Lucy Read online

  That evening the doorbell rang. Lucy watched from the stairs as Jenny opened the front door. Harry came in carrying a red motorcycle helmet and a plastic bag.

  “So what’s this all about?” He seemed too large for the entryway, a broad handsome man in disheveled clothes.

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine, Harry. Let’s talk later.”

  “Jenny, come on, it’s me, Harry. What’s going on?”

  “Harry, love, be a dear and let me tell you about this later, okay?”

  “What-ever,” he said in an odd, high voice as he turned to leave.

  “Hey.” Jenny grabbed his coat sleeve. Harry turned back, stared down at her, and then they embraced. “Thanks,” she said.

  When he left at last, Jenny leaned against the door, threw her head back, and rolled her eyes at the ceiling as if shutting out a storm. Then she climbed the stairs past Lucy and went into the bathroom. Lucy followed her and came to the door just in time to see Jenny washing her blood down the sink with trembling hands.

  7

  ONE MORNING, they were eating breakfast at the wrought iron table on the patio, beneath a green umbrella in the shade of the maple. The sun was high, and a contrail was growing longer in the eastern sky. Another squirrel was screaming in the trees.

  “You talked about The Stream and the squirrel warning you about the hawk,” Jenny said. “Tell me about that.”

  “It’s just our language. How we communicate. All the animals. We’re all in The Stream.”

  Lucy recognized that in some ways she was a scientist’s dream come true. Her father had told her that this might put her in grave danger if she fell into the wrong hands. Lucy didn’t mind the questions. Indeed, she had as many questions for Jenny as Jenny had for her.

  “Why do the people have grass around their houses?” Lucy asked. “You can’t eat it. And those men come and cut it down so that it never grows long enough to be useful.”

  “I don’t grow grass.”

  “No, but everyone else does.” They had finished eating and were bringing their dishes inside. Lucy held the door for Jenny. “And another thing. Every few days a big roaring truck comes to take our things away, things that might be useful.”

  “What things?” Jenny crossed to the sink, and Lucy followed.

  “All that stuff you buy at the grocery store. You put it all in that container by the alley.”

  Jenny laughed, running water over the bowls in the sink. “That’s garbage.”

  “But it’s all perfectly good stuff. All the boxes that the cereal comes in. Those beautiful plastic containers for the blueberries. It seems so sad to throw it all away. Won’t the person who made it be sad?”

  Jenny turned to look at Lucy and felt a rush of emotion for the girl. “You’re right. It’s a deep mystery how we came to live this way.”

  One night Jenny packed clothes and supplies in duffel bags and stowed them in the back of her beat-up Toyota station wagon. The next morning before dawn they began the drive north. Lucy could hardly believe how vast the city was. It seemed to go on forever. So many people, Lucy thought. Who would have guessed there were so many? All along the highway great signs with photographs on them seemed to scream out at them and the message was always the same: To crave more, to buy more, to have more.

  When at last the city ended north of Milwaukee, Jenny drove on through fields of crops. Lucy watched a flock of red-winged blackbirds rise from the fields and grow to such a size that it nearly darkened the sun. It wheeled about in a great vortex and then vanished once again like smoke flowing inexplicably into the green and yellow fire of tasseled corn.

  Jenny left the highway and took the back roads. She told Lucy that she preferred them, and Lucy was relieved. The small roads were more human in their scale, and the car traveled more slowly. She saw little towns and trees and real people. They stopped outside of a small town at a dairy farm that made cheese. Lucy thought that the people seemed friendly, a fat woman in a stained and threadbare flowered dress, and a thin gray-haired man in overalls. They had a daughter about Lucy’s age who sat fixedly watching a small television set. She didn’t even look up to see who had arrived. She was one of the first human teenagers that Lucy had ever observed closely. Lucy wanted to touch her and talk to her but the girl seemed so absorbed that Lucy was afraid to disturb her. Lucy wondered what it felt like to be inside her brain.

  Jenny bought cheese and bread and they sat out in a meadow of clover to eat. The cheese was sweet and sharp with crystals of sugar in it. Lucy lay in the cool grass, which was alive with bees. When they’d finished the cheese and bread, Jenny watched as Lucy dug in the moist earth with her fingers and brought a fresh grub to her lips.

  Lucy caught her looking and gave a guilty smile. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Jenny looked away discreetly and Lucy popped it in her mouth.

  That afternoon they passed through Duluth. An hour later the old green car plunged into the woods and up a road called the Gunflint Trail. As different as it was from the Congolese jungle, the shaggy old forest made Lucy feel at home. It was dense and cool and hung with moss. The smells and creatures were all very different from what she had known.

  They reached the cabin on the edge of a lake at dusk. Inside it was all knotty pine and flowered curtains and a wood-burning stove in the common room. Lucy and Jenny worked side by side in the kitchen, cutting vegetables for soup. That night Lucy slept well for the first time since leaving the jungle. It seemed so long ago now. From her bed she could see the moonlight coming through the shaggy trees and hear the sounds of the forest. There was no unnatural glow, no fog, no sound of machinery.

  The cabin was secluded in the woods and the weather was warm. Lucy slept without clothes and didn’t bother to dress in the morning. Jenny didn’t mind. They both came alive in the woods. They had been missing the forest. Jenny taught Lucy how to paddle the canoe, and together they crossed the lake. A raven came low overhead, cutting the still air with a sound like ripping canvas. In the afternoons Jenny chopped wood or sat in the sun on the deck and drank iced tea and watched Lucy play in the water. In the evenings they read or recited stories and poetry from memory.

  Lucy spent long hours exploring. Out in the forest, Lucy returned to The Stream and learned new signals of deer and moose and red fox and timber wolf. Mouse. Rabbit. Eagle. Beaver. She saw few people out there. She had plenty of warning the few times that she did see people, because they made so much noise. Lucy could easily slip up a tree and then continue her explorations when they’d passed. Lucy thought: They would make easy prey.

  But without realizing it, Lucy was lulled into complacency. Not all people were alike. She was taken by surprise by a quiet one. By the time she realized it, a boy of perhaps twelve had sneaked up to within sight of her. She caught only a glimpse of him. He had a camera around his neck. Lucy bolted and was gone in a second but the incident worried her. She was more cautious for the rest of the trip and was not caught out again.

  One night the weather turned cool, and Jenny and Lucy put on sweaters and built a fire on the shore and sat eating grapes and watching the constellations rise and the satellites arc overhead toward the north. Lucy listened to the crickets talking about what had happened that day and the day before and during their long history on earth. They had very high voices but Lucy could slow them down and understand. They sounded like a choir singing Gregorian chants. Her father had taught her: The crickets collect their memories and sing about them. They talk so much because they have so much to say. Some birds do that, too, and Lucy liked to sit out in the morning and listen to them reminisce about the days of the dinosaurs.

  One night when they were sitting on the shore after dinner, Lucy asked Jenny where she was from. “You now know much more about me than I know about you.”

  “Oh, it’s pretty boring. I grew up in the house where we live. My mother’s house. Of course, it was once my father’s
house, but he died when I was still in grade school so I always thought of it as my mother’s.”

  “So we both lost a father at an early age. I’m sorry. How did he die?”

  “He had a heart attack. As I grew up I realized that I hadn’t really gotten to know him very well. He was a lawyer. He and my mother had me late in life. He was very successful but that meant that he was also gone a lot. Trial lawyer. Then he was gone altogether.”

  “What do you think is going to happen to us?”

  “I’ll teach at the university, I guess. Write some more papers. Volunteer at the shelter.”

  “Shelter?”

  “Yeah. It’s a place for girls who’ve been abused and have nowhere to go.”

  “What do you mean abused?”

  “Beaten. Raped. Or just girls who happen to be homeless, because their parents aren’t around.”

  “Like me.”

  Jenny looked at Lucy, and her lips tightened into a sad smile. “No. That place isn’t for you. I want you to grow up with me. Go to college. Find something in life that you really want to do.”

  They sat with their heads angled toward each other, near the fire. Jenny’s face was regal in the sharp shadows. Lucy’s face was vulpine, her eyes gleaming out of the cave made by her hair.

  “You know what I think?” Lucy asked.

  “What?”

  “That someone’s going to take me away to a laboratory and do experiments on me.”

  “I won’t let that happen. I will never let them take you. Never.” She sat for a time letting that sink in. “Besides, no one will ever know. As far as anyone will know, you’re just an American girl.”

  A few days later they were on their way home. They stopped at the grocery store in Duluth to buy snacks for the road. They were coming out of the store eating Cheetos, and Jenny was reading the ingredients on the bag. “I should be arrested for letting you eat this junk.”

  “Why? They’re good.”

  “Oh, well, I guess it’s in the orange food group.”

  As they passed a coin box that sold newspapers, they both stopped to stare. “Local Teen Reignites Big Foot Debate,” the headline read. They studied the blurry image of a creature in the forest running away from the camera. It was taken from the back, but both Jenny and Lucy recognized it for what it was.

  “I’m sorry. He sneaked up on me.”

  Jenny put her arm around Lucy and directed her back toward the car, glancing around as if everyone must already know. As they drove away, Jenny said softly, “We have to be very careful now, Lucy. We can’t let things like this happen anymore.”

  8

  EVEN AFTER THEY RETURNED from the north woods, Jenny was still trying to get her mind around who Lucy was. She kept going over and over their time together, all the clues that she had ignored or had written off as the oddities of a girl who had been raised in the jungle. Of course, anyone would have done the same simply because the truth was so unthinkable. But by the time they were home, Jenny had begun to recognize a few undeniable truths about their situation. Jenny understood that her own inability to see what Lucy was, despite the clues, would work in their favor. Even the story in the Duluth newspaper told her something about the way people think. When people encountered Lucy, so bright, so pretty, and in some ways such a normal teenager, the truth would be the farthest thing from their minds.

  So it was that Jenny began the process of getting Lucy settled in her new life. They went to the high school and explained Lucy’s situation, an orphaned child from Africa, whom Jenny planned to adopt. The people at the school welcomed them generously. There would be tests, they said, since she had been schooled at home. Jenny began to think that things were going to work out. Lying in bed late at night, she’d tell herself over and over: Lucy’s a teenager, Lucy’s a regular teenager. Jenny would fall asleep repeating that mantra and wake from a dream of Lucy barking at an escalator in a mall while shoppers pointed and screamed like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  At the same time, Jenny wracked her brain for some sort of strategy they might adopt if they were ever found out. Should they run? Harry had a farm in the Wisconsin woods. Should she tell him the truth so that they could plan to go there?

  She recognized that her true situation was so complicated that it was virtually unknown legal territory. She could assert her rights as a parent, but that might be legally invalid if the authorities found out that Lucy was only half human. And what rights would Lucy have? Could Jenny be liable under the laws against importing great apes? Did the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species mean that it had been a crime to bring Lucy out of Africa? Could they then take Lucy away? Those were the thoughts that preoccupied her during those first weeks.

  Jenny was going to file the adoption papers the next day and begin the process of Lucy’s naturalization. That night Jenny and Lucy sat in the living room reading. Lucy sat on the couch with her legs crossed beneath her and thumbed through a big book of art.

  “Oh, look at this,” Lucy said.

  Lucy brought the book to Jenny and showed her a print of ballet dancers by Degas. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “I love that painting.”

  “Don’t you wish you could actually see the real painting someday?”

  “I can. I have. We’ll be downtown tomorrow. We can have lunch there.”

  “Where?”

  “The Art Institute. That’s where all those paintings are. Look.” Jenny closed the book and showed Lucy the cover. It was a book of paintings from the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

  Lucy’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, my, oh, my. You mean we can really see the real paintings?”

  Jenny laughed. “Yes, dear, we can. We will. Tomorrow. I’m going to bed now.” Jenny considered telling her that American teenagers don’t say, “Oh, my, oh, my,” but thought better of it. The kids in school would be teaching her how to talk soon enough.

  • • •

  There was a place where the elevated commuter train plunged into the earth and then accelerated forcefully through a dark tunnel that was illuminated only by faint yellow lights that went flickering past. Then the train hit a broad curve and the metal wheels began to howl against the rails, and Lucy began howling along with the wheels and everyone in the el car turned to stare and then looked away and pretended not to notice.

  Jenny wasn’t sure at first if Lucy was in distress or having fun. Then the track straightened out, the howling stopped, and Lucy turned the most beatific smile on Jenny. What a glorious child she was. They sat grinning at each other, unable to speak, and Jenny saw love in Lucy’s eyes, too. For a moment Jenny felt that they were communicating through what Lucy called The Stream. She asked herself how anyone, seeing Lucy, could possibly care what was in her genetic profile. But when Lucy turned to look out the window again, Jenny saw her face in the glass. The distorted reflection rearranged her features slightly, and Jenny was able to see her animal nature more clearly than ever before. She felt a chill of foreboding wash over her.

  When they had reached the station and climbed the stairs from underground, Lucy was breathless at the sight of downtown Chicago. The buildings tilting to the sky made her dizzy, and she held on to Jenny, her head thrown back, turning around to see them all. They were like two dancers spinning and laughing in a musical, and people turned to stare.

  After filing papers in a drab office, they crossed Michigan Avenue to the Art Institute. Jenny watched as Lucy approached it, eyes wide, mouth open, as someone might approach a great and holy cathedral. As they ascended the stone stairs, Jenny took her arm. “Honey. Now, no loud noises, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  When they entered the great hall of Impressionist paintings, Lucy grew very still. She turned slowly around, her eyes alighting on each canvas. Jenny stood beside her waiting. Then Lucy whispered, “These are real, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. They’re real.”

  Lucy stepped gracefull
y around the room, her body tensing and relaxing as she moved and paused. It was as if she were anticipating and then receiving an urgent message from each work of art. Cézanne, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin … She circled the room once, then began again more slowly. Jenny sat on a black bench in the middle of the room and watched. Lucy had none of the giddy distractibility that Jenny had seen in teenagers visiting the museum with school groups. She seemed in full communion with the works of art. After she had circled the room a second time, Lucy came straight across to Jenny almost on tiptoe. She bent down and cupped her hands to whisper, glancing around self-consciously.

  “These, these, these …”

  “What, honey? What is it?”

  “These paintings. It’s like they’re talking to me.”

  Then she flew across the room and stopped before Degas’s Frieze of Dancers. She looked at it, into it, for a long time, and then squared up her stance, put her hands to her face, and began to weep softly. Jenny stood and went to put her arm around Lucy’s shoulder. She saw that Lucy was peering through her fingers even as she cried.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes. Oh, yes. It’s all so beautiful. It’s a bit overwhelming, that’s all. I think I need to take this a little at a time. Thank you for this wonderful gift you’ve given me. But can we come back again? Can we please, Jenny?”

  “Of course we can.”

  9

  SCHOOL BEGAN ON A COLD and drizzly day. Lucy had tested out of every class. Her father had expected her to go straight to college in London, but the high school suggested that she enter her senior year because of her unusual circumstances. It would give her time to adjust.

  She had been apprehensive about the crowds and the noise, but was surprised to find that sitting in the big classrooms surrounded by humans was exhilarating and endlessly fascinating. She had never been in such close quarters with so many people before. She found it strange and initially delightful to be among those frail and delicate creatures, packed into a classroom so tightly that it seemed as if they might reach critical mass and turn to pure energy.