than a week…”
Lying in bed, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can pull it off. But then I think of the dooms of sorrow that
must’ve quaked through the Verver house last night, a day and night of imagining Evie slipping fast into the murky churn of
Green Hollow Lake, the thought of her body dragged up by grapplinghooks, her face worn away. Isn’t that what happens? I remember reading it somewhere. The water takes their faces. Thinking
of it, I wonder what despairing journeys Mr. Verver’s mind has made in the last twelve hours and I cannot bear it.
Not when I
know,
I know.
She doesn’t lie at the lake’s swampy bottom.
She lies with him.
And so I must save her, save them all.
“ I s that you out there, Lizzie?” Mr. Verver asks, and he opens the screen door. A weariness hangs heavy on him, heavier than
I’ve ever seen. His face. It’s his face that looks worn away.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Verver,” I say, and I’m practically jumping from foot to foot. “I’m just waiting for my brother to wake up.
I need his help.”
“What is it?” he says, his morning coffee in hand. He does that eyebrow crinkle thing. “Are you okay? Is there something—”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s stupid. It’s so stupid.”
I point wildly to the side of my house. “It’s the old milk chute. I keep hearing scratching sounds at night, and I think it’s
coming from there. Some animal or something trying to get in, or”—I flash my eyes wide—“out.”
He walks over to the chute just like that.
As if my wispy problem must be attended to, despite everything else that matters so much more.
“The hinge is broken,” I say quickly, and I feel like I might lose my nerve. “I’m afraid to—I just want it sealed up. So nothing
can get in.”
He looks at me and I can see all the kindness in him. He’s happiest when he gets to be kind.
“Sure, honey,” he says, his hand on the latch, fingers softly cradled about it. “It was probably just a raccoon.”
There’s all manner of unaccountable things happening in my body, including something looping through me, head to toe.
Even though I know what’s in the chute, even though
it was me who put it there two hours ago, at sunup,
I suddenly feel like I’m in a spook movie and
what might jump out?
And, one hand pressed against the side so the chute door won’t fall, he tugs it open.
My heart jabbers in my chest and I put my hand across it.
And it’s open.
And I watch as he sees the magic I have fairy-dusted there for him.
“Oh,” he says, and his face springs to life again, his features reassembling before my eyes.
He lets the door toggle on its sole hinge because, transfixed, he cannot help himself, and his hands hover above the gleaming
lighter, the white sheen of the Parliament pack.
But he does not touch.
He sees already. He knows.
The glory in my heart, it nearly shatters me.
Ten
W e wait for the police to come, and Mr. Verver can’t stop pacing up and down the driveway. He keeps running in the kitchen
and calling up the stairs to Mrs. Verver. Sometimes I think she never leaves her bedroom.
Mr. Verver keeps looking at the open chute, but from a distance, from two yards away, like to go any closer might make the
things inside disappear.
We wait and it’s only five, seven minutes, but it seems forever.
At first, there is a jumpy thrill to it, that I gave him
this thing,
that he knows it because of me. He knows Mr. Shaw was here.
But then I think what a messy thing it is for him to know. How much better is it to imagine Evie with Mr. Shaw? If she’s with
him then at least she’s not lost to dank depths. Or at least not those kind of dank depths. These are our choices.
And behind it, something else, something we don’t say, which is this: how does knowing Mr. Shaw prowled out here, loved her
with such secret longing, help find Evie?
The thought vaulting through me, I have
Lying in bed, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can pull it off. But then I think of the dooms of sorrow that
must’ve quaked through the Verver house last night, a day and night of imagining Evie slipping fast into the murky churn of
Green Hollow Lake, the thought of her body dragged up by grapplinghooks, her face worn away. Isn’t that what happens? I remember reading it somewhere. The water takes their faces. Thinking
of it, I wonder what despairing journeys Mr. Verver’s mind has made in the last twelve hours and I cannot bear it.
Not when I
know,
I know.
She doesn’t lie at the lake’s swampy bottom.
She lies with him.
And so I must save her, save them all.
“ I s that you out there, Lizzie?” Mr. Verver asks, and he opens the screen door. A weariness hangs heavy on him, heavier than
I’ve ever seen. His face. It’s his face that looks worn away.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Verver,” I say, and I’m practically jumping from foot to foot. “I’m just waiting for my brother to wake up.
I need his help.”
“What is it?” he says, his morning coffee in hand. He does that eyebrow crinkle thing. “Are you okay? Is there something—”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s stupid. It’s so stupid.”
I point wildly to the side of my house. “It’s the old milk chute. I keep hearing scratching sounds at night, and I think it’s
coming from there. Some animal or something trying to get in, or”—I flash my eyes wide—“out.”
He walks over to the chute just like that.
As if my wispy problem must be attended to, despite everything else that matters so much more.
“The hinge is broken,” I say quickly, and I feel like I might lose my nerve. “I’m afraid to—I just want it sealed up. So nothing
can get in.”
He looks at me and I can see all the kindness in him. He’s happiest when he gets to be kind.
“Sure, honey,” he says, his hand on the latch, fingers softly cradled about it. “It was probably just a raccoon.”
There’s all manner of unaccountable things happening in my body, including something looping through me, head to toe.
Even though I know what’s in the chute, even though
it was me who put it there two hours ago, at sunup,
I suddenly feel like I’m in a spook movie and
what might jump out?
And, one hand pressed against the side so the chute door won’t fall, he tugs it open.
My heart jabbers in my chest and I put my hand across it.
And it’s open.
And I watch as he sees the magic I have fairy-dusted there for him.
“Oh,” he says, and his face springs to life again, his features reassembling before my eyes.
He lets the door toggle on its sole hinge because, transfixed, he cannot help himself, and his hands hover above the gleaming
lighter, the white sheen of the Parliament pack.
But he does not touch.
He sees already. He knows.
The glory in my heart, it nearly shatters me.
Ten
W e wait for the police to come, and Mr. Verver can’t stop pacing up and down the driveway. He keeps running in the kitchen
and calling up the stairs to Mrs. Verver. Sometimes I think she never leaves her bedroom.
Mr. Verver keeps looking at the open chute, but from a distance, from two yards away, like to go any closer might make the
things inside disappear.
We wait and it’s only five, seven minutes, but it seems forever.
At first, there is a jumpy thrill to it, that I gave him
this thing,
that he knows it because of me. He knows Mr. Shaw was here.
But then I think what a messy thing it is for him to know. How much better is it to imagine Evie with Mr. Shaw? If she’s with
him then at least she’s not lost to dank depths. Or at least not those kind of dank depths. These are our choices.
And behind it, something else, something we don’t say, which is this: how does knowing Mr. Shaw prowled out here, loved her
with such secret longing, help find Evie?
The thought vaulting through me, I have
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