Chapter Thirty-Six
THIRTY-SIX
I have to get out of here. I consider hammering on the door or trying to kick it down; it’s flimsy plywood and already perforated with holes, but I don’t want Bert to come back up here. There is movement downstairs—the scrape of chairs, muted voices—and I wonder what he is telling them. I can’t sit and wait to find out, I need to get to Fern. I need to find someone who is thinking straight and right now I don’t trust anyone in this house—Lisa with her cold, hard stare or Sam cradling a child’s shoe in his large, heavy hands—to do that.
I lean out the window and look down. It’s broken concrete down there, stuffed with tall weeds that punch up through the cracks. It’s a long way to the ground but if I can swing over to the right I can jump onto the porch roof, and then it’s just a drop of a few feet. I start to clamber out, hooking one leg over the casement, hands holding on the frame. The wood there is rotten and spongy, black with mold. I don’t think it can hold me, but what choice do I have?
I slide the envelope into my pocket, keeping my eyes fixed on the porch roof below. Then I pull my other leg through until I’m sitting on the sill trying not to think about the way it creaks and shifts beneath my weight. If I jump, I might land on the porch and just go right on through, breaking a few bones in the process. If the cheap rubber roofing is as rotten as this windowsill, then it’s a real possibility. I swallow. I can already see smoke rising from the green. The early evening air bristles with voltage, charged with it. I can feel it against my skin like static.
Another creak and I dig my nails in. Wood splinters beneath me. Shit. Shit. I lean out into space, bracing my feet against the brickwork and pushing against it, releasing my grip, arching forward, the ground a long way down. Almost immediately I realize I have not jumped nearly far enough, that there’s no way I’m going to reach the porch, no way, and then I hit something solid, hard enough to knock the wind from my chest and my hands grope blindly, frantically for purchase. I hang on, I hang on so tightly my nails draw blood into my palms. I look down, realizing my feet are about four feet above the ground, kicking in the space. I’m clinging to the satellite dish, the metal groaning under my weight, feeling the give as it bends slightly, nails coming free with a screech of metal and brick dust. I don’t give myself any more time to think about it. I let my fingers go and my body drops to the ground.
A dull pain flares in my right ankle as I land awkwardly, rolling onto my side. I don’t scream, but my jaw snaps closed and I yelp in fright. When I stand and try to walk, the pain intensifies, throbbing a little. I manage though, limping toward the gate with my heart in my mouth. I expect to hear Lisa or Bert yelling my name any minute, expect to hear running footsteps behind me and a hand clamp down on my arm. I picture Lisa hauling me back to the house with a wide, sick grin, saying, Time for your Riddance, Mina Ellis, we need to break the spell. I keep going.
It’s busy down by the green. I’m shocked at the amount of people. The bonfires have already been lit, smoldering in the half-light, the wood not quite catching yet. It is a carnival atmosphere, voices high and rowdy. A woman with a long throat is laughing with her head thrown back. A man I recognize as having been outside the house right at the beginning, holding a placard with GIVE THE DEAD THY TONGUE painted onto it, is standing on a bench and singing at the top of his voice, one hand placed over his heart. Children are running amok as the first stars begin to prick the sky. I don’t know how long I’ve got before Alice will be brought down here. Maybe they are already heading this way. Maybe the Riddance has already begun.
The video shop is shuttered and two words have been spray-painted messily over the grille. Good Riddance. I hammer on the door with the flat of my hand but there is no response. I step back and look upward, can see a light on in the flat above. I jerk as someone throws a firecracker at my feet, laughing, dashing away. Everyone has big, red smiles. It’s disconcerting. I want to get off the street.
“Mind out!” a voice calls, and I’m shoved aside by someone moving past me at speed, their head down. My ankle sings in pain as I stagger sideways. They approach the door of the video shop, hands groping for the keys.
“Fern?”
She turns and looks at me and I’m startled by her expression. She looks stricken, almost panicked—wide-eyed and breathless. It takes her a moment to really see me.
“Shit, Mina! Come on in.”
Inside it is dark, muted evening light filtering through the grilles pulled down over the windows. From the flat above comes the sound of the television loudly playing cartoons and the strobing light of the screen projected onto the stairwell. Outside, another muffled bang as a firecracker explodes somewhere out on the green.
“Bet you wish you’d stayed at home now, right?” Fern says, pushing her bag onto the counter. I can hear the clink of bottles inside.
“You can say that again,” I say, and I mean it. I wish I’d never met Sam Hunter or heard that tape of his. I should have made that appointment with the caterers, I should have stayed home with Oscar and left that photograph of Eddie and his silvery eyes buried in a drawer. But then I think of the Polaroids in my pocket, Mary’s eye spiked with blood. I think of how she deserves justice, how all these Riddance girls deserve justice.
“I’ve got to talk to you.”
“I don’t have long. Stevie’s upstairs, and she’ll be needing dinner and a bath before it all kicks off tonight. I’d been hoping she’d be a bit older before being confronted with all this, but it is what it is, right?”
Fern laughs, and I think of the clinking bottles in her bag, wonder if she’s been drinking. She seems hectic, like she can’t settle. A prey animal with fast-moving blood.
“I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on in this town, Fern. I don’t know about hagstones and Riddances and all the rest of it, and right now I don’t trust anyone to tell me. You know what happened earlier? The Webber family asked us to leave. Sam’s sitting in the dark with a shoe in his hands and Alice looks like she’s on the brink of a fucking breakdown.” I tug at my hair, pushing it away from my face, feeling frantic. “When I went to pack my bags, Bert locked me in the bedroom. I had to climb out of the window to get here. It feels like everyone is losing their minds.”
She laughs, a small, soft disbelieving sound.
“The Riddance is a form of madness. I’ve always thought it. Purification through chaos. It works though, Mina. It works. I should know.”
We stare at each other a long time. The light coming through from outside changes texture, becomes warm and golden and flickering.
“How old were you?” I ask gently.
“Thirteen. June 1977, baby. Last full moon of the spring. The Native Americans call it the ‘strawberry moon.’ I was out of control, the whole town said so. I got into trouble setting fires—what’s it called? That urge?”
“Pyromania.”
“That’s it. Pyromania. You know, if they don’t want kids starting fires, they shouldn’t make it sound so fucking cool, you know? Anyway, that’s when Bert and Mary took me in. I had a Riddance two weeks later. Fighting fire with fire, I suppose you’d call it. I’d damaged a bunch of property and was looking at ending up in a youth custody center—a ‘Borstal,’ as it was known back then. It felt like the whole town came out to see me. The bonfires were twenty feet high. And the noise! Loud enough to drive the Devil out of me. I went to my knees in that grass and I’ve never felt lighter. I can’t explain it. I never set a fire again. No more stealing, no joyriding. I stopped cutting myself, went back to school—I mean, you can say it’s horseshit all you like but there are girls in this town who are proof of…”
She trails off. I feel frayed, as if I am coming undone. Panic, gnawing at me. Outside, firecrackers, a man shrieking at the moon.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. Magic? Power? I’m not the best person to ask. Bert would know.”
Bert. I reach into my pocket, for the envelope.
“Actually, Bert’s why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
From upstairs, Stevie’s voice floats down, “Mum-ee, I’m hun-gree!”
“In a minute, baby!” Fern calls back. She is still looking at me. “Is this about Mary?”
That ruptured eye full of blood .
“Partly, yes. I saw her before the undertakers took her away. Did you know that?”
Fern nods. Outside, another firework. The windows rattle.
“I don’t think that she died naturally, Fern.”
She regards me for a moment. Her gray eyes are luminous, gleaming with tears.
“Don’t. Don’t, Mina.”
“The way she was lying, the position her hands were in. Her fingers were hooked, like she’d been clawing at her throat.” I swallow, scrambling over my words. Fern takes a single step away from me as if I am infectious. “There were signs of a struggle in the room. A lamp had been knocked over, the bedcovers were on the floor. It wasn’t right.”
“Mina. Be very careful about what you’re saying.”
“I haven’t told anyone else about this. Just you.”
“Listen, Alice Webber is an oddball, okay?” Fern laughs uneasily. “We all know it. But Mary was like a grandmother to her—”
“I’m not talking about Alice. I know everyone thinks she had something to do with it but I was there, Fern. Alice found Mary that way. I’d bet my life on it. I’m talking about Bert.”
I watch Fern’s face switch slowly from shock to affront. Her mouth springs open, her head shakes.
“No, no, no. Bert wouldn’t do that. That’s absurd. It’s fucking offensive. ”
“Fern—”
“He loved that woman. You ever hear the way he talked about her? Saw the way his eyes lit up just at the mention of her name?”
“I’m not suggesting he didn’t love her. But she was very ill. It’s hard looking after someone who isn’t going to get better. Sometimes you just want to—”
“What?” she snaps. Her T-shirt slides down to reveal a round shoulder, freckled and pale. “Sometimes you want to what? Murder them? Are you listening to yourself?”
I swallow. The hush of the rain, the gasping breath. The grille rattles as if someone has fallen against it.
“You should go, Mina. I’ve got my kid to look after.” Fern picks up the bag and I realize how angry she is, how much I’ve misjudged this. I grab her arm and am surprised at how quickly she pulls it away.
“You should go, I said.”
I pull the envelope out of my pocket, feeling sick, feeling afraid. Right now, Fern is the only friend I have and I’m about to lose her, too.
“I found this at Bert’s house. Mary was trying to tell me about it. It was hidden away in a record sleeve. Billie Holiday. ‘Blue Moon,’ remember? It was their first dance.”
Fern turns to me, her face set. She doesn’t even look at the envelope.
“He, uh—there’s photographs in here. Polaroids. That’s a self-developing cam—”
“Jesus, Mina, I know what a fucking Polaroid is.”
“I don’t know how long he’s been doing it for— I don’t-I don’t have any answers for you. I just know that he isn’t the man you think he is, and this is why.”
I can hear my voice starting to fracture, strained sounding. I’m begging now.
“Take a look. Please, Fern. You’re in there.”
Fern squares her shoulders, jaw lifted.
“Bert took me in when I had nothing and no one. He has helped a lot of people in this town, Mina.”
“A lot of girls, you mean.”
“Huh?”
“Girls. Riddance girls. Like you, like Lisa. Like Alice.” I swallow, because this is it, I’m pulling the pin. “Stevie, too. You ever think about that?”
“Out,” she snarls. I actually see her lip curl, teeth bare. “I won’t ask you again.”
Something twists painfully inside me in a secret, deep chamber. Some emotion, straining for release. This is not how I imagined this conversation going. I wish I could think clearly. Fern takes a step toward me and I back away, hands up, palms out in a gesture of surrender.
“I’m going,” I tell her, because I am afraid. There’s real anger in Fern’s expression, her eyes glittering like mica, the heat of it searing and boiling. I try to take the Polaroid out, the one of Fern at age thirteen ( “June 1977, baby!” ), with her pink hair and her scarred arms, nails bitten all the way to the cuticle, but she slaps the envelope straight out of my hand and shoves me out through the door. I stumble into the street, injured ankle flaring painfully like a tendon is ruptured, lurching against someone who immediately pushes me away against the wall so hard I crack my head and see stars. I am dry-mouthed and breathless, feeling the heat of those bonfires even at this distance, like standing in front of a furnace. The smoke makes my eyes water and it stings. It hurts.