Picture This (10 page)

“What did you do that for?” asked Natalie, dusting off her clothes.

“I didn't do anything. We've got all the windows open downstairs, and the wind probably just slammed the door shut. Are you okay?” The girl had been in the closet for little more than a minute, yet she was clearly shaken. If Rocky could have reprimanded the house for bad behavior, she would have.

“I'm fine,” said Natalie, mustering up an unconvincing level of bravado. “Let's see the rest of your house.”

N
atalie had little to offer in remodeling ideas other than putting in a larger bathroom. “This is disgusting,” she said when she saw the tiny upstairs bath with the green sink on pitted aluminum legs.

“I know it's hard to see the potential of a house, especially when it's been abandoned for years,” said Rocky. She wanted the house to reach out and inject hope into the girl, to draw her in, not slam her in a closet. She'd give Natalie more time to get used to the house.

Cooper was in exactly the same spot when they came back down.

“I think it's unanimous: the house needs a lot of help,” said Rocky. “Let's head back to the cottage. I know you said that laundry was on your list, and I've got to drive around the island to check on our feral cat population.”

She had almost said “home,”
let's go home,
and she wondered if Natalie had heard the unsaid words brimming up in her throat. They walked back in silence, with Cooper peeing on critical canine communiqué outposts every twenty feet. Compared to the old Costello house, the rental cottage looked simple and uncomplicated, like a plain burger, no pickles, no lettuce. Cooper drank deeply from his water dish and then stretched out long on his favorite spot by the sliding glass door.

“What's up with this statue?” asked Natalie. She nodded her head toward the one piece of artwork in Rocky's house, poised on an end table by the couch.

The two-foot-tall sculpture, lovingly carved, was of a woman playing the saxophone, eyes closed in ecstasy, dress blowing, knees splayed slightly as she leaned back into the music.

“That's from my brother, Caleb. It was a prototype for his musical sculptures. He's got a waiting list now, people are crazy about them. I'm sort of his business contact for Portland, where he sells them. His newest one is a fiddle player standing on one toe.”

Natalie had gathered a bag of dirty clothes and was headed to the one Laundromat on Peaks, but something stopped her.

“What's it like to have a brother? I mean, it sounds like you like him or understand him.”

Rocky turned the saxophone woman about a quarter-turn to the sun, as if it was a philodendron.

“When we were growing up, he had a learning disability. He was two years younger, so I looked after him. He describes it as me beating the daylights out of the bullies who picked on him. Then at some point it all switched around, and he became my friend, my go-to guy.”

Rocky was going to say more and tell the girl how her brother propped her up after Bob died, how he was the only person who was willing to tell her that she looked like shit after grief threatened to drown her. But talking about Bob with Natalie was filled with land mines. Natalie had never once said,
Sorry about your husband collapsing on your bathroom floor and dying.
Even with a teenager's neophyte system of empathy, this felt like a harsh oversight. Had life been that hard for Natalie?

“I don't have a brother or a sister. Not that I know of. Sometimes the foster parents said that all of us were like brothers and sisters in their house, but we weren't ever going to be family. We don't do lunch, send birthday cards, or call at Christmas,” said Natalie.

Cooper picked up his head from where it had rested on his front paws. He tilted his head, listening to a sound beyond the narrow band available to humans.

“Who were you close to? Of all the families you lived with, who could you talk to about important stuff?” asked Rocky.

Natalie bent over to pick up the white plastic bag of laundry. “It wasn't any of the families. It was one of the caseworkers. Not that she was so special, but she was there for a lot of the switches from one home to another. Then she left. She had a baby of her own. I guess her baby was more important.”

Natalie lifted the bag and held it in front of her in a peculiar way, not hoisted over one shoulder, as Rocky would have done.

“But who did you talk with about emotional things, about dating, or dreams of what you wanted, you know?” asked Rocky, following the girl to the door.

Natalie turned to face Rocky, keeping the plastic bag between them. “You still don't get it. I didn't have a brother who grew up to become my go-to guy. I didn't have anybody, and if I had dreams, I kept them close to me so that no one could steal them in the middle of the night.”

Rocky placed a hand on the door frame. “You're right. I don't know what it was like for you. If you want to tell me more, I'd like to listen.”

Natalie's chin shook minutely. “Why would you want to listen? I mean, why would you care?”

Rocky bit her lip and did not attempt to crack through the rhetorical question. But as Natalie walked away with her bag of dirty clothes, the question settled around her shoulders.

Chapter 16

Cooper

H
e shut his eyes in order to see. A trumpet of scents opened up a stellar universe, larger than anything his eyes would ever see.

His kind was different from wolves in a fundamental way that had to do with what the long snout searched for in the world of smells. When it came to sniffing out humans, wolves scanned for the acrid scent of humans in order to survive by avoidance; they determined if humans were near, and if so, how close they were and what threat they carried? The canines who had long since come in from the wild had unearthed endless ripples of meaning about humans: they had dissected their chemistry and understood their clang of fears, the splash of anger and the tremble of devotion that drove them like thunder. There was nuance to the rush of scents, and it helped if he closed his eyes. If anything, the canines who had bonded with humans long ago were now more complex than the wolves.

The black dog discerned the small and large agonies of his pack. The girl, Melissa, circled food with the bold flash of a warrior, and he helped her as much as he could, sighing bravery into her hands as she ran her fingers through his fur. He accepted her skirmishes with food, her need to hide from the very substance of life as if it were the enemy. It was not his battle, but he understood the depth of her courage when he smelled it on her, and for that he loved her as he would love a pup with large awkward paws.

His companion, Rocky, grew stronger each day, filling up with the tender buds of beach, water, sticks and leaving the land of grief and the search for the dead. He had tried to lead her with his breath, with his eyes, with the endless permutations of tail wagging, his ears turned this way and that, his spine curling in ecstasy, but her comprehension, as with all humans, was unreliable. Still, he had seen the look in her eyes that canines do not find with all humans, and he was grateful to have found her. She was his, and he would never be taken from her.

But the new one, the visitor, clouded her intent, twisted the flow of chemicals that pulsed out of her skin in puddles, and caused the black dog to swallow light, to curl his tongue, to make ready his long bones. She was without a pack, a perilous state for dogs and humans. She was young, not much more than a pup in human terms. Even so, a tiny cloaked molecule coursed through her, so well hidden that a lesser dog might have missed it, and even he was not entirely sure of its meaning. Now that Cooper had sensed it, he would wait. He closed his eyes to see.

Chapter 17

Tess

T
ess's granddaughter had just celebrated her seventh birthday, and as her birthday gift, Tess had invited her to Peaks Island for a sleepover all by herself. Usually Danielle came with her little brother, Sam, and they slept together in their grandmother's loft, or all three of them slept on the new screened porch. Coming alone was special, and the news of it had made Danielle squeal with joy.

They ate pizza on the deck near the ferry. In the summer, the restaurant near the dock pumped out its loudest selection of music. Tess wore earplugs. Danielle vibrated with excitement.

Tess saw the child's lips moving and said, “What did you say, sweetie?”

Danielle pointed to her ears and shouted, “You can't hear me with earplugs. Take them out.” Danielle plucked imaginary plugs out of her ears.

Tess got the main gist of what the girl said. She pointed a finger in the air in the wait position. In between songs, Tess removed the spongy earplugs. “Let's start walking home before the next song starts. We can stop for an ice cream cone.”

Tess selected one scoop of coffee ice cream, and Danielle picked fudge ripple. They sat on a bench near the grocery store and ate their cones, watching the comings and goings of the customers emerging with multiple plastic bags.

They tossed their napkins in the trash barrel on the sidewalk. It was Saturday evening, and the accumulation of plastic water bottles, paper, and Styrofoam had simmered to the top of the fifty-gallon container.

Danielle reached up and easily placed her small hand in her grandmother's. Tess squeezed softly, and a lovely buzz of violets swirled around her nose. This was the slightest improvement in the rewiring of her senses. Or she was making it up.

“Are there some mothers who don't love their babies? Did your mother love you?” asked the girl.

What a strange departure from ice cream and summer evenings. Tess looked down at the top of the girl's head. Several barrettes held her long bangs off her face. Danielle wanted her hair to be one length. As it was now, her thick red hair was chopped into a cascade of layers, making it look like ocean waves. Why was the child asking about mother love?

“I'll tell you, but I'd like to know why you're asking.”

Danielle hopped over a bump in the sidewalk where a tree root had burst through. Her plastic sandals slapped down with a suctioning noise. “I heard you on the phone with Mr. Isaiah. You said Natalie is sort of like Rocky's new daughter. I saw Natalie in Portland when Dad and I were looking for new shoes for me. Natalie told me that her mother couldn't love her and that she had to live in foster homes. I asked her what foster homes were, and she said that they're for kids who get born to parents who don't love them and they are given away to people who are paid to take care of them but not to love them.”

Danielle took a breath and launched in again. “My mother loves me, and so does Daddy. You loved my daddy when he was a little boy. Did your mother love you?”

Something like used engine oil had seeped into the world of her granddaughter, and drops of it cascaded along her ears and down her neck. Did Natalie have to use the very words that would cause Danielle to worry?

“I was wonderfully loved by my mother. I just didn't have her very long because she died when I was young. And my father loved me the best way he knew how. He was rather stern.”

They were nearing the driveway to the house. Tess let her hand rest along Danielle's shoulder. “I'm glad that you're asking about this. I think you're a scientist. You've just spotted something unusual, and now you're examining the world to see if you can find any more of these unusual sightings.”

The child put her hand in Tess's pants pocket and held on, something she hadn't done in months. Tess felt a thread of fear coming off the girl for the first time. The sensation was faint, but the urgency of fear coming from her granddaughter added texture to the emotion.

“We don't know what went wrong with Natalie's mother, but it had to be something terrible and big. Huge. And her mother must have had no one else to help her with her child. This is not like it is for you at all. This would never happen to you. You have family who love you and would do anything to take care of you. I would never let anything bad happen to you.”

Was it bad luck to make such absolute promises? Tess knelt down to eye level. “What happened to Natalie is terrible and it's sad, but now she has to figure out how to make the best of her life. Now she can choose who will be in her life and who won't. She doesn't have to let people in her life who don't care about her.”

Danielle patted her grandmother's cheek in a sudden gesture that Tess hadn't seen from the child before. They stood up and continued along the gravel road. Danielle twirled in a mixture of skipping and turning.

“If Rocky knew about Natalie when she was little like me, Rocky would have driven to her house right away and told the foster home people that she would take care of her. Wouldn't she?” asked Danielle between twirls.

“Yes,” said Tess. “You are probably right about that.” Is that what was driving Rocky now, trying to rescue a child from the past? Rocky wasn't even sure the child was Bob's. Only DNA testing would give a definitive answer.

T
ess and her granddaughter shared a common tweak in their DNA: they each had synesthesia. Tess wondered what it would have been like if someone had explained this simple and amazing fact to her when she was Danielle's age. As far as Tess could determine, the child had a synesthetic response to sound and smell. Wind chimes made her feet itch. A ripe banana looked like a green mist. Tess tried not to overwhelm the child, but she was fascinated by the inner world of her granddaughter.

Tess tucked the child into bed. She had a spare bedroom as well as the loft, but sometimes Danielle ended up in bed with her grandmother.

“I want you to know right now that we are not eating popcorn in my bed,” said Tess. “It felt like I was sleeping in a gravel pit the last time you slept in my bed.”

Danielle giggled at her grandmother's attempt to be stern. “It was popcorn, not gravel!” Danielle spread her arms and legs under the sheets as if she was making a snow angel.

“Gramma, do you remember what tomorrow night is?”

Tess never got tired of hearing the name that applied to so many but sounded so sweet from her own granddaughter: Gramma. “Yes, tomorrow Rocky is coming to play cards with us. It's practice for our big island poker tournament right here. We'll have to practice tomorrow afternoon after we get back from checking on the rental houses. Do you remember Texas Hold'em?”

“Yes.”

Tess grabbed a brush and pulled it through the girl's hair and began to braid it into two short braids.

“Do you remember what a straight is?”

“Oh yes, I like straights. They taste like chocolate.”

Tess logged another cross-firing of the senses.

“That will prove to be a helpful advantage that is best kept to yourself. What's a better hand, two pairs or three of a kind?” Tess fastened the two braids with a hair tie.

“I can't remember that one,” said the girl. She squeezed her face together as if doing so would help her remember.

“Well, that's why we have our little study cards. We'll look at them at breakfast and then we'll practice in the afternoon. Rocky can't remember things the way you and I can. Her straights don't taste like chocolate. I'm willing to guess that, for her, even a royal flush doesn't have the carbonated fizz it had for me. We are going to beat the pants off Rocky.”

“How does Rocky remember the cards?” Danielle sounded concerned as she leaned back on her side of the bed, her head sinking into a down-filled pillow.

“She has to remember the numbers and the faces that she has in her hand and make an educated guess about the cards that we have, but she can't smell them or feel them or taste them like you can. Poor Rocky.” Tess was determined to make Danielle's synesthesia an asset. Her son claimed that she took the matter too far, but even he was charmed by Danielle's whimsical frankness about her perceptions of the world.

“Did you pick out three books to read tonight?” asked Tess.

“Yes, they're right here,” said Danielle, patting the small pile beside her. It often took the girl a good long time to slow down enough to sleep. Her feet still tap-danced under the covers. The three stories would help. Tess put several pillows behind her head and settled in to read. Had someone read stories to Natalie? Or was there a large blank spot where the reservoir of stories, warm blankets, and children fresh from the bath was meant to be?

“There's one special thing that I wanted for my birthday, but I'm afraid you won't let me have it,” said Danielle, opening up a large book called
B Is for Blue Planet.

Oh no. Was the child going to blackmail her dear old grandmother into getting her ears pierced? “What is it?” said Tess.

“I want to learn archery. I know I'm too little, but Rocky could let me watch until I get bigger. Did you know that you learn a lot just by watching and practicing something in your mind? It's called visualization,” said Danielle, who was becoming more energized by the minute. She might still be awake at midnight.

Visualization? When Tess had been in second grade, education consisted of repetition and little else. But archery with Rocky? The woman could be a blundering disaster with young children.

“I'll ask her and see, but I can't promise. It will be entirely up to Rocky,” said Tess. “She's not really used to young children,” she added hesitantly.

“I know that. Rocky is jumpy yellow with little kids. I can explain visualization to her,” said the girl.

Tess smiled. Perhaps there would be a mutual benefit.