Light from a Distant Star (16 page)

“Come on, you guys, let’s have some fun!” She slid off the cannon barrel, then pranced along, swinging her arms and calling back loudly. “Sometimes you just have to do things! Take the friggin’ bull by the horns!” At the sidewalk she had to balance, wobbling on one foot to
put the other heel back on. Continuing her march, she grew short of breath, even a little wheezy. “Get outta your comfort zone. People’re always going, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ But, jeez, what kinda life’s that? I mean, you at least gotta die trying, right? That’s what I say anyway.” A passing car honked its horn and she waved both hands high over her head.

“She nuts or what?” Henry whispered.

“Happy, that’s all,” Nellie whispered back, but something was off-kilter, like static in the air, invisible but prickly.

As they walked down Linden Street, Dolly grew subdued. Her skinny heels clicked between them. They were all feeling the heat. No one was talking. Every time Henry tried lagging behind, she’d stop and wait for him to catch up. At the end of the street she turned right then left, then right again onto Harlequin Circle. Nellie and Henry froze at the mouth of the cul-de-sac.

“Whose house is that?” Dolly asked with a slight nod at the large gray cape at the end.

“My friend. Jessica,” Nellie said with the uneasy sense that Dolly had deliberately led them here. Well, then, why didn’t Nellie go ask her friend to have ice cream with them, she said. No, she told Dolly. She didn’t want to. Why not? Because, Nellie said. She just didn’t.

“Let’s go see if she’s home.” She gestured for them to follow. “C’mon, it’ll be fun,” she teased, almost whining. “The more the merrier!” Nellie could feel Henry’s disbelieving stare with Dolly’s pouty insistence. “We came all this way, and now we’re here, so why not? Why?”

“Because I don’t want to, that’s why,” Nellie declared in a tone she’d never before dared use to an adult. But right then Dolly was acting more like a child than a grown woman, petulant, and determined to have her way. No matter what.

Stepping off the curb, Dolly tucked the back of her blouse into her waistband, then squared her shoulders and marched across the street right up onto Jessica’s front porch. They froze, watching her ring the bell. Nellie couldn’t understand why she was doing this. Maybe her mother had put her up to it, hoping if she was nicer to Jessica, then maybe Mr. Cooper would finally make an offer on the store. But that wasn’t her mother’s style. She was way too direct. And Dolly didn’t even
know Jessica, although Nellie did remember her asking about Claudia Cooper. Maybe that’s it, she thought, relieved when no one answered and Dolly started back down the steps. Dolly was on the serpentine brick walk when Mrs. Cooper opened the door. She was drying her hands on a dish towel. Her dark hair was pulled back and she wore a tight white tennis outfit. Three-year-old Annie, the youngest Cooper, peered out from her side.

“Can I help you?” Mrs. Cooper called down to Dolly, who hurried back onto the porch. Whatever she said caused Mrs. Cooper to look past her with an exuberant wave. “Hi, Nellie!” she called over the railing.

Groaning, Nellie managed a limp wave.

“I just told your sitter, Jessica’s not here. She just left for her appointment, but she should be back in an hour or so.”

“Oh,” Nellie called back weakly.

“I’ll tell her you came by! She’ll be
so
happy!”

Again, Nellie waved.

“I’ll have her call you!”

Faking a smile, Nellie backed off, waving.

“That was weird,” Henry said under his breath as Dolly crossed the street. They continued on to Rollie’s. Instead of going inside, they stood at the takeout window where Ruth was. Store policy didn’t allow workers to wait on family members, so Ruth not only pretended she didn’t know them as she jam-packed their triple chocolate cones, but she asked Henry what his name was. Ronnie-Don Rufus, he said, and she burst out laughing so hard she could barely scoop. Ronnie-Don Rufus was one of the characters in the made-up stories their father used to tell them when they were little. No matter the calamity, hapless Ronnie-Don was usually nearby, both cause and victim, the family catchphrase for those what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong moments. Ruth and Henry’s laughter made Nellie realize how long it had been since they’d enjoyed one another. But what had changed? And why? Was it money? With hard times upon them, were they turning on one another? Pulling apart? Coming undone? Wasn’t that when families were supposed to stick together? Right then and there she resolved to do everything in her power to keep them strong. Ever since Ruth’s
search for her birth father, Nellie’d had the feeling that
she
was the lynchpin, true firstborn of the real family.

Much to Ruth’s disappointment, Dolly didn’t want anything. Not a sundae, a frappe, freeze, or even a cone. Just a cup of water. She didn’t have much to say on the trek back, which took even longer because she seemed so tired. Her earlier zest had fizzled. She’d pulled her blouse out of her waistband and was carrying her heels. Sighing, she trudged barefoot up the hill, behind them.

“You gonna call her?” she asked when they got home. She meant Jessica. Henry had already thanked Dolly and fled into the house before she could suggest any more excursions.

“I don’t know,” Nellie said, licking her sticky fingers.

“She seems really nice,” Dolly said.

“She wasn’t even there.”

“I mean her, the mother,” Dolly said, looking not at Nellie but past her.

I
T WAS
M
ONDAY
night and Ruth still wasn’t home. Her mother and father had been up for hours, waiting. They thought Nellie didn’t know, but she’d been waiting too, listening. At three in the morning the front door finally squealed open. Nellie crept to the top of the stairs, straining to hear every word. Accusations, the tearful denials, and in the end her mother telling Ruth she was on “a quick trip to big trouble, drinking and running around with a fast, older crowd!”

“I wasn’t drinking!” Ruth shot back in thick-tongued protest.

“Of course you were! You reek of alcohol! And God knows what else!”

With that, Ruth must have tried to rush past them for the cool sanctuary of her room. The sounds of a brief scuffle only darkened the shadows below. Nellie leaned closer. The hair on the back of her neck pricked up and she was queasy with the thrilling horror. Never had such shocking events taken place within her own family. She ducked back. Ruth was halfway up the stairs.

“Get back here! Get down here right now!” her mother demanded. She must have grabbed Ruth then. A thud came on the stairs.

“Oh! My God! Are you all right?” her mother gasped.

“What do you care, you bitch!” Ruth screamed.

“Don’t you dare speak to your mother like that!” Her father sounded about as angry as she’d ever heard him. “After all she does for you, you should be ashamed of yourself, young lady.”

“Leave me alone. I don’t have to listen to this. You’re nothing to me! Nothing!”

And with that she half ran, half stumbled up the stairs, sobbing and moaning, past Nellie hunched in the dark alcove by the bathroom.

Nellie lay in bed awake for a long time after that. She hated her sister and suffered a deep sorrow for her parents’ pain. Their lives, she realized, were false, counterfeit. They were just like everyone else. It was all a lie. Her father was weak and so was her mother. High above, from her air-conditioned perch, Ruth had always ruled their family, and now would destroy them. At four
A.M.
, too agitated to sleep, Nellie turned on the light and wrote her a long letter. In it she said how sorry she felt for Ruth, that it must have been hard all these years, being a stepchild and half sister and never a 100 percent real member of the family, but that didn’t mean she was different from the rest of them, meaning, of course, herself and Henry. No, because they loved her as much as they loved each other, but if she kept on acting this way, then she was going to have to stop caring about her. And, soon, so would Henry. It was up to her, her choice.

Nellie sealed the envelope, tiptoed to the third floor, and slipped the letter under her door. She returned to bed, relieved and empowered. She felt good about everything, especially about herself. Upon reading her letter, Ruth would realize she had to start acting better. The future of their family depended on it, which she’d also stated in her letter.

R
UTH WAS ASLEEP
when Nellie left the next morning. Because she’d be home all that day with “a touch of the flu,” as her mother called it, Nellie’d be free of Henry. As he’d so gratefully be of her. The day would be hers to do whatever she wanted.

She rode her bike to the junkyard. The canoe was lashed to the top
of Charlie’s truck. Max was digging a trench along the front of the barn. A few more feet, then they were going fishing, he said. She asked if she could go and he said it was up to Charlie, who watched from his chair just inside the shade of the barn. She went over and asked, but Charlie was in a foul mood. He just kind of waved her off, saying how “pissed” he was. For one thing, the more Max dug, the more rot he was finding in the sills. Oughta just shovel it all back in. Goddamn place could fall down, for all he cared. Last night someone kept throwing firecrackers over the back fence. Twice he’d called the police, but soon as they’d leave, it’d start up again. His third call, they told him “to deal with it.” They had more important things to do. Charlie said he knew who it was, so he damn well would deal with it his way, and nobody’d better say a damn word after.

Still muttering, he got up and limped toward the truck. She followed eagerly. Max tossed his shovel in the trench and started tying Boone to his stake by the gate. No, Charlie called back, bring him. But the canoe wouldn’t take all three and the dog, too, Max said, but Charlie insisted. Max put Boone in the back of the truck. Nellie climbed in between the men. Duct tape patched the split leather seats, but the inside of the cab was immaculate. Excited to finally be going fishing, Nellie knew better than say much, which fit right in with Max being his usual quiet self. Not Charlie though. He was talking a blue streak. It started the minute the old pickup rumbled onto the street.

The damn Shelby twins, that’s who was making his life miserable, setting fires in the woods, which is how the tires got burning, and stealing from him because their parents couldn’t control their two strange kids; not only that but the father, whatever the hell his name was—Mort, that was it—Mort Shelby’d been on his case since day one, and he was damn sick of it—turn left—another left—down there—that road there, dammit …

They were rattling down the narrow washboard road, right toward the Shelbys’. Their house sat at the very end, starkly tall, the weathered clapboards a paintless gray. She’d seen it once or twice, years before, from the backseat of a crowded minivan or station wagon, filled with squealing kids being driven home after someone’s birthday party. But now no one was inviting the Shelby twins to anything anymore.

Go knock on the door, her grandfather ordered Max, and tell their kids to get the hell out here so he could set them straight about some things.

“No.” Max looked past her, right at Charlie.

“What the hell you mean, no? You wanna job? You wanna keep working or you wanna be picking your skinny ass up off the goddamn street again? Is that what the hell you want? Well? Is it?” Charlie’s tinny voice churned the heat inside the cab. She squirmed between them.

“Can’t, Charlie,” he muttered, looking down at the wheel.

Licking his lips and breathing hard, Charlie studied him for a moment. “Goddammit!” he finally barked, opening his door. With a groan, he removed himself from the truck in sections, one foot, a leg, hip, an arm. “You! Come on down!” He gestured. To Nellie. Just go knock on the door, he said, and ask the twins to come out for a minute, which, when she thought of it later, was probably his plan in the first place, the only reason he’d let her come. She said the same as Max: no. “Why?” He was enraged. “Why the hell not?”

“I know them. They’re in my class.”

“Even better then.”

She refused to get out of the truck. Now, Charlie insisted, or he’d damn well pull her out. Beside her, there came from Max a low, deep sound, a drone, almost. Arms folded tight and feet braced to the floorboards, she stared back at Charlie. He tried a few more threats: telling her mother, her father, never allowing her back in the junkyard again, her or her piss-ant brother.

Finally, he stormed, as best a limping man can storm, up to the house. He was still banging on the door when it opened. Boone’s barking started in the back of the truck the minute Mrs. Shelby stepped out. A tall woman, she was older than Nellie remembered, and skinnier. She endured Charlie’s tirade, from time to time straining her head back in disbelief. She said something, then went inside. Moments later, with Boone’s even more frantic barking, she reemerged with her sons. They towered over their mother, squinting, as if from sunlight they hadn’t seen in months. Even with the engine running and Boone’s barking, Nellie could hear Charlie’s shouting. The Shelbys just stood there taking it.

Nellie slid low on the seat. “They didn’t do anything. I know they didn’t,” she said over the dog’s commotion.

“Boone’s pretty riled,” Max sighed, proof enough for him.

“They’re just different, that’s all. They’re really smart.”

Max leaned over the wheel.

“They’re always getting picked on,” she added.

Whatever Mrs. Shelby was saying now incensed Charlie even more. His hands flew in the air. Nellie could tell from the way she looked at her boys that she knew they were different, too. She spoke to Rodney, then to Roy. Suddenly they both turned, in such a rush that one seemed stuck to the other as they hurried inside.

“They your friends?” Max asked.

“No. I mean, I know them, but—”

“They have any friends?”

“Uh-uh. Just each other.”

He nodded. “I had a brother.”

“What’s his name?”

“Merrill.”

“Merrill. He live around here?”

Mrs. Shelby stood her post, watching Charlie’s labored retreat down her steep steps. No matter what, they were good, good boys, she was surely thinking.