The Number 7 (3 page)

“These are great!” He picked up a coffee can and handed it to me. “Mums bloom while everything else around them dies. They're hardy survivors.”

I gave him a wary glance.

“Seriously,” the boy continued earnestly. “Take this one for free. Put it out on your front porch and come back next week to tell me it's thriving out there!”

He pointed to the front of the store, his eyes focusing on something behind me. I turned around to see what had caught his attention. Through the store's front window, I watched as snowflakes began to fall in large, wet clumps.

“First snow of the year,” the boy smiled. “See you in a week.” He winked again, grabbed his watering can, and walked away, leaving me with my arm around a can of amber mums and my heart fluttering.

The drive back to the house was dark. Snowflakes fell onto the windshield with persistence. I breathed heavily into the scarf around my neck.

“I've been thinking, kiddo,” Dad began. “This house—” he sighed. “It's a good house. This town is a good town.”

Since when?

I looked happily down at the mums in my lap. There was something intriguing about the boy in the store. His strange knowledge of flowers? The confidence I'd be back? His imperfect freckles?

“Louisa?” Dad repeated, interrupting my thoughts. His eyes focused on the road ahead. “Turn on the defroster for me, can ya?”

“Sorry,” I fumbled to turn the dial before the heat began to hum in vibrations off the dash.

“What do you think about moving here?” The words came rushing out with such speed I barely understood them. When I finally grasped what he'd asked, I didn't know what to say.

Leave North Carolina? Where was this coming from?
Until yesterday, Dad wanted nothing to do with this place. And what about me? I had just started my sophomore year. And what about Greta and her entire social network? I couldn't imagine her moving. She'd throw a fit.

“Greta's going to throw a fit,” I answered without really answering.

He looked down at me, and I could see he'd already made up his mind. I wasn't being asked if I thought it was a good idea. Of course not. I was being asked to support him.

“You let me worry about Greta,” he uttered. And that was that.

Dad was on the phone with Greta in the other room to let her know his plans as I sat by the fireplace watching the flames dance a shadow-puppet cabaret. I heard him quietly reassure her that moving during senior year wasn't the end of the world. He whispered as if he knew I was listening; he whispered as if I was judging the strength of his argument.

“Greta—the mortgage is already paid for up here. Greta, I—”

I silently wondered if she'd recoil more into the shell she'd recently created for herself. The truth is, we'd all become hermit crabs. Our shells were made of the same substance: vivid memories of Mom, lost memories of Mom, fleeting memories of Mom. We shed our shells just enough in the mornings, sloughing them off and hiding them under the covers of our beds or in between the tiles and the grout in the shower, but when we returned in the evenings, we'd find them—and desperately retreat back into them. My shell was thin. I had my list of tangible, numerical, itemized memories I'd never lose—but Greta's armor seemed thick. She'd crawl into it at night, into the darkness. None of her friends knew. Sometimes I wondered if even Dad saw how she seemed to disappear after dinner. It was one more thing neither of us acknowledged.

Dad entered the living room, his hands behind his head. He looked distressed and came to sit next to me.

“Your sister—”

“I know.”

The fire cracked loudly and sent embers floating up the chimney.

“She just seems so . . .” We sat quietly for a while. “What about you, Lou? How are things with you? Things aren't so bad, are they? We're making it okay, aren't we?” He scrubbed a hand down his face, pulling his mouth into a frown. Was he really asking me this time? Did he really want to know what I thought? Or was I just supposed to agree this time, too?

“Dad, it's just as you always said it would be. No going back. One new page. One new chance.” I looked up at him encouragingly; it was as close to the truth as I could get. I couldn't tell him how I really felt. He didn't really want to know.

“Everything's going to be okay. I just wish your mom were here.”

I pulled out my list of memories—six yellow pages of legal paper stapled together. Staring at the worn paper, he paused. “You started that list the day after Mom died . . . ”

“And I haven't been able to add to it for five years. I have 522 memories documented. I can't remember any more.”

“You will. She's not gone. Not yet. Memories have a funny way of popping up unexpectedly,” he gestured toward the papers.

I rested my head on Dad's shoulder, blinking sleepily, and folded my remembrances back into my pocket.

That night I dreamed of Mom. She was with us in Grandma's house, standing at the kitchen sink and looking out the window. She had her back to me but I recognized her posture, the way she stood with her feet together, pointed out. A ballerina's stance. She was standing tall and healthy. As I approached her from behind, I fumbled in my pockets to find my list of memories. I wanted to show her. I wanted her to know I hadn't forgotten anything. But my pockets were very deep—unbelievably deep—so endless that I couldn't reach the bottom. I couldn't reach my list. I started to panic. I couldn't let her think I'd lost them—the most important pages I'd ever owned . . .

“I know memory 523, Lou,” Mom said to me, still facing away.

Suddenly, there it was—my list, six pages, unfolded in my hands on its normal yellow legal notepaper. I leafed through them following the sequential numbers . . . 127 . . . 345 . . . 461 . . . 522. And that's where the list ended. I'd only written 522 memories. I couldn't remember any more. Frustrated, my eyes filled with tears. What was memory 523? What had I forgotten?

That's when the ringing began.

It started as a low hum, but it gradually grew louder and increasingly shrill. It wasn't like a telephone's usual smooth electrical tone; these rings were sharp, like a bell. Like a steel alarm bell. One long vibration followed closely by a short one. I jerked awake, my dream dissolving like sugar into water.

I sat up in bed straining to hear. The rest of the house was dark and still. I glanced at the clock on my bedside table—3:13
A.M.
I crept to the hall and followed the noise to the base of the attic steps. Whatever the sound was, it compelled me to move forward. Slowly, I climbed the old staircase one step at a time, my feet falling hard against the bare, dusty floors. An invisible force drew me reluctantly to the desk. The phone's receiver trembled in its cradle, and the attic walls seemed to shake with its electrifying ring.
Was the floor moving or was I?
Fingering the black wire, thick like licorice, I followed the cord to its full length, down to its frayed ends, and remembered with a start that the phone wasn't plugged in.

The old relic was ringing! I desperately wanted it to be Mom calling. But when I reached—quivering—out toward the phone, I hesitated. I was scared to think what Mom would say to me, what she thought of me. Was she angry we'd be leaving North Carolina? Was she sad we'd have to abandon her in that overcrowded cemetery? Would she cry? Would I?

When I answered, though, the caller on the other end wasn't my mom. It was the same hoarse breathing I'd heard before. It sounded like it was issuing from a pair of croaky lungs, their hollows filled with dust and cobwebs. There was a pause, a clearing of the throat, and then a woman's voice began.

“Gerhard once asked me if I'd ever watched someone die,” spoke a woman, breathing a long sigh. Her enunciations were old; very 1940s, like Katharine Hepburn. Long, drawn-out syllables and soft Rs, like “dahling” and “cab drivah.” The voice belonged to a born New Englander with cheeky inflections.

“‘I have,' he continued. ‘In another life. Long ago.' When he said it, I remember his eyes were like beautifully etched, dark obsidian glass. They looked so fragile that at any moment I was afraid they'd shatter into a million tiny pieces right in front of me.” The woman took a deep breath, as if lamenting the memory. “That was the night he first told me he was a murderer.”

Then the line went dead. No dial tone, no operator. Just
click
.

Back in North Carolina, I found myself sitting quietly, trying to forget the phantom phone call. This was the second time I needed to ignore my curiosity. How long could I avoid acknowledging what was happening to me?

But I had to focus on my most immediate concern: leaving behind my home. It was eerily cold for the South, and the strong wind nearly knocked our “FOR SALE!” sign off its chain.

I was sad to leave, but I'd come to terms with it. Greta was miserable. As it happened, we were moving on her eighteenth birthday. Dad bought her a conciliatory dozen donuts and shoved an unlit candle in one before we sang her a half-hearted “Happy Birthday.” She looked at us both like she wished we hadn't bothered. Now she sat in the backseat, her chin in her palm, completely shut off in an iPod world. The Smiths.
Of course,
I scoffed.
She's starring in her own John Hughes movie
. Dad ignored her. I wished I could. Since our return home, I'd watched Greta experience four of the five stages of grief. The first day, she went around the house telling Dad she wasn't leaving. No way, no how. He couldn't make her. The second and third day, Greta was awful to be around. She yelled and cried. Swore to Dad that he was ruining her life, and threatened to run away. The fourth day, she begged Dad to let her finish out her senior year. She promised straight As, saying she'd live under house arrest. On day five, Greta took a vow of silence.

The roads in the Brandywine Valley were different from those in North Carolina. They curved dangerously and sloped without warning. They had blind spots and bends and one-lane bridges. As we passed old stone houses with smoking chimneys, I tried to imagine what this area looked like long ago: a huddled group of soldiers drinking mulled wine on a front stoop. Redcoats, maybe. Women walking down the road in long skirts with muddy hems, carrying large baskets of bread or apples or laundry. My mind saw them all.

At five-thirty on Saturday night we turned onto October Hill Road. The woods, now layered with a fresh blanket of November snow, were still as mysterious as they had been only weeks before, and the house was still as alluring as we'd left it. Even Greta, despite her tantrum, seemed enchanted. She stepped out of the car and stared at the house while Dad and I unloaded.

A white piece of paper jutted out of the black metal mailbox next to the door. I ran to retrieve it, smiling to myself as I skipped past a lone coffee can of radiant chrysanthemums.

“It's a letter from Rosemary inviting us to dinner tomorrow night,” I read aloud as my eyes scanned the page.

Dad set Greta's bag down at her feet.

“Do we have to go?” I asked apprehensively.

“Why wouldn't we go?”

“I don't know. She's . . . strange.”

“Well, she's the closest thing you have to a home-cooked meal. Tonight, we're ordering in,” Dad shouldered past me to open the door, and Greta and I exchanged knowing glances.
Since when did Dad ever cook?

“Happy birthday to me,” Greta muttered under her breath.

Once inside, I ushered Greta through the house, pointing out the bathrooms and kitchen. She gave little feedback except for a couple grunted acknowledgments. In a way, this house was already more mine than hers.

I showed her my room and tried to be encouraging, but my sister refused to share my excitement. She glanced around the space with distaste.

“Come on, Greta. I'll show you your room,” Dad mumbled, leading the way.

Her bedroom was noticeably larger than mine, and Greta seemed silently pleased. She had a small writing desk and a window seat on the back wall. She walked to the window and pulled back the heavy velour curtains. The moving van was pulling into our driveway and it was already dark outside.

“So what's there to do around here?”

At long last, Greta offered a small smile. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Dad crossed the room and put his arms around her, relieved to be free of the guilt she'd put upon him. I stayed in the doorway. Had Greta finally reached stage five? Acceptance? Dad seemed eager to believe she had, but I wasn't convinced.

Dad and Greta retreated downstairs to help the movers, but I held back. Tiptoeing down the hall, I opened the door to the attic stairs and glanced up into the dark shadows. Within seconds, I found myself standing in front of the telephone. I didn't even remember climbing the stairs. Staring down at the small antique phone, I held the receiver to my ear. It was dead.