The Body Farm, page 6
Your child will grow up safe. Your child will never know a thing about her father. A blank space on the birth certificate.
You check your watch again: 7:32. Still no sign of the bus. Somewhere behind you, a teenager is playing a video game at top volume, filling the air with erratic, staccato chiming. The wind picks up, carrying the smell from the garbage bins beside the depot. Your stomach twists with nausea.
After a moment, you kneel, unzipping the duffel and groping for the crystal ball. You want its comforting weight in your hands just now. Beneath the streetlight, you see your own face reflected in the curve of glass. The combination of ambient darkness and overhead illumination brings your image into stark relief. You lean forward, and your reflection elongates. There are your grandmother’s hooded eyes, her thin nose. You have never seen the likeness so clearly before, though people used to comment on it when you were a girl. Your features will age into your grandmother’s, you can see now. The underlying bone structure has always been the same.
The streetlamp flickers, and your reflection changes. Now there are many faces inside the orb, some shadowy and ethereal, some crisp and solid. A few have pixie cuts like yours, but others blur into black, giving the impression of long dark curls. There are dozens of them, dancing in and out of view, shifting like light on the surface of water. Perhaps they represent the other women Ulf has harmed—Ruth and all your sisters, the coven you never knew you had. You lift a hand to wave to them, and the image alters again, your reflection warping and contracting before your eyes.
There, looking back at you, is a child’s face. Plush cheeks, a rosebud mouth, a serene expression. You gasp aloud. Is this, at long last, a true glimpse of the future? You lean close, trying to see clearly in the murky depths, but the child remains stubbornly out of focus, a gauzy waif with blurred features. It is impossible to determine age or gender, though the face seems plump and healthy, maybe even smiling.
And then the bus thunders around the corner, huge and shuddering, cutting a proud swath through the gloaming. Its headlights strike the crystal ball in your hands, erasing your image and setting the orb aglow. For a moment there is only light, a miniature sun cupped in your palms, shining with infinite possibilities.
Few witches have ever succeeded in performing the Spell for Disappearing. No one has ever managed to work the spell a second time, as it requires too much of the body and mind. This rite is one of the most potent and risky forms of magic known. If you are strong, if you are resolute, you will be able to vanish once in your lifetime—and only once. Choose wisely.
Across, Beyond, Through
For the first hundred miles, Eden is sound asleep in the back seat. Carl navigates the winding roads with the radio on low, a hiss of guitar chords and static. The sky is dark, the highway a shimmering ribbon of gray, but he is wide awake.
It is four in the morning. The highway fills gradually with fellow travelers, early commuters on their way to work. Carl welcomes the friendly blaze of their headlights. He keeps an eye on his daughter in the rearview mirror. Eden talks in her sleep, though not in any language he can understand. At fourteen, her coltish frame is too long to stretch comfortably across the back of the car. She tosses and turns.
Occasionally Carl catches a look at her face, splashed in the glow of oncoming headlights. It makes him wince each time. He knew that as the hours passed, his daughter’s bruises would darken, all part of the healing process. Still, it is a shock to observe the pulpy mess that used to be Eden’s right eye, her lip scabbed and swollen.
The sun crests the horizon dead ahead, lighting up every bird dropping and crust of ice on the windshield. And then, without warning, Eden hurtles into the passenger seat, her hand on Carl’s shoulder, her bare foot fishing for purchase. She settles cross-legged beside him and yawns, smacking her lips. Her T-shirt is on inside out.
“We’re really on the road,” she says. “I thought maybe I dreamed that.”
She flips down the visor and investigates her wounds in the mirror there. The black eye has taken on a sticky sheen, like mother-of-pearl. Her lip is spongy, split down the middle. She grimaces at her reflection.
“We’ll get you an ice pack at the next oasis,” Carl says.
“I thought I dreamed all of it,” Eden says. “It seems like a nightmare, right?”
Carl nods. “Sure does.”
“Mom punched me twice. Eye, then mouth. And then bam, open hand, right here.” Eden lays a palm over her ear.
“I’ve never known your mother to hit anyone.”
She cocks her head to the side, considering this. Her auburn hair, shoulder-length, swings with each gesture.
“Can you—” Carl pauses, unsure how to proceed. “Would you like to tell me more about what happened yesterday?”
“No,” Eden says, without hesitation. Clearly she was waiting for this question, her answer loaded and ready to fire.
Carl knows better than to push. The highway winds among rolling hills, a wide prairie beaded with farmhouses. The sign for Pennsylvania appears around a curve. As they cross the border from New York, both Carl and Eden lunge forward across the dashboard, one arm outstretched, trying to be the first to enter the new state, if only by the length of a fingernail.
“I won,” she crows.
“I’ll beat you to Ohio,” he says.
The sunlight flares across the windshield, offering light but no warmth. It is December, and the air is tinged with frost. Carl reaches for his thermos of coffee. He has not slept much in the past twenty-four hours.
The call came around 2:00 a.m. yesterday, waking him in his Las Vegas apartment. Eden’s voice, incoherent with sobs. Carl staggered out of bed and switched on the light. It took him a while to understand what was happening. Eden cried in a way he hadn’t heard since her babyhood, the sort of reckless, breathless wheezing that used to accompany a tantrum. He remembers fumbling for the clock and doing math—2:00 a.m. for him in Nevada, 5:00 a.m. for Eden in Utica on the other side of the country.
“Where’s your mother?” he asked. “Can I talk to her?”
“She’s been arrested,” Eden screamed through her tears.
Carl threw on whatever clothes he could grab—a strange arrangement he is still wearing, crisp khaki slacks and an ancient hoodie with paint on the sleeve—and drove to the airport.
○
Dark pines stand out among the bare, skeletal trees. An arctic breeze buffets the car as Carl and Eden play Twenty Questions. He tries not to stare at her injuries, though it’s difficult. Her lip is a chunk of pulped plum. Her eye is in the process of swelling shut. She has a concussion that will require care, and one eardrum is ruptured. They cannot fly across the country; the changes in cabin pressure could cause permanent damage to Eden’s hearing, not to mention excruciating pain. So Carl rented a car and they are road-tripping through ten states over two days.
He has a high-stakes poker game on Tuesday, scheduled months ago. He’s paid the entrance fee. The prize pool is over a million. It cannot be missed.
Lake Erie glimmers between the trees on Eden’s side of the car. The Pennsylvania coast is layered with plateaus and valleys of ice, an otherworldly, uneven terrain caused by the movement of waves and sudden cold snaps and snowfall and the occasional thaw followed by refreezing. The deep water, however, seems unaffected by winter. Along the horizon, waves shift and dance, blue under blue sky.
Eden was not supposed to join Carl in Las Vegas until June. His apartment is not ready for her; it’s still a bachelor pad strewn with empty liquor bottles and dirty dishes. Did he remember to hide his marijuana paraphernalia? He’ll have to check as soon as they walk in the door.
Until now, his relationship with Eden has been one of summers and texting. They are buddies. They chat with their thumbs about TV shows they both watch, comic strips they both enjoy. Sometimes Eden sends him strings of emojis he can’t parse. Sometimes he dreams about her—Technicolor, slow-motion moments of closeness, Eden as an infant clutching his finger, Eden as a toddler in his lap, Eden as a preteen riding on his back. He wakes up haunted, unsure whether these visitations are good dreams or nightmares.
She lives with her mother in Utica during the school year and spends her summers with Carl in Las Vegas. That has been the custody agreement up until now, anyway. For three precious months each year, Eden has hung her art on his fridge, critiqued his decor, woken him with a pillow to the face, challenged him to dance parties, and infused his life with sweetness and purpose. Their erratic closeness—periodic but intense—has allowed him to see her growing up in a different way. She does not age continually for him, but in surges, her shoulders suddenly wider, her face elongated, her vocabulary larger, her movements more assured.
He does not know what happened between her and her mother. He can only assume that his ex-wife suffered a psychotic break of some kind. He and June have a cordial, icy dynamic—cordial on his side, icy on hers. But she has always been a loving mother. She has never raised a hand to Eden before, not even a swat on the behind. Her discipline consists of time-outs and exhausting lectures on ethics. She is the sort of mother who cuts the crusts off the bread and peels the oranges she puts in Eden’s lunch, even though Eden is in eighth grade and most of her friends just buy a hot lunch and a soda. June is doting and overprotective, lauding Eden’s every achievement on social media. Even participation trophies and so-so report cards are touted like Olympic gold medals.
Carl cannot imagine what caused his ex-wife to beat their daughter so badly that Eden ended up in the emergency room and June in jail.
Pennsylvania is the shortest leg of their trip. They cut across the chimney of land that sticks up from the northwest corner of the state. When the sign for Ohio appears, Eden cracks her knuckles and rolls her head side to side like a gymnast preparing for a difficult routine. As they cross the border, both of them lunge forward against their seat belts, one arm extended.
“I won,” Carl says.
“Your arms are longer. Unfair advantage.”
A barbed wire fence separates a field of snow from another field of snow. Probably corn and soybeans grow here in the summer, proud thickets of green, but just now the landscape seems almost apocalyptically bare. Eden tips down the visor again to examine her reflection in the mirror. Beneath the black eye, her cheek has begun to swell, slowly turning mauve.
“It’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” she says.
Carl is in the process of passing a semi when his cell phone jangles to life.
Eden glances at the screen. “It’s Mom.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I thought she was in jail.”
“Your aunt probably posted bail.”
“Oh no. Oh no.” Eden tugs desperately on a lock of hair, a gesture Carl recognizes from her toddler years.
He pulls onto the shoulder, tires kicking up a wash of gravel that pings against the undercarriage. He waits a moment to steady his nerves before climbing out with the phone in his hand. The chill turns his breath to vapor. He takes a few steps down the road, glancing back at Eden’s white face.
“You’re a monster,” June cries, in lieu of greeting. “Where on earth are you?”
“I’m bringing Eden to Vegas with me.”
“I got home and the house was empty. The CPS people told me you’d taken her. How could you do this to me?”
Carl shivers. He did not think to bring a coat before boarding the plane; he has been a native of Nevada for long enough that he forgot what real winter is like.
“Are you there?” June shouts.
“I’m here. Eden is going to stay with me. It’s all arranged.”
“You’re an asshole.”
Carl gnaws on his thumbnail, baffled. June does not swear. She has forbidden Eden from saying shut up or crap or even the word hate.
“Is Eden . . .” June begins, then trails off. “How does she look? Is she—”
“She says you punched her twice and boxed her ear. Is that what happened?”
“Oh my goodness.” June blows her nose. “Oh heavens. Look, you’ve got to bring her back here. This is all a big mistake.”
“Did you hit her?” Carl repeats. His hands close instinctively into fists. Papa bear.
“It’s complicated. I can’t get into it right now.”
“It doesn’t seem complicated to me.”
June’s voice rises an octave. “I can’t even think while you’re holding my little girl hostage. You’re going to turn around and bring Eden right back home. She belongs with me. I’m her mother. I know what’s best.”
Carl hangs up and glares at the phone for a minute, then turns it off in case June calls back. The little screen goes black between his fingers.
○
Ohio lasts for hours. Snow begins to fall, a powdery dusting, bleaching the air. Clouds cover the sky, the ground moon-pale, the whole world rendered in grayscale. Eden signals at trucks to sound their horns. Drivers in passing cars do double takes at the sight of her face. Her bruises are blossoming spectacularly. Whenever her mouth starts bleeding she dabs it with Kleenex, which is then deposited randomly around the car, along with ponytail holders, tubes of lip balm, socks, and hairpins. An adolescent nest.
And all the while, Carl’s mind orbits the puzzle he cannot solve: What made June turn on her beloved child? He still remembers his ex as she was when he first encountered her—crackling with life, constantly in motion. He remembers her fiery red mane, now darkened to coffee brown and laced with gray. He remembers the way she hummed when she was thinking and chewed her pencils so intensely that she nibbled away every scrap of yellow coating, turning them into whittled, damp twigs.
Even then, he and June made for something of an uneasy alliance. She came from Southern Baptists who raised her on purity rings and father-daughter dances. Carl’s parents, on the other hand, were hippies who urged him not to marry until he was at least thirty so he’d have plenty of time to sow his wild oats and find out what kind of life he wanted for himself. He and June met in an introductory science class at Utica University. They both needed it to fulfill their requirements for graduation and were both lost after the first session. Carl was prelaw, June majoring in philosophy with the goal of becoming a doctor of divinity. They coached each other through Physics 101 and ended up falling in love, each fascinated by the other’s strangeness.
After graduation, they moved in together. In defiance of her upbringing, June was sexually active—a demon in the sack, actually—but she could not shake the guilt. Often she wept in shame after orgasm. Carl privately hypothesized that her fascination with the study of religious scholars arose from a desire to quantify the precise cost to her soul of each sin. He knew to tiptoe around the apartment without speaking whenever June was on the phone with her parents. They believed she lived alone. Fortunately they were proud Mississippians and refused to travel to the scary, unfamiliar North.
Then Eden came along. An accident, a statistical anomaly—June was one of the tiny fraction of women to get pregnant while on birth control. Abortion was out of the question, of course. Carl hadn’t meant to marry so young, but he knew June needed this from him. And he loved her then, he did. They eloped as quickly as possible so her parents wouldn’t be able to count backward from nine months and draw nefarious conclusions.
The real battles began during the pregnancy. Carl had finally come to terms with the fact that he did not enjoy the law. He was finding success as a poker player online. He’d begun driving down to Atlantic City on the weekends and returning with fat pockets. He wanted to try his luck as a professional gambler. He believed, rightly as it turned out, that he could make a good living.
June was horrified by this development. She insisted that he take a nine-to-five job instead, something with a schedule and benefits she could depend on. And so he did. Against his better judgment, he became a paralegal at a soul-crushing corporate firm. He did it for Eden, born a week after her due date, a nine-pound behemoth with a full head of red-blond hair.
The marriage limped along for a couple more years. June was at her best with Eden, changing her diapers with lightning speed, translating her mewls and grunts into plain English, and nursing her in the rocking chair for hours while she teethed. Carl can still see them there, Eden dozing at her mother’s breast, June nudging the chair back and forth with her toes even as she dozed too.
Their split was more his fault than June’s. Some might say it was entirely his fault. He continued gambling on the side, weathering the inevitable storms whenever June found out. Each time, she begged him to quit. Each time, he solemnly agreed, lying through his teeth and privately vowing to cover his tracks better.
Then came the affair. Her name was Marianna, another paralegal at the firm where he never wanted to work in the first place. Carl takes full blame for their tawdry, but satisfying, fling. He has always had difficulty denying himself pleasure. June walked in on them in bed together, and that was the end of the marriage.
His infidelity catalyzed something in June. She’d always been a Sunday churchgoer, but Carl’s betrayal seemed to activate some latent zealotry. She switched from her broadminded Unitarian church to a fire-and-brimstone Baptist one on the other side of town. She started going three times a week. Overnight, it seemed, she became someone Carl did not recognize: born again, smugly saved, quoting scripture in every conversation, even with their divorce attorneys, and frantically organizing Eden’s baptism, something she hadn’t thought necessary until now.
The divorce was acrimonious but rapid. Carl escaped to Vegas and found his way to a kind of hedonistic serenity—sleeping with whomever he liked, avoiding serious entanglements, surfing the shifting waves of poker wins and losses, now broke, now flush, and following his bliss, as his parents used to say.
It was the right thing for him. But he does regret missing so many milestones in his daughter’s life. He wasn’t there when she was born. June had recently caught him gambling again and banned him from the delivery room as punishment. He was in bed with Marianna the evening Eden said her first word. He was settling into his new apartment in Vegas when Eden had her first ballet recital, a chubby three-year-old in a frilly tutu. He was at the casino when she lost her two bottom teeth on the same day; he had to content himself with seeing the gap in her smile over FaceTime. There are more things, surely, that he has missed—inches of growth, childish revelations, tiny heartbreaks, new ideas, moments too inconsequential to be mentioned over the phone but vital nonetheless. Impossible to reclaim.
