Bird Song (70 page)

“Hey, watch it, that’s my car!”

“Oh please, you just punched it just a few seconds ago, you big baby.”

“Well yeah, because it’s
my
car.”

“Well, I’m the fairer sex—what more damage can I do to it that you haven’t done?”

“Fairer sex my—”

His response was muffled as Stacy climbed into the back seat and pulled the driver’s side seat down.
 
She scooted behind my seat and wrapped her arms around me.

“I’m sorry.
 
I…I’m just…sorry.”

I patted her hands and stifled a sniffle.
 
Graham reached over and placed his hand on mine.

“I’m here for you, Rocky.”

I smiled through my tears.

“Thanks, Frank.”

Stacy’s head popped between the seats and she looked at the two of us as though we had lost our minds.

“Did you guys snort something while I was gone?
 
Rocky?
 
Frank?”

Graham pointed to the ornament that hung beneath his rearview mirror—a cluster of different key chains, all bearing logos or images from our favorite movie.

“Oh.
 
God, why didn’t I notice that before; you guys really are weird, aren’t you?” Stacy commented as she reached her hand forward to examine the odd collection that Graham had gathered over the years.

“We must be if we’re hanging out with you,” Graham quipped as he started the car.

“So says the guy dating the angel,” Stacy laughed sadly.

Graham said nothing as he pulled out of his stall.
 
He put the car in drive and the silence in the car followed us as we headed towards my house, the dark streets hiding what I knew the others couldn’t know, couldn’t feel.

Leave me alone, Robert.
 
Stop following me and just go away.

The air around us turned cold and I watched as Graham flipped the heater on, his breath coming out in puffs of vapor despite the sudden blast of hot air.

I stared out of the window and pressed my head against the glass, watching the reflection of my tears trail down my face as my body slowly began to shiver from the sudden chill.

I love you, Grace Anne Shelley.

I rubbed the tears with the back of my hand, knowing that it was a futile gesture, but not caring.
 
I closed my eyes and the warmth started to slowly return as we neared my home.

The lights were on, a familiar figure stood in the doorway, waiting for us.

“She’s fast,” Graham muttered, his tone flat.

“Yeah.
 
If you thought it was bad with me, you’re in for a rude awakening,” Stacy quipped.
 
“Now hurry up and get out—I have to pee.”

Graham quickly opened his door and climbed out of his seat, pulling the lever to release the chair’s back to allow Stacy to exit the back.
 
He left and came around to the passenger side, opening the door and offering me a hand.

I took it and stepped out, realizing for the first time that my arm was throbbing.
 
I apparently wasn’t the only person who had noticed that my arm was injured when I heard three equally shocked gasps as the extent of the damage to my arm was revealed in the porch light of the house.

“Oh goodness, look at your arm,” Stacy said, her fingers shaking as she reached out to gently touch the odd peacock-hued pattern on my bicep.

“What the hell did that?
 
Did that come from Robert?” Graham asked, shocked by what he saw.

I looked down at my arm and frowned.
 
The same, strange honeycomb-patterned bruising that had covered my hand after I had hit Lark last year now filled up half of my arm.
 
I looked at Lark’s surprised face and she shook her head in confusion.

“I don’t think he intended to do that,” she said quickly when she saw the anger in Graham begin to grow exponentially.

“I don’t care if he intended to do it or not.
 
He’s hurt her and he’s allowed others to hurt her.”
 
He turned to face her, a sudden thought coming to him.
 
“How long did you know about all of this?”

Lark bit her lip and shook her head, unwilling to answer, but knowing that she couldn’t help it.
 
She fought against the instinct to tell the truth, finally giving up just before her voice turned into a scream.

“Since the day she came home from the hospital.”

Graham nodded his head, his expression becoming hard, his eyes cold, and turned away, walking with me inside of the house.
 
Stacy followed, as did Lark, who closed the door behind us, unable to look at Graham again after his response to her answer.

Wordlessly, I walked upstairs to my room and began to collect my things to take a shower.
 
I left sodden, muddy footprints all over the carpet as I did so, but I really didn’t care.
 
I headed to the bathroom, passing a worried Stacy, and closed the door behind me.

I removed the dress and undergarments, making great ceremony of ripping the corset off from the front, popping each little hook and eye, before tossing it to the ground.

I stared at myself in the mirror and watched as I slowly crumpled inward, all barriers gone, all inhibitions disintegrated into nothing as I finally allowed myself to cave into the hole that now made up who I was.

I felt my tears, hot and unrelenting, fall down my face and splash onto my chest, my belly, my legs.
 
I stared at myself as my eyes and nose grew redder with each passing moment, unable to handle the constant tide of tears and everything that coincides with them.
 
I saw my lips begin to tremble and flutter as the once silent sobs started to grow in intensity, the sounds resembling those of a wounded animal.

I ignored the knocks and the calls of concern that came through the door, and when my body began to shake, the spasms of each painful acknowledgement of the betrayal that Robert had dealt me, only then did I wrap my arms around myself, a pitiful effort to keep that last vestige of restraint in place.

I stood there for what felt like too long and yet not long enough.
 
My eyes had grown grotesquely puffy by the time I finally headed into the shower to wash the muck out of my hair and body.

I remained in the shower only long enough to soap up and rinse off.
 
I dressed quickly and opened the bathroom door to see three anxious pairs of eyes waiting on the other side.

They said nothing as I walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me.
 
I could hear them crowd around my door, silently contemplating whether to open it or leave me alone.

I threw my dress into the hamper beside my dresser and glanced up at the mirror that was raised above it.
 
Stuck to the side were photos—images of happier moments—or simply blissfully ignorant moments of Robert and I.

I reached up to remove them, the movement slow thanks to the pain in my arm.
 
When my mirror was clear of any reminders, I walked over to the closet and pulled out the shoe box that held the sandals Robert had bought for me to wear to Hannah’s wedding.
 
I removed them and placed the photos beneath the tissue paper.
 
I replaced the shoes and topped it with the lid.

Sighing, I walked over to the trashcan beside the nightstand next to my bed and placed the box in there.
 
I continued to make these small trips until the small receptacle was overflowing with items that had been given to me by or reminded me of Robert.

“This is going to be hard enough with you still in my head,” I whispered.
 
“I don’t need to see these things, too.”

I crawled onto my bed and placed my head against my pillow, feeling the tears begin anew as I stared through the dark windows, imagining a pair of silver eyes staring through at me, sadness and remorse saturating each glimmering iris.
 
I shook my head at the image.
 
“It’s too late,” I mouthed, and then pressed a closed fist to my lips, stifling another sob.

When my eyelids finally fell from the weight of exhaustion and sleep, they did not do so before my mind tricked me into seeing those eyes once more, this time the silver replaced by golden rings.

I woke up the next morning in a fog, feeling strangely weightless as the scent of flowers drilled through my nostrils.
 
I opened my eyes to see my room turned into a sea of bright yellow as every single inch was covered by a pot of lilies.
 
Note cards stuck out of them like little white flags, each one bearing the same two-word phrase:
 
forgive me.

I asked Graham and Stacy to help me remove them, telling them to take them wherever they wanted to, as long as they were nowhere near the house.
 
For the next two days, I woke up to the same cloying aroma of the bright pink and white flowers and each time, Graham and Stacy silently carried each pot outside into awaiting cars.
 
Finally, on the fourth day, I simply asked them to move the pots outside.

Surprisingly enough, while Dad and Janice were away on their honeymoon at a destination spa in Rockbridge—another gift from
Ameila
—Stacy and Graham somehow managed to be around each other without starting a single argument.
 
Lark, somehow sensing that her presence reminded me far too much of Robert, kept at a distance.
 
Her relationship with Graham had taken a sudden
u-turn
after he discovered that she had known nearly as long as Robert had that Sam had tried to kill me, and so she never came into the house again after that first night.

I tried to get Graham to understand her reason for doing so, but he couldn’t accept it.
 
He was loyal to a fault, I realized, and the guilt that I bore from knowing that he was preventing himself from being happy simply because he didn’t want to betray me too was difficult to stomach.
 
Stacy kept her opinion on the subject to herself, even from me, though I was certain she’d had several discussions about it with Lark during the moments she wasn’t with me.

The bruising on my arm which had angered Graham and shocked Lark and Stacy had vanished that first morning—I didn’t bother pretending that I didn’t know how.
 
I just didn’t think about it at all.

It was during one of the rare moments when I was alone—Stacy was at a Doctor’s appointment while Graham was attending his first day waiting tables at the diner near the mall after quitting his job at the theater—that I decided to finally go up into the attic to grab some of the things for the baby that Janice had written down.

I took a flashlight with me, as well as a spare bulb in case the light up there wasn’t working.
 
I pulled down the ladder in the upstairs hallway and climbed up into the dusty space, covering my nose with my hand as I did so.
 
I pulled on the chain attached to the overhead lamp and nodded knowingly as the familiar crackle of a broken filament sounded.
 
I slowly unscrewed the bulb and replaced it with the fresh one, applauding myself as the numerous boxes and sheet covered objects were illuminated in the bright, faux-daylight glow.

“Now then, which one contains all of my baby stuff?” I asked out loud.

I placed the flashlight near the edge of the opening and began to walk around, inspecting the dusty boxes with careful eyes, reading each label in the smooth, graceful strokes of my mother’s hand, and the brisk, short strokes that belonged to my father.

I soon made out the outline of a crib—or at least, parts of a crib—beneath a grayish-pink sheet and lifted the dusty cloth off of it as gently as possible.
 
The cloud of dust was minimal, and the light sufficient enough for me to see that the sheet had been covering the four sides that made up the basic frame of what had once been my crib.
 
I ran my fingers down the smooth curves of the white wooden rails, trying to see if I could ever remember being behind them.
 
I couldn’t, of course, but it felt good to try to remember something pleasant.

I pulled the rails out from its hiding spot and maneuvered them to the ladder.
 
I began climbing down, bringing each one down with me, one-by-one.
 
When all four were out of the attic, I dragged them into the bedroom that would soon be Matthew’s.
 
Janice had been busy painting the walls several different colors—each wall was a pale, pastel shade of blue, yellow, green, and orange—and arranging matching patchwork curtains against the lone window that mirrored my own facing out into the street.

I repeated this trip several times with more items and boxes I discovered and could move on my own, making sure to uncover the items that I couldn’t so that they could be moved later without having to do any re-searching.
 
When I was done, I finally sat down in Matthew’s room to go through a box that had been labeled “Grace” in my mother’s handwriting.

The tape gave way quite easily, and I pulled out several tissue wrapped pieces of clothing, including a bonnet and a dress that I could only have guessed was what they used to bring me home in.
 
I carefully rewrapped them and placed them to the side as I pulled out several more objects that appeared to have been stored as I exited infancy and entered toddlerhood.
 
There was even a pacifier that looked so mangled, I wasn’t sure if it had belonged to me or some mystery dog my parents might have owned before I was old enough to remember.