“No media.” Lucas had responded firmly. “Tessa only needs to ease her mind.” Patronizing. It sent a trickle of annoyance up my neck, but it did the trick for Herb. He even retrieved a shiny new shovel out of the garage for Lucas.
So Herb has left us to it. Except Lucas and I haven’t budged since the screen door ricocheted on its hinges a minute ago. Instead of investigating the garden, Lucas is casting watchful eyes up the walls and windows of my grandfather’s mythical house. He has never been here before, even though it’s just an hour’s drive from Fort Worth. By the time Lucas and I were wrestling in the backseats of cars, my grandfather was half-blind and permanently propped in bed.
It is comforting to know that Lucas is so focused. Protecting me from my monster, even if he has always believed, no matter what I say, that the monster is mostly confined to my head.
The house has cast a cool, dark arm across my shoulders. I know this house like it is my own body, and it knows me. Every hidden crevice, every crooked tooth, every false front. Every clever trick from my grandfather’s imagination.
I start a little when Lucas steps beside me, armed with his shovel and ready to go.
The Susan times her warning to my first squishy step into the soil.
Maybe he did bury one of our sisters here.
If it weren’t for the fig tree standing there like an arthritic crone, I wouldn’t know where to dig. The garden is twice as large as when my grandmother grew her precise rows of Early Girl tomatoes and Kentucky Wonder beans and orange habanero peppers, which she turned to jelly that ran on my tongue like lava. This morning, other than the fig tree climbing out of it, the plot is a flat brown rectangle.
I used to stand in this garden and pretend. The blackbirds stringing across the sky were really wicked witches on brooms. The distant fringes of wheat were the blond bangs of a sleeping giant. The black, mountainous clouds on the horizon were the magical kind that could twirl me to Oz. The exceptions were brutal summer days when there was no movement. No color. Nothingness so infinite and dull it made my heart ache. Before the monster, I would always rather be scared than bored.
“This is a very open area, Tessa,” Lucas observes. “Anyone who looked out a window on the west side of the house could have seen him plant the flowers. That’s pretty brazen for a guy you think has managed to fool everybody into thinking he doesn’t exist.” He shades his eyes to look up. “Is that a naked woman up there on the roof? Never mind. It is.”
“She’s a replica of The Little Mermaid statue that gazes over the harbor in Copenhagen,” I say. “The Hans Christian Andersen one-not the Disney version.”
“I get that. Definitely not G-rated.”
“My grandfather cast it himself. He had to rent a crane to lift it up there.” I take three carefully measured steps north from the fig tree. “About here,” I say.
Lucas thrusts the glistening metal of Herb’s shovel with crisp, clean determination into the dirt. My own rusty shovel is leaning against a tree. I’ve brought a stack of newspapers, an old metal sieve from the kitchen, and a pair of work gloves. I plunk myself down and begin to sift through the first chunks of overturned soil. I hear Jo’s voice in my head insisting that this isn’t the way.
I glance up, and for a second, see a little Charlie on the porch. I blink, and she’s gone.
It isn’t long before Lucas has stripped off his shirt. I keep sifting, averting my eyes from the muscles rippling across his back.
“Tell me a story,” he says.
“Really? Now?” A black bug is skittering down my jeans. I blink, and it’s gone.
“Sure,” Lucas says. “I miss your stories. Tell me all about the girl up there on the roof with the nice boobs.”
I pull out a rough piece of old metal. Think about how many layers to leave out of a multi-layered fable. Lucas has a short attention span. I know that he is just trying to distract me.
“A long time ago, a mermaid fell madly in love with a prince she rescued from the sea. But they were from different worlds.”
“I’m already sensing an unhappy ending. She looks lonely up there.”
“The prince didn’t know it was the mermaid who rescued him.” I pause from breaking apart a large chunk of soil. “She had kissed him and laid him on the beach, unconscious, and swum back out to sea. But she desperately wanted to be with him. So she swallowed a witch’s potion that burned away her beautiful singing voice but in return carved out two human legs. The witch told the mermaid that she would be the most graceful dancer on earth, yet every single step would feel like she was walking on knives. The mermaid didn’t care. She sought out the prince and danced for him, mute, unable to speak her love. He was mesmerized. So she danced and danced for him, even though it was excruciating.”
“This is a horrible story.”
“There’s lovely imagery when it’s read aloud. It loses a lot in my retelling.” I raise my eyes to the window in the turret of my old bedroom. The partly drawn shade makes it appear like a half-closed eye. I imagine the muffled sound of my grandfather reciting on the other side of the stained glass. An ocean as blue as the prettiest cornflower. Icebergs like pearls. The sky, a bell of glass.
“And did this a-hole of a prince love her back?” Lucas asks.
“No. Which means the mermaid was cursed to die unless she stabbed the prince and let his blood drip on her feet, fusing her legs back into fins.”
At this point, I stop. Lucas has already produced an impressive hole the circumference of a small plastic swimming pool and about as deep. I’m way behind on sifting through his piles of earth. All I have to show for my efforts are a stack of rocks, the ribbon of rusted metal, and two plastic pansy markers.
Lucas drops the shovel and falls to his knees beside me. “Need some help?” he asks. I know him well enough to translate. He thinks this is futile. My heart isn’t really in it, either.
I hear the creak of a door opening, punctuated by a noisy slam. Bessie Wermuth is trotting our way in fire-engine-red workout gear that clings to two narrow inner tubes of fat around her waist. She’s carrying tall yellow Tupperware cups chunked with ice and amber liquid.
“Good morning, Tessa.” She beams. “So nice to see you and… your friend.”
“I’m Lucas, ma’am. Let me help you with those glasses.” He picks one and swallows a quarter of it in the first swig. “Delicious tea. Thank you.”
Bessie’s eyes are fastened on Lucas’s snake tattoo, which starts around his belly button and disappears into his jeans.
“Have you found anything yet?” She raises her eyes from Lucas’s belt buckle.
“A few fossils, a plastic plant marker, a rusty piece of metal.”
Bessie barely acknowledges my stash. “I wanted to tell you about my box. Herb said he didn’t tell you about my box.”
“Your box?” A curl of uneasiness.
“It’s a bunch of junk, really,” she says. “I’ve even labeled it, Stuff Nobody Wants But Mom. You know, so my kids don’t have to add it to the crap they’re cleaning out when we die. There might be something in there you’re interested in, though.”
The sweat under my arms is icy. What is wrong with me? It’s just Stuff Nobody Wants.
“I’m going inside to get it,” she says. “I couldn’t carry the box and the tea. Meet me at the picnic table.”
“Are you all right? You don’t look right.” Lucas pulls me up. “We need a little break anyway.”
“Yes. Fine.” I don’t say what I’m thinking-that I have a bad feeling about Bessie and her relentless tilling. We walk thirty yards and plant ourselves on the bench of an old picnic table slopped carelessly with green paint.