Hidebehind

One

It was all a joke until Penny didn't come home one afternoon. I had believed it was fake—all of it, from our parents' funeral to moving to live with two human beings older than dinosaurs and going to school where there were fewer than twenty students in the eighth grade. None of it was real; it was a dream from which I'd awake at some point, valuing life more after seeing how bad it could be, like Scrooge. So I had taken it all lightly. Had not cared about any of it, not embraced let alone loved the new people or place or future . . . until Penny didn't come home.

Then it had to be real, if I wanted to get her back.

*****

The day we arrived at our Great Grandma's house was contradictorily sunny in spite of the clouds I was sure had descended. Things made perfect sense at that time, because I knew they were all fake. I had known the moment Penny and I had attended our parents' wake that this was all some great hoax—their bodies weren't even real. They were wax. They were painted. I had never known my mother or father to look anything like the figures in the coffins at church. The eyes were made-up and the hair plastered all perfect—their arms were even resting, fingers clasped, across their stomachs. Whoever had made them had even gone to the trouble to pull up the corners of their mouths so they appeared to be smiling. That had been the key—the smiles. No dead person would be smiling.

So I'd known it was a joke and decided to wait patiently until the prank was revealed, no matter how long it took. I wouldn't be taken in; I wasn't so gullible.

Penny had cried, though, and that had bothered me. She was the most breakable eight-year-old I'd ever seen, and I can say that, because I'm her brother.

Penny wasn't sick. She never had been. But she was pale as a ghost with eyes sort of sunken in her face, like she might have actually been the one whose funeral we should be crying at. And she'd always looked that way, even when she was happy.

The worst of the joke, though, was that whoever had decided to play it on us had also decided that we couldn't stay where we were. Penny and I had to be moved, the lawyers said, because my parents had written somewhere that if anything should happen to them, we were to live with my grandfather. Whoever had written it must not have known my grandfather (another clue that gave it all away), because he hadn't been well in years and had moved in with his own mother, who was miraculously healthy for a ninety-two-year-old woman. The whole thing was a horrible, horrible joke.

We'd packed up at the end of the summer. I'd said goodbye to the friends I'd had since kindergarten. I said goodbye to the five-foot tree in our yard that I'd grown from a seed. But that was all. Penny had said goodbye to everything else for me, even if they were things that might sooner or later follow us to the next house: the clouds, birds, a leaf on the windshield . . . happiness. And then we'd taken a plane miles and miles away to a Great Grandmother we hadn't seen in two years and a Grandpa we hadn't seen since the Christmas prior, when mom had flown to Minnesota to get him; he hadn't been in the right mind to travel alone. She'd wanted him to see us. He was her father. We didn't know how much longer he'd recognize any of us. We didn't know how much longer he'd recognize himself. Mom had explained what was wrong with him as getting old, but what I realized she really meant but didn't want to say was going crazy.

In any case, the shock of the move was about enough to put my conspiracy theory over the edge; it wasn't a theory anymore—someone was definitely conning us. It would all be over within a matter of days . . . hopefully.

Our arrival at the old farm was hardly friendly. As the cab puttered down the tree-lined dirt lane that served as a driveway and pulled up to the front of the house, our sole greeters were a couple of big brown dogs. They seemed friendly enough, trotting over to the vehicle with tongues hanging and tails slapping against the doors, but the moment I got out, I noticed that one of them had only three legs and the other's head was dotted with some globular thing I mistakenly assumed was a wart. Not the kind of friendly I'd thought they were. Penny went ahead and petted the mangy things, but I didn't want anything to do with them and got nauseated when the three-legged one licked my knee. They seemed to cheer up my sister a little, so I decided to forgive them and concentrate on taking in our luggage.

The cab driver wasn't responsible for ringing the doorbell; I guessed the job unfortunately fell on me, so I hauled my suitcase across the patio and up the steps leading to the door. I knocked into a couple of wind-chimes hanging from a hook overhead and was angry with the noise they made. Aware of the scowl creeping across my face, I scrutinized the place for a doorbell. I didn't see one. Instead, behind the ripped screen door was another door; this second one had a door knocker on it. I didn't want to open the screen; if I hadn't made enough noise already, the squeal of the springs would definitely bring someone out . . . why the inevitable meeting should upset me, I hardly knew. Before I could consider turning and asking Penny to knock, the interior door swung inward and the face of a gargoyle peered out at me.

"Who's there?"

I was taken aback. "It—it's me . . . us! Robert and Penny."

"Robert and Penny?" She was clearly confused, but then I saw recognition in the sunken old eyes behind her thick glasses. She smiled. Her teeth looked to be in good condition for someone as aged as she was. "Robbie! I thought you weren't due until Friday!"

"It . . . is Friday."

"And where's Penelope?"

I motioned toward the patio. "Over there, with her luggage by the cab. I . . . I think he's waiting to be paid."

"Oh, yes. So he is." Great Grandma opened the screen door and shuffled out, forcing me back a bit. I noticed she was wearing slippers. "You go on inside, then. I'll take care of the cab."

I watched her for a moment, wondering how in the world I could be related to someone so old . . . so odd. A great sad feeling rolled through me, but I shrugged it off and lugged my suitcase into the house. Entering the place felt more like walking to the gallows; part of me died when I went through that door.

We had been to this house once, long ago, when I had been about Penny's age. I didn't remember much of the place, but the smell immediately felt familiar in my mind. It was the smell of old people. Strange and somehow stale. The front room had an eating table and chairs and a sitting area full of old furniture: sofas with huge flowery patterns, a rag rug, a television that looked to be about fifty years old, and a rocking chair. There were knick-knack boxes lining the walls, filled with china plates and cups, little figurines of characters I had never seen, tobacco pipes, fake plants, and all sorts of other odds and ends. A cuckoo clock ticked on the false wood wall across from me; I noticed that the time was way off.

An old man's cough came from somewhere else in the house, somewhere I couldn't see. It startled me. Even though I knew it was my grandfather, I couldn't bring myself to go find him and say hello. I was afraid, so I just hurried in the other direction, into a hallway off the main room and toward a bedroom I vaguely remembered sharing with my little sister the last time we'd visited.

The house was small—a three-bedroom ranch with two bedrooms to the left of the kitchen and one to the right; I'd gone right, and I'd found a room with twin beds and a bathroom next door. I figured this was where Penny and I would be staying. Not living—staying. Like on a vacation. Everything was green and white, from the bedspreads to the curtains and the bottles atop the bureau. But it was old person matching, all lacy things and dusty furniture.

I chose a bed and sat down heavily on it, contemplating everything. Maybe if I didn't open my suitcase, I wouldn't have to stay. Maybe I would wake up.

I hated how Great Grandma called me Robbie. For some reason, she'd always done it—in holiday cards, on the phone with my mother, the last time we'd been to visit. My name was Robert. Just Robert. Or Rob, if I liked you. Not Robbie. But I couldn't correct her. She was so old . . . so old.