The Singing Bone (21 page)

“This one is for you, Molls,” Alice said as they stood in front of the closet. She took out a green-and-yellow-striped dress and held it up to her friend.

“I guess.” Molly lifted a corner of the dress and let it fall.

Alice watched as Molly pulled off her shorts and T-shirt and brought the dress over her head. “I'll take this one,” Alice said of a dress with small blue flowers and tie straps.

Allegra put on a rosy pink shirtdress, belted it at the waist, and did her hair in a bun at her nape. Molly and Alice found silk kerchiefs and folded them into headbands. Lee and Stover leaned against a wall, watching. Mr. Wyck came by and hit Lee on the back of the head. “Comb your hair,” he said. “Get your clothes on.” Lee chose a short-sleeved madras shirt, faded from the sun, and a pair of dark Levis.

“Isn't Stover going?” Alice asked, and Stover shook his head.

“I'm staying here,” he said. “To keep an eye on things.”

Trina and Stover often stayed behind, working in the garden or getting meals ready. “We're fucking again,” Trina confided to Alice. “Just by ourselves.” Alice was hardly surprised, but what Trina said next made Alice pause and look into Trina's eyes. “It's so Stover won't ask why he never goes to the Smiths,” she said.

“Why can't he go?” Alice asked.

“Mr. Wyck says white people are afraid of black people. I'll go sometimes, but for right now, I'm taking care of Stover for Mr. Wyck.”

Alice nodded and helped Trina dry the dishes before they left. Alice's generation was different, surely, than the ones who came before. They'd all heard recordings of Dr. King and read about the riots and understood the inequities of the previous generations, but she knew not everyone was enlightened. She remembered the things written on the fence of Stover's house, and how her mother said it would take years to reverse all the hostility. Maybe a hundred; maybe more. In the meantime, people just had to keep doing the right thing. Alice didn't like it.

  •  •  •  

“You look like a college boy,” Molly told Lee when she saw him in his madras shirt.

“That's a riot,” he said. “You look like someone who wouldn't talk to me.”

Molly walked around him in circles with her hand on her hip, her nose in the air. She pulled away each time he reached for her.

Mr. Wyck yelled at them to get downstairs. “We need to leave, people.” They stood in front of him, and he paced back and forth, looking them up and down. He stopped in front of Molly. “How are you, angel?” he asked, and she looked up at him and nodded. He slipped a finger under her chin and lifted it gently, kissing her lightly on the mouth. When he stepped away, he began to speak. “I want you all to remember that we are a family, so when we go out there today, we are not lying. We are not even exaggerating. We
are
a family, and to do my work—to help the Smiths—we have to let them believe we are the kind of family they understand. Allegra is my wife, and Molly and Alice, you are cousins staying with us for the summer. Remember—and this is the most important part: You tell people and they see it. That is how it is. And you should believe it, too, while we're there. You already know we are a family. All this is, is changing what we call ourselves. There's nothing bad here. Everything we do we do for love.”

  •  •  •  

They piled into Mr. Wyck's white VW bus and opened all the windows. Alice, Molly, and Lee sat together behind Allegra, who sat up front, and Mr. Wyck. Once they got out on the road, Mr. Wyck began singing one of the songs he'd taught them, “Dark Eyes,” a folk song he'd learned as a child. Sometimes, when they had one of their parties, he'd play it on his guitar, slow at first, then speeding up as the lyrics became more urgent. He taught the chords to Lee, too, and they played together. He sang it in Russian, but he taught them the lyrics in English:
Dark eyes, burning eyes. Frightful and beautiful eyes. I love you so, I fear you so. I was lost when you first drew near— 
When he'd found out that Alice could sing, Mr. Wyck asked her to sing the last stanza alone, and she lifted her chin and opened her arms and beat it out.

“Holy shit, we need to record this,” Mr. Wyck had said and the next day, he and Lee unloaded recording equipment from the van. Alice stood in the yard and watched them. “Where did you get all this?” she asked. “A friend,” Mr. Wyck said. They worked on setting it up all day one Saturday. They recorded the song many times—once, Alice sang it straight through on her own. “The beginning has to go very slow,” she told Lee and Mr. Wyck. “I never want it to get too fast,” and she closed her eyes as she sang, and she thought of Mr. Wyck, and by the end, tears were running down her face. Soon there were other songs to learn and record—“Evening Bells,” and “Juniper on the Hill.”

But the trip to the Smiths wasn't long enough to sing them all, and just as they'd finished another round of “Dark Eyes,” they turned off the main road and drove down a winding dirt road bordered by old shade trees. “Don't act surprised when you see how much money they have,” Mr. Wyck said as he slowed the van down. “Act like you've seen it before. Rich people don't like to be uncomfortable about having so much more than everyone else.”

“Um,” Lee said when he saw the house. “Maybe they should be uncomfortable?”

“Where do people get all this money?” Alice asked.

“Their families, honey bunches. Some people don't have to work,” Mr. Wyck answered.

Allegra whistled. “This is a spread,” she said.

“I told you so. I don't lie.” Mr. Wyck checked his face in the rearview mirror before they got out of the van, and Alice smoothed her dress. Molly stood next to her, her back hunched, her shoulders rolling forward. “It's hot,” she said.

“Stand up straight, Mol. You look like you're about to fall down. Are you okay?” Molly nodded and held Alice's hand.

The Smiths lived in a sprawling four-story white house with a pool, a guest house, and a stable. The whole family—Bob and Greta and the twins, Matilda and Matthew, or Tilly and Matty for short—had come out to the porch to greet them. Greta glowed in her colorful kaftan, her golden hair swinging in two thick braids, a ready wave, a tentative smile. Bob stood next to her in his heavy black-framed glasses, hair graying at the temples, and, even on the weekend, a pressed white shirt, belted and creased khaki pants.
He has a heavy heart
, Alice thought, imagining she could see it through his body. Allegra had taught her to visualize her own organs to look for trouble.
Scanning
she called it, and Alice tried to scan Greta and Bob. They both seemed so clean and good. They seemed
expensive
.

After introductions, they drank iced tea on the porch. Tea was served by a young woman in a white dress—the kind a nurse would wear. She used tongs to take the ice from a silver bucket and place it noiselessly into tall glasses. Alice admired the way the woman's slender hand looked against the clear white of the ice as she passed them their glasses. Sugar? Lemon? When Alice scanned the woman though, she could tell she didn't trust them. On their way inside, Alice pulled Allegra aside to tell her, but Allegra brushed her hand off her arm. “Don't be a paranoid,” she said. “I told you to stay sober.”

“I am,” Alice protested. “I scanned her.”

Allegra looked into Alice's face and shook her head in a way that said
Not here, not now.

Over lunch, they made small talk. Greta was thinking of becoming a Unitarian, but Bob had always been a Protestant. Greta's hands shook when she spoke and Bob took one of her hands in his. The twins stayed with the young woman out on the porch, and sometimes Alice looked out the window and saw her rocking them there. Molly put her coffee cup down loudly on the saucer. “Now what does a Unitarian believe in, exactly?” Molly folded her hands in front of her on the table and leaned forward.

  •  •  •  

Mr. Wyck had taught Molly how to shoot heroin the night before. Alice had watched, even though it made her feel queasy. She didn't like needles. Molly was laughing, though. “Give it to me, sweetheart,” she said before he plunged the needle. Molly dropped back on the bed, her eyes rolling up in her head, her hands and feet tensed, then went slack. Maybe he shouldn't have taught her the night before, Alice thought, but decided that Mr. Wyck knew more about heroin than she did, and maybe Molly was getting sick or something.

When he took the needle out again, Alice said, “She's like a little doll.” Mr. Wyck sat across from her on the bed, Molly between them. “I want to put a closet dress on her.” Alice smiled and smoothed Molly's curls. She started to get up to find a dress, but Mr. Wyck said to wait. He didn't want Allegra to get curious. Mr. Wyck said she'd go crazy, so he injected Molly where Allegra wouldn't see.

“Isn't it addictive?” Alice asked, but Mr. Wyck said only if she did it all the time, which Molly didn't. “That's just talk, baby,” he said.

  •  •  •  

The Smith house was decorated with shining Scandinavian furniture. After lunch, the twins rolled about on bright, hand-loomed rugs in the living room. There were piles of books—mostly on design and ­architecture—and when Greta went to put the twins down for a nap, Alice and Molly sat side by side on the low red couch and turned the glossy, heavy pages of the books, whispering about the houses they'd inhabit one day with Mr. Wyck. “We'll have babies with him,” Molly said quietly.

“You know he doesn't like babies,” Alice answered.

“He'll change his mind,” Molly said sleepily. “When he sees them.” Molly had always wanted babies. She said she wasn't smart enough to go to real college, and when Alice protested and said that she was, Molly lifted her shoulders and smiled. “Please don't,” she said. “I'll be perfectly happy with the babies.” She talked about the smell, the soft locks of hair at their necks. “My brother's the smart one,” she said. Alice wondered if somehow it wasn't the way other people saw Molly that made her think that—that they were soft with her because of her pretty face—and that maybe it held Molly back, but Alice wasn't sure, so mostly she just listened to Molly.

There was a big bouquet of poppies on the glass coffee table. Alice took up one of the architecture magazines and leafed through it. She showed Molly a picture of a small log cabin in a forest. “This is in Sweden.” Alice nudged Molly, whose head was dipping back into the sofa.

The Smiths kept pictures of their oldest son, Robert, on the mantel above the fireplace: Robert in his uniform; Robert at his high school formal; Robert the football hero. Alice rose and went to look at the photos. She ran her fingers over the silver-framed portraits and wondered what it had been like to be Robert. He was handsome, with straight white teeth and dark blue eyes.

When Greta came back, they went back out onto the porch. The sun had gone behind the clouds. Greta passed around a plate of fresh chocolate chip cookies and a pot of coffee. Alice watched as Molly picked the chocolate chips out of her cookie, lining them in a neat row on the side of her plate. When Molly looked up, she smiled at Alice and offered her the chocolate. “You want?” she said, even though Bob was talking. Alice shook her head and brought a finger to her lips.

“My son Robert—” Bob's voice broke over the name a little, like a twig snapping on the forest floor. “As you know, Robert was taken as a prisoner. We want to get him back.” He clasped his hands in his lap and shook his head.

“Taken by the VC,” Lee said. “Like me.” He kept his head down, resting his elbows on his knees. “Like so many of us,” he said, sitting up straight, looking Bob in the eye.

“Even though Robert's my husband's son from another marriage,” Greta said, “I truly think of him as my own. We miss him so much.” Her eyes were round and soft. Alice looked at Molly and saw a tear roll down her friend's face.

“I bet the twins miss him, too,” Molly said. Everyone looked at her.

“Oh, sweetie.” Greta reached for Molly's hand. “We all do.”

Everyone was quiet then, and Lee told the story of his own capture and how Mr. Wyck's men got him out—that he was alone in a cell. There were rats, terrible things, torture, and then a man came and pulled him out, a Soviet, and when he got home, his parents told him it had been Mr. Wyck's doing, and after that, Lee vowed to help Mr. Wyck recover more POWs—men like himself who thought they'd die there in a cold isolated cell. “My parents,” Lee said, “they never told me how they worked getting me out, but my mother says it was worth everything to see me again, and I say it was, too, because this is my country, and here I am.”

“Now.” Mr. Wyck sat forward with his elbow on his knees. He opened his palms and looked at Bob and Greta as he spoke. “We're almost one hundred percent certain that they've moved Robert into Soviet territory—into one of the old labor camps.”

“They use brainwashing.” Allegra took some papers out of a folder. “Mind control. They release the prisoners and return them to America only when they are communist.”

“Do you really think,” Bob said, his face pale, “that Robert might still be alive? The war has been over for four years. Wouldn't they have released him by now?”

“Do you think your son would say he's a communist to get out?” Lee asked. “I doubt it,” he said. “I doubt it very much.”

“I'm not saying you're wrong here,” Bob said. He nodded at Mr. Wyck, Lee, and Allegra. “But I'm surprised that the Soviets are having anything to do with this.”

Mr. Wyck didn't say anything for a moment. He studied Bob and Greta. Alice could hear wind chimes, the wind moving through the leaves. “If you folks aren't ready to do this—” he said, shaking his head.