The Fall of Never(42)

“Your father has dogs,” her mother said quickly. Her voice was sharp, like she’d just been poked in the rear with a hot iron. “The man spends half his life butchering wildlife, and the other half collecting them in cages at the rear of the compound. He puzzles me, that man.”

“They should quiet down soon enough,” Glenda said. “I just came from feeding them.”

“That’s Rotley’s job. They’re his dogs, really.”

“I know, Mrs. Kellow.”

“Where is he, anyhow?”

“Don’t know,” Glenda said, filling her arms with pastries. Kelly went to her and took some of the load from her arms, followed her into the kitchen.

Helping the housekeeper put the food away, Kelly said, “Are you close with Becky?”

“Becky’s a lovely girl.” She seemed saddened just thinking about her. “I try to be close. We get along nicely. Not like us, though.”

“I remember,” Kelly said. “You were good to me. I never thanked you for that.”

“Oh, honey…”

“Really. You raised me, not them.”

“Your parents were busy people, dear.”

“No, they were just rich people, and that allowed them to keep busy. Growing up, I sometimes thought they forgot they even had a daughter.”

Glenda replaced a tray in the refrigerator, shaking her head. “Now, honey, you know that’s not true—”

“I know,” she said, “but it still felt that way sometimes.” She thought about her mother sitting at the dining room table, flipping absently through a gardening brochure. And then her father, standing in the middle of his once great purple room that was purple no more. He was almost a nonentity—back then, and even more so now, it seemed. It was the house, she thought, consuming them just like it had tried to consume her as a child.

This house had nothing to do with what happened to me, she thought, although she still couldn’t be certain. It was just a gut feeling. The memories of her childhood were like slices of Swiss cheese—riddled with holes and inconsistencies. It was something else, something I still can’t remember.

“You were the one who wanted to keep me here,” she said then, as if suddenly remembering. But she’d at least known this part all along. “They sent me to that institution but you tried to get me to stay. Thank you.”

Glenda was now leaning over the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the hedgerow in the yard. The windowpane was covered in a film of frost. “Don’t be hard on them,” she told Kelly. “They did what they thought was right. They only wanted what was best for you. You can’t keep hating them for that, darling.”

“Well,” Kelly said, putting a hand on the woman’s back. “Thank you nonetheless.”




It was cold outside, and Kelly hugged herself tightly about the shoulders as she crossed around to the rear of the house. She saw her father standing beside the large pen that housed DeVonn Rotley’s collection of Dobermans. His back was to her, and he stood staring down the valley into the immense swell of trees. She came up behind him, uncertain as to what she should say (or even if she should say anything at all), and stood watching him in silence for several moments. She thought of the painting of the giant kneeling down by the river. Despite his imposing size, her father no longer seemed like a giant, crouching or otherwise. Rather, his form evoked in her images of downed power lines, of aged cattle strewn without method or purpose about some green pasture, lost and forgotten. With the passage of so many years, and like magic, he’d somehow managed to regress in age, as if his physical self was desperate to return to its youth. She watched him, and when he sighed, he did so with a great heaving roll of his broad shoulders.

Yes, she thought, he looks like a child.

He turned. Her presence startled him. Some of the dogs behind the fence looked up at them.

“Sorry,” she said.

His complexion was sallow and pasty. His eyes looked too small, pushed too deep inside his head. “I was thinking of your sister.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Becky would come out here, would scoot down this hill when she was younger. In the snow, she’d slide down on a sled or even without one, on her belly. Just laughing. I used to watch her from the window.” His eyes grew distant. “It snows every winter. You can almost count on it. Every year, every winter, like nature’s promise.”

“She’s going to be all right,” she told him, not really knowing whether or not that was true.

“Yes, she is.” He turned away from her again and looked back out over the forest below. “Just like you, Kelly. Always looking for adventure, always out seeking for something, always keeping busy. What do you suppose she looks for out there?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was it you were looking for?”

She thought of her childhood, of hiding in the woods by herself, keeping herself occupied with one thing or another. There’d been the bird book that one summer, and she’d taken to cataloguing birds. Or the toy boats she used to sail in the little stream. Always alone, always keeping busy. Alone…

“I don’t remember,” she told him, which was partially true, although she thought, I was looking for companionship. I was looking for someone to spend time with me. I was looking for what I never received from you and Mom.