Light from a Distant Star (45 page)

“We thought we could handle it,” her father was saying. “Nellie’s always been so up front about everything. You know, whatever’s on her mind she tells you, right then and there.”

Nodding, Mrs. Fouquet looked from one to the other. She seemed to like Ben and Sandy.
Probably feels bad such nice people have to have such a lying, thieving, nasty-minded screwup for a daughter
.

“And she’s so intelligent,” her mother was saying. “Like her father, the two of them, the things they talk about. Sometimes I close my eyes and it’s like two adults talking.” She flashed Nellie a quick smile.

“So like everything else, I guess we just assumed Nellie was so well grounded she’d get through it okay,” her father said, his wistful glance for the daughter he’d thought he had. “She’s a good girl.”

“Actually, most of our problems have always been with our oldest, with Ruth,” her mother said. “But I guess that’s what happened—all the turmoil with Ruth, meanwhile, everything with Nellie’s going under the radar.”

Pretty valid observation, Nellie thought, roused by the realization of how good she’d be at this, therapy, helping people cut through their own bullshit, which was probably her surest skill, and best of all, being paid to do it. Some people she’d spot the minute they came through the door.
Boom, kleptomaniac! Next. Narcissist! You! Pathological Liar!
But then they probably wouldn’t want to pay for the whole hour, so she’d have to drag it out, something she’d had plenty of experience doing after all the hours of half listening to Jessica’s tales of woe just long enough to get to the end of a show.

“And what about you, Nellie?” Mrs. Fouquet was asking. “What do you have to say about all of this?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, scrambling to take her proper place in this dialogue. Deciding to become a therapist had given her a surge of confidence along with a sense of clinical remove. In addition to the three adults analyzing Nellie Peck, there would be Nellie Peck herself. The problem was that the one thing that needed saying was the very reason they’d brought her here to try to talk her out of.

“You’ve had to go through a great deal. It couldn’t have been easy,” Mrs. Fouquet coaxed.

Sympathy
, Nellie noted,
bullshitting the bullshitters
.

“What’s been the hardest part of it all?” Mrs. Fouquet asked.

“Not being believed.” She looked at each of them.

“Not being believed by who?”

Whom
, she wanted to say. “Nobody believes me about anything. Except maybe my brother. I think.”
And they’d probably brainwashed him, too
.

“Why do you think that is?” Obviously, going for the kill, Mrs. Fouquet repositioned her chair. “That nobody believes you about anything.”

Interesting technique
, Nellie thought,
the way she reframes each answer
. “Well, first of all, it’s probably because I’m a kid, which I get. And maybe even because I’m a girl and I’m supposed to be all hormonal and emotional all the time, which I’m not. Hormonal, that is. But I guess the part I don’t really get is how people can call me a liar just so they can keep on lying to themself. Themselves,” she quickly corrected.

“No one’s calling you a liar!” her mother gasped, to which her father added, “And we never would. That word is not in our lexicon,” he informed Mrs. Fouquet.

“Just because you don’t say the word doesn’t mean you’re not thinking it,” Nellie said in her most precise diction.

“Nellie,” her mother implored, shaking her head.

“Excuse me, Nellie, let’s try something,” Mrs. Fouquet said. “Put yourself in your parents’ shoes, switch places, so to speak. Now, every time they tell you a story, you have a hard time believing it, and the reason you can’t is because of all the things they’ve made up before that
weren’t true. So then one day there’s a terrible incident and they come to you and try to explain exactly what happened. But by then, you’d have a hard time believing them, wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Fouquet’s face glowed with cleverness.

The little boy who cried wolf? That was weak
. Better not to get tangled up in the analogy, Nellie decided, opting to sidestep that one. “But they never do, they never lie. Mostly, they just don’t tell us things. They wait till we leave the room. So I usually just try and figure things out myself,” she said, eliciting wan smiles from her parents.

“We don’t argue in front of the children,” her mother tried to explain. “We never have.”

“But you must argue sometimes,” Mrs. Fouquet said. “Most couples do.”

“Not really,” her mother said with a quizzical look at Nellie’s father.

“Disagreements, the quick kerfuffle,” he said. “And the occasional slammed door. Or frosty silence,” he intoned in a deeper voice, so stern faced that her mother giggled. “Icicles.” He shivered, and Nellie smiled, observing them across a barrier only she knew was there. She loved them, she did, which made their tenderness toward each other only the more isolating. And bewildering.

Now came Nellie’s time alone with Mrs. Fouquet. Her parents left to sit in the waiting room, relieved and grateful, their burdens already lighter. Mrs. Fouquet wanted to stay on the subject of Nellie’s figuring out things for herself. Nellie got right to the point. She explained what she couldn’t actually say to her parents. There was only one reason they didn’t believe her, and one reason only. They needed Mr. Cooper’s help.

“Do you really think your parents would do that just to sell some property?” Mrs. Fouquet had gone skeptically squinty eyed on her. A bobby pin dangled over one ear.

“Maybe they don’t think of it that way, but that’s what they’re doing.”

“You sound angry. Are you? Are you mad at them?”

Nellie thought a moment. “Not really. More like disappointed, I guess.”

“How so?”

She cringed with the annoying expression. It made her more determined to say exactly what she meant. “Sometimes I think it’s easier for kids when their parents are all messed up. They don’t know, so they have to find everything out for themselves. They’re tougher then, stronger in a way. In my family there’s the right way and the wrong way, so it always seemed easy. You know, just follow the rules. But it’s like this muscle you never get to use. Then all of a sudden when you have to, you find out, whoa, wait a minute, there’s all these other reasons, but we won’t talk about those, so you just do what we tell you.” She looked up, conscious of the warmth and the low light in the room, the watchful silence. “I’m sorry. I can be very loquacious sometimes. Actually, most of the time.”

“Oh no, not at all. I’m impressed,” Mrs. Fouquet said, repinning her hair. “You’re very mature and you have a great deal of insight, which is a gift, but it can also be difficult when you’re young. And confusing.”

“Because people think you don’t know what you’re talking about, right? I mean, when you’re a kid.”

“Sometimes the hardest part of being a kid is accepting when something’s out of our control.”

“But it’s not! Out of my control, I mean, because I’m the one that can make things right. The way they should be.”

Air ball, not even close
, Nellie realized, seeing Mrs. Fouquet glance at the glowing red numbers, the tiny digital clock on the side table, unobtrusive, but strategically placed. “In any event, Nellie, that’ll take some time,” she said, closing a folder. “And patience. A lot of patience, both on your part and your parents’.” She reached across the desk and shook Nellie’s hand, her firm grip holding a moment. “And by the way, that muscle, that’s a good muscle to keep flexing,” she said with a wink.

R
UTH HAD GOTTEN
all A’s on her midterm report. Henry had a boil on his cheek that had just been lanced. His description of what came oozing out made his sisters beg him to stop. Charlie was back home, most days spent in bed. He had agreed to a visiting homemaker and nurse after her mother threatened to petition the court for legal guardianship.
Benjamin’s half-filled application for a job at Home Depot was still on the kitchen counter. Her mother was working on invitations for the jewelry party she was planning to have two weeks before Christmas. Might as well turn the notoriety to some commercial advantage, she’d decided. Lazlo regretted selling his prizewinning painting, he told Benjamin. It had left him with a great emptiness, which he admitted didn’t make sense. Maybe it wasn’t emptiness so much as the well he needed to keep filling, her father suggested, likening it to his own experience. He was still trying to find a publisher, but in the meantime he’d started the research for his next book. It would be about George C. Humboldt and his connection to the old railroad line, a subject few people knew anything about. After two very long and productive visits with the Humboldts, he’d already filled an entire notebook. Tenley had begun sorting through ancient family papers, boxes of them in their attic. Louisa said she hadn’t seen her brother this engaged, this excited about anything, in years. If ever.

N
ELLIE HAD STARTED
a letter to Max. Twelve pages long, it was mostly fiction, Charlie feeling better, her long walks with Boone, but she couldn’t seem to finish it. Something needed saying, though she wasn’t sure what. Or maybe there was nothing to say, no good ending. Not a satisfying one, anyway. Maybe she just needed to keep on writing. Maybe that was it, her connection.

S
HE HAD BEEN
sent to keep Charlie company. Mrs. Kirkley, his day nurse, had to leave a little early, and Nellie could fill the gap until the night nurse arrived. She came directly from school. She was almost at the junkyard when the Shelby twins drove by on their souped-up bicycles with Boone leashed to Rodney’s handlebar.
ASTRO BOWLERAMA
, said the bold white stitching on their satiny black jackets. They stopped and rode back.

“Boone! Hey, Boone.” She dropped to her knees and hugged him. “How’re you doin’, big fella?” The dog’s tail whipped back and forth and he nuzzled his head against hers.
He knows I tried
—she could feel
it, rubbing his broad chest. “His heart,” she said, looking up, “it’s beating so fast.” The brothers were grinning at each other.

“Cuz he likes you,” Rodney said.

“No, I don’t!
You
do, you’re the one!” Roy said.

“I meant him.” Rodney pointed to Boone.

“You both do, then,” Roy said, rocking back and forth, an awkward attempt to calm himself that had amused many tormentors over the years.

“Shut up!” Rodney swiped his brother’s arm.

“It’s true. You even told Mom,” Roy said, and Rodney’s face turned red.

Saying she’d better go, Nellie stood up. Her own face felt hot.

“Hey, that crazy guy, he was guilty, huh?” Rodney said quickly.

“He wasn’t crazy.” She started walking. Rodney rode slowly next to her, with Roy trailing.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call him normal, okay?” Roy said then gave his snorting laugh.

“Yeah, like sneaking around, spying on us all the time,” Rodney added with such grating self-importance it was all she could do not to run.

“He was a pervert, that’s why. A registered sex offender. My mother said she should’ve called the police; if only she had, that lady’d still be alive,” Roy called from behind.

“That’s so weird! Why do you say such weird things all the time? No wonder people are always making fun of you!” She pulled open the creaking gate, hurried inside, then banged it shut, shaking the rickety fence on both sides.

Nellie sat across the room, with her history book open, waiting for Charlie to wake up. Still agitated by her run-in with the twins, she couldn’t concentrate. She felt terrible. She shouldn’t have said what she did, especially when she was the only person they ever talked to, probably in the whole town. Trusting her, they’d let their guard down and she’d turned on them. The worst of it was realizing she was just as mean as everyone else.

Charlie lay propped up against pillows. His cheeks were sunken and unshaven. His eyes were closed. Even from here she knew he wasn’t
asleep. She could tell by his breathing, and sleeping people didn’t keep licking their lips.

“Charlie?” she whispered, getting up. She wanted to talk about Max. “Are you awake?” She asked again when he didn’t answer. “Charlie?” She stood over the bed. “You still sleeping?”

“Jesus.” His eyes opened wide. “Not anymore I’m not.” He closed them again.

“Want some water? Your cup’s here.”

When he nodded, she guided the straw to his mouth. One sip and he pushed it away. She asked if he was hungry. No, he said. Could she get him anything? No. One of those hard candies on his night stand? No, nothing. How about the TV, did he want it on, she asked hopefully. He didn’t. This morning’s paper, she’d read it to him if he wanted.

“You know what I want?” He looked sideways with one eye open. “To get this over with, that’s all the hell I want.”

“Get better you mean?” She knew what he meant.

“No point dragging it out. A sick animal—you wouldn’t think twice, right? Put it out of its misery, that’s what you’d do. Hey! Why’nt you go get that hammer and—” He thumped the side of his head, then turned away with a sour laugh.

“You think Max’ll write you again?” she asked quietly.

He snorted. “Dead men don’t write letters.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was strident.

“Like he wanted for his dog.” He slashed his finger across his throat. “Better’n being caged up, don’t you think?”

“No. There’s always hope.” Even the word sounded bleak.

“Got news for you, girlie. Guys like Max, they got nothin’, and they’re born with less. I seen enough to know. Poor bastard, last of the losers. Last one I’ll know, anyway.” His mouth trickled into a wan, wet smile.

“I thought he was a very nice man.” Her voice broke.

“For all the good that does. ’Specially when you’re so far down from the get-go.”

She got up and stood by the window, arms crossed, looking out at the sea of discarded, unwanted, useless trash Max had tried to organize. Caught in the wind, a torn cardboard box tumbled the length
of the rutted driveway. She didn’t want Charlie to see her crying. For a few moments the only sound was the rasp of his labored breathing.