“Is that bad?”
“You’re only supposeda be baptized once! But Father Stevenson approved it and even performed every one of them.”
“Weird...”
“So Ms. Grisham’s in there callin’ my girl a demon; says the baptisms are wearing off and that she might need a fourth. Father says that’s not why we get baptized. Grisham says her niece is obstinate. Father says Christ was obstinate too and that confession is a time to admit your own sins and not the sins of others. Then–this is the best part–he sends the witch home with fifty Hail Marys.”
“James Parker!” My Dad’s sanctimonious voice echoed through the chambers.
“Crap,” I said. “Looks like I gotta bolt.”
“No prob. I gotta get that carpet clean if I ever wanna carry another thurible.”
“James!”
“Coming Dad!” I shouted. I stood up, then turned back for my final question. “Hey, Dom.”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you make that cross on your chest every time you say her name?”
He looked at me with lovesick eyes. “’Cause every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.”
* * *
Monday.
When boys are twelve, phrases like “She’s not my aunt, she just wants me to call her that,” don’t stand out as particularly odd. Three baptisms and “Little Madonna” sounded strange, but not perverse and certainly not dangerous. I blame part of my naiveté on my age, part on the era. Either way, our brief tree-top dialogue and my conversation with the alter boy churned for days before warning signs registered in my developing brain. If Ms. Grisham wasn’t Mara’s mother, aunt, or grandma, then who was she? If Mara was adopted, surely she’d call the woman “Mom” like Livy did. And if she was a foster kid, she wouldn’t be living with the same woman for so many years.
Something was very wrong.
Last night I dreamt that Mara was in my bedroom. She was wearing the same footie pajamas from the evening we met, but her hair was crimped like it was in church. My room became a snow globe of slow-drifting feathers and my ceiling’s glow-in-the-dark galaxy dissolved into a holy dusting of Milky Way stars. Mara watched them, her head against my forearm, cuddled against me with fuzzy limbs brushing against my skin.
I woke up wet for the second time in a week, then snuck another load of laundry to baptize my sticky shame in a barrel of tumbling bubbles.
If Ms. Grisham didn’t have legal custody of Mara, that was a humungous problem... but maybe it was a problem that I could use to my advantage.
It goes without saying: my mother had a big heart. If she knew what I knew about the little girl in Whit’s suburb, she would do everything in her power to set things straight. However, Mom’s emotional response would be countered by Dad’s debilitating logic. He would explain in his calm, condescending tone that we don’t have all the facts, that we don’t know the whole situation, and that it would be a shame to call Social Services on an innocent woman.
If I wanted to convince them both of Mara’s situation, I was gonna need proof.
Meanwhile, the castle routine continued as usual. Despite her fears, Livy passed the seventh grade with As on every exam. The twins were little balls of mayhem, and Fantasia was... still just a baby. Dad spent the first eight hours of every weekday at the firm, then came home and retired to the eagle-watching tower with binoculars and a glass of wine. At seven o’clock he emerged in a lackadaisical mood for dinner and time with the family.
Every Monday, Mom hired a pair of babysitters to supervise an at-home daycare in our basement. Her friends arrived at noon, dropped their youngsters alongside the twins and Fantasia in the downstairs playroom, then joined my mother in the library for “The Demi Moore Cigar Club.” Although it would be two years until the Ghost actress appeared on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, rumors of her bold tastes and macho elegance earned the respect of women from Hollywood to West Michigan. Mom’s club even had its own cigar box with fancy clips and trays.
When the ladies were settled, I wiggled through my secret passage and held my ear to the seam of light that defined the library-side hatch. The voices were clear, but despite bouts of laughter, the conversation was dull.
The privacy of the passage encouraged my curiosity. From my stack of books I removed a children’s encyclopedia I normally used for screenplay ideas (the entries on medieval times and the Brother’s Grimm provided a full sketchbook of inspiration). I held the hefty book beneath Mickey’s lamplight and turned to the index.
“Sex, see Reproduction.”
Back to the “R”s.
“Reproduction, 44, 180, 234, 496”
Flip to page four-ninety-six and... jackpot!
I stumbled across this page a dozen times during my research, but I always gagged at the drawings of naked people and giggled at the word “scrotum.”
This time, something was different. I read the curious words with genuine interest: “seminal,” “fallopian,” “cervix,” “urethra”; black lines connecting each word to a corresponding pastel blob in the exposed guts of the nudists. The pictures fascinated me, particularly a colorful cross-section of an erect penis sticking straight up inside a vagina. I tried to imagine how it must look in real life, but I couldn’t get the technical drawing out of my head. As I focused on the image, a warm feeling swelled between my thighs–
“Hey dorkface!”
It was Livy! I slammed the book, snapped off the Mickey lamp, and hugged my knees in the darkness.
“James!” she yelled again. “There’s a package for you!”
* * *
The film was already warm when I opened the envelope; the brown ribbon hugged the reel in a tight, immaculate spiral of images and magnetic sound.
Whit wasn’t due for another forty-five minutes.
I heaved my father’s projector from the storage closet to my hideout. He bought the machine at a garage sale a few years back so we could watch Mom’s old family movies from Cleveland. Now it was mine.
Clamps with rubber tips held a white towel to the banisters, creating a small but reliable movie screen. My stubby fingers rushed to feed the film’s tiny perforations into the projector’s gears while drops of sweat formed on the peaks of my ears. Dismantling a time bomb would have been less nerve-wracking.
A flick of the switch and the bulb ignited the towel with a tattered white square of scratches and specks. The cone of light illuminated a swirl of dust and I inhaled deeply the robust scent of heated acetate.
Like the click of a baseball card in bike spokes, the machine pulled the film across the lens to create a wild scramble of orange and yellow. The built-in speaker screeched. I lowered the volume so the women wouldn’t hear.
Suddenly, the ladies, the castle, my world dissolved. I was alone with my thoughts and the unfocused image... and Mara’s voice. I didn’t know the song–another church song–but the effect was the same. Heavy breathing accompanied the melody. It was a raspy, distorted breathing that tugged my neck hairs like a static-charged balloon.
The image bounced, cleared, and reeled into it’s final position, gazing into the darkness of a single familiar lamppost and snow covered trees. The picture bobbed with morbid breaths. Then, from the grainy shadows and the winter wonderland, the boys appeared; only a handful, zombie-like and staring directly at me.
There was no question that Ms. Grisham was the crappy camera operator, sitting in her recliner beside the window. Her breath became a chant that muffled Mara’s voice; a garbled tirade with words unfamiliar.
The snow zoomed through the lamplight and stuck like spit-wads to the faces of the boys. Then, the camera whirled in a burst of blue and yellow streaks and landed on a wide composition of the antique living room. Mara crowned that blood-red platform like a music-box ballerina. She was in her underwear; her ankle handcuffed to the bolted eye-hook in the center of the stage.
* * *
In the driveway, Mom laughed with Mrs. Bullard and Mrs. G
reenfield as the other women strapped their kids in car seats. There were jokes about roach clips, compliments on the newest phase of the castle’s renovation, and playful suggestions to make the cigar club a daily retreat.
When the last minivan was gone, Mom noticed me straddling Leo’s stone back. Her smile faded when she saw my eyes. I stepped off the lion, approached her slowly, and fell into a bear hug.
I told her about Roslyn. I told her about my late-night trip to the Grisham house. I knew the consequences, but I didn’t care.
Whit arrived at the peak of my confession. My cheeks were red and stained with tears. The film was in my mother’s hand.
Despite her calming reassurance–despite the burning embarrassment and the sickness from what I saw–I could not shake the memory of the raspy chant that distorted my angel’s song.
* * *
Tuesday.
Dad suggested I stay, but Mom let me go.
I met Whit behind the cul-de-sac mailbox a moment before Mr. Anderson arrived. He was a friend from Social Services and my mother’s mentor when she first became a foster parent.
Mom met him at the window of his brown van and gave him the film.
He unspooled the header. He held it to the sunlight. He closed one eye and pulled out a yard of film. He paused every few inches to scan the tiny pictures, then spooled the reel and jammed it in his lapel pocket.
Whit’s shoulders fell and he shook his head. “Always gotta do the right thing, huh?”
Three clicks and Ms. Grisham opened the door in a plain purple dress and curlers in her hair. Reluctantly, she invited Mom and Mr. Anderson inside.
Thirty minutes later, two patrol cars arrived without sirens. Inside, the woman screamed.
Ms. Grisham was removed from her home–thrashing and cursing–in the arms of two police officers.
“Jesus Christ has damned you all!” she cried, feet dragging the sidewalk and curlers unravelling. “Get behind me, Satan! Tempt me no more! Send that whore back to Babylon and put that demon down!”
The officers strengthened their hold, then flattened her across the hood of the car.
“Damn her!” she screamed. “Damn that bitch to hell!”
One officer read the woman her rights. The other secured the handcuffs and ducked her into the car.
Mom appeared at the doorway, one hand on her hip, the other covering her mouth. She watched the patrol cars drive away and her chest heaved. She turned around and nodded once.
Mr. Anderson emerged at last, holding the delicate hand of a downcast little girl. Mara didn’t look up. Mom touched her shoulder and led her to the passenger side of the van while Mr. Anderson jumped in the driver’s seat. From our poor vantage behind the mailbox, Whit and I couldn’t see the girl or my mother, but the van remained motionless for a very long time.
Finally, Mr. Anderson turned the engine and drove away. Mom waved, and as she crossed the street to our car, I could tell that she too had been crying.
* * *
The twins were sent to bed early and Dad rallied Livy and me to the dining room for a family meeting. Mom was already seated and rocking Fantasia to sleep.
Dad spoke slowly with his hands folded between us, pausing every so often to judge our reactions from the rim of his glasses. “Your mother and I talked it over, and we think it’s best if Mara stays with us for the summer...”
My chest–
“...just until we can find her a permanent home.”
I couldn’t breathe but I couldn’t let them see. A surge of blood darkened my vision and I thought for sure I was going to faint.
“Where will she sleep?” Livy asked.
“Well,” Mom said, “the twins are already settled in the third bedroom, and since the downstairs guest room is still unfinished, we thought you might let Mara stay with you.”
Livy rolled her eyes. “Can I still have sleepovers?”
“Of course.”
She sighed dramatically, then nodded. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”
“What about you, James,” Dad asked.
I nodded. It was all I could do.
We discussed a few more particulars, then Mom stood from her chair and tapped Livy’s shoulder. “Let’s let the boys talk for a bit. Help me put the baby to bed?” As my sister grumbled, Mom winked at Dad and left the room.
For an hour and seventeen minutes, my deepest fears were realized. The situation with Mara and that glimpse of Roslyn’s thigh prompted The Dreaded Talk. For an hour and seventeen minutes, I learned from my father the truth about boys and girls. I learned the reason that I wet the bed in more scientific detail than any encyclopedia could offer.
Dad’s speech concluded with a hug that dissipated the blush in my cheeks. He nodded to my room. “There’s a present on your bed,” he said.
“A present?”
“For doing the right thing.” He smiled and smacked the back of my head.
I ran. I nearly tripped over the parlor rug. I opened my door and flicked on the light and saw–sitting smack in the middle of my dinosaur comforter–a brand new video camera.
4. CAMERA TESTS
Whit begged me to invite him to dinner the night Mara arrived. Luckily, Mom had a standing rule that forbade visitors on the first day of a new arrival, so I could tell my friend that I didn’t have a choice. Dinner would be strange enough without a perv in a wheelchair.
I had three days to prepare. First, I slyly solicited Mom for a haircut, claiming the three inches of shag was making my head sweat in the summer heat. Next, I “accidentally” dropped my Fraggle Rock toothbrush in the toilet. Dad told me to boil it in water... but Mom saved the day and replaced it with a plain toothbrush from her bottomless bin of backup toiletries. My room was gagging on Star Wars memorabilia, Jurassic Park dinosaurs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, and posters of Harrison Ford, but I couldn’t hide the trove without stirring my family’s suspicions. I searched out the most embarrassing aliens and the largest dinosaurs and shoved them under my bed. Mr. Ford could stay.
Last winter, Mom snagged a pamphlet on child obesity from the YMCA and suggested that I use it as a guide to earning my Super Nintendo. Annoyed, I shoved it in my junk drawer and forgot about it. But now... I was motivated! I retrieved the pamphlet, studied the charts, and determined my goal weight to be one hundred and twenty-five pounds. I borrowed Mom’s scale and stepped up. Twenty pounds to go.
A NordicTrack ski machine sat beside the laundry-room door in the basement. One of the cords was tangled around the wooden base, and a row of newly-pressed shirts hung from the extension bar. The rest of the exercise equipment fit easily inside a wicker basket: a knotted jumprope, mismatched barbells, a Thigh Master, a Walkman with earphones, Livy’s hot-pink headband, and a series of Jane Fonda workout tapes. Dad called Ms. Fonda a “horses ass”–the only time I heard him swear–but Mom claimed she only liked the woman for her motivating exercise routines. While the family slept, I hooked a VCR into my six-inch bedroom TV and danced like a baboon with the aging actress as my guide.
For three nights I slept in a pool of my own sweat. I dreamt of Mara again, but I woke up nervous instead of wet. Did she know that I was the reason she was taken from her home? What if she was mad at me? What if she really loved her pseudo-aunt? Surely she would be grateful; after all, I saved her life. Right?
Although I was never stinky fat like Trent Rainwater, I hedged my bets and borrowed Dad’s deodorant for the big night. I combed my hair just enough to look nice, but not enough to encourage Livy’s jokes. I wore a simple red tee and my baggiest pair of jeans. I brushed my teeth three times.
Mom was scheduled to arrive with Mara at five-thirty. While she was out, Dad watched kids instead of birds and “cooked dinner” with a phone call to Domino’s. As usual, the delivery boy couldn’t find our hidden drive, but Dad accounted for the extra twenty minutes and the pizza arrived with the ladies.
The foyer door opened and slammed. I cupped my mouth, huffed my breath–
not too bad!–then ran to meet them at the top of the stairs. Mom was talking but I didn’t care; my attention was with Mara.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi,” she replied in that delectable voice I’d been savoring for days. Her irises mirrored her cute tan dress. Screen-print daisies rose from the hem and twirled her ankles as she sauntered up the stairs. I studied her expression for any sign of hatred or thankfulness, but in a heartbeat I had forgotten my mission, abandoned for the midnight center of her perfect eye.
Before I could utter a better greeting, Mom swept Mara into a tour of the parlor, bedrooms and library. They plopped her suitcase on Livy’s second twin bed, then ended the tour in the kitchen with plans to see the ballroom after dinner.
Mom’s place settings were fancier than usual for a Friday night. She removed the crystal from the buffet and adorned the table with forest-green place mats that matched the seat cushions and walls. “Sorry about the mess,” she said and offered Mara a chair between Bobby and herself.
“Your home is beautiful, Mrs. Parker,” said the girl, more somber than I expected from the nymph who once scurried a homemade rope. “Is it a real castle?”
Dad sat at the head of the table, then opened the pizza boxes. Jake lunged for the first piece of plain cheese.
“How rude,” Livy muttered and took her own slice.
“The castle is totally real,” I replied (my first words to Mara since “Hey” at the top of the steps). “It’s real old too. It was built eighty years ago by a guy named John Alabaster Rhodes.”
“Cool,” she said, then looked at me and smiled.
I maintained my scholarly façade. Inside, I was beaming.
Dad served a slice of supreme to Jake, then tore off the biggest pieces and slid them on my plate. “Two slices of supreme for the famous director.”
“Just one,” I said, then pulled them apart and placed the larger piece back in the box.
Dad and Mom exchanged a glance; for the first time, I knew what it meant.
“So Mara,” Mom said, “what do you do for fun?”
She scanned our faces. “Well, I really like school. I miss it a lot.”