The only times he felt like himself were back in his room locked up and dreaming, or sitting in his car outside Mabel Ridge’s house, with half a dozen loaded guns beside him and another batch in the trunk, just in case. For the past six weeks he’d been living in a motel on the back shore and coming out to Dogtown as often as he could. He’d visited with his daughter once or twice, helped her blow candles off a birthday cake at Chuck E. Cheese, taken her to the beach and the zoo. But most of the time he just stayed parked in his car outside, keeping watch from dusk until morning. Sometimes Mabel forgot to pull down the shades, and he could see Loo walking around inside. Those were the best nights. He’d watch his daughter float from room to room, eating dinner, sitting at the table, her face flickering for hours in the dim blue light of the television. On the nights the shades were down he could still see bits of glow around the edges, and occasionally a shadow passing by. It was enough to know Loo was there, only five hundred feet and one wall between them.
The day after Hawley shot himself his daughter came outside and brought him dinner. His heart caught up in his throat when the door opened and he saw her small figure coming down the path. He grabbed the bearskin rug from the backseat and threw it over the guns beside him. She came straight to his car and knocked on the window and he rolled it down.
“Hi Dad,” she said, and handed through a plate wrapped in tinfoil. It was still warm. He put it on his lap, and she passed him a knife and fork and a napkin, too. In the doorway, he could see the outline of Mabel Ridge watching them, her arms folded tightly across her gigantic breasts.
“Thanks,” said Hawley.
“Grandma says you shouldn’t be out here all the time.”
Loo was leaning on the window. She was so close Hawley could smell her hair. It smelled just like Lily’s.
“Tell Grandma I said tough.”
He’d been careful about parental rights, paying large sums to a high-end, discreet and ruthless lawyer. Each time Mabel Ridge went to the courts to get sole custody, he’d shut it down. He’d been generous with child support, but all the real money was locked up tight for Loo. He didn’t want the old bat getting her hands on it, or trying to push him out of his daughter’s life, either.
“Are you sick?” Loo asked. “You look sick.”
“I’m okay.” He could feel the heat of the plate through his pants, across the tops of his knees. The Percocet was starting to wear off and there was a puddle of blood beneath the parking brake. Loo’s eyes trailed to the passenger seat. At the bear covering the guns. Usually when he came to visit he brought presents, and he could tell she was trying to figure out if there was something hidden there for her.
“What are you going to be for Halloween this year?”
“A witch.”
Hawley tried to think of something else to say. Something that would keep her next to the car. But he could already feel his strangeness rising up between them, the same way it emerged whenever he left his motel room, a block of ice between him and the world.
“Come inside, Louise,” Mabel Ridge called.
“I could swing by tomorrow,” said Hawley. “Take you trick-or-treating.”
“I don’t think Grandma would like it.”
Hawley looked down at the plate in his lap. He wondered what was underneath the tinfoil. It smelled like some kind of pasta. Spaghetti, maybe with meatballs.
“Pretty please,” he said.
Loo ran her hands back and forth along the car, like she was testing the metal. It looked like she was searching for hinges, hinges that could fold the car in two. Something in the back of Hawley’s mind flashed forward, a memory tilting and sliding, and his stomach gripped as if he were suddenly teetering on the edge of understanding some great secret of the world. And then it left him.
“Okay,” Loo sighed. And she turned around and walked back up the path to the house. She opened the door and went inside and shut it behind her. And then Mabel Ridge went to each window and pulled down every shade.
—
HAWLEY CAME THE next night at five-thirty. The sun was just beginning to set. He parked his car, got out and then walked up the path. Mabel Ridge had never invited him inside, but he knew every inch of the place. The way the kitchen was set behind the living room, the way the stairs ran up behind the chimney. Two second-floor bedrooms with two windows each, separated by a hall and one bathroom. Laundry in the basement, and a bulkhead door that led out into the backyard and was locked with a chain.
He didn’t want Mabel Ridge to smell anything on him so he hadn’t had a drink all day. Instead he took an extra Percocet so he could walk on his foot without limping too much. He’d cleaned out the wound again and wrapped it, but his toes and ankle were swollen and he could hardly fit them inside his boot, so he’d removed most of the dressing and covered the bullet hole with a sock. He’d shaved. He’d bought a new shirt. Even his fingernails were clean.
Hawley lifted the heavy pineapple knocker and rapped it three times. He could hear little footsteps tup-tup-tupping, and then the door swung open and there was Loo. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a red circle glued to the front, and a cardboard poster tube spray-painted silver was tied to her head like a crown. At the very top a bunch of bubble wrap was glued in a spiral, stuck out in front like a traffic signal. In her arms was a basket full of apples.
“Trick or treat,” Hawley said.
Loo handed him one of the apples.
“Don’t you have any Milky Ways?”
“Grandma says no candy.”
“The kids are going to love that,” said Hawley. “What are you, a periscope?”
“No,” Loo said. “I’m a toothbrush.” She poked the red circle on her shirt, and made a whirring, machinelike sound in the back of her throat.
“I thought you were going to be a witch.”
“She was,” said Mabel Ridge, coming in from the kitchen, wearing her apron and goggles and rubber gloves, looking every bit the mad scientist. “Her teacher made this costume for a school play, and now she won’t take it off.”
Hawley crouched next to his daughter. Her dark hair was cut short, to her chin. A month earlier she’d stuck gum in her hair. Mabel Ridge had tried ice and peanut butter and all kinds of soaps and finally sat his daughter down at the kitchen table, wrapped a towel around her shoulders and cut all of her hair off. Hawley had watched each snip of the scissors through a pair of binoculars. Loo had cried the whole time.
“Boop,” said Hawley, and he tapped his finger to the red button on her shirt.
“You don’t have to say anything,” said Loo.
“All right,” said Hawley.
“Push it again,” she said, and this time when he touched his daughter she made the sound again, a kind of growling.
“This is for you,” said Mabel Ridge, and she handed Hawley a tall white paper hat with pleats on the sides, the kind that chefs wore in fancy restaurants. Then she held up a T-shirt. A piece of red felt in the shape of a triangle was sewn to the front, with the word CREST painted in white.
“I made it for me, but it should fit you just fine.” Mabel stood there, waiting for him to balk, and it wasn’t until he saw her tight, steely grin that he realized how much the old woman still hated him.
“I’ll wear it,” said Hawley.
“Let’s give your dad some privacy,” said Mabel Ridge.
“I need the shirt,” he said, and she threw it at him. Hawley took off his jacket and drew the costume over his head. He put on the chef’s hat and looked in the hall mirror. He thought of ways to get Mabel back for this. Then he smothered the whole idea. He had to give the old lady credit—it really did look like the cap on a tube of toothpaste. And it was enough that he was in the house at all. It was enough that Loo was smiling.