Arrowood (6 page)

Granddad made it brutally clear how disappointed he was in my father, going so far as to blame the twins' disappearance on Dad's deficient parenting. He regretted coddling Eddie, who was the baby of the family and the sole remaining child, only thirteen years old when his two older brothers were killed months apart in Vietnam. Nana and Granddad had provided my father with an education and a trust fund, and that hadn't been enough. They had allowed us to live under their roof, had fed us and paid the bills while my dad dabbled in pyramid schemes and made dubious investments. If we wanted to leave Arrowood, we were free to go, but we wouldn't be welcome back. Regardless, the house would not be willed to my father, and it would not be sold. I imagined Arrowood living on without us, extraordinary measures being taken to keep it viable: foundation rebuilt, plumbing repaired, wiring replaced. It would go on, a house without a heart, like a body on life support.

Time split in two, and from there we started a new calendar, our lives forever divided into
before
and
after.
Days crept into years and
after
became the only time that seemed real, everything
before
dissipating into a lovely dream that I wasn't sure had existed. Each of us became a different person
after,
and while I couldn't say with certainty that these weren't the people we were meant to be, it seemed that the twins' disappearance had knocked us irrevocably off course. We had struck an iceberg, and though three of us survived, we were left adrift, each to find the shore on our own.

I slept fitfully, dreams wending through my body, tightening ligaments, straining muscles, grinding teeth. In the darkness, I felt the tickle of the twins' wispy hair, their small hands tucked in mine, their breath warm on my cheek. I sang to them in the dream, whispered verses of mockingbirds and diamond rings.

I woke with a dull headache and aching jaw, my sheets clammy and my hair still damp from washing it the night before. When I went to brush my teeth, I saw that I had broken the tip off one of my canines in the night, leaving a sharp, jagged edge. It wasn't the first time. For the past several months, I'd been grinding my teeth incessantly. I'd cracked a molar in Colorado, and I was still making payments on the crown. I wanted to pretend the tooth was fine, but it drew blood when it touched my tongue. Reluctantly I got dressed and drove downtown to Ferris Family Dental—Ben's father's practice—where Grammy had taken me every summer to get my teeth cleaned, because my parents couldn't seem to remember to take me to a dentist during the school year.

I was nervous about seeing Dr. Ferris. I didn't want him to ask what had happened to me, why I had disappeared from his children's lives after so many years as close friends. I hoped, instead, that he might talk about Ben and Lauren, tell me where they lived and what they were doing and spare me the awkwardness of having to ask.

“I don't have an appointment,” I told the receptionist, “but I broke a tooth, and I was wondering if Dr. Ferris could take a quick look at it.”

“Are you a current patient?” she asked, winding a section of highlighted hair around her pen. Her eyebrows had been plucked into dramatic arches that made her look like a cartoon villain.

“Former patient, I guess,” I said. “I've been gone for a while and just came back. Arrowood. Arden.”

She tugged the pen out of her hair, her eyes widening.
“Arrowood?”

I nodded. It occurred to me that while people might recognize my name, hardly anyone would recognize my face. Certainly not the younger generation, who hadn't known any living Arrowoods.

The receptionist tapped on her keyboard, eyes flicking from the screen to me and back as she typed. “You're not in the new system. You'll have to fill out these forms. I'll check and see if we have time to squeeze you in today.”

She handed me a clipboard and stared after me as I sat down to fill out the papers. A woman sat across from me reading an issue of
Good Housekeeping
while her little boy, maybe five years old, banged a Matchbox car against the side of Dr. Ferris's aquarium
.
“Fishy, fishy, fishy!” he screamed. “Stop that,” the woman mumbled, not looking up from her magazine. The boy dropped the toy car and pounded the aquarium with his fists.

It didn't take long to complete the forms, because I didn't have answers for most of the questions. Insurance provider? None. Date of last cleaning? No idea. I returned the clipboard to the desk and flipped through the magazines. Nothing left but
Field & Stream
and
Golf Digest.
I walked back toward my seat, avoiding the little boy, who had thrown himself onto the floor and was swishing his arms and legs back and forth like he was making snow angels on the carpet.

“Arden?”

I turned around, and Ben Ferris stood in front of me, wearing a white lab coat. Ben. My first and best friend. He was taller than I remembered him being when we had said goodbye the last time, when he barely had to lean down to kiss me. I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he hadn't forgotten anything, and an uncomfortable buzzing sensation spread from my heart out through my limbs, like a swarm of frantic insects. Ben's wistful expression was quickly broken by a grin, and I took a halting step toward him, not sure of the appropriate greeting for someone I'd once been so close to but hadn't seen in years.

Ben didn't hesitate, though. He wrapped his arms around me. “I heard you were coming back. I can't believe you're here.”

I could feel myself warming in his embrace, the heat and humidity of those long-ago summers seeping into the air-conditioned office, and I hastily stepped back, letting my arms fall to my sides.

“I can't believe you're a dentist.” He used to say that he would never work with his dad, no matter how much his parents pressured him. He had wanted to be an artist. I had wanted to be a history teacher.

Ben laughed. “Yeah, well, it's a job. Come on back, I'll take a look at your tooth.”

“Is your dad not here?” I asked.

“He's out playing golf,” Ben said. “He probably spends half his time on the course, now that he's got me here.” He gave me an amused smile. “Don't worry, I promise I'm qualified. I've pulled tons of teeth. Some human ones, even.”

“Ha-ha,” I said. He still had the same sense of humor. I was glad he was making this easy for me, not dredging up the past, not asking why I had shut him out.

I got situated in an exam chair and Ben leaned over me, shining a light into my mouth. I could smell his aftershave, woodsy and subtle, unlike the Axe body spray he used to coat himself with. I wondered if his mom had picked it out for him. Or a girlfriend. I glanced furtively at his left hand and was relieved not to see a wedding ring, though I chided myself for checking. I had no claim on him anymore.

He poked around my mouth with a metal pick, his gloved fingers gliding over my gums. “You grind your teeth a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“I can tell. Have you been feeling stressed?” Concern showed on his face, though I couldn't be sure if it was concern for me or for my teeth. Possibly both.

“I guess. My dad, you know. And moving back.”

“I'm so sorry about your dad, Arden. I would have gone to the service, but I didn't know they were having it in Quincy. Everyone thought there would be something here in town.”

“It's okay,” I said. “It all happened pretty fast. I didn't really have time to tell anyone.”

“My mom took flowers,” he said, “out to the cemetery. We were all thinking of you, worrying about you. Lauren tried to track you down. She wanted to call, but she couldn't find a current phone number.”

Lauren. I hadn't spoken to her in so long.

“Thank you,” I said, “for the flowers, and everything. I'm all right, though, really. Just a lot going on.” I was still reclined in the chair, and it was a bit uncomfortable talking to him this way, like I was on a therapist's couch.

“Well, you might want to think about getting a mouth guard to wear at night, at least until your stress levels ease up. You don't need a crown, but I'll have to grind down the sharp edge.” He pulled the instrument tray closer.

I tried to sit up. “How much will it cost?”

“Relax,” he said. “This one's on me. It'll only take a few minutes.”

“You don't have to do that,” I said. “I can pay.”

Ben smiled. “I know, but I won't let you. I have a favor to ask, and this is my way of buttering you up.”

He leaned in, and it occurred to me that I hadn't been in such close proximity to a man since Dr. Endicott. I instinctively pressed my arm against my ribs, the scars from my accident hidden like squirmy things on the underside of a log. I tried to keep my eyes closed while Ben worked, though it was hard not to stare at him, to compare this version of him to the one in my memory. It was similar, in a way, to viewing age-progressed images of the twins—the disconcerting sense that I was looking at a stranger who bore a slight resemblance to someone I'd loved. Ben's hair was cut short, no longer sticking up every which way, and his face had lost its boyish softness. Dark stubble covered the acne scars along his jawline, and I remembered how badly he had wanted to grow a mustache the summer after sixth grade. We had ridden our bikes to the public pool almost every day that summer, and on the way home we would sometimes stop at an abandoned house at the edge of the woods, though I knew Grammy watched the clock and worried the entire time I was gone.

“I wish I could shave,” Ben had said one afternoon. We had spread our beach towels out on the sloping back porch of the house. If we lay down flat on our stomachs, we couldn't see above the weeds.

“Why?” I asked. “It looks painful.” The one time I had watched my father shave, he'd nicked himself, the razor dragging a swath of blood down his neck.

“We're gonna be in junior high. All the other guys are already shaving.”

“No, they're not,” I said. “If they say they are, they're probably lying.”

I was already resigned to the fact that I was a late bloomer. My body refused to exhibit any of the signs of womanhood I'd been promised in the health class film that the girls had watched while the boys were sent outside to play baseball. Some of the girls in my class had been wearing training bras since fourth grade, and many had graduated to real ones. That spring, I had fretted over the hard knots of tissue that had developed beneath the skin of my flat chest. Convinced that cancerous tumors were growing inside me, I had reluctantly confided in my mother. She had rolled over to grab a bottle of muscle relaxants from her nightstand, irritated that I'd woken her. It was four in the afternoon.

It's not cancer,
she'd snorted, tapping a pill into her palm.
Don't they teach you this stuff at school? Congratulations. You're becoming a woman.
The film had said we would grow breasts. It hadn't mentioned anything about stony lumps that would, for me, take years to soften and expand.

“Feel this,” I had said, taking Ben's hand and placing it on my flat, twelve-year-old chest as we lay on the porch of the abandoned house. His fingers rested uncertainly on my shirt, and I pressed them into my flesh. “You think not having hair on your face is bad.” His ears had turned pink, and he had smiled sheepishly, his hand lingering and then falling away.

When Ben finished working on my tooth, I ran my tongue over the smooth edge, the damage seemingly undone. “Thank you,” I said. “Now, what was the favor you wanted to ask me?”

I was hoping, irrationally, that he would ask for things to go back to the way they were, that we could somehow undo the distance between us, as simply as pulling slack from a rope.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “You remember my mother.”

“She's unforgettable.”

Ben smirked. “Something like that. Anyway, she's heading up the visitors bureau now, and she's been up in arms over some report that named Keokuk the worst town in the state. She's working with the historical society to set up one of those holiday home tours as part of an initiative to boost tourism and revitalize the town, and she would love to include Arrowood.”

“That sounds great,” I said. “But I don't know about opening Arrowood up to tourists. I mean, I just got back myself.”

“I know,” he said. “I don't want to pressure you. She wanted me to ask you, and I was going to wait until you got settled, but then you showed up today. I was thinking about how you were always so into local history, and all the old houses. Seems like a good fit, something you might enjoy.”

He was right about the old houses, though I doubted I would enjoy anything that involved his mother. “I'll think about it,” I said.

He smiled. “Thanks. I'd better get back to work, but I'd love to get together and catch up soon. Want to do dinner this weekend? Maybe Saturday at the yacht club?”

My family had belonged to the yacht club
before,
in our former life, and we'd eaten dinner there dozens of times with the Ferrises. It wasn't fancy like the name implied, just a clubhouse with a restaurant and some docks. My dad had kept a ski boat there. The boat had a glitter-flecked, ruby-red hull that reminded me of Dorothy's shoes in
The Wizard of Oz,
so Dad had dubbed it the
Ruby Slipper
.

We spent a lot of time on the boat before my mother got pregnant with the twins. Dad would be in the driver's seat, his back and shoulders deeply sunburned, a can of Coors in his hand. I would sit backward, the wind whipping my hair in my face, and watch my mother slice through the wake on her skis, her pale hair flickering behind her, the river calm but for us splitting the surface, our waves diminishing as they raced toward shore.

“Sure,” I said to Ben. “The club's fine.”

“Great. I'll see you Saturday, then. My cell number's on there.” He handed me a business card with
BENJAMIN FERRIS, DDS
in glossy letters, his fingers curling around mine and then sliding away. “I can pick you up around seven.” My hand warmed where he'd touched me, like a match had been struck across my skin.

Back at the house, I stood at the kitchen sink and ate a Pop-Tart without toasting it. I was debating eating another one when I spotted Mrs. Ferris out in the yard near their carriage house, staring at Arrowood. I backed away from the window, watching her from the side. She tilted her head, as though looking up at the second or third story, and then she turned and disappeared into the carriage house.

I wondered how hard she would try to convince me to participate in her home tour. Maybe I should suggest that she'd have better luck organizing a tour of all the abandoned houses, for people who were into ruin porn. I was afraid, if I opened Arrowood up to strangers, that it would attract people for the wrong reasons, that they would be snapping selfies in Violet and Tabitha's bedroom and looking for ghosts.

Still, part of me was enticed by the idea of having a holiday celebration at Arrowood. My parents used to throw a Christmas party every year, up until that last year when we were packing up to move. They had a twelve-foot-tall spruce delivered from a tree farm, and Dad would haul the Arrowood family ornaments down from the storage room on the third floor. In kindergarten I made a paper angel with my handprints as wings, and Dad had placed it at the top of the tree, so high up that I could barely see it from the floor.