Little Girls(16)

“He’s dead. Torpedo’s dead.”

“Oh, honey,” Ted said. Susan ran to him and he scooped her up in his arms. She sobbed against his neck. Ted made shushing sounds and swung her gently from side to side.

Laurie got up and went down the hall to the front door. Susan had left the door open. Laurie stepped out onto the porch and immediately felt the chill in the air. Beyond the porch, the world was comprised of infinite darkness. This sort of darkness did not exist back in Hartford, where the suburban streets were overcrowded with houses and vapor lamps and there were always cars cruising up and down the neighborhood streets. This darkness was nearly primordial in its depth and magnitude. Just beyond the porch, the lawn resounded in a chorus of crickets.

Laurie bent down to examine the cigar box that sat on the porch beside the door. She opened the lid and there it was, the little thing gray and stiff among a spongy mat of dry grass and bits of twigs. The frog’s eyes bulged, its mouth frozen open. Laurie could see its individual ribs, thinner than toothpicks. Some of them appeared broken. She jostled the box until the stiff little amphibian rolled obediently onto its back.

She considered tossing the contents of the cigar box off the porch, but then thought better of it. If she knew anything about her daughter, it was that the girl possessed unwavering sentimentality. Susan would want to dispose of the frog herself. And Ted would humor her. He would probably help her dig a hole in the yard, maybe even say a few words: a makeshift funeral for a stiff little amphibian. That this frog might receive the service her dead father had not was a notion that was not lost on Laurie. Yet the thought did not upset her.

Back in the house, Ted was still cradling Susan in his arms. Susan had stopped crying but Laurie could hear her snuffling against Ted’s shoulder.

“Okay, Susan,” Laurie said. “Calm down, hon. It’s just a frog.”

Susan’s grip around her father intensified as she issued a shrill whine. Ted frowned at Laurie from over Susan’s hair.

“Come on,” he said, patting Susan on the back. He moved past Laurie and out into the hall. “Let’s go upstairs and brush those teeth.”

Laurie listened to him climb the stairs to the second floor. The whole house creaked. We baby her too much. We’re turning her into a needy, spoiled child. Perhaps she had agreed to stay here instead of the hotel too quickly. Susan was as fickle as any ten-year-old; she would have wound up adjusting to the hotel just as easily as this old house. In fact, probably more so, since there would have been a lot to keep her occupied in downtown Annapolis, not to mention a TV in the hotel room. What was there for a ten-year-old to do hanging around an old house all day?

In the kitchen, Laurie loaded the dirty dishes from dinner into the dishwasher. The plate of leftover brownies looked as unappetizing to Laurie as a plate of charred wood. Disgusted, she dumped them into the trash pail beneath the sink. They had turned into hard little cassettes and sounded like stones striking the bottom of the pail.

She went into the hall and paused, listening to Ted and Susan talking in hushed voices upstairs. Quietly, she climbed the stairs and stood at the top. The bedroom door at the far end of the hallway was open and there was a light on in there, but she couldn’t see Ted or Susan. Holding her breath, she listened.

At first, it sounded like Ted was consoling her in the loss of her frog, but then Laurie realized they were talking about her—she could hear Ted saying “mommy” over and over again to their daughter in a placating tone. Heedful of loose floorboards, Laurie crept closer to the open bedroom door. She paused halfway down the hall when she heard the squeak of bedsprings.

“It’s like when Sissy O’Rourke’s dog was hit by that car,” she heard Ted say. “Remember? You had to be extra nice to Sissy for a while. Remember how we went over and brought her those chocolate chip cookies?”

“I helped bake those cookies,” Susan said.

“Yes. And you did a splendid job,” Ted said. “But now you have to be that way for Mommy, if just for a little bit. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Susan said, her voice hushed now. “I think so.”

“That’s good. So we’ll try to be a little tougher for Mom, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Let’s see your tough face.”

Susan must have pulled a face, because she began giggling and then Ted laughed, too.

“Good,” Ted said. “Now plant a kiss right here, sugar-pie.”

The bedsprings squealed again.

Something solid seemed to wink into existence in the upper part of Laurie’s chest. She didn’t approve of Ted talking to Susan about her that way. It made her feel weak and feebleminded. She had spoken to him about it in the past, particularly after an inexplicable episode had happened to Laurie last year—the episode Ted referred to as the “highway incident.” At the time, Ted had agreed with her, yet wound up doing what he wanted later on. She considered confronting him about it again, but the thought made her weary. She didn’t have it in her. Not tonight. Not here in this house.

She went downstairs, locked up the house, and then crawled back up to the second floor. This time, the bedroom door at the far end of the hall was closed, which meant Susan had gone to sleep. To her right, the door to the master bedroom stood open. She realized that it was the one room in the house—with the exception of the basement—that she had not gone into yet. She approached slowly, hesitant to enter her father’s old room. There was a four-poster bed, the sheets fresh and crisp. On the wall above the headboard was a massive wooden crucifix. Jesus was a wraith with a look of idiot madness on his face. Laurie pried it from the wall and slid it under the bed.