The Bargaining (12 page)

April turns her attention back to Roberta. “Our total, please. And three of these charming wooden baskets,” she says, holding one up and smiling the world's fakest smile.

Roberta looks once more at the guy—George—behind us before roughly swiping the rest of our groceries and dumping them straight back into the wooden baskets we brought them up in.

“You can find your way out, I'm sure,” Roberta says to April after we pay. “And I trust you can find your way to another grocery store in the future.”

“Well, that's an awful lot of trust to place in a stranger,” April says, then turns to the rest of the line, finding George first and then every set of eyes after his. “I'm taking it that's
not something you folks like to do. Trust strangers. If you all change your mind, I'll be more than happy to invite you into our home. We'll be here for most of the summer, and you're welcome to come by if you'd like.”

“April, what the hell?” I whisper, not nearly as forgiving as she is at least pretending to be.

“Language,” she says through gritted teeth, and I know I'm smearing up some sort of illusion she's trying to create.

“I think you've made your point,” says Roberta. “Now if that's all, the door's behind you.”

April turns toward the exit and pushes her way out, but I stay for a minute longer. I'm not looking at Roberta, who has now busied herself with the business of ringing. I'm looking at the man in the tan jacket. George.

And I'm only looking at him because he won't stop looking at me. I can't tell if he wants to hug me or throw me out the window. His face is red splotched, broken blood vessels dancing across his bulbous nose and puffed cheeks. He's entirely bald on the top, the ring around the back of his head overgrown and gray. A matching mustache adorns his upper lip, pushing his mouth down on his face.

I wait until he turns back to Roberta, who is desperately trying to engage him in conversation, before I join April out
side. She's struggling to push the groceries into the back of her jeep.

“There you are. I was going to send SWAT in there if you didn't come out in five more seconds,” she says, winded at her effort.

“Sorry,” I say, and I can't tell what I'm apologizing for, but April answers like she knows.

“I'm not,” she says. “I'm thrilled. If these people are a ­little afraid of a ghost story, that's just better for business, which means that's better for resale. If they want to come and check it out, all the better.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, but she waves me off.

“You know. Old towns, old houses. People are so superstitious. Even the Realtor told me some nutty story about the Carvers just sort of disappearing. I mean, come on. Everyone disappeared back then. It's not like the mid-nineteenth century is known for its immaculate record-keeping.”

But I'm not satisfied by her answer, and I think she knows it because she says, “Look, the scariest part of this house is the roof. I'm having a hell of a time lining up meetings with anyone in this town. If I keep making scenes at coffee shops and grocery stores, I'm never going to get it fixed up by the end of July.”

At least that much I understand, and for maybe the first
time ever, April sounds rational about the house. Maybe not totally competent, but rational at least.

But as we drive off, I'm still pushing away the memory of George and his sagging face. I have enough faces haunting me these days. I hardly need to add one more to the roster.

9

Dear Rae,

It feels like I'm cheating on you.

You'd make fun of me if I ever said anything like that to your face. “This is why people think we're going out,” you'd say.

But I know you'd know exactly what I mean, and you'd agree. Because if you knew all the stuff I'd been doing without you lately, you'd be pissed, and you'd say something awful like I'm totally selfish or that I'm afraid to share anything good with you because I'm incapable of being a real friend. Like that time I went to see 20 Minute Loop
play in Tempe, and I went alone because I didn't feel like listening to you trash all the other underage kids who snuck in just like we would have done but who for some reason don't get to share the same sort of cool you think you possess over all of them. And I had such an awesome time and forgot you weren't there, and I was talking about it in front of you later and you called me a poser and stopped talking to me for a week.

I think the thing you'd be most upset about is the photography classes. It's not like I think I'm some sort of incredible artist or anything. I've only been going for a few weeks, but I already know that this is what I'm going to do forever. We get to borrow these fancy cameras for two days and basically do whatever we want. We can make the pictures say all these incredible things, with just one image, just one click. I get to say everything I want to say without writing a word. I could stop speaking for the rest of my life.

And I don't want you to know anything about it. I don't want to share how this feels with you. I think that means something huge. Only now, instead of trying to write what I think it means in a letter I'll never give you, I'm looking everywhere for an image that captures it. I'm seeing words
in shapes and colors and light. And I'm seeing you so differently.

I heard Melissa Corey is transferring to Truman. I heard she has to take a little white pill every night just to go to sleep.

Penny

I don't know if Rae read the letters in order. It wouldn't have mattered to her, I know that, but I wonder anyway. If she had read them in order, I consider how that might have blunted the blow. And like always, I wonder if I really care.

I look to Linda, waiting patiently for me to see her next to my notepad. I run my finger over the dust that's already begun to accumulate on top of her even though it's only been a few days since I used her last. Her lens cap covers her Cyclops eye.

“Show me something new,” I tell her. “Something other than this.”

My phone buzzes on the bed beside me.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Jesus, where are you, the bottom of a well?”

This is the first thing she has to say to me. A criticism of the cell reception.

“I'm doing great, Mom. Thanks.”

I stand and begin to pace the room, my usual exercise for this category of phone calls. I push aside the instant regret I feel these days whenever I pick up her call.

“Oh, here it comes. Penny's pity party. Everyone's invited,” she says. Teasing never really sounds good on her.

“The cell reception is spotty here. Actually, so is the Internet. We don't have cable or anything. It's kind of remote,” I say, finding the blandest tone in my repertoire. Anything that doesn't sound self-pitying.

“That explains why you haven't responded to my e-mails,” she says, and I suddenly remember her last argument with Dad.
There she is, Passive Aggressive Natalie.

“I'd ask if this is a bad time for you, but you're the one who called me, so . . .” I try to get her back to a neutral topic.

“I'm at that place with the weird chicken tikka masala.”

Which explains the Bollywood soundtrack in the background.

“The place where we went last Christmas?” I ask. I know where this is going, but I'm not in a hurry to indulge it.

“Do you remember that hysterical couple who sat next to us? The ones who kept offering to share their food?” she asks. She's really going to make me be the one to say it first, even though I've earned hearing it from her. She'll never be the first one to tell me that she misses me. That maybe
she was a little hasty in sending me away like she did.

Today I just don't feel like letting her off the hook.

“You're lonely,” I say, more of an accusation.

“There, you got your shot in. Feel better?” she asks, her tone dimpling under offense she has no right feeling. She wasn't the one who was thrown away. She wasn't the one who was expendable.

So indeed I do feel a little better.

“How's the house?” Mom asks, trying something new.

“It's a dump,” I say. “April calls it charming.” And immediately, I regret saying it.

Mom snorts. “Well, she has a thing for older projects.”

She can find the smallest opening to zing my dad. She must feel like she scores a bonus point when she can trash his second wife, too.

“It's just hard to meet people while school's out,” I say, diverting the topic. I have no desire to meet anyone, really. This is the kind of conversation I fall into when I talk to my mom: someone else's. It's like I temporarily occupy some other kid's body and say what I think disgruntled teenage girls say to the mothers who don't understand them.

“A fresh start is what you need,” Mom says, playing her own role in the fake conversation. “Some solitude will do you good.”

An image of Rae's face glowing under the moon from the other night invades my memory. Mom doesn't want to know who I'm keeping company with, not that she ever really wanted to be bothered with that.

“Well, mission accomplished,” I say. “I'm officially a shut-in.”

“Would you like some balloons?”

“What?”

“For your pity party. You might need some balloons,” she says.

I suddenly feel tired. I lean against the wall of the ­middle room and slide down, puffing dust around me as I land.

“You're right, Mom.” I give up. It's just easier to get this part over with.

“I find it impossible to believe I raised a daughter who could be this much of a victim. You have no idea how hard it is for me to hear you beating yourself up like this.”

There's so much I don't understand about her logic, how this has become about
her
.

“I'm sure it's very hard on you,” I say.

“I know what that tone means, and I don't care,” she says, then away from the phone, “Can I get the check please?” before returning to me. “I didn't do everything right with
you. I think that much is obvious. But I did not raise a victim. That's for girls with weak mothers.”

“This has been great, Mom. Really. But I have to go.”

“Wear a rain jacket,” she says. “June doesn't mean it's summer yet.” Then she hangs up.

I throw my phone across the room, and it lands with a muted thud on the floor.

I can hear April struggling to move something downstairs. Maybe that behemoth of an antique sofa. I hear it scrape against the wood floors below, then she grunts, sighs, tries again. More scraping.

I know I should go down there and offer to help her. I can't offer anything to her without it coming out reluctant at best, downright hateful at worst. And that's the strangest part. When I hold my brain still for a moment, when I demand that it give me one reason for despising her, it can only conjure the most trivial proof. I wish I could say the same about my own parents.

I'm so caught up in thoughts of Mom and Dad and April that I almost don't notice the humming.

Only after it stops do I feel something missing. So when it starts up again—down the hall somewhere—I'm immediately aware of its presence.

The melody is one I can't quite place, but that isn't what's
so jarring. It's the high, resonant sound of the voice that bothers me. Because I know it isn't April's voice. It clearly belongs to a little kid.

I follow the sound, first into the hallway, then to the pink room in the corner, the dirtier twin with the spider occupying the closet. The singing is growing louder, and not just because I'm getting closer. The little voice is pushing on the melody, insisting it be heard.

But as I approach the doorway and the room comes into view, the singing suddenly stops, and all I find are the same dirt smears on the floor that haven't been wiped away yet.

No, that's not entirely true. There's something new on the floor, something that wasn't there earlier. A pony. The same turquoise pony I rescued from the adjacent room our first day here. The one I'm positive I left in what I'm now calling my room, even though it feels like anyone's but mine. And now the abandoned pony is once again adrift among old furniture, lying in the middle of the floor, a tiny yellow brush with a broken handle tangled in its matted hair.

“Who's there?”

It's such a stupid question. I know there's no one here. I can see the entire room. Even the door to the closet stands open, but the memory of that insistent singing is still bouncing between my ears. And something about that pony is
unnerving me. I retrace the memory of sliding my fingers over the synthetic hair. There was no yellow brush the last time I held it.

I weave quickly through all the rooms. Nothing else is any more out of place than it was before. I double back to the pink room, then cross the hall to the room with the mural on the wall. The boy's green eyes still stare above the shredded wallpaper at something I can't locate. April's stripped away the rest of the wallpaper, and now I see all of the boy, with his crisp white T-shirt and loose jeans.

“Hey, if someone's in here, it's called trespassing.”

I talk a very big game. I'm not sure what I'd do if some little kid came out, hands in the air, ready to surrender.

I scan the room's cluttered corners from the doorway. I trace the piles of furniture for any sign of additional disturbance but find nothing.

I return to the boy on the wall, his face fixed in contemplation; whatever the painter of the mural was thinking at the time, perhaps. But something about his eyes seems different now. Before, they had a dreamy quality to them. Maybe it was in the way the brow was painted, with a tiny crease above. That childlike wonder so many artists like to capture, even if it was a little out of place on a kid who looks like he's only a few years younger than me. But maybe I was
just imagining that look because I don't see it now. ­Instead, I see a smooth surface, a definitive stare. A gaze of purpose.