The Space Between Trees (8 page)

The next day at school, when I see Hadley in the hall, she doesn’t turn and dart away like usual, but instead checks her path to head right at me. Now I’m the one who wants to get lost in the crowd, and I look for some shoulders or backpacks to hide behind. But it’s too late. She’s right on me with her cig breath, stink eye, and the slice taken out of her chin. Her skin has gone all white along the road of that scar, like it’s bone, like it’s ghost.

She doesn’t say hello, just sort of shrugs her shoulders instead. She yanks her ponytail around to one side and begins to rake her fingers through it, over and over. It reminds me of a movie I saw where this guy—this evil villain guy—sharpens a knife on a leather strap while he’s talking to people, and he’s so cool, he doesn’t even have to look at it. In the scene, the knife’s going on the strap, and the person the villain’s talking to is staring at it (because wouldn’t you?) and it’s making this
whisk whisk
sound, which is almost the sound Hadley’s fingers make going through her hair.

“You’re going to dinner tonight?” she says.

“At the McCabes’? Yeah.”

“Not McCabe
s
.” She frowns. “Just Mr. McCabe. They’re divorced.”

“I know,” I say, though obviously I hadn’t.

She screws up her mouth and gives her hair another tug. “So you’re coming, then?”

“Well, yeah. He invited me, so I thought—”

“Right.” She furrows her brow, like she’s very worried about something, and then, swift and graceful, turns her head and blows a wad of spit onto the ground. I’ve never seen anyone spit like that, right out onto the floor. I stare at the glob of it, pearly, shimmering, until someone treads through it.

“Sorry. That was gross.” She smiles for a second, brilliantly, but then it’s gone like a camera flash.

“We met at the funeral.” I speak these words in almost a whisper. “Mr. McCabe and me.”

She shrugs again like she doesn’t care and tosses her hair back over her shoulder, finished with it and me.

That night, I tell Mom that I’m meeting some friends at a school basketball game. She’s so excited about it that her cheeks get pink without even any blush to help them along. She asks for the friends’ names, so I choose three of the Whisperers’ names at random. She repeats each of them like they’re foreign words she must remember.

“Are you going to wear colors?” she asks. “Colors?” I look down at my green sweater and think,
Green isn’t a color?

“Your school colors—Chippewa Braves. Let’s see, you’re gold and crimson, right?”

“No. We don’t really do that.” Though I honestly have no idea whether people do that or not. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems like the exact sort of thing that people at my school would do.

“We used to paint our faces”—she grazes her cheeks with her fingertips—“before games. You’re going to have so much fun. You can stay out late,” she says, pleased. “I won’t even look at the clock.”

I ride my bike to Mr. McCabe’s condominium, my nose and fingertips freezing in the wind, my scarf flying out behind me. The condominium parks popped up a few years after the big neighborhoods, one across the street from each. Mr. McCabe’s condo park is across from Hokepe Woods, where Mrs. McCabe still lives in the pretty house I walked to after school years ago. She must have been at the funeral. Not with Mr. McCabe, though, now that they are divorced. Maybe with a new husband? I hadn’t seen her there. Of course, I’d missed the entire thing. I ride on the other side of the street from Hokepe Woods like it’s cursed. I can’t see much of it from the road—just a few peaked roofs and the stone sign.

I was back on my paper route last Sunday; I even went back to the place where they had brought out Zabet’s body, out in front of that ancient woman’s modern house. I had deliveries, after all. Turns out that even after a dead girl is carried across their lawns, people still read the newspaper. As I approached the house, I caught myself looking at my feet, at where I was going to step, like I might accidentally trample some undiscovered clue or tromp through an errant puddle of blood. Of course there was nothing like that. The neighborhood was just the neighborhood, tidy as ever.

Jonah wasn’t there on Sunday. I saw his boss, Mr. Jefferson of Jeffer son Wildlife Control, struggling with a trussed deer. The spring rains had begun this week, and the sled’s runner was caught in a tire
rut made from last night’s mud. Mr. Jefferson’s stomach was astounding, folded over his belt like a sack of loot. I went over and helped him right the sled, my satchel knocking into the deer’s flank with a dull sound. The deer’s eyes were lined in black with tiny white feathers of fur in their corners.

“Beyond the call of duty, sweetheart,” Mr. Jefferson said when we were done, sticking his hands on his hips and puffing a bit.

“No problem. How’s Jonah?”

“Oh, ho!” He pressed at his side. “I assume she’s altruistic—that she’s here to help. Now I see her true motives. She’s in love with the boy!”

“We just talk,” I said, hating this man, hating the whole expanse of his stomach. “Just sometimes.”

“Sure, sure, honey. Sure. Jonah’s on a little sabbatical, a little restup-and-feel-better.”

“Is he okay?”

He made a great big gesture in the air like he was presenting something, a trophy maybe. “He’s fine. Strong, young boy.” He winked. “I’ll tell him his girlfriend misses him.”

Before I could help myself I said, “Tell him his girlfriend’s pregnant.”

Mr. Jefferson’s face turned pink and his belly rippled with a fit of coughs. I only said it to punish him for what he said, but then I worried that he might flop into a faint over the dead deer, and I’d have to pull them both out to the truck. Finally his coughs slowed down, and he wiped his hands over his face and mouth. Somewhere between coughs he’d figured out that I was only joking. He offered another “Oh, ho, ho!”

“Well, I gotta deliver these,” I told him and left him there, panting for breath over the dead deer.

I turn my bike into Mr. McCabe’s condo park and weave through. They’ve got the condos blocked out in groups of three or four, which repeat over and over like the background in old cartoons. Their porches are empty except for a plain doormat in the center of each, like a postage stamp stuck to an envelope. I aim my bike between two shiny cars. Almost all the cars are nice here, since it’s mostly divorced dads in these condo parks; they get to keep the good car but not the house.

I imagine dads in condo after condo, just home from work in their rumpled suits. One wields a martini shaker; the next, a billiards cue; and the third, a high-class skin magazine. I picture Mr. McCabe cooking, an artichoke cupped in his hand. The artichoke is small, delicate, a mossy green; its leaves are wrapped tight over its middle like it’s protecting something there. I wonder where my dad lives, if it’s in a place like this.

I park my bike and walk up to the door. The porch light is on, even though it’s not dark yet. I straighten my coat and scarf and the sweater underneath and think that maybe I should have worn a dress. I knock on the door. After a long moment, Hadley answers it, in a dress.

“Hey,” I say.

She steps back, and I step in. She hunches against the wall and grimaces like I’ve just said something horrible.

“He’s in there.”

“Oh,” I say. She tips her head back against the wall like she’s going to tack herself up next in the line of watercolor seascapes hanging at measured intervals.

“Evie!” Mr. McCabe steps into the hallway, working a dish towel between his hands. He looks different from the way he did at the funeral, or maybe I’m just not remembering him right. His eyes are bright, almost glassy. Before I can say hello or “thanks for having me,” he’s closed me up in a hug. His shirt is rough on my cheek, and he smells like a lot of garlic. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I end up patting him on the back until he pulls away to reveal Hadley still leaning on the wall, disgruntled and ponytailed and heaving with unaired sighs.

“Do you like pasta?” Mr. McCabe looks at me expectantly, and when I nod, he nods back so that both of us are nodding at once like we’ve agreed on something, and I guess what we’ve agreed on is that I do like pasta. “I made spaghetti, and this sauce is
not
from a jar.” He wheels around and uses his dish towel to wave us on after him.

Hadley doesn’t move, so I go in first. For a second, I think she might stay there, leaning and frowning, but then I hear her push off of the wall and follow me. The kitchen is small, and the appliances are three-quarter size and squeezed in. There’s a little bar jutting out of the wall, and Mr. McCabe leads me to it, setting his hand just behind my shoulder and sweeping me along. There are bar stools tucked under it, so I pull one out, drape my coat and scarf over it, and then sit on it. Hadley is swept into the seat next to mine. She sits astride it like a horse, her dress falling over her knees. Her dress is splashed with yellow flowers. It has the faded fabric and mothball smell of a thrift store, but it’s pretty, like one of the dresses my
mom has on in pictures from when she was my age. It’s strange to see her dressed up.

“I like your dress,” I tell her.

She doesn’t look at me.

Mr. McCabe leans over a tall pot on the stove. He peers into it, stirs, tastes whatever’s in there. Then he’s up watching us again. All of his gestures are quick, his words, too, like a timer’s been set somewhere, ticking down to zero, and he’s racing to beat it.

“Ten more minutes. At first, I thought that I’d make lasagna. You girls remember how Elizabeth loved lasagna.”

He looks at us, and I look over at Hadley for help, but she leans on the counter, her jaw set.

“Yes,” I say. “That’s right.” Though, truth be told, I don’t. I don’t know Zabet’s favorite foods; I don’t know her middle name; I don’t know anything but what little snatches I’ve gotten from the hallway gossip at school and the afternoons I spent with her years ago. I can’t even remember what foods Zabet liked then. Sandwiches, I think. We ate a lot of ham sandwiches and nachos made with strips of American cheese laid over tortilla chips.

Mr. McCabe is still talking. “I’d say that was her favorite food—lasagna was—and I thought that if she liked it, then probably you girls would like it, too. But then I thought maybe I shouldn’t make it because she liked it so much. So I thought spaghetti. Everyone likes spaghetti. And you do? You like spaghetti?”

Hadley stares at nothing.

“Sure,” I say again. “Spaghetti’s great.”

It’s like this for the next half hour. Mr. McCabe talks about Zabet, dogging each sentence with the question “Do you remember
that?” I keep nodding and saying “that’s right” and “yeah, exactly,” even though I don’t remember any of it—how could I? Hadley sinks lower and lower, until one of her cheeks is actually resting on the counter. Mr. McCabe doesn’t seem to notice her disgruntlement; he’s flying around the kitchen, lining up spice jars, pouring us ginger ale, and tearing apart a head of lettuce.

“Are you okay?” I whisper to her while he’s bent over the cooking pot.

“Fine,” she says.

She’s so listless and huffy that I’m almost surprised when she rouses herself to join us at the table for dinner. I tell myself that her mood has nothing to do with me. But as a test, I ask her to pass me the bread. She does, but when she swings the basket over to my side of the table, she lets it go before I’ve got my hands on it. It drops, careening off the edge of the table. Somehow I catch it before it hits the floor.