The Mystery of Hollow Places(40)
There’s a whole web of residential streets here spinning through the trees. On Google Maps it looked totally doable. On the ground, it’s a different story. And what do I expect to find, anyway? Whether the stone in my satchel’s front pocket is my grandmother’s heart or not, she’s dead for certain. Lil said Mom’s father was gone too. And even if Mom did come home, what was left in her childhood house to come back to? Who knows if the people living there can even help me?
Still. I have to start somewhere. And even though Fitchburg is bigger than Sugarbrook, it’s an old town and this is an old neighborhood, and just like in Sugarbrook, neighborhoods love to talk. And if there’s one thing they like to talk about best, it’s their sons and daughters. Where they are now. What they’re doing. Who’s moved to the big city and become a smash success. Who’s been arrested and who got married and who came out of the closet and who died, and all the terrible things that happen to them along the way.
We head in the opposite direction. A few blocks past a cross street, it seems like we’re getting too far from the field, so we turn around and head down Bond, where, three houses in on the left, I grab Chad’s swishy ski jacket. My heart hammers against my ribs.
The little house isn’t white—it’s sort of a bluish purple, not even recently painted, and there’s no flag hanging from the lamppost. But it has the same perfectly square windows, the chimney is in the right place, and though the tree in the yard is taller, it’s definitely the forked white birch from the picture. I hold the photo up to be sure.
Chad double-checks the picture and smiles. “I think we found it.”
I tuck the photo in my jacket pocket and try to crack my knuckles, before remembering I’m wearing puffy gloves. “I guess we should ring the doorbell.”
He peels off his left glove, pulls my right glove off by the tips, and threads his fingers through mine. I don’t even get to soak in the warmth of his skin, his callused palm, before my traitorous hand jerks away of its own free will. It’s out of my control, like a sneeze.
I can feel my cold cheeks warm, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t . . . Sorry.”
He nods. “Come on, tough guy.”
Why? Why is this the moment my imperfect but generally reliable brain misfires?
Whatever the reason, I don’t have time to think about it because we’re moving: up the flagstone walk, up the steps to the miniature porch, toward the door with a little stained-glass bumblebee sticky-cupped to the side window. I reach out my hand, now in control, if shaky, and ring the doorbell.
And realize there’s probably no one home. Because it’s ten thirty on a Tuesday, and we’ve come all this way for nothing, and really, what could these people have told me anyway, since all the Fayes are gone—
The door opens.
“Help you?” asks a man, eyeing us down the long wedge of his nose. Wearing only a Red Sox T-shirt and sweats over bare feet, he crosses his arms against the wind. Something tells me he’s not a long-lost Faye.
I skim my tongue over my dry lips. “Yeah. Yes. Sorry to bother you, it’s just, I’m doing a school project and I, um, wondered if you might have a minute to help me?”
“Aren’t you guys on break from school?” Scattered in the hallway behind him, I notice kid-colored backpacks, and smallish sneakers with light-up bottoms.
“I know, it sucks, right?” Chad laughs. “Homework over vacation?”
I shrug in a What are you going to do? way.
“I don’t know. I’m just off my night shift. About to head to bed. You’re not selling magazines or anything, are you?”
“No way. And just a second is all I need,” I say gratefully. “One point five seconds at most. See, we’re supposed to do a report on our family history in the area. And my mom, she has this cousin I never met. Sidonie Faye? They haven’t talked in a while, since Sidonie moved away, but Mom said she lived in this house growing up. And she thought Sidonie might’ve moved back into the area. I know it’s a long shot, but I was just wondering if you knew her, if she might’ve come back here, in the past few years?”
“This is a school project?” He lifts a bristly black eyebrow.
“Yep. For social studies—applying big lessons to our little lives, you know? Oh, and I have a picture!” I dig into my bag, pulling out the brochure from the Boston MFA. I flip to the exhibit photo and spread it out for the guy. I notice Chad examining it slyly, then looking at me. For comparison?
The man in the Sox T-shirt shrugs. “Tell you the truth, we just moved in three years ago, and we didn’t buy the house from a Faye. You know who you might ask? Tilly Donahue.” He points to a squat brown house two properties down, its lawn potholed with grassless patches, plastic pinwheels poking up through the gnarly shrubs around the porch. “She’s lived here some fifty years, got her nose in everybody’s business. Let’s say she knows when the mayor takes a squat.”
“Uh-huh. So, she’s usually home?”
“Right now, she’s at . . . what do you call . . . water aerobics or something. For old people. Her home aid will bring her back around one thirty, after they do their shopping. I know this because she comes knocking every damn day at one forty-five to change a bulb or fix her doorbell or some nonsense. And I work nights, you know?”