Lucy

by Nathaniel Berry

Maple City Dispatch: stories from the former “Fence Capital of the World,” Adrian, MI

School nights in late spring, Lucy would sneak out through her bedroom window and across the front porch roof, then down the drain-pipe to the driveway. Sometimes I’d wait for her in the ditch by Airport Road, hiding from the neighbors and the curfew-enforcing patrol cars. Sometimes we’d meet at Twin Ponds, a park halfway between our houses, on the footbridge over the dam. In the parks, she liked to hide in the trees and jump out to scare me. I was never quiet enough to ambush her back—I’d try, but she has heightened senses in the dark. Once, she told me she was a vampire, and I believe her.

We first met at a friend’s birthday party. I think Lucy was sixteen, then: two years older than me. We were in the backyard trying to imagine and embody whatever we thought adults were supposed to do at parties. Lucy slouched alone by the back-gate, playing with a plastic lighter, setting the sleeve of her black sweatshirt on fire. I like fire, she told me—not apologizing, not trying to explain, sleeve smoldering. She liked stealing, too—she shoplifted dresses from DEB with a kind of bored professionalism. I’m pretty sure she never wore them. She liked stealing, and fire, and sneaking out of her house at night. 

There was never any specific objective to any of Lucy’s crimes—the danger of getting caught was its own reward.

The parks in our hometown are strung out along the River Raisin and the old rail line, you can traverse them undetected at night. From Twin Ponds you can get across Maumee to Riverside Park, cross a railroad bridge, sneak past the High Rise, into Trestle Park and you're good. From there, you can get to Island Park through the woods behind By Nature Health & Wellness or you can get up Heritage Park by the Kiwanis Trail, and then through backyards and farmers’ fields. The parks are empty and breathtaking at night—canopies of maples, roots curling down the banks into the river. Summer nights, the leaves plump up and block out the sky; the wrought-iron street-lamps glow in every tree like fairy lights. It smells like muddy water and clipped grass and creosote. I don’t remember most street names in Adrian; I get turned around when I’m driving—but I know every footpath and every quiet, secluded place where two people can sit and see the stars mirrored in still, silver water. I suspect that every town in the world has places like these: little doorways into tranquil darkness, places you can only find when you’re young, and can’t ever quite go back to in waking life.

One night, Lucy got caught sneaking back into her place. Her house is haunted—there’s a ghost that lives in her brother’s closet, and at least one more ghost that operates in the back-porch and kitchen. This ghost activated the kitchen smoke detector right before she got home, and so her mother was up, looking out toward the garage when Lucy started back up the drain-pipe.

I’m grounded, she told me, in an MSN message that I read on my bedroom desktop. I’ll have to be careful about sneaking out now.

I’d always hoped that the rules didn’t apply to Lucy, that it was impossible for her to fail or be contained. I’d come to understand that she possessed certain supernatural powers, and expected that she could come and go as she pleased. But at least it was a ghost that had manifested to stop her—nothing earthly should have been able to. I’d wait for her at Twin Ponds, thinking every cracking twig was her, ready to pounce, but it was a while before she could get out again.

We met recently at Trestle Park, the halfway point between her new job and my parents’ house. Lucy has spent the last fifteen years moving from country to country: she’s taught English in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, and has been to at least another dozen countries along the way. In between teaching gigs, she’s here, in Adrian, working for her Aunt’s elder care service. She walks across town to work—she never learned to drive. She tells me she hasn’t ever earned enough money at one time to have been obligated to make student loan payments—she’s still darting like a wraith among the confines of mundane life.

 It’s evening, but nights in Adrian are different for grown-ups. The spaces are smaller and the danger is practically gone. We could still get a ticket for being in a park after 11:00 PM, but that feels pretty surmountable now, and we don’t really stay out that late anymore.

Adults—with adult bedtimes—we are nevertheless teenagers again when we meet, in terms of things we can summon the courage to talk about. I don’t bring up the pictures of her and that guy we went to school with, and if she notices that my engagement ring is gone, she doesn’t mention it. Lucy didn’t like the new Star Wars, and neither did I. Lucy liked the new Avengers and I didn’t see it. I recommend Knives Out; she recommends The Last Kingdom, which I had previously seen the first season of and thought was kind of good. She tells me she’s thinking about getting a masters’ in teaching at U of M, or maybe skipping the country again if she can get another teaching gig.

I don’t have the right to an opinion, but I hope that she leaves Adrian. I like the idea of one of us leaving our world behind and striking out into the urgent and unknown. A masters’ degree and a steady income doesn’t suit a supernatural creature like Lucy—but I’m beginning to believe that she isn’t a vampire anymore; and, honestly, maybe she never was. I don’t tell her this either.