Nightshade

She crossed the bridge over Granite Creek, which wound along the western edge of the town before meandering south through a corner of Hapgood Farm on its way to drain into the Merrimack River, a dozen miles southeast. As Joan turned onto Prospect Street and drove by the high school — as unchanged in the last century as everything else in Granite Falls — she found herself wondering once again why her parents had come here in the first place. All she really knew was that it had happened before either she or Cynthia was born, and that after her father left — when she was still too young to remember him — her mother had stayed. Even before the disease had robbed her of her memory, Emily Moore had steadfastly refused to talk about why her husband had left. As for why she herself had stayed in a town where almost everyone else had roots that went back generations, Emily only shrugged her thin shoulders. “There was a job here,” she said. “What was I supposed to do? I had two children to raise. I couldn’t leave.”

A trap, Joan thought now, her grip tightening on the steering wheel as she pulled around the corner onto Burlington Avenue. The whole town is a trap. Mother sounded just as trapped back then as I feel now. And today she looks like a trapped animal. Another thought came to mind: Had the animals for whose hides the town had been built felt the same fear when the traps closed on them? But even as the idea came to her, Joan rejected it. It’ll be all right, she told herself. Whatever happens with Mother, I’ll get through it, just like I’ve always gotten through things.

She braked the Range Rover to a stop in front of the house in which she’d grown up. The crowd, its enthusiasm for the fire quenched along with the flames themselves, had all but disappeared, though Ralph Gunderson was still chatting in his front yard with Phyllis Adams, who had come over from her house across the street. As soon as Joan saw the disapproving look on Phyllis’s face, she knew what her mother’s neighbors had been talking about. Phyllis confirmed it: “It’s such a shame, isn’t it? Of course, we’ve all known Emily shouldn’t have been living alone, haven’t we?”

Joan tried to ignore the sting of Phyllis’s words. As late as yesterday afternoon her mother had refused even to discuss the possibility of leaving her little house on Burlington Avenue, let alone allow someone to come in and care for her; but Joan knew that all Phyllis and her friends would remember was that she’d left her mother alone, and the house had caught fire.

She offered Phyllis a smile that feigned more warmth than she felt. “You know my mother,” she replied. “She’s always been independent, and obviously she was able to get help before the fire got out of control.”

Phyllis smiled thinly. “I suppose God looks out for those who have no one else.” Her eyes bored into Joan’s. “Will you be putting her somewhere?”

“She’ll be with us,” Joan replied. “At least for a while.”

The other woman’s expression hardened. “Well, at least you and Bill are in a position to be able to do what you want.”

So there it is, Joan thought. Leave it to Phyllis to assume that enough money can solve everything. But instead of rising to the bait, she reminded herself that Phyllis had undoubtedly been drinking most of the afternoon, and was now probably feeling even more sorry for herself than she did when she was sober. Joan made herself smile again. “I’m just glad we can take her in,” she replied evenly.

Before Phyllis could say anything else, Joan mounted the steps leading to her mother’s front door and went into the house, with Matt right behind her.

“What’s with Mrs. Adams?” her son asked. “Why’s she mad at you? Or is she already drunk?”

“I think she’s just mad at the world,” Joan replied, answering Matt’s first question but ignoring his second. “She resents anyone who she thinks is a little better off than she is.” Her nostrils filled with the acrid smell of smoke as she quickly scanned the living room and dining room of the little house. Though everything looked exactly as it always had, the house somehow felt different.

The fire, she thought. It’s just the smell of the fire.

But it was more than that, for as she closed the front door behind her and moved farther into the house, the strange sensation grew stronger.

Behind her, Matt echoed the feelings she hadn’t yet voiced: “This is weird. It’s like the house knows Gram’s not coming back.”

As Joan’s eyes took in the living room — its tables covered with the cheap china figurines her mother had been collecting since she and Cynthia had been children — Matt once again gave voice to what she was thinking.

“What are we going to do with all her stuff? Move it into our house?”

Joan heard a note of anxiety in his voice, and her mind went back ten years to the time when she and Matt had been living here in this house, before she married Bill Hapgood.

She could still remember her mother chiding Matt as his small fingers reached out to the china collie dog that lay on the floor under the end table. “Don’t touch that!” she’d said. “That’s very valuable, and not for children.” Matt jerked his hand away as quickly as if he’d touched a hot stove, and her mother had turned on Joan herself. “Can’t you control your brat? If you didn’t know how to raise him, you shouldn’t have had him in the first place!”

Even years later the words still stung her, and though she hoped that Matt had blocked them from his own memory, the way he was staring at the porcelain dog told her that he had not.

“I suppose we’ll have to take some of it,” Joan said, already dreading the task of sorting through the scores of figurines her mother had crammed into the house over the years. Nor would it matter how careful she was, or how hard she tried to choose her mother’s favorites. Whatever she did, it would be wrong. “But we won’t take any of them right now,” she decided. “We’ll just get a few of her clothes, and I’ll bring her over tomorrow to start going through everything.”

Matt’s gaze shifted from the collie to his mother. “Gram’s going to live with us from now on, isn’t she?” Despite the inflection at the end of the sentence, Joan knew it wasn’t a question; he was asking for confirmation of what he already knew.

“I don’t see what else we can do,” she said gently. “I know she’s difficult, and I know — ” She hesitated, but knew there was no need to cushion Matt from the truth. After all, they’d both lived with his grandmother through four of the first five years of his life, after Joan had finally faced the fact that she couldn’t raise him by herself in New York City. “Matt, I’m sorry. I know how she treats you, but what else can I do? She’s still my mother.”

“Jeez, Mom, it’s not just me — look how she treats you. It’s like you can’t ever do anything right, no matter how hard you try!”

“I know.” Joan sighed. “But it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s my mother, and I have to take care of her as long as I can. I can’t just — ” She cast around in her mind, searching for the right words, but could find none better than the ones her mother always used. “I just can’t bring myself to ‘throw her in the home.’ ”

Matt took a deep breath, then slowly let it out in a sigh of resignation. “I guess,” he agreed, and Joan could see how much effort it took for him to give her even that. But then he brightened. “Hey, who knows? Maybe she’ll be better once she’s out of here. Let’s go up and get whatever she’s going to need, and get out of here.” He wrinkled his nose against the acrid smell of the fire that hung heavy in the house. “This place smells even worse than ever.” But as they started up the stairs, Matt’s step slowed, and when they came to the landing, he paused, gazing through the open door to the room that had belonged to the aunt he’d never known. “She’s not gonna make us move Aunt Cynthia’s stuff too, is she?”

Joan hesitated at the door to her sister’s room, then stepped through it. And suddenly she heard her mother’s voice again. “Get out! That’s Cynthia’s room, and those are Cynthia’s things, and no one is to touch them! No one! And keep your bastard brat out of there, too!”

As the echo of the words slowly faded away in her mind, Joan shook her head. “No,” she told Matt. “She can’t ask us to do that.” She smiled at her son, and offered him a conspiratorial wink. “After all, we can’t move what we can’t touch, can we?” But even as she spoke the words, her mother’s voice rang in her mind once more. This time she recalled a day when Matt was three, and she had suggested to her mother that he was old enough to have his own room.

“Cynthia’s room? You want me to give your sister’s room to your little brat? Never! As long as I’m alive, I’ll keep your sister’s room ready. When she comes home to me, all her things will be waiting for her! All of them!”

Joan, eyes glistening with tears, had said nothing, knowing it was useless to argue with her mother.