Dark Water - Laura McNeal [8]
Robby slumped without interest on the sofa back. “What?”
“Can’t you hear it?” It was a crackly-tap-tappy sound. I’d once thought it was the sound of twenty-five mouths chomping mulberry leaves, but it turned out to be all their little caterpillar feet grasping and ungrasping the leaves as they moved.
“Snap, crackledy, pop,” Robby said finally. “That is kind of creepily interesting. I recommend checking your cereal bowl before you eat in the morning.”
I was disappointed that he didn’t appreciate the caterpillars, but I couldn’t really blame him. Not everyone likes a tray of devouring insects in the living room.
“I think I’ll go eat something at home,” Robby said.
“Well, why don’t you,” I said. “You big snob.”
“Stop calling me that.” But he didn’t leave. He just stretched full length on the sofa, which wasn’t easy because of the various pillows and magazines and remote controls that had been strewn all over it, and he put his arm across his forehead in this way that at first looked stupidly theatrical. But then he said in this seriously miserable voice, “Cherchez la femme.”
“Cherchez la what?”
“It’s just this French saying. If a guy’s behaving weirdly, look for the woman.” His face was whiter than usual, and sadder.
“Are you hiding a le woman somewhere?”
“No,” he said. “It’s my le dad. He has a le femme.”
It was a joking way to put it, but the air in the room had changed. It was all prickly and electrified now, like a wire. I didn’t pick up the tuna or finish opening the box of crackers.
“How do you know?”
“Because I caught him,” Robby said.
Eight
He said it happened two weeks ago when his mother was on her way to Paris and his dad was supposedly gunning his motorbike on trails. Robby wasn’t supposed to be home, either, because the Redlands Symphony orchestra was performing in the auditorium at the high school, and Robby, as a band member, was an usher who was going to audition afterward for a spot at the music camp the conductor was involved with somehow. Except that Robby got all the way to the high school, which is a twenty-minute drive from the ranch, and discovered he forgot the reeds for his clarinet. The band teacher is this cranky bearded man named Mr. Van der Does who is always telling Robby that what stands between Robby and success is a lack of commitment, because Mr. Van der Does, like my father, believes that disorganization is a sign that you don’t really care.
So Robby drove back to the ranch, trying to hurry so that at least he could hear the second half of the concert and do his audition, and he left the Ford Packrat parked on the dirt road that led from the house to the grove because he thought that’d be quicker. When he ran up the hill to the house, he noticed a strange car, but he didn’t give it a lot of thought—there was no extra parking for the guesthouse, so if somebody came to visit me or my mom, they parked in Robby’s driveway. So Robby opened the front door and went up the stairs to his room for the reeds, and then he looked in the mirror and saw that he’d sweated completely through his only white shirt. His room was next to his father and mother’s bedroom, and he decided to borrow one of his dad’s shirts, but the bedroom door was shut.
“It’s never shut during the day,” Robby said. “They don’t ever close it except at night when they go to bed.”
It struck him as odd, so Robby stood there for a second. He knocked. He heard noises—not voices, but shifting noises. His dad opened the door just a crack and came out, closing the door behind him. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked.
“I forgot my reeds,” Robby said. “I thought you went out on a ride.”
“I got a flat tire,” his father said.
“Can I borrow a white shirt? I got this one all sweaty, and I’m really late.”
Robby waited for Hoyt to open the bedroom door and walk into the room with Robby, get the shirt out of the closet, and hand it to him. But his father didn’t open the door. He stood in front of it like a bad actor in a high school play.