The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(33)

When it was understood that Jack Griffith was back to stay, many of his neighbors began to wonder when he would make his way over to Pinnacle Lane. But after a while, they stopped wondering. And my mother, who still hadn’t left the house since our birth, had no idea that Jack had returned — after all, who would possibly tell her? Emilienne certainly wasn’t going to. Emilienne started smoking cigars, perhaps hoping the heavy smell of tobacco could mask Jack’s distinctive scent of soap and Turtle Wax — just in case it should find its way to Viviane’s sensitive nose. And Gabe? Gabe was too busy suppressing the urge to walk up that impressive driveway and punch Jack in the face to even think about mentioning Jack’s return to Viviane.

I, of course, had no idea of the personal implications of Jack Griffith’s arrival, about whom I’d heard from Cardigan. But there was definitely a change in the air — and it wasn’t caused by my grandmother’s cigar smoke.

Cardigan and I often played the “Is that the rat fink?” game, where we rattled off the names of different men in the neighborhood we thought disreputable enough to leave my mother with two children to raise on her own. Our favorite was Amos Fields, who was actually my grandmother’s age and a broken man since his son Dinky’s death in the war.

“Maybe your mother was trying to comfort him,” Cardigan offered.

I nodded. Maybe.

Secretly, I had always assumed Gabe was our father. After all, Gabe had been living in our house since before we were born, even after he’d made a good name for himself as a carpenter and could afford much more than a single room with a shared bathroom down the hall.

Why else would he have stayed so long?





HENRY WAS FREED from our mother’s protective rule on the hill just a few months after we turned thirteen. Thirteen years. I often wondered if my mother truly had our best interests or hers at heart when she imposed this way of life on us. Nonetheless, it was Gabe, our gentle giant, who convinced her to finally let Henry off the hill.

Gabe and Henry were quite the pair, driving around town in the old Chevy truck — Gabe with his long limbs folded uncomfortably inside the cab and Henry in the passenger seat, often patting his ears rhythmically with his hands.

On the way back from one particular outing, Gabe glanced over at Henry, who sat on the ripped upholstery drawing on a thick pad of paper with waxy crayons. Henry’s drawings were hardly the scribbled circles and oblong squares typical of the creations he’d made just the day before. Gabe pulled into the driveway and leaned toward Henry. Being careful not to touch him, he asked, “What do you got there, Henry?”

Henry lifted his head and tossed the drawing pad and crayons to the side. Without a word, he jumped out of the truck and trotted up the stairs to the house.

Henry had drawn a detailed map of the neighborhood, complete with road signs and house numbers.

Later, after everyone was asleep, Gabe walked into Viviane’s room and laid the drawing on her bed.

My mother pulled the cord to the lamp near her head, blinking in the light, and stared unseeing at the drawing on her bed. “What is this?”

Gabe was pacing the room. “It’s Henry’s.”

Viviane picked up the drawing and looked at it: the house on the hill at the top of Pinnacle Lane, the bakery, the school, the accurate house numbers and road names, all ending at the newly constructed police station up on Phinney Ridge. Viviane shook her head.

“He drew it,” Gabe explained.

“What? No. That’s impossible.” Viviane dropped the paper to the floor.

Gabe picked it up and looked at her until she exhaled, looking strange and defeated. “This is a good thing, Vivi. Now we know there’s something going on in there; we just need to find a way to reach it.”

Viviane leaned toward the lamp again and pulled the cord, leaving Gabe in the dark but for the silvery light from the moon shining on Viviane’s pillow. “Amazing handwriting, don’t you agree?” she finally said.

“Yes. Amazing.”

“Did you see that L? Impressive. I certainly don’t make my L’s anything like that.”

“No, me neither.”

Afterward, Gabe retreated downstairs to his room. He climbed into his own bed, and both he and Viviane imagined the other was asleep while they worried the night away on their own separate floors.

Gabe woke before dawn the next morning to the sound of the coffee machine percolating on the kitchen counter. Viviane was an awful insomniac. Gabe wondered if anyone else knew this about her, that while the rest of the house slept, she often spent her nights staring at the dark sky through the kitchen window. He often considered joining her. Maybe he’d finally say the right thing. Maybe he’d make her laugh. And then maybe they’d share a real conversation, something so much more than the kind of exchanges necessary between two people sharing the same living space: Could you get more milk? Or No, go ahead — you can use the bathroom first. Maybe, but Gabe was willing to admit this wouldn’t be that day. Instead, he took a quick shower and made his way into the yard to watch the sun rise by himself.

At first Gabe thought he was looking at nothing more than one of the low white blooms of the peony bush. That is, until he saw a pink nose attached to it. Gabe walked across the yard, scooped the little thing up, and brought it inside. He washed the dirt from its paws in the kitchen sink and was petting it in puzzlement when Viviane walked up from the basement, carrying a basket of freshly laundered clothes.