The Children(84)
All his softness was gone, though. His hair had been the last of it. He used to look like a lost boy. Now he looked like a knife.
* * *
Maeve Carter was a witch for sure. Within an hour she’d divined the status of every person in the house, traced its currents of power. She treated Edith as an equal, Llewellyn with flirtatious scorn—Alright, Granddad, she’d say when she saw him, in flawless imitation of his accent—and Jonathan with the frigid politesse of a lady addressing a servant.
The last was so glorious to witness, Guinevere didn’t care that Maeve seemed to see her as some kind of homunculus. A pet at best. It was hard to pin down how exactly she perceived Ennis, and Guinevere didn’t care to. She just wanted her to leave him alone.
After the first night Maeve’s mother flew back to California. Life of a mommy manager! she said breezily, while her daughter mimed Psycho stabs at her back.
Once she’d gone Maeve’s voice got lower, her eyeliner thicker. She lost the babyish headband that held back her pale hair, and the strip of skin between her shirt and waistband widened from tributary to river.
And she wouldn’t stop bothering Ennis. She liked to say mean things to him. Liked to tug with her little hand at the front of his shirt and poke him in the side and call him names. Hey, nature boy. Okay, Smokey Bear. Once she touched the softness of his shaved head and said, Ooh, it feels like a hedgehog. He gave her no encouragement, only watched her with his cool blue eyes.
Usually their guests—even the loud ones, the possibly mad ones—swam with the house’s tides. Maeve dropped into their languid routines like a rock. A space rock, magnetically charged, pulling everyone off their axes.
It didn’t help that Guinevere was running on days of bad sleep. It was that dream. The same dream, playing like an endless TV show every time she slept. Pausing when she opened her eyes.
Maeve was supposed to stay for two days. When, by noon on the third, there was still no sign of her departure, Guinevere walked softly to the room they’d given her. It was a few doors down from her own. She pressed her ear to the door, then knocked. When no one answered she let herself in.
The room was dark, curtains drawn. The air smelled of musky candy. It had the close, unwholesome atmosphere of a den. As her eyes adjusted Guinevere saw tangled bracelets glinting from the unmade bed. Bronzer was smeared across one panel of the beautiful old vanity, and a spray bottle labeled Tangerine Queen sat on an Olympics logo of oil rings. On the floor were headphones and tiny T-shirts and jeans scrunched up with dirty underwear inside them.
What a gross girl. The thought was satisfying, almost crunchy. Guinevere sprayed Clinique Happy into the air to freshen it, jumping back when the droplets hit her skin.
Oh, well. This was her house. So what if mean Maeve smelled her perfume on Guinevere? She couldn’t prove she’d been in here.
After trying on Maeve’s makeup and flipping through her CDs and looking in vain for a single book—did the girl not read?—she started to wonder where, exactly, Maeve was.
And Ennis. Where was he?
A minute later Guinevere was sprinting over the back lawn. Her father was painting with the studio doors thrown open, Neil Young pouring out over the grass like a second sun. She didn’t spare the studio a glance.
Why was she so sure of where she’d find them? The Sharpe siblings hadn’t visited their little house in progress since April. It had been smaller than they remembered. Shabby and wet-warped and leaking a sharp urine scent. Animal, she hoped. They’d spent so many springs starting over, but she could see in her brother’s face this time was different. They would not start again.
The abandoned structure came into view in ash-colored slashes. Something hung from the wood like a flag on a derelict vessel. A windbreaker, lilac.
Guinevere walked a little closer, around to the right, and saw—
Skin. Limbs, moving. Pinkish pale and sunbrowned, enough of it at once that she knew to look away before she saw more. And god, she felt so stupid, running away. So self-conscious she made herself slow to a walk. Wiping her face, thinking surface thoughts. At least they didn’t see me, at least they didn’t hear me—
She took in a great shuddering breath. It was their clearing. Their little Wendy house, built by hand. And he’d brought Maeve to it, to do the same ugly, desperate things Llewellyn did with his carousel of models. That Edith had done with Arthur Borelli and, Guinevere knew by now, whomever else she liked.
She cut through the orchard, through its slow confetti of rising falling bees, almost asking for a sting. It would justify the hard, unswallowable pain in her throat.
So what? she asked herself. So what? Maeve would leave soon and it would be like none of this had even happened. This time next week it wouldn’t matter at all. The whole visit would drift away like a movie they’d watched once and forgotten. You couldn’t hold a memory. It had no weight.
She twisted a last clinging peach off its branch and took a savage bite. Bloomy, so floral sweet she could vomit. She chucked it away.
She just had to make it to her room. The one person who might try to stop her was Jonathan. Last she saw him, he was lying on the couch flipping through a box of manuscripts he’d driven up with from the city. He turned their pages with crisp snaps, making explosive sounds of derision. All these writers’ delicate dreams in his disgusting hands. Guinevere went on tiptoe to the stairs, then sprinted up them. She threw her bedroom door open and momentum made her stumble, catching herself on the frame.