Honesty

HONESTY

I pull into the driveway, and as I step out of my car, I hear my name being called.

Sophie walks toward me. She wears a long emerald green dress with a square neckline and puffy sleeves. Her hair is down, and it blows back even though the air is completely still. Not even a hint of breeze.

She carries a large wicker picnic basket.

“Am I too early?” she asks. “Perhaps I should let you settle.”

“No,” I say. “I’m happy to see you.”

It’s true. I might have my misgivings, but she’s been nothing but good to me. I can dismiss my suspicions in exchange for some company.

I mean, they’re ridiculous anyway. Curses? Really?

She sets the basket down and reaches for me, giving me the sweet hug that I desperately need.

“Pet,” she says, stroking my hair, “you’re sad.”

“It’s been a long, weird week,” I say.

“You can tell me all about it,” she says. “Or not. We can forget it ever happened. Poof. Gone.”

I realize something, and as the words form in my head, they simultaneously blurt out of my mouth. “Wait. How did you know where I live?”

“Oh, I’m here all the time. Watching you while you sleep,” she says, picking up the basket. “No, darling. Lynn mentioned she was getting an upstairs neighbor. Have you met her yet?”

“No.” I’m beginning to think she doesn’t exist.

“She’s a photographer, so she travels a lot for work. She’s lovely, a bit shy, though I suppose that might be ideal for a neighbor,” she says. “Anyway, we don’t get many new residents in town. Hardly ever. Ever, ever. But here you are, and here I am.”

“Sorry. I just was like ‘Wait a second.’ ” I open the door and we start up the stairs. My footsteps are loud and graceless, clunk clunk clunk. Sophie’s are orderly, deliberate. Almost musical.

I pause with my key in the door. I haven’t cleaned. There are dirty dishes in the sink. Multiple wine bottles empty on the kitchen counter, awaiting recycling.

It’s embarrassing.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say, unlocking the door. “It’s messy. I’m sorry. Like I said, rough week.”

“Please,” she says. “No judgment from me.”

She sashays into the kitchen and puts the basket down on the counter, then begins to wash dishes.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” she says. “You relax. Oh, I brought you a candle, orange blossom and honey. Citrus and sweet. It’s in the basket. Here.”

She wipes her hands on my grimy dish towel and opens the basket. She takes out the candle. It’s in a big glass jar. It’s homemade. She made it.

“Thank you,” I say, taking a sniff. It smells so good it’s absurd. “Wow, Sophie. I love it.”

“I made it with you in mind,” she says. She pulls a book of matches out of somewhere. A pocket? She tosses it to me.

I put the candle in the center of the kitchen table. After a few failed attempts to light a match, I finally have a lucky strike. I light the candle. But the flame is quick, hungry, and it burns down to my fingers.

“Ow, fuck,” I mumble, dropping the match into the candle, and literally lick my wounds.

“Are you all right, pet?” she asks.

“Yep,” I lie, my fingers still in my mouth.

I sit myself down before I cause any more damage. I watch her work. She’s so fast, so efficient. The dishes are all placed neatly on the drying rack. She begins unpacking the picnic basket. There’s a loaf of bread, cheese, some kind of spread. A roasted chicken in a glass Pyrex dish with sprigs of rosemary and thyme. A sack of tiny red potatoes. Green beans.

A bottle of brown liquor.

“I’m going to make rum punch,” she says.

“This is really nice, Sophie,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Annie, I haven’t had anything to do on a Friday night in . . . let’s just say a very, very long time. It’s my pleasure. Truly.”

She pulls a pear, an apple, and a container of blackberries out of the basket, which is starting to give off major Mary Poppins vibes. How much stuff is in there? She brought her own cutting board and knife. It’s a big knife. She must sense my reaction, because without looking up she says, “Don’t worry. The fruit won’t feel a thing.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Do you want to talk about your week? Might feel better to get it off your chest.” She begins to chop the apple. The knife makes a crisp slicing sound. It must be very sharp.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s clearly not nothing, or you wouldn’t be upset,” she says. She sets the knife down. She approaches me, offering a slice of apple.

“Try it,” she says. “They’re good this time of year.”

It’s got pink skin, pale flesh. There’s no browning, no bruises.

“What?” she asks. “Don’t you like apples?”

The room creeps up on me, walls inching in. There’s not enough air.

I take the apple slice and shove it into my mouth. I stand, walk over to the window and crack it open.

“It’s stuffy in here,” I say, mouth full of apple mush. Delicious mush. Juicy. Sweet.

I notice Sophie is watching me. Not looking at me. Watching. Dissecting.

Something’s not right. The feeling is sudden and palpable.

I meet her gaze, and she begins chewing on her thumbnail. Her eyebrows are low. It’s an unmistakable expression of concern.

“What?” I ask her.

“You don’t trust me,” she says.

“What? No. Of course I do. I trust you.”

“I understand,” she says. “I’m not an easy person to trust. Maybe it’s the way I look.”

“No, Sophie. Why would you say that?”

“You hesitated. Just now when I gave you the apple. Like you were afraid to eat it.”

“No,” I say. But I was, wasn’t I? Why? Why do I feel like something’s off?

“I . . . ,” she says. She doesn’t finish her thought. She stares out the kitchen window.

I can’t let my weird paranoid bullshit ruin this potential friendship. I won’t.

“It’s not you, Sophie. I’m just preoccupied. I had a bad conversation with Sam. He said something that really bothered me. And then I started drinking. I’ve been drinking a lot,” I say. “I keep thinking, what if I can’t do this? What if I can’t be alone?”

Her demeanor changes. She softens, returns to cutting fruit.

“I understand why you’re asking the question,” she says. “But we’ve talked about this. You will be fine. Who initiated the contact? Him or you?”

I falter. Technically he called me, but he was calling me back. “Um . . .”

“So you?”

I nod.

“We’ll have to fix that,” she says. “And what prompted the call?”

“I don’t remember. General loneliness?”

“Here,” she says. She sets a glass down on the table in front of me. “Only if you want.”

“Is it just rum in there?”

“Does it matter?” she asks.

I take a sip. It’s straight rum. I guess we’ve abandoned the punch idea. That’s fine.

“What did he say that hurt you?”

“He said . . . he said something about how he used to have to be home for dinner. Like, there was an insinuation that I kept him on a short leash, something like that.”

Sophie gasps. “What a hideous thing to say!”

“I don’t think I had, like, unreasonable expectations when we were together. But I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I did.”

“Annie,” she says. She pours herself a glass of rum. I notice her hand is shaking. Badly. Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong.

The nag of fear is back. The flapping bird of panic.

“Sophie,” I say.

She lets the glass fall from her hand. It smashes when it hits the floor. Completely shatters. Glass everywhere.

She steps on the glass without caution. It crunches under her boots. It’s a horrible sound.

Outside, the sun bows beneath the trees, a sudden descent that chokes the light from the room. For a moment, in the chaos of the newborn dark, I can’t see her at all. She’s nowhere. But then she appears beside me, sitting next to me at the table. The only source of light in the room is the candle, the manic dance of an orange flame.

In the candlelight, shadows traverse her face. They climb up her neck, claw at her cheeks. The subtle warmth about her that I’ve grown accustomed to, the slight upward turn at the corners of her mouth, the fullness in her cheeks, eyelids relaxed to conceal the full whites of her eyes—all of that is gone.

Her mouth is flat, cheeks gaunt, eyeballs bulging out of their sockets.

“Annie,” she says, her voice low, hoarse, “are we friends?”

How else am I supposed to answer?

“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”

“Do you want to be my friend?”

“I already am,” I say. “We’re friends. I’ve slept over at your house.”

There’s a sting on my arm. She’s grabbing me. Her hand clutches my wrist. Her nails dig into my skin.

“I need to tell you something,” she says. “Something about me. Something I believe you may already suspect.”

“Okay,” I say. I wriggle my hand and she loosens her grasp, though not enough for me to escape it. She has me.

“I’ve told you before, I feel real affection for you. A kinship. And I . . . I can sense you pulling away from me. Perhaps I’m imagining it, manifesting my fear. You see, it’s very tempting for me to be my whole, true self around people I care for. But whenever I am, I take the chance of scaring them away.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sophie,” I say. “It’s fine. We’re good.”

“I’m so afraid, Annie. I’m afraid if I tell you, it’ll ruin everything. It’s been so long since I’ve had a friend. And I could be a good friend to you. I could help you!”

She leans closer to me. “I know what it is not to know your place.”

“Sophie,” I say, “it’s cool. We’re cool. We’re good.”

She sighs, her exhale blowing the candle out.

But only for a second. It reignites itself somehow.

Sophie pushes a closed fist toward me, toward the light. She flips up her forearm. Then she slowly unbends her fingers, revealing her open palm. In it, a giant spider.

It’s got a long body, skin like black velvet. Its front legs stretch out, rest on Sophie’s index and ring fingers. Its back legs dangle off either side of her wrist.

“Shit,” I say, pushing my chair back away from the table, away from her.

“I meant to help,” she says as the spider crawls up her arm, settling on her shoulder. “I wanted to make things better for you.”

“Sophie,” I say. I feel disconnected from my body, weightless in this strange reality. I move to stand.

“No,” she says. “Sit down.”

There’s a pressure on my shoulders, like two strong hands are there wrestling me back down. I collapse into the chair like a rag doll.

“Please,” she says. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“Sophie,” I say, “I’m sorry, but you’re freaking me out.”

“Hold on,” she says. The spider stirs. It disappears behind her back. A few seconds later, the light above the table comes on. I look over and see the spider on the wall near the switch.

“What the fuck?” I mutter in spite of myself. “What the fuck? What the fuck . . . ?”

“I thought you liked spiders,” she says.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what’s happening.

“Do you understand?” she asks. “I would never hurt you. Never. I don’t like to hurt anyone. Well, unless they deserve it.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

“I’m not telling you, darling. I’m showing you. This is who I am,” she says. “What I am.”

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Does it matter to you? If I’m . . . different?”

“Different from what, Sophie? Different how?”

“There are many misconceptions,” she says. “I won’t say the word.”

In the light, I can clearly see her vulnerability, same as the other day in the diner. The way she leans, the wideness of her eyes, the straight line of her mouth—it’s all desperation. She’s not a threat to me. She’s pleading with me.

“The boy is fine,” she says. “He won’t bother you anymore. Maybe it was a bit theatrical. But he was rotten.”

The disconnect returns, the weightlessness. Like I’m on the steep drop of a roller coaster.

“I’m sorry,” I say, a nervous laughter escaping from somewhere inside me. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I cursed him,” she says. “For you. I cursed them all. They won’t bother you anymore. They’ll be good students.”

“What do you mean, you cursed them?”

She takes a deep breath and smooths her hair. Then she says, “If you keep asking these questions, I will answer them. But before you do, search yourself to see if you already know. Or if you even really want to.”

All I want is to be out of this moment, out of this deeply unsettling conversation. I want fun Sophie to come back. I want to eat chicken and drink rum and forget about my problems. The last thing I want is any new ones. I have more than enough already.

I’ll concede there is something dark going on here. I wasn’t wrong to entertain the idea of the supernatural.

I hear the echo of Sam’s voice in my head, his response when I told him about the spider. He said, That’s not possible.

But it happened. It wasn’t just possible; it happened. I saw it. I witnessed it.

Things are possible. All kinds of things.

The spider is in Sophie’s lap, and she’s stroking its head with her pinkie.

All kinds of strange, crazy, fucked-up, incredible things.

“Now,” she says, “are you hungry? Should I put the chicken in?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“I just need to warm him. He’s already cooked,” she says, turning the oven on. “Don’t worry. Won’t be dry.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s not really worrying me right now. With what just happened. Not worried about dry chicken.”

She laughs. A head-back, hearty laugh. It stops abruptly. “You still want to be my friend?”

I don’t have to think about it. The answer is already there waiting patiently on my tongue.

“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”

She hides her face from me, lifting her hands to form a shield. I hear a single loud sniffle. She releases her hands, wipes her cheeks and smiles at me.

“I’m not going to cry,” she says. “I haven’t cried once in—I don’t know—a hundred years?”

A hundred years?!

I know, with what we literally just talked about, with everything I’ve observed and experienced, that things I’ve previously known as fantasy, as pure fiction, can exist within my reality. Still, hearing Sophie casually mention that she’s been alive for over a hundred years is jarring.

Jarring and distressing and . . . oddly thrilling? I don’t know what I’m feeling. At this exact moment, I’m watching a large, seemingly sentient spider offer Sophie a handkerchief for her to dry her eyes with.

Maybe I should be questioning my sanity, but how can I doubt what’s right in front of me?

I start to laugh again, my new default reaction to any information I don’t quite know how to process. Because how the hell else am I supposed to process this?

I can’t stop laughing. It’s cathartic. A strange, exhilarating release.

Sophie glances over at me and joins me in my laughter, though I don’t think she understands what we’re laughing at. I guess I don’t, either.

This makes it all the funnier.

Soon I’m hunched over the table, holding on to it to steady myself so I don’t fall to the ground in hysterics.

Sophie clutches her sides, her cheeks turning red.

Finally, she catches her breath for long enough to ask me, “What are we laughing at?”

I shrug.

This is also, apparently, hilarious.

We laugh until we’re both on the floor. Sophie’s spider and a few other spider friends who’ve emerged from under furniture and who knows where else congregate by her feet. They vibrate, their bodies bouncing, legs shaking. It’s like they’re mimicking her movement. Or they’re also laughing.

“You know,” she says, “I don’t really think I’m hungry at all. Are you?”

“No, actually,” I say, “I’m not.”

She pulls herself to stand. “I’m going to put this all away. You can have it another time.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“I’m not hungry,” she says. “But I do want a slice of cake. Is that all right?”

She shows me a small iced loaf.

“Yes,” I say. “What is it?”

“Lemon cake,” she says. “I have some pomegranate seeds we can put on top. Would you like some?”

Ten minutes later we’re on the couch eating the lemon loaf with two forks. She has the tray on her lap, and I’ve got the bottle of rum between my knees.

“So, guessing you’re not actually in real estate?” I ask.

“Well, it is my land,” she says.

“The town knows?” Their reactions are starting to make a whole lot of sense now.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Everyone in Rowan. No one outside. Well, there are rumors, I’m sure. Were rumors. Long time ago. Occasionally outsiders would show up at my hut. Throw stones.”

I laugh. “Yeah, your hut.”

“Oh, I’m not being funny,” she says. “Remember that hut in the woods? I used to live there! I’ve been in the house for—I don’t know—only about ninety years? The man who built it, a terribly arrogant railroad tycoon, outright stole my land. He did not much care for me bringing this to his attention. He did not much care for me. But as I’ve said to you before, things have a way of working themselves out.”

I decide not to ask how exactly things worked themselves out.

“No one bothers me anymore, really,” she says. “They know better.”

Not going to ask any follow-ups about that, either.

“Oh, pet! I meant to tell you! The pool is ready for you. You should come over this weekend and have a swim. I was thinking I’d make goulash. Do you like goulash?”

“Never had it,” I say.

“Settles it, then. Will you come tomorrow? Are you busy?”

“No,” I say. “Not busy.”

“Good! It’ll be fun,” she says. “I can’t eat any more of this cake.”

She takes another bite.

She’s so endearing. So thoughtful and generous and beautiful . . . I mean, so what if she just so happens to be able to control spiders and curse obnoxious teenagers? So what if she dabbles in some dark magic and is over a hundred years old? I like her, and she likes me. She’s my friend.

It’s hard to make new friends, especially as you get older.

I need her.

“You could sleep over again, of course. If you like.”

I flash back to the guest room, to the way the bed canopy sagged under the weight of something. To the face in the mirror.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything,” she says. “I’m an open book.”

“Is your house haunted?”

She sets the cake down on the coffee table and reaches for the bottle of rum.

“No,” she says. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what the rules are.”

“Rules?”

“Like, if you can make spiders do stuff . . . if you’re . . . different, what else is different? What else don’t I know about?”

She tilts her head to the side, confused. “I’m not sure what you mean, darling.”

“Are there ghosts? Vampires? Werewolves? Like, what else is out there?”

She takes a swig of rum and pats me on the leg. “You have nothing to fear.”

“Sophie,” I say, “that doesn’t answer my question.”

“Doesn’t it, though?” she asks, passing me the bottle. “Trust me.”

“So your house isn’t haunted?”

She shakes her head.

“Okay.”

“It’s just old.”

“Okay.”

“You believe me?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You would know, right?”

“Yes,” she says. “Of course.”

“Okay. Cool.”

“Cool.”

I give her back the bottle and pick up the cake. I take two bites in quick succession.

“Is there anything else, pet? Anything else you’d like to ask me?”

“Umm . . . not at the moment,” I say.

“You’re a very accepting person, Annie,” she says. “I appreciate that about you.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s good for me, especially considering . . . But I do worry with other people. I wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“I wonder about how much you’ve accepted that maybe you shouldn’t have. What you may still be accepting.”

I finish the cake and slide off of the couch onto the floor. The rum has gone to my head.

I don’t feel good.

“More specifically, I mean with Sam,” she says. “You told me what he said to you, but what did you say back to him? You should have told him to fuck right off.”

“Should I have cursed him?”

She looks wounded. I’ve hurt her feelings.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That sounded mean. It was meant to be a joke.”

She sighs and begins to examine her nails. They’re painted black. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

“I’m not going to curse my ex-boyfriend. Sam is fine. Everyone can be a jerk sometimes.”

“All right,” she says, “I’ll leave it alone. For tonight. I’ve put you through enough, though I did bring cake. And liquor.”

“You did.”

“Does that even things out?”

“Sure.”

She laughs. “I’m convinced!”

Maybe it’s the rum, or maybe it’s the truth, but right now all I can think about is how much I love her. She’s my lifeline. I don’t have a single other person whom I can confide in, who cares for me the way that I know she does. She has my back.

I don’t know why. Why she wants to be friends with me, hang out with me. I’m not special. I’ve always been realistic about who I am, about my perfectly average, unexceptional trajectory. I’ve always been fine with it.

But as she moves her fingers through my hair from behind me on the couch, humming some tune I can’t identify, I wonder if maybe I am special, and it only took someone else special to point it out to me.

“I should go, pet. Let you sleep,” she says. “Shall we meet at the market tomorrow? Around eleven?”

“Mm. Yeah,” I say.

She’s carrying me. She’s carrying me to bed.

I don’t know how. I’m taller than her. I’m all limbs. I’m heavy.

She sets me down gently and pulls up the covers, the way a mother would.

“There we are,” she says. “Good night, Annie. Sleep well.”

She hovers her hand over my face. My eyes close, and I fall into what will be the best sleep of my life.