The Singing Bone (13 page)

Why not?
Hans Loomis thinks. He smiles at Ariel. Ariel comes forward. “Don't,” she tells him. “Hans.”

“Film it,” he answers. “I want to know what it feels like.” He looks around. “This,” he adds, and makes his way into the circle. Some of them look at him—curious—this middle-aged, round man with glasses. They are deferential, letting him into the jostling circle, taking his hands. He could be a friend of Jack Wyck's.

Hans knows all the words to “Dark Eyes.” He's listened to the recordings over and over again. He joins in the singing. He is an actor in a play. The players form a loose circle and begin a slow and sloppy
hora
. Hans lifts his arms, changes directions, runs a few paces, turns again. Ariel moves to the center of the circle to get a better angle. Hans wonders briefly what he looks like on film, an older man dancing with a group of young people. It's madness, but he keeps going. His breathing is labored. He thinks of Molly, her asthma, her shallow breath, her yellow hair.

The sun has dipped below the horizon, but it's still light enough to see the graves. The lights from the town are visible, too, and a few of the Wyckians have left their car headlights on. They dance faster and faster, singing as they go. Hans imagines there are thirty or more in the circle. Strays stand hesitantly at the edges until someone reaches for them, breaks the chain, and pulls them quickly in. Everyone's moving too fast. He's afraid he'll stumble, fall.

They sing “Juniper on the Hill.” Hans doesn't know all the words, so he drops the hands of strangers and stands back. His heartbeat slows and he looks at the faces of the dancers as they pass. They are circling, the pace slackens, and their song becomes a call and response. The candles light their faces from below, distorting their features into monstrous shadow masks.

Hans wonders what the Wyckians do when they are not dancing on graves. Perhaps they are respectable members of society—librarians and doctors and teachers. Someone yells “Cops!” and the dance ends. The revelers break apart and run in different directions, but after they've all left, Hans guesses it was a false alarm. There are no police. It is just Hans and Ariel in the graveyard. Ariel has turned the camera's light off, and they stand there in the dark. “Do you think anyone is coming?” Hans asks.

“No.” Ariel fumbles with a match and relights one of the candles. “Not a fan of dark graveyards,” she says. “It seems wrong to dance here.”

“Didn't you ever play in a graveyard?” Hans asks. “I did. We used to have picnics in graveyards.”

“Yeah,” Ariel says. “We did sometimes. Just never like that.”

Hans can hear her breathing, open-mouthed, stunned, as if she were the one running in circles. He can just make out her silhouette in the candle's light. Hans feels a finger of cold air touch the space between his scarf and his hat. He turns to see if someone's there, but it's too dark to tell. He figures it's just the cold. His hat and scarf have come loose in the dance. He pulls his hat down and tucks his scarf tightly into his coat collar, but he still feels the prick of the night. “It's cold tonight.”

“It is.” Ariel has started pacing to keep warm.

“Ariel,” Hans says, “can you turn the light on again, please? We can film now while it's quiet.”

Ariel turns the light on and trains it on one of the graves. “Recording,” she says. They walk the short distance to the grave. When they get close enough to read the inscription, Hans stoops and puts his hand out to touch the letters. It's a small stone—the kind one purchases for a baby or a child. It's etched with two columns that frame the name and dates—stone blossoms form at the top and bottom of each column.

Someone else visits this grave. The roses there are fresh, though they've been crushed and broken apart by the revelers. He can smell them in the night air. Pink roses. White roses. Hans gathers the broken flowers and sets them next to the grave. He has brought a bouquet of his own. He takes fresh daisies out of a bag and places them in the plastic holder perched at the headstone. Hans touches the words with his fingers as if he's brushing something from the surface.

“Such a short life,” Ariel says.

“Yes.” Hans says. He looks up at the sky. The moon is bright. “We should find the other graves before it gets much colder.” Hans keeps his head down as he walks. Ariel follows. But he's lost. The night spans out around them. There is just the light from the camera and what he remembers from another visit. He asks Ariel to turn the camera off. “I can't remember where the other graves are,” he says, squinting into the camera's bright light. “We'll come back tomorrow—” And then it is dark. “We'll try again when it's light out.”

The grave markers are white in the light of the moon, like the edges of waves on a dark sea.

She chose a room on the second floor. The trees were so full and green by the end of spring, by the time they graduated, that she could no longer see the reservoir through them. On the first day, Allegra brought her blankets and sheets and sat down on the bed with her. “Alice,” she said. “You seem like a very special person to me. I'd like us to be friends.”

“Of course we're friends.” Alice smiled at Allegra.

Allegra reached out and tucked a strand of Alice's hair behind her ear. “Mr. Wyck will ask you to do some things around the house,” she said slowly. “Chores, if you will. Since you're guests.”

“That's fine. I don't mind.”

“He'll let you know.”

“All right.” Alice sat still, waiting for Allegra to keep talking, but Allegra only murmured something about the coming heat and rose to find a fan. She came back with it in one hand and placed it on the bureau so that it faced the bed. She stood in front of it, her back to Alice, checking to see if it worked. The blades stirred at the warm air. She switched it on and off several times.

Her back still to Alice, Allegra said, “I owe him my life.”

“What?” Alice asked over the noise of the fan.

Allegra turned and sat back down on the bed, but then rose again as if she'd remembered a forgotten task. “I should go.” She leaned over and quickly kissed Alice on the top of her head. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Alice said. She gazed out the window. Evening was coming. She could hear her friends downstairs, the small sounds of domesticity: the clatter of silverware and plates, the table being set, voices rising and falling. In the autumn, when the leaves started to change color and the ground grew hard beneath her feet, Alice and Stover planned to leave for California. She'd only told Molly, who'd grabbed her and hugged her so tightly that Alice had to pry her friend's arms away. “Molly,” she'd said. “I'll be back sometimes. You should find something to do, too. Go to college,” but Molly laughed. “Me?” she'd said lightly, shaking her head. “I haven't decided anything yet. I know I want to have babies. That's it.”

The days grew longer, the nights warmer, and Mr. Wyck watched Alice. Sometimes when he was looking at her, a shiver ran up Alice's spine. He stood too close to her while she chopped the vegetables for dinner. He was in her way when she swept the floor. His chest grazed hers on the steps or when she carried a plate of food to the porch. He began to call her Genie when no one else was around. “Genie,” he said, “tell me a story,” and she would look up from whatever she was doing. “About what?” she said. “Anything at all,” and so she told him about the reservoir: about the summer they tied a rope to a tree so they could swing out over the water and jump in, about stealing someone's rowboat and taking it out without oars and swimming back, about the time Molly discovered a pile of porn magazines on the shore, or the time Alice found a bag of abandoned kittens in the woods. She took them home to keep them, and the next day, only one was left. Her mother had given the rest away. Brinks, she called him, because she'd found him on the brink of death. When Mr. Wyck said
Alice
, he said it softly, like no one ever had before. Sometimes he laid two fingers gently on the back of her neck, and when she turned to face him, or to ask what he was doing, he'd say,
Shhh
, as he ran his hands lightly around her neck and shoulders. She began to long for him to kiss her, to do something.

During thunderstorms, they ran out into the rain, hooting and laughing, the ground muddy beneath their bare feet. Alice had never been in the rain like that before—or only as an accident. This was different, this was a celebration, and it seemed to Alice, as she threw her head back and opened her arms to the sky, that she hadn't really understood anything before—that like Mr. Wyck said, if she loved the world, it would love her back, and wasn't this love? “Doesn't that feel good?” Mr. Wyck called out, his voice nearly lost in the rain. He'd taken off his shirt and the water ran over his tattoos, giving his skin a sheen. “Yes!” Alice yelled back.
Yes
. Because this was real. This was life. It was like everything held more color when Mr. Wyck was near. Alice could feel the rain, smell the earth. She could see for the first time.

At night, when they sat around the fire, Mr. Wyck pulled her feet into his lap and held one of her bare ankles in his hand. Soon she lost the thread of the conversation, sensing only the small circle Mr. Wyck drew on the inside of her ankle. She knew he was in his thirties—she'd asked. He was vague about his age, but when it came up, Allegra always chimed in, “Age is just a number,” and everyone nodded. It wasn't cool to think of Mr. Wyck and Allegra as one thing and everyone else as another. Mr. Wyck didn't like boundaries or convention, he told them. “We're all the bourgeois until we're not,” he said. “When is that?” Trina wanted to know. “You have to be able to shed your own chains,” Mr. Wyck explained. “Let them rattle and fucking fall, because they will.” To Alice, he said, “The world belongs to the brilliant. The bourgeois elite would love to keep you down, but they can't, baby, they can't.”

Alice watched Allegra's face for signs of anger or discomfort, but she never saw any. Allegra was busy carrying on her affair with Stover—and with Lee—Alice realized one evening after dinner, when Allegra lay down between the two of them in front of the fire, folding their arms over her body. She passed them each a square of acid on the tip of her tongue. And Lee—Lee divided himself between Trina and Molly equally. He seemed to be always holding onto them, hooking his fingers through their belt loops, an arm around a waist, but he never came near Alice. He barely looked in her direction. Alice knew they were all having sex—except for Mr. Wyck—he wasn't included any more than she was. She watched them disappear into rooms, one by one, rising after sharing a joint, their bodies heavy but alert. Or Allegra would look at Mr. Wyck and say, “Good night, darling,” and he would laugh and say, “Already? I'll miss you, princess,” but then he headed upstairs.

“Come on,” he said one night to Alice. “I'll show you what I'm working on,” and he took her up to the attic to show her his tattoo designs—drawings of vines and suns, the phases of the moon. They were done in pen and ink, carefully stippled and colored with bright, translucent inks. “Do you want one?” He turned her palm up and drew a line with his fingers on the inside of her arm. “Here maybe,” he said. “Or here.” He touched her abdomen. She stepped back, surprised. “It hurts, doesn't it?” she asked.

“Not so much,” he said. “Just a pinch.” He stood in front of her, smoothing her hair. They pressed their palms together and Alice closed her eyes. He raised her hands up and down. “You know me,” he said.

“You know me,” she echoed. Their hands made a path through the air, up, down, side to side, and then he opened her arms into a tee-shape and pressed his body into hers. Their mouths touched, and she breathed in unison with him, inhaling and exhaling. It wasn't kissing. It was more than kissing.

“God, you're beautiful,” he said. “You're my angel. Angel,” he said. “Close your eyes.”

Alice closed her eyes. She stood still for a few minutes, and when she opened them again, she was alone in the room. She turned one way and then the other, looking for him, but it was as if he'd vanished into the shadows that crept away from the moonlit window, the small pool of light that illuminated his drawings. Should she try to find him? Was it a game? She left the room, feeling her way down the narrow attic steps, and then she was in the hallway. Below, she could hear the others making love, and for a moment she stood still and listened, trying to decide who was with whom. She peered over the railing and saw them there, all together, and it was so strange and beautiful that she watched for a while, wishing she could join them, but feeling that she hadn't been invited. Instead, she went to bed, where she dreamed she was running through the forest, running like an animal, jumping over felled trees, her feet barely touching the ground, the snap of the grass at her ankles.

At breakfast, no one looked any different. “You're so hungry this morning,” Alice said slyly to Stover as he took another piece of corn bread. Everyone looked at her, but no one seemed to get her joke. She wanted to scream, “God, you guys! I know what you're doing!” Mr. Wyck laughed. He slapped Stover on the back so hard that he coughed.

“Alice,” Stover said. “Do you want this?” He offered her the bread he'd taken.

“No.” Alice shook her head. “Why would I take your bread?”

“Give her the bread,” Mr. Wyck said, suddenly serious.

“I don't want it,” Alice protested, but Stover put the bread back in the basket anyway.

Later, when she and Stover were hanging the laundry, Alice turned to him and asked, “So what do you do at night?”

“What do you mean?” She was holding the basket, and Stover was pinning the clothes to the line.