Cold Springs(8)

The idea made him smile.

He said, “Why wait? This round's on me.”

Twice, Mallory had dreamed about the house. Each time the metal vines on the walls started moving like hair, and the dark doorway opened like a mouth. It would start to inhale, pulling Mallory toward it, trying to bring her inside.

Mallory shivered. She breathed into her hands and tried to capture the warmth, but that just made her palms sticky.

A song was playing on the car radio—men with funny voices, singing that they were going to come back home from five hundred miles away.

Mallory didn't like the song, but she didn't want to touch Katherine's radio. She was afraid she'd make the music even louder.

When Katherine finally came out of the house, talking to somebody on the porch, Mallory started bouncing in her seat, willing her to hurry.

She liked being with Katherine, the way she liked the spinning teacup on the carousel or her daddy dipping her upside down. But Mallory didn't have bad dreams about the spinning teacup. She had bad dreams about the yellow house with the dark door and the metal vines.

Katherine slid in the driver's seat. She smelled like smoke. She had a brown lunch bag, and Mallory asked what was in it, because she was hungry.

“Medicine,” Katherine told her.

“Are you sick?”

Katherine smiled. “Let's get back home, Peewee.”

“Why do you like coming here, Kaferine? I don't like it.”

Katherine laid her hands on the steering wheel. She seemed to be feeling it for a special vibration. “I had to say goodbye to somebody, sweetie. I had to tell them something. I don't expect you to understand, okay?”

“We won't come here anymore?” Mallory asked hopefully.

“No,” Katherine said. “Our little secret. Okay?”

Katherine squeezed Mallory's knee, her fingers biting like ice. Mallory felt so relieved tears welled up in her eyes. The house seemed to be looking at her, waiting for her to promise.

“Secret,” Mallory said.

She promised she would never tell anyone about the house. Never in a million million years.

Norma Reyes was worried about the girls.

She wanted to call Katherine, make sure everything was all right. She wanted to pull her daughter straight through the phone line—kiss her forehead, pinch her cheeks, tell her, M'hijita, I am on your side. I am not mad anymore.

But she couldn't be the first to suggest calling. That would prove something to Chadwick—a lack of trust in Katherine, an admission that things were as bad as he believed they were.

He never approved of how she dealt with crises, and the crises always happened on her watch, because everything was Norma's watch. Twenty-four hours a day.

Norma had learned to be defensive—to play down Katherine's problems, because if she didn't, Chadwick would fly off the handle. Not emotionally. Never emotionally. But he'd get worked up with some crazy idea—like the therapy. Like medication. Like sending Katherine to pinche Texas. He would bring home educational manuals and the flavor-of-the-week child psychology book and make up a game plan to fix their daughter like she was some broken carburetor.

Qué cacada.

And he wondered why she hadn't been anxious to tell him about the heroin.

Now here they were, on the school playground, freezing their asses off, she and Ann sitting at the base of the play structure, watching their husbands teach each other karate like a couple of drunk idiots. John was laughing, the kindergarten quilt he'd paid $7,500 for draped over his shoulders so he looked like an Indian chief of the Crayola tribe.

Everyone else had left except the cleaning crew and a few staff members, who were putting their classrooms back together inside.

The wood plank under Norma's butt felt like an ice block. The paper lanterns above them dripped icicles. Inside, the night custodian Juan Carlos was blaring Frank Sinatra Christmas carols while he ran the vacuum cleaner, sucking up the booze and pâté crackers the parents had trampled into the classroom carpeting.

This was not f**king quality time. They would have to leave soon or freeze to death, but who was going to be the first to admit this idea was a failure? Who was going to break down and confess that they were nervous and unhappy and just wanted to go home?

Somewhere along the line, Norma's life—her marriage, her friendship, even the way she raised her daughter—had become a game of chicken. She and Chadwick were barreling along at top speed, pretending they weren't on a collision course, trying to be the last to flinch.

“You sure there's nothing I can do?” Ann asked.

What Norma heard: You need help because you're a failure.

Maybe that wasn't Ann's fault. She had the same tone of voice Chadwick did—steady and calm, bleached of emotion so you had to guess her feelings.

Norma was raised in a family where if somebody was mad, if somebody had a problem with you—you knew it. It would come flying at your head as a Bible, a tortilla press, a hand towel—something. Then you'd yell a little, and it was over. The way Chadwick and Ann expressed themselves—Norma had learned to be suspicious of every comment, because they weren't obvious. Their criticisms were like Chinese water torture. Norma guessed it must be a teacher thing.

John clunked his champagne bottle on the ground, tripped on the edge of the kindergarten quilt. “All right. Look. They have this thing they do with their elbow, right?”