Still Life With Shape-Shifter

  On the other hand, I don’t really like living in the city, in a little row house that’s one of a series of row houses all marching down the street like redbrick soldiers. I like being able to walk to a neighborhood Italian restaurant, but I don’t like the fact that I have to close every shade in my house at night or my neighbors will make comments on the following day about what TV shows I’ve been watching. I’m not used to this many people being this close, all the time. I miss my house. I miss my twelve acres. I miss my sister.

  Can’t think about that.

  I don’t mind the commute down to PRZ every morning because the rented house is only a few blocks from Highway 55. I’ve started listening to audiobooks to make the trip pass more quickly, and I find I like this way of consuming a novel. When the book—or the narrator—is particularly good, I even become a calmer driver, less inclined to curse at red lights and people traveling slowly in the fast lane. Yet another benefit of my new life.

  Brody takes Highway 55 in the opposite direction, back into the city, on his morning drive. He’s been rehired at Channel 5—not as an on-air reporter, but as a behind-the-scenes producer. When I ask him if he likes that better, he merely shrugs.

  He has, at least for the time being, given up the notion of writing a book about shape-shifters. I’m deeply relieved, but I hate the thought that he’s had to put aside even a small dream. When I ask him about it one night, he says, “I’m too close to the story now. It would be a memoir, not a work of nonfiction. And I don’t want to write a memoir.” The distinctions aren’t clear to me, but he seems adamant. Maybe later, I think. After everything’s settled.

  We both have the sense that we’re just marking time. The sense that our real lives will start in a year, maybe two, that we’re in a very pleasant but still extremely nerve-wracking state of limbo, and nothing important will be launched or decided until it ends. Until something happens to Ann.

  Maria Romano calls me every few weeks with updates, and I live for the sound of her voice on the phone. I admire the way she handles these calls, telling me every single detail she can call to mind, knowing how important each one will be to me, without sounding maudlin or depressing.

  Ann looked thin, but she had a good appetite. She rested most of the first day, but then she was up and playing with Lizzie the next day. She yelped once when Lizzie pulled her ear too hard, but she didn’t bite or scratch, just kind of backed up and watched her for a while, as if waiting to see if Lizzie was going to do anything else inappropriate . . .

  William usually takes human shape at least once during these visits and fills her in on anything major that’s happened while they’ve been gone. It’s William who describes what happened only three weeks after the wedding when, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep Ann from following the back roads that would lead to the house she’d grown up in. They arrived on Bonhomme Highway at dusk and traveled cautiously along the shoulder to avoid being hit by cars, though Ann, as always, became increasingly reckless as they approached the most familiar curves of the road.

  And then they got to the point where he knew your house should be, but it wasn’t there—just an empty field with a couple of Bobcats digging up dirt—and it was like Ann didn’t know what to do, William said. At first she slowed down, like she knew something was missing, she just didn’t know what, then she picked up speed again, racing up the hill and around the next curve, as if what she was looking for was just around the corner. And she kept going for another mile or so, then she stopped, and turned around, and retraced her steps. And the same thing happened—she’d slow down, she’d speed up, she’d keep looking for something. He says he’s not even sure she knew what she was trying to find. And after a couple of hours of this, she turned away, and they headed to a park to spend the night.

  My heart breaks to think of Ann lost, confused, frantically seeking something she can’t even articulate to herself.

  And rejoices—in a stern and bitter way—to think that I have, with my staggeringly expensive purchase, bought her another year or two of life. If I had ever doubted it, I know for certain now that she would have reneged on her promise. She would have come to see me, turned human again, and died in my arms. I have outwitted her, and I am fiercely glad.

  And irredeemably sad.

  I carry those two contradictory, equally powerful emotions in my heart for the rest of that year. Through a sparkling white winter and my first Christmas as a bride. Through spring’s shy, flirtatious arrival, one day warm and beckoning, one day haughty and cold. Through summer’s expansive, self-satisfied, slow and sluggish reign. And back toward autumn’s temper tantrums, stormy and beautiful.

  Debbie has her twins, both of them girls—named Sasha and Sarah, not Zoe and Zelda. Immediately, she descends into a life of sleepless chaos from which she occasionally sends bulletins that roughly translate into This is even harder than I thought it would be, but God are they beautiful. After a three-month maternity leave and a long search for the perfect nanny, she’s back at PRZ, vowing that Charles won’t touch her again until he’s “cut off the jewels and buried them in the yard.”

  Brody wins a regional Emmy award for a program he produced, which prompts his boss to offer him a raise and an extended contract. But I sense a restlessness in him that more money and increased responsibilities won’t appease. His friends Carolyn and Joe have left Doctors Without Borders to begin volunteering at a place in Tasmania that treats and educates children with handicaps. He keeps reading books about mountaineers who found schools in Asia and economics professors who start microfinance banks in Bangladesh.

  “I don’t want to be the guy who builds the school or starts the banks,” he tells me. “I want to be the guy who writes about the guy who goes out to change the world.”

  “I have half a million dollars,” I say. “We could take a year off and go to Africa.”

  “Maybe,” he says. “Not quite yet.”

  Not quite yet. Not while Ann is still alive.

  * * *

  The call from Maria comes on a Wednesday afternoon in late October. “Ann’s here,” she says without preamble. “But she’s struggling. Lying on her side and panting. She took some water, but I couldn’t get her to eat anything. I think it’s time.”

  For a moment, I can’t think. “Okay—I’ll—thanks for calling. Let me get some stuff together and—I’ll leave as soon as I can.”

  Brody’s at work, and I know he can’t always answer his phone, so I text him. Going to Maria’s. He’ll know what that means. I stop in Debbie’s office, and say baldly, “I’ve got to go. Don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  She’s sitting behind her desk, looking weary and hot, but on the instant I have every scrap of her attention. “Ann?” When I nod, she says, “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “Thank you, but no. I just want to be with my sister.”

  Against this very eventuality I have, for the past couple of months, kept a packed overnight bag in my car. I don’t know how the next couple of days will go, but if Ann’s too weak to travel, I might be staying at Maria’s for a while. Part of my brain acknowledges that as a horrible imposition, and part of me doesn’t care. All that matters is that I get to Ann’s side as quickly as I can.

  An overcast sky ushers twilight in an hour or two early; I accomplish the whole drive in a gray half-light that reinforces my sense of dread. All the lights are on at Maria’s, and I push the door open without even bothering to knock.

  All the people who live in the house full- or part-time are gathered in the living room. Maria’s reading a book to Lizzie, and the little girl—more than two years old by now, and so big—is repeating words back to her. Dante and William are seated on the couch, both of them turned to gaze at me. Dante looks sober and sorry; he knows what it’s like to lose a sister. And William—he looks dreadful. Pale, scraggly, rail-thin, and miserable.

  He knows what it’s like to lose a sister, too. And now he’s learning what it’s like to lose a
lover.

  “She’s back in Lizzie’s room,” Maria tells me. “Dante and I thought we’d go away for the night. Give you a little privacy. You can sleep in our room—I changed the sheets this morning.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I’m already edging toward the hall, but I meet William’s eyes. “Are you staying?”

  He relaxes a little, as if maybe he’d thought I wouldn’t want him to be here. “If you don’t mind.”

  “She belongs to you, too,” I say.

  And then I can’t wait another moment, and I run straight to Lizzie’s room. It’s decorated in a zoo motif—perfect for a shape-shifter, I suppose—but most of the furniture has been pushed back against the walls. There’s a hooked rug on the floor, shaped like a plump giraffe, and Ann’s lying on top of it.

  The only illumination comes from a polar-bear night-light, but that’s plenty. I can see that Ann is still in husky shape, and Maria was right. She’s definitely struggling. Her eyes are closed, her breath is shallow and troubled, and her legs are held out stiffly from her body. But she hears me come in and she stirs, seeming to make a great effort to lift her head from the floor. When the blue eyes open, they look whitened, half-blind, and as they stare at me for a long moment, they show no flicker of recognition.

  “Annie,” I whisper and drop to my knees. “Annie, it’s Mel.”

  Maybe she remembers my voice, or my name, or my scent, but suddenly she knows me. I see her face change and her body ripple as she tries to push herself upright. The heavy tail beats the floor a few times in joyful welcome. I put my hands to her face and her tongue flashes out to lick my wrist. Her nose is hot and dry, and her fur feels gritty and sparse beneath my fingers. She doesn’t have the strength to sit up.

  So I lie on the floor next to her, my hands still on her face, her paws scratching gently at my shoulders. “How’ve you been, baby?” I ask in a soft voice. “You’re looking pretty tired. I guess you’ve had a tough few months, huh? But I hope you’ve had some fun, too. I’ve missed you. I’ve thought about you every day.”

  She makes a little whine deep in her throat and paws at my shoulder again, like she’s asking me a question. “Yeah, baby, you can change now,” I say, my voice even softer. “You can come back to me. It’s okay if you’re not strong enough. I’ll just lie here with you a while, just like you are now. But if you want to change, you can do it. You can come back.”

  She whines again, and I move one hand from her face to her neck to her shoulder. Under the brittle fur, I can feel her muscles straining, almost unraveling and reknitting; she closes her eyes again as if the effort of transformation is almost too much for her. I’m afraid to speak, afraid to distract her and somehow strand her in a half-life between one form and another. Then all at once I feel the tension leave her body. Her head falls back, her legs splay—and all that bristly white fur melts away.

  Lying beside me on the giraffe rug is my painfully thin, fearfully weak, radiantly smiling sister. Blond, naked, shivering, and dying.

  “Annie,” I breathe, and crush her in my arms.

  She’s laughing and crying into my neck. I feel the bones of her arms as if they are not softened at all by muscle or flesh. Her skin is chilled to the touch, so I shake free and sit up just enough to twitch a quilt off the nearby rocker, and I tuck this around her so she’s covered from her chin to her toes. Then I snuggle up against her again.

  “It is so good to see you,” I say.

  “It’s been a lot more than three months,” she answers. Her voice sounds a little froggy, as if she’s been battling bronchitis, but I know she just hasn’t used it in a very long time.

  I’m surprised into a breath of a laugh. “Yeah. More like a year.”

  “You tricked me,” she replies, but she doesn’t sound angry.

  “I did. I’m sorry.”

  “You tore the house down!”

  “Sold it to Kurt.”

  “No! Did you get a lot of money?”

  “Half a million dollars.”

  “But why? Why did you sell it?”

  I stroke the blond hair that falls around her face. It’s matted with dirt and frayed with split ends. Not so much unkempt as uncared-for. “Because I didn’t want you to come back and turn human and die.”

  She gives a long, shuddering sigh, a sound that could belong to a dog as much as a human. “Yeah, and I would have. I wanted to. But I still can’t believe you’d sell the house!”

  “So now I have a lot of money. How should I spend it?”

  “Buy a red sports car and drive it really fast.”

  “Yeah, and get a speeding ticket every day.”

  “Travel around the world. Spend a year in Europe. You’d like that.”

  “I’ve been thinking about traveling. That’s a good idea.”

  “How’s Brody?” she asks.

  “Working at the TV station again. Just won some award. I like being married to him.”

  “That’s nice,” she says with another sigh, this one happier.

  “So what about you? And William? How’ve you been?”

  “Good. Really good, until a few weeks ago. We spent the winter down in the bootheel on a farm William learned about from a friend. Lots of cows and barns and warm places to sleep. I felt so good. Really strong. When it snowed, we’d just go racing across these open fields. We wouldn’t see a human footprint for miles—just this gorgeous white expanse of snow. William said whenever I stood perfectly still, I’d just disappear.”

  “I remember that!” I exclaim. “The first time it snowed after we moved to Dagmar. You went out to the backyard—you were still a puppy—and you got lost in the drifts. And we couldn’t see you. And Daddy and Gwen were panicked, and they started combing the backyard, calling your name and trying to find you. Daddy was sure you’d gone on into the forest and broken a leg or something.”

  “And I was just sitting there on the side of the yard, watching everyone run around. I thought it was a game.”

  “You were a little shit,” I inform her, and she giggles.

  “Hey, remember the time Debbie and her mom came over, and I was in the front yard, and Debbie started playing with me, and her mom was all, like, ‘Don’t touch stray dogs! They could have rabies!’ And Daddy was so mad, but he couldn’t say why.”

  “Oh, yeah, and I remember the time Kurt came over and we were sitting on the couch watching TV and everyone else was asleep. And we were making out, of course, and you came out of the bedroom and said, ‘I can hear you kissing, and it’s gross.’”

  “Well, it was, all slobbery sounding.”

  “To this day, if I’m watching a movie, and the couple makes any noise at all when they’re kissing, I think about that.”

  “You know what I always remember?” she says. Her voice is dreamy, as if she’s drifting back toward a memory or tiptoeing down to the boundary of sleep. “And it’s so stupid. I was, I don’t know, ten, and you wanted me to wash my face and brush my teeth, but all the washcloths were in the laundry. So you said I could wash my face by putting soap on my hands. And I didn’t want to, because I was stuck on the idea that you had to have a washcloth. And you said, ‘That’s how cowboys wash their faces.’”

  “I said that? I have no memory of that conversation at all.”

  “You said it,” she confirms, speaking through a big yawn. “And to this day, whenever I’m splashing water on my face, I think, ‘Hey, that’s how cowboys clean up.’”

  “Well, they probably do.”

  She yawns again. “I’m so tired,” she says. “I’ve lost so much energy in the past few days.”

  I speak as casually as I can. “Yeah, you’ve gotten pretty thin.”

  “I haven’t had much appetite. Been sleeping a lot. Just dragging in general.”

  “Yeah,” I say again. “I think the life you’ve led has been pretty hard on your body.”

  “Yeah,” she repeats, sounding even fuzzier. For a moment I think she’s already drifted off, then she speaks
again in that drowsy voice. “Mel, I can’t keep my eyes open, but I don’t want to fall asleep in your face!”

  “It’s all right. We’ve had a chance to talk.”

  “Will you be here when I wake up?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “All right. Then I’m just going to take a nap.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “It was so good to see you again,” she whispers. “I missed you so much.”

  “I missed you more.”

  She manages the faintest laugh. “Love you.”

  “Love you more.” She might have fallen asleep already; in any case, she doesn’t answer. I add, “Love you, love you, love you.”

  She stirs, and for a moment I think she’s going to add something, but she’s just resettling on the rug. I wonder if I should move her to Lizzie’s bed—I wonder if the hard floor will bruise her fragile bones. I’m sure William would pick her up if I asked him to. Hell, she’s so thin I could probably lift her myself.

  But I don’t get up. I don’t move away. I merely lie there for the next hour, listening to her breaths as they gradually grow farther apart. At some point I sense a presence behind me, and I turn my head to see a shadow standing in the doorway, unmoving and silent.

  “I don’t think it will be much longer,” I tell William, “if you want to stay.”

  He doesn’t answer, but he steps into the room and settles on the floor on the other side of Ann. I wonder if I should leave them alone together—it’s a lover’s right, after all, to gather up his beloved’s final hours and fold them against his heart—but then I realize it doesn’t really matter. Ann will have no last words to share with either one of us, so we have nothing to fight over, no reason to be greedy.