Closer Home (23 page)

Moving across the floor, I crawl into my old bed without bothering to take off my clothes. The mattress sags in the middle. The springs creak when I roll over. The sheets smell dusty. I’m so tired that none of it matters, my limbs molding themselves into the old sleep posture that fits this bed.

But my heart continues to beat so hard I can hear the blood whooshing in my ears, and that internal quaking is going on again, a tremor so deep I can’t touch it. Memories swirl around me in dizzying intensity. Callie begging for bedtime stories. Me singing her to sleep when she was sick, worried about her fever. The two of us standing dead center, shouting at each other over points of contention: dresser territory, her clothes scattered all over the floor, the latest theft of my favorite shirt and earrings.

And then, inevitably, there is Dale. Memory shows him sitting on the window ledge, face flushed, pupils dilated, with Callie standing halfway across the room wearing next to nothing. I’d burst in seeking refuge from the most disastrous night of my life. And there they were, the only two people who really mattered to me in the world, completely wrapped up in each other. In that moment, the knowledge of what Dale meant to me came flashing down like a message from God on high.

Rolling over in my childhood bed, burying my face in the pillow, does nothing to make the memories stop. Grabbing the pillow and blanket, I tiptoe out of the room and retreat to the living-room couch downstairs. It’s comfortable enough for my weary body, which settles into the familiar hollows with a sigh of satisfaction. But my brain still refuses to cooperate. My eyelids pop open, and a jumble of worries mixes in with the memories. Ricken is probably stealing everything from Callie’s house. I should be there to make sure he’s gone, to let the attorney and the agent know he’s out of the picture and has no authority. I should go through the bank accounts, the properties. How am I going to get my mind wrapped around all that? What about the paparazzi? And is there any way to help Ariel find her father with all of the fakes coming forward to complicate things? Dale is a constant in every one of those threads. And my anger at Callie surfaces over and over again, wrapped up in a web of bitter grief and guilt and failure. I roll from side to side, punch the pillow a time or two, and finally give up on sleep.

I wander around the room, picking up items and putting them down. Mother’s old china dog. The pillow I cross-stitched for some school project that was inexplicably kept around, probably because neither of my parents knew what to do with it. Crossing to the double bookcase, I let my fingers trail across the spines of books that have been occupying those shelves since before I was born.

There’s nothing in the fridge, but I have been known to store things in the freezer, and I score a half-eaten pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Fetching a spoon, I carry the container with me to look out the kitchen window at the little park across the street. The last time I sat on the park bench reading a book and letting the spring sun warm me, Callie was alive, my feelings about Dale neatly contained, my future set.

The ice cream sits cold in my belly, the lingering sweetness on my tongue already turning bitter. Without thinking, I drift across the room to my old piano. It’s an ancient upright, already battle-scarred when Dad brought it home. I haven’t had it tuned in a couple of years, and guilt over its neglect adds to my already overwhelming emotional cocktail. Sinking down on the bench, I let my hands rest lightly on the keys. They feel faintly gritty; Kelsie has been slacking on the dusting. The A key is chipped, thanks to Callie dropping a paperweight on it.

I’d been furious about that, had chased her down and spanked her, using the advantage of weight and fury to wreak my vengeance. She’d retaliated by tearing up my math homework. But she’d left the piano alone. Even then, we’d both agreed that music was sacred territory.

If I’d been smarter, kinder, more tolerant, maybe things would have turned out differently between us. Anger rises out of the guilt, as it always does. Of all of the things she’s taken from me over the years, including Dale, the one that hurts the most is music. When “Closer Home” hit the charts, when I heard her voice on the radio and saw her on TV singing my song, it choked me. I would sit down to sing, and my voice would crack and break and turn into coughing. My fingers sat idle and silent on the keys. No more tunes popping into my head from out of nowhere. No writing songs. No singing. No playing for the sake of letting the music flow out through my fingers. For a time, I took refuge in technical studies, playing scales and broken chords over and over, striving for ever-greater speed and accuracy. I skipped a day. Then another. A month went by. Then a year, and another.

Teaching lessons makes it easy enough to hide the block. I can direct fingers and voices, set assignments, arrange recitals, without ever dipping into the music myself. None of my students know. Dale used to ask, every now and then, if I’d written anything new. But maybe he figured it out, because somewhere along the way, he stopped asking.

Now, in the dark silence of the old house, with Ariel asleep in Callie’s bed and all my ghosts alive to haunt me, I set my fingers over the worn piano keys. Weariness steals over me and I just sit there, fingers resting on the keys, moving in and out of the edges of sleep. My head nods and I catch myself, open my eyes. They drift closed again.

“Coward,” Callie says, sitting beside me on the bench. She smells of shampoo and floral spritzer. She’s wearing my angora sweater. Her sudden appearance doesn’t surprise me; I already knew she was here.

“I’m not scared.”

“Then why did you stop playing?”

I trace the jagged edge of the broken key, then depress it so slowly the hammer nudges against the string without a sound. “Why did you steal my song?”

“You weren’t using it.”

“It was mine! You had no right.”

She laughs softly and kisses my cheek. “Silly goose. Music is like air. It belongs to everybody.”

The laugh, the kiss, are so real my eyes fly open. But the bench beside me is empty. I know ghosts don’t exist, that this whole conversation is happening inside my head. So why do I still smell her fragrance and the pressure of cool lips on my cheek? I want to shout at her to get back here and finish this conversation, but if I do that I’ll be crazy for sure. Panic beats against my ribs. Maybe I am losing my mind. Maybe I’m imagining this whole thing. Or maybe she’s alive and well somewhere, and I’m having some psychotic episode or crazy dream.

Only the familiar keys beneath my hands save me from a full-scale panic attack. They anchor me, ground me. I depress the broken key again, this time a little harder. One clear tone hangs in the air, A440, only a little flat.

I was born with perfect pitch, which is both gift and curse. A certain vibrational frequency produces a certain tone. When it rings true, I feel a sweetness deep at the center of me. The tones can be managed, arranged, organized.

Which is a very different thing, really, from music.

My fingers move into a scale; slow, uncertain. A chord progression, still tentative. Asking something. The vibrations, the tones, are predictable and constant. It’s the music makers who are random.

“They’re really not predictable at all,” Callie’s voice says. It’s distant now, no longer beside me on the bench. “Don’t you see?”

All I can see is that my world is a mess. My fingers stumble on a progression and I close the lid. This time when I lay down on the old couch, sleep is waiting, and I’m mercifully conscious of nothing.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Somebody is shaking my shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Go away.” I roll over, pulling the blanket up over my head, trying to retreat into the warm bliss of nothingness.

“I’m hungry.”

“Eat some cereal.”

The hand shakes me harder. “There isn’t any cereal. There isn’t
anything
.”

Not Callie. Ariel.
Reality pours in. The paparazzi. Dale. The old house. I burrow deeper into the sofa, wanting more than anything to escape what the day holds in store.

“If you weren’t up playing the piano in the middle of the night, maybe you could actually wake up in the morning.” Ariel strips the blanket off me, and there’s no more hiding from the light. A cold nose pokes into my ear, snuffling, followed by a warm tongue slathering across my cheek.

Ariel giggles. I sit up and pet George’s head, mostly to hold him back from more licking. The piano feels like a dream, but if Ariel heard it, then it was real. Not the Callie part, that can’t be. But still, the memory of her voice and that butterfly kiss are as physically solid as the sensation of my hands on the keys.

“What are we going to do about breakfast?” Ariel asks. “How do we get anywhere? You don’t have a car.”

These are all good questions. I do have a car, in fact, but it’s parked at the Spokane airport, a two-hour drive from here. My place is a couple of miles away. And I’m not asking any of the neighbors for breakfast. After last night, I can’t call Dale.

“Can we order something? George is hungry, too.”

“Ha. Welcome to small townsville. McDonald’s doesn’t deliver.” My mouth is desert dry. My head aches. Food is not anywhere on my playlist, but I need coffee.

“What are we going to do?” There’s a note of panic in her voice, and for her sake I try to pull myself together.

“We have feet. We’ll walk. Give me a minute.”

“What if
they
are out there?”

“I’ll find you a hat.”

“I’m taking a shower.” She’s already scouted the house, apparently, because the door to the main bathroom slams shut a minute later. I let George out into the fenced backyard, then shuffle through my parents’ room and into the half bath.

If anybody needs to worry about being seen, it’s me. I look like I’ve been out on an all-night bender. My eyes are bloodshot. My hair is flattened on one side, wild curls springing up on the other. A red line from the sofa cushion runs the length of my right cheek. The pipes above my head are loud with the running water, and I can hear the shower spray hitting the tub.
Callie better leave me some hot water.
I catch the thought.
Not Callie. Ariel.
I have got to get out of this house before it makes me crazy. Too many memories. A little cold water to my face helps, but not enough.

When I walk out of the bathroom, my mother is lying on the bed. She’s on her side with her back to me, a thin hump under the covers. I blink, and she’s gone. The quilt is smooth, the pillows set neatly and precisely on top, exactly where I put them when I made the bed the morning after I drove her to the nursing home. A trick of the light. I smooth the quilt with my hands. Plump the pillows and replace them. Open the blinds to let the full sun shine in.

The sky is the pure true-blue of spring up here in the north country. Cloudless. Sunlight falls across the mountain that marks the edge of the valley on the far side of town, turning the trees to gold. I’ve never seen this view from exactly this angle before. Mom always kept the blinds closed, the room dark. Now, in the morning light, I see the room with new eyes. Small, cramped. There’s barely enough space for the bed and the dresser. Dark paneling on the walls. No pictures. The beige carpet is threadbare, stained on my dad’s side from spilled drinks.

I feel like I’m suffocating. The window opens with a crank handle. It’s stiff but functional, and I manage to get it open. Cool air flows in, smelling of spring flowers and grass. I rest my hands on the windowsill and breathe. Then, driven by a compulsion I don’t stop to think about, I strip the bed. The old quilt feels heavier than it should, weighted with years of depression and despair. Down the stairs, outside, and straight to the trash can.

“Annelise Redding. What on earth are you doing?”

The voice jolts my head up, eyes wide, a child caught with her hands in the cookie-jar. Mrs. Olson stares at me accusingly while her rat-dog terrier sniffs at the trash can and then lifts a leg to water it. Mrs. Olson ruled first grade with an iron fist. Back in the day, I have no doubt she paddled students regularly. Denied that satisfaction by the time I came along, her weapons were a sharp tongue, sarcasm, and bitter homework assignments doled out in retribution for whispers and fidgets.

Since she also lived next door, all of my small indiscretions were reported to my mother, who did nothing but look at me as if I were an extra burden in her already dreary life. Even now, her voice sends my heart galloping, guilt flooding me from head to toe as if I’ve been caught cheating on a test.

“That’s a handmade quilt. Antique. Is something wrong with it?”

“Yes.” Let her think it’s a spill or a stain, not just accumulated years of depression and an episode of temporary insanity.

Her eyes are as gimlety as ever in her wrinkled face. “You’ve been busy,” she says, implication dripping all over the words. “I saw your magazines.”

“They’re not exactly mine.” I bite back a flood of words out of habit. My body tells me that I’m six and she can hurt me.

“I must admit I am surprised to see you here. I’d think you’d be busy partying, taking up where Callie left off.”

“Mrs. Olson, with all due respect—”

“She always was trouble, that one. You were bad enough, but from the minute she pranced into my classroom, I knew.”

“What did you know?”

I close the trash can lid. Stand up straight and turn to face her. Her eyes travel over me from head to toe and back again, and she shakes her head, clicking her tongue. “Las Vegas is a place of sin. Look at you.”

“What did you know?” I raise my voice a little, take a step toward her. I’m not scared anymore; there’s something stronger running through my veins.

“All big eyes and curls, wrapping the boys around her little finger. Where could it go from there? Everybody was so surprised when she turned up pregnant. Me? I told Pastor Montaigne that—”

I take another step toward her, which puts us eye to eye and almost touching. “And what did you do to help her?”

She backs up, dragging the dog away from its ongoing investigation of the trash can. “I don’t know what you—”

“When we were kids. You lived right there. Did you notice what was going on with my parents?”

“I—”

“Of course you did. You knew. Everybody knew. Mrs. Redding is depressed. Mr. Redding drinks. Those poor, neglected children, coming to no good. You sat around and gossiped about us with your friends. Picked on us at school because we had no parent to defend us. And now you’re going to stand here and talk shit about Callie now that she’s dead? Fuck you!”

She gasps, her sharp face flushing scarlet. Her dog starts yipping, loud and shrill. “How dare you use such language to me!”

“You mean fuck? Are you objecting to my particular usage? Do you want me to spell it for you? F-U-C-K you. Now get off my sidewalk and go wag your tongue elsewhere.”

I don’t wait to see if she follows my command. I turn and stomp back into the house, slamming the front door behind me.

Ariel stands in the entry, eyes wide. “Who was that?”

“A neighbor. You ready to go?”

“I need a hat. And you are not going anywhere like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you look like shit.”

“I don’t care what they think. Any of them. They can take their shitty photographs and plaster them on telephone poles. I’m through with everybody.” I rampage through the house, pulling up all the blinds, opening all the windows. Letting in the air and the light and banishing ghosts. Living room, kitchen, music room. No more evidence of Callie, no lingering fragrance. I open the piano lid I slammed shut last night and run my hand lightly over the keys.

“Feel better?” Ariel asks. She sits down on the bench and starts hammering away at “Chopsticks.”

I do, as a matter of fact. Or I did. I press both hands over my ears. “Must you make that racket?”

She grins and bangs harder. “Go take a shower. There’s only one towel, which you probably know, and I used it. But hurry up. I’m starving.”

The coast looks clear when we set out. We will inevitably encounter neighbors, but I’m pretty sure Mrs. Olson won’t talk to me for a while. She’ll be too busy talking to everybody else. Before we go, Ariel scans the social media feed with the search strings she’s inputted. Everybody’s busy with the flavor of the day, which isn’t us.

Still, I don’t want to venture far. There’s a gas station at the traffic circle, the closest place where we can buy food. It’s not much farther to McDonald’s and Zip’s, but we would have to walk by Benny’s Inn to get there. I’m leery of motel parking lots. We can cut through the park and stick to side streets the way I’m headed.

It feels good to be out and about, stretching out tight muscles, clearing my head. No ghosts out here. It’s easy to put the last hours in perspective with the sun shining warm on my face, the sound of lawn mowers, the trees in bloom.

“It was kinda weird sleeping in Mom’s old bed,” Ariel says, after we’ve walked a block in silence. “Good weird, though. How come you slept on the couch?”

“The weird was not so good for me.”

“I remember visiting,” she says. “And that I could stand on the bed and see out the window.”

We settle back into silence, my brain setting to work on the problems I need to solve. Car, attorney, paperwork, paparazzi.

“It smelled like her,” Ariel says. “Like that perfume she wore.”

“Those sheets have been washed a bunch of times since she used them.”

Ariel shrugs. “I dreamed about her. That she came in and sat on the bed and kissed me. And when I woke up, I smelled her perfume.”

“It was only a dream,” I say, but a cold thread runs the length of my spine.

“I wasn’t sleeping. You were playing the piano. Scales and stuff.”

My left toe catches on a crack in the sidewalk while my right foot keeps on moving. The great divide between immobility and momentum throws me off-balance, and I brace myself for a fall, lurching sideways onto the grass and barely managing to keep on my feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just clumsy.” Something pulls in my thigh when I resume walking, making me limp a little.

We walk the rest of the way without incident. I’m vigilant for either of the cars from yesterday but see nothing suspicious. Right inside the gas station doors sits a wire rack with the weekly edition of the
Statesman Examiner
staring up at us. Both of us stop as if on cue, staring at the picture of Dale’s rental car with a teddy bear blocking the window, the “I ♥ Callie” shirt unmistakable. I don’t even read the headline.

“Hurry,” I whisper to Ariel, but she needs no such instruction.

Chin tucked, letting her hair hide her face, she whispers back, “I’m not hungry anymore.”

But we’ve come this far and we’re getting food. Whatever ancestral spirit possessed me when I was talking to Mrs. Olson is back in command. I hold my head up, bold as you please, and search out bread, milk, eggs, and a small bag of dog food. Ariel follows, after a moment’s hesitation, picking out a breakfast burrito from the food warmer and pairing it with a tall energy drink. I look at the drink, then at her. I should insist on orange juice, get a few vitamins into her. Instead, I free up one hand by passing her the milk jug, and fill a twenty-ounce cup with coffee.

The boy behind the cash register hasn’t grown into his height and doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with a set of very long arms and legs. His face is attractive, though, and he’s got beautiful brown eyes, which Ariel appears to notice with some approval. She smiles at him. He smiles back.

And then his face changes. His Adam’s apple bobs. A red flush starts at the base of his neck and travels up over his jaw and into his hairline. “You’re her. You’re Ariel. Oh my God.”

I set my groceries down on the counter with a bang, but he still only has eyes for her. “What you’re doing—it’s so cool. I hope you find him.”

“Thanks,” she says, the color of her face mirroring his.

“Look, can we buy our stuff?” There’s a greasy-haired man behind me, baggy shorts riding low under a beer belly, stained T-shirt, carrying a six-pack in each hand and looking like 9:00 a.m. is way past time for him to get started. Behind him, a sixtyish woman, dressed for the office, taps her toe impatiently, lips pursed.

“Sure,” the boy says. “Sorry. I can’t believe it’s really you.” He fumbles the packages across the scanner and into a bag, dropping the egg carton, then checking to make sure they’re all okay.

While I run the credit card through the machine, he grabs a copy of the newspaper and sets it on the counter in front of Ariel. “Do you think, maybe, you could sign this?”

“What?”