Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (32 page)

“No, thank you,” Livvie said. She set the water and Ambien on the nightstand.

Charlotte reached for the first hanger on the bed, which held a pair of black chinos, and hung it in the closet. She wished she could stand there and gaze into the closet instead of having to look at the rest of the room.

Livvie said, “I know I'm only going to be here for tonight, but I wanted to put my things out anyway. Jesse's things. I don't think I could relax without them.”

“It's okay,” Charlotte said. She turned toward the bed and reached for the next hanger and took her time placing it inside the closet.

Livvie said, “I did something I'm not sure about now.” Charlotte found that if she kept her gaze low, sweeping across the floor, she could still turn to the bed to retrieve the hangers one at a time. “What did you do?” she asked.

“I left a note for Jesse. On his pillow. Telling him where I am.”

Charlotte picked up a hanger, felt the weight of the clothing but could not identify it, kept looking at the floor as she turned, and the piece of clothing swung slightly with the movement. She placed the hanger on the rail but left her hand there, held to the rail because she thought her knees might give out, thought the darkness deeper inside the closet might pull her in. She asked, “What aren't you sure about?”

“I mean, what if Denny comes back? I wouldn't want him coming here to get me.”

Charlotte's chest ached. Her throat felt clogged. She wanted to run to the bathroom and throw up, but she doubted she had the strength to do so. When she spoke, she thought her voice sounded odd, dusky and thick. “Denny won't dare come to my house. He's surely not that stupid, is he?”

Charlotte waited for the answer, but there was none. Instead she heard or maybe only felt Livvie approaching, felt her standing there behind her. Now Charlotte turned away from the closet, and there was Livvie with a wistful, small smile, a still-crooked smile from the swelling that had not gone all the way down. She had the little spiral notebook in her hand. “Can I show you this?” she said. “It's one of those flip books, you know? Just peel back the bottom corner and riffle through the pages.”

Charlotte's hand was shaking when she took the notebook, so she moved quickly, hoping Livvie wouldn't notice the trembling. She held the notebook in the palm of her left hand, used her right thumb to expose the sketches in the pages' corners.

“Isn't that clever?” Livvie said. “That's supposed to be me hanging up clothes on the clothesline.”

“He's got the laundry basket, the clothespins, and everything,” Charlotte said.

“He was always making things like that for me. I only brought a few of the things back with me.”

Charlotte looked at her and smiled and felt sick to her stomach. She handed the notebook back to Livvie, who returned it to its place atop the dresser.

“You don't think that if Denny does come back,” Livvie said, “he'll destroy the things I left there, do you? Just out of spite? I mean, all of our clothes are still there. All of Jesse's clothes and most of mine.”

“If you want to,” Charlotte said, though even as she heard the words she knew they were a mistake, “we can go back tomorrow and get everything. This dresser is still empty, right? There's plenty of room. And there's a whole other bedroom.”

“I probably would if I was going to stay longer.”

“Maybe you should consider it,” Charlotte said, though the sense of having made a mistake grew stronger with every word, the confusion in the repetition she heard inside her head, the voice asking,
What are you doing here, Charlotte? What are you doing?
She blinked and looked at the far wall, and everything looked strange to her then, familiar yet not at all, the pale green paint on the walls and the corner of the lace curtain. She slid her gaze to the right and looked out the window below the half-raised blind, saw her backyard extending out to Mike Verner's field, the clothesline stretched across the sky. From where she stood, she could not see the barn or, just beyond it, the other leg of the
L
-shaped field, but she knew they were out there, always out there. Past the barn and the field were the trees where the crows roosted. It never changed, never would. The scene was the scene, she could not paint over it. Put a new blank canvas on the easel and the old picture would bleed through. That's why she couldn't paint, she realized. Because no amount of paint could ever cover the old picture. That constant scene. That one irredeemable moment.

She turned and looked at Livvie, who was standing there now, hanging up the rest of her clothing. She watched Livvie place the last hanger on the rail and then turn to her, smiling, and Charlotte felt the tightness in her neck and at the base of her skull, and all she wanted was to call Livvie to the window and have her look out, have her see what Charlotte always saw out there . . . have what must happen happen . . . let everything come to its end.

And Livvie told her, “This is the nicest bedroom, Charlotte. I can't believe how nice it is.”

“I'm glad you like it,” was as much as Charlotte could manage.

W
HAT were you thinking?
Charlotte asked herself again. It was the same question she had been asking all through the evening, during the light supper of canned soup they shared, during the clean-up and awkwardness of silence that followed. They had tried to watch television for a while, but the bottle of wine did nothing to calm Charlotte, only made her more restless and anxious, so that at not yet nine, she went into the powder room and switched on the mirror light and looked at herself in the glass, wondered how all that frenetic activity beneath her skin and inside her skull could not be visible somehow. She felt as if every cell in her body was racing around aimlessly, drunk with fear. Her skull felt as if it must soon burst apart from the pressure. Yet in the mirror Charlotte appeared calm, still, so self-contained. Charlotte looked at that woman and asked, a whisper, “What were you thinking?”

She returned to the living room and opened her hands to Livvie. Two Ambiens lay in her right palm, a Vicodin in her left. “Take your pick,” Charlotte said.

Livvie touched the Vicodin. “This is the one that made me feel so spacey?”

“Right,” said Charlotte. “The other ones will help you sleep.”

“I feel like I've been sleeping all day,” Livvie said.

“I know, but trust me. You don't want to lie awake all night. You'll just lie there in the darkness and relive everything.”

Livvie picked the Ambiens out of Charlotte's hand.

Charlotte popped the Vicodin, on top of the Ambiens she had already taken in the powder room, then lifted her wineglass to Livvie and toasted, “Chin-chin.”

A
ND now, alone in her bed at half past eleven, the house quiet but for the usual ticks and creaks, the occasional hum of the furnace blower, Charlotte felt a pleasant heaviness in her body but no sleepiness. Her cells, at least, had ceased their mad racing about, and she felt the peculiar sense that her body had lapsed into a coma, her limbs motionless and content to remain that way while her mind continued to grind on, though without the anxiety now, in a kind of reconciled acceptance of the sadness of its thoughts.

Charlotte understood now what Livvie's son had meant to her. How she must have clung to his every smile and kindness, and how he must have clung to hers. They had been alone in a world filled with malice and threat. But at least they had been alone together. But now . . .

Ever since the candlelight vigil, Charlotte had been struggling to adjust to her jarred perception of the boy. Until she saw his sketches, she had been able, most times, to think of him as just a nasty little boy, sullen and angry, destined to perpetuate life's misery. But when she had been forced to see his talent, his sullenness took on a different hue. Maybe, she thought, he was sullen because he felt different from his peers, different from those rough-and-tumble boys who only want to fight and play football. Jesse wanted to draw pictures. And now Charlotte had met his mother too—
Had brought her here, for God's sake! Charlotte, what were you thinking?
—a woman who was sad, yes, but sweet to the bone, and with such a mother, Jesse surely must have dropped his mask of sullenness. Maybe, to a lesser degree, with his art teacher too—the woman who had organized the candlelight vigil and had put his pictures on display.
Had he been sweet with her, his teacher?
Charlotte wondered.
Had he trusted her? Had he smiled at her with no trace of anger in his eyes?

Had Jesse and his mother snuggled together in their tight little trailer?
Charlotte wondered.
Had they played Yahtzee, worked on his homework at the kitchen table?

It must have been so,
Charlotte told herself.
They had each other, whereas you . . . You had your art, or so you thought. You had color and light.

C
HARLOTTE dreamed that the man made of shadow came toward her in her backyard. He came close enough that she could see him motioning with his hand, telling her to come with him, follow him. She rose out of her lawn chair and walked behind him through the darkness. They walked past the barn and into the field, and as they walked she could hear more and more clearly the woofing of the vultures. Just after the man entered the trees with Charlotte close behind him, she looked up and saw the branches heavy with crows, and she wondered,
How is it possible that I can see them so well in the darkness?
There were so many crows that they completely obliterated the sky, yet she could see each crow distinctly, the oily, blue-black feathers, the shining yellow eyes. Then she smelled the carcass, the dead opossum, and the scent was overpowering, sickening and palpable, greasy on her skin. The man said, “Here,” and she looked at him and saw that he was smiling. She could feel the vultures milling about her feet, their long feathers dragging through the leaves, their red-skinned heads brushing against her legs. “Here,” he said again, and nodded toward the ground. But she would not look down because she knew that she should not. “Just let me look at the crows,” she told him. The man's smile faded then, and he backed away from her, and one of the vultures walked between her legs, and because her legs were naked now, because she was suddenly naked, the scrape of its feathers startled her so that her body went rigid, and she wanted to scream but could not, she wanted to run but could not, and when she awoke suddenly, gasping and sitting up, the scent and the taste of the rotting opossum still filled every breath, so that she rolled off the bed quickly and grabbed the little trash container beside her bed and knelt there heaving with the dawn's light falling in through the window and onto her back.