Cackle(19)

She erupts into whole-body shivers, like saying the word was physically painful.

I mime zipping my lips. “I won’t say it.”

“I hope you won’t think of me differently now,” she says, “or after you see my house.”

We stop in front of a tent where cartons of fresh berries are for sale. Ripe pink strawberries. Chubby blueberries and raspberries. The most beautiful blackberries I’ve ever seen, clusters of dark bubbles shining like satin. Sophie goes for the blackberries. She plucks one from a pile and slips it into her mouth.

There’s an ancient woman sitting in a rocking chair in the corner of the tent.

“These are delicious, Tilda,” Sophie says to her. “I’ll take four cartons. Do you have a bag?”

The old woman nods and attempts to get up.

“No, no, darling. Just tell me where,” Sophie says.

Tilda points and Sophie follows. She sets the berries down to grab a large paper bag. She holds it open, and I put the berries inside.

“Teamwork!” she says, smiling. Her teeth are pearly white and perfect. “Good-bye, Tilda.”

Sophie doesn’t pay for the berries. She just takes them. I look back at Tilda, who gives a tepid wave.

Sophie leans into me and says, “Tilda and her incessant chatting. Are you all right to walk, pet?”

“Sure,” I say.

“It’s not too far, but we’ll have to cut through the wood.”

“That’s fine.”

“All right, here we go. This way.”

She leads me between two large grayish trees. At first I think there might be a path, but I was deceived by pale dirt. There is no path. We’re just wandering through the woods.

“I hope you don’t mind the forest,” she says. “I’ve always found it peaceful, but I know not everyone shares my view.”

“I haven’t spent much time outdoors,” I say. “My dad took me camping once. It was kind of a disaster. Rained the whole time.”

“Camping,” she says. “You have to be a true enthusiast to enjoy sleeping on the ground.”

“Yeah,” I say.

The memory of the camping trip seeps through my whole body. The rain hammering against my poncho. It stuck to me like a second skin. I remember shivering, listening to my teeth chatter. There was no fire; it was too wet. No hot dogs. No s’mores. We ate cold beans out of aluminum cans with plastic spoons. We slept in separate tents. I spent the night waiting for a boogeyman to rip open my tent with a bloody hook. I thought it would be funny, because he would expect to find a scared little girl screaming her head off, but instead it’d be me, sighing, pulling down the collar of my pajama top for easier access to my carotid artery. Hello, sir. Would you kindly put me out of my misery?

We pass an old stone well. It’s been devoured by moss.

“The well,” she says, “is how you know you’re getting close.”

“Old well in the middle of the woods,” I say. “Not creepy at all.”

She laughs. “Wait until the headstones.”

I assume she’s kidding until a minute later, when I see them. A small circle of headstones, chipped and worn and weathered. I can’t read what they say; whatever inscriptions were there have been eroded by time.

“Shit,” I say. One of them is split, and some kind of green goo oozes from the crack. More moss? Caterpillar guts? Inside the circle rests a mound of dead flowers.

“I like to lay flowers,” she says, “or a wreath.”

“It’s just a random cemetery?” I ask.

She sighs.

“The earth is a giant cemetery,” she says. “Not to be morbid, but it’s true.”

“Right.”

“Here we are,” she says. “See it?”

Between the trees is a small hut. An assembly of sticks with a thatched roof partially caved in.

“I’m only joking,” she says. “If I had better jokes, I would tell them.”

“What if I’d been like, ‘Oh, wow, so nice, so cute.’?”

“I would know you were a dirty liar with a heart of gold.”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen some apartments in the city that aren’t as nice as that shack and are way more expensive.”

“Dreadful,” she says. “All right, this is slippery right here, so let me help you.”

The ground slopes upward, and Sophie climbs, holding up her dress. I don’t know how she manages to look so graceful climbing, but she does. When she’s at the top, she reaches back for me.

I accept her hand and use it to steady myself. I fear I’ll take us both down, but she’s solid. She keeps us upright.

“We’re out of the woods!” she says. “I’ll reward you with tea and treats and pie.”

She threads her arm through mine, so we’re linked at our elbows. For a moment, the bright early-afternoon sun burns a hole through my vision. I close my eyes and watch the rust-colored orb float there. When it begins to fade, I open my eyes again and am stopped dead by what’s before me.

“Is that your house?” I ask. It’s a stupid question, because the structure at the bottom of the hill isn’t a house, the same way a T. rex isn’t an iguana.

It’s basically Versailles.