House of Wonder (12 page)

Easter

1961

H
attie liked the Hooper boys. “They're just how boys are supposed to be,” she'd say of the three young men who lived next door and were handsome and cruel in equal measure. “Their mama's raising them right.” But Silla found them terrifying. And even though she stayed in her room when her daddy was traveling, which was most of the time, she avoided the window, which faced the fence that separated her own yard from theirs.

For each one of the three Hooper boys, there was an enormous dog, all three with muscled but hungry frames and the sort of matted brown and black fur that became burdensome in the heat. The dogs were kept tethered to an iron stake in the ground, where their world had a circumference of about forty grassless feet. Most
of the time, no one went anywhere near them, but sometimes the boys got bored. Sometimes, they would wait until the dogs weren't looking; then they'd run up and try to kick them. The dogs would lurch around and begin their pursuit, their teeth bared, their snarls ferocious, as the boys would scramble away, laughing, their voices adrenaline-spiked. They knew exactly where the limits lay, when the dogs' lines would become taut, where they'd meet the resistance of their collars.

Hattie would head out as soon as she heard their game start, deciding this was the moment to shake out a tablecloth or prune the roses. Sometimes she didn't need the guise of a chore. Sometimes she'd just lean against the porch railing, her lips curved into a crocodile smile, one of her feet sliding out of the back of her high heel. Hattie always wore high heels.

Once they had an audience, the boys became a bit more vicious, a bit more daring. They rarely got bitten, but when they did, before they even assessed their wounds, they'd look to make sure Hattie had been watching. “Serves you right,” she would say, her chin lifted regally. “You better go tell your mama to get the Mercurochrome.”

Silla could hear the Hoopers outside now, so she sat on the floor between her bed and the wall, singing quietly. She did everything quietly, though she couldn't have told you why. And when she noticed the door to her bedroom start to open, her body stiffened, and her song hid in her lungs. But it was her father's face that appeared. “Daddy,” she gasped, as she scrambled to her feet.

“How's my pretty girl?” he asked, as Silla hurried to him.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, noticing that his hands were tucked behind his back, hiding something from her
view. It was then that she heard the chirping. “I got a surprise for you,” said her father, as he brought around a small, lidless cardboard box.

Silla's smile was instant when she saw the chicks, when she matched their high-pitched peeps to their soft, butter-colored bodies. Their heads were lifted and eyes alert as they tried to grip the smooth bottom of the box and gain their footing with their tiny claws. “They're for Easter,” said her father, as Silla peered at them. “You like 'em?”

She nodded.

“Then go on,” he said, nudging the box toward her.

Silla slid the box from her father's hands and went to her bed, her eyes not moving from the chicks. She sat on the mattress, placing the container carefully on her lap. There were six of them. Six chicks. She counted them as they huddled to one corner of the cardboard, running her fingers over each of their tiny skulls. “Shhh,” she told them, chuckling. “It's all right.” Then she lifted her face to her father, blushing even before she spoke. “I'm singing with the choir tomorrow. At morning services.”

“You don't say,” said her father, staring at his daughter, who really had become quite lovely. “Well, well.”

Silla bit away her smile and looked back down at the chicks, feeling her father's attention linger. “You know, you should probably keep those outside, sugar,” said her father finally, giving his daughter a wink. “Hattie said she doesn't want any dirty ol' chickens in the house.”

For the rest of the evening, Silla stayed outside with the chicks, on the other end of the house from the Hoopers' yard. She picked them up one at a time, cradling them into her chest,
amazed at how light they were, at just how insignificant their bones felt. When her bedtime came, she put them in the shed with an old dishrag balled up in their box to help keep them warm. Surely, they needed something to do so.

The next morning, even before looking for her Easter basket, Silla slipped out of the house to check on them, a smile spreading instantly across her face as she opened the door to the shed to hear their greeting.

“You love those chicks, don't you, Silla?” asked her father, as Hattie massaged his shoulders after church. And Silla dipped her chin to her chest and smiled. “I'm glad, sugar,” he said as he reached for his tumbler, then looked again at his daughter. “You sang pretty at church today.” The drink was like liniment; you could see his muscles start to loosen. “You sang real pretty.”

Hattie's hand slid slowly down her father's chest. “Silla, honey. Why don't you go out to the shed?” she suggested. “Visit those birds of yours.”

•   •   •

That night, the rain started. Silla found its gentle persistence soothing. A thunderstorm was erratic. It would blow in and blow out, bringing spectacle and sensation. But a spring rainstorm would build gently, falling steadily until it passed through. And that night Silla slept soundly. The air was cool. Her father was home. And she heard nothing but the rain.

By the time she woke up in the morning, the skies had cleared and her father was gone again, back on the road. Still in her nightgown, she laced up her shoes and went out to the shed just as she had the day before. The ground was damp and almost bare in spots, and was still heavy with dew and a mist
that would soon succumb to the sun. Before she reached the shed, she knew something was wrong. Before she had set her fingers on the handle, they started to quiver. And when the morning light filled the dark shed, it was the silence that she noticed first. Then she realized that the box was gone.

She circled the shed. She looked under the old workbench and behind the rusted-out washbasin. Once she knew for certain that the chicks weren't there, something instinctual, some impulse for self-preservation, took over in her. She walked back in the house, trying to move like a ghost, invisible and unnoticed. But Hattie was in the kitchen, standing at the sink when she entered. “What's wrong, Priscilla?” she asked, her voice too solicitous, too kind.

Silla couldn't bring her gaze up from the floor. “My chicks are gone,” she whispered.

Hattie made a gentle
tsk
sound. “Ohhh,” she said. “Ain't that a shame?”

Silla would never mention the chicks again and her father would never ask, as nothing held Lee Harris's attention for long, least of all six baby chickens. But later that evening, while Hattie was watching her television program, Silla went back to the shed. Scanning the area around the door, her gaze caught on a small divot in the dirt, still moist with the previous night's rain. She slipped her finger inside, feeling its boundaries. There weren't very many things that could make a hole like that. It would have to be something slender, something sharp. The heel of a woman's shoe, maybe. And as it turned out, they weren't uncommon in the yard. In fact, Silla followed a path of them, one by one, from the shed to the edge of the Hoopers' fence, where the world of the dogs met hers.

Chickens and Rats

B
obby propped open the theater door, letting the girls walk out ahead of him, then gestured for me to do the same. “So what did you guys think?” I asked our small group as we hung together, walking down the theater's dimly lit corridor, lined with posters of coming attractions and doors to other worlds. But Gabby and Rose were too absorbed with each other to pay any attention to the question. I smiled at Bobby, feeling a flash of discomfort as I found myself at a momentary loss for what to say next. Knowing each other since childhood had put us in an uncomfortable gray area between total strangers and blood relatives.

“Gotta love a good rat story,” said Bobby.

Our footsteps fell into sync until we passed a poster for a campy horror movie that featured an enormous cobra—its body coiled, its hood spread wide. “Hey, do you remember Ron Frankney?” I asked, though I knew he did. Ron was part of Harwick lore in the same way Bobby was. In the same way Warren probably was. All figures from a shared youth whose myth was greater, more sensational, than their person.

Bobby chuckled, his chin dropping to his chest. “Yeah,” he said. “I remember Frankney. He had that”—he glanced at the girls and lowered his voice, in the way parents do when they are about to use anything less than G-rated language near their kids—“big-ass snake. He used to feed it live chickens.”

“It wasn't chickens,” I said. “It was rats!”

Bobby stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “I'm pretty sure it was chickens,” he said.

“It wasn't chickens!” I protested, relishing the feeling of being teased by a handsome man. “Where would he have even
gotten
live chickens in Harwick back then?”

“The Boorschmidts,” he said, as if the answer were obvious. And I felt my head fall back with the sort of laughter that silently seeps through the whole body, warming it entirely. The Boorschmidts were another Harwick legend, a trio of brothers who had a small farm near the center of town and in my youth had seemed ancient, though they had probably only been in their sixties at the time. They wore jeans that they belted with lengths of rope, and sold corn and their own hybrid string beans out of the back of their pickup truck. When the property around them became more developed, they sold off all but a small square of land, but didn't relocate themselves. Instead
they remained defiantly in their home—the yard complete with a half-dozen hound dogs and twice as many chickens—all in the midst of Harwick's suburban splendor.

We took a few more steps. “You know they finally sold the house,” said Bobby.

I had noticed that the lot had been razed, but never thought to ask my mother what had become of them. “Where'd they go?” I asked, having trouble picturing the Boorschmidt brothers anywhere other than in their ramshackle home.

Bobby's tone was softer. “I heard they went to a continuing care facility.”

“Oh, no,” I said, watching my feet as they moved along the maroon carpet. I supposed I had always imagined that the Boorschmidts would die one day all at once, collapsing simultaneously into their bowls of oatmeal. “That's so sad.”

We pushed out of the dark theater and into the bright expanse of the mall, with its light floors and atrium ceiling. “So I guess Lydia Stroppe was at our house the other day,” said Bobby, his tone both casual and confessional. It wasn't lost on me that he didn't refer to her as Lydia Parsons; maybe we all had a tendency to allow the past to supersede the present, to overlay who someone was now with who they had once been.

“Oh, really?” I asked lightly.

“Yeah, my parents wanted to get her opinion on listing their house.”

“You guys are moving?” I asked, hoping my voice revealed nothing.

As I watched my feet slide over the shiny floor, I felt an uncomfortable and unwelcome sense of loss. Yet Bobby's leaving Harwick shouldn't mean anything to me.

“My parents were starting to think about it, but now they want to wait until the market's a little stronger. My mom thinks moving somewhere warmer would be good for my dad's RA,” he said. “But now that I've started talking to Hewn Memorial about staying on, I honestly don't think they'll end up leaving.”

We passed a husband and wife with three little boys who all looked to be within a couple years of one another in age. I smiled at them and they smiled back. Suddenly Rose turned around. “Hey, Mom!” she said, her eyes wide and concerned. “Gabby says she's really, really hungry for ice cream.”

Gabby looked as though this was the first she was hearing about it. “Gabby, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Rose, all sympathetic nods. “She says it's her blood sugar.”

I immediately halted. “Rose Parsons,” I scolded. A boy in her class had type 1 diabetes and Rose's big takeaway from Miss Claire's lecture on the subject was that sometimes Conner might have to eat pudding if his blood sugar got too low, a fact she was trying to exploit. Rose gave me a hangdog expression and turned back around. Once she and Gabby were again oblivious to Bobby and me, I turned toward him, ready to offer an explanation, but Bobby said, “She's just like you used to be.”

I softened. “She's way feistier than I ever was.”

“I don't know,” said Bobby. “You were pretty feisty.”

We walked in silence for a few more paces until I asked, “So do you know the Castros, from the neighborhood?”

Bobby brought his hand to his jaw. “Over on Squire Lane?” he asked. Looking at me, he saw the degree of my interest. “I know who they are.”

“What are they like?”

Bobby shrugged. “They seem nice enough. I think they're really involved in the town. I believe Rob is on the town council.”

“What about their son?” I asked, barely waiting for him to finish. “Zack? What's he like?”

“I don't really know him.” We took a few more steps. “He seems like your average teenager.”

With my arms crossed over my chest, I looked straight ahead, into the crowd of the mall. “I think he might have been the one who beat up Warren.”

I didn't need to say anything else. Bobby inhaled and righted his gaze, seeming to ponder the possibility. Then he nodded.

I let my hand fall helplessly to my thigh. “I don't know the kid,” I said, “but would he
do
that? Would he really beat up a pizza delivery guy?” I looked at Bobby, as if he could explain it. “Just because he could?” I assumed it would be for no other reason. I assumed that Zack Castro could have no complaint with Warren other than his very existence.

Bobby lowered his head. “He's what, like seventeen years old?” he said, as if this were the sad but honest explanation.

We lingered in our thoughts until Rose pulled us back to the present with requests for things that were sweet and sparkly.

“It's Halloween tomorrow, Rose. You're going to have plenty of candy.”

We pushed through the doors of the mall and it felt like leaving Oz. Gone was the anesthetizing warmth of retail. I blinked toward the parking lot, which was brightened by the towering, long-necked lights that ran in orderly rows up and down the asphalt. Then, from the deep chill of the late fall air, I felt an enormous shiver run through my body.

Without a word, Bobby reached around my back and pulled me into his side, rubbing my upper arm briskly and efficiently. And like a prim old schoolmarm, I stiffened. His hand stopped, and his arm dropped away.
It's just as well,
I told myself. And I reminded myself of all the reasons why.

“Where are you guys parked?” he asked.

I pointed toward our car. “Over by Lipman Teller.”

“Come on, Gabs,” he said, reaching for her hand. I had already taken Rose's. “Let's walk Rose and her mom to their car.”

“It's okay,” I said. “You don't need to walk us.”

Bobby waved off my objection.

Once we arrived at my station wagon, he waited as I got Rose strapped in, letting the girls have one last moment together. “This was fun,” I said, turning to face him.

“We'll do it again,” he answered. And then he opened his arms and put them around me. And without having a chance to think about it first, I found myself hugging him back. It lasted only a moment, heart to heart, our backs to the rest of the world. We were at once holding each other up and standing of our own volition. At once strangers and old friends.