The Sheltering: A Novel

PART FIVE�������������������������������������������

PART FIVE 141 KATIE WALKED FIRST ON THE SIDEWALK and, when she met Pennsylvania , down the center of the road. Without realizing it, or not exactly realizing it, she was retracing the path they’d walked twice that day, back and forth to the church. It was night now and rain fell softly through the trees except it wasn’t rain but the lightest of breezes, a glance, a touch, but enough to turn the leaves, ticking them, so their gloss was hidden and their dull undersides shone with darkness. After Lucy had locked herself back in her room and Katie knocked and pleaded for what seemed like days but was probably a few minutes, Katie’s shame had morphed into a sort of indifference that suddenly flowered into a blind rage. She showered and pulled on cut-offs and a t-shirt, pounded a last time on Lucy’s door, screamed that she was leaving, and walked out barefooted, halfway to the first streetlamp before it hit her that she was walking without shoes which, seriously , Katie, was really a stupid thing to do. That her feet hurt, that the flecks of rock and tar bit at her soles only ensured that she wouldn’t go back for them. A little pain would do her good, she thought. It might ebb the heat, and maybe it had because she felt nothing now, no anger, no shame or sorrow. It was the same emptiness she had beheld at the altar if she wanted to open that shiny box right now which—be honest, Katie—no, she most certainly did not. Just walk, girl. Past the church, the power lines crossed the road to lay two narrow shadows over the asphalt, twin finish lines to which she walked parallel, meaning—voila!— that she would never cross them. Symbolic. Except don’t be stupid. Scratching around for signs—pathetic, really, the gross neediness. Something in her wanting to hold the pillow of her sister’s faith against the hollow cavern of her own heart, the way it echoed, held recesses and chambers she dared not enter. She wanted to self-examine, introspect. Except she didn’t. Just keep walking. Walk this off. If possible she would walk all the way to the Occupy encampment in Orlando, but of course that wasn’t possible. Or was it? Thirty miles along I-4. You’d be there by morning. But seriously, folks. She kept walking, uber-fucking-bored, which was to say standard upper-middle class suburban ennui. Which itself was boring. She should have brought her 142 iPod. She was learning French on her iPod, but then if you’re going to be remembering things how about you start with your shoes, OK, thanks. She turned off Pennsylvania onto Pine Tree Court, big houses here, decade old-two story ranchettes, forests of pine. Driveways with basketball hoops, trampolines in the backyards. The street was a horseshoe that intersected Rosedale, the road switching from asphalt to ocher paving stones, cobblestones, she guessed, that carried the night perfume of money. The trees got larger and the houses smaller, the McMansions giving way to the Arts and Crafts bungalows tucked beneath giant water oaks. It became harder to see. That was what it meant to have money, not the showy SUV-and-a-time-share-in-Cozumel money of big houses and heated pools, but real money, old money. What was visibility next to deferred stock options, or trust funds that kicked in at eighteen like reliable generators ? Heat and light, darling. It was all around her. Every front yard a thicket of sculpted vegetation. Every sky a dome of Spanish moss. A sound, a low whirring. Look up: owls. Two owls clung to the powerline above her, so perfectly arranged they appeared to be toys. Each about the size of her head. Gray owls. Great Horned Owls? Common Screech Owls? Thank you, daddy, for the trove of useless information , the trivia so much of the world confused with knowledge. “Hello, owls,” she said, and one of them rotated its head a half degree to follow her. “Goodnight, owls.” Up ahead was Rosedale Azalea Park, a sliver of good health that rivered through the neighborhood. Stone steps. Stands with doggie-bags. A few benches and a sign past them that read no sleeping on or assuming a horizontal position by order of city ordinance...