The Understory (5 page)

She drove fifteen minutes on the freeway, long enough for stars to emerge in the Arizona night sky, until she saw an appealing sign—Paradise Valley. Paradise seemed like an improvement, so she took the exit and meandered around until she wound up on a hilly, rural road, a hundred yards away from paradise itself. Illuminated by several yard lights was a Victorian home, painted a robin egg’s blue with white trim, complete with two ornate turrets and wrap-around porch. As one might expect from a fairy-tale scene nestled in the woods, a white picket fence enclosed a lush, green yard, but in the darkness, Story failed to see the patches of brown, dead grass.

Her parking spot was a small turnout hidden behind a hill, a quarter mile away. She began her trek to the perfect life in the perfect house. After an exhausting day, she was tired and therefore grateful when she saw how easy her entry would be—an open window in a back room on the first floor. Careful to make almost no noise, she extracted the screen, hopped through, and replaced the screen behind her.

Seeing no signs of life, she inspected the dark room, drenched in spots with moonlight. It was someone’s office, but it was dusty and unused, with an unexpected sadness hanging thick in the air. A nameplate, displayed in brass and mahogany on a large desk, was highlighted by one vibrant moonbeam:

DAVID PAYNE, ATTORNEY AT LAW

(AT HOME, JUST
DAD
)

Story walked over to a closet’s double doors and peeked inside. With enough moonlight in the right spots, she saw three boxes sitting on the floor. The one closest to her feet caught her attention. Having no lid, its contents overflowed onto the floor. One sheet contained a list of medical histories, and on another were handwritten names and phone numbers. But on another sheet, the sheet that explained how all the unorganized papers were connected, was an old, but beautiful, watercolor painting of a tree with exaggerated branches, each one containing a name written in black-ink calligraphy. And at the top of the parchment page was the title for this worn work of art:
Payne Family Tree
.

Jutting out of the box were other framed family trees, each one slightly different, but all related. When Story tried to shut the closet door, the box full of Payne lineage, as if in defiance for not having been properly tended to, somehow got in the way. Using her foot, she pushed the box back into the closet, and in doing so pushed someone’s unfinished project farther away from completion.

At that moment, in a startling announcement, the only life in the room talked to, talked
at
, Story. “Miss you,” squawked a green parrot in a silver birdcage hanging in the office corner.

Story stared at the bird’s head, crowned with an orange, red, and yellow tuft of feathers, and wondered if she was hearing things.

“Miss you,” it squawked again.

Story mouthed the words she knew by heart. “
A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:
‘
Allez vous-en!’
”

After wondering how the bird could already miss her, a complete stranger, Story walked closer to the cage and stuck out her finger. The bird then squawked, “Fuck it all!” in a very different tone, but it was obvious both phrases had been heard and practiced many times.

Story heard footsteps, so she hid under the desk.

The light came on, and Story saw a woman’s feet with half-polished toenails shuffle across the floor. Story peered around the desk corner to see an attractive woman—actress-pretty, the kind of woman whose soft features and wavy blonde hair captured an entire room’s attention. But her beauty seemed tarnished somehow. The woman shut the window, looked outside, and walked back over to the office door. She shut the door with authority, as if this was part of her night’s routine, and approached the bird.

“Hey, Sonny,” she said in a soft, melancholy tone. Story peeked out a little further from behind the desk, just enough to see a visibly upset Claire Payne take two pills from her pocket. Claire turned her head, so the bird wouldn’t see, and swallowed them. After facing the bird once again, she said, “Well, Coop drew an inappropriate picture at school today, then refused to go to his baseball game, and I verbally assaulted one of my patients during a therapy session. So,” she said, snickering, “it was a good day.”

Her eyes began to well up. “I’m sorry about the door. I know how you love imperfection, but I called someone to fix it.” She paused, and her voice cracked. “Every time it pops open and creaks, we think you’re coming home.”

Her hand trembled when she spoke again. “Friday’s his birthday, and I don’t think I can . . .”

Tears streamed down her splotchy face. “He’s so angry, David.”

Then, suddenly, she wiped the tears away, threw her fists in the air, and shouted, “Fuck it all!”

“Fuck it all!” the bird repeated as she walked toward the door.

Just as Story was about to get out from underneath the desk, the woman stopped in the doorway and greeted her raven-haired son.

The woman turned into another person, a pretend-happy person, for a split-second, and smiled like a good mom would. “I’m great, honey. Now, say goodnight, and then it’s bedtime. I’ll meet you upstairs,” she said, heading out the door.

Neither the woman nor the boy acknowledged the lie. Only the bird got the truth.

Small feet pitter-pattered over to the birdcage, and the boy seemed okay, until he spoke. “You promised,” Cooper stated matter-of-factly, staring at the bird, now perched on a yellow mini-trapeze. “You promised you’d take me to find It when I turned nine.” The bird stared back with black, motionless eyes.

After biting his lip, Cooper then made an all-too adult declaration. “Maybe you were wrong. Maybe there’s no such thing as magic.” He paused for a moment, and then his tone turned reckless. “If I don’t find It by my birthday, I’m gonna do it,” he said, his whole body tense and anxious.

Do what?
Story wondered.
Run away?
But then Story’s own muscles tightened, and she felt the boy’s gloom pass over her like an invisible wave. A thought made her panic.
Shit, is this kid gonna kill himself? Okay, I get it. My life is not that bad.
Story was really starting to think she should break into more stable households, where children didn’t make suicidal threats or talk to cantankerous birds. She envisioned this little boy’s body sticking out of an oven.
Do eight year olds even know how to turn on an oven?
As Story pondered whether
broil
was a third-grade vocabulary word, she felt this boy’s loss of innocence as her own, and almost shouted “abracadabra” in hopes of fixing the desperate situation. Between the bird, the boy, and the mother, Story had three different perspectives.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

The boy walked away from the bird, but stopped halfway to the door and turned toward it. “Miss you,” he said.

And then Story heard the bird squawk, “Miss you.”

F
or the first time in a long while, Story Easton knew other people more miserable than herself. She didn’t know where all of the sadness came from, but she knew about unhappy families.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Still crouching beneath the desk, Story was alone now, but the mother and boy’s grief felt like another, still-breathing person in the room. Story got out from her hiding spot and wondered if she should formally introduce herself to the bird, but when she looked at him, all she saw was a small but colorful parrot, preparing to be either sweet or belligerent.

“Fuck it all!” the bird shrieked as Story walked by.
Belligerent.
But this time, she forgave him.

Part of Story wanted to run out of that house and forget what she’d seen and heard, but another part of her, the authentic part that didn’t want to fail, was drawn to these strangers.

After tiptoeing into the hallway, she made her way toward light—through the kitchen, where she glided her hand over cool granite countertops, through an unused family room, where life used to happen, and finally, to the base of the stairway that led upstairs, where she could hear them talking.

As Story climbed the steps, the mother, upstairs, surrendered a battle she couldn’t win and, already tired, said, “Ready?”

The boy nodded as his mother reached for the book. By now, they were both snuggled up in their usual spots, and Story, having climbed the steps, was out in the hallway, barely out of sight. The boy clutched his umbrella and twirled it as his mother began.

“Once Upon A Moonflower: A Fairy Tale (or A Tale of a Fairy).”
And then she added, “Written by Martin Baxter.”

Of course, the mother and boy didn’t know Martin Baxter, but to her surprise, Story did. By a strange coincidence, she’d spent the night before at his house, and had seen how sad and empty his pale blue eyes looked in the Phoenix moonlight.

After opening the book, the mother read the disclaimer on the first page. “Due to its graphic (real) and cerebral (smart) nature, this story is not recommended for small children, unless they are really, really brave.” And then, as she always did, she read the dedication. “For my daughter Hope, the project I’m most proud of.”

Story remembered the little blonde girl on Martin Baxter’s shoulders, and then wondered what it would sound like for her own mother to say the word
proud
in reference to her.

After reading the introduction, Claire began the story. “Once upon a time, there was a girl named Hope, who lived in the heart of the rainforest.”

The mother went on to read about Hope, lost in the dark jungle, embarking on a quest to find the magic treasure box hidden deep in the forest, but she didn’t get far before the boy hung his head and said, “It’s not gonna happen, is it?” He frowned. “He said when I turned nine, I’d be old enough, and when I was old enough, we’d go find the magic . . .” He didn’t bother with the logistics. “
Together
.”

His birthday is Friday
, thought Story.
He’s supposed to find the magic treasure box on his birthday
.

His mother searched for the right answer, but it never came. “Honey, Dad meant well, but it’s only a book, and Hope is only a—”

“Fuck Hope!” the boy cried.

“Cooper David Payne!” his mother scolded. “You’re not allowed to say that word!”

“Fuck
fairies
then!”

Exhausted, the mother placed her hand on her son’s leg, warm and sprouting small, soft hairs. “You’re not allowed to say the ‘F’ word, Coop.”

For just a moment, he stared up at her with an honest inquiry. “Fairies?”

And then the stress came crashing down on her as she pounded her clenched fists into her son’s twin bed. “Fuck it all!
Fuck
is the word you’re not allowed to say, goddamn it.” She began to cry, mumbling “Sorry” and “Fuck” in-between sobs and hugging her son.

“See? You say it,” Cooper said. “I’ve heard you say it to Sonny.”

Sonny?
It took Story a moment to realize the cranky bird had a happy, sunshiny name.

A few seconds after the mother began crying again, she stopped, suddenly wary. “Did you hear something?”

“Nuh-uh,” Cooper said, still teary-eyed, refusing to look at the pictures on the page.

Story left her exposed hideout and slipped into the last door at the end of the hallway. While Cooper and his mother finished their story several doors back, Story explored her new room, a guest room with very little in it save a desk, a bed, and a closet. In the closet hung two cocktail dresses still in dry cleaner plastic, and on the floor, Story found what she was looking for.

High-heeled shoes, beaded and shiny-black, called to her. She put them on, quietly prancing around in her very own pajama pageant, and after leaving her old self behind, she began to strut, emerging empowered and confident. Finally, Story Easton felt like someone else, someone who made things happen. In her mind, she sparkled with fairy dust, and flew through starry skies, bringing light to shadowy places. For a moment, Story was Hope, and she flew on fairy wings, found the magic box, and rescued Cooper from everything life had done to him.

And when she went to bed, she dreamed of an enchanted girl floating down an enchanted river.