“Thank you,” I said. Then: “How old are you?”
“Eight.”
“How do you know about alchemists? How do you even know that word?”
“I want to learn every single thing there is to know about the Middle Ages.”
I glanced out the window and noted that the rain seemed to be slowing. I considered urging him to join the kids who had been herded downstairs to run around the basement, where earlier in the party they had been playing games. I wondered if his mother or father was among the parents who had remained to help chaperone the party, and guessed not.
But I was wrong. Before I said another word to the boy, I felt a presence behind me and turned to see a woman my own mother’s age with caramel-colored hair that fell to her shoulders.
“I see you met my Eric,” she said to me, sitting on the floor beside the boy and patting his knee in a way that exuded good-natured camaraderie as much as maternal love. “I’m Cristina. Cristina Holbrook.”
“I’m Lianna.”
“We’re new here.”
“Oh?”
“Yup. We bought the Thompsons’ house out on Orchard Street.”
“Across from the Prescotts’?”
“That’s the one.”
“Then”—and I paused, unsure how to phrase what I was about to say, hoping to find the least disconcerting construction—“those were your horses.”
The woman nodded, stealing a glance at her son as she did. He wrapped his arms around his rib cage as if he were binding himself, holding himself together—creating a straitjacket or a defensive cocoon, I thought.
“Yes,” said Eric’s mother. “Those were our horses.”
*
The problem with bringing Paige to the party was that I had to wait for it to end to bring her home. I had to watch Ethan open his presents and then some of the kids pull the M&M’s from the cake frosting the way nasty children pull wings from flies—the index finger and thumb working like tweezers—and I had to chat with the grown-ups. They wanted to be polite and show their interest in my life, which meant they tortured me by asking me about my upcoming senior year of high school and where I might be applying to college. The one parent that interested me, Eric’s mother, was always near her son and so we never spoke again that afternoon.
But it did mean that on the car ride home I could ask Paige about the party and the new boy.
“He was kind of quiet during the show,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
“Maybe he just knows magic is stupid,” Paige said, trying not to smile, but the side of her mouth was curled up the tiniest bit.
“Yeah, it wasn’t that. But he did become one heck of a big talker when it was just the two of us.”
“He must have figured out pretty fast that Ethan Gollner is a disaster.”
“He really is. But it was nice of him to invite you.”
“He just wanted as many presents as possible.”
“He probably likes you.”
“He likes that I’m good at sports.”
“Maybe. But all the kids like you.”
We paused at a stop sign. In the brief quiet, she asked me, “Is there something wrong with the new kid?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Well, one minute he’s super-quiet. And then he just goes off on dragons and wizards and stuff. He said something about this special saddle and blanket he had for his horse. He said he owns jousting pads for it. He said he owns a lance, but it isn’t real. When I asked what jousting pads are, he might have talked for eleven hours if Ricky Atkins hadn’t shut him up.”
“Why does that mean there’s something wrong with him?” I said, though I had a feeling she was onto something.
“That was, like, all he would talk about. Ask him if he wants cake and he answers that in the old days dessert was honey and wine.”
“Oh. Maybe he is a little strange.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“But I’m glad Ethan’s parents thought to invite him. You’ll look out for him, right—when school starts?”
She turned to me, horrified. “He’s a boy and he’s weird and I don’t even know him.”
“No one does.”
She reached forward and turned on the radio, scanning the stations until she found a song that she liked. I knew my sister well enough to know that she had no intention of continuing this conversation while trapped alone in the car with me.
*
My father swirled his scotch in his glass and I found myself gazing at the ice cubes in the amber. In school that spring I had read that once upon a time advertisers put the word sex into alcohol ads, sometimes hiding the letters in the ice, because nothing sells like sex. I felt only a little buzzed now, and I tried to find the x in the contents of my father’s glass. I thought I might have discovered one in the highest of three cubes, but of course no one had airbrushed that ice. This was real.
I sat back in the couch. Maybe I was more wasted than I realized. I had no plans tonight but to hang around with my family, which I always enjoyed, but I had retreated to my own room after dinner and smoked a small bowl first.
“I wouldn’t call the little boy strange because he is fascinated by the Middle Ages,” our father was saying to Paige. She was in her pajamas now and had curled up in the great chair with him, half on his lap. Soon he would walk her up to her bedroom and either he or our mother would read to her. Our parents alternated, but I couldn’t remember whose turn it was this Saturday night. “Perhaps it’s evidence of a keen intellectual curiosity.”
“Okay. I’ll stick to weird,” Paige said.
Our mother was upstairs taking a bath. She had read somewhere that a warm bath decreases the likelihood of a sleepwalking event, and so she had begun taking baths before bed. We suspected this was just an old wives’ tale, but it was harmless and she had discovered just how much she enjoyed devouring novels in the tub.
“That’s not a very precise word, either, Paige,” he answered, his voice soft and professorial. “Weird can mean an awful lot of things. I think he actually sounds a little shy. Maybe all his talk of wizards and jousting is a defense mechanism. Remember, he doesn’t know anyone yet.”
“I think in this case, weird’s a pretty good word, Dad,” I chimed in. “I’m with Paige on this one.” I knew that I wasn’t being helpful from a pedagogical perspective, but it was going to take a lot more time or considerably stronger weed for me to forget the way Eric had waited behind to tell me that he knew the secret behind the Candy Factory. It also annoyed me when our father pretended he was Atticus Finch.
“Lianna! I am sure there are people who think your magic is…weird,” my father reminded me.
“Okay. Let’s try this one,” I said. “How about awkward. He’s the most awkward kid I’ve met in a very long time.”
“I’ll accept that. And Paige?”
My sister looked up at our father.
“I would suggest you just view this awkwardness as a part of what makes Eric who he is,” he said.
“Like a condition?” she asked.
He sighed. It wasn’t like a condition at all, but he wasn’t going to correct her yet again. The truth was, we referred to my mother’s sleepwalking as a condition, and obviously Paige did not think less of her because of it. I sensed this was what my father was thinking, and I smiled at him. I wanted him to know that I appreciated how difficult it was sometimes to be a parent.
“Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.”
“Why is he so awkward?”
“I have no idea. All I know is what your sister has told us.”
Paige looked over at me and scowled. “You didn’t ask enough questions at the party.”
“I didn’t have a chance,” I answered defensively. We had gone through all of this at dinner. About the very same moment that Cristina Holbrook told me that she had moved into the Thompson house across from Heather Prescott and those were her horses that had been electrocuted, Ethan Gollner’s mom had come in
and said I’d done a great job, but the magic-show part of the celebration clearly was over. I had felt a little chastened and a little judged. I didn’t believe that the Candy Factory trick had tanked the party, but I had a feeling that Mrs. Gollner did. Nevertheless, I had already decided to remove the trick from the parties where the audience was going to be this young.
“You know, I wish I hadn’t even brought the kid up at dinner,” I added.
“Oh, I’m glad you did,” our father said. “I think your sister is, too.”
“Maybe he was so quiet because he was so sad,” Paige said.
“Probably true. Imagine if you had two horses and they were both electrocuted,” said our father.
“And you’re in a new village,” I added. “You haven’t made any friends yet.”
Inside, however, I didn’t believe it was quite that simple. Eric Holbrook might have been sad that the horses had died—he might have been devastated or stunned or scarred—but he was also…something else.
I heard our mother on the stairs, and a moment later there she was. She was in her favorite navy-blue sleep shirt: it buttoned up the front and fell to a few inches above her knees. Annalee Ahlberg was tall and beautiful, and her legs seemed to go on forever.
She bent over and kissed me on the top of my head as she passed me.
“What are you all talking about?” she asked.
“The boy whose horses were killed,” said Paige.
She seemed to think about this as she sat down on the couch. Then she said, “I called Cristina tonight—his mom. Mostly just to introduce myself. You know, welcome her to the area, see if she needs anything. Tell her how sorry I was about those poor animals.”
“Did you tell her how close we were when the power line snapped?” I asked.
“I did.”
“And does she need anything?” my father asked.
“Not really. It’s just the three of them: Cristina, her husband, and Eric. He works at the college.”
“Does he?”
“Yes, but in administration, not faculty. He’s in development. They just moved here from Saratoga Springs. He used to work at Skidmore.”
“Ah, development,” my father said, nodding dismissively. “He makes sure there is money for climbing walls and a world-class natatorium.”
“And financial aid,” my mother said, raising an eyebrow. Then she turned back to me and said, “She liked your show, Lianna. She thought you were adorable.”
I wasn’t sure I liked being adorable. I thought kittens were adorable. Babies were adorable. I wanted to be mystifying or surprising or professional, at least when I was performing.
Paige nuzzled a little farther into our father’s chest. She rested her head against him. “Is Eric really upset?” she asked our mother.
“About the horses? Oh, I guess he was. He is. Certainly Cristina is. They were her horses at first.”
Paige toyed with one of the covers on the armrest. “I just can’t see that weird kid on a horse.”
“Apparently he rides rather well. Before they moved here this summer, he was in some medieval equestrian festival in New York.”
I could imagine Cristina Holbrook elaborating on her son’s interests, though with a voice that was not nearly as obsessed as Eric’s. I had the sense that Cristina had probably shared a good deal more about her disconcerting little boy, because my mother was confident and kind and invited confession. I did my best to listen as our parents and Paige continued to chat, but whether it was the dope or the fact it had been a long day, my mind wandered.
And soon I was filled again with the dread and anxiety that had been trailing me lately, and that I just couldn’t seem to shake.
*
On Sunday afternoon, my mother let me drive the new Pathfinder to Middlebury so Paige and I could buy our notebooks, binders, and pens for the school year that was soon to begin. Our family had purchased the SUV specifically because eventually my parents would be carting me and all of my furniture and clothes to (and from) college, and in the meantime it would make traveling to the Snow Bowl, where our family skied, considerably more comfortable. Paige was already a promising young ski racer, a kid who was fearless, athletic, and fast.
On our way out of town, just a few miles from the village center, I coasted to a stop and pulled off to the side of the road near the Prescotts’ driveway.
“Are we going to Heather’s?” Paige asked, her voice tinged with both annoyance and surprise.
“No.”
I saw that the power line was repaired. I spotted a backhoe in the field across the street and two fresh hillocks of dry August dirt where I presumed the horses were buried.
I turned off the ignition and climbed from the car. “Want to come with me or wait here?” I asked Paige.
“Where are you going?”
I pointed at the field across the street, and Paige rolled her eyes, unbuckled her seat belt, and joined me. The sun was high and the air felt steamy.
Though I loved our cat, I really didn’t view myself as much of an animal person. Today, however, I was drawn to those mounds. I felt a need to pay my respects. It was as if those horses had taken the bullet for my mother and me.
“Come on,” I said to my sister, crossing the street and climbing over the wooden fence into the meadow.
The two of us stood there before the graves for about thirty seconds in absolute silence. I tried to rein in my more ghoulish thoughts, but it was impossible. I heard the horses’ whinnies as they felt the electricity coursing through them, the agony of the shock and then the unbearable spike of pain as their hearts abruptly stopped beating. Did they rear up on their hind legs or did it happen too fast? I imagined Cristina finding them dead in the field. I saw the backhoes digging the two plots and then unceremoniously pushing the dead animals into the deep rectangular trenches.
Finally, Paige spoke, motioning up toward the house. “Is this okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine. No one would mind.” But when I followed my sister’s eyes, I felt a pang of worry. There, watching us from the terrace at the back of the house, perhaps fifty yards away, was Eric. Either we hadn’t noticed the boy, which was possible, or he had seen the two of us and come outside. I wondered now if this was in fact a violation of some sort, an impingement on the family’s privacy or mourning.
“I think he’s coming,” Paige said. I thought she sounded anxious, as if she were thinking the same thing that I was. I could see that Cristina had joined her son and the two of them were fast approaching.
“It will be fine,” I reassured Paige.
“Hi, there,” Cristina said when she reached us. She was wearing a white sundress with a print of blue irises.
“Hello. We just…I just wanted to pay my respects, I guess. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, not at all.”
“This is my sister, Paige. You might remember her from the birthday party. She’s in Eric’s class.”
“Hello, Paige.”
“Hello.”
I glanced at Eric. He was gazing past us at Mount Abraham in the distance. Paige was staring down at the twin mounds, apparently fearful that it would be awkward to observe this strange new classmate, but also afraid to look at the boy’s mother.
“What were the horses’ names?” I asked the woman.
“Clara and Marnie. Clara was seven. Marnie was eleven.”
“I am really sorry, Mrs. Holbrook.”
“I know. Thank you. And, please, call me Cristina.”
“Does Eric miss riding them?” asked Paige.
“Why don’t you ask him?”
Paige nodded, embarrassed. She understood on some level that she shouldn’t have been speaking as if he weren’t present. She looked at the boy, and though he didn’t look back, she asked, “Do you miss riding your horses?”
“Yes.” The answer was short but not brusque. He continued to look out at the mountain.
“I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what h
appened to them,” she went on.
“Clara was one year younger than me,” he said, finally looking at Paige. “I didn’t get to name her because she was named when I was a baby. If I had gotten to name her, I would have called her Brunhild, which is a much better name for a jousting mare.”
“Brun what?” asked Paige.
“Brunhild. It means armored battle maiden.”
“Do you two want to come up to the house for lemonade?” Cristina asked.
I knew that I didn’t and I suspected that my sister didn’t. We both wanted to get to Middlebury and do our back-to-school shopping, and steer clear of conversations about armored battle maidens. But I thought of what this woman and this boy had lost and couldn’t imagine saying no.
“Okay,” I answered.
“Lovely,” Cristina said. She looked at Eric, who once more had grown quiet and was staring at the two mounds. The boy raised his hand and waved at them, using mostly his wrist. Then his mother did, too.
*
Cristina seated the two of us on the terrace in elegant wrought-iron chairs with weather-resistant plaid cushions. She poured the lemonade from what I thought looked exactly like the old Kool-Aid pitcher: bulbous and squat, but cheerful. It was delicious. Eric sat beside his mother on the wrought-iron settee. He draped a massive, illustrated children’s encyclopedia of the Middle Ages on his lap as if it were a napkin. He thumbed through it intensely as if we weren’t there and he was all alone on the porch.
For the first few minutes Cristina asked Paige all about the kids in Eric’s and her class, some of whom she had seen at the party. She was mining for friends for her son. And Paige obliged because Paige was smart and understood this as well, and because she was always happy to share the skinny on the kids around her. Sometimes Paige answered Cristina directly and other times she spoke to Eric; almost always her candor left me smiling.
But I felt the tenor change abruptly when Cristina focused on me and said, “Your mom and I had an interesting conversation.”
“Oh?”
“She told me she’s an architect,” the woman said, and I was relieved. I told myself that I was overreacting in this summer of dread. “Someday my husband and I might have her here to do some serious renovations on this place.”