House Arrest (19 page)

“Open it.”

“It’s your package.”

“You do it, please.” Pippa said, not moving onto the porch.

Using the edge of the ignition key, I slit the crisscrossed packing tape. The flaps were slotted together, each tucked under the next, unfolding as I started to lift them up. I hesitated, glancing at Pippa again.

She stared down towards her feet, at the few remaining blades of grass. The short brown sticks, frozen erratically every which way, sparkled with ice in the stark light. Finally, Pippa climbed the steps onto the porch and stood next to me. I pulled apart the cardboard flaps.

The cat’s body lay nestled on a bed of crumpled newspapers. Curled up tight to fit into the box. Her sleek black head, no longer attached, was tucked into the concavity of her body. Her eyes were open, cloudy and empty. Too late, I tried to push the flaps closed.

“Bast,” Pippa said, the word a deflated sound of exhaled air and woe. She dropped to her knees and took the box into her arms, cradling it against her chest, rocking back and forth.

I took a step backwards. The air around me froze and shattered, frosty crystals plunking onto the sidewalk. I wanted to comfort Pippa, really I did, but my muscles were ice. I couldn’t feel my hands and feet. It was December. It felt like snow. But this was a freezing that came from inside. I watched Pippa tremble, her shoulders hunched forward and her forehead rested on the edge of the cardboard box. The strength of her response frightened me. So fierce, so private.

I backed down from the porch, towards my car.

“Please stay.” The hollowness in Pippa’s voice stopped me. She was my patient.

I picked up Pippa’s keys from the porch. I helped her stand and steered her, still hugging the box, into the living room. She collapsed onto the sofa.

“Anyone home?” I stood in the arched doorway between living room and dining room and called into the quiet center of the house.

A man’s voice called down from the second floor. “Who’s there?”

“Please. Pippa needs help.”

She rocked back and forth on the sofa, cradling the cardboard box, the flaps folded down to shroud the cat’s body. I turned towards the sound of footsteps on the wide staircase. A heavyset man thumped down the steps, one finger hooked onto a dark turquoise bandana knotted around his throat.

“Who are you?” he asked.

He brushed past me to Pippa without waiting for an answer. Two identical boys, perhaps three or four years older than Zoe, followed him down the stairs and into the living room. They threw themselves onto the sofa, one on each side of Pippa. The boys were striking, with startling blue eyes and coffee-colored curls several tones lighter than their skin. They stared at me. The fluffy orange cat dashed into the room. He jumped onto Pippa’s legs, sniffed at the box, and darted under the sofa.

“I’m Emily Klein. From the nursing agency.” I addressed my comments to the man, but watched the boys, sandwiching Pippa in a tight hug.

The man moved to the sofa and bent down to Pippa. “What’s wrong? What happened?” He reached for the box.

Pippa came awake then. She pushed his hand away, placed both her hands firmly on top of the flaps. “I don’t want them to see this.” She turned to me. “This is Marshall. And Jeremy and Timothy.” She looked back at Marshall, then patted the box on her lap.

“Bast,” she said.

Marshall stood up. “Boys, get back to your math. Upstairs. Take Newark with you.”

“What happened to Bast?” asked Jeremy. Timothy stared at the box.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Marshall said.

“Later,” Pippa promised. “We’ll tell you everything.”

Timothy scowled but stood up and scooped up the orange cat from under the sofa. Jeremy hugged Pippa hard for a moment longer and whispered something in her ear before following his brother out of the room. The man turned to me. “Thank you for helping Pippa. You can go now. I’ll take care of this.”

“Okay.” I started to turn away.

“Please stay,” Pippa said to me, then looked at Marshall. “Do we report this to the cops?”

Marshall laughed. It was an ugly sound, containing a hint of something I almost recognized but didn’t want to know.

“A lot of good that will do,” he said. “We’ll discuss it with the rest of the family when they get home. Let me see her.”

He took the box from Pippa’s lap and set it on the coffee table. His thick hands fumbled for a moment with the flaps. He stared down at the cat’s body. Then he stroked the back of his fingers lightly along the quiet black fur. He touched the soft place behind the flattened ear. His hand jerked away as it touched the stiff neck hairs, coated thick with dark ooze. He struggled to maneuver the flaps back together, each one tucked under the next. Finally, he spoke. “Whoever did this is a coward. How brave is it to kill a cat? Let him come fight, man to man.”

Pippa rolled her eyes, then looked at me.

Marshall’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll put her in the greenhouse for now.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said when Marshall had left. I still stood frozen in the doorway. “How can I help? Should I call Nan Malloy? She mentioned some new hate group in town. I suppose she should know about this, before the hearing tomorrow. Maybe she can do something.”

She looked at me funny. “Sure. Whatever.” She pointed to the telephone in the hallway. “You call. I’ll make tea.”

I watched Pippa spoon loose tea leaves into a small wire basket while Nan Malloy’s phone rang.

“I expected something like this,” Nan said when I told her about Bast.

Pippa was warming the earthenware teapot with hot water from the faucet. I turned away from her, wrapping myself in the telephone cord and facing into the hallway. Pippa should not have to hear how unconcerned her probation officer sounded about her safety.

“What do you mean, you expected it?” I lowered my voice. “If you knew it might happen, couldn’t you have warned us, prevented it? Do you expect more violence? Maybe to the people in this house, next time?”

“There are thousands of hate crimes every year in this country.” Nan’s voice sounded defeated. “Hate crimes are message crimes. No, I’m not worried about more violence. The message has been delivered and received. Loud and clear.”

“So that’s all? Aren’t you going to do anything?”

“What do you want me to do?” Nan asked. “I’ll send a squad car out to take a report, okay? See you in court tomorrow morning. Ten sharp?”

“Yes.”

“And Emily,” Nan hesitated, “I hope you’re not getting too involved with these people. Remember what we talked about, how manipulative they can be?”

“Don’t worry.” I hung up and turned to Pippa, who was holding the two cups and the teapot. A thin rope of steam rose from the spout.

“Come back in the living room,” Pippa said. “You can tell me why you look ready to kill someone.”

When we were settled on the sofa, Pippa started to pour the tea.

“What kind of tea?” I pointed at the teapot. “Not red raspberry?”

“What’s wrong with red raspberry?” Pippa asked, holding the teapot in mid air.

I immediately regretted my words. Great time to preach about diet. Why did I have to be such a meddler? I had given Pippa the list of herbs and teas to avoid on that very first visit. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut? Shut up, I told myself, and drink your tea so you can leave this dark place.

“What’s wrong with it?” Pippa’s expression was severe.

“Red raspberry isn’t good for you this early in pregnancy,” I said. “It can bring on premature labor.”

“Not to worry. This is spearmint. House specialty.” Pippa filled the cup. “But now I get it. That’s what it was, the first time you were here when I made tea. You looked like something smelled bad. Why didn’t you just say so, about the tea?”

“You wouldn’t have listened,” I said. “You didn’t want me here.”

“You’re right about that.” She tilted her head to the side and looked at me. “And now you don’t want to be here.”

“I’m sorry.” I looked at Pippa’s open face and sunburst hair. I really liked this woman. Admired her even. But a beheaded cat was more than I could stomach. I had to shift this relationship back onto professional ground, where it belonged. I stood up.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I can’t stay.”

26 ~ Pippa

Washing the breakfast dishes the next morning, Pippa sensed she wasn’t alone and turned. Francie stood in the doorway, the palms of her hands pressed against both sides of the doorframe. Like she was holding up the whole house.

“What’s with the black?” Francie asked.

Getting dressed for the court hearing hadn’t been simple. The public defender had instructed her to dress conservatively. “Look young and innocent,” he’d said. “Wear muted colors. Pastels.”

Pippa wanted to make a good impression, but couldn’t figure out how to put on panty hose with the ankle monitor. She tried threading the thin fabric under the strap, but there wasn’t enough space. She tried wearing the stockings on top, but a corner snagged the stocking and caused a run. Finally she gave up and wore her usual thin white sock under the monitor and pulled black knee-highs over it all, hidden by a long black skirt. Pippa couldn’t believe she had been brought to the verge of tears over something that stupid. Don’t waste your tears on trifles, Ma used to say. Save them for when they count.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what the lawyer advised.” Pippa concentrated on scrubbing the oatmeal crust on the cast iron pot. “I feel like wearing black. I am not a pastel kind of girl, number one. And number two, I’m mourning a murdered cat.” And a dead daughter.

“You’re attending a hearing about the murder of your child. You might want to modify your fashion statement.”

“Criminal neglect,” Pippa said. “I’m not charged with murder.”

“Same thing, as far as a jury is concerned. If you belong to an evil religious cult.” Francie pivoted and left.

Pippa dried her hands, then pressed her flushed cheek against the cold glass of the window in the back door. It had snowed again last night, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the park. She pictured the flakes settling on the teardrop-shaped rhododendron leaves, muffling the winter rustlings of birds and small animals. She squeezed her eyes shut to erase the image of Abby’s slight form under two layers of blanket sleeper, red against the white coverlet of snow.

It was none of their business. Not the lawyers or the judge or Nan Malloy or any of them, even Emily. It was not their concern what color clothes she wore to court. Or who she was mourning.

27 ~ Emily

I grew up with protests and demonstrations. Every time our president bombed a small country that we had to search for in our family atlas, we marched. Every time the state legislature tried to pass a law cutting welfare benefits or limiting gay rights, we picketed. But never in thirty-two years had I found myself in this position. Between me and the front door of the Hall of Justice marched four dozen people carrying hand-printed signs: An Eye for an Eye. Justice for the Frozen Babies. Protect Springfield from Satan-Worshippers.

My father’s voice thundered in my head: never cross a picket line.

What would Arnie Klein say about neo-Nazis demonstrating against a cult in the neighborhood? Would he honor their picket line, engage them in political discussion about their message of hate? Who were these people, bundled up against the December cold? It was hard to identify anything about them, even their ages. They didn’t look like skinheads, though how could you tell with bulky coats and ski hats and scarves? Would they mutilate a family pet to prove how much they hated people who worshipped strange gods, a deity living in a forest instead of a church?

My immediate concern was getting into the courtroom for Pippa’s hearing. I stepped closer to the sidewalk. An older guy with white hair poking out around his down hood stepped out of the line of walkers to stand in front of me. His sign read
Avenge the Frozen Babies.

“Will you join us?” he asked. “We want the judge to know that Springfield citizens will not sanction the sacrifice of innocents in our city.” Wearing puffy mittens, he fumbled with the stack of bright green papers under his arm and handed me a flyer with the words of the message forming a cross.

My father spoke up again: never cross a picket line.

Mumbling thank you to the picketer, I folded the flyer into perfect quarters, and shoved it down into my jacket pocket.

Stick to unions and antiwar protests, I told my father. You don’t know anything about this kind of demonstration.

My father would have welcomed an argument about the correct response to a racist picket line. Growing up, every Sunday morning was a verbal brawl between Arnie and the editorial page of the
Times
. His exuberant gestures slopped his coffee over the cup rim, stamping overlapping tan rings on the newsprint pages. Momma and I would egg him on, nudging our chairs to face him across the breakfast table like an audience, clapping at his most lucid and persuasive arguments. Arnie’s eloquence shone at the table, although sometimes I wished he was like other dads. My friend Marta from next door came over for dinner one time. My father started talking about college days in Ann Arbor, when his history classes and Momma’s music studies were secondary to their anti-war activism. “We majored in revolution,” he shouted. Marta didn’t come again.

Some of our best conversations developed as we crisscrossed the gravel trails of the city park near our Portland apartment. When I was frustrated about not being able to balance my birthday two-wheeler without training wheels, or unable to decide between the soccer team and ballet lessons, he would offer a long walk to talk it out. I had to scamper beside him, my legs pumping to keep up with his loping stride and the dipping, soaring kites of his sentences. His words wove pros and cons, reasonable possibilities and unexpected consequences. In my memory, those walks and talks were always on sunny May afternoons or glorious October mornings. Never the gloom of winter. I stamped my feet, willing blood to flow into my toes. I could use his incisive and wise brain right now. Everyone else was telling me what to do. Gina warning me to protect the career I had worked so hard to establish. Anna observing me like I was a suitcase abandoned under a seat in an airport, ready to explode.

I wished my father were walking alongside me now, his sentences somehow somersaulting my opinions into place. But he was dead. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my tingling ears and crossed the picket line to enter the Hall of Justice.