Poe (15 page)

Great. She’s already pissed because I’m a good ten minutes late. But then Lisa looks pretty sexy when she’s pissed.

Today she’s wearing a vintage forties flower-print dress and the dark blue denim jacket I’ve seen before. Her hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail, and her black combat boots are the only giveaway of her drummer aspirations.

As soon as I’m near she narrows her eyes. “I just waited so I could tell you that I’m
not talking
to you,” she says, her voice tight.

She turns away and starts to walk briskly down the sidewalk. Her combat boots make a clop-clop sound on the pavement. I have to jog to keep up.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I found the most amazing thing…”

She ignores me.

“And I’ve got news—they’re giving me a raise; I can work from home. You should have seen Mac’s face when I came into the office…”

Nada. I’m the invisible man. A trickle of sweat inches its way down my back; I’m not used to walking so fast.

“And then I find out—like I’m famous or something. I went into that weird little Christian store and the guy behind the counter wanted to get a picture with me.”

At this she snorts derisively, which I take as encouragement. Technically it’s not talking, but it is a
sound
, a form of verbal communication.

“And the guy had this book and he was, like, it’s five hundred dollars, like I don’t have five hundred dollars, and I was all, like, no problem, and man, you should have seen his face when I laid out that cash on the table…”

Lisa stops short at the bus stop, crosses her arms over her chest, and peers down the street. A beige Cadillac lurches by; one wheel is slightly flat, and the exhaust sputters a plume of blue smoke as it turns the corner.

“And then I saw the book, and it’s all in Greek
and
Russian, really old actually.” I’m now blathering away like the proverbial idiot. “I found some weird shit of my dad’s after he died, like this ring, and the symbol on the ring is
in
this book, and I’m thinking maybe this is all happening for a reason. I mean, when would I have five hundred dollars to blow on something as stupid as an antique book—”

“Wait,” says Lisa, holding up her hand. “Your dad is dead?”

“Sure, my parents were killed in a car accident. When I was in college. You didn’t know that?”

“No,” she says tersely. “Like I said, we don’t really know each other.”

Awkward pause.

“I’m sorry,” she adds a little more gently. “About your parents.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, and here—
Shit, not now, not now
—tears start to well in my eyes, so I quickly turn away from her, look toward the Devonshire Bank. There’s an old-fashioned clock that hangs out over the sidewalk, and I watch the second hand tick, gather myself. A lumbering bus approaches, the 49B.

“My car died yesterday,” says Lisa quietly. “This is my bus.”

It stops in front of us, and there’s a
whoosh
as the doors open.

I turn to her.

“I’ve never had a nickname in my life,” I say quickly. “My birthday is September 3, I’m twenty-three, and I dropped out of college senior year when my parents died. I was majoring in English. I have a scar on my right knee from a bicycle accident, I like tomato sauce and ketchup, but strangely don’t like tomatoes, and I write shitty obituaries for an even shittier newspaper. In my spare time I pretend to be a novelist.”

“You getting on, Miss?” calls the driver.

“I like chocolate cake—never vanilla,
never
—I’m allergic to penicillin and being on time for work, and I don’t have a favorite color, because why play favorites? I’ve been told a few times—okay,
more
than a few times—by the opposite sex that I can be an idiot. Yesterday I admit that I went more than a few steps past idiot to asshole. But I was jealous. Okay, so you
know
me. Now you know me.”

“That’s all superficial stuff,” says Lisa.

“But it’s a start, right? Lisa, all I want is a shot to get to know you. Just one. I won’t blow it.”

The driver leans over his steering wheel. “Either you’re getting on or you’re not.”

Lisa doesn’t move—doesn’t look at me. Her gaze is fixed somewhere between the second and third step of the bus. A moment passes. Another. But finally she looks up at the driver.

“Not,” she says firmly. “He’s giving me a ride.”

The driver mutters something unintelligible, the doors of the bus close, and I think that maybe, just maybe, doors of another sort altogether open.

“Right here—no your
other
right,” says Lisa.

We’re on the outskirts of town cruising down South Street, and I turn the car onto an unmarked road that’s not much of a road. I wish I had a Jeep instead of my Mustang, because with all the teeth-jolting potholes, I can’t imagine the muffler will make it out alive. We pass a wide field that’s planted with corn in summer but is now just a barren, weedy lot. On the left is a lonely gas station, Friendly Fred’s.

The houses are smaller here, single-story ranches and shotgun shacks, not like the looming Victorians downtown. Some are fenced, enclosing a scattering of horses, sheep, and goats, while others have scrubby front yards and wire chicken coops. In one yard a tire swing hangs from the branch of a thick maple tree.

“Right here,” says Lisa as we approach an unpaved driveway marked by a tall elm tree. She’s tense for reasons I can’t imagine, but I know enough not to ask.

The driveway is rutted deeply, gashes in the frozen earth that I try to avoid by driving on the shoulder. A couple of chickens scatter before us, squawking in protest, and then a two-story farmhouse rises in front of us. It’s the same house from Lisa’s laptop pictures, and its simple white paint stands in stark contrast to the surrounding brown and dormant field. A hulking, abandoned thresher rusts quietly at the far edge of the property near where a forest begins. I put the car in park and turn off the engine.

“This is your house?”

“Not mine. My mom’s. Get ready.” Lisa opens the car door and steps out into the chill afternoon air.

“Get ready for what?”

No answer.

I get out of the car and feel a gentle arctic breeze brush against my cheeks. It’s amazing how quiet it is out here in the country; the sound of my feet crunching across the thin layer of icy snow seems absurdly loud. But suddenly the silence is broken by a massive pit bull, which barks fiercely from the sagging porch. I’m grateful to see that it’s chained.

“Buddy doesn’t bite,” says Lisa. “Much.”

“Gee, thanks for the heads up.”

Lisa just smiles at me nervously.

A barefoot little girl charges through the front door of the house, braids flying behind her. She clutches a crayon drawing and launches herself into Lisa’s arms.

“You’re home, you’re home, you’re home! What’d you get me?”

Lisa gasps in mock surprise, twirling the girl in a circle. “Was I supposed to get you something? I forgot.”

“No you didn’t, no you didn’t!”

“Well,” says Lisa, putting the girl down, “there might be a little something in my bag. Where are your shoes?”

The girl ignores the question. “Life Savers, I know it’s Life Savers.” She stops short when she sees me, an unfamiliar man standing next to an unfamiliar car, and then I recognize her: a little older maybe, but definitely the girl with the pink boots in the photos.

“Who’s this?”

“My friend Dimitri.”

The girl eyes me warily. “What do you play?”

I look to Lisa;
some help here please?
But she’s trying to cover a smirk with her hand.

“Well, ah, what do you like to play, hide-and-go-seek?” I sound like a very bad and transparently phony imitation of Mr. Rogers.

The girl gives an exasperated sigh, like I’m hopeless. “I play bass guitar. See?”

She holds out her hand, and I can see her thumb has a large callous. “But Lisa’s teaching me to drum too. I’m pretty good at it.”

“I’d like to hear you sometime.” At this her face brightens considerably.

“Maybe later,” says Lisa. “
After
you’re done with your homework. And found your shoes.”

“Damn it,” the girl mutters.

“Amelia!” Lisa’s voice is sharp. “What did I tell you about swearwords?”

Amelia kicks at a clod of frozen dirt with her bare feet. “I can decide if I want to use those words when I’m older and have a record deal, but for artistic purposes only.”

“What
kind
of record deal?”

“With a major label,” grumbles Amelia.

“
Exactly
,” says Lisa. “Now go find your Life Savers and leave Dimitri alone for a few minutes. Think you can do that?”

“
Okay
,” says Amelia, mimicking Lisa in a pitch-perfect lilt.

“Interesting parenting style,” I whisper in Lisa’s ear. I can’t miss the fact that the girl bears a striking resemblance to Lisa; they share the same Roman nose and wide brown eyes.

“Interesting
auntie
style,” says Lisa.

“This is called getting to know you. I wasn’t judging.”

“Sure you weren’t,” says Lisa, heading up the porch steps. As if on cue, Buddy starts to growl at me menacingly, his yellow teeth bared. He looks like he’s blind in one rheumy eye, and patches of his mangy fur are missing, revealing pink skin beneath.

“C’mon,” says Lisa. “You’re not scared, are you?”

“Me?” My voice squeaks. “Scared?”

My heart does start to pound as I take the first step and Buddy continues to snarl, but I think to myself that the hospital wasn’t so bad, was it? Maybe they’d put me back on the VIP floor again while the neurosurgeon team attempts to reassemble what’s left of my face.

But as soon as I’m on the porch, Buddy turns into a doggy marshmallow, his stump of a tail starts to wag, and he sniffs my
crotch in a decidedly interested way. Dogs and kids—now I remember why I avoid them.

“See, he likes you,” says Lisa, barely containing a laugh.

As if to further make the point, Buddy heads around behind me and starts sniffing my ass.

“A lovely pet,” I say. “I feel violated.”

“Buddy!” Lisa whistles, and Buddy settles slowly onto the porch floor with a whine. “Good boy,” she adds, and his stumpy tail wags in response.

“You ready for the house tour?” She seems jittery, and I remember how revealed I felt when she was in my apartment, how I saw it through her eyes, all its flaws and imperfections.

“I was born ready,” I say.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.” She inhales deeply. “Okay.”

Together we step inside the small entry. The walls are paneled with fake dark oak, and the wall-to-wall carpet is a bright Astroturf green, like the house was built on the remains of a miniature golf course. Narrow stairs lead to the second floor, and the banister is clumsily painted white, as if it was primed but no one ever got to the painting part.

She leads me into a tight living room. There’s a large seventies-era TV that’s built into an armoire, an awful sagging red-plaid couch covered with an orange crocheted afghan, a La-Z-Boy upholstered with cracked black leather, and an oak-veneer coffee table, the kind that comes in a box from Kmart and you assemble with a hex key wrench. Above the TV hangs a tall painting: an owl sitting in a seed-shaped helicopter while a curl of wind blows beneath. I step closer and see that a tree in the background has a human face, and the leaves are actually tiny hands. It’s part Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, part surreal Salvador Dali, in a dark green wash that gives it an antique vibe.

“My mom paints,” says Lisa. “She has a studio in the barn out back.”

“Nice,” I say, and Lisa shrugs, as if everyone’s mother paints owls in helicopters.

The rest of the walls are covered with photos, the typical family brass-framed portraiture. I see Lisa through different stages of adolescence, including glasses and braces. Her hair was a different color when she was young, more of a mousy dirty blond than the deep auburn it is now. There are photos of a boy growing up as well, his hair the same mousy blond until his late teens, when he starts to sport a jet-black Mohawk. In one picture his eyes are heavily made up, and they stare directly at me, as if the photo is alive somehow. Possessed. I involuntarily shiver.

“Daniel,” says Lisa. “My brother.”

There are complicated emotional layers in the wistful and sad way she says “brother,” but something else as well—a trace of fear, a tangible anxiety. Her finger absently traces the thin line of her scar, which is just visible above her jacket collar.

Suddenly Amelia tears through the screen door; it swings shut behind her with a loud thwap. “I found them, I found them!” She’s already pulled at the top of the wrapping and is prying out an orange candy with her thumb.

“Who wants a Life Saver?”

“I do,” says Lisa quietly. She reaches out her hand, and Amelia drops one on her outstretched palm.