Zebra Forest (14 page)

B
y the end of July, when Andrew Snow had been with us almost three weeks, the first of the summer thunderstorms came rolling in. The windows darkened, and the sky turned yellow, the way it does when the last of the sun squeezes its way past the gathering clouds. I was looking at it out the front windows when the rain started. It hit the windows like a handful of pebbles.

“Summer storm,” I said to Andrew Snow, who’d been straightening Gran’s magazines. “We get a lot of those. Especially when it’s hot like this.”

Then I felt stupid, because I realized that he’d been right on the other side of the Zebra all along. He knew about our summer storms. He didn’t say so, though.

“Electricity builds up in the air,” he said instead. “It’s got to go somewhere.”

Rew came down then. He sat on the steps and stared out the front window. Rew and I loved storms, because Gran loved them. We looked at each other, but neither of us said anything.

It wasn’t dark yet when we heard Gran’s door open. I thought she was just going to the bathroom, then back to bed, but then Rew said, “Annie,” soft, like a warning.

I looked up and there was Gran, at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a robe and slippers, and her hair went every which way, but she smiled a little when she saw us, and started coming down.

Andrew Snow was in his place by the door, reading one of the books I’d given him. He looked up when Gran came down, but I blocked him, standing so Gran couldn’t see his face.

She smiled at me again, and her eyes weren’t dull, the way they’d been so often lately. She went on into the kitchen. I followed her.

Behind me, I heard Rew whisper to Andrew Snow.

“Don’t ask her questions,” he said. “Don’t bother her.”

Gran was moving toward the cupboard, looking for the mugs. Andrew Snow had moved everything, of course, in his cleanup. I wondered if Gran would notice.

“Can I make you some hot cocoa, Gran?” I asked her. “It’s raining.”

Gran nodded. “I would love that, Annie B.,” she said. It was one of the first things she’d said in weeks, and I grinned. But behind her, Andrew Snow came in.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

For a minute, I froze, wondering what Gran would do, if she would run back upstairs and go away from us again. But after a minute, she gave a little half smile and nodded. So I sat down next to her, at the table, and she took my hand.

It’s hard to know with Gran,
I thought.
Hard to know what makes her happy and what makes her sad.

Gran watched Andrew Snow make the hot cocoa, and I watched Gran. So did Rew, who had come just inside the kitchen. When the good smell of the cocoa filled the room, Andrew Snow set a cup down in front of Gran. Then, without asking, he set down three more.

I liked the look of those four cups. I sneaked a glance at Rew, in the doorway, but he just shook his head. He turned and went upstairs, and from the kitchen, I heard his door snap shut.

Neither Gran nor Andrew Snow seemed to notice. Andrew Snow cleared his throat and sat down.

Gran took a sip of her cocoa and smiled that faint smile. “It’s good, Andrew,” she said. She still held my hand.

“Thanks,” he answered. Then he reached over and touched her hand, the one that held mine, on the table. “And I want to say thank you too for keeping . . . for all this time, for Annie and Rew.”

Gran didn’t answer. She squeezed my hand, and didn’t let go to take his, and after a minute he pulled his hand back, and put it in his lap.

I shifted a little in my seat. “We don’t have to talk,” I said to Andrew Snow, hoping he’d take the hint. “Let Gran drink her cocoa.”

For a little while, we just sat there, listening to the clatter of rain on the windows and to the boom of the occasional thunderbolt. The windows would light up around us, and Gran would give my hand an extra squeeze. All the time, she watched Andrew Snow, but Andrew Snow didn’t look at anyone.

Finally, Gran said, “They’re both smart, Andrew. And good. Always good.”

I thought Gran might be getting ready to tell one of her excellent lies, but Andrew Snow looked up at her, quick, and I could see by the way he narrowed his eyes that he just couldn’t help himself. He was going to have his say.

“Couldn’t you have let me know?” he asked her. “I’m still alive back there, Mom. We didn’t both die.”

The color that had been starting to show in Gran’s face drained away. She turned from him and stared at the gray window, at the storm.

“No one’s coming this afternoon,” she said. “No one would go out in such a storm. That’s good.”

I didn’t have any idea what she meant, but Andrew Snow seemed to. And it made him angrier. He stood up.

“Is that what you think?” he asked her. “Is that what worries you? Why would they come? Why would they? How would they even know?”

Gran let go of my hand. She put her hand to her ear again.

“Don’t!” I said to Andrew Snow, my voice rising. “Don’t talk to her!”

He stopped then, but it took a lot for him to do it. I could see his jaw jut out on either side, he was holding his mouth so tight. And the grim look had come back to his face. With an effort, he sat back down.

It was too late. Gran stood up, so fast the chair fell back behind her. I couldn’t tell what her expression meant, whether she was frightened or sad. Before I could puzzle it out, she was at the landing, and then I heard her door swing shut upstairs.

Andrew Snow had not moved from his chair. I felt like Rew just then. I wanted to tell Andrew Snow how much I hated him. How much I wished he would just go away. Instead, I said something almost as mean.

“How come Gran never visited you?” I asked him, trying to make my voice as cold as Rew’s. “Can’t you get visitors in prison?”

I could tell I’d hurt him, because he looked down at his hands when I said it, as though his knuckles were the most interesting thing in the world. He tilted his head, in the way I’d seen Rew do so many times, when Adele Parks came and asked him questions he didn’t like answering, like whether he had many friends.

But he answered me anyway, and he didn’t sound angry, either.

“She came once,” he said, and I guess he saw that I didn’t believe him, because he added, “It was years ago, right at the start. She came with my dad. He was alive then. But it killed the two of them, coming there. Her especially. She just touched the glass and didn’t say a word. And then, after he died — she didn’t come anymore. I think maybe it was just too hard.”

If I’d thought hurting Andrew Snow would do me good, I was wrong. I could picture him too well, sitting there in that prison, with nothing to look at but the trees. But I knew Gran. And I knew she’d never go to a place like that. Not for anyone. Not even for her son.

E
veryone had gone silent. Gran, Rew, Andrew Snow. For a full day after Gran went back upstairs, Andrew Snow barely said a word, and Rew didn’t come down, either. But I was sick to death of silence, sick to death of slamming doors and people who ran and hid. So on day twenty-two, I decided I wasn’t going to be afraid of them anymore. Not Gran, not Rew, and not Andrew Snow.

That morning, my father made oatmeal with wheat germ sprinkled into it.

He spooned it out for me. When I didn’t reach for it, he said, “Eat. It’s good, really.”

I ignored that, both him and the oatmeal. Instead, I said, “Why are you so mad at Gran? What did she ever do to you?”

Andrew Snow looked at me in surprise. “I’m not mad at her,” he said. “I’m grateful she’s taken care of you all this time.”

I snorted, sounding like Rew. “You’re a liar,” I said. And I didn’t care if it hurt him. “Every time you talk to her, you end up yelling.”

Andrew Snow sighed. He turned from me, took a rag, and started on the kitchen window, where pink still lingered in the sky over the Zebra. I could smell the Windex on it, a sharp, chemical smell. I thought he meant to ignore me, but he didn’t. After a while, he said, “That’s true. I’m angry and grateful at the same time, I guess. I can’t decide which. Don’t you ever feel two ways about something?”

I almost laughed. I felt two ways about almost everything. But he didn’t mean for me to answer. He moved on with his rag, cleaning the stove.

“So?” I asked him. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Annie,” he said, turning round to look at me. “Haven’t you wondered why no one’s come for me? It’s been almost a month. No one’s come to find me.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that. “You said they’d look for the others first,” I said. “Isn’t that the reason?”

“For a while,” he said. “For a while. But I should have been gone by now. I’ve overstayed my time. By now, they’re hunting for anyone they haven’t found by going to their families, the people they know. Don’t you see that?”

I did.

“So why haven’t they come?” I asked him.

He sighed, in that way Rew does when I’m being slow.

“Because as far as anyone knows, I have no family. My family’s gone,” he said to me.

If Rew had been there, he would have understood. I felt dull, blank.

“But we’re here,” I said.

Andrew Snow sat down. It was as if all the air had gone out of him suddenly.

“For two months after I went to prison, my father came to visit me,” he said quietly. “Then one day, he didn’t wake up. Just died, in his sleep, there in the apartment. Your gran sent word to the prison, but I wasn’t allowed out for the funeral, and she didn’t come see me. And then, just a few months later, she sent a note.”

“A note? You mean like a letter?”

“No, just a note. Twenty words, no more. It said, ‘I can’t, Andrew. Forgive me. I have to be free of this place. And the children should be free too.’”

“Free? What did she mean?”

“She meant she was leaving. I didn’t believe it at first. Leaving me there, with no one. But she did it. She picked the two of you up and she disappeared. Totally.”

“How do you know? You couldn’t have come out anyway.”

“I sent my lawyer. He was a nice man, did his best for me. He went and talked to her friends, went looking. She’d done a good job of it. She didn’t want to be found. She closed every bank account they had, paid all her bills, left no forwarding address. Sold anything that could have led anyone to her. He looked for a long time, my lawyer. But he couldn’t find a trace of her. Not of any of you. The only one he did find was Amanda.”

I gave a little start. “Amanda? My mother?”

He nodded. “
She
wasn’t hiding, anyway. He found her and went to talk to her. He asked if she’d help him find you, so I’d have someone on the outside, someone just to write to, even. So I could know about my kids as they grew up.”

“What did she say?”

Andrew Snow ran his fingers through his hair, and it stood up, dark red. Then he closed his eyes and took a long breath.

“She said you weren’t her problem anymore, and neither was I. She called the prison and told the warden I had people harassing her. I spent a week in isolation for that.”

I felt sick. The smell of the Windex and the aroma of the oatmeal seemed to clog my throat. I pushed the bowl away, to the edge of the table. Andrew Snow opened his eyes.

“I shouldn’t have told you that,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. Some things, maybe, you shouldn’t know.”

But that only made me angry. I wanted to know things. I wanted to know everything. Even things about Amanda White.

“Why did she hate us?” I asked him. “Were we so bad, then?”

Andrew Snow blinked. He shook his head. “You weren’t bad,” he said softly. “You were babies. Just babies. It wasn’t you. It was her. Something was broken in her. I see it now. After she had you, she got a little hard, somehow. She went rushing around after good times — that’s what she always called them. She was always looking for something to do — night and day. Most of the time, she left you with your gran, and after a while, you even stopped crying for her when she did. There was something missing in her, I guess. I don’t know what it was, what made it. But she could laugh — she could always laugh. And yet I never did see her cry. Not once.”

I thought about that. About a mother named Amanda who was broken. And I thought about Gran.

“Is Gran broken, too?” I asked him.

He put his chin in his hand then, thinking. But finally, he said, “Gran left everything she knew behind. After what happened with me, she couldn’t even look her friends in the face anymore. Shame does that to a person.”

He stopped then and looked down at the table, smoothing the grain of the wood there with his hand.

“I did that to her, I guess. That was my fault.”

Then he looked up again, and straight at me. His eyes were bright. “Shame can change a person, sometimes,” he said. “It changed her. But I don’t believe it broke her, Annie. No. She’s hurt, but she’s not broken. Not like Amanda was. Gran left me, maybe because she couldn’t help me anymore. But she took you with her. Didn’t she?”