Break the Skin (22 page)

A MISERABLE HEAD COLD
—that was the next thing. It started coming on that evening at work, and by the weekend it’d gone down into my chest.

Bronchitis, the doctor told me come Monday. He gave me a prescription and said to drink plenty of fluids and get lots of rest. I slept all day and then dragged myself into work.

“You’re white as a sheet,” Delilah said when she saw me in the break room.

“Bronchitis.” I took my pill bottle out of my purse and shook it. “I’ve got an antibiotic.”

She just raised her eyebrows and gave me a questioning look, as if to say,
You think that’s all it is?

Well, anyone could get a cold—you couldn’t very well point a finger at Rose for that—but then I got a rash under my arms (“Miliaria,” the doctor said. “Prickly heat”), and that was odd because it was the dead of winter, and as the doctor explained, folks usually got prickly heat in the summer, when the days were hot and humid and the sweat ducts got clogged with dead skin cells or bacteria. “Prickly heat in winter,” he said. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”

Delilah was. “She’s put a hex on you, Laney. That’s my guess. You walked away from her, and now she’s going to make sure you come to no good.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Is it?” said Delilah. “I guess we’ll see.”

I wasn’t ready to believe it, not for a second. I chalked up Delilah’s suspicion to the fact that she had it in for Rose. Nothing more than that.

Then Poke paid me a visit on Christmas Day, and he told me what he’d seen.

It was the night before, he said. Christmas Eve. After his grandfather went to sleep, he slipped out of the house and took a little tour of the town. Things were quiet at the Raymond house. Jess and Libby were drinking eggnog and watching that old movie,
It’s a Wonderful Life
, on television. They were sitting on the couch, and once Libby even put her hand on Jess’s, a tender gesture that gave Poke hope they’d call to mind the people they were when they first fell in love. “When you love someone, it should be forever, don’t you think?” And I told him yes, I’d always thought it should, but sometimes the world has other plans.

The lights were out at Bernard Goad’s, and Poke chose to take this as a sign that he’d gone to bed early, unable to stand the misery of the fact that Libby Raymond was with her husband and not him on Christmas Eve. “I couldn’t work up much sorry for him,” Poke said. “After all, we usually get what we deserve, or at least that’s my opinion on the subject.”

I almost asked him what he deserved for peeking into people’s windows, but it was Christmas, and he had a little box with him that he’d
obviously wrapped himself. I could only assume it was a gift for me, and I was so ashamed that I didn’t have anything for him that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything that might sound accusing. Besides, maybe what he deserved for all that peeking was everyone’s thanks. His vigilance was trying to keep us all on the straight and narrow.

He sat on my bed, the little box in his hands. The wrapping paper was silver, and too loose. The taped ends pooched out and sagged. He’d stuck one of those fake bows on top, the kind with an adhesive backing. A green bow that kept coming loose, so he had to mash it back down with the heel of his hand. Each time he did, the bow flattened out a little more.

Ida Henline was outside when he stopped by her house. She was in the yard looking up at the night sky. “They say on Christmas Eve,” she said to Poke, “you can sometimes see clear through the sky into heaven.”

The fact that Miss Henline had caught him out and about and spoken to him gave him the whim-whams, but he went away eager to believe in what she’d said because it was a lovely thought. “Who would you want to see,” he asked me, “if you could get a window to the afterlife?”

I didn’t really know. Daddy, of course, but that was the easy answer. I walked over to the window and looked outside. A flock of starlings had gathered in Mr. Hambrick’s yard and were pecking at the ground. Snow was starting to fall. I remembered, I told Poke, a girl in my eighth-grade class who’d died over the summer between junior high and high school. She was alone one day at Lakeview, and she decided to go swimming in the lake even though there were signs that said it wasn’t allowed. She dove off a pier into shallow water, hit her head on the bottom, broke her neck, and drowned before anyone even knew it’d happened. Her father found her flip-flops on the pier, and that’s how he knew where the police frogmen should look.

That girl—her name was Tess. She was heavyset with a badly acned face, and whenever I looked across the room and saw her hunched over her desk, trying to make herself as small as she could, I knew she was
just as miserable as I was. When she died, I felt my heart break, and even though I’d never been friends with her—barely a word had passed between us—there’d always been something comforting about the fact that she was there. When she died, I felt even more alone.

“Tess Raymond,” Poke said, and I was surprised to see how much he really knew about the folks who lived in New Hope. “Mr. and Mrs. Raymond’s girl.” He nodded. “That’s where their trouble started.”

Sometimes, like now, he could bring an ache to my throat, and even though he was a peeping Tom, it was clear that what he really wanted was to watch over people.

“Yes, Tess Raymond.” I turned away from the window. “That’s who I’d want to see. I’d want to make sure she’s happy.”

“She is,” Poke said in a very calm voice. “Anyone who goes to heaven is happy.”

Rayanne Fines was watching one of her UFO videos. She kept rewinding it and playing it again. She was sitting on the floor right in front of the television, and she was tracing her finger over the screen, following what appeared to be a streak of light. “I’m undecided on this issue myself,” Poke said, “but I intend to stay open to the possibility.”

The Reverend Gibson was wrapping a Christmas present, and Poke assumed it was for his pen pal in Russia. “That’s a good thing,” Poke said. “People hadn’t ought to feel alone.” He mashed down the green bow again. “Especially people like us.”

“Us?”

“You know. The shiver spooks. The ones close to coming apart, only no one sees that until it’s too late.”

I felt a draft of cold air on my neck. Goose bumps came up on my arms. Poke had it just right. Yes, that was what we were—Poke and Rose and Tweet and Delilah and Lester and me, and so many others. A clan of shiver spooks.

“You’ve pegged us,” I told Poke.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t take any pride in the fact.”

Then he told me about Rose. It was after he left the Reverend Gibson’s. He saw a light on at Rose and Tweet’s, and he decided he’d stop by just to see what was what. She was in the kitchen.

“She had a doll. A skinny little doll with black yarn for a mess of curls, and she was sticking straight pins into its head.” He looked at me for a good while, making sure I got what he was telling me. “That doll looked like it was meant to be you, Laney, and you’ve been having those headaches.”

Seeing Rose sticking those pins into that doll was enough, he said, to scare the stuffing out of him, so he went right home and made sure all the doors were locked. Then he sat in the dark, thinking that what he’d seen was something no good. Rose seemed upset, like she was angry, and he could only assume she was mad at me.

“I don’t know what’s up with the two of you,” he said, “but I know you haven’t been over there in a long time. So I got this idea. Here.”

He reached out the little silvery box and waited for me to take it.

“Oh, Poke.” I withered from shame. “I didn’t get anything for you.”

He sloughed off any disappointment he was feeling. “I’m used to not getting much. This is just something you might need.” I undid the wrapping and opened the box. Inside was a rabbit’s foot key chain, worn and yellowed. “It’s nothing I bought or anything,” he said. “You know. I just had it, and I thought better you have it than me.”

I rubbed my finger over the fur. I was trying to find the words to thank him, but I was afraid I couldn’t talk right then without crying. My throat was filling up with all I felt on account of he’d made this tender gesture. He was concerned about me, and he’d given me what he could, what he’d had on hand, a lucky charm to protect me.

“Come over here,” I finally said.

He got up from the bed and went to where I was standing. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hugged him to me, hoping that would tell him what I couldn’t say, that I was grateful.

“Hey, now,” he said, and he tried to squirm away from me, but I could tell he wasn’t trying too hard. “Aw, crap,” he said, but I knew he didn’t mean it. I could feel it in the way he sank into me, how much he wanted to be held. I could tell this holding, two shiver spooks hanging on, was the best thing he could have asked if he’d been able to tell me what he wanted for a gift.

“Look,” he said. “Here comes Tweet.”

I had my back to the window, but Poke could see out it as he looked over my shoulder.

I let go of him and went to the window. Tweet was coming down the sidewalk, past Mr. Hambrick’s house. It was spitting snow. The sky was that gloomy color of lead, and the branches of the blue spruce in Mr. Hambrick’s front yard were shaking in the wind. The flock of starlings lifted up into the sky, chattering as they wheeled off to the south. Mr. Hambrick was sprinkling some salt on his front steps. He waved at Tweet, and Tweet waved back. He was wearing a pea coat and one of those long scarves with a pattern of piano keys on it. He took one end of the scarf and tossed it over his shoulder. Even from my distance, I could see his face was red from the cold.

Somehow I knew that he was coming to see me. Mother was downstairs listening to Christmas music. I thought about telling her not to answer the door, but she’d say not to be such a silly goose. It was Christmas and here was someone else coming to see us.

So I checked myself in my dresser mirror—oh, what was the use?—and when the doorbell rang, I told Poke to wait right where he was, and I went downstairs to see what Tweet wanted.

The thing was, he told me after he chatted a bit with Mother and then she left us alone, Rose was wondering why I hadn’t been down to see them in so long. He stood just inside the front door, snowflakes melting on his eyelashes. He smelled like his clarinet reeds, those strips of cane he soaked in water—that clean, woody smell—and I found myself,
as I always did, wanting to lean my head against his chest, imagining that’s where he kept it, whatever it was that gave me such a calm feeling when I was with him. I guessed he kept it right there close to his heart.

“I thought we were all friends,” he said. “How come you stopped coming around?”

I wanted the earth to give way beneath me, just open up and swallow me whole so I wouldn’t have to stand there, ashamed. It was a busy time, I said. I had trouble looking at him as I explained myself. The Christmas season left me on the run at work. I was worn out most of the time, and I’d been having those headaches. “Work and sleep,” I said. “That’s about all I’ve had time for.”

Tweet reached out and laid one of those beautiful hands on my shoulder. “Laney.” His voice was soft now and patient. “I want to explain something to you about me and Delilah.”

I couldn’t imagine where this was going, but I wished he hadn’t mentioned Delilah’s name, calling attention to the hurt between them.

“You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“No,” he said. “I want to.” He took a breath and let it out. “Sometimes you think you’re right where you need to be in your life, and then just like in a good piece of jazz, a little variation comes onto the scene. Dig? And you follow it just to see what’s possible. That’s what happened to me and Delilah when Rose came along. I saw a new way of being. I didn’t want to hurt Delilah, but I had to follow what my heart was hearing. Simple as that, Laney.” He took his hand off my shoulder, and I missed having it there. “Listen to your heart,” he said. He stepped out onto the porch. Then he winked at me. “Come down and see us soon. Rose doesn’t want you to be lonely.”

It hurt to hear him say that, to know that he and Rose had talked about me, had said,
Poor Laney, not a friend in the world
.

“I’m not lonely,” I said, but he was too far down the sidewalk and the wind was too loud and my voice was too soft, so I knew he didn’t
hear me. “I’ve got Delilah,” I said to no one. Then I closed the door and went back upstairs.

My bedroom window was open, and the screen was leaning against the wall. It was a short drop down to the porch roof and another few feet to the ground. I looked around for Poke, but he was gone.

THE NEWS THAT ROSE
had done what she had with that doll shook me, and though I tried telling myself it didn’t mean a thing, the longer the migraines went on, the more inclined I was to wonder if what Delilah said was true—oh, it seems silly now—that Rose had put a hex on me.

One night after New Year’s, Lester drove me down to Evansville to see a concert. We ate supper first at a Greek restaurant, and he ordered for me and explained what the hummus was and the falafel and the tabouleh. He did it patiently and without making me feel stupid.

Snow slanted down through the lights of the parking lot. We sat in a booth by the window, and I felt the cold from the glass. I told him about the headaches and what Delilah had said. I told him Poke had seen Rose sticking pins into that poppet doll.

“You don’t think it’s possible, do you?” I said.

He was very serious about it all. “I’ve seen all kinds of strange things, Laney.”

I watched the snow and waited for him to tell me more, but I suppose his story of the wedding party in Iraq was all the story I needed.

“Are you dangerous?” I laughed a little when I said it so he’d know I was teasing.

He looked straight at me, and he kept quiet just long enough to worry me. “Yes,” he told me, his voice low and steady. “I’m a very dangerous man.”

Right away, I was sorry I’d said it. It was a stupid thing to say, even in jest. I hadn’t meant to remind him of what he’d lived through in Iraq.