for a long, terrible moment, he stands paralyzed by possibilities. And then he ducks under the boards, negotiating his crutch, awkwardly, through the gap, and into the House.
Kirby
9 September 1980
It’s that kind of day, crisp and clear, on the cusp of fall. The trees have mixed feelings about it; leaves showing green and yellow and brown all at the same time. Kirby can tell Rachel is stoned from a block away. Not just by the sweet smell hanging over the house (dead giveaway), but by the agitated way she is pacing the yard, fussing over something laid out in the overgrown grass. Tokyo is leaping and barking around her in excitement. She isn’t supposed to be home. She’s supposed to be away on one of her sojourns or ‘so-johns’ as Kirby used to call it when she was little. Okay, a year ago.
For weeks, she wondered if this So-John guy was her dad, and if Rachel was working up to take her to meet him, when Grace Tucker at school told her that a john was a word for a man who uses a prostitute, and that’s all her mother was. She didn’t know what a prostitute was, but she gave Gracie a blood-nose, and Gracie pulled out a clump of her hair.
Rachel thought it was hysterical, even though Kirby’s scalp was red and sore where the hair was gone. She didn’t mean to laugh, really, ‘but it is very funny.’ Then she’d explained it to Kirby the way she did everything, in a way that didn’t explain anything at all. ‘A prostitute is a woman who uses her body to take advantage of the vanity of men,’ she’d said. ‘And a sojourn is a revitalization of your spirit.’ But it turned out that wasn’t even close. Because a prostitute has sex for money, and a sojourn is a vacation from your real life, which is the last thing Rachel needs. Less vacationing, more real life, Mom.
She whistles for Tokyo. Five short sharp notes, distinctive enough to separate it from the calls everyone else uses for their dogs at the park. He comes bounding over, happy as only a dog can be. ‘Pure-bred mutt’ is how Rachel likes to describe him. Scrappy, with a long snout and patchwork sandy-and-white fur and creamy rings around his eyes. ‘Tokyo’ because when she grows up she’s going to move to Japan and become a famous translator of haiku poetry and drink green tea and collect samurai swords. (‘Well, it’s better than Hiroshima’ is what her mother said.) She’s already started writing her own haiku. This is one:
Rocket ship lift-off
take me far away from here
the stars are waiting
This is another:
She would disappear
folded like origami
into her own dreams.
Rachel applauds enthusiastically whenever she reads her a new one. But Kirby has begun to think she could copy down the wording from the side of the Cocoa Krispies box, and her mother would cheer just as loudly, especially when she’s stoned, which is more and more often these days.
She blames So-John. Or whatever his name is. Rachel won’t tell her. As if she doesn’t hear the car pull up at 3 a.m. or the hissed conversations, unintelligible but fraught, before the door slams and her mother tries to tiptoe in without waking her. As if she doesn’t wonder where their rent money comes from. As if this hasn’t been going on for years.
Rachel has laid out every single one of her paintings – even the big one of Lady Shalott in her tower (Kirby’s favorite, not that she’d admit it), which is normally stowed at the back of the broom cupboard with the other canvases her mother starts, but never quite manages to finish.
‘Are we having a yard sale?’ Kirby asks, even though she knows the question will irritate Rachel.
‘Oh, honey,’ her mother gives her a distracted half-smile, the way she does when she’s disappointed in Kirby, which she seems to be all the time these days. Usually when she says things Rachel insists are too old for her. ‘You’re losing your child-like wonder,’ she’d told her two weeks ago, with a sharpness in her voice like it was the worst thing in the world.
Weirdly, when she gets into real trouble, Rachel doesn’t seem to mind. Not when she gets in fights at school or even when she set fire to Mr Partridge’s mailbox to pay him back for complaining about Tokyo digging up his sweetpeas. Rachel told her off, but Kirby could tell she was delighted. Her mother even put on a big pantomime, the two of them yelling at each other loud enough for that ‘self-righteous windbag next door’ to hear them through the walls, her mother screeching ‘Don’t you realize it’s a federal crime to interfere with the US mail service?’ before they collapsed in giggles, clamping their hands over their mouths.
Rachel points to a miniature painting positioned squarely between her bare feet. Her toenails are painted a bright orange that doesn’t suit her. ‘Do you think this one is too brutal?’ she asks. ‘Too red in tooth and claw?’
Kirby doesn’t know what that means. She struggles to tell her mother’s paintings apart. They’re all pale women with long flowing hair and mournful bug eyes too big for their heads in muddy landscapes of greens and blues and grays. No red at all. Rachel’s art reminds her of what Coach said to her in gym class, when she kept messing up the approach to the vaulting horse. ‘For Pete’s sake, stop trying so hard!’
Kirby hesitates, not sure what to say in case she sets her off. ‘I think it’s just fine.’
‘Oh, but fine isn’t anything!’ Rachel exclaims and grabs her hands and pulls her into a stepping foxtrot over the paintings, twirling her round. ‘Fine is the very definition of mediocrity. It’s what’s polite. It’s what’s socially acceptable. We need to live brighter and deeper than just fine, my darling!’
Kirby squirms out of her grasp and stands looking down at all the beautiful sad girls with their skinny limbs reaching out like praying mantises. ‘Um,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to help you move the paintings back inside?’
‘Oh, honey,’ her mother says with such pity and scorn that Kirby can’t bear it. She runs inside, clattering up the porch stairs, and forgets to tell her about the man with the mousy hair and jeans pulled up too high and a skew nose like a boxer, who was standing in the shade of the sycamore next to Mason’s Filling Station, sipping a bottle of Coke through a straw and watching her. The way he looked at her made Kirby’s stomach flip like when you’re on the tilt-a-whirl, and it feels like someone has scooped out your insides.
When she waved vigorously, over-cheerful at him, like, Hey, mister, I see you staring at me, jerk-wad, he raised one hand in acknowledgement. And kept it up (super creepy) until she turned the corner up Ridgeland Street, skipping her usual shortcut through the alley, hurrying to get out of his sight.
Harper
22 November 1931
It’s like being a boy again, sneaking into the neighboring farmhouses. Sitting at the kitchen table in the quiet house, lying between the cool sheets of someone else’s bed, going through the drawers. Other people’s things tell their secrets.
He could always tell if someone was home; then and all the times he’s broken into abandoned houses since, to scrounge for food or some overlooked trinket to pawn. An empty house feels a certain way. Ripe with absence.
This House is full of expectation that makes the hair on his arms rise. There is someone in here with him. And it is not the dead body lying in the hallway.
The chandelier above the stairs casts a soft glow over dark wooden floors, gleaming with fresh polish. The wallpaper is new, a dark green and cream diamond pattern that even Harper can tell is tasteful. To the left is a bright modern kitchen, straight out of the Sears catalog, with melamine cupboards and a brand-new toaster oven and an icebox and a silver kettle on the stove,