Second Nature (6 page)

“What are you doing?” Robin asked when he began to write. “What is that?”

He hadn’t known himself until he had spelled it out completely.
Stephen.
That’s what he’d been called.

Robin had been delighted. She’d tossed a book high into the air and called him brilliant and suggested he practice writing every day. He did as she asked; he knew it was in his best interest. But the funny thing was, each time he printed out a word on a piece of lined paper, he felt as though he were losing something, as though the lines on the paper had somehow shifted, dividing him in two.

With every word he wrote, with each book he read, he remembered more, as if he had to be reminded of the story of his own life. They had been up in the sky, that much he knew, when the flight from San Francisco to New York veered so far from its route that the plane wasn’t sighted until three months after its disappearance. Another month had passed before the search party reached what was left. By then, the remains of the passengers that hadn’t been carried off by foxes and hawks were so decayed even the tracking dogs refused to go close. The search party assumed there were no survivors, but in fact there was one. He was three and a half years old and had just learned how to whistle and spell his name; he could recite all of
The Cat in the Hat
by heart.

Stephen planned to be a fireman when he grew up and own a white-and-black spotted dog. He was cheerful and good-natured and tended to see the sunny side of things, but he knew something wasn’t right when the clouds all around him began to move too quickly. As he looked out the window, he found himself believing that the sky was a dish without a lid. It was possible to rise forever, but once the fall began, the bottom was only inches away. It took a long time before he managed to get out from beneath the crush of bodies on top of him. The metal all around hissed and grew hot. Stephen recognized his father’s brown shoe and the pink baby blanket the little girl in the next row had used to play peek-a-boo. “I see you,” she had called to him. When he found his mother, he sat hunched over right beside her, waiting for her eyes to open, almost believing his cries could bring her back to life.

He was an only child, well loved and well cared for. Every morning, his mother had served him oatmeal with honey. Every night, he’d been tucked into bed at seven. They lived in an apartment where pigeons roosted on the window ledges; he liked the cooing noises they made, he liked to hear them flap their wings. When he climbed out of what was left of the plane and looked up, he was amazed to see that the sky he had fallen from was filled with light. There was nothing like this in the city, where a grid of metal meshing covered the windows. What was above him was so beautiful and surprising he couldn’t look away. It was as if he’d never before seen stars.

When the big dog came up behind him she was so quiet he hadn’t known she was there until he turned and saw her face, near his own. She was gray with a silver muzzle and yellow eyes. Stephen’s mother had always warned him to stay away from strange dogs, but without thinking he reached out and touched the dog’s nose. She pulled her head back, startled, then pushed against his chest with her nose. She didn’t have a collar or a leash like the dogs that were walked around his block, but she made a little barking noise. Stephen’s face was still hot and red from crying. It was late September, but cold as a December day in New York; when he breathed out, there were puffs of smoke. Behind him, in the dark, the twisted remains of the plane made a sizzling sound. The big dog stared at the wreckage; she tilted her head, listening.

“My mommy’s in there,” Stephen told her.

The dog quickly looked back at him when he spoke.

“We fell down,” he said, and his face felt even hotter.

It was dark out in the woods, and the trees looked as if they might come alive and swoop him up in their arms. Stephen had been glad that the big dog had come up to him. He had seen Lassie on TV; he knew dogs could always find the way back home. But he must have blinked, because the big dog had suddenly disappeared into the darkness. He looked and looked, but she wasn’t there. Then he heard a whimpering, and she was back. She walked away again, stopping after a few paces to look back at him. He followed her then, and each time she disappeared, Stephen found that if he just kept going she’d be waiting for him.

After a while he could no longer hear the fiery sound of the plane. The woods were still, except for the wind, which called out numbers and names in a hollow blue voice. The moss was so thick Stephen stumbled, and his shoes slipped into badger holes. He was getting tired, but each time he stopped, the dog came out of the darkness and pushed against his back, and they kept on this way until they came to the base of a ridge. His feet hurt by then, and he was hungry. He wanted oatmeal with raisins, or chocolate chip cookies, or a big, red apple, peeled and cut into quarters by his mother. The sky was still filled with lights, but he couldn’t see them anymore because the pine trees grew so close together, and they were so tall, taller than the brick buildings on his block. That was where he had thought they were heading, but now he had the funny feeling that the buildings and shops and sidewalks that he knew were so far he’d never be able to walk all the way there. His throat became dry just thinking about the distance, and his thirst was so bad he started to make little choking sounds that were almost like crying.

When the two other dogs came out of the shadows, Stephen had leaned against the big dog’s side for comfort. One dog was even bigger, and black, so that all Stephen could see of him were his eyes and his teeth. The other was gray and white and he looked over at the black one, waiting for some sort of sign: flattened ears, hair standing on end, a rumbling sound deep in the throat. The black one was crouched down as he came toward Stephen, but he stopped when the big dog came between them. Her tail was straight up and she showed her teeth, and the black dog looked at her bewildered, then moved aside.

Stephen held on to the big dog’s fur as she led him toward the base of the ridge, where a cave had been dug. It was even darker here than it had been outside, but Stephen just kept following, though he’d had to crawl part of the way. The cave was surprisingly warm, so warm his eyes were closing as he followed her. The big dog stopped, and when Stephen’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he had seen that two puppies were waiting. As soon as the big dog flopped down, they scrambled over to her, and Stephen had heard them drinking. He was just as thirsty as they were, and when he went to join them, and found they were drinking right from the big dog, he did, too, and his eyes continued to close. As he drank he was saying good-bye, to feather pillows and ABC books, to cool lemonade on June days and potted hyacinths along the windowsill. On all other nights, he had worn blue pajamas and slept with a stuffed panda his father had brought home from a business trip; he had stretched out beneath his quilt and listened to the sound of traffic out on the street, like a river winding along the avenue. But on this night, all he heard was the big dog’s heart beating as he curled up beside her, and all night long he dreamed he was home.

She told the butcher that they were no longer vegetarians, in order to explain why she was now one of his better customers, stopping in twice a week. She told her best friend, Michelle, whom she had never once lied to, that she couldn’t afford their nights out on Tuesdays, not even a movie or a Greek salad at the diner. She was not a particularly good liar; she stuttered and coughed when she amended the truth, but nobody seemed to notice. One night, as she brushed her hair a hundred strokes, Robin realized she was no longer even considering that she might take him back. She had begun to call him by his given name, and that alone had changed something. He was taking up more and more of her time, so much that she had begun to forget simple things: dishes in the sink, Connor’s lunch, the cat’s needing to be fed or set out at night, the name of the variety of hollyhock that grew beside her own garden gate. The last Sunday of the month she forgot to take an apple pie to her grandfather, and Old Dick refused to be consoled.

“I didn’t have time to fix the crust,” Robin told him. “The market was all out of Mrs. Smith’s.”

“Bullshit,” he spat back. He still looked formidable, even in bed, beneath a tartan blanket. “I want my pie,” he insisted.

“Ssh,” Robin whispered. “Do you want Ginny to hear?”

“I hear everything,” Ginny called from the dusty living room, where she was watching her program.

“I’ll bring you two pies next time,” Robin offered.

“Not a good deal for me,” her grandfather said. “I could be dead. You don’t look well,” he added. He reached for his bifocals, which hung on a string tied around his neck. “Let me see your face.”

Robin was sitting in the big chair by the window; she lifted her chin to him. Her hair was piled on top of her head, caught up in a silver clip, and she was wearing old clothes, a gray thermal undershirt, jeans, worn riding boots splattered with mud. As a child, she’d been stubborn and willful; she considered her grandfather’s land to be the whole universe, and anyone who stepped inside the iron gates had to play by her rules. Even Michelle was always a foot soldier or a lady-in-waiting, always second in command. When Poorman’s Point had belonged to her grandfather, she believed she could do exactly as she pleased, and her grandfather had encouraged it; he didn’t mind if there were burrs in her hair or if she slogged through the marsh grass in her socks. Ginny would throw up her hands and shriek, but she couldn’t stop Robin from inviting squirrels to the tea parties she held on the porch. Robin was never satisfied until those squirrels ate their salted peanuts off the china plates and sipped lemonade right out of the cups.

“You’re lying about something,” Robin’s grandfather said. He was still sharp, and he drove a hard bargain; it was impossible to get away with much in his presence, whether or not he was wearing his glasses.

“Don’t be silly,” Robin said, but she stumbled over the word “silly” and her face grew as pink as a cabbage rose. As soon as she could she put away the groceries she’d brought him, vacuumed the living room under Ginny’s direction, and got out of there, taking the stairs two at a time, running down the gravel driveway to her parked truck.

Of course, that was the thing about lying, once you began, you had to do it again and again. After fifteen years of decreeing the difference between right and wrong, Robin had turned Connor into a liar as well, and had even advised him on what lies to tell. When Stuart called, Connor insisted that Robin had a bad case of laryngitis, which made it impossible for her to speak on the phone. He asked his father not to come to the house but to meet him instead at Harper’s, for dinner or lunch; they needed time alone, man to man. Roy fell for this line and was pleased, and he didn’t seem to notice that, when they did meet, Connor didn’t say a word. At the hardware store, Connor told Jack Merrill they were having problems with the electric company again; he even managed to act embarrassed as he paid for the box of white utility candles. But of course, it wasn’t the electric bill that was the problem. Lamps cast shadows and drew the attention of anyone who might be walking a dog or riding a bicycle along the street after supper. At twilight, they closed the curtains and double-locked the front door. If an unexpected guest should arrive—a school friend of Connor’s, or Michelle’s younger daughter, Jenny, selling mint cookies to raise funds for a class trip—they wouldn’t answer the doorbell. Instead, they sat in the dark. They listened to the wind and the echo of footsteps on their front porch, and if they counted slowly to one hundred, whoever it was who had come to visit would be gone.

Every evening, before daylight was gone completely, Connor played checkers with Stephen. Stephen definitely liked to win, and he showed no mercy. One day, after only a few games, he was double-jumping so much that Connor decided they should leave checkers behind and move on to chess. Robin wasn’t home yet, so after he set out the pieces on the board, Connor went to the kitchen and got beers for both of them. That evening, he heard Stephen laugh for the first time. As it turned out, Stephen was a natural at chess, a bit better at offense than defense.

“Your little horse,” Stephen said, triumphant, as he took Connor’s knight.

Connor grinned right along with him. When his mother had told him the little she’d heard of Stephen’s history from her brother, he’d thought living in the woods sounded exciting. Now he reconsidered, and he wasn’t so sure.

“Were you actually with the wolves, or just kind of in the same vicinity?”

Stephen stopped smiling; he turned his gaze back to their game. “The same vicinity,” he answered.

“What did you do to get food?” Connor said. “Did you have to kill the things you ate?”

Stephen took Connor’s bishop and placed it on the coffee table.

“Deer and things like that?” Connor said.

“Things like that,” Stephen said. He nodded to the chessboard. “Your move.”

Connor carelessly moved a pawn. “Did you cook them, or just eat them? Like raw or something?”

One more move and he could put the boy in check. He knew the right maneuver instinctively, just as he knew the moves to make before a kill. This board of black and white squares was nothing compared to a dark night and tall grass. There was a strategy always, a place for each of them, to the left and the right, in a fan shape, deep in the sweet grass. It took forever, and no time at all; once you were running, you could taste what you were after.

“Holy shit,” Connor said when Stephen captured his queen. “I sure screwed up.”

Stephen held the white queen in his hand. He should not be in this house and he knew it. The nights had become more difficult for him. He paced the guest room, wearing out the carpet. It had been so long since he’d been able to run that he could actually feel his muscles growing weaker. The calluses on his hands and feet were no longer as thick; if he pricked himself with a thorn, he would probably feel it now. On some nights, the scar on the inside of his thigh caused him great pain, as if to remind him of who he’d once been. But the truth of it was, he’d been locked away for so long that when a butterfly came in through the open window one evening, he’d been startled.