The Tangled Bridge (26 page)

“Naw, we don't want her lookin like that.”

Marie-Rose piped up. “I have a dress she can wear! It used to be hers.”

“No,” Patrice said. “Too small.”

But Simms said, “Give it a shot.”

Something about the way that man spoke, you'd think he used pigeonry to get his way because Patrice found herself going back up the stairs to the room to try on the dress. Stupid; it wasn't going to fit. She was a good foot taller than Rosie!

She pulled it over her head and looked down. Whereas the dress came to Rosie's calves, on Patrice it rested right around her thighs. At least it bloused out in such a way that it fell loose around her middle.

The door opened and Simms came in.

“I'm dressing!” Patrice said.

“You look dressed to me.”

“You should have knocked.”

And Simms gave her such a look as to make the blood feel cold beneath her skin. She had to turn away.

He said, “Where your cross at?”

“What?”

“Yesterday, you were wearing a cross around your neck.”

She still was. Eunice's cross. She reached into the dress and pulled it out so that it rested atop the fabric.

He said, “That's fine. Now get on down the stairs. We wasted enough time already.”

“In this?” Patrice said, incredulous that he would want her to wear Rosie's dress.

He nodded. “It's nice. You look like a true angel.”

Strange the way he delivered that compliment. More matter-of-fact than flattery.

But then he paused at the door. “Here.”

He walked toward her and she felt herself stiffen, he'd come so close. But he pulled at the dress. She realized the sash was dangling loose. He tried to tie it once, twice, stepped back and looked at her, then he yanked at it and she heard it rip. She looked down and saw that he'd torn it out where the ends were sewn into the seam. It left two-inch gaps on either side.

Furious, she looked up at him but immediately swallowed back her protest. His look was so hard. Too late now, anyway. The dress was ruined.

Without another word he turned and strode for the door. She stole a look around the room in hopes that there may be some mirror, any mirror, but found nothing.

“Let's go!”

She hurried after him.

At the bottom of the stairs, a soft-curled lady in a long dowdy skirt was painting Rosie's face. Just the lips. She was dabbing purple-red color with a brush to form a cupid's bow. Patrice was astonished at the effect. Rosie had become a living doll.

“Now her.” Simms pulled Patrice forward.

“What's this for?” Patrice asked.

But the woman just said, “Don't talk sweetie. Need your lips real still.”

But Rosie must have already asked this question because she said, “It's so when we sing our mouths will enchant all who wander near.”

It sounded like she was quoting someone else. Patrice cut her eyes toward her sister without moving the rest of her face. The paintbrush felt like a strange creature pressing against her lips. Guy and Gilbert were looking on as though their sisters had just revealed themselves as fairies.

“The dress really does look good on you, Treese,” Gil said.

Trigger was stealing glances at Simms. Patrice looked, too, wondering about him. He looked Italian or Mexican or some other sort of dark-complexioned race. He wasn't wearing the fedora today but he was in a suit. Another cheap one.

“There,” the woman said.

Still no mirror. Patrice's lips felt gluey and leaden, and the paint smelled like must.

“Don't lick your lips, don't even touch them,” the woman said.

Hutch pushed some papers at Patrice and waved at Rosie. “Y'all sing this one.”

Patrice looked at it as she held it out for Rosie—sheet music for a song she'd never heard before. “No accompaniment?”

Hutch exchanged a look with Simms and chuckled. “Can't tote no piano out to the street corner.”

Patrice glanced at Rosie, whose forehead was wrinkling like an old hound as she glared at the papers in Patrice's hands. Rosie was slow on her letters at school, let alone words, let alone musical notes.

“Sing it!” Simms thumped the paper and it made Patrice jump.

She gave it a go. With no background music and not so much as an opening note to prompt the key, Patrice did her best to guess the tone and modulated her voice to follow the rises and falls, at least as the notes seemed to appear in relation to one another. Too disorienting to add in timing; each sound came out as a dead, round whole note. Rosie moved her lips but did not sing at all.

Patrice dared a glance at Simms and he looked disgusted.

What now, was he going to renege on hiring them to sing the sheet music? Was he going to demand payment for providing them a room to sleep last night?

Her voice squeezed to a halt. She hadn't finished it. Everyone was staring.

“It's only because I've never heard it before. If I could just have the piano—”

Simms grabbed her by the throat and yanked her forward. But whatever he was about to do or say to her never happened. Trig had his pocketknife up under Simms' jawbone. Hutch moved like he was going to knock Trigger into pieces, but Patrice wrapped her mind around him and saw that he held still.

Simms let Patrice go.

Trigger did not let Simms go.

“Leave it,” Patrice said to Trig.

Trig released Simms.

Simms straightened his tie and gave a long look of incredulity to Hutch. “What you doin over there, hibernating for winter?”

Hutch just stared back.

Patrice said, “Let me play the song once on the piano. Then Rosie and I will have no trouble singing it.”

*   *   *

THE PIANO SMELLED YEASTY
. Patrice set the sheet music in place and settled her hands over the keys, pausing to squeeze her fingers to dispel the shaking. All those eyes staring at her at once. Something so powerful about that. Right now it was a power she didn't want—it threatened to scorch her right off the stool.

Her fingers pressed down on the keys and it began. Two, three measures, and then she stopped. One of the men sighed but she couldn't stand to look up and see which one. She read through it for a few seconds. Started again.

This time she played the song. The piano could have used some tuning, but the song itself actually sounded quite lovely, with the opening chords coming through sweet and sentimental, almost a comic sadness. The timing fell into place without Patrice having to concentrate too much. Gil turned the page for her when she came to the end of the first one, then continued turning pages as she played it through once.

When she finished she rubbed her hands together twice and started right back at the beginning again before anyone could say a word. This time she sang it.

When she was finished, she asked Rosie, “Do you have it?”

Rosie nodded.

Patrice stepped away from the piano and stood next to her sister. They sang the song together. It sounded right. Rosie kept up as best she could, though she couldn't read the music fast enough and had only heard Patrice sing it the one (and a half) times. When Patrice looked up during those last verses, she saw all had taken seats except for Trigger and Simms, who were standing at the farthest ends from one another. Simms was smoking. Big old Hutch had gone gentle-faced in the way some do when they drop self-awareness. Simms seemed to note Hutch's reaction, too, and he seemed more interested in that than the singing itself.

They came to the end of the song. Patrice and Rosie just stood there together. All were silent, except …

The river devil.

It had come back. It looked like a man but with female breasts and sharp teeth. It kept singing where Patrice had finished, as though it was fascinated by her. The other children's river devils were there, too, though for Patrice they were like shadow creatures. Patrice retreated into herself and tried to dispel the briar world—not possible by trying to force away thoughts. It meant she had to be calm. She had to watch and listen—to everything: the world around her, her own heartbeat, even her thoughts as disembodied objects.

She did this. She watched and listened. Her brothers and sister, from the looks on their faces, were seeing the devils, too. Patrice listened to the sounds beyond the walls to the street: hooves and wheels and voices. A dog barking. She noticed light filtering through a gap in the brick.

The river devil faded away.

From somewhere in the city, the bell sounded four times for the hour. Its tone was the same key as the song.

And Simms was talking. He was saying that they'd wasted enough time and should get a move on.

Patrice nodded, throwing her entire attention into that single interaction with Simms. “Let's go then.”

Simms was narrowing his eyes at Trigger. “We may actually have a little work for the boys, too.”

 

thirty-one

NEW ORLEANS, NOW

WHEN BO ENTERED ESTHER'S
hospital room he threw his arms around his mother with no regard for tubes or machinery or bedside tables. But then again, Esther didn't show any regard for those things, either. She just hugged her boy, tears streaming. Madeleine was struck by the look of abject fear on her face.

“We'll give y'all a moment,” she said, and hung back with Ethan.

Mercifully, there hadn't been anyone in the second bed. Ethan closed the door so that Esther and Bo could be alone. The lights of the hall were stark white, as was the textured linoleum, as were the walls. A horizontal stripe divided one white from the next.

Madeleine said, “Ethan, when you were talking to Zenon through Mare, and he made those threats, what did you say to him?”

“Told him he wouldn't get the chance to hurt anyone else.”

And then he turned to Madeleine with a look of utter exhaustion, resignation, and fury. “Because I'm gonna kill him myself.”

Madeleine took his arm. “Don't talk that way, not even for a minute!”

“I don't see as I have a choice, Madeleine. He's making threats against your life. I can't just stand by and let anything happen to you.”

“I can hold my own against him. I have so far.”

“So far.”

“And you won't be able to help me or anyone else if you go to prison for murder.”

She pulled him closer. His eyes were bloodshot and his jawline had gone to stubble. She lifted her face so she could find the scent of his skin, up in the neck where it smelled most like him.

She said, “You need rest. We'll come up with a plan after we sleep.”

He nodded, pulling her in close.

*   *   *

THE DOOR OPENED AND
Bo emerged. “Mom wants to talk to y'all.”

Madeleine and Ethan followed him in. Esther was sitting up in her bed with an IV in the back of her hand and a frayed paperback on the bedside table.

Her face.

Her right eye was black and folded shut, and the right side of her mouth was swollen and split. A mesh cast bound her right hand.

The left eye, the untouched one, was wide and wet and it appraised Madeleine and Ethan with a look of desperation and fear. “I wanna thank y'all for bringin him.”

Madeleine said, “I'm afraid we shouldn't stay much longer. It isn't safe.”

Esther turned to her son. “Bo honey, why don't you sit over there in the corner and listen to your new music box for a minute. You can show me your moves.”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Over here, OK?” Ethan said, nudging Bo to the far corner and drawing the curtains to Esther's bed so that Bo was hidden from the door.

Nothing but Ethan's classic rock on the iPod but Bo seemed to like it. He slipped on the earbuds and moved his head to the rhythm, the volume loud enough where the song was audible.

Esther said, “My neighbor Cheryl offered to watch him.”

Madeleine and Ethan looked at one another.

Madeleine said, “I'm not sure that's safe. For Bo or for Cheryl.”

Esther nodded. “That's what I thought. It's just, you hardly know him. And I don't know you.”

Ethan said, “That's true, but we understand what's coming after him. Best thing for you right now is to go ahead with the rehab and let us protect him.”

Esther pulled in her breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “I wasn't going to go. Couldn't risk losing my job. But they already fired me anyway. So I guess the decision's been made for me.”

Madeleine put a hand to her shoulder.

Esther's lower lip was trembling. “Why him? Why my boy?”

Ethan slipped his arm around Madeleine and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

Madeleine said, “He's got a special light inside. It's hard to explain, but there are dark forces that would like to extinguish that light.”

“Those devils, the river devils,” Esther said.

Madeleine nodded.

“But why?” Esther asked, and tears spilled over onto her cheek.

“I wish I could say. I just don't really know myself because I'm still learning. The immediate threat is from someone alive, someone like me. We're trying to stop him. The river devils, they're limited in what they can do. They whisper into your ear, tell lies.”

“And I fell for it,” Esther said.

Madeleine opened her hands. “There's more to it than that. You do have the power of choice with the river devils. They know how to find your weak spots, but you're still ultimately in control. But aside from them, you're up against a serious warrior.”

“Warrior.” Her jaw went tense as she seemed to digest the idea. “That what you mean when you say someone like you?”

Madeleine shrugged. Esther was looking at her they way a fawn might regard a bobcat.

Esther said, “That what turned those schoolyard bullies into full-on thugs? Made Mare chase Bo under the trailer with a carving knife?”