Other Shepards (12 page)

“No, I’ll just sleep over at my uncle Pete’s. He lives in Chelsea.” Louis made a fist and tapped it against my nose. “See you.”

He lets me know he’s here by throwing something at the streetlight in front of our house. I lean over the tarpaulin-tacked wall and spy his shadow.

“Psst! I’m up here.”

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel!” Louis talks so loud that my stomach tenses, and I cross my fingers against anybody inside the house hearing us.

“You’re an outlaw in this town,” I say when Louis swings up over the wall. “Charged with the crime of being in my bedroom last week.”

“Of kissing you in your bedroom last week,” Louis corrects. His knees brush against mine as he slides next to me. Hearing him say the word
kissing
makes me look away.

“So Aaron the Pious is allowed in the house, and I’m lower than a roach or something.” He smiles and leans back, his laced fingers making a hammock to hold his head. “Don’t tell your mom, but once a house gets roaches, there’s no getting rid of them.”

I used to think I would never be able to come up with more than a dozen original words to say to Louis Littlebird, but we talk for a long time. There is something about Louis’s voice, although it is hardly familiar, that lets me loosen the wrappings I hold around my outside self.

It is not just me talking, either. Louis tells me things: about how last year he and his sister took their old dog, Rosie, to the vet and how he held her and hugged her while the vet gave Rosie the shot to put her to sleep, and how he cried for three days. We talk about Matthew versus Geneva, and I have to admit that Matthew’s biting sounds like a worse problem than Geneva’s wild dreams, although Louis is stumped when I tell him that Geneva has threatened to cut off her own tongue if we don’t get to go to Saint Germaine.

“I think she stole the concept from Van Gogh,” I explain. “She sort of likes to talk about things that also make her sick.”

Louis laughs. “A mute sister isn’t the worst punishment in the world. If Mattie shut up for more than five minutes I’d consider it a blessed miracle.” His face becomes more serious. “You’re going, aren’t you? To Saint Germaine?”

“It feels funny to say yes. It breaks a lot of rules. I’m not honoring my mom and dad’s wishes, I’m lying, I’m stealing.”

“Come on, you aren’t stealing anything. It’s only a matter of time before someone admits to buying those tickets for you.”

“I guess.” In the week I have grown to know him, I have had to recategorize Louis from the stranger of my daydreams into reality, and even his physical appearance has altered from the shift. His eyes, which at first had seemed so aloof, are eyes that cried over his dog. The hands he uses to pin wrestling opponents also know how to give his mom neck rubs.

“Besides, it seems like you two can pretty much take care of yourselves. I mean, when I saw your mom that day, no offense but I thought she was your grandmother,” Louis says. “She looked so flimsy, like she’d crumble into dust if I slammed the door too hard. Tonight at dinner, I asked my mom what she would do if three of her own kids were, you know, were gone, just like that. She said it’s the kind of tragedy that’s toughest on the parents. She said men in white coats would have to carry her away.”

“My mom’s strong, even if she doesn’t look it,” I say. “She’s a survivor. That doesn’t mean that on the inside she isn’t grieving. It’s only that she has a different way—”

“Stop right there, because I didn’t mean to get you uptight, okay?”

“She’s not crazy, you know. Neither of them is crazy. They’re regular parents, maybe quieter and older, maybe a little more cautious—”

“Hey, I’m sorry!” Louis didn’t mean to speak so loud; now his voice sinks into a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

We are both quiet, searching for the right thing to say. “There’s this tour that goes past our house every Saturday,” I begin after a moment. “Over the years, the guides have changed, but the tour always ends with the same old story, about how some old mayor of New York’s mistress lived in our house and how sometimes you can see the mayor’s ghost creeping down our front steps. It’s the highlight of the tour. No one pays attention to the other facts, like that our street is crooked because it used to be a cow path, or that it’s one of the only houses in the Village with a cellar. It’s the ghost story that grabs them. They love it.” I sigh, linking my arms around my knees like a basket handle to hold myself. “And that’s what’s wrong with our family.”

“Wow, you lost me,” Louis says. “What does some mayor’s ghost have to do with anything?”

“Because I’m a ghost story, too,” I say. “Geneva and me both. And our story is so awful that it crowds out everything else about us. Whatever else Geneva and I are—a good tennis player or an artist—has been swallowed up by our haunting. And you know the worst part? We never even knew them. We never shared their history. We live inside our very own haunted house, and we have no idea who the ghosts are, any more than we can remember the mayor and his mistress.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. He reaches his arm around my neck, and his fingers are warm, kneading my skin. “I get what you mean. Even my mom had heard the story of your family. My oldest brother, Francis, was three grades under your brother John. Mom said they were on the debate team together, and once she watched them debate against Xavier. I asked if she remembered him, and she told me your brother had a loud debating voice, one of the only people she could hear from where she was sitting in the back row because she was pregnant and liked to be near the exit.”

I smile; other people have talked about John’s public speaking voice, how he liked to get his point across in crashing decibels.

“I also asked my mom what she would do if a ticket to Saint Germaine dropped in her lap,” Louis continues. “Guess what she said?”

“What?” I lift my shoulders. “I give up.”

“She said, ‘I’d think someone up there was watching over me.’”

“Is that what you think?”

Louis uses his free hand to scoop something from the pocket of his leather jacket. “Here, give me your hand,” he says.

“What is this?” I cannot see, I can only feel the nugget of weight he places in the palm I offer him.

“It’s Saint Jude,” Louis tells me.

“What’s he the saint of?”

“I think he’s the saint of travel. You should take him with you to Saint Germaine. He’ll keep you protected.”

I almost want to laugh in Louis’s face, he sounds and looks so trusting and earnest, but instead I quickly drop my head to scrutinize the tiny tin statue, no bigger than a Crackerjack prize. Then I lift Saint Jude to my ear, like a shell.

“He’s saying, ‘Remember to take sunblock.’” Louis smiles. His hand on my shoulder anchors me to him. “He’s saying, keep safe and come back in one piece.”

“Is he?”

“Yeah.” The second kiss Louis Littlebird gives me feels like slow motion, as if he had decided on it long before he climbed up onto this roof tonight. At first my face and body are stiff, and I keep waiting for him to figure out that I haven’t had any experience with kissing, but soon I realize that it comes pretty naturally to me. The sign of a genuine Ick, I guess.

Suddenly the moon makes its debut, throwing white light over us, making me shy.

“It’s getting late, probably,” I say. “I bet it’s almost eleven.”

“Yeah, I should get going. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” We stand together, and he kisses me quickly on the cheek, a velvety soft brush that is nothing like a night crawler.

“Goodnight.”

“’Night, Louis.”

He swings down the ladder with an athlete’s ease. By the cloudy, apple juice light of the street lamps, I watch him, a long shadow with a confident stroll, until he vanishes.

The tickets are hidden under my mattress, and Saint Jude stays under my pillow. I keep thinking they might guide me to the right decision. But my Tuesday night sleep is awful, and I wake the next morning feeling as if I haven’t slept at all. Geneva avoids me and I know she is terrified that I will tell the parents. Every time I look at her, I am confronted with her face of silent pleading.

Wednesday night I am exhausted, flip-flopping from side to stomach to side, drifting in and out of shallow sleep. My dreams sputter and fade and are forgotten. I wake up and hear Geneva in the bathroom. Is she running the faucet or flushing the toilet? I force my eyes closed in an effort at sleep.

My fingers find the edge of Saint Jude. He is made of metal so thin that at first I thought I could bend him between my fingers, only I tried and I can’t. Behind my closed eyes is dark ocean. The water moves around and through me, and so I dive deeper, pulling myself along the current. We’re swimming together, Geneva and I, and she is telling me how the water fixes her, but her words are secret, the private underwater words shared between sisters, and I am smiling now, the water rushing in between my teeth and pouring into my smile.

“Holland! Holland!”

My name. I open my eyes to see my sister standing in the doorway of my room. The light shining behind her acts as an X ray, separating her body from her nightgown.

“Holland, are you okay?”

I close my eyes and open them again, but I do not wake up. I am not dreaming, but I am not awake, either. Held in this moment between sleep and consciousness, I am resolved. I know what we are supposed to do.

“I’m awake.” I yawn and slither up in bed.

“You were talking real loud. I couldn’t understand what you were saying. It must have been a dream.” Geneva approaches me reluctantly. “You need me to sing or hear prayers or anything?”

“Geneva,” I say slowly. “I am going to ask you a question and you must answer honestly. Think hard and take your time. How scared would you be to get on a plane?”

She is even frightened of the question. I can see by the way her body collapses slightly around her middle, shoulders drooping and knees bending to give way to the disintegrating support of her stomach.

“Very,” she answers. “Very very. As many
verys
as you can say in three hours and twenty minutes. But I’d do it. I’d do it if I knew that Saint Germaine was waiting for me at the end.”

When we come home from school on Thursday afternoon, the kitchen looks wild, framed by colors never before introduced into our house. I have been a helper to the process, a reliable mixer of varnishes, a steady hand at stippling the mattes of the sky and ocean. Geneva and Annie are the real artists. As soon as she drops her book bag, Geneva is at the sink, where she begins to mix paints and thinners with the expertise of a chef.

They have been painting the sky as a storm front, “because the colors are more funky,” Geneva informs me, using a word I know she borrowed from Annie. And so our walls shine oyster gray and sulfurous yellow, ribboned with hints of pink and lavender and misted with cloud tatters.

“On the ceiling you should paint Zeus, holding a giant lightning bolt ready to strike down anyone using too much basil,” I joke. “Since it’s a kitchen,” I explain, when neither Annie nor Geneva laughs. Geneva dips her brush and scrutinizes its color.

“Does this look too mustardy?” she asks me, holding the tip of her brush. “Maybe more linseed oil,” she says, answering her own question.

Annie is crouched on the floor, mixing paints into pottery saucers. “Take off your funny hat, Holland, and get working,” she says, looking up at me. Her face is bright with cheery flecks of paint, but grape-dark shadows are scooped beneath her eyes, and her linen blazer seems to engulf her body.

I stoop next to Annie. She hands me a bristle brush and a dish of brown goop.

“Are you shrinking, or are your clothes growing?” I ask her, half-kidding.

“Add a little more ochre and mix until it’s even,” Annie says. “It’s for shading the tree trunk.”

“You look tired. Might be spring flu. It’s going around,” I say. “There were four kids absent in my class today.”

“Holland, if I’m here to help you, what’s the use of your trying to help me? We just cancel each other out.” It is the first time Annie has admitted she came into our home for any other reason than to paint the walls, and her comment takes me by surprise.

“Okay,” I say. “Forget it. Take care of yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“We’re going,” I say after a minute. I squirt a dollop of ochre yellow paint into the saucer, like melting butter into chocolate, and wait for her reaction. None comes. “Tomorrow,” I continue. “We’re cutting school at lunch. We’re not telling anybody. Other than you, I mean. And Louis. And I’ll tell the parents, too, once we’re on our way.” It was my final bet to myself.
If you can get yourself to that island, you have to let the parents know. It’s not fair to worry them.

Annie sits back on her heels, touching her fingers against the hollow of her neck. We lapse into a silence so long that I think she is angry with me. I draw my face up, defiant, waiting.

“Well, Holland Shepard,” she says finally through a little laugh, “you have more spirit than I’d figured. You’re turning into someone I can really relate to.”

Her words make me so happy I could hug her, if she were the hugging type.

I
SINK MY SPOON
into the molded plastic compartment of chocolate pudding, which looks like a square of wet cardboard and tastes not much better. I turn away from lunch to gaze at my view, so clear it is as if the window itself had been painted blue.

Geneva has worn herself out with Hail Marys and is working through a string of Pledge of Allegiances. When I lean forward I can see that her body is pushed up into her chair, head and shoulders glued to the back of the seat, giving her the appearance of an astronaut just launched into space. Only her mouth moves—“antoo the republic forwidget stans …”

“Do you want your crackers?” I ask. Without turning her head, she flips the package onto my tray.

Neither of us has brought books, so I busy myself with the travel magazines stacked inside the netted pocket attached to the back of the seat in front of mine, then turn my attention again to the window. The view, though unchanging, exhilarates me. “We will be cruising at an altitude of 28,000 feet,” the pilot had informed us over the speakers. A breathless height.