Still Life with Shape-shifter (12 page)

“Ann?” I call again, but the hopefulness has evaporated from my voice. I hit the wall switch at the door and quickly take in the fact that there is no one in the kitchen or living room, then I check Ann’s room. The bed is unmade and there are shoes on the floor—signs of recent occupation, but no guarantee that the last tenant plans to come back anytime soon. Ann usually leaves a mess behind whenever she goes.

I retrace my steps, looking for evidence that she plans to return. She’s only been here a day. Surely she can’t have left already, without a word of good-bye. I find it in the kitchen, on the counter, next to the note that holds my phone numbers. She has had so little need to write throughout her lifetime that her handwriting is still girlish and round; you’d think the note had been penned by a child.

Mel—don’t worry. William and I decided to try to find the nearest park and spend the afternoon. We’ll be back tonight or maybe tomorrow. Don’t hide the key someplace new! See you when we get back.

A

The emotions that flood me are half relief, half resentment, and in both cases they are intense enough that I know I’m overreacting. She has her own life; she cannot be bound to me so tightly by my affection that she strangles. Even if she were my daughter, not my sister, I should not experience this extreme level of painful loss. I can’t explain it—I’m a little embarrassed that I feel it—and I don’t know what to do with all the grief and anxiety and anger that are percolating just under my skin. I slap my open hand against the plaster of the kitchen wall, so hard that I bruise my palm. Then I plunge through the house and fall to my knees on the couch, punching the back cushions with all the force I can muster.

The whole goal is to stave off the tears, but it’s no use. As soon as my arm tires, I cover my face with both hands, as if, here in the empty house, I’m afraid someone will see me. I’m already crying.

CHAPTER TEN

T
hat’s the way it goes for the next three weeks.

Ann and William come and go like eccentric ghosts who make appearances based on some opaque algorithm of their own. They might be sleeping in her room when I go to bed at night, but gone when I wake in the morning. They might have breakfast with me in the morning, then disappear before I return from work. Sometimes they’re home for only a few hours before vanishing for two days. During one forty-eight-hour period, they never leave the house.

I’m starting to get used to William though I still don’t find him easy or comfortable to be around. He is obviously attempting to be a thoughtful guest, rinsing out any dish he touches and never leaving clutter in the main areas of the house. He hauls the garbage out on trash night and fixes a leaky faucet in the bathroom—which surprises me no end, as I hadn’t expected him to possess stereotypical masculine skills. But I don’t quite know how to interact with him when Ann’s not around. He doesn’t make idle conversation. He doesn’t watch television. He’ll play games if we drag out the Chinese checkers board or the Monopoly box, and he’s unexpectedly adept at putting together the old thousand-piece puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle that Ann unearths one evening. But he has no social graces. He makes no attempt to be entertaining. He can sit for hours in a silence so absolute I would swear he was sleeping except that I can see his eyes move to track my progress across the room. I’m working on learning to like him, but I have to confess I find him spooky.

Ann, by contrast, is her usual delightful self, though a somewhat more sedate version. After William’s alarming announcement, I am watching her even more closely than I ordinarily would, and what I mostly notice is how much she’s slowed down. She doesn’t
fling
herself across the room with her usual manic energy; now she strolls, or even saunters. As best I can tell from her frequent absences and my own hours at work, she sleeps about half of every day. Even so, she never seems entirely rested. She yawns a lot, or drowsily curls up against William on the couch. But she doesn’t seem unhappy; she doesn’t seem sick. She doesn’t complain of fever or pain. I can’t tell from observation if there’s anything wrong, and when, one afternoon, I ask her outright, she merely laughs.

“Nothing,” she says. “Is there anything wrong with you? Except that you’re a big ol’ worrywart?”

No. No, that’s my main affliction.

During this three-week period, I hear from Brody seven times.

Twice he sends brief, cheery e-mails with attachments he thinks will amuse me. One is an article about his sister Brandy’s winning a humorous internal company award for “most likely to stare down a tiger in the wild.”
What did I tell you?
he writes on his accompanying message. One is an article about two Oregon hunters who claim to have photographed a half-man-half-beast creature in some cave off the rocky coast. The creature is so obviously fake that you can actually see the store price tag hanging off the actor’s left elbow.
This is what I’m competing with. This is what the vast American public believes is the true nature of shape-shifters,
his message says this time.
And you wonder why I’ve made no progress on my book.

I’ve wondered no such thing. But I cannot keep myself from replying though I know it will only encourage him to stay in touch.
Maybe you need a new topic. Maybe it’s time to expose the atrocities of kitten hoarders.
He answers with a message box that holds only a smiley face.

Three times he phones. Like the e-mails, the calls are short and amusing. Once he wants to know if Slices will deliver a whole pie to his downtown address. Once he opens with, “I know it’s a long shot, but would you have any interest in going to a hockey game tonight?” And once he calls to see if I’ll have dinner with him if he drives down from the city.

I turned down the hockey game, so I can’t believe it when my response to the dinner invitation is, “I’d love to.”

But Ann and William have disappeared again, and the house has taken on that echoing sound, and it’s the weekend, and I’ve remembered the kind of soul-stealing loneliness that you only feel when you aren’t expecting to be alone. I brace myself for a series of questions and subtle attempts to draw me out, but in fact Brody spends most of the evening talking. He’s just finished writing an article about a college professor who’s taken his whole undergraduate accounting class down to Mexico to help a group of village women organize a profitable business around their traditional crafts of pottery and weaving.

“I love this kind of stuff,” he says, still buzzing with enthusiasm. “You know—‘one man can make a difference’ acts of faith and inspiration. Putting good into the world in tangible ways. Makes me feel like a piker. Makes me feel like I should find someone and donate a kidney. Do something to make my life worthwhile.”

“You don’t think you’ve done anything worthwhile up to this point?” I ask.

“Nothing big,” he says. “Nothing that has changed someone else’s life in a material way for the better.”

If you write your book, you’ll change mine in a material way for the worse,
I think. “There’s still time,” I say. “Maybe you’ll save a drowning kid or win the lottery and give all the money to charity.”

He’s regarding me quizzically. “You don’t think about these things?” he asks. “Making the world a better place? Leaving your mark?”

“If I say no,” I reply, “will you think less of me?”

“I would think less of you if you were a serial killer,” he answers. “Anything other than that, I think I’d just find intriguing. Still trying to figure you out.”

“I never really felt like I had that much time or energy left over to try to save the world,” I say. “Mostly I’m just trying to keep things together. Get through the day.”

He tilts his head, still watching me, as if sifting my words for more meaning, so I elaborate. “You know a little bit about my life growing up. Gwen was—odd. Unreliable. My father started getting sick when I was a teenager, and he was pretty much out of it by the time I was in college. I’ve been taking care of Ann since I was ten years old—I was practically her only parent by the time I was eighteen. I never had much time for idealism. I was just trying to get dinner on the table.” I shrug. “Maybe it sounds selfish. Maybe someday I’ll start volunteering at soup kitchens. Probably not anytime soon, though.”

He nods, as if something in my answer has satisfied him, and asks, “How’s Ann?”

I tense up a little, but it’s the first time he’s posed a direct query about her since he met her, and this question could be viewed as innocuous. “Good. Tired. I think she’s run herself pretty ragged, so she spends a lot of time lolling around the house when she and William aren’t off—” I’m not sure how to complete the sentence. “Hiking or something,” I end lamely.

“William?”

I nod glumly. “Her boyfriend.”

“Sounds like you’re not a fan.”

“I don’t dislike him. He’s a little old for her, maybe, and kind of a strange guy, but I don’t think he’s abusive or anything. Just—odd.”

He nods. “Like Gwen was odd.”

It’s a split second before I remember I’d used the same word to describe my stepmother, and another moment before I realize what I’ve revealed to him. He knows—or at least suspects—that Gwen was a shape-shifter; and now he suspects the same of William. But because he made me a promise, he won’t ask outright.

I tilt my chin defiantly. “Now that you mention it,” I say, “they’re a little bit alike.”

He grins. “Just what I’d have expected. Maybe he’ll turn out to be a good choice for her, then.”

My voice is icy. “I don’t have any say in the matter one way or the other. So I’m doing my best to like him.”

“I’m sure you are. I’d love to meet him.”

“I can’t imagine you will.”

But of course, the seventh time I hear from Brody during that three-week period, that’s exactly what happens.

It’s around noon on Saturday, I’m clearing away the lunch dishes, and Ann and William are trying to decide where they want to spend the next couple of days. The weather forecast is sublime—sunny days predicted to hit sixty degrees, dry nights no colder than forty—and she wants to take him down to Johnson Shut-ins State Park. He seems to think it’s too far, so he’s been offering alternate venues. I try not to wonder why he’s so bothered by the distance, which isn’t that extreme. Maybe he’s feeling lazy. Maybe he’s worried that the rain will move in sooner than the weatherman says. Surely he’s not concerned that Ann doesn’t have the strength to make it that far.

“You don’t have to go at all,” I say as I load the plates into the dishwasher. “I told you, Debbie’s having me over tonight for Charles’s birthday. She’d be glad to have you guys, too. I’m sure there’s plenty of food—Debbie always makes enough to feed the whole neighborhood.”

William shows me the expression I like best, a curiously sweet smile laced with humor and self-knowledge. “Dinner parties are not my natural habitat,” he says.

“Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about Charles and Debbie, who like
all
kinds of weird people,” Ann says. “But I don’t feel like I can sit still at someone’s house and behave. I’m all—” Her whole body twitches in a simulated spasm. “On edge. I need to run. I need to see the world a different way. I need to shift.”

That’s when the doorbell rings.

For a moment I’m frozen—
Who’s there? Did they hear Ann’s last remark?
—even though common sense says the door’s too thick, and her voice is too soft too carry. My pulse is already at double time when I hurry across the room to open the door, and it kicks into a frantic beat when I see Brody on the other side.

“I swear I’m not stalking you, I swear I really did have a reason to be in Dagmar,” he says, talking fast. “Had an interview this morning with a guy who runs a business right across the street from Corinna’s, and I thought, what the hell, it’s ten minutes out of my way, I’ll see if Melanie’s home.”

Ann has come dancing up behind me, her smile so bright that I can
feel
it even with my back to her. “Brody! Come on in! Are you hungry? We just finished lunch, but there’s plenty left.”

His eyes cut sideways to acknowledge her, but then he looks right back at me. “Not if Melanie doesn’t want me to come in.”

“Don’t be silly.” She pushes past me to unlatch the door and swing it open in an inviting way. “You can meet William.”

Brody remains unmoving on the porch, his eyes locked on mine. I haven’t said a word. I’m furious, I’m frightened, I’m trying to figure out how to play this. Did he hear Ann’s careless declaration?
I need to shift.
Will he take one look at William and instantly know what he is?
He’s odd—like Gwen was odd.
Will it make things better or worse if I lock him out of the house and refuse to speak to him again and force myself, though it seems impossible, to henceforth remain unmoved by his careless charm?

It almost seems as if he can hear what I’m thinking. “Just let me know what you want,” he says in a soft voice. “I won’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

“Sure,” I say finally, my own voice rusty. “Come on in.”

I turn away and let Ann act as his hostess, chattering as she leads him toward the old oak table. “I’ve had lunch,” he says.

“You could have a soda,” she suggests.

“That sounds great. Something without caffeine if that’s an option.”

I head to the kitchen to fetch a chilled Sprite, so I don’t witness the introductions Ann makes between Brody and William. I assume they shake hands—I hear William mumble something—but it’s Brody’s response that gets my attention and makes me whirl around so fast I almost drop the can.

“Have I met you before?” Brody says. He sounds puzzled, or maybe just thoughtful, dredging through old memories.

William is wearing a half-smile that clearly indicates Brody has asked a stupid question. “I don’t think so. I’ve never been to Dagmar till recently.”

“No, it wasn’t here. You just look so familiar.”

William hunches a shoulder and doesn’t answer. By this time, I’ve made it over to the table, and I hand Brody the can, belatedly thinking to ask, “Did you want a glass? And ice?”

“No, this is fine. Thanks.”

“Sit down, sit down,” Ann says, still acting as hostess. “Brody, would you like some cookies? They’re just store-bought, but they’re pretty good.”

“No, no dessert, thanks. Unless you have pie,” Brody says, sinking to a seat. The rest of us arrange ourselves around the table though no one actually relaxes. I have the notion that William has gone into some kind of feral high alert, like a hare trying to outsmart a wolf. Brody, who is leaning casually against his chair back, is clearly still sorting through his memories, looking for a match. Ann is bouncing around like a child who’s eaten too much candy, and I’m as tense as a violin string. If you ran a finger across my forearm, you’d wake a low G.

“Sorry, no pie,” Ann says. “But you and Mel could drive over to Slices if you’d like.”

He glances her way. “You’d come, too, wouldn’t you?”

She shakes her blond head. “William and I were just leaving. We’re going to spend the weekend—” She pauses, then smiles luminously. “Camping.”

“Tents and amenities, or roughing it?” Brody asks.

Now she laughs. “Roughing it.”

“I need a tent and a sleeping bag,” Brody says, “but I scorn these modern-day campers who set up their RVs in the state park and get electricity and water and cable TV, for God’s sake.”

“Mel hates to camp,” Ann says.

Everyone looks at me, so I figure I have to speak. “That’s putting it too mildly,” I say, making some effort to sound humorous. “Absent the apocalypse, I’m never going camping again.”

William unexpectedly enters the conversation again. “You should do it the way we do,” he says. “Then you’d change your mind.”

There is a brief silence while everyone at the table considers what exactly he might mean by that.

Then Brody looks over at me with a smile that is both understanding and amused. “So if they’re going to be gone all weekend,” he says, “are you free? We could go to dinner tonight. Or see a movie. Or something.”