The ball of fluff and Mary and the woman, all idiotically small, stood like pit bulls.
Before he stalked off toward the parking lot, he let me know without a word that this wasn’t over.
The woman watched his back until she was sure he wasn’t changing his mind. By that time, her dog was already in Mary’s lap, swinging.
She turned, smiled, and stuck out her hand to me. I still remember how cool it was, like river water. Like I was being baptized.
“I can always tell a fucker,” she’d said. “My name is Bunny.”
62
It creeps me out, the silence of this subdivision. All I can hear is my breath and the rhythmic padding of my feet on the sidewalk.
Five years ago, these houses were rib cages. I woke up that first morning in Maggie’s house to a hammer whack that ran through my bones like a gunshot.
When I moved the curtain in Maggie’s guest room, I thought any one of the men balanced on the roof rafters could be my father coming for me. As the daredevil king of the Elk City drilling rig, he was known for being able to pull his body to the top of anything.
He’s the one who taught me to climb the trees that clumped down by the river where we fished. It’s not the difficulty of the tree but your ability to understand it, he’d drawl. When I was clinging to a weak limb like a monkey, he wouldn’t guide me down. He’d stalk away disgusted, saying, Think, Montana. Think before you move.
Now here I am, on Normal Street, USA, where there is barely a tree to climb, not thinking clearly at all.
Because nothing is normal. Everything is a lie.
Pocono Estates was named for mountains a thousand miles away in Pennsylvania and there’s not a mountain in sight.
The Cinderella turrets on these upper-class castles pretend there is a third floor when there are only two.
My feet stutter to a stop on the sidewalk.
526 Mountain View Drive.
Instead of flat red clay, the lawn is bright green with a deep-tilled edge.
The door is red instead of black.
Every blind closed.
I feel the same amount of scared as I did five years ago.
Nobody is answering.
I peer through the diamond pane in the door and am surprised I can see all the way through to a tiny piece of the living room. The wooden angel wings that once hung over the couch are gone.
Maybe I have the wrong house. Maybe Maggie wrote the wrong return address on her birthday cards to me on purpose. That possibility is an ache in my chest.
Maggie was security conscious. I remember all the blind-closing. All the alarm keypad–punching. Five years is a long time, but if my face is filling Maggie’s computer screen right now, she knows exactly who I am.
I’m almost to the curb when Maggie calls my name.
She throws her arms around me like she’s stopping a ball from rolling into the street.
Her hair is wet on my cheek. She smells of a fruity shampoo that makes my stomach churn. At first, I think her reaction is out of happiness to see me. But she’s using her hug to hurry me back up to the door while I try to stop blubbering.
My skin feels like plastic, melting. My feet, throbbing from running all the way from the park on asphalt highway. My muscles, still aching from sawing at tree limbs.
In the entryway, with the door shut, her eyes are practically eating me. The long cat scratch on my arm from the barbed wire. The bruises and dirt on my knees. The snot running out of my nose. The nipples pointing through this stupid sports bra that say I’m all grown up now.
She settles on my eyes, where Bunny says my soul sits behind a green curtain. Why can’t I stop crying?
Maggie’s eyes aren’t easy to read, either. She’s just out of the shower, possibly why she didn’t answer right away. As short as I remember. But skinnier and more muscular, without the warm smile.
Outside, she had muttered in my ear It’s so good to see you. But now we are standing a foot apart and she is not saying anything at all. She’s not asking obvious questions like Why are you here? or Why are you crying? But I can feel her thinking. And she’s thinking she made a mistake opening the door.
I wipe my nose on my arm, so embarrassed. “Hormones. Bunny says it’s hormones.”
That triggers a smile, a big, false one. I don’t remember her being false. “I’d love to hear all about your foster mom.” She says it as if my arrival is a perfectly civilized, prearranged thing. “Lola is at a pool party down the street and Bea is at a summer day camp jumping on bouncy things. They will be so excited to see you, too.”
Lola was only three when we ran around in eye patches and built her messy cupcakes. Now she’s eight. If she remembers me, it would be barely. The baby, not at all.
Say something else, Maggie. Something true.
Maggie is marching me through the obstacle course on the living room floor—an open laptop with a dark screen, a stack of documents with blue Post-its, a yellow cat that won’t budge, some brutalized children’s picture books.
We’re in the kitchen before I can even think. Over her shoulder, my face is stuck to the refrigerator with a Mickey Mouse magnet. The graduation picture I sent, standing by Bunny’s magnolia tree.
My tears are drying up. But it’s suddenly hard to breathe. Polka dots of light. Mickey Mouse, in motion on the fridge, doubling and tripling himself.
Her hand on my shoulder is cold.
“This is the last place I saw her,” I whisper.
Maggie’s face folds in on itself. “I miss her so much.”
That’s when I know what her hesitation was about. Why she mailed cards with $50 bills but never came to see me, not at the group home, not at Bunny’s, even for a quick visit, even though I put her on the approved list.
Maggie had to put Odette away in a box.
And by coming here, I’ve taken her out.
Maggie is sitting where Odette sat when she gave me my six words.
This time, I am making up for all that silence. I am talking like I will never stop.
I tell Maggie everything.
About my father.
My mother.
Bunny.
The Blue House.
The green lake.
The Betty Crocker cookbook.
The bloody boots in the closet.
The limping man in the cemetery.
Finn. Rusty. Wyatt.
The six words.
How much I run, run, run.
Maggie reaches across the table, her thumb pressing on my heart tattoo. I think it is on purpose. She says she feels guilty all the time. She says that when Odette comes to her dreams, they are flying together on the back of a big black bat.
She tells me everything will be OK. She seems like the Maggie I remember.
Except the shadows on my blind side, they’re starting to gibber.
Lola is studying my face with the sweet seriousness only an eight-year-old can. She asks me to take out my eye and put it back in. When I’m done, she pats my cheek like I am precious sculpture.
In her purple bedroom, she shows me a scrapbook where she saved the goodbye note that I left under her pillow. The sequined eye patch we made together is there, too, zipped in a plastic baggie, just like Trumanell’s pink lipstick in the Betty Crocker cookbook.
It makes me shiver a little, this scrapbook. To know I am the myth between the pages, just like Odette. Like Trumanell.
Finn is now turning the pages of Odette’s scrapbook. Or burning them. Because I was too stupid to finish, I may never know the end.