Gravedigger's Cottage (14 page)

“Leakage is a very serious problem,” Dad insisted, sounding like a wounded bear. “This house needs to be sealed up tight for its own good.”

“Maybe the house doesn’t
want
to be sealed up tight for its own good,” I said back, my voice soaring above his.

“Yes, it
does,”
he said, louder.

“No, it
doesn’t,”
I said, louder.

I crushed up the money and held it tight in my fist as I spun away from Dad. I marched out of the bathroom, passing Walter, who was all but bawling his eyes out except that he was too busy being a little man about it and so was instead trembling and growling with the effort of keeping it all inside.

“Oh, just stop it,” I snapped, and dragged him out of the bathroom, out through the kitchen, and out the back door.

Which I slammed, hard enough to make the dartboard shake loose.

He must have been right on our heels, because he was instantly there, at the dartboard. “You don’t understand,” he said, and I turned to see his eye peeking from the slim space between the board and the hole that was once the cat door. He must have been on hands and knees.

I looked at the eye, and the eye looked at me. Blinked.

I was going to answer, but then couldn’t. Because I didn’t know what the response was. I didn’t know if I did understand. And I didn’t know if I didn’t.

I grabbed Walter by the shirt and dragged him off to do our shopping, alone.

We still didn’t know the area. How could we, right? We hadn’t been around very long, and we didn’t actually go anywhere besides the beach, the yard, and the corner market. So the only option was the mall that sat perched like a big concrete vulture on the outer edge of the town, at the other end of the one regularly run bus route from the village. It ran from the end of our road, out to the mall, and back, as if those were the two notable destinations in this little world of ours.

It was called the Seaside Shopping Center, even though it was not by the seaside, even though it was about eight miles from the seaside, even though you could not see or hear or smell the sea from the Seaside Shopping Center and being there made you want nothing so much as to be back by the actual seaside.

None of that was important anyhow. What was important was that Walter and I got on the bus together by ourselves, we got to the mall together by ourselves, and we were going to go through with the traditional McLuckie day out before school opening together by ourselves. That was what was important. That was what was good.

“I miss Dad,” Walter said as we walked through the big glass doors of the main entrance and stood in front of a very sorry little Radio Shack that looked like it was abandoned but was, in fact, not.

“None of that,” I said firmly, without any emotion because the situation did not deserve any of my emotion. “No missing Dad. Dad’s not here.”

“Duh,” Walter said. “How else could I miss him?”

“Yah, well tell me this: How do you feel when we’re at home?”

He paused, searched, decided. Decided on the truth.

“I miss him at home, too.”

“Right. Maybe you just have to get used to that,” I said, stepping along past Radio Shack down the main drag of the center.

“Get used to missing Dad? Just, like, get used to it? How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know how, Walter, just do. Look at me. I learned. I stopped missing him already ages ago. While we were still on the bus even.”

“Liar. I heard you whimpering when you were pretending to be looking out the window.”

“Liar.”

“Liar
liar.”

“Anyway, I was not whimpering. I was sighing with frustration and contempt.”

“Hmm,” Walter said, going up to the window of the Puppy Palace and staring at a lazy family of kittens, “sounds just like whimpering.”

We were both putting our fingers up against the window, like everybody does with the captive cats and dogs of mall pet shops, to get them to put their paws up against the glass. The cats looked up at us and stared, motionless.

“Leakage,”
I said, steaming the glass window in front of my mouth.

“Yah, right, leakage,” Walter said, though I was not quite sure why. Perhaps his solidarity was returning.

We turned away from the pet store, waving at the kittens. They did not wave back. We once again confronted the reality of the mall. If that was what you could call it.

It was a very tired mall. Air-conditioning was probably its main attraction, as the place was haunted by ghostly old people walking silently up and down and around, getting their exercise without threatening their paleness. Young people were in short supply, or anyway middle-young people were. A few very young yelpy kids were tagging along with mothers, presumably buying them their school stuff and working up a sweat doing it, regardless of the nice air-conditioning. And it still seemed empty. And as if all movement was somehow slowed down just a tick.

There was not a single store I had ever shopped in before. There were off-price clothes places and a shop that sold cheeses, cutting boards, and sausage. There was Radio Shack, which I knew of but never considered entering. There was a place that sold Irish china butter dishes and crystal lamps and brown bread. There was a place that sold posters, and throw rugs that looked like posters and T-shirts that could be made of the same images as the posters and throw rugs. There were empty shops. The feel of the mall, as we walked through it, was very much of a place that no longer existed, or at least wasn’t supposed to.

“This place scares me,” Walter said as we sat ourselves down at the fountain that served as the shopping center’s center point. The place overall was shaped like a cross, and we were plunked at the crux of it, with the fountain just sort of weeping meekly at our backs.

“Don’t be silly, Walter. You sleep in the Gravedigger’s Cottage, for goodness sake.”

“This is scarier. I miss Dad.”

“Stop missing Dad. I order you.”

“I hate it when you’re in charge.
Insister.”

“I hate it too. Tough.”

“What are we doing here, Sylvia?”

“We’re learning to fend for ourselves.”

“No we’re not. We’re sitting in the middle of a big nothing mall, on the edge of a big nothing fountain that sounds like a urinal, with old people running circles around us. I hate it.”

“Snap out of it. We have a job to do.”

“I hate it. How much money do we have? Can we get giant chocolate-chip cookies over there at the Giant Chocolate-Chip Cookie Company?”

I didn’t even know how much money we had. I just stuffed the money Dad gave us right down into my pocket without bothering to count. As if looking at it, counting it, acknowledging it at all was somehow giving in and making things all right, which they were not.

I shrugged. I pulled out the bills.

By the time I finished counting—with Walter right there counting along—I was rather startled. I counted it a second time, then just looked at it.

“Why did Dad give us four hundred dollars?” Walter asked.

“I don’t know. How do I know? Maybe he wants us to dress really, really well this year. Maybe he wants us to buy school clothes for the next three years so we don’t have to do this again for a long time. Maybe he wants us to bring him home a sandwich. I don’t know. I don’t know, Walter. But yes, we do have enough for a giant chocolate-chip cookie at the Giant Chocolate-Chip Cookie Company.”

I got to my feet and marched toward the Giant Chocolate-Chip Cookie Company.

“Jeez, I was just asking, Sylvia,” he said, scuttling along behind me.

We discovered that they stocked more varieties than chocolate chip. We discovered it thoroughly, in fact, by ordering chocolate chip and double chocolate fudge chunk and oatmeal raisin and peanut butter Reese’s Pieces.

We gorged ourselves. They were not lying about the giantness of their cookies. We ate and ate until we could eat no more, eating, even, beyond the point where there was any point, or any pleasure, to eating any more. We ate, in fact, to the point where we were now going to have to buy slightly larger school clothes.

If we did even buy school clothes.

“What are you thinking, Sylvia?” Walter asked as we waddled along, heroically trying to wash down the cookies with cold fizzy root beers. I became aware that we had joined the slow-motion exercise circuit, walking the edges of the mall with the old folks. I became aware that I did not care.

“You know you are not supposed to ask me that, Walter.”

“Yah, I know,” he said. “So okay, what
do
you think?”

It was only a subtle difference, true. But it was difference enough, and within the rules.

“I think I don’t feel very much like school shopping.”

“But we have to.”

“No, we don’t. Who says so? I’m in charge, remember?”

He shrugged. Less an
I don’t know
than an
I give up.

We walked. We got in step with the old folks ahead and we kept that step for fifteen, twenty minutes, fifty minutes, walking up the main drag of the mall, left into the arm of the cross and back out again. Down the main drag, up, down the right arm of the cross, and again.

It was bizarrely soothing. The people here were happy to be here, closed up in the peaceful, pointless Seaside Shopping Center. It was temperate, flat, protective, unchallenging.

But happy, somehow. I watched people talking, joking, complaining, laughing, moaning. It all looked like fun. A low-key feeble kind of fun, but real-life fun. I was jealous.

We walked past the music store that sold those Wurlitzer organs that played every instrument all by themselves and sounded like a chorus of ice cream trucks and dancing monkey shows. We went past the Bargain Books store with nobody in it and the bored-looking salesgirl behind the counter with not a thing to do who still stared off into space instead of picking up any of the books. We passed the Great Outdoor Sport and Game Shop with its big diorama of ducks and moose in the window, even though ducks and moose were not likely to buy what was on offer. We passed the jewelry store, the pet store again, the toy store, Brigham’s ice cream, and the Giant Chocolate-Chip Cookie Company, which made us gag and walk a little faster. We walked and walked and settled into a kind of numb groove, but didn’t get any closer to what we wanted, what we thought, what we hoped for.

Until we got the feeling we were being pursued. I felt it, looked at Walter, who felt it, too. We picked up the pace, but it didn’t help. Somebody was right behind us.

“Hi,” Dad said in a shaky, overanxious voice.

I turned, and threw myself at him.

“Yess! Dad,” Walter said, jumping in.

“How’s the shopping going?” Dad said, looking around as if he were the one being followed.

It was the first time in at least a week he had left the house. It could have been a year. He had managed to trim the eyebrows, and did cut the beard right off. Along with several hunks of his face. There was still blood seeping from openings in his neck, and his brilliant white T-shirt was speckled with red. He kept nodding and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

But he was there. Which was out of the house.

“How did you know where we were?” Walter asked.

Dad shrugged. “This is all there is,” he said apologetically. Looking around again, he winced. Then shrugged another apology.

“It’s okay, Dad, it really is,” I said, meaning the mall, but I could have been talking about other stuff. “There are some okay things here. And it’s quiet. Nice.”

“Good air,” Dad said.

“Right,” said Walter, “the air-conditioning is the best. We’ve been walking like a hundred miles without breaking a sweat.”

“We ate at the Giant Chocolate-Chip Cookie Company, Dad,” I said.

“Did you? That’s all you ate? You just ate cookies and nothing else?” The words were familiar enough. He would not approve. But the tone was something else entirely. The tone was pleasant. Happy for us to be happy, if malnourished.

“And guess what, Dad?”

“What?”

“They have apple cookies.”

“Apple cookies? No.”

“Apple cookies. Yes. Giant apple cookies.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Well. Well then. Do you think we should get one?”

“Oh god, Dad,” Walter said, covering his mouth with both hands.

Dad laughed. “Well then, do you think we should get one for me?”

“Well,” I said, feeling buoyant and generous, “I do have almost four hundred dollars.”

“What?” Dad gasped. “What? What are you doing with that kind of money, Sylvia?”

“You gave it to me.”

“I did not.”

“You did so.”

“Oh. Oh my. I didn’t know I did that. I didn’t realize…”

He seemed very sad about this. He looked at his feet, then up at me and Walter.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I reached in and pulled out the money, extending it to Dad.

He looked away from the money, back to his feet.

“Does that mean you are not going to buy me a giant apple cookie after all?”

“Of course we are, Dad,” Walter said, grabbing my arm and shaking it, making the money fall onto the floor.

The three of us fairly dove to the floor to retrieve it. It was, after all, more money than Walter and I had ever seen at one time. And with Dad showing no sign of returning to the working world, more than he might see for a long time to come.

We each had a bunch of bills, each crouched on the floor to form a tight-knit little circle. Elderly walkers strolled by above us, looking down, smiling nervously.

“Suppose we should go on now and spend this on school gear, huh?” Dad said with anti-enthusiasm.

“There is no place in here to buy anything, Dad. You couldn’t get an outfit here if you wanted to. Unless you were dressing up for a daytime TV talk show.”

He made a noise then that could have been
hmm,
but sounded to me like
good.
He said it was
hmm.

He stood up, we stood up. We each had a share of the money.

“Let’s go and try and find a real clothes store someplace,” I said, reason once again being my job.

“No,” Dad said immediately. He was looking around again, searching, sizing. There was an odd little glow about his face as he took in the motley array of businesses on offer and the barely lifelike population of the place. “We just got here.”