Swallowing Stones

  For a while he walked around town. Then he wandered down two more blocks, until he came to the end of Main Street, and turned left. He headed up the hill, passing several old Victorian homes, then entered a side street. That was when he suddenly realized where he’d been going all along. For there, across the street from him, stood a large blue-gray house with elegant white scrollwork. Jenna Ward’s house. He realized then that it hadn’t been just idle curiosity that had prompted him to look up her address in the phone book three nights ago. He had needed to come here.

  Michael sat down on the curb. Even through the heavy haze, he could see the neatly manicured lawn and the rows of thorny bushes drooping under the burden of fat wet roses. Everything looked still and misty, as if it had been stopped in time. There was something ghostlike about it.

  He shivered, feeling the damp curb through his cutoffs. Part of his backside rested on wet grass. But he could not bring himself to leave, even though he had no idea why he had come.

  He wondered if the family belonged to the community pool, then decided they didn’t. If they did, he would have recognized Jenna; he was sure of it. Maybe they had their own pool. Judging from the house and the part of town they lived in, it seemed a reasonable assumption. Michael decided they probably spent at least part of their summers on Martha’s Vineyard, or Nantucket, or someplace like that.

  When he stood up to keep his pants from getting any wetter, he noticed he was only a few yards from the front of a church. If he sat on the stairs, his presence would seem less obvious to anyone in the neighborhood who might notice. So he positioned himself on the top step, resting his back against the heavy oak doors. And there he kept his vigil until the streetlights blinked on.

  the moon was almost full that night, but Michael did not notice until he came to an unlit road. The blue-white glow spilled down through the leaves, and the trees cast their inky shadows across the road. It was a quiet street, one he had never been on before. He kept walking, because he had already been all over town, and because there was nothing else to do and nowhere to go.

  When he reached the end of the road, he saw, in the moonlight, a Cape Cod house, small and neat and white. A name plaque dangled from a post by the split-rail fence. The letters burned into his tired eyes, forming the name Ruggerio. He wondered if this could possibly be Amy’s home.

  Somehow he had never pictured Amy living in a house, although he didn’t know why that should be. But as it turned out, this was her house, because suddenly there was Amy, standing in front of him in her white shorts and pink tank top, as if she’d been expecting him all along. She smiled a shy hello; then, gently taking his arm, she led him inside. Michael couldn’t tell if she was surprised that he’d suddenly shown up at her house or not. He decided not to question any of what was happening. His instincts told him it was better that way.

  Everything inside was neat and clean, but the furniture seemed too big for such a small house. Old and overstuffed, it seemed to push up against the walls, as if trying to burst through them. Amy pointed him in the direction of a large, bulky couch. As Michael sat down he noticed a pale brown stain on the front of his T-shirt. He realized he must have spilled some of his Coke earlier but hadn’t been aware of it. He wished he could hide the stain somehow. He thought about turning his shirt around when she left the room. For some reason it seemed important not to let Amy think he’d shown up at her house looking like a slob.

  “Want something to eat?” she said.

  Michael nodded, although he really wasn’t hungry. He still could not understand how he had come to be at Amy’s. Had he seen her address somewhere? He’d heard about things like that. How the brain stored away little bits and pieces of seemingly useless information, which suddenly popped up at the most unexpected times.

  Amy left the room. When she came back, she was carrying a tray with a pitcher of iced tea, two glasses filled with ice, and a half-empty box of Fig Newtons. She set the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch where Michael was already settling in, letting himself sink comfortably into the soft cushions. By then he had forgotten all about turning his shirt around.

  “Are you here alone?” he asked, glad to discover that his voice sounded relatively normal.

  Amy poured a glass of iced tea and handed it to him. “Pappy’s upstairs sleeping.”

  “Your dad?” Michael took the glass from her. The icy wetness cooled his sweating palms.

  “My grandfather.”

  “He lives here with you?”

  A soft smile curved the corners of her full mouth. “I live here with him,” she corrected. “Gram died a little over a year ago.”

  Michael did not ask about her parents. It was enough for the moment to know she had a grandfather. Enough to know that she wasn’t totally alone in the world, although he wasn’t sure why that should matter to him.

  “We can watch a movie if you want,” she said, pointing to the VCR next to the TV.

  He cleared his throat. “What kind of movies do you have?”

  Amy seemed to hesitate. “Mostly romantic stuff,” she said, barely whispering. Her face flushed a delicate pink, which both surprised and touched him. He realized then, for the first time that evening, that she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her face looked scrubbed and polished. She bit into a Fig Newton, looking thoughtful. “Or we could play a game. I have Scrabble.”

  Michael said Scrabble was fine, although he didn’t feel much like playing. But Amy seemed pleased. And it would keep his mind off other things.

  They set up the board on the coffee table, pulling cushions from the couch onto the floor. Then they settled themselves on the cushions and, like an old married couple, played Scrabble and ate Fig Newtons until, exhausted, they fell asleep on the floor.

  When the first rays of light began to filter through the sheer white curtains, Amy rose and went about turning off the lights. Michael waited by the front door.

  “I hope we didn’t disturb your grandfather.”

  Amy grinned. “Couldn’t you hear him snoring?”

  “Well, yeah, but …”

  “He sleeps like a log.” She looked down at her bare feet. The sunlight caught the top of her head, turning her dark brown hair a rich auburn. Michael felt an overwhelming desire to touch that spot on her head. “I’m glad you came over,” she said simply.

  Without looking, Michael reached for the doorknob. “I didn’t mean to stay so long,” he told her. But they both knew he had.

  “It’s okay. Nobody’ll find out.”

  Something inside him cringed. In that single moment he realized that Amy was perfectly aware of what the other kids thought of her, although he was beginning to wonder just how true those stories were. And he also knew, beyond a doubt, that she would keep his visit a secret.

  Michael turned and stepped outside into the damp morning air. He knew that if he stayed another minute, he would kiss her goodbye.

  Amy waved to him, watching as he walked out to the road, then slowly closed the door. He was alone again, only this time the aloneness had a sharper edge to it.

  He looked back at the small house he’d just come from. Sunlight poured down the front of it like fresh cream. Where was he to go from here? It seemed as though each new day became more complicated, more exhausting. He spent all his waking hours trying to get away from someone: from Darcy, from Joe, from his parents, and maybe even from Amy, because he realized he probably wouldn’t be coming to her house again.

  The rest of the summer still loomed ahead of him like some vast desert he had to cross. Then would come September and school. He wondered how much longer he could keep avoiding people, lying to them. How much longer could he keep dodging the inevitable?

  jenna

  6

  for two days after her father’s death, hundreds of enormous dragonflies blanketed Jenna’s front yard. No one knew where they came from or why they darted about haphazardly, barely two feet above the ground, with their iridescent wings, their blue-green bodies,
shimmering in the sunlight. Like miniature aircraft with defective gyroscopes, they shot out in all directions, coming within a fraction of an inch of colliding with each other.

  Neighbors who never went for walks and had little interest in physical fitness suddenly took leisurely strolls along the sidewalk, slowing their pace to a virtual standstill as they approached the Ward house. They did not know what to make of the strange sight. So they simply shook their heads and called it a sign—but of what, they had no idea.

  All this time Jenna hardly noticed the dragonflies or the curious neighbors. At night she sometimes slept curled on the wicker chaise longue on the front porch because the air-conditioning in the house numbed the tips of her fingers and toes. On those nights cicadas hummed their own deep, mysterious song while a mournful owl in a nearby oak tree wailed the chorus. And in the morning the pillow would be wet with tears Jenna had cried in her sleep.

  Something else came with the night: a disturbing dream. A dream choked with thick, twisted tree trunks, big enough to hide a bear, and tangled vines that coiled around her body, pulling her deeper and deeper into a mist-clouded forest. Through the vapor Jenna could make out the bare bone-white branches of a giant tree. And as the vines pulled at her ankles she tugged against them with all her strength. She would not go to this place. Nothing, not all the vines on the face of the earth, could make her go there.

  In daylight the dream made no sense. Whenever Jenna thought about the tree, it didn’t seem frightening at all. She knew this place, this old sycamore. Everybody called it the Ghost Tree. It was a place steeped in mystery and folklore. Jenna had spent happy hours there as a child. She would have laughed at her fears had the dream lasted only one night. But she had dreamt it three nights in a row. Each time she had to fight the vines even harder, and each morning she awoke exhausted.

  in the days following her father’s death Jenna’s house was never empty. Family came, neighbors came, her mother’s coworkers, Jenna’s classmates, her father’s friends; they filled every room. They brought cakes and covered dishes. They shared their stories, their memories of Charlie Ward. And when Jenna could take no more, she locked herself in her room. No one thought it the least bit odd—although they might not have understood the pleasure she got each time she walked into her room.

  Over the past few days she had rearranged everything. Now every object on her dresser was carefully aligned. The bedspread was smooth and taut, not a single wrinkle. Every piece of clothing in her closet was neatly lined up by color, and every shoe was snuggled beside its mate in tidy rows.

  Each time she left her room, she inspected every inch to make sure nothing was out of place. And when she returned, the comfort she felt in finding such order was so intense, she wanted to cry. Each and every object was always just as she’d left it. Nothing had changed.

  Perhaps the people downstairs might have thought this strange if they had seen her room only a few days earlier: chaotic heaps of discarded dirty clothes, crusty plates, glasses gummy with dried soda, papers and open books tossed haphazardly in corners. But that room had belonged to another Jenna.

  They might have thought it unusual, too, that she spent many of those private hours, after she’d retreated to her well-ordered sanctuary, working on math problems. But Jenna couldn’t have cared less what they thought. Math was her passion.

  She could never make those people downstairs understand that she found these equations more comforting than their sympathetic words and hugs. Solving math problems cleared her mind; it left no room for anything else. Equations produced only one correct answer. You either got it right or you didn’t. There was no middle ground. No murky gray area to confuse you.

  on the morning of the funeral, her mother stood in Jenna’s doorway staring at her daughter’s attire. Her well-shaped eyebrows slid into a frown.

  “What?” Jenna smoothed her long skirt, then spread her hands palms up. She looked down at her heavy lace-up boots. It had rained all the previous day and most of the night. The grass at the cemetery would be wet, the ground muddy. The boots were a practical decision. Her mother, the queen of practicality, should have been able to see that. Jenna braced herself for an argument.

  But Meredith Ward, much to Jenna’s surprise, simply shrugged and began absently brushing at a wrinkle in her skirt. She said nothing. Her own outfit was perfectly coordinated. Jenna noticed she wore high-heeled black patent leather shoes. The heels were sure to sink into the soft mud, throwing her mother off balance. The image of her mother suddenly tipping over in front of all those people made Jenna smile, while at the same time a wave of shame for even thinking such a thing on the day of her father’s funeral washed over her, dampening her amusement.

  Jenna hiked up her skirt, put her foot on the bedspread, and double-knotted the shoelace, trying to ignore her mother.

  Meredith Ward hovered in the doorway for another minute, although Jenna was no longer sure why. Then, much to her relief, her mother turned and headed downstairs.

  The rest of the morning was a blur. People she had never met, coworkers from her father’s office, took her hand and whispered their muted words of sympathy. Close friends and family swarmed about her in the hot, sticky air until she thought she might suffocate. Overhead the dark clouds rumbled and threatened, but the rain never came. And when it was time to leave, Jenna stared down at the casket in front of her and wondered again, for the thousandth time, what she was supposed to be feeling.

  on the hot July evenings that followed, while bees hovered lazily over the borders of pink impatiens, Jenna lay in the hammock by the pool waiting for her father to come home from work. She would find herself doing this and then realize that it was not going to happen.

  Sometimes, when she opened her eyes slowly, the shadows from the trees in the woods behind her house played tricks and made her believe she actually saw him. But on this particular night, just as the fireflies began to appear, the shadow that moved toward her from the wooded path turned out to be Andrea Sloan, her best friend.

  Andrea lived in the house behind Jenna’s on the next street over. Their houses, like all of the homes on the block, were separated by a thick wooded area that spanned about fifty yards. Over the years the two girls had worn a footpath between their two backyards.

  Andrea pulled an aluminum chair over to where Jenna lay in the hammock and sat down. She put her hand on the edge of the hammock and began to rock it back and forth as if she were rocking a cradle. “Come to the pool with me tomorrow. I can get you a guest badge.”

  Jenna folded her arms behind her head and stared up at the stars. “Why? We can swim here.”

  “Yeah, but everybody else will be at the community pool.”

  Jenna looked over at her friend. Andrea had let go of the side of the hammock and was tugging nervously at a tight ringlet of short dark hair.

  “I’d feel weird,” Jenna told her.

  “Why?”

  “Well, everybody at the funeral … you know … was being so … nice. It gave me the creeps.”

  “Yeah? So? You don’t want them to feel bad about what happened to your dad?” Andrea looked confused.

  Jenna sighed. “It’s not that. I just hate the idea of people feeling sorry for me.”

  Andrea sat back and plunked her bare feet unceremoniously on Jenna’s stomach, using it for a footrest. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” she said.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I think it really stinks, what happened to your dad. But I don’t feel sorry for you.” She made a face. “That would be like pity or something. I don’t do pity.”

  Jenna laughed. “At least not very well, anyway.”

  Andrea lowered her feet back to the ground. “Besides, Jason’s coming home tonight, isn’t he? So he’ll probably be there.”

  Jenna had had a crush on Jason Friedman since the seventh grade. Then finally, in April, they had started going out. She had never been happier. Now she realized with amazement that she hadn’t even though
t about him these past weeks.

  Jason and his family always spent part of July camping in Maine. It occurred to her that Jason probably didn’t even know about her dad. How could he? His family had left before it had happened. And since his father always elected to go camping in remote places that had no phones or plumbing, insisting his family could live without television and newspapers for a few weeks, the chances of their having heard about the accident were practically nil.

  “Come on,” Andrea coaxed, “it’ll be fun.”

  Jenna looked down at her bare feet and wiggled her toes. “I don’t know. Maybe some other time.”

  “Some other time? That’s it?” Andrea reached over and pinched Jenna on the forearm.

  Jenna jumped. “Hey.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you were still alive.”

  “Well, I am,” Jenna snapped, “so you can keep your hands to yourself.”

  Andrea slapped her palms on her thighs and took a deep breath to show her disgust. “I just thought you’d want to get out of the house. Face it, Jen, you haven’t been anywhere in weeks. You can’t hang out in your house forever.”

  A cool breeze skimmed over Jenna’s bare arms and legs. She wanted to tell Andrea that yes, she could hang out in her house forever. And she might have said just that if Andrea hadn’t gripped the side of the hammock again and begun tugging it back and forth. Jenna grabbed the sides and held on.

  “Are you listening to me?” Andrea shouted. “I mean, Jen, there have been parties practically every night around here. How are you going to meet any seniors if you don’t go to parties?”

  Jenna didn’t respond. She doubted she’d ever want to go to another party for as long as she lived. At parties she would have to pretend that everything was fine, as if her father’s death had been just some brief interruption in her life and now everything was back to normal. It would be too painful.