Relativity (2 page)

I slam the Jeep door a little too hard. The house looms over me.
Three stories of peeling paint, shutters that hang by rusted screws. Dense ivy strangles the porch columns. The front door is swollen with rot and age.

“Let me get that.” Dad gives the door a hard shove and it opens.

Inside, it’s quiet. Dad makes a beeline for his laptop, which is perched on the coffee table in the living room. Above the couch is one of Willow’s enormous oil paintings, gray with streaks of black and navy. It looks like a threatening rain cloud. I’m half tempted to get Dad an umbrella, but I suppose that would support his theory that I’m acting like a child.

“Where is everyone?”

“Kandy’s off somewhere getting her nails done,” Dad says. “Willow’s in her studio.”

“Looks like you’re busy too,” I say, motioning to the piles of paperwork.

He nods. “The label for the spinach-artichoke sauce is killing me.”

“A delicious source of iron?” I try. “A heart-healthy pasta topping?”

Dad wrinkles his nose. “That’s all been done before. I’m trying to create a story, something fresh.” He deepens his voice. “In the year 1864, an Italian farmer planted his first tomato plant.”

“When was the last time you slept? That’s a question for you, not a suggestion for the sauce label.”

“I tried last night.” He winks at me and starts shuffling through a stack of file folders.

“You should get some fresh air. Go for a walk or something.”

Dad gazes at the computer screen. “Hmm.”

“I’m going to unpack some more,” I tell Dad, though I know he’s
just tuned me out. Click. Off. He’s in spinach-artichoke land, in Italy, in the year 1864. So I head upstairs to my room. At some point—maybe—it won’t feel horrible to call it my room. Right now it’s just walls, ceiling, and floor, in the wrong city, in the wrong state.

There are stacks of boxes labeled
RUBY’S
. I use a pair of scissors to slice through the tape on a smaller box. It’s crammed with DVDs and my old iPod. Plastic hangers go in the closet, and a lace-collared dress I should’ve never packed goes in the trash.

Under my suitcase, I find
Physics of the Impossible
, so I put it on the bookshelf, next to Kaku’s other books. Then I sort through a stack of laundry on my bed, and an unfamiliar hoodie surfaces. I hold it up to examine it, and a plastic drugstore bag—full of lipstick and eye shadow—spills onto the tangled sheets of my unmade bed. It must be Kandy’s.

I sift through the goo tubes. Several are red, and I have to laugh. I’m sure Kandy has no idea they make the red coloring from pulverized beetle shells. Yeah, you’re wearing a scale insect in the suborder Sternorrhyncha on your lips.

I walk across the hall to Kandy’s room and flinch at the sign on the door:
GET LOST, GO AWAY, DIE
. It wasn’t there yesterday, so I can only assume it’s for me. Gosh, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I listen for a moment, trying to hear footsteps or voices coming from downstairs. Silence. No sign that Kandy’s home yet, so I open the door.

In contrast to the rest of the house, her room is bright with color. Three walls are red, the fourth silver. The red walls are covered with clippings from magazines. Mostly celebrity red-carpet photos. On the
silver wall is a framed Wassily Kandinsky print. That’s who Kandy’s named after, which is just plain wacky. I mean, the guy was a Russian painter, no relation. He just happened to be the subject of Willow’s MFA thesis when she got pregnant.

I toss the hoodie and the bag of makeup on Kandy’s bed, then go to the window to look at an astounding oak tree that’s on the property behind us, about a half mile away. Kandy’s got a better view than I do, the best in the house. I’m guessing the tree’s eighty feet tall, maybe more. It’s crooked and magnificent, surrounded by acres of cornfields. I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in jaw-droppers conjured up by Mother Nature. The Northern Lights, for one. Brachiosaurus standing forty feet tall, volcanoes spewing 2000-degree lava, the Milky Way containing 100 billion planets. All of it seems otherworldly, the stuff of pure imagination.

There’s something about this ancient oak tree that’s startling in that same otherworldly way. I find myself stopping at any window that allows even a glimpse of it. It’s got this presence, a vibe. It almost seems like it’s watching me back. For a long time—maybe longer than I realize—I’m glued to Kandy’s window. Mesmerized.

I shudder, shake off the feeling.

Get a grip, Ruby. It’s just a tree. Go finish unpacking.

I head across the hallway back into my room just as Kandy reaches the top of the stairs. I smile. She glowers.

“How was the manicure?” I ask, trying to sound light and casual. My heart is pounding. If she’d come upstairs thirty seconds sooner, she’d have caught me. …

“Were you in my room?”

“Um, yeah?” I say. She narrows her eyes, so I hurry to explain. “I found some of your makeup, and I put it on your bed.”

She looks startled. “You found makeup?”

“It was mixed up in some laundry—”

“Whatever.” She points to the sign on her door. “You can read, right?”

“Sorry,” I say, taking a step back. She’s a little too close; I can smell her mint gum.

She puts her hands on her hips and sizes me up. “You should’ve kept the bag for yourself. You need, like, a total makeover,” she says with a look of sheer repulsion. “That shade of denim? It is so bad. And those shoes.”

I look down at my frayed jeans and olive sneakers. “Thanks for the tip.” I sidestep around her and head downstairs.

Yep, we’ll be best friends in no time.

Dad’s laptop is still on the coffee table, but he’s nowhere around. I find Willow in her studio, perched on a stool, paintbrush in hand. She’s working on a painting of bare winter trees. Gray branches set against a gray sky with a gray barn in the background. Super-cheerful.

“Have you seen my dad?”

“He ran to the grocery store to get some frozen pizzas and a rotisserie chicken for dinner.” She turns to look at me, black paint in her curly blond hair. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I say.

“Really?”

I half nod. Hardly convincing. At least she cares enough to ask.

“Is there something you need or can’t find?” She puts her paintbrush down, ready to help. So far Willow seems like a decent human being. Then again, I have to wonder what she’s really like, underneath, because there has to be a reason Kandy’s the way she is. Genetics. Her upbringing.

Willow searches my face. “If you give me a list of your favorite food, I’ll make sure I stock up the next time I shop. Doritos? Cheetos?”

I sigh. “I’m not much of a junk-food person.”

Her eyes ask,
Then what’s wrong?

I can’t exactly say that her dilapidated house is depressing, that Ennis will never compare to Walnut Creek, that I miss George, that her daughter is sharpening her freshly painted talons so I’m afraid to go back upstairs. I can’t tell her that since she’s become my stepmother, I’ve suddenly been missing my real mom. That I’m wondering how different my life would be at this very moment if Mom had survived that car crash eleven years ago, when I was four. She got hit hard, but her dependable Volvo weathered the impact. She had her seat belt on. It wasn’t an airbag malfunction or anything else that might make sense. No. It was an airborne windshield wiper—propelled with arrow accuracy and speed—that skewered her esophagus.

If it hadn’t been for that windshield wiper, I wouldn’t have a stepmother or stepsister. We wouldn’t have moved to Ohio. I wouldn’t be standing in this room right now. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. One event triggers another, one path stems to another, and eventually you end up standing in the middle of Somewhere Unrecognizable
without a compass or map. You get there one increment at a time, with movements so subtle that you don’t even notice until it’s too late to find your way back.

“That bookstore in the shopping strip,” I say, trying to distract myself before I get emotional in front of Willow. “Could I borrow someone’s bike and go? I saw a magazine there yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, Ruby.” Willow sighs, sincere in her disappointment. “We only have one bike, and it’s in bad shape. I’ll drive you tomorrow, okay?”

I nod. “I’ll just go for a walk, then.” I turn to leave the studio but notice a canvas propped against the wall. A chill runs through me. “That’s the oak tree that’s off in the cornfields.”

Willow follows my gaze. She looks at the painting with a weary smile. “You’ve noticed it too?”

“It’s hard not to.”

“I know what you mean. After we first moved into this house, I couldn’t stop painting it. The second Kandy left for school, I’d go upstairs and sit at her window and work. I must have twenty oils and watercolors, and a notebook full of sketches.”

“There’s something about it. Definitely.” True to Willow’s style, the painting is dark. The oak tree looms, its branches reaching out with sinister, clawlike leaves. “You made it look pretty menacing.”

“Well, that’s because of the legend.” She leans forward to tell me. “Apparently someone tried to hack it down with an ax sometime in the late 1800s, and he was said to have burst into flames.”

“He caught fire?”

“So the story goes.”

I cock my head and consider the lightning-lit clouds that Willow painted behind the oak. “You know, human bodies contain electrical fields, as well as flammable gases. Put the two together, and you’ve got flames.”

“You’re talking about spontaneous combustion?”

“Yeah, but there’s never been any scientific proof it actually happens.” I wave my hand to dismiss the idea. “Usually it’s just a dropped cigarette.”

“There’s more to the story,” Willow says. “About fifty years ago, a couple of professional loggers tried to cut it down with industrial chain saws. They were both electrocuted.”

“Dead?”

Willow shrugs. “Who knows. But after I found that out, I stopped using it as a subject. I felt like I was painting a serial killer. I like my palette dark these days, but not that dark.”

“Did you ever look it all up?” I ask. “They sound like campfire stories someone made up to scare kids.”

“No, I never did any research to find out if it was fact or fiction,” Willow admits. “I walked all the way to it one day, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. For all I know, the tree just marks a property line, and it probably provided good shade for cattle at one time. But just the idea of those crazy stories was enough to turn me off.” She points her brush at the canvas in front of her. “I found other trees to paint.”

“Innocent trees without blood on their branches.”

“Do me a favor and don’t tell Kandy.” Willow winks at me. “About me painting in her room? She’s doesn’t like me setting foot in there.
She calls it ‘trespassing,’ and that if I’m not careful, I’ll be ‘cited and fined.’”

She laughs, but I’m not so sure it’s funny. What would a “fine” from Kandy consist of? If she actually caught me in her room, would she expect me to do her math homework for a month? Clean her hairbrushes? Organize her purses by color? Of course not. It would be by brand, then color.

“Gotcha,” I say, pretending to lock my lips with a key. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Enjoy your walk. We’ll eat around six,” Willow says, dipping her brush in water.

“Sounds good.”

I grab a soda from the fridge and venture into the backyard. A few hundred feet from the house, the grass ends and the cornfields begin. The stalks are dense, in tight rows, but there’s one wider alley at the corner of the yard, like they skipped half a row. A mistake when they planted.

I can see into the field far enough. It looks like a navigable path, and it’s aimed in the right direction, so I decide to walk to the oak tree. I’ve been wanting to get a closer look, and after hearing Willow’s stories, I’m more curious than ever. Besides, let’s face it: there’s nothing better to do.

Five minutes into my trek, reality check. This is not easy. Leaves lash my face, dust and dirt invade my sinuses. I’m sweating. And sneezing. My entire body itches. A humongous insect orbits my head, and I spin around, swatting and ducking.

“Get away!” It dodges the palm of my hand and slowly drifts off, unimpressed.

I’m left wondering: Was I going this way, or that way, or …? There are no landmarks in a cornfield.

“Crap.” I walk a little more, then stop to gulp the last of my soda, wishing I’d chosen water instead. Sucrose and caramel color aren’t exactly quenching my thirst.

Relax, Ruby. You’ve only been walking five minutes. How lost can you be?

Okay, maybe it’s been ten minutes, though as far as I can tell, I’ve stayed within the confines of a single row, which means I’m walking in a straight line. I jump, stretching my neck, trying to glimpse the third floor of Willow’s house. No use. The corn is eight feet tall. Add the tassels on top, maybe it’s ten. And I suck at jumping.

Ridiculous? Yes, indeed.

I can navigate BART all over San Francisco, to and from the East Bay, south to the airport, and anywhere in between. The maps are easy to read; the lines are color-coded. I never feel intimidated. I’m never lost. But then again, I’m never alone. I’m either with Dad or George.

George. I picture him at the café, in our usual spot, on the leather couch. I should be next to him, scooping whipped cream off the top of my shake, then his. I should not be dripping with sweat in the middle of a cornfield. Last week should not have been the end. It shouldn’t have been our last time together, our good-bye.

“Your going-away present,” he’d said, handing me a wrapped gift.

“Thanks!” I’d taken the opportunity to move closer. Our thighs were touching; we were shoulder to shoulder. I could smell his skin, a hint of the sandalwood soap his mother stocks the bathrooms with. “Let’s see,” I said, though it was obvious it was a book. A big one.

“Try not to squeal with excitement.”

I snorted with sarcasm. “I wouldn’t know how to squeal, even if I wanted to.”

“You’d squeal if your dad told you he’d changed his mind, and you weren’t moving.”

“I might attempt a cartwheel,” I admitted. “Which would be ugly.”