Boy, Snow, Bird (33 page)

“Why are you up so early?”

“I just wanted to walk around without seeing anybody,” she said, studying the porch floor. I thought she looked a little fatigued, so I made her take a vitamin tablet and tried to enact a talking cure.

“You go home tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And do you go back to work right away?”

“No, I don’t have a case until next week.”

There was a skin on my cocoa, and a thicker one on hers, but she was drinking around the edges of it.

“A case?”

“I knew you weren’t listening the other morning.”

“I’m sorry, honey.” Honey. I’d never called anybody honey in my life before then.

She smiled. “Don’t be. It’s dirty work, Boy. I’ve been following men’s wives and taking note of their indiscretions. It pays well because it’s valuable to the clients. It makes their divorces significantly cheaper.”

You never really feel your jaw until it drops. I think it was the crispness of her words just as much as the worldliness of what she was saying. Should a diaphanous butterfly ever perch on my
finger and provide analysis of the day’s stock market activity I won’t bat an eyelash.

She looked up (we were directly beneath Bird’s window) and continued in a whisper: “I don’t know if I can stick it out for much longer. You’re taking photos of a couple from across the street, you’re sitting next to them in some bar, eavesdropping for incriminating details, sometimes the guy will get up and go to the restroom and the unfaithful wife will turn around and just start
talking
to you. People in love are so trusting. They’ll say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, your prince will come,’ and I’m all no no no, don’t talk to me, I’m stalking you. One woman . . . I liked her, and it was sad to hand in the stuff I’d got on her . . . she started telling me about her life with her lover. It was all moonshine, I knew who her husband was, and where their home was, and where she sent her kids for their education. But she told me the man she was with was her husband and they had four boys he took fishing every Sunday, and between the boys and work they only had one date night a month so they had to make it special, and I just started shaking. I keep going to Isidor—that’s my boss—to tell him I’m quitting, but then he pays me . . .”

I sniggered, and then we were both laughing.

“Don’t go home tomorrow, Snow. Stay awhile, okay?”

She hesitated.

“Isidor might fire you, but if the job makes you shake, is it really right for you? Visit awhile longer. Please.”

“It’s not because of Isidor. It’s that kiddie bedroom. But I guess I only have to sleep there.”

3

o
n Saturday morning I had a long talk with Arturo about Frances and the rat catcher and what I meant to do. He laughed at me and then he forbade me and then he warned me. I walked out of the room and he followed me into the next room. Then he walked out of the room and I followed him into the next room, and not for a second did either of us stop talking. We split a sandwich for lunch and he conceded that if he were in my place he’d want to meet Frances too. If there’s still anything left of her. If she wants to meet us. I think he was just getting hoarse. Plus he knows this terrain. He’s been handling the difference between the mother you want and the mother you get for years, managing the discrepancy like a pro, making it look easy.

(Charlie would’ve been full of useless pity, I think. It’s so stupid to compare, or even to think of him at all.)

“But just for a week.” For some reason Arturo tapped his watch. “Bird can’t miss too much school. One week for now and then we’ll talk.”

“Right,” I said, remembering that Snow had thought she was only visiting Clara and John for a week. I kissed him and went upstairs before he could begin to remember that too. I packed a bag—books and records, things I thought Frances might get curious about or find offensive enough that she’d wake up just to challenge them—and I knocked on Bird’s bedroom door. She wasn’t in there, just a scattering of spiders hanging in midair, waiting for me to close the door again so they could continue on to their secret destinations. Arturo was back in his studio by the time I went downstairs, but Mia had arrived, with her suitcase, as agreed. She hadn’t seen Bird, either, but she had a lot of complaints and suggestions to make. This trip would seriously disrupt her work on the article, we could engage a suitable doctor from here, and so on, and so on.

“Hold that last thought while we go grab Snow.”

“Her too?”

Snow didn’t answer when we knocked, but Agnes had said she was in there, so we went in. She was lying facedown on her spangled blue bed. Her hands were pressed over her ears, and when we first entered the room, we couldn’t hear why (Mia looked around at all the mobiles and wall stencils and gave a silent whistle), but I stood beside her bed and heard singing. A clear, mellow voice with a hint of a ragtime pitch, as if the singer felt such emotion that the melody came out uneven.

All I do is dream of you is dream of you the whole night through . . .

Julia.

Snow’s lips were moving; she was involuntarily singing along. Mia grabbed my arm, then searched the tops of the shelves and
the dresser for a record player. When she couldn’t find one, she knelt down beside Snow and tried to lift the girl up. I went to the window. I didn’t especially want to, but that was the direction the singing seemed to be coming from. The bedroom overlooked Olivia’s garden, which looked empty until I flung the window open and saw movement behind the hedge. The singing stopped. I ran down into the garden and out of the front gate and caught Bird about a millisecond before she vanished into the woods. I caught her by her ear, and I yanked hard.

“So you’re a mimic, huh?”

“It’s not a crime!”

“So you’re trying to drive your sister crazy?”

“I’m trying to see if she’s a phony or not.”

“And if you manage to drive her out of her mind that means she’s not a phony? I’m going to twist this ear right off of your head, Bird Whitman.”

I guess I must’ve sounded like I meant it, because she screamed with such fear that I instantly let her go. Mia and Snow came running toward us, and Bird wrapped her arm around a tree trunk as if depending upon its aid. Maybe she was given my eyes so that I can never stay mad at her. But you can’t let a thirteen-year-old just walk around with the ability to sound much too much like a dead woman.

“How long have you been doing this?”

She shrugged, and I turned to Snow.

“That was the third time,” Snow said. “But Boy, don’t kill her, or threaten to. She—she didn’t know what she was doing.” I think it took a lot for her to say that. Not that her sister appreciated it.

“Yes, I did know what I was doing,” Bird insisted.

“You will never do anything like that ever again. And you will go pack a bag immediately,” I told her.

She lifted her chin. “Where are you sending me? Can I write a note to Louis first?”

“We’re going to New York for a few days.” I looked at Snow and Mia. “All of us. We’re going to go look at a quilt your great-grandmother on my side made, Bird. It’s an important quilt. It’s in a museum. I don’t know why I started with the quilt. Really we’re going down there to go see somebody. She needs us, I think. I’ll explain more on the bus. And we need her. You, Bird, you’ve always got to know, and we’d better find you a way to do something other than devilry with that. And you, Mia, you’ve got to tell, and Snow—well, you’re a pretty face and more. As for me, I’ll do whatever else there is to be done. And yes, you can write a note to Louis. But get a move on. The bus we want leaves in an hour.”

Bird bolted into our house, but Snow tucked her arm through mine and whispered to me that she didn’t want to come with us, she didn’t think she could help, she wanted to go back to Twelve Bridges. I linked my other arm through Mia’s and the three of us walked slowly up and down the street, talking about Frances.

Olivia Whitman walked out of her house and into the road as Mia was driving us to the bus station. So we had to stop the car. She gestured for Mia to roll down the window, and when she was obeyed, Olivia said, “Where are you taking my grandchildren?” She tried to sound imperious, but she just sounded old.

Snow looked out of the other window and bit her lip. Bird almost startled the life out of Olivia by planting a noisy kiss on her cheek.

I told her to wait there, and that we’d be back for her, and Olivia stood aside and let Mia drive on.

acknowledgments

Thank you, Marina Endicott; thank you, Jin Auh; thank you, Tracy Bohan; thank you, Megan Lynch; thank you, Dr. Cieplak; thank you, Kate Harvey. And Ronnie Vuine—thank you.