House Arrest (6 page)

“Be careful.” Francie removed her hands and let the clay spin alone. “I didn’t rescue your sorry butt from Lyman Street so you could cozy up to some nurse spy. Don’t you forget it, Pippa. She’s not one of us.”

6 ~ Sam

Sam only half-heard the first beep of the Special Ed bus. He had spent all afternoon trying to breech the cyber-defenses of a university admissions office for a client who suspected racial bias in his law school rejection. Sam was supposed to prove discrimination, but the firewall was tougher than he expected.

When the horn sounded a second time, louder and longer, he scooted his desk chair over the pine floorboards to the second floor window. Most days, Emily zipped out the front door to meet Zoe before Mr. Gonzalez had the flashers on, but Sam didn’t see her or her car. At the third insistent honk, Sam grabbed his jacket and hurried downstairs. The bus driver was helping Zoe maneuver down the steps with her crutches. Her rhinestone headband sparkled, even though the afternoon had turned cloudy and it looked like snow.

“Papa, I’m going to marry Señor Gonzalez,” Zoe said. She turned to wave good-bye to the silver-haired driver. “Right?”

“Si, si,” the driver said, handing Zoe’s backpack to Sam. “Hasta mañana, Missy.”

Zoe scampered ahead to the front door, her sticks clacking on the sidewalk. “I want a snack. Can we cake bookies?”

“Sounds dunky hory to me,” Sam said, following his daughter onto the front porch. He had started talking to Zoe in spoonerisms when she was an infant, even though it drove Anna crazy. By the time she was four, Zoe had figured out how to switch the first sound of words by herself. It was their secret language.

As he dug into his jeans pocket for his emergency key to Anna’s half of the house, Emily’s car sputtered to the curb.

“Sorry I’m late.” Emily slammed the car door and caught up to Sam and Zoe in the doorway. “Thanks, Sam.”

“No problem.”

“We’re going to bake cookies.” Zoe headed for the kitchen.

Emily tapped Zoe’s shoulder to get her attention, and pointed to the bathroom. “First your cath,” she said. “Then your snack.”

“I’m too hungry to wait.” Zoe turned back towards the kitchen.

“You know your mother’s rules. Hurry up. Your papa will wait for you.”

Sam hadn’t moved from the front door, uncertain if he should come in, or go back to his apartment.

“Right?” Emily looked at him.

Sam nodded. When Zoe closed the bathroom door, he followed Emily into the kitchen. Emily went right to the computer and pushed the power button. While it powered up, she started pulling food containers from the refrigerator and cupboards.

“Thanks again.” Emily opened the jar of peanut butter and sniffed.

“No problem.” Sam pointed at the computer, still loading. “When are you and Anna going to let me update that dinosaur for you?”

Emily didn’t answer. Sam had been making that offer for years. When Anna had first discovered that she was pregnant with Zoe, she and Sam had carefully planned the kitchen desk space. Sam would be able to work on the computer while watching the baby play on the kitchen floor, and Anna could return to her teaching job. That was before the ultrasound.

Emily plunked the armful of snacks on the table, leaned over the desk, and typed, then waited. Sam could hear the dial-up tones. So slow. Finally, she typed again and hit enter with a small flourish.

“Ready,” Zoe called.

Emily hurried towards the bathroom. Sam could picture the scene inside. Emily would inspect Zoe’s hands, making sure that she had washed them carefully. She would watch the girl lubricate the small plastic catheter and insert it until the yellow stream splashed into the toilet.

He scooted the kitchen chair closer to the monitor and saw a Google search for “Frozen Babies.” He clicked on the first entry and read a front page story in the city newspaper from August 24, almost three months earlier.

The partially decomposed bodies of two very young children were discovered yesterday by hikers in a remote section of Forest Park. Springfield Chief Detective Marshall Mahon revealed today that the bodies were hidden in a deep gully in the rarely-used southeastern section of the park. He theorized that they were frozen there over the winter and promised a full investigation, with prompt arrest of those responsible.

Why was Emily interested in this stuff? He heard the flush of the toilet, clicked on the Back arrow, and then on the second search entry, dated October 29.

Chief Mahon announced this afternoon that the frozen babies have been traced to a cult in the Forest Park neighborhood called the Family of Isis. Three adults have been arrested and will be arraigned tomorrow morning—the mothers of the two dead children, and a man allegedly the father of both. Law enforcement consultants from Boston deny any known association between Isis cults and child abuse or ritual sacrifice. But Mahon warned that “any cult must be approached with extreme caution and the expectation of bizarre behavior.”

Zoe rushed into the kitchen, her stuffed purple rhino gripped under her chin. “I cathed myself again, first try.”

Sam scooted his chair back to the table. “Good work, Poose.” He rescued the rhino and kissed the top of her head, letting her sandy curls mix with his own. Poose was her old nickname from the days before she mastered the crutches, when her preferred means of transportation was the papoose carrier on Sam’s back.

Zoe grabbed one waxed tip of Sam’s mustache and tugged. “Papa, I walk now.”

“You’re still my papoose.” Sam opened the bag of carrot sticks and dumped them into the bowl on the table while Emily scooped peanut butter onto Zoe’s plate.

“That’s three times in a row, all by myself. So I get a treat. Right?” She looked at her plate. “Hey, what about baking cookies?”

“No time to bake today.” Emily poured grape juice into Zoe’s plastic cup. “But, you’re right about the treat. I bet you’ve earned a trip to the Toy Palace this weekend.”

It had taken months of patience to teach his daughter to catheterize herself. Sam suspected Emily had done most of the work. Having Emily live there had turned out pretty well. He had been dubious when Anna’s Aunt Ruth called to say that Emily was moving from Portland down to Springfield, and could use some family. Just for a few months, while she got settled. That was four years ago. By the time Emily arrived, he had already moved into the upstairs apartment, so he didn’t have any say in the decision. He admired how the cousins arranged their work schedules so that Zoe always had supervision. Sometimes, he wished they needed his help more often.

“I’d rather have a kitty.” Zoe clasped her hands behind her back, leaned over her plate and licked the peanut butter off a carrot stick. “Meow.”

Emily rescued the rhinestone headband slipping down over Zoe’s nose. “Don’t push your luck. Finish eating, so we can do your stretching exercises, okay?” She sat at the computer and leaned towards the screen.

Sam stood up. That was probably his cue to leave. But he couldn’t help looking over her shoulder. “Why are you interested in this stuff?”

“It’s work-related. Confidential.”

She took those rules awfully seriously. Always saying she couldn’t talk about her patients because of the new federal HIPAA privacy regulations. Sam couldn’t help teasing.

“I get it,” he said. “Top secret.”

“Sop tecret.” Zoe echoed, and then slapped her hands over her mouth, looking at Sam.

Emily didn’t seem to notice. Sam brought his index finger to his lips. He wasn’t exactly sure why he insisted that the spoonerisms be their private language, but he liked it that way.

“Do you know anything about this Isis group?” Emily asked.

Sam shook his head. “I just remember reading the stories when the bodies were found, and then they arrested some cult members. But that was a few months ago, right?”

“Uh huh. It says that they found the bodies on August 23.” Emily clicked on the next entry. “But it took the cops a couple of months to track down the family.”

“Wasn’t there something about an orgy, dancing around a bonfire on the winter solstice? Isn’t that when the kids died, in that big snowstorm last December?”

Zoe twisted to look at her father and the carrot missed her mouth, landing a splotch of peanut butter on her cheek. “What kids died?”

Emily rubbed the peanut butter off with a napkin, kissed the cleaned spot on Zoe’s cheek, her lips pressing there until the girl squirmed. “Never mind, Zoe,” she said. “Those kids were different from you.”

Even so, Sam didn’t want to think about kids dying. He worried about Zoe every single day, mostly about her shunt. He looked at Emily. “How about if I do Zoe’s stretching? You can keep reading that stuff.”

“Okay.” Emily was already moving towards the computer. “Thanks.”

“Let me be your burst of beaden,” Sam whispered, squatting in front of Zoe’s chair. She and Rufus the rhino climbed onto his back and they trotted into the living room.

Whatever it was that was going on with Emily and her top secret work situation, it bought him an extra hour with Zoe. He never had enough time with his kid. He couldn’t blame Anna; he had been the one who couldn’t hack it and left. Anna was fair about custody, making sure he got exactly what was stated in the divorce agreement—every other weekend and holiday, plus one weekday evening. Unless Zoe was sick and couldn’t go to school, then she stayed upstairs with him while he worked. Most Sundays he was invited downstairs for dinner. Anna wanted Zoe to feel that even though her parents were divorced, she still had a family.

Zoe grabbed the television remote. “I get to chip the flannels.”

“Good one.” Sam helped Zoe position herself on the rug with a throw pillow under her head so she could see the screen, with Rufus snuggled against her neck. “You find Sesame Street and I’ll shake off your twos.” Zoe giggled, and he removed her shoes and socks and leg braces, checking the skin underneath for red pressure areas. Then he stretched the tight muscles behind her right knee to the count of ten, while on the television screen a blue giraffe danced the polka with the letter H.

Watching his daughter’s face, Sam thought about Emily in the kitchen researching the frozen babies. He didn’t really get it, her living like a maiden aunt in Anna’s home, helping with the household work and childcare. One Sunday dinner about a year earlier—they were having lasagna—Emily had mentioned a guy.

“Chad called this morning,” Emily said. “He wants to visit.”

“Who’s Chad?” Sam’s forkful hovered, mozzarella strings dangling.

Anna threw Sam a warning look. “Emily lived with Chad in Portland.” She smiled at Emily. “When’s he coming?”

Emily got up from the table, even though her lasagna was untouched. “I told him no.”

Sam didn’t learn any more about Chad after Emily left the room. Anna said it was none of his business. She would never talk about when she and Emily were kids on the island. Sam knew there had been some kind of tragedy with Emily’s parents, something about prison and family members taking sides, but apparently none of that was his business either. Whatever happened, it was a long time ago. Emily was grown up now. Didn’t she want a family of her own?

Zoe laughed and tugged on Sam’s sleeve. She pointed at the cartoon giraffe, now trying to do a headstand and balance his awkward body on his long skinny neck. “Watch with me, Papa.”

Sam switched to the left leg, flexing Zoe’s hip to ninety degrees, then slowly straightening the knee. On impulse, he grabbed Rufus and skipped the rhino across Zoe’s belly, burying his plastic nose in her armpit. That brought on a waterfall of giggles that banished all thoughts of Emily and her frozen babies.

7 ~ Emily

I could hear their sing-song voices counting hamstring stretches. Afternoons were my special time with Zoe, just the two of us, until Anna got home from school. Then all the business of making dinner and eating and getting Zoe ready for bed took over. Normally, I liked to do Zoe’s afternoon stretches myself, but today I was glad when Sam squatted down in front of Zoe’s chair so she could climb on for a piggyback ride. He whispered something, and she giggled, and for a minute I wanted to send Sam upstairs and keep Zoe to myself.

But that would be selfish. Anyway, I needed the time to learn more about Pippa. Glancing at the thickening clouds outside, I flipped on the kitchen light and concentrated on the computer.

If I ignored the diatribes against freezing embryos, most of the search results on “frozen babies” were from the local daily paper—news stories, feature articles, editorials. When I read about late summer hikers finding the bodies, I couldn’t help imagining Pippa opening the newspaper the next day. Did anyone warn her? Was she sitting on that yellow brocade chair, with the diesel-purring cat on her lap? Did she read that headline under the harsh gaze of the bird woman?

In early October, the newspaper reported three arrests.

Two suspects remain in custody: the male leader of the cult, identified only as Sebastian, and Murphy Barnett, the mother of the boy who died. Because of her pregnancy, Pippa Glenning, the mother of the dead girl, is released under house arrest on electronic monitoring and her unborn child has been placed under protective custody. Two older children remain in the household with their mother, Francine Beaujolais, under close supervision by the Department of Social Services.

On autopsy, the cause of death was determined to be exposure. The children were apparently in good health before the incident leading to their demise. The deceased were racially mixed, according to the medical examiner’s office.

What difference did their race make? And how could they tell? After eight months, frozen and then thawed, wouldn’t the bodies be decomposed? Wouldn’t they haven been bothered by animals? What would the bodies look like, after all that time? With a jolt, I remembered that one of those bodies was Pippa’s Abby.

In early November, the tone of the newspaper articles grew more hostile.

Chief Mahon urged the citizens of Western Massachusetts to be vigilant as the winter solstice approaches. “There may be substantial public risk,” he stated. “The potential for harm in the practices of cults must not be ignored. We have no credible information about what they do in their bizarre rituals secluded in the woods.”

Not everyone agreed with the Chief of Police about the public risk. One woman from Amherst wrote:

Isis worshippers revere all life, work to save the environment, and expressly forbid any sacrifice, either ritual or actual. Everyone is accepted in that so-called cult. All religions are welcome. How can this be dangerous?

Fierce arguments raged on the pages of the editorial section in early November. The angry words made me feel prickly and I switched off the computer. None of this seemed remotely connected to the poised young woman I met that morning. But then, the Pippa Glenning I met didn’t strike me as a person who would let her baby freeze to death.

Maybe it was those articles, or the snow outside, but that evening I couldn’t settle down. I rearranged the shelf of library books by due date, straightened the newspapers on the coffee table into a perfect stack, rescued a balled-up purple sock from under the couch. And I worried about Zoe, who had been unusually quiet at dinner.

“Do you feel sick?” I had asked her. “Headache?” I would never forget the time Zoe got quiet, and then muted, and then tearful, and finally was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night for surgery to replace the malfunctioning shunt in her brain.

“I’m not sick,” Zoe insisted.

“She’s fine.” Anna smiled at me. “Don’t be such a worrywart.”

When the dinner dishes were done, Anna and Zoe cuddled on the sofa with Rufus and Babar. I grabbed a heavy sweater and took my cup of tea to the porch.

The sun porch was my favorite room. With windows on three sides, it hugged the eastern wall of Anna’s three-story house. In summer, sunlight baked the air and faded the fabric cushions. But that night, wind gusts rattled their way inside and a thin coat of snow collected in the corners of the windowpanes.

Sam’s heavy footsteps thumped upstairs. I wondered exactly what kind of computer work he did to make a living, when he rarely left the house. That was his concern, I’d always told myself, even if it might be dicey. He was an odd duck, sporting a retro handlebar mustache with waxed tips. But I believed in people minding their own business.

Except I was grateful that Aunt Ruth liked to butt in on everyone else’s affairs. Living with Anna had been her suggestion. Aunt Ruth was my mother’s only sister and she took us in when my father went to prison. She was the social director, keeping track of every relative who ever lived on Saperstein Neck. When I left the island after high school, she wrote me newsy letters, even though I rarely answered. I telephoned her when I realized it was no good with Chad, to let her know I was moving down to Massachusetts. She reminded me that my cousin Anna lived in Springfield. My strongest memory of Anna was as a forlorn teenager at her parents’ funeral, after they drowned when their sailboat overturned in Penobscot Bay. We had never been close, even though her mother was my dad’s sister. Anna’s mom had disapproved of my parents and discouraged our friendship as kids, but that didn’t prevent Aunt Ruth from producing Anna’s phone number, and insisting that I get in touch.

“You two will get along great,” Aunt Ruth predicted. “You even look like kin, both so tall and slim.”

I stared at the snowy night sky, chopped into small squares by the windows. Aunt Ruth couldn’t have predicted how much I would love Zoe.

Before Zoe, I had never known a person with spina bifida. Oh, I had studied the condition in nursing school. And one night, working labor and delivery in Portland, I assisted at the delivery of a baby with a glistening red sack at the base of his spine. A riptide of silence rushed through the delivery rooms and spilled out into the sad blue hallway. There was a defeated look on that mother’s face as she listened to the obstetrician explain that her son had a birth defect and would never walk. Anna said they told her and Sam the same thing when Zoe was born. Anna still ranted and fumed about it sometimes.

Anna never told me the whole story of Zoe’s birth. Just that when the ultrasound showed the hole in Zoe’s spine, Sam wanted an abortion and she wanted the baby. Anna won. Turned out she didn’t entirely win because Sam couldn’t handle it. He moved to the upstairs flat on Zoe’s first birthday. In his own way, Sam was a good father. His work schedule seemed infinitely flexible, and he was always available. The arrangement worked for everyone. Especially for me. I loved Zoe, and Anna was like a sister. Only I never had a sister and neither did Anna, so what did we know? Maybe this was even better.

•

Once Zoe was asleep, Anna joined me on the wicker loveseat.

“She okay?” I asked.

“Fine.” Anna wrapped a ratty quilt around her shoulders. “Some girls at school were mean to her, wouldn’t let her join their club.”

I sat up straight. “What happened?”

Anna waved her hand in the air. “That’s the way kids are. She’ll forget about it by tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you going to say something to her teacher?”

“Kids can be brutal. I see it every day. Zoe has to get tough.”

She was probably right to ignore the classroom malice. But I kept picturing Zoe standing alone on the playground. I did a lot of that as the new kid at the island school.

Anna held out an envelope.

“What’s that?” I left it fluttering in the air between us.

“From Aunt Ruth, to both of us. Your grandfather is still in a coma.” Anna turned to face me and I saw Aunt Ruth’s pale yellow notepaper peeking under the ripped flap. “If he dies, we’ll drive back for his funeral.”

“No.”

“We have to,” she said. “We’ll go together.”

Who made her boss? Ivan was my grandfather, Anna’s great uncle. I pushed the envelope back toward her. “We can’t both go. I’ll stay here with Zoe.”

“She can stay with Sam.”

I heard the exasperation in my cousin’s voice, but I couldn’t stop. “She’ll starve. How can you leave your daughter with someone who never cooks?”

“He cooks.”

“Yeah, he puts things in the microwave and presses ‘start.’” I stood up. “Come on, the guy drinks instant coffee.”

“So what? Zoe’s too young for coffee.” Anna stood too. “Why are we arguing about Sam? Maybe Ivan will recover. Let’s see what happens.”

“We’ll see,” I said. No way, I promised myself.

“I have papers to grade.” She sighed and left the porch.

Standing alone, I took several slow breaths to blow away my worries. I was sorry about Grandpa Ivan, but I barely knew my mother’s father. Certainly not well enough to get me back there. My true family was in Springfield, with Anna and Zoe and my patients.

I looked around for something that needed doing. As I plucked dead leaves from the ficus tree, my hand brushed a thick web. A fat brown spider cozy in the perfect center of her web, a captive fly tucked below her. Safe and snug, with a full pantry. I sat down and wrapped myself in the quilt, still warm from Anna’s body.

All that talk about Grandpa Ivan and returning to the island. I tried to control myself, to imagine my childhood refuge, the leafy sanctuary of Aunt Ruth’s tree house. But I couldn’t help it. My thoughts tumbled backwards instead to my parents’ kitchen when I was ten. We were eating granola for breakfast.

•

The granola has raisins and pecans in it. My favorite. So I take a bite, even though my stomach is jumpy because we’re having auditions today, for the last play of fourth grade. I’m trying out for E.T.

“Just look at this eggplant.” Momma holds up the purple-black shape for our approval.

“Nice,” Daddy says without looking.

She cuts it into chunks and dumps them in the crock pot with the onions and zucchini and yellow squash and barley and broth. Momma gives after-school piano lessons at the Jewish Community Center. This way dinner will be ready when we all get home.

Daddy’s spoon taps against the edge of his coffee cup to emphasize each point as he reads the lesson plan about Vietnam that he revised last night. It made him and Momma argue in the living room when they thought I was asleep. It made him wheeze too, until he had to go find his inhaler. “They want me to teach what colonial families ate for dinner,” he had said, “as if turnips and sweet potatoes will create good citizens.” I covered my ears with my pillow.

I arrange my raisins in a row along the narrow rim of the cereal bowl and try to ignore his spoon-tapping. I imagine myself as a wrinkled brown extraterrestrial far from home. Does E.T. like granola?

The knock at the apartment door is loud. Momma answers it and steps back to let the two men in suits into the kitchen. They show their policeman badges. They mumble some words I don’t understand. They put handcuffs on my father.

“You have to come with us now,” the short officer says to my father. The cop doesn’t look at us. Momma hands my father his inhaler, then pulls me close. My spine is hard against her chest. I sniff her peach blossom shampoo from the food coop, mixed with a sharp smell that makes me shiver and cross my arms on my chest. Momma puts her arms on top of mine, like double seat belts.

Daddy says two words to Momma as the men lead him away. “Call Abe,” he says and Momma nods.

She and I stand still like that for a few moments. Then she drops her arms. And mine. I turn around so I can see her face. She must have bitten herself. A spot of blood hangs, suspended, on her bottom lip. Then it tumbles in a wavy line down her chin and falls onto her yellow Boycott Grapes t-shirt. She doesn’t go right to the sink and flush it out with cold water so the stain won’t set. She goes to the telephone.

I clear the breakfast table, but I leave my father’s bowl. His granola gets soggy and the milk turns grey.

That afternoon, Momma drives me up the coast to Rockland. We’re going to take the ferry to the island where she grew up. Her sister still lives there. Momma tells me I’m going to stay with Aunt Ruth for a few weeks. I start to cry. I don’t know Aunt Ruth very well and barely remember my cousins, even though we’re about the same age. We don’t visit them often. Daddy says we don’t see eye to eye.

“Just for a couple of weeks,” Momma promises. “So I can take care of your Daddy.”

What about me, I think. Take care of me.

We leave the car in the parking lot and walk onto the boat with one suitcase for the two of us. We stand in front, holding onto the metal chain. When the ferry passes the jetty lighthouse and picks up speed, the wind gets fierce. Momma puts her arm around me and steers me inside. We sit at an orange table. I pick pieces of rust off my fingers.

“Do you remember our photo album, from when Daddy and I lived in the commune?” Momma begins that way.

I nod. With those raggedy clothes, it was hard to tell who was a boy and who was a girl. We had laughed together, my parents and me, over those pictures.