Here So Far Away(31)

I went over to Ironwood Farm after school the next afternoon, feeling sullen and sooky in my nonvictory of having gone all day without trying to talk to Lisa or accidentally-on-purpose catching her eye. She made it too easy, acting all sunny and chatty and working the hallway like a minister’s wife at the Christmas tea. In the milk lineup, she threw her head back and laughed so hard at something Bill said that he took an involuntary step back. Even though I knew she was putting it on—just like I was pretending it was totally normal for me to be hanging out at the skateboarders’ table—it still sucked that she wanted everyone to think she didn’t care. Like juggling at a funeral, except the body was still warm.

I couldn’t get to the farm fast enough. Mindless labor, money in my pocket, and a legitimate excuse to tell Bill and Nat that it was cool if they wanted to go to the basketball game with Lisa because look at me already moving on to new things. I was so relieved to have somewhere to go, until I crossed the threshold of the house.

Francis wasn’t kidding: it was filthy. Cobwebs, clutter, torn linoleum. As I did a tour around, checking inside and under things, I could see where he’d started tackling it. The kitchen counters gleamed against the stained wallpaper. The ancient stove top was as clean as it was going to get, but the oven was crusted over.

“Now, seeing this from the outside, you’d think this house smells like a pig farm, but it don’t, right?” Rupert said.

I’d smelled a house like this before. There was a bona fide cat lady in town who had at least fifty semiferal cats, and I rang her doorbell on a dare from Lisa when I was eight. I glimpsed floors so worn that they had actual holes in them, and the smell of mildew and unwashed old person and unwashed clothes seemed to be carried on the dust floating from the ghostly layers that covered every surface. That house had undernotes of cat pee, whereas this one had the earthier scent of pig manure.

“It’s a tad poinky,” I said, though I couldn’t see any poo piles. Maybe Rupert was tracking it in on his shoes.

But underneath the grime, the house seemed like it had been at one time a comfortable, welcoming place. The furniture was faded but colorful. In the living room, a formal red chesterfield that looked like it was from the first half of the century was kitty-cornered with a green one that was straight from a 1970s basement bong room. Old family portraits and hooked rugs hung on the walls with randomly tacked up album covers, mostly bluegrass and Celtic folk music. Suncatchers hung in most of the windows.

I peered into an ornate copper birdcage that had been recently polished and had fresh newspapers lining the bottom. A beautiful blue parakeet was sitting on a perch. “Hello, pretty boy,” I said to him. “Say pretty boy, pretty boy.” The bird remained absolutely still. “Come on, pretty boy.”

I whistled a dandy tune to him. He turned slowly on his perch until his back was to me.

“Wilfred’s a dick,” Rupert said.

The second floor wasn’t much cleaner than the first, but it had less junk. The master bedroom might have even been pretty, with its cheerful blue-and-yellow floral wallpaper, iron bed frame, and lace curtains, were it not for a filthy crib-sized mattress on the floor.

Beside the back stairs was a small, empty room overlooking the blueberry patch—meant for a maid, perhaps, or a baby—and the one next to it was plainly Francis’s. A twin bed with a buttoned headboard of stuffed green vinyl, neatly made with a white coverlet. A few books stacked on the wooden stool that served as a side table. A plain, polished wooden table and chair. No dust, no clutter, no decorations. There was something almost aggressively absent about it, nothing of him in the room, other than that pile of books. On top was a collection of poems by Elizabeth Bishop.

My knees suddenly buckled, as can happen when a pig skull slams into them.

Shaggy tried again to shove past me into the room, but I blocked him with the door. There followed a struggle, with me pulling on the knob and him pushing his head against the wood, squealing in frustration, until he finally huffed and took himself off to Rupert’s room. He flopped onto the mattress on the floor.

This is ridiculous, I thought, making sure I heard the latch click when I closed Francis’s door. I didn’t want to touch anything outside of his room, even to breathe the air in this house. I was already twitchy with imminent pink eye. It wasn’t worth it, just to earn a few extra bucks.

I didn’t want to leave abruptly, but had to get outside. In Abe’s back seat were some pots of asters that I’d picked up for Mum at the nursery on my way to work. She would be annoyed if I came home without them. And then what? She’d send me out for more.

“Hey, Rupert!” I called. “I’ve got something for you, if you can tell me where the shovel is.”

I planted the asters around the front steps. It was such a relief to be out in the fresh air and working with my hands. I was digging a hole for the last of the flowers when the shovel clanked against a hard surface.

Rupert was at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper with the magnifying glass that I’d found inside the fridge earlier. I held up an old Canada Rye whiskey bottle filled with a clear liquid.

“What in the— Where’d you find that?”

“In the ground. By the steps.”

“Well, well! I couldn’t tell you how old that is. Decades probably.”

“What is it?”

“It’s not water.”