Something Of A Kind (9 page)

She seemed invested in a yellowing paperback until he entered.
It dropped in a heap on the floor as she covered her thin lips with a
finger, shushing him as her thumb jerked towards the couch. Lee
released a whooping snore, nearly on queue.

“Sarah told me everything,” she w
hispered proudly, rocking
thoughtfully in her creaking chair. “I think it’s very nice you were
trying to get Doctor Greg’s daughter to make friends. That girl's so
lonely. Did you know her mama passed?”

“I did.” Noah knew better than to question his sister’s judgment
on restricted information. He wasn’t overly concerned with keeping
Mary-Agnes current and informed.

Did she really think it was that big of a deal? She confessed an
altered story before I was even caught.

 

“And the Glass-man. He's no ray of sunshine. Ice cold, that one.
Nosey too.”

“I don't think she likes him much, either,” he agreed, unwilling
to argue. Mary-Agnes was a strong woman, hardened by years of
poverty and individual oppression. Still, every year lines curled into
her chubby face was another of concern. His mother was too old for
mothering, and she seemed increasingly fragile.

“That's horrible,” she chastised. Pursing her lips, her wrinkled
cheeks puffed with air. Her eyes darted out the window as her face
flooded with recollection. “The pictures outside, Tony's paintings,
the stains are bad.”

“I think it's mostly salt,” he said, making gradual steps towards
the stairs.

 

Wait for a pause and run for it.

“Salt and dirt. You're gonna spray 'em right?” she asked,
stuttering over each
r
while her
n’s
slides together with prolonged
syllables.

Is she seriously falling asleep?

“I can power wash the foundations.” Noah murmured, planning
to forget. He knew she wouldn't remember the request in the
morning, anyway. If she repeated it in sobriety, he'd dig in the shed
for a hose.

He waited for a response that didn’t come. As he dropped a foot
on the first stair, she muttered quietly, “You’re a good boy, No-no.”

 

“Thanks Mom,” he whispered, disappearing as soundlessly as
possible.

 

He wasn’t so sure.

 

CHAPTER 7 | ALYSON

When her father picked her up, the only thing he had to offer Aly
was a lecture on how her unpreparedness proved inconvenient. After
spending several minutes shaming, complaining, and making it clear
that he refused to recognize his own part in locking her out, he
dropped his keys on the coffee table. Claiming he would be out of
town, whereabouts need-to-know, Greg explained his organization
utilized carpools and commuter lots. The SUV was at her disposal
under the condition of responsible behavior. They parted ways in the
stairwell.

If he's just going to barricade himself in the basement, I'm
staying upstairs.

With Noah racing through her thoughts, it wasn’t long before she
swore to distract herself. Overthinking was leading to over-analysis,
enabling invasive doubts.

What is he thinking, feeling? What will we be? And what was
Greg’s fit all about?

Her father averted the subject of Noah, but his resulting glare
left her uninterested in hearing his opinion. She didn’t want to
discuss anything with him.

My life here deserves to be separate.

If
Greg
thought Noah would be
off-limits
because Lee
Lockwood was ‘business with an elder,’ the man would be
disappointed. Rude looks were one thing, but intervention was a line
she hoped he wouldn’t cross.

If he’s unobtrusive, I’ll stay out of this insane Ashland
‘researcher’ controversy.

 

Without words, her father was under her skin.

Normal girls would ache beneath a smile, drag a dozen outfits
from their closets, gush to their friends and mother. Aly liked him,
but was it like that? Did Noah think so? How would her mother feel
about it?

She’d think I was trying to forget her, to escape in him. Oh
God… am I?

Alerted by the strain in her back and the hair nervously twisted
around her fingers, Aly forced herself out of bed. Her exhaustion
was useless against a mind that wouldn’t shut off. Still dressed in the
day’s clothes and sick with unease, she wasn’t prepared to sleep.

Aly needed to get her mind off things before it exploded. Her
first instinct was to blast music and draw, but her materials were
buried and Greg was probably sleeping, even if he was in the depths
of the basement.

I need to do something. Assigning a task shouldn’t be this
difficult.

If her window wasn’t fixed, she would’ve crawled onto the
overhang above the back porch. Aunt Lauren's creaky Victorian had
a set of twin balconies, one overlooking the lake, another exposed to
the street. Between closing her eyes to a steady breeze and watching
boats that left foam paths in their wake, she found peace there. There
was an unaffected calm in the midst of the gnawing grief. Serenity
offered a life after her mother. It promised a ceasefire.

Lakes were intimate, spared from the travel of whispers in the
currents. They trusted the sky, not the jigsaw of bodies. They were
whole in themselves, not intended to a direct part of something
bigger.

After spending time in Ashland, it was impossible not to notice
the ocean constantly in her peripheral. It was a muscle she could
only turn her back to while it flexed in supremacy.

She forgot about it only when surrounded by trees, cloaked by
the forest. The roar of the tide was raw. Aly left it in the distance.
She hadn’t ventured onto the sands. She saw ash everywhere, glass
and slivers beneath the paper dust. Normalcy had already been
swept out to sea. There was no comfort in its presence; it constantly
threatened to take the ground away.

From the Ashland house, she could hear the bay, but it wasn’t in
her face, not like downtown. The window faced the backyard,
embracing the sights of foliage along the edge of the property. Tall
trees surrounded them, isolating the house. They went on for miles,
looping around the homes in wide arcs, weaving into public trails or
pressing against the edge of the coast.

Even as she imagined their empire, fused throughout the last
frontier, she couldn’t watch them forever. Invisible maps curled
beneath her skin, skewed across her skull, dripping along her inner
eyelids. As much as she embraced the cage around her, the anxieties
sprouted within, flooding her thoughts, spreading to her chest, her
sternum.

It’s like drowning in silk, tossing it across the trees.

Noah’s blinding sunshine, Greg’s black glare, the crimson fears
– the lilac shades of absence, the umber burial, the imperfect ivory
grief. A wrap of colors, stuffed in her airways. It was a plague of
fear, overwhelming her nerves, swelling in her joints, burning in her
lungs.

Turn it off.

She felt her aunt and uncle’s steely Victorian in her p
ocket.
Greg’s stare was across the room, his invasion breathing down her
neck. Noah brushed her lips, his flesh in her fingertips. Her mother
lay just beyond them, beyond reach, burning embers amongst the
stars. All of them, standing over her shoulder, apparitions grabbing
onto her throat. Bodies piled in her chest, clawing her convulsing
lungs, pounding against her spine, shoving against ribs, rattling her
sternum in demands of release.

Get out.

With fiery licks at her calves, she spun on her heels. Her mother
ran from the room, disappearing into the shadows of the hall. Her
emerald eyes a hazy gray, a sad smile luring her forward. Alyson ran
after, her feet suddenly bare, touching the cold hardwood. A laugh
pulled her back to the room, her mother dressed for a gallery, legs
crossed, sitting politely in an oak chair.

This isn’t real.

 

“It’s alright, baby.” Vanessa lied, her lips never moving.

Wind shattered the window at her back, waves crashing through
and sending her falling forward with a scream. Aly backed against
the wall, shaking and untouched. As the waters pulled out, the glass
reassembled. Her mother was pulled into her hospital bed, hooked
into the wall like it had been there all night. Her heartbeat monitor
thudded, her IV alarm screaming in offense against a bent cord.

“Momma?” Aly whispered, trembling, hesitantly stepping
towards dark hair spread across the starched pillows. The force of
the windows shattering again sent her flying backwards, a red-eyed
beast crashing onto her bedroom floor.

Its legs twisted to gain footing, spinning to the side, running at
Vanessa. It pitched itself over, pulling the tubes from her hands, the
stickers from her chest, the mask from her post-chemo face, paperskin ridden with blue veins. The roar of a dozen coyotes rumbled
from its chest as it clawed her, dragging her mother’s body,
convulsing without oxygen, from the plastic mattress.

Aly dry-heaved, clutching her head, falling to the floor, curling
into fetal position. She wanted to scream or grow breathless, to run
or to run at it, assault or escape. She couldn’t move.

With one leg sending her mother out the window, into the
murmurs in the shadows, it tackled Aly to the floor. The pressure of
a building dropped onto her chest, sending the air rushing from her
lungs.

She awoke on the floor, a sheet tangled around legs still clad in
tight jeans. Sweat plastered hair across her forehead, holding damp
clothes to the crevices of her back. She rested a hot cheek against
the hardwood, smelling
sweet and bitter
from lemon-scented
cleaners.

A sigh escaped from her lips as she pushed herself up. A forearm
that had been tucked beneath her head was
flushed and red,
imprinted with the outline of her mother's necklace. A sensation of
pins and needles shot through the limb when she balled a fist.

Aly hadn’t undressed but the lights were off. Her iPod buzzed on
the bed, the earplugs thrown from her ears as she dozed off. The
moon still hung high above the horizon, the bold sign of an ungodly
hour. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be sleeping for a while.

Tremors shook her frame. Adrenaline was easing from her
bloodstream. In the blue shadows of nighttime, she made her way to
the window. It hadn't cracked, totally unscathed. Summer heat had
begun to set, sweating condensation clinging in patches rather than
dusted across. Observing her reflection, her fingertips traced the
shape of her flashing eyes. They were a cold blue, eerily magnified
by old makeup staining black rims below her eyelids. Noticing a
shift in the trees, she flicked the light on.

It was a long night.

Greg had filled the extra bedroom with paint cans, though most
had been used and poorly mixed. Avoiding damp spots on the tarps
with her bare toes, she managed to uncover clean whites and a
modest heather gray. Unable to sleep, she piled her things in the
center of the floor and began exterminating the sickly green from
her walls.

While it dried, the pile of cardboard in the hallway grew as she
filled the empty
furnishings. Novels
packed the bookshelf.
Underthings and sketchbooks made their way to the dresser. Clothes
slid over their
hangers and relocated
to the
walk-in
closet.
Photographs, sketches, and non-canvas paintings were assigned to
vintages frames, and nailed to the walls long before they dried.
Thosethat didn’t fit were rotated in and out of a strip of gallery-style
space until it felt exact, the final remainder an unsightly stack in the
corner. She knew she was being loud.

Greg shouldn't have left the hammer in the hallway.
She didn't care if he was disturbed.
~

Déjà vu from a midnight nightmare, Aly awoke on the ground at
sunrise, hands caked with color and overwhelmed by the fumes of
latex.

With a throw pillow tucked beneath her aching neck, she found
herself in what she wore the night before– ripped jeans, easy-fit
tank, cropped sweater– all splattered in paint. After pulling curtains
over barren rods and covering the window, she stripped of her
clothes and sprinted for the attached bath. Cleansed by a hot shower,
she dressed, reassembled the room, and scrubbed away the wake of
her breakdown.

Paint, with gray. Too much white, not enough black.

The commute into town was peaceful. Mist hung low on the
street, the sky still dark at an early 6 AM. Without Greg in the car, it
was open season on the controls. With the air conditioner blasting
and her mp3 plugged into the speakers, cherry nails tapped the
steering wheel along to
The Script
.

Aly wasn’t familiar with the area, but she recognized the nearest
streets well enough. With the few signs she eyed, twenty-five milesperhour wasn’t unreasonable. The switches to Greg’s SUV weren't
overtly different from the spunky Honda Fit she shared with her
mother before her father entered her life, so blinkers weren’t an
issue. Her seatbelt held her firmly to the seat. Unless the lights
weren’t working or a stop sign had been hidden in the brush, the
flashing in her rearview mirror seemed unwarranted.

Easing to a stop, she silenced the speakers and lowered the
window. She found herself fidgeting, waiting for the officer to run
her plates.

I thought this was a warden and peace-monitor jurisdiction,
unless it's a statewide trooper. Do they really need them all?

“Do you mind telling me why you’re operating a vehicle
registered to a Mister Gregory M. Glass?” One man
asked,
stretching his lean frame to the full height, rather than leaning beside
her. His partner rounded the other side of the car. With a twist of her
fingers, she motioned to roll the window down.