Shades of Truth (11 page)

I
sat at my desk, trying to distract myself with drawings for my word study. Five fifty pm. Andrew and Helen would be here any minute for Sunday night dinner. Dad had invited them earlier this afternoon and then spent the day cleaning so Mom could nap.

When the doorbell rang, I closed my eyes, imagining the argument Andrew and I would have. Mom knocked on my door and I sighed. I couldn’t hide in my room all night. I followed Mom downstairs to the front door, feeling another pang of unhappiness as Andrew and Helen came in.

“Matthew promised it was only pizza, no fuss,” Helen said. “I invited you all over to the station, but we thought it might be easier here.”

Mom took Helen’s outstretched hand. “You’re our first company. This is perfect.”

Andrew followed me into the kitchen to gather knives, forks, and napkins.

As soon as we were out of Dad’s earshot, Andrew said, “Listen, Sadie, I’m sorry about …”

I hurried him back out into the living room. “Can we talk about it later?”

When we sat down, Helen and Dad debated when the first snow might be. Mom didn’t say much throughout the conversation. She was pale, but her old smile was back.

When the oven dinged, Dad brought the pizza to the table. “Bon Appetit!”

During dinner, no one mentioned bears, the community meeting, the hunters, Dad’s job, or Helen’s research. Andrew and Helen talked about their favorite hikes in Yosemite, and Dad made comments here and there. I watched to make sure Mom was okay and avoided Andrew’s eyes.

Needing to escape, and also remembering poor Higgins on the porch, I said, “Higgins needs a walk.”

Andrew leapt out of his seat. “I’ll help!”

Perfect.

Dad called after us, “Wear coats. It’s cold.” Andrew hadn’t brought a coat, so I loaned him one of Dad’s. I pulled on my red fleece and clipped on Higgins’ leash.

The moon was full, and our breath made misty clouds as we walked.

“Is your mom okay?” Andrew asked, glancing back at the house.

I shrugged. “She’s had a hard couple weeks.”

Higgins darted after a bird and we chased after him.

“How long has she been sick?” Andrew asked.

“Right now it feels like forever,” I said. “But it’s only been about two years.”

I wanted to put off talking about Jim, so I told Andrew about the scavenger hunts Mom used to take me on, and some of our crazy camping adventures. Talking about Mom, the way she used to be, felt hopeful, like one day she’d be that person again. Once Higgins finished his business, we went back to the house, but instead of going inside, I led Andrew up the spiral staircase to the lookout.

“Welcome to my favorite room in the house.”

Andrew followed me onto the porch. “I heard the people who built this cabin were really into stargazing. I wonder if there’s still a telescope around somewhere.”

He yanked open the closet door I thought was painted shut, and sure enough, inside a tarp covered an old metal telescope.

“Want to take it out?” Andrew asked.

I helped him brush off the dust and position the telescope to point at the sky.

He twisted the knobs and squinted through the eyehole. “You’ve got to see this.”

I bent down to look and gasped. Tiny stars, totally invisible to my naked eye, filled the sky. “The Milky Way!”

Higgins barked and I laughed. “Do you want to see too?”

I sat on the floor and gathered Higgins into my arms, snuggling my nose down into his warm fur. There, my face hidden, I finally felt ready to talk to Andrew.

“Andrew, I’m sorry I haven’t reported Jim,” I said.

“Until Mom told me today, I didn’t know your mom was so sick,” he said. “I know you want to protect the bears, but I suppose you’d want to protect your mom even more. And making your dad … Anyway, I’m just saying I get it.”

“It wasn’t really about Mom, I don’t think. I just can’t … I think I’m afraid.”

I braved lifting my head, but kept Higgins in my lap. “What if Patch dies because I’m too afraid?” I asked.

Andrew sat beside me. “Talk to your dad again and see what he thinks. But I was wrong. I shouldn’t have told you to report Jim, especially if you don’t know for sure he shot Big Murphy. After talking with Mom, I realize falsely reporting him might be a disaster. Let’s just keep feeding Patch and her cubs and try to keep her away from Jim.”

I studied Andrew’s face, taking in his words. Was this what Peter meant about meeting in the middle? Was it possible for someone to believe something so strongly, the way Andrew believed I should tell about Jim, and the way I believed Ruth shouldn’t have kept the truth from me, and then truly see the other side? Higgins leapt out of my lap and ran circles around Andrew, barking happily.

“Okay, Higgins,” I said. “Time for you to take a look at the stars.”

I picked him up and Andrew held the telescope so Higgins could see. Unfortunately, Higgins thought the telescope was a chew toy, not a scientific tool, so he ended up seeing very little of the galaxy. Once we settled him down,

we took turns looking through the scope, naming the constellations until Helen called up that she was leaving.

“C
rosshatching is a way of adding additional color as well as texture.” Vivian showed me her crisscrossed lines.

I compared her picture to the tree bark we were replicating.

“What’s wrong? You’re wrinkling your nose.”

I rubbed my nose. “It’s just not matching up with what you’ve said before. You told me to look closely and draw what I see, not what I expect. I don’t see any crisscrossed lines on the bark.”

“Ah.” A wide, satisfied smile crossed Vivian’s face. “You’ve finally arrived at the artist’s first question.”

“The what?” I dropped my brown pencil. I’d been drawing with Vivian for weeks now, and only now arrived at the first question? How many questions were there?

Vivian took a stack of papers off her bookshelf. The top
one, a reproduction of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
, I’d studied in third grade.

Vivian spread the top three pictures across the table. Next to
Starry Night
, she placed a picture that was mostly green and yellow and red. It was all sharp angles and strange combinations of colors. I could almost make out a face, but not quite.

“That’s Picasso’s
Woman with Pears
. And this one,” Vivian showed me a painting of a girl with a red kerchief tied around her head, “is by Jean-François Millet.
Shepherdess with her Flock
. What do you notice?”

I frowned at the three vastly different pictures. Van Gogh’s thick swirls looked more like a complete picture when I squinted my eyes, but still, the image was unrealistic, warped somehow, not what I would truly see if I looked at a nighttime sky. I couldn’t find a single pear in Picasso’s painting. The shepherdess was more realistic, more like what I’d drawn so far.

“I like the Van Gogh best.” I twined my pencil through my fingers. “But it isn’t realistic — not like what you’ve been teaching me to draw.”

“So, what is the artist’s first question?”

I frowned again, a thousand questions buzzing around my mind, but none that seemed important enough, or clear enough, to be the artist’s first question. If artists drew in tons of different styles, why was Vivian forcing me to draw everything realistically? Why were we drawing crosshatching that didn’t exist, instead of what we actually saw?

Vivian laughed. “Don’t worry, Sadie. When I learned to draw, I wondered all the same things you’re probably wondering now.” She stood and headed to the door. “To celebrate you stumbling across the artist’s first question, let’s have tea. See if you can put your question into words when I come back.”

While she was gone, I compared the three pictures, so different and yet all intriguing, unique. My mind was a mouse running a maze, finding dead ends around each corner. What I wanted to know was … I wanted to know …

As Vivian came back, tea tray in hand, a nearby gunshot rattled the windows.

“Why can’t they just stop?” I hated the way the shots caught me off-guard, stirring up all my fears. Big Murphy’s okay, I reminded myself. Patch will be. Or at least I hoped she would. She’d made it this far. She was close. So close.

Vivian set down the tray. “Why don’t you go find a textured object outside to bring in and draw? You can think about the artist’s question while you look.”

I stood wordlessly as Vivian added cubes of sugar to her tea and stirred.

Outside, I started toward the woods at the back of the house. Cold mist, somewhere between snow and rain, fell. I didn’t want to draw bark or another leaf so I scanned the ground for a rock. A motor coughed to life as I rounded the back of the small shed. Peter backed his ATV out of the shed, cut the engine and hurried back inside.

I almost called out to him, but he remerged from the
shed, now wearing a green fisherman’s hat with a red feather. I’d seen the hat before somewhere, but not on Peter. My greeting caught in my throat.

He restarted his engine and pulled out. The dented ATV with muddy tires. The red feather flapping on his green hat. My legs went watery. Not Jim Paulson. Peter Harris. Peter Harris, my friend, who had promised he would never shoot one of Helen’s bears. He had shot Big Murphy and, like everyone else, he had lied to me. I hugged my arms close, but I couldn’t stop shivering.

I forced myself to focus on rocks, to look for texture. Finally, I picked up a rough, triangular stone, flecked with gray and blue and purple. Then, I walked, one foot in front of the other. Once I was inside, I would just draw. Later I would figure out what to do.

As I closed the door, jaw clenched, shoulders tense, I knew I could never hide my feelings from Vivian.

She came into the blue room with a plate of cookies. “Oh good, Sadie. I was about to come find you.”

“Why?” I asked.
Slow down
,
Sadie. Relax
.

I rolled the rock from one hand to the other. I couldn’t look at her.

“Sadie, are you cold?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

I closed my fist around the rock.

She sat on a stool beside me. “What is it, Sadie?”

“Peter …” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

Worry faded from Vivian’s face. “He was sorry to miss you today.”

I lost control of my mouth. I lost control of myself completely. A full-grown tiger sprang to life inside my chest. I leapt off my stool. Listened to my anger humming.

“Peter,” I spat each sharp, bitter word, “shot Big Murphy. Before hunting season. He broke the law. And then he told me he would never shoot a research bear. After he already had. He tried to make me see the hunters’ point of view.”

“He what?” Vivian’s face was a mask of confusion.

“The bears already run for their lives forty-six days of the year. It wasn’t even time for Big Murphy to run yet.”

“Sadie.” Vivian stepped closer to me, reached out to touch me. “What do you mean? What happened outside?”

“I thought it was Jim Paulson. Dad wouldn’t accuse him because he couldn’t prove it. I thought I knew for sure. I saw his ATV driving away. But just now I saw Peter’s dented ATV, and the red feather in his hat. He shot Big Murphy.”

“But he couldn’t —” Vivian said.

“He did. And now that I know it was him, I need to report him.”

“Sadie,” Vivian moved toward me, eyes pleading. “Talk to Peter. I’m sure he’ll tell you …”

I stepped away and found my back against the wall. “A lie?”

Vivian put her hands on my shoulders. “Sadie, look at me. Peter wouldn’t shoot a bear outside of hunting season. He wouldn’t shoot a research bear. He just wouldn’t.”

I felt trapped. I had to get out of there. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Sadie,” she said.

I ducked away, grabbed my sketchbook, and ran.

“Sadie, wait!”

I yanked open the door, got a running start on my bike, and rode away. I couldn’t talk to anyone anymore. I had to be alone.

T
he ride home was long and cold, and my fingers ached bone-deep each time I touched my metal brakes. I tried not to stop.

Mom sat in the wingback chair with a cup of tea and a book in her lap, not reading. Higgins lay on her feet. Sometimes I wanted to wrap my arms around her and protect her from everyone, from everything. And just as big a part of me wanted to shout at her. Why couldn’t she get better? Why couldn’t she be Mom so I could be me?

I made myself a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows, ignoring my memories of Peter’s Double Decker Chocolate on a Cloud. Higgins tried to follow me upstairs, but kept slipping on the steps. Eventually, I carried him up.

I sat in my window seat, breathed in the chocolate steam, and watched my fingers turn redder and redder as they
defrosted. My mind flashed from one image to another. Deep indigo Vivian drawing symbols on our whiteboard. Peter whittling the squirrel. Throwing plates with Vivian. Eating mac and cheese. Going to Compline. Patch hiding from Jim in the tree. Big Murphy, injured, crashing through the bushes. The ATV. Dad refusing to report Jim. Peter’s hat.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and suddenly, I wanted to pray. Not a scripted prayer from the
Common Prayer
book, but a real conversation with God. I didn’t know how. I opened my eyes and scanned my empty bedroom. The emptiness stretched beyond the walls of the room, beyond the walls of my house, making me feel as exposed as if I floated on a glacier, alone on the sea. Was God really here with me? I closed my eyes again, because the emptiness frightened me.

“God,” I whispered, waiting, then pushing on. “Doug says you can see our thoughts … Can you really see all that’s happened? I don’t know what to do …”

The clock ticked and I waited, feeling the velvet window seat against my palms, the curtains at my back, Higgins at my feet. I hadn’t crumbled to dust, scattered in the wind. Carefully, I opened my eyes, and saw that the dizzy emptiness had shrunk. I hadn’t heard any God-like voice or gained any answers about what to do, but somehow God felt a little closer. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to start whispering to him next time.

Higgins tugged at the hem of my jeans.

“No, Higgy.” But I moved down to the floor so he could sit in my lap. I took the scrapbook off my bedside table.

Don’t fail me now, Pips
.

Pictures of us with lettuce in our teeth, mud on our faces, and TP on our shoes. Pippa could always make me laugh.

“Let’s draw, Hig.” I brought my pencils and sketchbook to the window seat and shaded my page, laying a foundation for my drawing.

Higgins tried to bite my pencil. Despite his help, I sketched the smooth lines of my window and the wispy snowflakes outside. At first the images laid flat on my page. An extra layer of shading gave them depth and dimension, but I couldn’t make my drawing look smooth, the way the windowpanes and snowflakes actually looked. No matter how much I scrubbed and blended, my strokes wouldn’t disappear.

A knock on my door brought me back to my bedroom. “Sadie, can I come in?”

No. “Sure.”

Mom came in and sat on the bed. “What are you drawing?”

Higgins licked her hands and sniffed her tea, which must be cold by now.

When I didn’t answer, Mom reached for my sketchbook. “You’re becoming quite an artist.”

“Not really. I can’t get my shading right.”

Mom shook her head. “You’re so hard on yourself, Sadie.”

“I wish it had worked out better. Us moving here,” I said. “You …”

She looked me straight in the eyes, her expression free of the usual mask. She let go of our game of pretend and really looked at me, her face full of everything she never said:
I’m sick
,
Sadie. I’m worried I won’t get better. I love you
. And for the tiniest moment, I felt a tug, maybe that tug that Lindsay had talked about.
Notice this. Pay attention to this
. Mom and I were two people, seeing each other. And then it was gone.

She leaned back and her face tightened, “I’m okay, Sadie. Really.”

A gaping hole opened inside me, wanting what I’d almost had, wanting not to be shut out, wanting her to tell me she’d get better. Wanting to believe it was true.

“I guess I’ll go heat up my tea,” she said and drifted out of the room.

I curled up on top of my comforter. I’d wake up when Dad got home.

“Sadie?” Someone called my name and knocked on my door. “Sadie, can’t you hear Higgins whining? Come on, Hig, I’ll take you outside.”

I heard the door open and Higgins’ nails click quietly out into the hall.

I cracked open one eye and shut it quickly again against the bright sunrise. My feet felt impossibly heavy and my legs itched. As my mind-fog lifted, I realized I’d fallen asleep
in my clothes. I hadn’t even taken off my shoes. I sat up, rubbing my face where my cable-knit sweater had pressed into my skin and checked my clock. Seven fifteen, Thursday morning. I went to my calendar and counted days. Nineteen days left of hunting season. Yesterday rushed back — Peter and my argument with Vivian. I threw myself back into bed and covered my head with my pillow.

Dad knocked again. “Sades?”

“Come in,” I said.

He took one look at me and burst out laughing. “You look terrible!”

Higgins put his front paws up on the bed, and Dad lifted him the rest of the way up. Immediately, Higgins climbed onto my lap and began licking my face.

“I was going to offer to take you to the research cabin after school today,” Dad said. “But maybe you should come home instead and take a nap.”

I pushed Higgins off my lap. “No, I want to go.”

“Bring your boots then,” Dad said. “We might head out into the woods today.”

Last night’s frozen dew glistened from branches of evergreen trees as we roared into the morning quiet. Dad’s country music blasted from the radio. Suddenly, he turned it down.

“Sadie, Vivian called me last night. She’s worried about you too.”

I froze. I hadn’t expected Vivian to call. I wasn’t ready to talk about Peter and Big Murphy yet. I tried to change the subject.

“Dad, is Patch okay?”

“I haven’t heard a peep from Jim, so he must not have found her.”

I twisted the edge of my sweater between my fingers, knowing now was the time. Now. I should tell Dad now about Peter and Big Murphy.

“Sadie, you know I’d love to give Patch a fighting chance to make it through the winter with her cubs. I just can’t report Jim if I’m not sure.”

I should stop him, tell him. But I couldn’t.

God
,
please help. I’m turning into a very bad person. What am I supposed to do?

Dad filled the silence. “I’m supposed to be standing outside the mess, helping fix it. I can’t jump into the middle of it all. Don’t you see?”

I didn’t trust myself to speak. Dad wasn’t making sense. His fading black eye still tinged blue and green proved just how in the middle of it all he was.

“Someday you’ll understand,” Dad said, as we pulled up to school.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled his rough cheek close. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I couldn’t find words, not even to chase the deep sadness out of his eyes. I let him go and walked to the school steps where Ruth waited.

As soon as she saw me, she burst into nervous chatter about her presentation. One of the first days of school, I remembered feeling like two people, one standing outside
myself, calmly observing, and the other very much inside myself, feeling every little stab of pain. Again now, listening to Ruth, I watched from the outside. Anyone watching would believe we were close friends, but I still felt miles away from her on the inside. Why couldn’t I just forgive Ruth? Why did the space between us spread wider every day?

“Sadie, are you listening?” Ruth shook my arm.

I forced myself back to the school hallway, away from my thoughts. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

“Should I say the part about families being like oranges, and everyone being a separate slice?” Her eyebrows scrunched together with worry.

I faked yet another smile. Now was not the time for her to doubt herself. “Ruth, your presentation will be perfect. Don’t worry. Do it just the way you practiced.”