“He doesn’t like to be touched,” Viviane explained softly.
Jack seemed not to hear her. He turned suddenly and took her face in his hands. “I think about you all the time. You have to believe that. I think about you every day.” Viviane’s face turned a glorious pink at his touch. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, delighted to find that he still smelled of soap and Turtle Wax.
“No one has ever loved me the way you did, Vivi. And the thought of you having to raise our son all alone . . .”
Vivi? Viviane looked up sharply. There was only one person who called her Vivi, and that was Gabe. Hearing Gabe’s nickname for her — just for her — in Jack’s voice was unsettling. She could feel coils of doubt creep over her. She tried to ignore them. “I wasn’t exactly on my own,” Viviane replied softly, irritated that she was suddenly thinking of Gabe when she finally had Jack standing right in front of her. Gabe with his kind eyes, his strong hands, his unfaltering . . .
“But I wasn’t there.” Jack touched his forehead to Viviane’s.
Why haven’t I seen it before? she thought. Gabe loves me.
“I can help you now,” Jack boasted. “Look around. I can give you anything you could ever need!”
She glanced at Henry. It was funny. Henry resembled Jack so much, but when she looked at her son, the other person who came to mind was Gabe: Gabe helping Henry climb into the truck before taking off on another one of their adventures; Gabe and Henry chasing down that ridiculous bat; Gabe looking at her shyly when he cradled Henry in his arms for the first time fifteen years ago.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
Viviane sighed, closed her eyes. Of course she could forgive him, and then surely be happy for the rest of her life.
“In a way, we could even be a family,” he added.
Viviane opened her eyes. “What do you mean, in a way?”
Jack motioned to the room around them. “Look what I’ve done with my life! I’m finally someone important in this town. You can’t expect me to forfeit all of this?”
Viviane narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re still searching for your father’s approval? He’s been gone for years, Jack!”
“That’s irrelevant,” Jack spat. “People who never respected my father respect me now,” he said. “They look up to me; they ask my opinion. I’m not going to just give all of that up to take up with —”
Viviane flinched in anticipation of the old and ugly phrase.
Jack ran his hands over his face, sweaty with aggravation. “Look, I’m sorry to be so blunt. But, Jesus Christ, Viviane, I thought you of all people would understand.”
Viviane helped Henry into his coat, and the two quietly left the impressive house, followed closely by Trouver. She forgot her red coat hanging in the hall closet.
Back in the truck, she wrapped Henry in two old, scratchy blankets she found under the seat. She used a third one to dry off Trouver. The blankets smelled a bit musty, but neither Henry nor Trouver seemed to mind. She turned the key and the truck sputtered and gasped and died.
Then it hit her. She did understand. At last, when it came to Jack, she could say that she understood completely. The house was renovated. There was a pool in the backyard. And there were his ridiculous, expensive clothes. A lot of things had changed. In spite of all that, Jack hadn’t changed at all. And with that realization, my mother began to laugh. And she laughed.
And she laughed.
And she laughed.
She laughed until Henry covered his ears with his hands and Trouver began to howl. She laughed until her cheeks were sore and her throat hurt and her eyes watered. She laughed for her wasted, difficult life that never had to be wasted or difficult in the first place. She laughed for her two gloriously beautiful but strange children and for a carpenter she should have loved from the moment her mother heard the birdsong announcing good love’s arrival.
But more important, she laughed because finally, after all these years, she didn’t love Jack Griffith anymore. It was the laugh of relief.
Viviane turned to Henry. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“There’s a bee in the bush and a cat on the wall,” he said miserably, pushing one of his hand-drawn maps into Viviane’s lap. It was remarkable, she noted, how accurate the drawing was. Even the street signs were posted on the correct side of the road. Then she noticed that this particular map was different from every other map Henry had made in one way. On the door of one house appeared to be a smear of blood.
“What is this? Are you bleeding?” Viviane did a quick check of Henry’s fingers and arms, his nose, ears, stomach, tongue.
Henry shook his head and slapped her hands away. “There’s red on the floor and feathers everywhere!” he shouted, stabbing the map with angry fingers.
“Henry, listen to me . . .” Viviane spoke slowly. She hated when other people did that, spoke to Henry as if he were still a small child, but sometimes it was hard to tell if he was listening.
She took a long look at her son, wrapped in blankets and a rain jacket, his worried face sticking out from the hood.
“You were certainly smart to wear a coat,” she mused. The day had not implied that such a fierce storm was on its way.
“It happens after the rain,” Henry said.
After the rain?
“You knew,” she whispered. “You knew it was going to rain.” And if he knew that, what else did he know? What happens after the rain?
Henry pushed his map at her again. “Pinna is hurt,” he pleaded. “The Sad Man says listen.”
The engine of the old truck finally turned over and roared to life.
NATHANIEL LED ME to the back of the house, where a fire blazed. The fireplace was made of stacked stone and ran from the ceiling down to the floor, where it yawned into an opening large enough that I could feel the heat of the fire from the hallway. A pile of newly cut wood was stacked beside the fireplace, the ax delicately tipped into the top log.
I’d never actually been in anyone else’s house before — not even Cardigan’s. It was strange, doing things that other people — normal people — did. But the thing was, being in that house didn’t make me feel like everyone else. Instead, I felt as if I were acting out a part in a play, a fictional character playing a role that someone else had written for me. When it was over, I would take my place at curtain call, and then I would go home to where I was real again.
Marigold Pie’s living-room floor was covered with a soft brown carpet. There was an olive-green couch and a glass-topped coffee table in the room. A tall table in a corner held glass bottles of different shapes and sizes, each containing a fluid of some color or another. An impressive ship in a bottle was displayed on the mantel. The only thing that I wasn’t sure about was the huge needlepoint kitten staring at me from over the mantel. I figured that was just an isolated lapse in taste.
Nathaniel leaned his umbrella against the metal screen in front of the hearth and walked over to the table of bottles. “How about something to drink? Might help with the cold,” he said.
I hesitated for a second. “Okay.”
I stood quietly in front of the fire, the warmth of the flames wicking through my calves and my outstretched hands until I stopped shivering. I pulled off my socks and shoes, hung the socks on the fire screen, and stretched the tongues out from my shoes before setting them in front of the fire. I pulled Rowe’s coat from my shoulders and draped it, lovingly, next to my socks. I shook out my wings, scattering little droplets of water across the room, sprinkling pictures and furniture.