Guilt (6 page)

Claire gave up, angry that she was the only one who felt opposed to such a subject for their artwork. She sat for ten minutes in her chair, looking at her white sheet of paper and brooding over the project. She decided, at last, to direct her inspiration towards a happy ending. She imagined the little girl re-uniting with her parents in an embrace on the front porch of their home.

Her skill couldn't quite match her desire, and the permanency of the charcoal made her work difficult. More than once she became disappointed in her drawing and had to start with a fresh piece of paper. When she crumpled her third sheet in frustration, Corry looked up from his own drawing. He observed her for a moment before cautiously deciding to speak. "I know this may sound insensitive, but you just have to try to distance yourself from the topic. So you can get it done."

Claire contemplated this for a moment before responding, "It's art isn't it? It's not meant to be objective. It's meant to express your feelings. How can you distance yourself from your feelings?"

Corry looked at her, stunned for a moment. He appeared to realize what she said. His face became a bit strained and he flushed, ashamed of the advice he had given. "You're right. Sorry. I was just trying to help." He put his head down and returned to his own work, but didn't seem to be concentrating very well.

Claire felt guilty that she'd argued with him when he had just been trying to offer her advice to get through the project. She resolved to patch it up and make him feel better. "I decided to give the story a happy ending. I just can't seem to make the charcoal do what I want it to do." She told him about her idea for a joyful reunion, and that she was struggling with the details of the embrace between the parents and the girl.

The Freak snorted over her notion, but Corry gave her a supportive smile. By the look in his eyes, she knew that he shared her detestation of the subject. After he gave the Freak a stern glare, he turned back to Claire, gave her some tips on how to smear the charcoal to get a shadowing effect, and began to elaborate with her on her story. By the end of class, they envisioned that the little girl would prove to be a very important person one day, growing up to become a doctor and finding a cure for cancer.

The Freak let out a few groans of annoyance and made a gagging noise once or twice, but Claire and Corry had already become adept at ignoring him. Their conversation flowed comfortably now.

As more days passed, they managed to develop their conversations into a regular routine, talking about all kinds of subjects from the unusually warm October weather they were having to the unreasonable price increase of pizza in the school cafeteria. With their generalized topics, like the possible reasons that Ms. Frye's classroom smelled like formaldehyde (strange, since she was a history teacher, and not associated with science or animal dissections), they struck up a watered-down version of a friendship. It was the first time Claire felt a genuine amiability from any of her classmates since she started the school year; and that alone endeared Corry to that very rare honor of camaraderie that she accepted from almost no one.

Chapter Seven

Home. Oh, boy. This was going to be uncomfortable. I sat in my car, which I parked on the curb in front of the house. Nothing had changed – well, maybe there was a shrub or two missing that used to frame the porch, but everything else looked just the way it did when I last saw it. I'd stayed away for so long that being here made me feel nervous. The familiarity of my surroundings fueled my anxiety, reminding me (as if I needed reminding) of the reasons I stayed away.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't associate my anxiety with my parents. There had never been any estrangement between us, and everything was fine when they flew out to see me a little over a year ago. But that was on
my
turf. While they were there, they forced a promise from me to come back to Brickerton for a visit, and had been hounding me about it ever since. This was the fulfillment of that promise. I'd find reconciliation with my past during my sojourn here, or this would be the last time I would ever lay my eyes on Brickerton. That was my vow to myself.

I took a deep breath, got out of the car and made for the porch steps. At the front door I hesitated. Should I knock or just go inside? This was my childhood home, but it wasn't home anymore. It might be rude if I just went in unannounced, but it could hurt my parents' feelings if I acted all formal by ringing the bell.

I decided to knock and then enter on my own. That way I covered both bases. After rapping three times, I turned the door knob. It didn't give. It was locked. When I was a girl, the door was never locked. There was no need to lock it in a small town where everybody knew their neighbors. But after the kidnapping crime when I was in high school, all that changed. Every home was locked whether the inhabitants were home or not. Fences were built to separate people from their neighbors. Children could no longer run off and play until they were called in to dinner. The world of Brickerton changed then. And, it seemed, that change stuck.

The front door opened after a few seconds. Lil stood on the other side of the threshold in all of her haughty glory. "Well, if it isn't the prodigal daughter, gracing us with her presence."

"Bite me, Lil." I wasn't in the mood, so I pushed past her with my suite case in tow. She let me by. She didn't dare stop me when my parents were in the house.

Mom came into the entry room from the kitchen. "Clairabell?" I hated that nickname. "Oh, sweetheart, there you are. What took you so long? We expected you at least two hours ago."

"Hi, Mom." We hugged. "I just took it easy on the drive from the airport." She didn't need to know that I got sidetracked. She'd just be disappointed that I let something else take precedence over my family. Even if it
had
been unintentional.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a young boy lounging on the couch in the living room. That must have been Jacob, Lil's nine-year old son. I hadn't seen him since he was two. Boy, he looked a lot like his mother.

"Jacob," Mom called to him. "Come say hello to your aunt."

He didn't move from the couch. I could see earphones in his ears, and his foot beat time to some song that no one else could hear.

"Oh, well," Mom turned back to me. "Don't mind him. He's at that age."

"The pain-in-the-ass age?" Lil asked, apparently fed up with her son. What'd she expect with the role model he had?

"Oh, Lil. Don't talk that way about your own child," Mom defended. "Jake's a good boy. He kind of takes after his Aunt Clairabell. I swear he's more likely to be your son than Lil's, Clairebie."

"Yeah, that would be impossible," Lil jumped on the opportunity to insult me. "You have to have sex in order to reproduce."

That set me off. "Not all of us are pathological sex fiends,
Lil
."

"Yeah, some of us choose to be heartless bitches." She bit back.

"By the way, have you even discovered who the father of your son is yet?" Now I started to hit beneath the belt.

"Oh, go get laid you frigid nun." Lil curled up her lip and narrowed her eyes at me.

"OK, Lil – " Mom tried to interrupt but I wasn't about to concede yet.

"Maybe I could if there was a man left in the world that hasn't already screwed you." That wasn't a very good come back. I never had been very good at offhanded remarks.

"And maybe you wouldn't have been raped if you weren't such a stuck-up prude," Lil battled back again. Well, she wasted no time in broaching
that
subject. Her jeer let me know that people hadn't forgotten my ordeal from seven years ago. That realization stung me a lot more than her cruel words did.

Mom sucked in a breath of shock. "Lil. Good God, don't say such things," she admonished.

While she scolded my sister for her remark, it didn't seem like she completely disagreed with her. I could tell from the glance they exchanged that this was a subject they had discussed before. What kind of an attitude was that for a woman who had made her daughters go to church every Sunday as we grew up, and wouldn't let us date at all in high school (though Lil found ways around that one, and I didn't want to date anyway)? Did my own mother feel that I was a prude?

"Lil, why don't you go home now?" Mom tried to diffuse the situation, just like she always did. "Jake can stay here tonight and help me with the turkey in the morning. Doesn't that sound like a good idea, Jake?" He didn't hear her.

Lil huffed, but listened to our mother. She went over and kissed Jacob on the forehead. It had to be the most sentimental thing I'd ever seen Lil do, but he just ignored her. After grabbing her purse from the side table, she headed for the door, giving me a snarling frown on her way out.

Mom declared that she needed to return to the kitchen to resume her traditional holiday eve pie baking, so she directed me towards my father. Dad was holed up in the garage, his usual hide-out.

I walked through the door in the hallway between the entrance room and the kitchen, and out to the frigid workshop in the garage. With his butt jutting into the air, my Dad bent over the motor of his riding lawn mower, flashlight in one hand and pliers in the other. It had probably been weeks since he'd mowed the grass and would be several months before he needed to use the mower again, yet he tinkered on it now, and probably would all winter. It was either his hobby or his escape from all the estrogen that flowed through the rest of the house. I never figured out for sure which reason prompted him to disappear into what he called his "man cave".

"Hey, Daddy." I greeted him to get his attention.

"Claire-bear." He turned. "There you are. Been lookin' out for you all day." He put down his tools and opened his arms to give me a hug. I fell into his embrace. It always felt so good and safe to have my big old Dad hold me like I was still a little girl.

"How was the drive from the airport?" he asked as he let me go.

"Oh, you know, same old highway." I answered. "Nothing's changed."

"What?" he replied like I was silly. "Didn't you see the new Super Shopper on your way into town?" New businesses always pleased him. Every time a new business opened, he thought the economy was coming back into Brickerton; but he ignored every place that closed up, though that was a more common occurrence.

"Oh, that's right. I did see the new Super Shopper." I smiled to appease him. "It looked busy." That was probably because it was the day before Thanksgiving. Everybody rushed to the store the day before a holiday to get last minute ingredients for dinner.

"Yeah," he beamed back. "I think it's catching on." I loved my Daddy. He was ever the optimist.

"Well, I'm gonna clean up in here," he continued. "You go ahead and go back into the house. I'll be inside in a bit."

I pecked him on the cheek and turned to leave.

"Oh, yeah," he said before I got to the door. "Your mom had me clean out the attic last month, so there are some boxes in your bedroom. Mom wants you to go through them and see if there is anything you want to keep. She wants to give the rest to charity or take them to the dump."

"All right," I moaned. Not exactly a chore I wanted to do on my holiday, but if I didn't, Mom would just throw it all away.

I grabbed my suite case from where I abandoned it earlier by the front door and dragged it up the stairs to my old room. I noticed on my way through that Jacob hadn't budged from his seat on the couch. He concentrated on whatever music he was listening to, and tuned out the world around him. Guess he really was a lot like his Aunt Claire.

I reached my bedroom, and crashed onto the bed; but got back up, disappointed. It didn't feel as comfortable as it once had. After opening my bag to settle in, I turned towards the boxes that my dad had left in the corner of my room, and decided to try and find my old art portfolio. I thought I recalled stuffing Corry Murphy's obituary in there twelve years ago. I wanted to see what it said about the family he left behind.

I found what I was looking for at the bottom of the second box of junk. Flipping through the pages, I came across the obituary, which had yellowed and faded with age. Along with it, I found the charcoal drawing that Corry had made in art class. I'd forgotten all about it, and so I sat and recalled how I came to be in possession of it.