Stones and Spark Page 22

  "So you got a cell phone." She's standing on a chair, opening the top cabinets. "You going to use it?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know how to use it, to text people, stuff like that?"

  "Of course." I hate the pettiness in my heart, but my sister brings out the worst in me. In her presence one minute, and she's already making me feel inferior. "I know how to do all that stuff."

  "There you are!" She grabs a bottle—"Come to mama!"—and jumps off the chair. She turns to me with a devious smile. "Care to join me?"

  "I'm fifteen."

  "Suit yourself." She unscrews the top, sniffing the opening with appreciation. "Ahh. Now I just might make it through this stay."

  I wait until she pours a full glass of the amber liquid. Wait some more while she takes a long drink.

  Then I ask, "What happened?"

  She just nods toward the hall, pours another glass. "Go see for yourself."

  I start down the hall, feeling like I might be dying. Like, maybe I even want to die. Fade away, and just not have to deal with all of this. When I'm halfway down the hallway, the voices come rushing toward me. My mother's high North Carolina accent. Tight, distressed. My dad's deep Virginia baritone. I check my watch.

  He’s home early.

  Too early.

  Helen is already drinking.

  And—I look down—I'm a mess.

  I make a mad rush for the kitchen, find Helen finishing another glass of whiskey, and take the stairs like a fugitive cat burglar. On the third floor, I start tearing off my clothes and jump in shower, scrubbing away all the evidence of another life. Back in my room, I pull on clean jeans and a t-shirt then quickly open the window and shake out my school uniform. The tunnel soil patters on the ivy that climbs up our brick like that kudzu.

  I make a vow to wash my clothes tonight, when my mom goes to sleep.

  If she goes to sleep.

  It's nearly six o'clock when I come back downstairs. The storm, I pray, has passed. My dad's pushed it out of the house, like he always does. We will say grace and celebrate Helen coming home and eat brown paste.

  But I hear her voice before I reach the second floor.

  "David. I saw her."

  I stop on the landing. Long ago, before I even realized what I was doing, I figured out how not to cry. If you practice it enough, it's almost like breathing. First you tell yourself that sting in your eyes is nothing. A speck of dust. A stray eyelash. Allergies. Then you focus on something completely and totally unimportant. A blank wall. A pencil. Some fork on the table. Whatever you find. But the most important thing is to never ever blink.

  When I come down the last flight of stairs, my eyes are fixed on the handrail.

  "Nadine," he's saying, "let's not get into this now."

  "The voices said to look out the window. And there she was, running. In the dark. And a car was waiting."

  "Honey, those voices aren't real."

  "You're not listening. Raleigh's afraid of the dark—she would never run at night."

  I make sure to hit the last step just right. The wood squeaks. Everyone turns.

  In my dad's face there's so much anguish I have to look away. And because I can't look at my mother, that leaves Helen. Leaning against the fridge, she slurps the whiskey. I take a long look at her. If I don't stop lying, that's who I could turn into.

  "Hi, sweetie," my dad says. "Look who's home?"

  I force my eyes back to him. My heart shrivels, seeing the raw pain in his face. The stress of this day. I can’t keep adding to his hurt.

  "Mom's right," I tell him, my eyes begging him to understand. "I snuck out of the house last night."

  "Really!" Helen says. "That's amazing!"

  Ever since I was little, my dad's told me the truth is always better than the lie. He says the truth sets us free. Maybe it does. But sometimes it first splashes gasoline on the fire.

  My mom's voice quavers. "Who are you?"

  "I'm Raleigh."

  "You can't be."

  "I am."

  “And Helen—" she spins toward her. "What did you do to Helen?"

  I glance at my sister. She raises her glass. "Here's to family," she says. "Bottom's up."

  My dad moves toward my mom, trying to put his arm around her. She backs away.

  "Honey," he pleads. "It's alright. The girls are here, we're all here."

  "No, they're not!"

  "We talked about this, remember? The voices don't love you; they're not your family. We love you. And I'm sure Raleigh can explain why she was—"

  "Hours, David! She was gone for hours. The car brought her back. It prowled down our alley. And now Helen." Her hand, pointing at my sister, is shaking. "Helen told me she was coming on Thursday. Three-forty-five. Today is Wednesday, I know it's Wednesday, don't try to tell me it's not Wednesday—"

  Helen slams the empty glass on the counter. "Oh, for Pete's sake! Everybody can agree it's Wednesday—okay? It's Wednesday and I changed my plans. Why is that such a big freaking deal?!"

  I shift my gaze. The glass in the French doors holds too many reflections. My mom, her posture coiled with fear. My dad, still wearing his suit from work, like he raced out of the office. My sister swaying. I focus on the slate patio, the stones blue and flat, made over eons and epochs, time upon time. I think about how Teddy describes time, as a football field.

  "These two are not our daughters!" my mother cries.

  "Honey, you need to trust me."

  I hear something move. I look over. She's opened a drawer, taking out the yellow legal pad. My footprint.

  I stare at the slate, refusing to blink. The football field begins with dust and stone and prehistoric flora that die in swamps. Twenty yards. Creatures of the deep, creatures on earth, thirty yards. All of them baked into the earth, fifty yards, and by the time human beings show up we're one inch from the goal line. From dust we came, to dust we will return and—

  A door slams.

  I look over. My mother is still holding that legal pad like she's clutching courtroom evidence. But my dad is calling Helen's name, racing down the hall. Calling, calling, calling, the same way I begged that tunnel for Drew.

  I shift my gaze to my mother's face. It looks as stony as the slate.

  "You won't win," she says. "Whoever you are."

  The sting. The burn. It makes me want to blink.

  "I guess you needed this person to pretend she's Helen, is that the plan? She had to come home early?"

  God knows the very last thing I want is for Helen to come home early.

  But speaking the truth right now will only open up another avenue leading straight into Crazyland. The situation is hopeless, and serious, but despite the tightness in my throat, I open my mouth and force out the words.

  "I'm your daughter, Raleigh. I've always been your daughter."

  My dad comes back into the door. When he looks at me, I blink. My vision blurs but I can see the look on his face. Like now he doesn't know who I am.

  What happened to the daughter who never cries?

  Oh, she left. Now he has the girl who skips classes and sneaks out in the middle of the night and lies, lies, lies.

  "Go get Helen," he tells me, wearily. "Bring her home."

  I look at him, like I don’t know who he is either—what happened to grounding me?

  But I nod and rush upstairs.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  In my bedroom, I yank open my backpack and search for the cell phone. The battery is low so I plug it into the wall socket and search for the phone number my dad programmed into the thing.

  After four rings, Helen's recorded greeting comes on: "I refuse to answer my phone right now, so leave a message. And be witty."

  Hanging up, I do neither. I throw a flashlight into the pack, pull on a sweatshirt, and then toss in the dying phone.

  In the kitchen, the brown pastes have all crystallized and cracked, like desert mudstones. When I step outside, pushing my bike across the patio, through the back
gate, the cold darkness feels like it will never end. I order my heart to stop palpitating, force my breathing to slow, tell my mind to focus solely on helping my dad.

  I stick to the lighted streets. People are strolling the sidewalks in pairs, dipping under awnings into neighborhood restaurants and bars. After several passes through the Fan district, I'm surprised by how much I'd really like to see my sister. Even drunk, even belligerent. Even in her paint-smeared jeans, scuffing down the street, Helen would be a welcome sight because my life feels too full of emptiness. It's like everyone is not here. There's just me. Alone.

  And for one brief moment, I even feel sorry for Helen. She flees "parents’ weekend" and this is her lousy welcome home. Can I really blame her for getting drunk? I run and I run and run and run. Maybe Helen's way of coping is more honest.

  At the statue of Stonewall Jackson, I turn right, wondering if my sister's ticked off enough to leave town. The Greyhound bus station is six blocks north, a dumpy rectangular building, sitting directly across the street from the city baseball stadium. Coasting to a stop, I glance at the stadium, shuttered for winter. The field looks abandoned, nothing like that first game this spring, when Opening Day led us to Titus's restaurant.

  And look what that one day brought into my life. Drew's life.

  I lock my bike outside the bus station's entrance, and make a promise to God: Bring Drew home, and I will never complain about baseball again.

  Inside the station, lying across four chairs, a woman sleeps below the electronic board that lists the bus arrival and departure information for tonight. The cities, the times, the stops along the way. One bus leaves for Washington D.C. in an hour, another for New York City. Yale University is in New Haven, Connecticut, not that far from Manhattan. I stand there, wondering whether Helen is drunk enough to hitchhike to campus. The woman lying on the chairs opens her eyes. Her skin is dark and faded, her hair the color of campfire ash, and the blank expression in her eyes says her departure was a long time ago.

  I walk the terminal's L-shaped space, searching for Helen. Every surface in here looks grimy, as if coated by diesel fumes from the busses. Or from smoke. Richmond is home to the Philip Morris tobacco company; the city still allows smoking inside some of its buildings. Since my sister started smoking in tenth grade, I follow the cloud that hovers over some orange storage lockers, the surfaces browning from exhaled tar. Helen's not there, and when I describe her for the two men puffing away, each one shakes his head.

  I check the women's bathroom. Considering how dirty this place is, the linoleum is a disturbing shade of yellow. There are also a lot of discarded bus tickets on the floor and shiny brochures advertising The Jefferson Hotel, and of course the crumpled paper towels that never make it to the trashcan. I'm checking the stalls when a woman walks in. She wears high heels and a short, tight black skirt. When she sees me checking the stalls, she hesitates before walking to the mirror. She opens her purse, takes out a tube of lipstick, and leans into the mirror. Her eyes stay on me.

  "You lookin' for somebody?" she asks.

  "My sister." I describe Helen—reddish-brown hair, dressed like a hippie. "Have you seen her?"

  The woman is carefully stroking her lips with a magenta color, so bright it glows. She straightens, gazes at me in the mirror. "Your sister, she's in some kinda trouble?"

  "No."

  She yanks a paper towel from the dispenser. "What'd she do?"

  "Nothing, I just want to find her."

  Eyes still on me, the woman blots her lipstick with the towel.

  "So have you seen her?" I ask again.

  "Can't say that I have." She tossed the towel toward the trash and walks to the door. When she throws it open, a gust of air smelling of diesel stirs the litter on the floor, including her paper towel. Like all the others, it's missed the can. The air lifts it, displaying her magenta kiss.

  Overhead, the loudspeaker crackles. Somebody clears their throat, then announces the bus leaving for Washington D.C.

  But my eyes are fixed on the paper towel. On the bleached white paper, the lipstick looks almost purple, almost the color of Drew's sparkly Schwinn bike. I step closer, feeling weirdly drawn to the thing, and when I'm directly above it, I can't stop staring at that parted mouth. It looks familiar somehow. Those silent lips that seem on the verge of saying something.

  When I look up, my reflection gazes back at me. Brown eyes charcoaled with insomnia, cheeks red from biking through the cold, my long hair windblown. But the image fades from the glass as my mind recalls another pair of painted lips, and they remind me why the mouth on the towel looks familiar. Because it’s like that lipstick kiss on the St. Catherine's mirror. The one I saw that Friday night, in the girls’ bathroom. Same kind of bright silent mouth, ready to speak, to tell me something.

  I glance at towel. Same kind of litter was on the floor.

  That night.

  The girls’ bathroom looked like this one, in the bus station.

  And suddenly, I know.

  I know.

  ***

  I take one quick look inside the bus leaving for Washington, but Helen's not on it. And she's not inside the station. When I step outside, looking around, the only thing there is the baseball diamond, waiting across the street.

  I think of Titus again.

  He's got no alibi for Friday afternoon. None. And Drew and I shouldn't have been in his restaurant. He broke the law.

  But as I bike south toward Monument Avenue, I hear his sister-in-law's voice in my head. And I see the grandchild, her skin dark as melted chocolate.

  That is not Titus's child.

  When I turn right on Grove Avenue, pedaling past the headquarters for the Daughters of the Confederacy, my mind is flipping through the days, going back to the worst Friday of my life. I recall Drew's bike, waiting outside the gym, and her jacket in the physics lab. The notebook, its pages devoted to drawings and diagrams explaining the physics between a bat and a ball. Simple stuff, really.

  Like instructions. Like she was teaching someone how to hit.

  Definitely not me. Drew already taught me how to hit a baseball. Because I'm athletic, she thought I'd love the sport. I could hit great; I was still bored.

  And Titus?

  He set batting records in the minor leagues. He hit so well the majors called him up.

  Drew couldn't teach him anything about hitting.

  I ride down the road, the streetlights beaming as clear as purified quartz all the way to St. Catherine's. This time, the parking lot outside the gym is empty. No limos. No chaperones. Nobody guarding the gym door.

  I lay my bike on the grass outside the main building and walk carefully to the windows. All the lights are on. The classroom white boards are so clean they gleam. Desks and chaira aligned in rows. The floors swept of debris.

  I check my watch. 7:18.

  I circle the building, peering into each classroom until I find the person responsible for all this cleanliness.

  John. The janitor.

  He's cleaning Mrs. Weston's classroom. Our History teacher keeps a list of ancient dates on her white board, from the Peloponnesian War to the fall of Rome. The dates stay there until we've memorized every one. John moves his rag delicately around the numbers. I watch the overhead light, shining on his bald head. When he finishes cleaning the board, he removes a dust mop from his rolling cart and begins navigating through the desks, straightening each as he goes.

  Here in the dark, watching him work, I feel both weightless and riveted to the ground. I'm here—completely—and not here. My mind continues to go back through the days and nights, even as my eyes watch him push a chair into its desk. I remember the dark classrooms that Friday night, how the desks twisted in disarray, how the hallway was littered with paper.

  And the bathroom. That lipstick kiss waited on the mirror. He scrubbed it away while I was there. And it was after midnight.

  Parsnip came by. She said: "Working late, I see."

  I check my wa
tch again. 7:24 p.m.

  And almost all the classrooms have been cleaned.

  When I look through the window again, John has stopped beside a desk where someone's left a sweater on the chair. He holds it up, as though looking for a name. He examines the St. Cat's crest but then glances at the open door, to the hallway. I think somebody's called his name. I watch the door, expecting a person to appear. But when nobody does, I glance back at John.

  He presses the vest to his face, covering his nose and mouth. I watch his eyes. They roll back in his head then close. His chest expands with the deep inhalation, the theft of this sweater's scent, the stolen smell on this girl's clothing.

  He is a man in total rapture.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  There's only one vehicle in the front parking lot, by the main entrance. A white truck with a camper over its back. I peer through the driver's window. The glass is so clean, not one smudge or fingerprint. And inside, no litter.

  I rap my knuckle down the camper, listening. There's no response.

  Which means there's nothing here to convince Officer Lande to come out. Especially when the cops are convinced Drew and I are playing some game.

  I take my bike over to the side of the building and open my cell phone, calling home. My dad's voice sounds like somebody's been kicked him in the stomach.

  "Come home," he says. "Don't worry about Helen. She can take care of herself."

  "Come home—right now?"

  "Where are you?"

  I glance around the empty school, the dark trees. "I'm thinking about hitting McDonald’s for dinner."

  "Raleigh.” He hesitates. “I love you, very, very much."

  "I love you, too, Dad. And I'll be home soon."

  When I call Helen's phone again, she's still not answering. But this time I leave a message. It's not witty: "Call me. Dad's worried. And hurry, this stupid phone's almost dead."

  I slip the thing into my pocket and start bouncing foot-to-foot to stay warm. Twelve minutes later, John the janitor comes out the school's front door, whistling. He holds a ring of keys and shakes them, filling the dark with silvery music.