Lovely Wild (25 page)

His mother’s gaze flared. “I knew it.”

“Don’t start.” He held up a hand, but his mother was already off and running.

“I told you, Ryan, if you only knew—”

“Enough!” Both of them looked reflexively at the ceiling, but if they’d woken the kids there was no sound of them from upstairs. He fixed his mother with another hard glare. “I know you hate her. I know you always will hate her. But I’ve told you before and I’m going to say it again, just so we’re clear—I love Mari. All marriages have rough spots, and this one isn’t because of her.”

His mother looked shocked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s not supposed to mean anything. It means that I screwed up. It’s my fault. I...” Ryan ran his hand through his hair again.

“You look like your father when you do that.”

He stopped. “I had an affair with a patient. The one who killed herself. I lost my job because of it—”

“Oh, Ryan!”

“And I was facing charges,” he continued, cutting her off before she could go into full-on wailing. “But they’re being settled out of court. I’m not going to lose my license. They couldn’t prove it.”

His mother looked stricken. “But you did it. It’s true.”

He nodded. “I needed to get away for a while.”

“So you went...there?” His mother’s lip curled. “Why on earth? You could’ve—”

“Come here?” He laughed harshly. “Right. She knows you can’t stand her, Ma. She’d never have come here.”

His mother’s back stiffened. “I have never treated your wife with anything but politeness.”

He found a laugh at that. “Yeah, well, having you over for the kids’ birthdays and holidays when you ignore her like she’s a stranger is a lot different than asking you to put her up in your guest bedroom.”

“I’m sorry,” his mother said.

It was the last thing Ryan ever expected his mother to say. “She’s a good person, Ma. I wish you could understand that. Hate Dad if you have to. He’s dead now, and anyway, he was the adult who made the decisions, not her. You have to stop blaming her for what she couldn’t help.”

“Oh, Ryan, you don’t understand. I know she can’t help where she came from or what she is. But what you don’t understand is that she will never be...”

“What?” he challenged. “She won’t ever be what? Normal? High-class, like you? I hate to say it, Ma, but if class is determined by how you treat other people, Mari’s got a lot more than most people I know.”

FIFTY-FOUR

MARI’S OFFER HANGS
between them for a long moment before Andrew answers.

“No,” he says.

It breaks her heart. Mari sits at the table, her face in her hands. “You don’t love me. You said you did, but you don’t.”

“Mariposa, that’s not the only way to love someone. I mean, it’s not right.”

She knows it’s wrong. She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes to hold back tears. “Go away, then.”

“I don’t want to go away. You don’t understand...”

She doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to hear.

“I need to try calling my kids again. I can’t seem to get a good signal out here.” She’s changing the subject, she knows, even if what she says is true.

She doesn’t care about reaching Ryan, who hasn’t called her once since she’d asked him to leave. Probably pouting. But Kendra hasn’t answered any of Mari’s dozen texts, and that’s more worrisome. Kendra’s attached to her phone at all times, even the cheap replacement. Either the messages aren’t getting through—not so much of a surprise, considering the poor service out here—or she’s ignoring the texts. Mari hopes it isn’t the latter, though she supposes, depending on what Ryan told the kids, it would be understandable if they ignored her.

“You had my daughter’s phone,” she says suddenly. “And the library book.”

Andrew looks uncomfortable. “I didn’t know they belonged to your daughter.”

“Why did you take them in the first place?”

For that he seems to have no answer.

Mari turns her back on him. She thumbs in Kendra’s number with a simple message.
Call me, honey. Love you, Mama.

After a moment, Mari thumbs Ryan’s number. Her message to him is even shorter and simpler.

Call me.

She’s not really sure she wants to talk to him, but she supposes at some point, she must. She can’t ignore the situation forever. At some point, Ryan will tire of his mother’s hovering and snide remarks the way he always does. He’ll want to come back. He has to soon, anyway, because the summer will be ending and even though she’s the one who told him to leave, she can’t imagine he’d go back to Philly without her.

He won’t abandon her.

Suddenly, so fast she loses her breath, Mari’s world spins until she staggers.

She falls to her knees on the nubbled rag rug, the knots digging into her flesh so that she thinks of Andrew saying how his parents had forced him to kneel on grains of rice. Only seconds have passed and already her knees hurt. She can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him to do it for hours.

“Mariposa. Don’t.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do!”

She forces herself to her feet. Forces herself to breathe. But it’s not working. Panic sweeps her and she flings open first the fridge, gasping aloud in relief at the sight of every shelf and drawer filled. Milk, eggs, butter, yogurt, ketchup, mayo, mustard. She catalogs everything with her hands as though only by touching can she make it all real.

Then the cupboards. Everything is there. She could live on this bounty for months, especially if she’s sparing. Even if Ryan never comes back, even if Mari is cut off from everything, she can survive.

At the sink she runs cold water and gulps it until her stomach sloshes and then she leans over, mouth open and throat convulsing, convinced she’s going to vomit. Slowly, breathing deeply, she forces away the nausea. She’s going to be fine. She will be fine.

“Rough time,” she mutters. “Rough time. Rough. Time.”

Breathing in. Breathing out. She grips the sink and sips at the air as she murmurs. She blinks. The world no longer spins.

To her surprise, Andrew pulls her close. He kisses her forehead, not her mouth. Mari closes her eyes, comforted. She remembers something like this from before, though she was much smaller.

“I may have forgotten you,” she says, squeezed up tight and close against him in a way different than Ryan has ever held her. “But right now I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know you.”

His hands stroke once, twice, over her hair. “I’ve never forgotten you.”

She tips her face up to his. “Tell me how you met me. Tell me about the first time you saw me.”

She wants to know what it was about her that made him fight so hard to keep her safe. Mari wants a fairy story. But Andrew only strokes her hair back from her face and gives his head the tiniest of shakes.

“Can you remember the first time you met me?” he says.

She thinks and thinks again, then harder. She looks into his eyes. They’re kind eyes, blue ringed with a darker edge and white flecks in the irises.

“No. But I told you before, a lot of what happened when I was younger is hard to remember.”

“Maybe,” Andrew says, his hands making a ponytail of her hair at the base of her neck, “it’s because I was always part of your life.”

“Were you?” She lets him tug her hair to tip her face further.

He’s smiling, but a little sadly. “Feels like it. Doesn’t it?”

There are more questions to be asked, but there always will be. Mari looks at Andrew. She looks toward the window, the blue sky and the hint of green that indicates the tops of the trees. She doesn’t need to ask him anything else right now.

FIFTY-FIVE

“HERE.” GRANDMA SLAPPED
down a thick folder in front of Kendra, who had her feet up on the coffee table. “You should read this.”

Ethan was staring with blank eyes at the television, more mindless cartoons, but he looked around now. He reached for the folder, but Grandma slapped his fingers. Actually slapped them, so the monkeybrat pulled them back with a cry. He looked stunned, which is how Kendra felt.

Grandma might be annoying, but she’d never been mean to either of her grandchildren. She’d certainly never hit them. Now Ethan stuck his fingers in his mouth and stared at her, wide-eyed. He looked as if he might cry.

Kendra frowned. She might tease her brother, she might call him names, she might even poke him herself when he got really annoying. But that was her job and her right as his sister. Nobody else was allowed to treat him that way.

Not even Grandma.

“What is it?” Kendra said, sullen, not even making a motion to reach for it.

“It’s the truth about your mother,” Grandma said in a stiff, formal voice that cracked. She cleared her throat. “The real, whole truth that nobody seems to care to know.”

Kendra didn’t trust her grandmother’s opinion about her mother any farther than she could toss her cell phone without breaking it—which wasn’t far at all. And if Kendra’s dad didn’t want to know what was in that file, it must be something he thought was so awful he didn’t want to know. “What’s that mean? The real, whole truth?”

“You don’t know anything about your mother. And I’ve kept silent all these years because I love your father. And I love you. And Ethan.” Grandma’s voice broke, then. Hard. Tears brimmed up and fell down her cheeks.

Kendra had seen her grandmother cry before, but this was the first time she believed the tears were real.

“I didn’t want to hurt you. So I kept the story to myself. All of it. But I knew. Oh, yes, I knew all along.” Grandma shuddered and her mouth looked as if she’d sucked on a lemon. “But now, it’s time.”

“Why now?” Kendra asked, not even caring if she sounded like a little bitch. “What’s so important about now? I mean, it’s not like we ever thought you loved our mom. We know you can’t stand her.”

Grandma looked as though she’d stepped in something that smelled bad, but the tears still tracked down her cheeks and made stripes in her makeup. She’d hate it if she knew how she looked, Kendra thought. Old and wrinkled and smeared.

“When you’re a mother, you’ll understand what it’s like to want to protect your children and do what’s best for them. Someday, Kendra, I hope you’ll understand what it’s like to be a real mother. One who doesn’t leave her children—”

“Our mother didn’t leave us!” Kendra shouted. “She would never!”

“Of course she did!” Grandma shouted, just as loud. Spit flew from her red lipsticked mouth. “She could hardly do anything else, could she? How else could she behave, given what she came from? What she was?”

Kendra had heard her grandmother say such a thing before. “What do you mean, what she was?”

Ethan had begun to sniffle, his eyes darting back and forth, big as saucers. Usually even the tiniest hint of tears would have Grandma woo-wooing over him, but not this time. Now she barely looked at him. Her eyes bore into Kendra’s.

“Read that file. Then you’ll know. And make sure your father reads it, too.”

“If he reads it, will he take us back h-home?” Ethan cried. Snot bubbled out from his nose.

Kendra grimaced. Gross. She looked at her grandmother, who just shook her head and pointed at the folder.

“No,” Grandma said, “I’m sure that once he reads that, he won’t take you back to her. Ever.”

With that, she made a grand exit, leaving Kendra to stare after her with her jaw gaping in amazement and fury. Ethan burst into full-on sobbing. Kendra cringed away from the glistening snot sliding all over his face but did pull him closer. There were tissues handy on every end table, but she handed him one of the doilies from Grandma’s couch instead. He scrubbed at his face.

“Don’t read it,” Ethan begged her. “And don’t show it to Daddy! Don’t, Kiki!”

Curiosity killed the cat. How many times had Kendra heard that? And what had she ever learned from listening at doors but half stories and mysteries that didn’t get explained? Here was her chance, once and for all, to learn whatever was “the truth.”

“Whatever it is, Grandma thinks it’s going to make us not love Mom. Or make Daddy not love her. Which is just stupid,” Kendra said in a low, hard voice meant to drive the tears right out of her brother’s eyes. She felt like crying herself, but forced it back. She wasn’t going to let Grandma get to her like that.

“I don’t think you should read it, Kiki. Throw it away.”

But she couldn’t.

FIFTY-SIX

THIS DAY HAS
no soundtrack, but it’s as idyllic as any movie. Andrew takes Mari up the mountain and through the woods to explore old places and show her some new ones, too. By the time evening starts to fall, Mari’s cheeks are sunburned from their picnic at the top of the mountain, and her feet and calves ache from the hours of hiking. She’s bone-tired but refreshed. She takes Andrew’s hand as he helps her over a fallen wooden fence at the edge of the field. By the time they cross it, the sun’s started dipping below the edges of the trees and the chickens have all gone inside the hen house. Mari hears their muttered complaints, but doesn’t expect to see Rosie stepping out holding a hen by the neck in one hand.

“Oh. Shit,” Andrew mutters and drops Mari’s hand.

“Rosie? What are you doing?”

Rosie holds out the hen, whose feet swim in the air. “This one’s not laying anymore. She’ll make a nice pot of soup.”

Mari isn’t sure she can be affronted—technically the chickens are hers, or at least they belong to her property, but since Rosie’s been the one taking care of them all these years it seems she has some sort of right to them, too. Still it would’ve been nice if the woman had asked her first.

“Oh. I didn’t know you just...took them.”

Rosie’s smile slips over her face like the growing shadows in the field. She looks at Andrew, her gaze hard and somehow hot. “Chickens that don’t lay aren’t of any use but in the soup pot. Hello, Andrew.”

“You...know each other?” Mari supposes she shouldn’t be any more surprised by this than she was about the chickens. Rosie, after all, lives in the only other house on this lane and would be Andrew’s only other neighbor.

“Of course we do. He hasn’t told you?”

Mari looks at Andrew, whose shoulders have hunched. He’s looking at the ground where the toe of his boot digs into the dirt. “Why would he? You never mentioned him, either, Rosie.”

The words come out with a faintly accusatory air, and Mari realizes that’s exactly how she meant them to sound. Rosie had known of the tiny cabin in the woods and the man who lived there but hadn’t mentioned it. It was strange, at the least. Slightly sinister, if Mari thought harder about it. As though Rosie knew, but hadn’t wanted her to know.

Andrew says nothing, not even when Rosie sidles closer and shakes the hen at him. The poor bird is dangling from Rosie’s fist like she’s already killed it. Mari doesn’t want to watch it suffer, slowly suffocating.

“Kill it, if you mean to,” she says. “But don’t choke it like that.”

Rosie looks at the chicken, surprised, as if she’s forgotten she held it. She tosses it to the dirt where it lands on its side and scrambles in the dust before getting to its feet and shaking its wings.

“I wondered how long it would be before you found her,” Rosie says to Andrew. “Like calls to like. Sin to sin. No matter what we try to do. You always were full of sin.”

Mari tastes sourness, bright and sharp. “Andrew? What’s she talking about?”

Rosie laughs. Here in the darkening yard it has a slightly maniacal sound to it. “Oh, Mari. Pretty Mariposa. Pretty like a butterfly and just as stupid.”

“Don’t you call her that.” Andrew’s eyes flash.

“What’s that? Mariposa? Or stupid.” Rosie’s gaze pierces Mari. “You don’t know about him, do you?”

“I know all about him,” Mari says stubbornly, though by looking back and forth between Andrew and Rosie, it’s clear she’s clueless. Her chin lifts, though. Her fists clench. She stands her ground. She might not be sure what’s going on, but she certainly won’t stand for being called stupid.

“Do you? I don’t think you do. Because he didn’t tell you, did he? Of course he didn’t,” Rosie says bitterly. “He wouldn’t. Because if you knew... Well, I thought better of you, Mari. That’s all. You with your nice family and those children. That handsome husband who gives you so much trouble.”

Mari shakes her head. Earlier the world had threatened to spin out from under her. It tips again now. She digs her heels into the dirt, wishing she was barefoot so she could curl her toes into the earth, too. The solar lights lining the driveway have started to come on, and a light inside the barn she didn’t notice before has now become bright enough in the dusk to make a square of light. All of this means she can clearly see Rosie’s face, twisted in disgust, and Andrew’s look of shame.

“You don’t know anything about my husband.”

Rosie laughs again. The sound curdles in Mari’s ears. “Sure I do. How he got into trouble at work. Even an old woman like me can look stuff up on the internet. I know all about how he lost his job, how he slept with that patient of his. How he killed her.”

“Ryan,” Mari says, “did not kill that woman.”

Rosie shrugs, unconcerned. “She took her own life, but he was her doctor. Wasn’t he supposed to be helping her? Not driving her to jump in front of a train.”

“Disturbed people aren’t rational. It’s not anyone’s fault. And certainly not Ryan’s.”

“Disturbed people. You’d know about that, wouldn’t you? And you,” she says to Andrew, “I guess you’d know a thing or two about it, too. Huh?”

“Shut up,” Andrew says firmly. “You can just shut up.”

“That’s a nice way to speak to your mother,” Rosie says, and Mari gasps aloud. Rosie turns. “That’s right. He didn’t tell you, did he?”

Andrew makes a low noise in his throat. “You’re not my mother.”

Mari can’t keep up. There are too many words. Emotions. All of this is swirling around her, a tornado of anxiety, but though she’s in the center of it, there’s no calm place to keep her safe.

“No, I’m only the one who raised you like my own when she wouldn’t. I’m only the one who took care of you when you were sick, made sure you had clothes and food and a roof over your head!” Rosie shakes her fists at him. “I’m only the one who made sure you got your schooling, made sure you learned your Bible! No, I ain’t your mother, praise Jesus, and I thank the good Lord I’m not!”

Mari steps back. Back again. She’s never liked the sound of raised voices. They make her cringe.

“Tell her,” Rosie says and spits to the side. “You disgusting, devil-ridden piece of hell-bound filth.”

“This is the woman who gave you the watch,” Mari says, then louder, “the one who punished you for getting your clothes dirty? Rosie is the one who made you kneel on the rice to pray?”

He nods once, twice. “She did raise me. She did all of those things. Yes.”

“And yet you’d run away, like you always did! Always running off into the woods.” Rosie spits to the side, a great glob that glistens in the light from the barn. “And I never knew, did I? Why you were so hell-bent on getting back here, no matter how many times I warned you off. That was your filthy secret, yours and your father’s. Well, then I learned why and I prayed for your soul, Andrew. I prayed the sins of the father had not been visited upon the son, but my prayers went unanswered. Didn’t they?”

Rosie heaves a great sigh and for the first time sounds more sad than angry. “I tried with you, son, I truly did. But there was too much of your daddy in you, wasn’t there? And too much of your mama, too, I guess. No matter what I did, it was always going to come to this.”

“Andrew,” Mari says with as much dignity as she can maintain considering she feels as though she might vomit into the dirt from all the stress. “Please. Tell me what’s going on.”

He turns to her. He takes her hands, an action that makes Rosie spit again. Andrew ignores her. “You want to know about the first time I met you?”

Mari nods, uncertain of why it’s important to tell her now. Not sure she wants to know, if the look on Andrew’s face is any indication of how he feels about the story. But his fingers squeeze hers, and Mari remembers how Andrew always did his best to keep her safe.

Andrew draws a long, slow breath. “I was six when you were born. My father had promised me a ride into town with him to go to the hardware store. That’s where he told
her—
” he jerks his chin at Rosie “—we were going.”

Mari thinks Rosie will interrupt to complain again, but she says nothing. She’s listening, too. Maybe she doesn’t know the whole story, either.

“But we didn’t go to town. We came here, to his mother’s house. We came here a lot. Rosie wasn’t supposed to know when we visited, and my dad always made sure I knew not to tell her. But she knew, anyway, I think.”

“I knew,” Rosie mutters with a shake of her head that sends her gossamer hair floating all around her face. “Oh, yes. I knew about it.”

The hen has abandoned them and gone back to her sisters, too dumb to be happy she’s survived another day. The three of them stand in the harsh, white light from the barn that makes the shadows so much deeper as Mari tries to wrap her mind around what Andrew has said. His mother’s house? Whose mother?

“We came into the kitchen. The dogs were barking and jumping. You know how they were.” Andrew’s thumbs stroke over the back of her hand. His smile is meant to reassure her but only sends another swirling vortex of anxiety around her. “They were barking so loud it should’ve been impossible to hear anything else. But I heard screams.”

Screams are never good.

“My father told me to stay in the kitchen with Gran, who was sitting at the table pretending she didn’t hear anything, but he wasn’t paying attention when I followed him upstairs and down the hall. The bedroom door was open. I could see directly into it. I could see her there, sitting on the bed, her legs spread. I was embarrassed, I thought she was, you know. Peeing.”

“But you kept looking, didn’t you?” Rosie says with another bitter laugh. “Just like your father.”

Andrew looks into Rosie’s eyes, and his look is dark. Black. Nothing blue about those eyes now. For the first time since meeting Andrew again, probably for the first time in her life, Mari is scared of him.

“There was a lot of blood. I’d never seen so much blood. And she was screaming, cursing. When she saw my dad, she called him every bad name I’d ever heard and a lot of ones I never had. She put her hands down between her legs, where this tiny head with dark, dark hair was pushing out. And my father turned around, saw me. ‘Get some blankets, Andy,’ he said. So I ran into the other bedroom and pulled the quilt off the bed, and I dragged it down the hall to give them. And there was the baby in her arms. Covered in blood and screaming. I’d never seen a baby so small like that. I didn’t know they came out so bloody.”

Even at eight, Ethan knows where babies come from, how they’re made and how they’re born. Still, knowing and seeing are two different things. Mari can’t imagine what the boy Andrew must’ve thought about seeing a woman give birth.

Andrew shivers and takes in a long, deep breath. “And my father said, ‘you can’t tell anyone, Andy. Nobody. Don’t. Tell. Anyone.’”

Rosie gives a low groan but says nothing.

“And Ellie said, ‘Andy, isn’t she beautiful? I’m going to name her Mariposa, because she’s so beautiful, just like a butterfly. And it will be your job to protect her, Andy. You’ll have to help me protect her. You will help me, won’t you?’ And I said...I said yes.”

Mari doesn’t want to be holding Andrew’s hands any longer. His grip is too tight. It’s no longer a comfort, but a set of shackles. He’s not stopping the world from spinning, but instead has put his finger upon it like a globe, turning it fast and faster.

“So I did what she asked. I protected you. And like my father had said, I didn’t tell anyone. Especially not
her.
” He throws the word again at Rosie.

“All I knew was you had some fascination with running back there through the woods to that house! No matter what I did, I couldn’t keep you from it! The same as him,” Rosie adds bitterly and spits again, then again as though she’s sick from the words. “No matter how I punished you, you still ran back there. If I’d known there was another child—”

“What would you have done?” Andrew challenges, letting go at last of Mari’s hands and confronting Rosie. “Would you have taken her, too? Raised her up to kneel on rice until her knees bled? Locked her in the closet for hours at a time just because she said she was scared there was a monster in there, and you wanted to prove that Jesus didn’t allow monsters in children’s closets? What would you have done if you’d known?”

“I wouldn’t have left her there alone with nobody to take care of her!” Rosie screams. “You can hate me all you want to, Andrew, but the sin is not mine! It’s your father’s and his sister’s, the pair of them, sick as sin. I tried, oh, how I tried, to keep you from it. You call me cruel, but everything I did was to help you. And in the end, you didn’t go so far away did you? You could’ve gone anywhere in the world, but you stayed right here. Right within spitting distance of this house. And why? So you could make sure it would be here for her when she came back? So you could keep it safe for her, make sure nobody else lived in it, right? Did you tell her about what you did to make sure it would be here for her? Did you?”

“Shut up!” Andrew screams, and advances on Rosie so fast the woman can’t back away and Mari can’t reach to stop him, even if she could move, which she can’t.

She’s still reeling from everything Andrew has said, trying to make sense of it. How the pieces tied together. How they’d made her who she was.

Andrew’s fingers close around Rosie’s shoulders and he shakes her the way she shook the chicken earlier. Rosie fights him. For an old lady, she’s strong. Or maybe Andrew, despite his rage, isn’t willing to really hurt her. She kicks at him, missing his nuts but bending him over, anyway.

Panting, she turns to Mari who’s stood in stunned silence during the whole violent episode. “Ask him what he did to keep people from that house.”

Andrew stands, hands out. “Mari. I didn’t know it was you. All I knew was someone new had moved into the house. And I never meant to hurt anyone, especially not you....”

Mari hears the sound of ringing rocks. She feels the thud of the stone on her leg. She gasps and gags, acid burning in her throat, but swallows down hard to keep her gut in its place. “You were the one throwing the stones?”

Andrew says nothing. He doesn’t have to. He looks ashamed, and that’s enough of an admission.