The Humming Room

  “Not me.” Violet put down the basket and came over to sift through one of the boxes until she found a packing slip. “Looks like your uncle ordered them.”

  She picked up a few of the shirts and looked at them quizzically. “The things Ms. Valentine got for you were much nicer.”

  “I told him I liked my own clothes better,” Roo said, remembering.

  Violet looked around at the other clothes in the boxes, a surprised expression on her face. “So he bought you your own clothes.”

  Roo nodded, frowning. Her uncle had barely seemed to notice her; and what he noticed, he hadn’t appeared to like.

  “I don’t know what to think about him,” she said, looking up at Violet.

  “Yes, well…no one really does.”

  “Do you like him?” Roo asked her curiously.

  Violet paused, as though she’d never really considered this before. “It’s hard to say…I doubt he cares if anyone likes him or not. That’s why people think he’s strange, I guess. It seems unnatural not to care what people think of you, doesn’t it? Like a person who never blinks.”

  “People say that I’m strange,” Roo said.

  “You are.” Violet nestled a sweatshirt back in its box. “But I’ve seen stranger.” She smiled in a private sort of way—a small, sad smile.

  Up in her room, Roo tried on all the clothes. They fit perfectly, much better than her old clothes really, which were all stretched out. She peeked in the vanity mirror, standing back so as to see her whole body. Dressed in the new brown corduroys and a green shirt, she looked like a fresher version of herself, as though all the wear and tear of her life had never happened. She raked her hand through her hair. Was it her imagination or did her face look fresher too? The color of her skin and eyes seemed clearer.

  “My name is Roo Fanshaw and I live on Cough Rock,” she murmured at her reflection. Her voice was timid, but the words themselves sounded right.

  “I live on Cough Rock,” she repeated with more conviction. “I live with my uncle. He’s away a lot. But I don’t really mind. I found this little cave—” She stopped, realizing that she was no longer talking to her reflection but imagining what she might say to someone else. The shadowy image of the Faigne popped into her mind.

  I might tell him about the cave, she thought. He seems like a person who could keep a secret. I might even tell him about the humming.

  “Did you make the storm come?” she whispered to the mirror.

  Roo jerked her head up suddenly, and her eyes narrowed. Something had changed in the room. It was such a slight shift that only someone whose senses were as keen as hers would have noticed it. The air quivered. She listened with the same concentration that she listened to the earth. Then she heard it. The humming.

  She rushed down the hallway, the humming sound growing more and more distinct until she found herself inside the girls’ dormitory. Here, the sound was the loudest, though still muffled. She walked around the room, pressing her ear against the walls, yet she still could not pin down where it came from. It was so distant, yet it was coming from inside the house. Not a ghost. No, this was a person, a living person, she was sure of it. Was it P. Fanshaw? Was it the same person who had bit her uncle’s face?

  Finally, Roo perched herself on the iron headboard of one of the beds and listened to it. There was nothing frightening in it. In fact, there was something familiar about it, though she couldn’t say what. It gave her the same sense of maddening familiarity she had felt when looking at her uncle’s face. The same yet not the same. It weaved through the air around her. Sometimes it sounded tentative, as if it were testing something out. Other times it would gain in force, calling out, almost pleading; then, as if it heard itself and was ashamed, it grew soft again.

  Suddenly she knew why the humming sounded so familiar. It was exactly how she had sounded back in her own room, all alone and talking to her reflection in the mirror.

  Chapter 8

  Like most stretches of undisturbed freedom, Roo’s came to a sudden and unpleasant end. It happened the following day, while she was sitting in her cave watching a curious bundle of sticks moving across the water in the distance. It had a herky-jerky sort of propulsion that captured her attention. She watched it, squinting, trying to figure out how it could push against the current like that. At the sound of a boat motor starting up, the bundle of sticks swerved abruptly and beneath the sticks a large brown eye gazed in Roo’s direction. Roo blew out a breath of surprise and delight. Now she could see the stag’s rolling shoulders as it swam past Cough Rock, zigzagging with alarm. The motor sounded like it was coming from the lagoon. Roo poked her head out and craned her neck around the edge of the cave. There was Ms. Valentine, guiding her Boston Whaler beneath the stone arch and out into the river. That struck Roo as odd. It was too early for her to be collecting the mail. And anyway, she was going in the opposite direction of Choke Cherry Island. Roo watched the boat curl around Cough Rock and disappear from her line of sight.

  Abandoning her cave, Roo hurried across the lawn, which the sun had recently coaxed from its dull brown into a bright green. When she reached the semicircular patio she perched on top of the low stone wall that hedged in the patio on one side, and she tracked the Whaler as it plowed across the river toward Clayton.

  Maybe my uncle is coming back, she thought.

  She felt a rush of nervous anticipation. She wondered if he’d be happy to see that she was dressed in the clothes he’d bought for her—a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved navy blue T-shirt. She looked down at herself. The knees of the jeans had some dirt on them from the cave. She stood up to wipe it off, gave the shirt a tug to smooth it out, then sat back on the wall to watch for Ms. Valentine’s return.

  The view from the patio looked out onto the seaway, the channel between the islands and Clayton’s shores. It was here, Violet had told Roo, that the nurses had once wheeled the hospital’s children to sit and watch the ships pass while they breathed the icy air into their weak lungs. Roo wondered if the girl who owned the box under the floorboards had once sat here too, watching the boats zipping past. Speedboats, fancy wooden boats, small aluminum fishing boats. Every so often a massive freighter would lumber between channel markers like a great rust-streaked whale, making the other boats leap up and slam down in its wake.

  Finally, Roo spotted the Whaler cutting across the waves and heading back to Cough Rock. As it came closer, Roo could see that there was someone in the passenger seat. Her stomach felt an anxious twist as her eyes strained to make out her uncle’s form, but the canopy obscured her view. It was only when the Whaler was finally moored in the lagoon, and the passenger stepped out that Roo saw it was not her uncle at all. It was a woman, thin and gray haired and dressed in a girlish bottle-green jumper dress. From the back of the boat, she hauled out a large, battered suitcase. Ms. Valentine tried to take it from her but the woman waved her away. Ms. Valentine took it anyway, and the two ladies started up the path toward the house.

  Roo kept so still that Ms. Valentine might have walked by without noticing her, but the old lady saw her. She stopped in her tracks and said something to Ms. Valentine, whose head then swiveled toward the patio.

  “Roo!” Ms. Valentine called. “Come here, please.”

  Cautiously, Roo hopped off the wall and walked over to them. She didn’t like the look of this. Ms. Valentine’s expression was worrisomely satisfied, and the gray-haired woman stared at Roo with far too much interest.

  “Roo, this is Mrs. Wixton. She’s going to be your tutor. And your companion.”

  Mrs. Wixton clasped her hands in front of her dress and nodded to Roo very formally. Her hair was thin and so tightly permed that it looked like she had tiny packing peanuts glued to her scalp.

  “I don’t want her,” Roo said.

  “This is what I was talking about,” Ms. Valentine said to Mrs. Wixton in a confidential tone.

  “I don’t need a tutor,” Roo insisted.

  “The New York St
ate School Board would beg to differ with you, and the local school is not an option,” Ms. Valentine retorted. “It’s an hour-and-half trip each way. And come winter you won’t be able to go in any case, once the river freezes.”

  “Then let Violet be my tutor,” Roo said.

  “She has enough to do,” Ms. Valentine replied. “And you’re the type who needs someone to keep a sharp eye on you.”

  Roo shot Mrs. Wixton a look of cold resentment. Mrs. Wixton didn’t seem to mind. She smiled brightly at Roo. Her lipstick was pale pink—the sort of lipstick that a young girl would wear—but her blue eyes were steady and shrewd.

  “Oh, I predict that Roo and I will be best buddies before the week is out,” Mrs. Wixton said confidently. She held Roo’s angry gaze, undisturbed by Ms. Valentine’s impatient shuffling, until Roo finally turned away and looked back out at the river.

  Having Mrs. Wixton around was very hard on Roo. No one had ever kept a sharp eye on her before. Mrs. Wixton never left her side. There were hours of lessons every day. Mrs. Wixton had once, many years before, been a middle-school teacher and in her suitcase were stacks of moldy schoolbooks that made Roo sneeze when the pages were turned. At first Roo simply refused to do the lessons, but the old lady was used to dealing with rebellious children. She patiently explained that if Roo continued to disobey her, she’d have to inform Ms. Valentine. “And that would be a pity, since I believe I’m what you would call your ‘last hurrah.’ If I don’t work out, they may not be able to keep you. Ms. Valentine tells me there is a family back where you came from that will take you in…”

  The threat of being sent back to the Burrows was enough. Roo did Mrs. Wixton’s lessons, first furiously, then sullenly. The lessons weren’t hard, only long and very dull. At first Roo sped through them quickly, in the hopes of being set free for the rest of the day. But Mrs. Wixton had been told to keep a sharp eye on Roo, and she did her job diligently. Even when Roo was given a break from work and allowed to go outside, Mrs. Wixton accompanied her, always hovering, following along behind her as Roo ran across the rocks. It was unbearable. Roo could not hide in her little cave and watch for the Faigne or listen to the earth. Even the black squirrel would not come out again to see her with Mrs. Wixton there.

  The nights were no better. The little room next to Roo’s had been hastily furnished and Mrs. Wixton was moved in. There was a narrow bed, a tiny dresser, and that was all. But Mrs. Wixton scrubbed the room and made it tidy and it seemed as if she would be perfectly content to stay there forever.

  The first night of Mrs. Wixton’s stay, Roo waited until she was sure the old lady was asleep. Then she tiptoed out of her room and started down the hall to listen for the humming. But as she passed Mrs. Wixton’s room, Mrs. Wixton called out, “Roo, dear, where are you going?”

  And then came the rustle of the old lady easing herself out of bed.

  As it turned out, Mrs. Wixton slept as lightly as a cat.

  Eventually Roo found a way to break up the monotony of the lessons during the day. She discovered that Mrs. Wixton was fascinated with the Fanshaw family. Every now and then she would interrupt her lesson to casually ask Roo a question about them. “Is this the only house they own?” “Why does your uncle stay all winter?”

  At first Roo only shrugged glumly. But soon she realized that Mrs. Wixton would rather hear about the Fanshaws than teach Roo a lesson about geometry. So Roo began to make things up.

  She told Mrs. Wixton that her uncle had a fear of birds, and in the spring he would have Ms. Valentine climb all the trees on the property and smash any birds’ eggs with a tiny silver hammer, and that one of her cousins had been born without eyebrows, and many other ridiculous things. Mrs. Wixton listened to it all without question. It seemed that there was nothing she wouldn’t believe about the Fanshaws, and she never tired of hearing about them.

  Sometimes Roo was certain that Mrs. Wixton tailored her lessons to bring up the topic of the Fanshaws. Once when they were studying geography, Mrs. Wixton pointedly said that they would focus on Brazil that day, and she turned her fusty old textbook to a section on the Amazon rain forest. The shiny, yellowed paper held some black-and-white photos of the jungle. Mrs. Wixton flipped through the pages, then stopped at a photo of a squat, thick-bellied man, wearing nothing but a cloth around his waist. In his hand was a limp, lifeless monkey, held by the scruff of its neck.

  “Fascinating place, the Amazon,” Mrs. Wixton said. “But then you must know quite a bit about it.”

  “Why would I?” Roo asked irritably.

  “Because of her,” Mrs. Wixton said. “Your aunt. Mr. Fanshaw’s late wife.” She was baiting Roo, trying yet again to glean some information about Uncle Emmett. But this time, Roo herself was interested.

  “I never met her,” Roo said.

  “But you must have heard about her,” Mrs. Wixton pressed.

  Roo shook her head, hating to admit it, yet hoping that Mrs. Wixton would tell her more.

  “Well, she came from Brazil, apparently. A little village on the edge of the rain forest. Her name was Ana. Your uncle spotted her on one of his trips and was instantly smitten, or so the story goes.” Mrs. Wixton was clearly thrilled to be able to offer up information that Roo didn’t have. “I saw her once in Clayton with Mr. Fanshaw. She was quite striking, with beautiful long black hair. But she had a wild look about her. I felt sorry for her, I actually did. Fish out of water. Though of course your uncle was so kind to her,” she added carefully. “All that gossip after she passed away made me sick to my stomach.”

  “What gossip?” Roo asked.

  “Oh, folks around here will say anything, especially if it’s about Summer People.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Well,” Mrs. Wixton began, rising off the bed for a moment to adjust her skirt, “some people believe she was murdered.” She waited a beat to see that she had Roo’s full interest before she continued. “It was because her death was so strangely sudden. She had been perfectly healthy and well, according to the people who had been working in this house. And then, quite out of the blue, she was dead. And to make matters worse, your uncle refused to speak about it. He immediately fired everyone who had been in the house, except Ms. Valentine. It made people suspicious.”

  “Who do they think killed her?” Roo asked.

  Mrs. Wixton now shifted on the bed, straightening her spine and crossing her legs. “Of course it was all malicious nonsense.”

  “They don’t think it was my uncle, do they?” Roo asked, shocked. Her uncle had seemed cold and hard, but killing his own wife…she couldn’t imagine it.

  “How did we get on this topic in the first place?” Mrs. Wixton looked at Roo as if it had been her idea. “Okay, hocus-pocus, let’s try to focus.” She patted the pages of the textbook.

  As the days wore on, Roo’s captivity became harder and harder for her to bear. The bright spring light teased at her through the windows. She ached to be outside. The sun was melting deeper into the ground, waking everything up. The earth would be singing by now, and she was missing it! A hundred times a day she felt ready to bolt out of the room, fly down the stairs, and run outside to freedom. But the threat of being sent back to the Burrows kept her rooted. Gradually she began to feel sleepy and slow witted. Her pencil would droop in her hand while her mind wandered, though when Mrs. Wixton jolted her with a small shake and asked her what she was daydreaming about, she couldn’t remember.

  She was glad for any time outdoors, even if she was under constant guard by Mrs. Wixton. As soon as she felt the sun on her skin she awoke. She ran around the island, knowing that Mrs. Wixton could not keep up; yet also knowing that there was nowhere really for her to go. She was desperate for freedom and for solitude, even if it was only for the few minutes when she was on one side of the island and Mrs. Wixton was on the other. It was during one of these runs when Roo had sprinted to one end of the island, leaving Mrs. Wixton far behind, that she saw the familiar jutting rock, which hid the
little cave. In a flash she ducked inside.

  Chapter 9

  She kept still and quiet, which was the easiest thing in the world for her to do. She watched Mrs. Wixton pass once, then twice more. On the third pass, Mrs. Wixton was calling for her, though not very loudly.

  She doesn’t want them to know that she’s lost me, Roo realized.

  By her fifth pass Mrs. Wixton’s voice was sounding panicked. Her skinny legs moved faster. Roo couldn’t help but smile. The calls were louder and lasted for some time. Then they went quiet.

  Roo wondered what would happen next. But when nothing did, she knew that nothing would. Mrs. Wixton wouldn’t want Ms. Valentine to know that her famously sharp eye was not quite sharp enough. She wouldn’t tell her that Roo was missing, not for as long as possible, and that would give Roo a few hours of beautiful freedom.

  She curled up and lay down on her side, ear to the earth, and listened to the music. It was busy and insistent now, pulsing with energy. She slipped into the sound gratefully, the way a numb, cold body slips beneath warm blankets. When she had her fill, she propped herself up on one elbow and pushed her finger into the dirt, scraping until she found a thick pink-and-gray earthworm. She held it, watching as it nudged its tapered head in the palm of her hand to stop itself and let the rest of its body contract in ripples. After a while, Roo placed it back on the ground, poking her finger in the earth to give it a tunnel. It was then that she spied something on one side of the hole. A piece of green-and-white-striped paper. Carefully she extracted it. It was a Juicy Fruit gum wrapper with a red wax-paper wrapper inside. The same wrapper as the gum in the box beneath the floorboards. Roo remembered the flashlight in the box. Maybe the girl had found this cave too, all those years and years ago, and had escaped here, just like she had. Roo wondered if the girl had gotten well and gone home. But then she looked down at the ring with the two hearts, still on her finger. No, the girl had probably died here. She would have taken the ring with her if she had lived.