The Children(47)

“Oh, my girl,” she said. Speaking to whom? Not Guinevere. “Never was there such a headstrong little thing.”

She stopped. Breathed in and straightened, beam by beam, addressing her granddaughter now. “God knows I wasn’t made to be a mother. But, honey, let’s be friends.”

Friends. A concept both ordinary and completely foreign. Guinevere tried to consider it, but it was difficult staying in the present. She began delicately to drift. Always in the same direction: back. This time to a snowbound night when Edith cleaned blood off her face in the rattling cold of a Farmhouse bathroom. One of the only times Guinevere heard her mention Bitsy directly. I would’ve wanted to cry at your age, getting a cut like that. Except, when I did cry, my mother would always—

That blank space at the end was as loud as a blank from a gun.

If Guinevere were to drift forward, into the future, she’d learn she would never ask Bitsy what it was like raising Edith. And Bitsy would never tell. The bond they’d build was their own, neither echo nor do-over. But it always had that hollow in the middle.

When her grandmother spoke again, Guinevere was nearly gone.

“I never should have let Edie leave New York.” Her voice a pale flicker, slicing across sleep’s blue grain. “I never should have allowed that child to hide away with two children.”



* * *




Guin rolled over, out of the past, turning her eyes to her apartment’s characterless crown molding. By the light she knew it was time to get dressed for the booksellers dinner. To stand up seemed impossible.

After that strange conversation with Bitsy, years would pass before Guin learned her grandmother did lie sometimes, had shielded her from the worst part of the truth.

Ennis hadn’t been sent away against his will, he’d begged for boarding school. And he hadn’t really said goodbye. He refused to see his sister at all.





Twenty-Seven

2001




Now she was eight. Hair buttery with sun, running down her back in a tangled V. Feet tough with callus, legs flossed golden with baby hairs. Every summer her skin burned and peeled, revealing new nebulae of freckles. A scar as thin as a toothpick ran from the corner of her left eye to the bottom of her cheekbone—blackberry bramble—and tugged it lightly down, turning her expression faintly melancholic. It made her look like a ballad knight, and she loved it.

They were in their clearing, working on their new house. The old one seemed silly now, about as secure as a jungle gym. This time they had the right materials: long pieces of board they’d salvaged from the edges of a worksite, left unsecured between weeds and a reeking porta potty. Things were going well until she drove a nail right through the meaty rim of her index finger, a perfect furrow that bled like a sonofabitch.

Ennis saw it happen. He tore his shirt right over his head and wrapped it tightly around her hand. Eight was too old to cry, but the tears came steadily anyway, blurring her vision and making her madder. Pain made her feel lopsided, made her vision swim heightened and green. It was spring, everything colored a lucent new-leaf shade.

“Hold it up,” Ennis kept saying. “Keep it higher than your heart.”

When they reached the path that led in a rambling half-mile shot to the peach orchard, he stopped short. Guinevere ran into his outflung arm.

This patch of the woods was theirs. The house was too remote to be stumbled upon, the paths too random for hikers to bother with. Once in a while they saw the caretaker and his red dog, but never close enough to speak to.

There was a stranger on the path. A woman around their dad’s age, hiking boots and a wilting layer cut. Her button-up was shadowed with pit stains, and the look on her face was a private one: frustration at the edge of tears. Just some woman, but Guinevere’s thoughts became rabbit thoughts. Don’t see us. Be still.

The woman saw them anyway. She froze and made a strangled sound.

“Oh, my god. Oh, my god!” She started to cry.

Ennis made a scooping gesture with his hand, meant for Guinevere. It said, Go back, stay behind me. “Ma’am? The road’s over that way.” He pointed. “Do you need help finding it?”

There was a story Llewellyn told them, when he used to tell stories. Of a queen so twisted with covetousness she could not rule, only gaze all day at the contents of a blackwood box: her lover’s heart, beating on a bed of green satin.

This was how the stranger looked at Guinevere’s brother. Then she did something worse. “Ennis,” she murmured, drifting toward him. “Beautiful boy. It’s really you.”

She kissed him, right on the mouth.

He didn’t pull back or shove her away. He was ten years old, and her gorgon’s kiss froze him solid.

Guinevere picked up a rock with her uninjured hand and whipped it, hitting the stranger in the neck. She screamed, folding over like she’d been shot.

“Leave him alone!” Guinevere said. “Ennis, run!”

The order unstuck him. They ran together and didn’t stop until they reached Art Church. Its doors were open, letting out odors of incense and linseed oil. Llewellyn leaned against the exterior wall, wearing his uniform: striped Picasso shirt over frayed khaki shorts that ended right above his golden-furred knees. Sometimes their father, clothed, looked more naked than a naked person.

He pushed off the wall when he saw his daughter’s tears and the bloody shirt around her hand, knocking over the bottle he’d set at his feet. It rolled, foaming, in the dirt. “Uh-oh. Let’s see it.”