Help for the Haunted(94)
Rose looked away, fixing her gaze on that suitcase we shared on all those trips with our parents. “Don’t worry about it, squirt. It’s not all your fault. Now leave me alone so I can finish up in here.”
I didn’t want to, but I turned and retreated to my room. Inside, I sat on the edge of my bed, absently petting the soft feathers of that last unbroken horse. All the while, my mind could not help but fixate on Penny down in the well. Despite my wishes, despite any rational thought, I kept wondering if the doll was still having an influence from where she lay in that cold, murky water.
Thump, thump, thump—I listened to the sound of my sister dragging our suitcase down the stairs. One last time, I told myself that I should do something to keep her from leaving. But when I went to the window and saw the car idling in the driveway, trunk popped open, I knew there was no undoing things now. Our father and mother stood by the road examining our mailbox, which had been knocked off its post. The trash cans were down, too, though they ignored those for the time being. I watched our father pick up the mailbox, inspecting the buckled sides and the bent red flag that spun round and round like some whirligig carnival game. He attempted to balance the thing on the post again, but it wobbled before toppling to the ground. My father kicked it away in frustration.
And then the front door opened and Rose stepped outside. She lugged our suitcase down the stoop to the car. Despite his back trouble, my father went to her and heaved it into the trunk. As he walked to the driver’s side, our mother pulled an envelope from her jacket and pushed it into Rose’s hand. My sister refused it, but my mother insisted, shoving it in Rose’s pocket. And then our mother did what I had felt too nervous to do, putting her arms around Rose, pulling her close. My sister did not return the hug, standing there stiff as that headless mailbox post.
From that moment on, things moved quickly: Rose got in the car and buckled her seat belt. My father did too, shifting into Reverse. As they backed out of the driveway, I waved to my sister, willing her to look up and wave too. But it never happened, even though I kept on waving until the Datsun pulled onto the lane and rolled away.
For a long while after they were gone, I looked out at the empty driveway and my mother lingering on the front lawn, gazing down the road as though she hoped for them to return. With the exception of a few occasions when she mentioned her father’s passing, I’d rarely seen my mother cry. As I stood at my window, however, I watched her hands move to her cheeks, wiping away tears. When I couldn’t bear to watch any longer, I turned to my desk and began sorting those horse limbs, lining them up until they were side by side, ready for the odd surgery I’d grown accustomed to performing.
Hours—that’s how long it took for me to carefully glue them together. All the while, so many questions about Rose and when exactly she’d be back knocked around my mind. When all the horses were returned to my shelf once more, it occurred to me that, ringing phone and chiming clock aside, there had been no sounds inside our house for some time. I stepped out of my room, locking the door behind me, listening for my mother. When I still did not hear anything, I made my way to the first floor. At last, I opened the front door and found her sitting on the stoop, wearing her robe and slippers still, a thick stack of white paper in her lap and more tears in her eyes.
I stepped outside and sat beside her. Above us, birds chirped in the misty air, and squirrels scrambled along the branches of the birch trees. I looked over at my mother’s crumpled face. The tears that rolled down her pale cheeks seemed capable of washing away the hints of blue from the veins beneath her skin.
“Can I ask,” I said, finally, “where Saint Julia’s is?”
Her hair had fallen out of its pins and looked wild as hay. She brushed it from her eyes, telling me, “Your father gave me the name of the town. But my mind—well, it’s been so muddled lately. This fatigue. I just haven’t felt myself. Anyway, it’s a nice place in upstate New York where they help people like her. Troubled girls, I mean. Your father found out about it. Made all the arrangements. If I felt better, I might have been able to keep stalling him the way I have for months now.”
“When will she back?”
“I don’t know, Sylvie. In some ways, that’s up to her.” My mother looked out at the empty driveway, hands resting on the thick stack of paper in her lap. When I asked what those pages were, the question brought more tears. I reached over, rubbed my hand on her back, feeling the knobby bumps of her spine. At last, my mother took a breath and told me that when she woke that morning, she made up her mind to fight her weariness and get out of bed to cook us breakfast. After being cooped up in that bedroom, however, she first wanted a glimpse of the sun. That’s when she opened the front door and caught sight of the vandalized mailbox and toppled trash cans. “I made my way to the street and picked up some of that trash, then lifted the mailbox off the ground only to discover this manuscript stuffed in there. It’s from that reporter your father welcomed into our lives.”
Inside the house, the phone rang. It had begun to sound like small screams to me. “Do you need to get that?”
My mother shook her head, waved it away. She looked down at the title on the top page. I did too: Help for the Haunted: The Unusual Work of Sylvester and Rose Mason by Samuel Heekin. “Your father,” she said, when the ringing stopped, “thought he was going to persuade the man to omit certain details he apparently told him one night when they were out having a drink after an official interview. But Sam—Mr. Heekin, I mean—had already finished the book and has no plans of changing even a single word. It will be published in another few months. September, actually. Heekin intended to give it to your father last night, but chickened out—that’s the only way to say it. Instead, he slipped it in our box after he dropped him off. Before whoever came by and knocked it off the post.”