The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair Page 9

  “I’m truly sorry for . . . that. Sometimes, you see, my father says I get a wee bit carried away, especially when it comes to double dares.” Jimmy sighed. I hurried on, “Please forgive me for my complete lack of manners and neighborly kindness!” I batted my eyes for extra innocence.

  If she refused to forgive me, I briefly considered negotiation. But Rule 14 from The Law: A to Z was: N: Never Negotiate with Terrorists.

  We waited for Ms. Myrtle’s reply. We sat in silence except for the tick-tick-ticking of a hidden clock, as if she kept Captain Hook’s pet crocodile in her basement. Ticktock, ticktock.

  I jumped a mile upon hearing a knock at the front door. My father’s figure appeared outside the front window. Relieved, I hopped up and pulled Micah along. We skirted the dead goose in the middle of the floor before Micah turned at the front door.

  “Um, Ms. Myrtle?” Micah asked. “What are you going to do with . . . ?” All eyes turned to the beautiful, lifeless goose.

  She shook her head pitifully. “What do you think? Gaysie Cutter knows how to bury the dead.”

  Jimmy pulled open the front door. My father nodded at Ms. Myrtle.

  “Ma’am. We’re very sorry.”

  “Jedidiah,” she said stiffly.

  As we walked down the stairs Ms. Myrtle called out.

  “Micah!”

  He turned, his eyes begging for a crumb of forgiveness.

  “I hate that shirt you’re wearing.”

  He stumbled down the stairs after me, then ran to the back of the house and hurled. My feelings exactly.

  Gaysie waited for us on the lawn as I stomped over, glaring at her superior, smug smile. I clenched my fists, thought of how I had been so afraid of her, of how she had killed Micah’s floatie and made him cry even after we’d found her fat sausage finger, how she’d called him weak.

  “Micah is the bravest and nicest and best boy I know,” I said. “He loved that mean goose but he loved Bitty even more. He’s sweet and—it’s his superpower! Don’t ever tell me he’s weak again. Not ever!”

  She drew herself up tall, her eyes boring down on me. She was pretty good at staring contests, but today I was better. I glared right back at her, my backbone made of steel. Never would Gaysie Cutter have power over me. I would never be afraid of her again. I would find out what she did to Wilbur and prosecute to the full extent of the law.

  CHAPTER 12

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER OUR HUMILIATING Ms. Myrtle experience, I lay in bed thinking about Vienna playing the piano, a little girl Ms. Myrtle loved. A girl who was nice to her boy. I admit, I wanted to love Vienna too. I wanted to be nicer to her, to help my dad try to make her better, more like that girl she had been—so why couldn’t I? I had avoided the care center like the bubonic plague pretty much since we had gotten here. My father said that some people were harder to love, but it bothered me, how excruciatingly hard it was.

  My mind wandered back and forth from a younger Vienna to a younger Gaysie. Gaysie was hard for me to even like, but Vienna apparently had. What were they like at my age, when they had all gone down that hill? If Gaysie had really died, why had she been allowed to live again and not Myron? And why had Gaysie come back with all of her memories—and Vienna hadn’t? There were so many variables that could change how things turned out. For instance, who and what had caused the sledding accident? Was someone at fault? What if someone had refused to go sledding that day? Would Myron be alive? What if someone had gotten Vienna’s heart started earlier? Would we still have her?

  When Vienna came out of the coma, it was nothing like the movies make it look. In the movies, when a mom opens her eyes, she instantly smiles and holds out her arms to her beloved children. There’s a happily ever after.

  My father said the brain could actually change and rewrite history the way we wanted, that photographs could trigger memories that never actually happened, that the many books I read planted narratives in my head that weren’t even true.

  But never once did he question the accuracy of my memory on the day Vienna awoke. We were both there, and, believe me, that’s a memory I have tried to forget.

  After her heart started, her brain did not. She slept for four long months.

  My father was first and foremost a man of science, but in the hospital he began speaking of miracles. We spent many evenings in the hospital chapel. He would open the Holy Bible as he sat in the pew and stare at the book without turning pages.

  “Guinevere,” he said, “faith is an experiment. It must be demonstrated before being rewarded.”

  “It’s a miracle she survived at all,” the doctors said.

  “It’s a miracle her heart is still beating.”

  And then: “It’s a miracle she’s awake.”

  Miracles could not be explained by my father’s science, by the doctors, world-class brain specialists, or nurses. This is how Vienna’s case changed my father. Before, all things could be explained from a scientific point of view. But then suddenly they couldn’t.

  On the day Mama woke up, my father carried me into the room. I was wearing a yellow dress that was now too tight around my armpits and shoulders, but it was her favorite.

  She lay in the hospital bed covered with a sheet, hands curled up close to her chest, body rigid and tight.

  “Vienna,” my father said. “It’s Gwyn. Guinevere. Your special girl.” I leaned over the cold hospital bed rail to hug her, tentative at first, then fiercely. She made no movement except to bring her hands and arms in closer and tighter to her body. When I breathed into her neck and said, “Mama,” she turned her head to the other side and made a fearful noise in her throat instead of pulling me close and wrapping me tight.

  The only person she reacted to besides my father was Nana. We didn’t know it at the time, but they were the only people she recognized—though somehow—much, much older, and she didn’t know why.

  Days passed, weeks became months. When she finally spoke, she was Vienna Eyre, age thirteen. And never a day older.

  Not once did she say my name or ask for her sweet pea.

  Back then I called her Mama.

  But after that day, she was never my mama again.

  My father began talking. He talked and talked and talked, tried to hit upon something she could grab on to. He told his wife that she was twenty-four. She didn’t live in Crow, Iowa, anymore. She was married, had two children, and was living in New York City while her husband studied to be an oral surgeon.

  That’s when she began swearing.

  She may have loved Jed St. Clair as a child, but she didn’t know him as a man. She did not remember getting married. She didn’t know her own father was dead. She remembered her sisters who came to see her, but was confused that everyone looked ten years older.

  She didn’t remember holding me just after I was born, stroking my head and saying I was the most beautiful baby ever. She didn’t know that she had watched me learn how to roll over, crawl, and walk.

  She didn’t know that she had loved me.

  After she came out of her coma, I was sure that if I touched her enough, looked into her eyes long enough—she would remember.

  But that moment never came. She never remembered me.

  Why? I wanted answers so badly, I ached for them. But no matter how hard I looked I could never find them.

  Guinevere St. Clair did not exist.

  I believe that was my father’s first true heartbreak.

  I know because it was mine, too.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE GOOSE KILLING IS HOW piano lessons with Ms. Myrtle began. Understanding a mean, old, sour pickle, my father said, would help rid the hate in my heart. He didn’t actually say “mean, old, sour pickle” but I’m sure that’s what he meant.

  “But, Daddy, my heart is perfect,” I said, riding Willowdale around the backyard. “The doctors tested it a million times, and, anyways, Ms. Myrtle will probably eat Bitty when she comes with me.”

  “Bitty will not be attending,” he said. �
�It will be good for her to be more independent, and music lessons will be good for you. Music makes extraordinary demands on the brain. Liszt’s Sixth Paganini Étude requires a staggering eighteen hundred notes per minute. Musicians have several areas, including the motor cortex and cerebellum, that are far superior . . .”

  I gave him a deadpan look.

  “You’ll also be able to play music with your mother, who I hope you’ll be visiting more often,” he added.

  My mood darkened.

  “Why is it always about her?” I burst out. “Ms. Myrtle actually liked Vienna. She hates me! You’re sending me to my doom. I heard a ticktock in the house, and I bet . . .”

  “Guinevere.” My father paused. “This is about you. It’s about your development as a well-rounded individual.”

  “I’d rather die than go into that house,” I sniffed. “I hate . . .”

  “Ah!” he said, backing up toward the house. “Don’t say it.” He turned to go inside.

  “Then I’ll think it!” I yelled after him.

  “You can think it,” he said over his shoulder. “But you can’t say it. I’d rather you not even think it. Remember . . .”

  “I know, know.” All my mean thoughts were going to get stuck in my brain, and I’d never be able to rewire myself and be a nice girl.

  “You start next Thursday,” he said. “I’m counting on you.”

  I leaned down over my cow’s neck. “Oh, Willowdale Princess Deon Dawn. I have an unusually cruel father.” My sweet cow tossed her head in agreement.

  On the bright side, maybe Ms. Myrtle would have dirt on Gaysie.

  • • •

  September had brought the scattered and random brilliance of red, orange, and yellow leaves, flushing out the humidity and brightening the little town of Crow, making it easier to let go of summer.

  We crunched in fallen leaves to and from school, made leaf tunnels, and breathed in the comforting smell of bonfires. During those days I often thought of Wilbur, becoming more and more certain something terrible had happened to him when he didn’t show up. One afternoon, after constant questioning, my father let me accompany him to Wilbur’s cottage.

  Gaysie wasn’t home, so we just walked across the backyard. My father tried the cottage door.

  “Windows are locked too.”

  “How did you know?” he asked, giving me a look.

  “Well, I was worried about our old boy,” I said innocently.

  “Hmm. A bit strange.”

  “What is?”

  “No one locks their doors around here.” He furrowed his brows. “Certainly not Wilbur.”

  “Maybe you should break it down with your foot. Give it a big hi-yah karate chop!”

  Instead, he peered in the window. I stood next to him on a big rock, lifted onto my tiptoes, and peered in alongside him. It looked the same except maybe more empty.

  On the mantel was a picture of Gaysie, Micah, and Jimmy standing by the Blue Mistress, all smiles. I stared at it. They were like a family. No wonder Micah and Jimmy were blind to Gaysie’s shadiness. And my father . . . his loyalty to women was his greatest blind spot.

  He looked toward Gaysie’s house.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked eagerly.

  “Nothing.” But I didn’t believe him. He was always thinking.

  My father sighed, put his hands in his pockets, and walked back across the grass. I thought for a moment before scrambling to catch up to him.

  When I did, he was speaking to Gaysie, who had just pulled into the driveway. And he was actually smiling! As if they really were friends.

  “Hello, Guinevere,” she said.

  I nodded sullenly and walked past her, feeling a burning inside for answers and an anger at my father’s stubborn refusal to see what I did. Was it truly a blind spot . . . or was it worse? Did his friendship with Gaysie also extend to covering up . . . a crime? I felt ill.

  We didn’t speak all the way home. He was lost in his thoughts, and I could not find a way to voice mine.

  • • •

  Unfortunately, Thursday piano lessons were not forgotten. The next Thursday we walked home from school as Micah, who was mostly recovered from the goose killing, told us about a story he’d written on his typewriter. My name, Guinevere, had inspired him, and he had decided to write an Arthur Pendragon story with an ending the way it should have been written. This time Guinevere would redeem herself instead of betraying the once and future king. He used a typewriter because Gaysie didn’t allow computers in the house (that was how the terrorists watched you). Living next to Ms. Myrtle, I guessed her paranoia was understandable.

  We stopped in front of Ms. Myrtle’s house. “I’d rather be tortured and eat rats,” I whispered, “than go into that house again.”

  “Have fun,” Jimmy said, skating away, his Mohawk blowing in the breeze.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gaysie, far out in the green fields, way past the late-summer crops. The blue tractor remained still, a thin plastic tarp now pulled over the top.

  “Micah, where exactly could Wilbur be?” I asked, purposely casual.

  “I just can’t figure it out,” Micah sighed, genuinely puzzled. I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see me rolling them. “He’s never been gone this long.”

  “How long has it been?”

  Micah surprised me by being very specific. “Twenty-one days,” he said. “Gwyn?” He turned to face me. “Do you believe everything happens for a reason?”

  I looked him in the eye and was about to say no. No way was I supposed to have a mother like Vienna. There couldn’t be a reason for that.

  “ ‘Cause I think,” Micah said, “that you moved here so we could find him.”

  “Find Wilbur?” I asked, surprised.

  He nodded.

  I was so touched by his faith in my super-sleuthing skills that I leaned over and kissed his cheek. He blushed a shade as red as his overalls.

  I was up to the challenge, of course I was. But as I looked out into the fields, my eyes caught on Gaysie again. I thought of that first day when she had tried to bury me, how she had a tendency to “fly off the handle,” how she snapped. No one just disappeared for three weeks. If Wilbur had been gone for twenty-one days without saying good-bye to Jimmy or Micah at least, the most likely explanation was . . .

  I gulped. Poor, sweet Micah. How could anyone be prepared for his own mother to be the only plausible murder suspect?

  I knocked and pressed my face into the front window of Ms. Myrtle’s dark house.

  “Get your greasy face off my window!” her voice screeched. I fell backward and landed hard on a green prickle bush.

  I glanced down the road, contemplating a runaway. Surely my father did not expect me to endure such personal degradation.

  “Come in and get off my bush!”

  Unhappily, I pushed the door open. I wondered if Gaysie really had buried the goose and what or who else she’d put in the ground. Gaysie Cutter knows how to bury the dead, Ms. Myrtle had said.

  Ms. Myrtle sat in the same chair as before, holding a cat that looked suspiciously like Mr. Thompson’s recently reported missing feline.

  Despite my misery, my father would have been pleased at the brief pang of empathy I experienced. The old woman was clearly sick, her face a gray, unhealthy pallor, and she shook with each breath of air. Maybe I would hold off on reporting her for cat burglary.

  After I washed out her mailbox she made me wash my hands at the kitchen sink. I obeyed, looking down the dully lit hallway. Dull, dull, dull. The whole place was devoid of excitement; no wonder she looked out the window. It pleased me, for the first time, to think that she spied on me for entertainment.

  I sat on the piano bench, facing a small spinet that looked out a large side window with a view of the Cutters’ backyard. This and the wide front window gave Ms. Myrtle a remarkable panoramic view of Lanark Lane. I imagined her sitting for years watching Micah and Jimmy grow up, seeing Bitty and me walk by
with Willowdale. Had her own boy walked down this street with his friends? Did he ever come home to visit her now? Did she miss him? Is that why she was so ornery? Or had her orneriness driven her boy away? I avoided looking too hard at the front yard, where the goose incident had gone so wrong.

  “You’re old to begin piano. . . .” Her mouth gaped open like an oxygen-deprived fish trying to remember my name.

  “I’d be happy to leave,” I said sweetly. “My father is making me come so I can play Paganini Étude and improve my motor cortex and cerebellum.”

  “Paganini Étude?”

  “It’s really so I can play with Vienna.”

  “Vienna,” Ms. Myrtle whispered. Her whole face softened like microwaved butter. “Dearest Vienna.”

  She resumed petting the cat.

  “I love cats,” I said, holding my knees, “even though I’m allergic.”

  “Don’t touch him,” she said. “You might decide to kill him, too.”

  “That cat looks just like Mr. Thompson’s,” I answered back.

  Hunched over and frail-looking, she walked toward me, struggling to clasp the poor meowing cat with her gnarled hands. She sat shakily down on the bench, close to me, smelling like mildewed carpet.

  “Vienna began playing with this book. She was my favorite student,” Ms. Myrtle said.

  My fingers touched the pages as I imagined Vienna Eyre as a little girl, opening the book and playing “A Playful Pony.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why was she your favorite?”

  “She was very talented and learned things quickly,” Ms. Myrtle said. “She was a sweet and smart little thing and kind to my boy. She would come visit with her cat, bring little presents, and talk and talk.”

  I suppressed a smile. I was always being told I talked and talked.

  The cat jumped out of Ms. Myrtle’s lap with a yowl. Large tufts of cat hair floated toward me. I sneezed, but tried not to touch my eyes.

  “Gus?” I asked.

  Ms. Myrtle smiled for the first time. “Gus,” she said. “Yes, my boy loved Gus.”