Four and Twenty Blackbirds (11 page)

While I still had the nerve to do so, I sought out my last conquest.

Brach Hall was situated down the hill behind the gymnasium. It had the same run-down brick-and-white exterior as the other buildings, but it lacked the decorative columns and the sense of architectural frivolousness. The door to this one was attached, but unlocked.

I stood on the landing and half expected a cold burst of wind or will to shove me back, but nothing of the sort greeted me, so I let myself inside. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Inside waited a hallway with a dozen or more doors standing ajar and a big open room down at the end. Sunlight gushed and fractured through the jagged shards of glass that lingered in the windows, and even though this place was as filled with forest and human garbage as the rest, it seemed bright and almost friendly in comparison to the rest of the places I'd checked. Best of all, it held the four tall filing cabinets up against the wall. A fifth had toppled to the floor and splayed its contents across the room, so I knew they were full of files and folders.

All I had to do was find my mother's.

It took some time. The files were not so alphabetically arranged as they should have been, and they were organized according to some grouping system that I didn't understand—possibly by age or by classroom standings. By the time I pulled Leslie's up out of the others, the flood of natural light had dimmed into a late afternoon stream, or perhaps it had grown cloudy. It had certainly grown quiet, and in light of my earlier supernatural greeting, quiet couldn't possibly be good. I climbed to my feet and stretched my stiff legs, wondering after the comforting hum of bugs and birds that had been my background noise all day.

I wiped at my sweaty neck and listened.

Still in the distance water leaked and tapped, and down on the road below a car zipped by. I didn't hear the low, rhythmic pulse anymore, or the jagged breathing, but its absence wasn't enough to set my mind at ease. I could tell myself it was my imagination, but deep down I knew better than that. I wasn't welcome here. Whatever eyes were watching, they didn't belong to my late mother.

Without opening it, I lifted the lightly stuffed folder.

Another engine roared down the winding road at the foot of the hill. This one slowed as it approached the gravel turnoff, and I thought I might have been discovered. But then the engine revved high again and left.

Back in the hallway I kicked aside the beer bottles and filthy, mildewed clothes and boxes that clogged the floor. Somewhere above I heard a muffled snap, and I froze, straining my ears. I heard it again, then again. It could have been a shutter flapping. It could have been a squirrel working on some nuts. I gripped the folder against my stomach and went back towards the front door.

Just before the last turn before the exit I stopped, my attention snagged by an open office. The nameplate on the door read M. Finley, and it was in surprisingly good order. On the wall to my immediate left was a classroom-sized chalkboard.

SHE KNOWS SHE WAS WRONG
, it read.

The message made me uneasy. Surely it had been there for some time, drawn by teenage vandals. It meant nothing to me. Nothing at all.

Finley's chair was pushed back away from the desk, and it sagged and smelled wet but it was in one piece. I nudged it aside with my foot. One desk drawer was on the floor, its contents damp and unidentifiable; but in another I found files with billing statements. Fortunately, these were filed by last names. My mother's was easy to find. I pulled it out and set it inside the folder I already carried. I turned to leave.

Although I had heard no sound, and although I had looked away for only a few seconds, the chalkboard bore a new warning across its broad green slate.

SHES COMING BACK

I sucked in my breath so hard I almost gagged.

The heartbeat was coming close again, up from behind me, loud enough that I knew I was hearing it, and not imagining it. This time there would be no fooling myself. The exaggerated breathing had returned as well, panting as it approached. It was as if a chilled wind was rushing up against my back, and it grew colder and stronger every second I stood there. I read and reread the message and tried to figure how it must have gotten there.

One by one, without a noise, another series of letters offered me advice.

LEAVE
!

I didn't have to be told twice. Sideways I slid towards the door, never for a second considering that I should look over my shoulder. The mysterious S H E did not welcome me there, and she was not a harmless shade. I had made her angry merely by not being my mother, and it seems I'd made her angrier still by unintentionally misleading her.

I fled shakily to my car, too baffled and afraid to give it much thought.

The Death Nugget was where I'd left it, its dark, roundish shape keeping the bulldozers company. I dug my keys out of my front left jeans pocket and fumbled with them, stupidly shaking as I unlocked the door and dropped myself inside. I tossed the folder on the passenger seat and threw the car into gear, backing down the gravel trail as though—and just in case—I was being pursued.

II

I didn't go home. Lulu and Dave would have asked questions, and I didn't have any answers yet. On Saturday night all the coffeehouses are crowded and loud, and the bars are worse because the patrons are not just bored but drunk as well. I wanted to be left alone, really alone, so I could shake the foggy residue of the poltergeists of Pine Breeze and take time to analyze what I'd found there.

I opted for a small restaurant, an Italian joint whose name I always miss by at least one vowel. I like the place. It's quiet and lowlit, with small booths set in walled-off sections that lend the illusion of privacy. I ordered a glass of wine from a blond waitress who probably wasn't old enough to serve it and who definitely should have asked for my ID, but didn't. She obediently brought the drink without any questions. After she'd gone, I opened the grimy file across the table and picked through the contents with all the precision of an archeologist. Any scrap of paper might be a clue.

The first dirty envelope was addressed to Leslie Moore c/o Pine Breeze in solid, precise handwriting in black felt-tipped pen. This letter betrayed only a little about the writer, but it revealed an entire world about my mother.

Dear L—

I hate them for reading these, and I hate them for reading what you sent—but please tell me at least that you're all right. Why won't you write? When I called there the woman assured me that you were free to do so, but she said you hadn't written anything to anyone hardly since you got there. She said you've refused us all—but you must not refuse me. You must write—or I swear I will come down there myself and take you away! I'll tell her to stop sending the money and then they'll have to let you go, whether you like it or not.

You said when you went in there that it was only for a short time, and you promised me you'd write. There are other hospitals, you know. There are other places you could go, places that are made for girls with our problem. I don't see why you want to stay out in that god-awful place. I could be with you—I could support you in this decision. Just say the word and I will make a place for you here, no matter what she thinks. I swear, if I don't hear from you soon, I'll stop the money.

—
A

I set the letter on the table and swigged at the wine like it was whiskey. At the table next to mine, the diners had left their signed credit card receipt on a small black tray. I snagged their abandoned pen and attacked A's letter with it.

"Why won't you write?"

I underlined it. The people at Pine Breeze (Marion Finley?) had told him she was free to communicate with him. I had no way of knowing if this was true or not. Therefore, I did not know whether or not Leslie had ever written A in return—or, for that matter, whether she'd ever received the letter I had spread out before me on the burgundy tablecloth.

"I'll tell her to stop sending the money."

I circled "her" and stared at it. Her who? The same "her" who would not approve of my mother joining A wherever he was? Maybe. I had an idea who "she" might be, but I did not set the letter aside yet.

"There are other places . . . for girls with our problem."

I circled "our" and sat back in my seat to stare at the three little letters.
Our problem.
He knew she was pregnant. I leaned forward again, and tapped the tip of my borrowed pen against the paper. Because I was not yet ready to move on, I recircled the word and stared at it some more, glaring as if it was hiding something from me.
Our.
His and hers. Their
problem
. A slight flush of indignation tugged at the edge of my attention, but the situation didn't warrant it, so I forced it back. No sense in growing a grudge now.

I reviewed the first two lines again.

Pine Breeze officials read the incoming and outgoing mail. It was pretty safe to assume they knew she was pregnant too. This realization raised more questions than it answered, since Lulu—and, come to think of it, that newspaper article—had all agreed that no one knew she was expecting when she was checked in. Either my family was lying, or someone at Pine Breeze was helping hide a secret or two.

My eyes returned to A's only threat—that he'd shut off the money. Not his money,
her
money. Another elusive
her
. Whoever she was, A was close enough to have some measure of say about where her cash went. I finally succumbed to my curiosity and reached for the next envelope in the folder, setting the damning letter aside.

This one was addressed on an old typewriter with its
E'
s set low. This one wasn't
to
Leslie, it was
regarding
Leslie. Inside I found a canceled check from a popular southern bank, signed with a tall, thin, slanty signature that took me a minute to decipher and confirm.

Eliza Dufresne.

"Old Tatie," I said under my breath. "The million-year-old matriarch. Where do you live, Tatie?" I flipped the envelope over and held it up to the small, primarily decorative lamp on the wall. There was no return address, but the postmark read "Macon, GA." Ah
ha
.

In the dusty stack I found half a dozen more canceled checks, all with Eliza's spidery signature. She'd paid Pine Breeze every month on the first or second day like clockwork. Why? What did she care? Who was A to her that she would pay to hide his lover?

I might have lingered over this question longer, except that another letter captured my attention—at least my shock, and then, though I wouldn't have cared to admit it, my horror. It was simple enough in appearance, in an ordinary white sleeve with a damp-obscured postmark.

Mrs. Finley, you must give up that girl's baby. That baby should never be born. He's going to cause a world of pain to many people—not just myself. You may go to hell too, for all I know, just for protecting her there and helping her give birth to that thing. I don't know. But the best thing you can do is send her home and let her mother deal with it. Her mother knows what to do. Her mother wouldn't pussyfoot around like you people are. This isn't a
matter for an institution, it's a matter for family and you know it. You're interfering, you're not helping. Send that child home or else there will be consequences.

There was no signature.

I wondered if Lulu knew anything, but I only wondered it briefly. I'd never get it out of her. She'd buried my mother deep—and her own mother beside her. She'd marked their graves with a secret sign that she'd never share with anyone, especially not me.

What to do, then? My grandmother was dead, and her daughters were silent. I didn't understand it, but I was determined to find a way around it.

I thought again of the nameplate on the office door. Could Marion Finley still be alive? If she was getting threats like the one I held before me, maybe she'd had a good reason to help keep my mother's indiscretion quiet; though that train of thought brought me right back around to my own family, and the question of whether or not anyone really knew.

Someone
outside the Pine Breeze staff knew, this much was clear.

I flagged the waitress down and asked her for another glass of wine and a phone book, if she could scare one up. She came back with both, and I thanked her. Inside I found a dozen or more listings for Finley, none of which were preceded by Marion. There was one R. M. Finley, though, so I filed that away for future reference. I knew more than a few people who went around signing their middle name instead of their given first. It was worth a shot. And later, I might even call a few of the other Finleys to see if there were any relations. Perhaps she'd married, or died. I closed the heavy book and pushed it away.

There should have been more letters, but I didn't see any. I gathered my findings up in a pile and went to put them back the way I'd found them, when a stray bit of coarse paper fell loose. It was another envelope, made of cheap paper with nasty yellow gum to seal it. A grimy smudge of a thumbprint made a dark shadow across the place where the return address should have been written.

I opened it and found nothing except another canceled check from Eliza. But all the rest had come from her in heavy white stationery, mailed with fancy stamps boasting pictures of flowers and birds. The postmark on this one was strange as well.

"Highlands Hammock, Fla."

Surely it was an error. Someone else's envelope, Tatie's check. Bureaucracies make mistakes all the time. The handwriting on the front looked like hers, though; I lifted another envelope to compare, and yes, the script matched up. I supposed she must have taken a trip, or at least I hoped so. Macon's only a few hours away, but it's a good six hours to the Florida state line from Chattanooga. Heaven knew how far south I'd have to go to catch her. Highlands Hammock. I'd have to look it up on a map.

Before I rose to leave, I went back to the first, most revealing item in the folder.

A's letter to Pine Breeze loomed beige and brittle before me. I read it for the umpteenth time, still amazed—still bewildered by a fact the letter made abundantly clear.

Leslie had
wanted
to be there.

I paid for my wine and left a good tip, even though the waitress hadn't been terribly helpful. At least she hadn't gotten in the way, and lately I felt even that much deserved to be rewarded.

The digital clock on my car's dashboard read 11:14 when I pulled into the driveway of the Signal Mountain house I still called home.