Ironside

Page 20

All the lights on the second floor were on, glowing like jack-o'-lantern eyes. No holiday lights trimmed the front steps, although all the neighboring houses were lit, bright and twinkling. Kaye climbed up the tree in front of her bedroom, the frozen bark rough and familiar under her palms. As she stepped onto the snow-covered asphalt of the shingles, she could see figures in her bedroom. Crouching, she scooted closer.
Ellen stood in the hallway, talking to someone. For a moment, Kaye touched her hand to the window, ready to throw it open and call to her mother, but then she noticed her rat cage was missing and her clothes had been piled in two garbage bags on the floor. Chibi-Kaye, Corny had said, joking. Chibi-Kaye came into the room, wearing Kaye's Chow Fat T-shirt. It hung to her scabby knees.
The little girl did look like Kaye in miniature— dirty blond hair in tangles over her shoulders, upturned brown eyes and a snubbed nose. Looking through the window was like seeing a scene out of her own past.
"Mom," Kaye whispered. The word clouded in the air, like a ghost that could not quite manifest. Her heart hammered against her chest.
"You need anything, Kate?" Ellen asked.
"I don't want to sleep," the little girl said. "I don't like to dream.”
"Try," said Kaye's mother. "I think—”
Lutie flew down from the branch of a tree, and Kaye was so startled that she fell back, sliding a little ways on the roof. From inside, she heard a high-pitched shriek.
Ellen walked to the window and looked out at the snowy roof, her breath clouding the glass. Kaye scuttled back, out of Ellen's line of sight. Like a monster. Like a monster waiting for a child to fall asleep so she could creep in and eat it up.
"There's nothing," Ellen said. "No one to steal you away again.”
"Who's she?" Lutie whispered, alighting on Kaye's lap. Lutie's wings brushed Kaye's fingers like fluttering eyelashes. "Why is she sleeping in your bed and wearing your clothes? I waited and waited like you said. You have taken a long time coming back.”
"She's the baby who got taken to make room for me. She's who I thought I was but I'm not.”
"The changeling?" Lutie asked.
Kaye nodded. "The girl who belongs here. The real Kaye.”
The cold of the snow seeped through her faerie gown, freezing the skin underneath. Still, she sat on the ledge, peering at the girl inside as Ellen shut off everything but the night-light.
It was a simple thing to wait until the hallway light went dark, climb a little ways, then push open the window to the attic. Kaye ducked inside, swinging her feet over the ledge and slithering through.
Her feet touched grime-covered floorboards, and she pulled the switch to turn on the single bulb.
Her hip hit a box, sending the contents spilling out. In the sudden light, she saw dozens and dozens of photographs. Some of them were stuck together while others were chewed at the edges, but they all featured a little girl. Kaye bent low. Sometimes the girl was a swaddled-up baby sleeping on a patch of grass, sometimes she was a skinny thing dancing around in leg warmers. Kaye didn't know which photos were of her and which ones were of the other girl—she had no memory of how old she'd been when the switch occurred.
Kaye traced her fingers through the dust. Impostor, she wrote. Fake.
A gust of wind blew through the open window, scattering the photographs. With a sigh, she started gathering them up. She could smell the droppings of squirrels, the termite-eaten wood, the rotted sill where the snow had soaked through it. Up in the eaves something had made a nest of pink insulation, garish against the planks. Looking up at it, she thought of cuckoos. She shoved the pictures into a shoe box and headed for the stairs.
No one was inside the second-floor bathroom, but another night-light glowed beside the sink. Kaye felt empty in this familiar space, as though her heart had been scraped hollow. But she had guessed right; no one had packed away her dirty clothes.
Picking through the hamper, she pulled out T-shirts, sweaters, and jeans she'd worn the week before, balled them up, and tossed them out the window onto the snowy lawn. She wanted to take her records and notebooks and novels too, but she didn't want to risk going into her bedroom to get them. What if the changeling screamed? What if Ellen walked in and saw her there, clutching the stupid rubber necklace she'd five-fingered at a street fair?
Carefully, Kaye opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, straining for the sound of her rats. She couldn't just leave them to get dumped out in the snow or given to a pet store like her grandmother threatened whenever their cage was particularly filthy. She felt panicky at the thought of not being able to find them. Maybe someone had put them on the enclosed porch? Kaye crept down the staircase, but as she snuck into the living room, her grandmother looked up from the couch.
"Kaye," she said. "I didn't hear you come in. Where were you? We were very worried.”
Kaye could have glamoured herself invisible or run, but her grandmother's voice sounded so normal that it rooted her to the spot. She was still in the shadows, the green of her skin hidden by the darkness.
"Do you know where Isaac and Armageddon are?”
"In your mother's room—upstairs. They were bothering your sister. She's afraid of them—has quite an imagination. She says they're always talking to her.”
"Oh," Kaye said. "Right.”
A Christmas tree sat near the television, trimmed with angels and a glitter garland. It was real—Kaye could smell the crushed pine needles and wet resin. Underneath sat a few boxes wrapped in gold paper. Kaye couldn't remember the last time they'd put up a tree, never mind bought one.
"Where have you been?" Her grandmother leaned forward, squinting.
"Around," Kaye whispered. "Things didn't go so well in New York.”
"Come on, sit down. You're making me nervous, standing there where I can't see you.”
Kaye took another step back, into deeper darkness. "I'm fine here.”
"She never told me about Kate. Can you imagine that? Nothing! How could she not tell me about my own flesh and blood? The spitting image of you at that age. Such a sweet little girl, growing up robbed of a family to love her. It hurts my heart to think of it.”
Kaye nodded again, stupidly, numbly. Robbed. And Kaye was the robber, the shoplifter of Kate's childhood. "Did Ellen say why Kate is here now?”
"I'd thought she'd have told you—Kate's dad checked himself into a rehab. He had promised not to bother Ellen, but he did and I'm glad. Kate's a strange child and she's clearly been raised terribly. Do you know that all she'll eat is soybeans and flower petals? What kind of diet is that for a growing girl?”
Kaye wanted to scream. The disconnect between the normalcy of the things her grandmother was saying and what she knew to be true seemed unendurable. Why would her mother tell her grandmother a story like that? Had someone enchanted her to believe that was the truth? Magic choked Kaye, the words that would conjure silence sharp in her mouth. But she swallowed them, because she also wanted her grandmother to keep talking, wanted everything to be normal for one more minute.
"Is Ellen happy?" Kaye asked quietly instead. "To have . . . Kate?”
Her grandmother snorted. "She was never really ready to be a mother. How will she manage in that little apartment? I'm sure she's happy to have Kate—what mother wouldn't be happy to have her child? But she's forgetting how much work it all is. They're going to have to move back here, I'm sure.”
With growing dread, Kaye realized that Corny had been right all along. Giving her mother a changeling child had been a terrible plan. Ellen had just been getting ahead with her job and the band, and a kid completely derailed that. Kaye'd screwed up, really screwed up in a way she had no idea how to fix.
"Kate's going to look up to you," her grandmother said. "You can't be running around anymore, missing important family things. We don't need two wild children.”
"Stop! Stop!" Kaye said, but there was no magic in her words. She put her hands over her ears. "Just stop. Kate isn't going to look up to me—”
"Kaye?" Ellen called from the top of the stairs.
Panicked, Kaye headed for the kitchen door. She yanked it open, glad for the cold air on her burning face. Right then she hated everyone— hated Corny for being right, Roiben for being gone, her mother and grandmother for having replaced her. Most of all, she hated herself for letting all those things happen.
"Kaye Fierch!" Ellen shouted from the doorway in her seldom-used "mom" voice. "You get back in here right now.”
Kaye stopped automatically.
"I'm sorry I lost it," Ellen said, and Kaye turned toward her, saw the distress in her face. "I handled things badly, I admit that. Please don't leave. I don't want you to leave.”
"Why not?" Kaye asked softly. Her throat felt tight.
Ellen shook her head, walking out into the yard. "I want you to explain. What you were going to tell me last time, at my apartment—tell me now.”
"Okay," Kaye said. "When I was little, I got switched with the—the human—and you raised me, instead of the—the human girl. I didn't know until we moved back here and met other faeries.”
"Faeries," Ellen echoed. "Are you sure that's what you are? A faery? How can you tell?”
Kaye held up one green hand, turning it over. "What else would I be? An alien? A green girl from Mars?”
Ellen took a deep breath and let it out all at once. "I don't know. I don't know what to make of any of this.”
"I'm not human," Kaye said, those words seeming to cut to the thing that was the most terrible and incomprehensible about the truth.
"But you sound—" Ellen stopped, correcting herself. "Of course you sound like you. You are you.”
"I know," Kaye said. "But I'm not who you thought I was, right?”
Ellen shook her head. "When I saw Kate, I was so afraid. I figured you did something dumb to get her back from whatever had her, didn't you? See, I know you. You.”
"Her name's not Kate. She's Kaye. The real—”
Ellen held up one hand. "You didn't answer my question.”
"Yeah." Kaye sighed. "I did something pretty dumb.”
"See, you're exactly who I think you are." Ellen's arms went around Kaye's shoulders and she laughed her deep, cigarette-rough laugh. "You're my girl."
Chapter 11
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
—E. E. CUMMINGS, "SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED, GLADLY BEYOND"
The lawn in front of Corny's trailer was decorated with a giant inflated penguin wearing a green scarf and hat and a red Star Trek shirt complete with an insignia on the left breast. It sat on the lawn, glowing erratically. As Luis pulled into the gravel drive, multicolored lights strobed from the roof of the trailer next door, turning the whole lot into a disco.
"Aren't you going to tell me what a beautiful home I have?" Corny said, but the joke felt forced, lame.
Ethine leaned forward, her fingers on the plastic seat.
Luis shut off the car. "Is that penguin dressed as—”
"Tip of the iceberg," said Corny.
Leading Ethine by the fur-lined handcuff, Luis waited as Corny unlocked the front door. Inside, the rainbow fiber-optic tree illuminated a pile of dirty dishes. Framed needlepoint samplers hung on the wall next to signed pictures of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. A cat jumped down with a thud and started to wail.
"My room's down that hall," Corny whispered. "Home sweet home.”
Luis padded over the worn carpet, leading Ethine behind him. There was a musty smell that Corny hadn't noticed before. He wondered if he'd just gotten used to it.
Corny's mother opened the hall door. There was something sad about her thin nightgown, her tangled bed-hair and bare feet. She hugged him before he spoke.
"Mom," Corny said. "This is Luis and . . . Eileen.”
"How can you just walk in here like this?" she said, stepping back and looking him over. "You missed Christmas, this year of all years. The first Christmas since your sister's funeral. We thought you were dead too. Your stepfather cried like I've never seen him.”
Corny squinted, as though some problem with his vision could explain her words. "I missed Christmas? What day is it?”
"It's the twenty-sixth," she said. "What are you three wearing? And your hair's black. Where have you been?”
Five days gone. Corny groaned. Of course. Time ran differently in Faerieland. It had seemed like two days when it had been twice that. Crossing to that island had been like crossing another time zone, like flying to Australia, except there was no way to gain that time on the way back.
"What is wrong with you? What have you been doing that you don't know how long you've been gone?”
Corny plucked at his tunic with a yellow-gloved hand. "Mom—”
"I don't know if I can ever forgive you." She shook her head. "But it's the middle of the night and I'm too tired to listen to your excuses. I'm exhausted from worrying.”
She turned toward Luis and Ethine. "There's some more blankets in the closet if you get cold; remind Corny to turn on the space heater.”
Ethine seemed ready to say something, but Luis spoke first. "Thank you for letting us stay." He looked almost shy. "We'll try not to be any trouble.”