White Space

“Other than the madwoman in the attic, which is so utterly Brontë but perhaps understandable considering Meredith McDermott’s long history of mental illness, that subplot is baffling,” Kramer said. “It’s as if these teens in Satan’s Skin are … stand-ins? Alters? Different possible versions and aspects of McDermott himself? Because, clearly, the man’s reworking his abusive past. That miserable childhood in Wyoming always haunted him, and of course, the snow and deadening cold are symbolic of slow soul murder. Very Joycean, wouldn’t you agree? He does much the same with the mother in Whispers—absolutely brilliant; we’ll be reading that after break … and of course, madness as a slow cancer, a rot eating away at the very fabric of reality, is rendered with stunning effect in this very bizarre little Victorian pastiche that exists only in fragments itself and yet is thoroughly blahdiddy-blahdiddy-blah-blah.”

Numb, Emma grayed out. Who gave a wet fart what McDermott had in mind? How had she copied a manuscript she hadn’t known existed?

Hating Kramer would’ve been easy; he was such an asshole. But she couldn’t, not really. From his perspective, she was a cheater, a plagiarist, the academic scum of the earth. But he just didn’t know the whole sordid story.

No one did.

8

EVERYTHING SHE KNEW about her bio parents fit the back of a stamp, with room to spare. Dear Old Drug-Addled Dad tried a two-point set to see if Baby really bounced against a backboard. (Uh, that would be no.) Mommy Dearest boogied before Dad tested whether she might be less sucky on a layup. Later, Daddy hung himself in lockup because—oops—someone forgot to confiscate the shoelaces of his All Stars. Big whoopsie-daisy there.

Cue ten years of Child Protective Services and a parade of foster parents, group homes, doctors, staring shrinks, clucking social workers. Her headaches got worse, thanks to Dear Old Dad. All that head trauma started off a chain reaction of growing fractures. She got older and uglier as her skull grew lumpier and bumpier.

Then Jasper, a crusty old sea dog with a fondness for bourbon, Big Band, and paint, showed up. Why he wanted to foster a kid, especially one with her history and looks, she never could figure. (Before her surgeries, she could have been a stunt double for those bubble-heads playing the Mos Eisley Cantina.) Jasper got her surgerized so her brain wouldn’t go ker-splat all over the floor. Fixed up her face, too. Then he whisked her away from all the do-gooders to an ancient stone cottage waaay up north overlooking Devil’s Cauldron, a dark blue inlet of rust-red sandstone layered over ancient volcanic rock on the northern tip of Madeline Island in Lake Superior.

By day, Jasper piloted charters and wandered around in a ratty cardigan and muttered to himself. Nights, he tossed back a couple belts, cranked up a wheezy old cassette recorder, and slathered canvasses with eerie, surreal landscapes choked with bizarre creatures, as Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin burbled, or Bleak House or The Old Curiosity Shop or a dozen other Dickens novels and stories spun themselves out on the air. Some of the creatures Jasper painted, she recognized: woolly mammoths, dinosaurs, prehistoric benthic creatures, weird insects with three-foot wingspans. Others—the ones with stalk-eyes and tentacles and screaming needle-toothed navels—were so Lovecraft, they looked like they’d slithered from the deep wells of inky nightmares.

What Emma never did understand was that when he finished, Jasper pulled a Jackson Pollock, slopping thick white paint onto each and every canvas. When she complained there was nothing left to see—and what was the point?—Jasper would toss back another shot and explain that the creatures, which existed in the Dark Passages between all the Nows, were too powerful to let out: Every time you pull them onto White Space, you risk breaking that Now. (And oh well, when he put it that way, it all became so clear. So much for a straight answer.)

With a story as Harry Potter as this, Jasper ought to have been a wizard. She should have had strange powers. But no, Jasper was just odd; a small army of surgeons stenciled a road map of skillfully hidden scars onto her scalp and gave her a normal, if titanium-enriched, skull; and she loved Jasper so much that seeing him as he was now hurt like nails hammered into her heart.

9