Little Bigfoot, Big City Page 6

Alice made a note of Doug Broussard’s name, reminding herself to see if he still lived in town. Then she went through every page of the paper for the next year to see if there were any other stories, either about the hunters or about the government men. She found nothing . . . but, as she kept going through the binders, she found other hints, other clues, other signs that the Yare tribe was thriving in the forest around Standish, nearby but invisible.

  From a 1987 paper’s “Good Morning!” column, a collection of neighborhood announcements (usually about tag sales) and requests (usually about who was parking in front of a neighbor’s driveway).

  A BAKER on BELLEFONTE LANE politely requests that whoever is stealing the pies from her windowsill on Thursdays please cease and desist. “If whoever it is wants a slice, they can knock on my door,” the baker said, “but the pies are for elderly shut-ins, and I’m losing four at a go.”

  From the “School News” page in 1991: “The Case of the Stolen Sneakers.”

  A sixth-grade class that constructed a Japanese tea house in its classroom as part of a unit on Asia wanted everything to be authentic, which meant that, on the day the tea ceremony was held, the students took off their shoes and left them lined up outside the school. By the time the tea was gone, so were the shoes—all twenty-three pairs belonging to the students, plus the shoes that Mr. Hallas said were his favorites. “My guess is that it’s just a prank, but I hope that whoever took them realizes sneakers don’t grow on trees,” Mr. Hallas said. “And neither do Florsheim loafers.”

  In 1994, a sub shop reported that its daily delivery of rolls was being stolen from its doorstep, some time between the five a.m. drop-off and the six a.m. arrival of the manager.

  In 1996, another “Good Morning!” item claimed:

  The Laundry Thief of Lowery Lane is at it again! The families of Lowery Lane say they’ve seen everything from bedsheets to T-shirts to ladies’ unmentionables go missing. “I thought it was just kids playing pranks, but whoever it is, they’re pretty picky,” said Tina Ferriman, whose husband lost his favorite plaid shirt in the latest raid. “They don’t take everything. Only the good stuff.”

  In 2001, high school seniors Brian DeVeaux and Courtney Long said that someone had stolen a valuable set of tools out of the back of Brian’s father’s pickup truck while Brian and Courtney were parked by the lake at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night.

  In 2004, fishermen said that eighteen cans of beer they’d left cooling in a stream in Standish Park had gone missing.

  In 2007, a woman wrote to “Good Morning!” to ask if anyone had seen the gold-rimmed reading glasses she’d left on a picnic table by the lake.

  Alice stood, stretched, walked outside, and ate on the library’s marble steps the sandwiches and apples and squares of chocolate she’d packed, glad that it wasn’t too cold out and that she had a thick down coat to keep the chill away. She drank her water and wondered what it would be like to have fur, to carry your coat with you everywhere you went.

  Back inside, she checked the papers all the way through 1970, then decided to change tacks. She put the binders in a neat stack and went to use one of the public computers.

  She began by typing her mother’s maiden name into a search engine, looking for anything, any scrap of information that would tell her what her mother had been like as a girl and young woman, where she’d lived and what she’d done before she’d married and had Alice. She found nothing. Not when she typed in “Felicia Wolf” and the name of every college and university in Vermont, not when she combined her mother’s maiden name with any relevant words she could think of—“New York City” or “Atwater School,” where her mother had told her she’d gone, and where Alice had lasted for just one grade. As Felicia Mayfair, her mother was everywhere—on charitable committees, at parties, and at galas, her blinding smile shining out from the society pages of newspapers and magazines—but Alice could find no trace of Felicia Wolf, the woman her mother had once been. It was as though, before the wedding announcement that told the world that Felicia Wolf would marry Mark Mayfair, her mother hadn’t existed at all.

  Strange.

  Back outside, Alice sat down on the steps again. This was the part she had been dreading, the call she’d been putting off. She had always thought of Miss Merriweather as a friend, someone who looked out for Alice and wanted what was best for her. It would hurt to learn that Miss Merriweather had lied about who she was and when they had met . . . and what if Miss Merriweather was worse than a liar? What if she was one of the Bigfoot hunters Millie and her Tribe were so afraid of, the people who’d treat the Yare like they were freaks to be displayed or animals to be caged? What if . . .

  Alice shook her head. There was no point wondering. Not when she could know for sure.

  She had Miss Merriweather’s number on her phone. Her thumb on the button that would connect the call when she changed her mind. Calling, announcing herself, making an appointment—all those things would give Miss Merriweather a chance to come up with a story. No, that’s not me. I have a twin sister; she’s a doctor in Vermont, she could say. Or, Yes, that was me, but I wasn’t an educational consultant back then, and your parents and I didn’t know each other that well, so it didn’t make sense for them to tell you that we’d met.

  Alice put her phone back in her pocket after looking up Miss Merriweather’s address. The subway took her right down to Greenwich Village. From there it was just a five-minute walk to the carriage house at the end of a narrow, cobbled street where it turned out Miss Merriweather lived. The building had a red-painted door, a curved panel of windows at its center, and an elm tree spreading its branches over the roof, which probably kept things shady and cool in the summertime.

  Alice pressed the buzzer. “Up here!” a familiar voice called. She climbed a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor and opened the door to Miss Merriweather’s apartment.

  In spite of the sunshine, the apartment was dim, the windows covered by curtains, the rooms lit with pools of lamp or candlelight. Colorful woven rugs, all in shades of red and sapphire and gold, were layered on the floor, the corner of one overlapping the edge of another. The furniture was worn and soft and comfortably squishy, as if Miss Merriweather had spent long hours curled up in each couch or chair. It felt cozy, with low ceilings and the scent of tea and baked goods, cinnamon and vanilla and the old-fashioned kind of hairspray that Miss Merriweather used. It reminded Alice of something, some place she’d been, but she couldn’t remember what or where.

  “Hello, Alice!” Miss Merriweather took her coat and boots and invited her to sit at a small wooden table in front of windows that overlooked a small bricked garden. If she’d been surprised to see her or worried that Alice had shown up unannounced, she’d hidden it well. Miss Merriweather looked the same as ever, small and plump and pink, with white curls, and was dressed in a high-necked blouse with lace at the sleeves underneath a suit jacket paired with a matching skirt. She wore a pearl necklace and low-heeled pumps, and looked like she was on her way to meet with a student or had just come home.

  “What a lovely surprise! How are you? Can I get you something to drink? A snack?”

  Alice had never seen the inside of a Yare house, but Miss Merriweather’s place was exactly what she imagined they’d be like. The kitchen, for example, had everything a normal kitchen had, only everything was smaller. The stove had two burners instead of the four that a regular stove had, and the eight that Alice’s stove boasted; the refrigerator was waist-high, and instead of cabinets, there were two plain shelves, which held a neat if limited assortment of plates and mugs and glasses. Built-in bookcases that lined the living-room wall held books about how to take aptitude and admissions tests and stacks of brochures for boarding schools all over the country, along with dozens of romance novels and what Alice’s mother would have called objets, decorative items set out in pleasing arrangements. There were two birds made from pale blue glass and a little wooden birdhouse, a pink-and-gold antique plate on a sta
nd, a jade elephant, and a polished teak family of bears, each one the size of Alice’s thumb. Bud vases held single blossoms: a pink peony, a cluster of pale-pink hydrangea, an apricot-orange rose. The apartment reminded Alice of a bird’s nest, if the bird had lived there long enough for her belongings to form layers, with each piece having a history, and all of them telling a story. Maybe Miss Merriweather had been to India and gotten her jade elephant there. Maybe she went to the flower market and bought her blossoms every morning. Maybe a grateful family whose kid had finally found the right school had given her the glass birds. Maybe . . .

  Alice froze. She’d been standing in front of the bookcase when she saw a woven basket on the floor. It didn’t look very special—just a regular basket, made of straw, round, with a handle you could loop over your arm—but Alice had seen a basket just like it before. She’d seen four of them, in fact. Millie had given one to her and one to Jessica and one to Taley and one to Riya before they’d all left for their break. She’d made them herself, she’d said, looking pleased and a little flustered when Taley had asked, and she’d filled them with . . .

  Alice bent down, checking to see whether Miss Merriweather’s basket contained honey or tea or the salt scrub that Millie had made, but before she could get a good look, she heard Miss Merriweather’s cheerful voice behind her.

  “Come sit,” Miss Merriweather instructed. “Tea?” she asked, setting a small plate of miniature éclairs and cream puffs on the table, along with a pair of folded napkins and a pitcher of water. Alice’s heart was beating hard, but she took her seat and accepted a thin china cup with a gold rim and roses on its side, which Miss Merriweather filled from a steaming pot of Earl Gray.

  “So we finally found the right school for you!” Miss Merriweather said.

  Alice nodded, swallowed her tea, and said, “I’m working on a project, and I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Of course,” she said. Her expression was serious but not frightened and not, Alice noticed, surprised. “I’ll do my best to help.”

  What am I? Alice wanted to blurt. Who am I? Where did I come from? What do you know about me? Are Mark and Felicia my real parents? Why don’t they want me? Why can’t I be where I belong? And who are you? Why were you at the hospital where I was born? Why is there a Yare basket on your shelf?

  But she had to be more careful than that. Pulling a notebook out of her backpack, she began, “Was I adopted?”

  She waited for Miss Merriweather to counter with a question of her own, to ask Alice why she thought that she, a hired consultant, would know anything about Alice’s personal life or early childhood, or whether this was an appropriate topic for the two of them to discuss. Instead, she answered.

  “No,” Miss Merriweather said. Her voice was firm, and her gaze was steady. She didn’t blink or fidget or pull at the lace of her sleeve. She just looked right at Alice as she spoke. “No, you were not.”

  “My mother showed me my baby book,” Alice said, pulling the book out of her backpack and holding it on her lap. Miss Merriweather nodded and made a go-on gesture with one hand. “Your picture is in it,” Alice said. “At the hospital when I was born. You were there.” Alice opened to the right page, pointed at the picture, then held her breath, praying she was right. In the quiet, she could hear the tap-tap-tap of Miss Merriweather’s toe against the floor. “That’s you, right?”

  “I’ve known your mother a long time,” Miss Merriweather finally said.

  “Then why didn’t she say so? Why didn’t she say that you’re her friend? Why did she tell me that all you are is someone she hired?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Miss Merriweather, her toe tapping faster as she shifted in her seat. Which, Alice knew, was grown-up-speak for You’re a kid and I’m not going to tell you. Miss Merriweather circled the rim of her teacup with one finger. “It has to do with your father. It was easier for him to accept me in your life—easier for your mother to explain who I was—if I was the person helping you find the right school, and not an old friend from even before you were born.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alice said. Her thoughts, and her tongue, all felt tangled. She’d imagined Miss Merriweather immediately acknowledging that yes, she’d been at Alice’s birth; that yes, she knew about the Yare and that, in fact, she’d been the one who had taken Alice away from her Yare mother and father and given her to Felicia and Mark. She’d explain why Alice had to leave the Tribe and tell her when she’d be able to go back, and be reunited with the Yare parents who surely missed her.

  Instead, Miss Merriweather looked at her from over her teacup. “Sometimes,” she said, “people have things in their past they would like to forget. Things that would be hard to explain. Things that are embarrassing.”

  Alice, who knew about embarrassing, nodded, even though she couldn’t imagine her beautiful, elegant mother being embarrassed about anything or having something in her past she’d try to hide.

  “And you’re happy, aren’t you? Happy there in the woods?” Miss Merriweather gave her a sunny smile. “Your mother tells me you’ve made friends.”

  Alice felt as if an electric current had rippled over her skin. Was this Miss Merriweather telling her that she knew about Millie, telling her without saying the words?

  “Of course, I’m happy to try to help you,” Miss Merriweather said. “What else would you like to know?”

  Alice looked down at her lap, wishing she’d made notes. “Why haven’t I ever seen a picture of Feli—of my mother when she was pregnant, then?”

  “I imagine,” said Miss Merriweather, “that maybe if there aren’t any pictures, it’s because your mother didn’t want there to be a record. Maybe she was uncomfortable.”

  Alice settled herself more deeply in her chair. She knew how vain about her figure Felicia was; how her mother would scroll through her phone looking at pictures of herself, one long-nailed finger swiping, swiping, her painted lips pursed as she’d hit “delete,” until there’d be not one single shot left to commemorate a family trip or a birthday party.

  “So I wasn’t adopted.”

  “You were not. I met you when you were a baby. You don’t remember—of course you couldn’t—but I was there, and you were beautiful.” Miss Merriweather’s gaze took on a far-off, longing look. “With your pretty little face and your sweet little nose. Ten perfect fingers, and ten perfect toes.”

  Alice knew she needed to redirect the conversation.

  “Is Mark my father?”

  “Mark has loved you since the day you were born,” Miss Merriweather said. As she spoke, Alice saw her gaze flick up and to the left, a motion so swift that she almost missed it. She’s lying, she thought. Except maybe she wasn’t. Saying that Mark had loved Alice since the day she was born was not the same thing as saying that Mark was her dad . . . but it wasn’t proof that she had a different, real father.

  Miss Merriweather pushed up the lace-trimmed sleeve of her blouse and peered at the round gold face of her little watch. “And now, as lovely as it’s been to catch up, I have several appointments this afternoon—”

  “Miss Merriweather,” Alice interrupted, her words coming in a rush, “am I human?”

  Miss Merriweather set her teacup down on her saucer. “Are you human?” she repeated in a tone that gave nothing away.

  “There was a boy,” Alice said. “This boy who was interested in Bigfoots and things like that, he thinks that there are Bigfoots in Standish, and he got some of my hair, and he sent it to a lab to be tested, and right before I came home, he came to the Center and he told me that I’m not human.”

  “What a terrible thing to say.” Miss Merriweather lifted her chin. “Human is as human does.”

  Which, again, was not quite the same as telling Alice, emphatically, that she was, indeed, 100 percent human being.

  “I want,” Alice began, and then stopped. Because it wasn’t just about what she wanted—friendship, love, a sense of belonging, a true home. It was also about wh
at she didn’t want. She didn’t want Mark and Felicia to be her parents. She didn’t want to be human. She wanted to be Yare. She wanted to live in the forest, with her friend Millie, where no one cared that she was tall and clumsy and broke things or that her feet had been bigger than her mother’s since she was six and she had to order her school uniforms from the special-size section of the catalog.

  Miss Merriweather’s voice was quiet. “Your parents have done what any parents do. They have loved you to the best of their abilities. They have tried to make you happy. More than that, they’ve tried to raise you to be strong enough to deal with adversity. Because no one’s life is perfect. And, of course, they’ve always kept you safe.”

  Alice nodded, knowing it was true. Or, at least, not untrue. She wasn’t starved, wasn’t beaten; she hadn’t been thrown out of her house, the way some of the other kids at the Center had been, for liking boys instead of girls or girls instead of boys. Her parents cared for her, even if she’d never felt like they loved her or even liked her very much. She’d never wanted for food—even if it was all low-calorie, healthy stuff—or for clothing, even if it was constricting and uncomfortable. They had certainly done their best to find her good schools and summer camps, even if they did it so that she’d hardly ever be home.

  “It’s good that you’re asking questions,” said Miss Merriweather, looking at her seriously. “But, Alice, you must understand that the answers might not always be the ones you want to hear.”

  Alice nodded again. The words Do you know about the Yare? were buzzing in her brain, but she couldn’t say them. She couldn’t decide what would be worse: Miss Merriweather looking puzzled and shaking her head, or Miss Merriweather saying that yes, indeed, she knew all about the Yare, and Alice wasn’t one.

  “I belong somewhere else,” she blurted, when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Miss Merriweather smiled. “Well, isn’t it a good thing that school starts up soon?” she said. “I imagine that you miss your friends.”