Ashes (21 page)

Even Peter believed it. She looked at his
hands. No. They would never have been able to slip a bag over a
baby's head, hold it loosely until the squirming stopped.

She was surprised she still
had tears left to cry. Maybe she would run out of them in a week or
two, when she was beyond
utterly
. When she had put it behind
her.

"Peach," she said. "I think peach walls would
look good."

"It's only for a little while. Until we have
enough money to move. The sooner we get you away from this house,
the better."

The million wouldn't buy Amanda back. But at
least it would help bury her, confine her to a distant place in
Katie's memory. Maybe one day, Katie really would be able to
forget. One morning, she would awaken without guilt.

She made coffee, some eggs for Peter. He
rushed through breakfast, checking over the NASDAQ in the
newspaper. She kissed him at the door.

"I promise to try harder," she said to
him.

He put a hand to the back of her neck, rubbed
her cheek with his thumb. "She had eyes just like yours," he said,
then he looked away. "Sorry. I'm not supposed to talk about
it."

"We'll be away from here soon."

"It wasn't your fault."

She couldn't answer. She had a lump in her
throat. So she nodded, watched him walk to his car, then closed the
door. After he'd driven away, headed for the Battery in Manhattan,
she went up the stairs.

She reached under the bed and pulled out the
keepsake box. She untied the pink ribbon and opened it. Amanda Lee
Forrester, born 7-12-00. Seven pounds, nine ounces. Tiny footprints
on the birth certificate.

Katie shuffled through the photographs, the
birth announcement clipped from the newspaper, the hospital
bracelet, the two white booties, the small silver spoon Peter's mom
had given them. Soon Katie would be able to put these things behind
her and move on. But not too soon.

She could cry at will. She
could pretend to be
utterly
if she needed to, if Peter ever
suspected. She could hide her guilt in that perfect hiding place,
her disguise of perpetual self-blame.

Katie put all the items of Amanda's life into
the plastic bag, then tied the box closed with the ribbon. She
returned the box to its place under the bed. Peter would never
understand, not a trade such as the one she'd made.

A million dollars to forever carry the weight
of silence.

She clicked on the nursery monitor, sat on
the bed, and listened.

###

THE HOUNDS OF LOVE

Dexter licked his lips. His stomach was
shivery. October was brown and yellow and crackly and tasted like
candy corn. He knelt by the hutch that Dad had built back before
the restraining order was filed.

He touched the welt under his eye. The wound
felt like a busted plum and stung where the flesh had split open.
Mom had accidentally left her thumb sticking out of her fist when
she hit him. She hadn't meant to do it. Usually, she was careful
when she punched him.

But one good thing about Mom, she didn't hold
a grudge for long. She'd turned on the television and opened a
beer, and after the next commercial break had forgotten all about
him. It was easy to sneak out the back door.

Dexter poked some fresh blades of grass
through the silver squares of wire. The rabbit flashed its buck
teeth and wrinkled its nose before clamping down on the grass and
hopping to the back of the hutch. It crouched in the shadows and
chewed with a sideways gnashing of its jaws. The black eyes stared
straight ahead. They looked like doll's eyes, dead and cold and
stupid.

Dexter's stomach was still puke-shivery. He
opened the cage and snaked his hand inside. The rabbit hopped away
and kept chewing. Dexter stroked the soft fur between the rabbit's
eyes.

Gotta tell 'em that you love 'em.

He snatched the leathery ears and pulled the
rabbit forward into the light. He held it that way for a moment,
like a magician dangling a trick above a hat, as it spasmed and
kicked its four white legs. This was October, after all, the month
when anything could happen. Even stupid old magic, if you dressed
like a dork in a wizard’s cape for Halloween.

Dexter looked over his shoulder at the house.
Mom was most likely passed out by now. After all, it was four
o'clock in the afternoon. But Dexter had learned from his dad that
it never hurt to be paranoid.

He tucked the rabbit under his windbreaker
and crossed the backyard into the woods. When he reached the safety
of the trees, he took the leash from his pocket. This was the
tricky part. With his tongue hanging out from concentration, he
squeezed the rabbit between his knees.

He pressed harder until he heard something
snap and the rabbit's back legs hung limp. He almost puked then,
almost wept, but his first tear rolled across the split skin
beneath his eye and he got angry again. "I'll teach you better than
to love me," he whispered, his breath ragged.

It was the rabbit's fault. The dumb creature
shouldn't have tried to love him. The rabbit was trying to get him,
to play the trick on him, to make him care. Well, he wasn't going
to belong to nothing or nobody.

Dexter used both hands to attach the leather
collar. The collar had belonged to his little redbone hound. Uncle
Clem let Dexter have the pick of the litter. Dexter had chosen the
one with the belly taut from milk that wagged its thin rope of a
tail whenever Dexter patted its head. Dexter had named it Turd
Factory. Well, stupid old Turd Factory didn't need the collar
anymore.

Dexter fastened the collar and let the rabbit
drop to the ground. It rolled on its side and twitched its front
legs. Sometimes they died too fast, sometimes before he even
started. Dexter headed deeper into the woods, dragging the rabbit
behind him by the leash. It was a hundred feet to the clearing
where he liked to play. There, the sun broke through the tree-limbs
and a shallow creek spilled over the rocks. Dexter squinted at the
scraps of the sky, his eye almost swollen shut now. The clearing
smelled like autumn mud and rot, the magic odors of buried
secrets.

Dexter tightened the leash around the
rabbit's neck until its veins bulged. He put one hand under the
soft white chest and felt the trip-hammering heart that was trying
to pump blood through the tourniquet. The rabbit began kicking its
front legs again, throwing leaves and dark forest dirt into the
air.

This was the part Dexter hated. The fear that
came to the animals sooner or later as he tortured them, that
little frantic spark in the eyes. The desperation and submission as
they gave all that they had. Stupid things, they made him sick,
they made him want to throw up. It was all their fault.

Dexter opened the pocketknife and went to
work. This one was a relief. The rabbit had started out scared and
stayed scared, paid for loving him without a whimper. Dexter was
blind from tears by the time he finished.

He buried the carcass between the roots of a
big oak tree. Right next to old Turd Factory. Dexter washed his
hands in the creek. It was almost dinnertime. He turned and walked
back through the clearing, past the depressions of soil where he
had buried the other animals.

His own little pet cemetery. He had seen that
movie. It had given him the creeps, but not badly enough to make
him give up his hobby. Plus, by the time he was finished with them,
no chunk was big enough to stand up by itself, much less walk.

Three cats were underground here, two of them
compliments of dear old Grandma. She'd given him the rabbit as an
Easter present. He'd swiped a rooster from a caved-in coop up the
road, but he didn't think he'd be pulling any more of those jobs.
The rooster had spurred him, plus the dumb bird had squawked and
clucked loud enough to wake the dead. There was a box turtle buried
somewhere around. But that had mostly been a mercy killing. Mom
kept pouring beer into its water.

Same with the goldfish. He told her he'd
flushed them down the toilet. Goldfish were boring, though. They
didn't scream or whimper. They didn't make him want to throw up
while they bled. They were too dumb to love.

Dexter giggled at the
thought of a goldfish coming back from the dead and haunting him.
He'd like to see that in a movie someday.
The Revenge of the Zombie Fish
. He
wiped his eyes dry and headed down the trail to the
house.

Mom was boiling some macaroni when he came in
the back door. She wiped at her nose as she opened a can of cheese
sauce. The sight of her moist fingers on the can opener killed
Dexter's appetite. He sat down at the table and toyed with an empty
milk carton.

She must have passed out in her clothes
again. They were wrinkled and smelled like rancid lard. "Where you
been, honey?" she asked.

"Out playing."

"Where?"

"Out," he said. "You know."

She slid a plate of steaming macaroni in
front of him. Dexter could see dried egg yolk clinging to the edge
of the plate. "How was school?"

"The usual."

"Hmm. What you going to be for
Halloween?"

“
I don’t know. I’m getting
too old for dress-up and make-believe.”

“
Whatever.” She opened the
refrigerator. It was empty except for a dozen cans of beer, a
wilted stalk of celery, and something in a Tupperware dish that had
a carpet of green stuff across the top.

Dexter watched as she cracked a beer. She was
red. Her hands were red, her face was red, her eyes were red.

"You not hungry?" she asked.

"No. Maybe later."

"Well, you need to eat. You'll get me in
trouble with Social Services again."

"To hell with them."

"Dexter! If your Grandma heard that kind of
language—"

–
the old bag would probably
slap me upside the head
.

But the good thing about Grandma, she always
felt guilty afterwards. She would go out and buy something nice to
make up for it. Like the pocketknife or the BB gun. Or a new
pet.

He didn't mind if Grandma made his ears ring.
At least with her, there was profit in it. With Mom or Dad, all he
got was a scar to show for it. Maybe Grandma loved him most. He
picked up his fork and scooted some noodles around.

"That's a good boy," Mom said. She bent and
kissed him on top of the head. Her breath smelled like a casket
full of molded grain. "Your eye's looking better. Swelling ought to
be down by tomorrow. At least enough for you to go to school."

Dexter smiled weakly and shoved some macaroni
in his mouth. He chewed until she left the room. The telephone
rang. Mom must have finally had it reconnected.

"Hello?" he heard her say.

Dexter looked at her. He could tell by her
crinkled forehead that Dad was on the other end, trying to worm his
way back into the bed he'd paid for with the sweat of his goddamned
brow, under the roof he'd laid with his own two motherfucking
hands. And no snotty-eyed bitch had a right to keep him out of his
own goddamned house and away from his only son. Now that it was
getting toward winter—

"You know you're not supposed to be calling
me," she said into the phone. She bit her lip as Dad responded with
what was most likely a stream of cusswords.

That was the problem with Dad. No subtlety.
If only he'd play it smooth and easy, pretending to care about her,
he'd be back in no time. And after a few months of acting, family
life could go back to the way it was before. Back to normal.

But the bastard couldn't control himself. Why
couldn't he just shut up and pretend to love her? It was easy.
Everybody else was doing it.

Riley Baldwin down the road said that was the
secret. The word "love."

"Gotta tell 'em that you love 'em," he always
said, with all the wisdom of an extra year and two more inches of
height. "Works like magic."

Said love had gotten him a hand up under
Tammy Lynn Goolsby's dress. And Grandma said she loved Dexter. Of
course, that was different, that kind of love gave you presents.
Love got you what you wanted, if you used it right, even if it hurt
sometimes.

"Don't you dare set foot near this place or
I'll call the cops," Mom screeched into the phone. Her face turned
from red to a bruised shade of purple.

She stuttered into the phone a couple of
times and slammed the handset down, then drained the last half of
her beer. As she went past him to get to the refrigerator, she
didn't notice that Dexter hadn't eaten his dinner. He slipped away
to his tiny cluttered bedroom and closed the door. He stayed there
until Mom had time to pass out again. He fell asleep listening to
her snores and the racket of the television.

Nobody said a word about his black eye at
school the next day. Riley was waiting for him when he got off the
bus. Riley had skipped. Dexter wished he could, too, but he didn't
want Mom to get another visit from the Social Services people,
showing up in their squeaky shoes and perfume and acting like they
knew how to run a family they didn't belong to.

"Got my .22 hid in the woods," Riley said,
showing the gaps in his teeth as he grinned. His eyes gleamed under
the shade of his Caterpillar ball cap.

"Cool, dude. Let me get my BB gun."

Riley waited by the back door. Dexter dropped
his books in a pool of gray grease on the dining room table, then
got his gun out of his room. Mom wasn't around. Maybe she'd gotten
one of her boyfriends to make a liquor run to the county line. A
note was stuck to the refrigerator, in Mom’s wobbly handwriting:
“Stay out of trouble. Love you.”

Dexter joined Riley and they went into the
woods. Riley retrieved his gun from where he had buried it under
some leaves. He tapped his pocket and something rattled. "Got a
half box of bullets."