Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

The mother sees all of this. There is a moment here, perhaps as this strange man had clasped the little foot, when by year 2000 standards, there would be a decision made by all who see this, that this is “unacceptable.” But nobody here seems to remember this protocol of the times. Except Ivy.

  Finally and reluctantly, the woman is wheeling her loaded cart away. Has she forgotten the next item on her list—Was it waxed paper or waxed beans?—while the child stares around at Gordon, or maybe at the lobsters, with solemn understanding.

  Ivy follows Gordon up and down a couple of aisles, notes that he isn’t buying anything or even looking for anything, just yakking with people, including the owner, who wears a short-sleeved white shirt and looks run-ragged in a composed and gentlemanly sort of way. Ivy takes pictures and notes and some audio of all this and Gordon ignores her, then, alas, he sweeps around back to “Aisle 2” and snatches up a bottle of cheap brandless aspirin and pays for it, yakking with the checkout woman. And the woman, gray-haired but with a young face and neck and hands, small-shoulders, and a single delicate gold bracelet on one wrist, points out Ivy to Gordon and laughs self-consciously as Ivy is snapping pictures of the five-dollar bill going into her hand from Gordon’s hand and Ivy is really standing close for this shot, she can actually smell Gordon’s damp shirt, not a wet dog smell, but not a commercial fabric softener smell, either, and Gordon puts both his hands on the counter, leaning an elbow against the lottery dispensers, and whispers to the woman and now the woman seems to forget all about Ivy. What the hell is he telling them? Ivy wonders.

  She tugs off her so-wet-it’s-flat beret and plumps it out as a young mother wearing a pale yellow T-shirt, fresh-looking if sadly soggy, and a baseball cap that reads KITTERY TRADING POST with a bull’s-eye target, pushing her grocery carriage along past Ivy accidentally brushes Ivy’s elbow, and Ivy sees that the carriage has three large self-satisfied-looking though rain-drenched children and a rack of diet soft drinks. And Ivy turns away and Gordon is still there close to her, tipping his bottle of aspirin from side to side as he yaks with the checkout woman, even as a guy with an armload of hotdog rolls and chips and ice cream (no wagon) comes to stand behind Ivy. He asks in a shy way if Ivy would reach him two bags of peanut M&M’s and hold them for him until he has hands. He wears a rain-blasted baby-blue muscle shirt but he is more pudgy than muscley, no beard, just a kind of nondescript blond-brown-haired-type guy, looks almost too young to be out shopping alone but probably he has kids, and probably a wife, a pudgy wife. This is the story in his face and soft shoulders and Ivy agrees to hold the M&M’s.

  Now a woman and man are stepping through the automatic doors, the woman’s face is just cream of tomato soup and crackers, not a face, though once of course it was a face, and it makes the back of Ivy’s slim pretty neck go cold.

  The man is perhaps late fifties. Round face. Glasses. Clean-shaven. Balding. Wears a rain-spotted green work uniform shirt and pants, a brown belt, worn, soft-looking. Sturdy thick waist.

  Gordon steps away from the register and Ivy arranges the two packages of M&M’s on the counter end to end like they are kissing. “These are his,” she tells the checkout woman and looks back to the young guy and he is so shy he averts his eyes when he says, “Thank you.”

  Ivy sees Gordon reaching for the rack of free Your Weekly Shopping Guides. She sees that the woman with no face wears gray sweatpants, sneakers, and a flowery top that might actually be a pajama top. Her hair is brown, touched with gray. Wet, of course. Her walk is crabbed. One eye is draped over by a satin-like wave of her red and silver skin. The other eye, her only visible eye, sits there brown and clear in the noseless stretched taffyish red mess, staring at, yes, Gordon St. Onge.

  Gordon turns from the newspaper rack and goes directly to this woman and kisses her stiff terrible cheek. He says happily, “Hi, Ruth,” and he looks into her single eye and smiles the same smile he used on the other woman, the expensive-looking cute one at the deli.

  Ivy decides not to take pictures of this. Suddenly, she feels ridiculous. And her own good looks seem silly. Vacuous. Embarrassing. She sees that the woman’s hands are also transformed, the right hand with the bone and muscle reshaped so that the hand perpetually points at the floor a few feet ahead of her.

  Ivy sees that the man who accompanies her raises his hand and touches his chin as he speaks in a low voice to Gordon. Ivy sees that this man wears a wedding ring.

  Gordon asks the couple, “You guys getting washed out over on the Boundary?”

  And the man replies in a low voice, “Yep.”

  After a little chat in which the woman never speaks, just nods at everything, Gordon grips the man’s upper arm in a brother-to-brother fashion, then releases, then turns for the door, newspaper under one arm, ambles out into the bellowing downpour and Ivy follows.

  Gordon strides across the shining skirling pavement, in and out of violent inch-deep ponds, then turns abruptly, his loose shirt flaring. He looks at Ivy, who has dropped some distance behind him now. Their eyes don’t exactly meet since the rain is smashing down harder by the second, a gray wall, a Niagara, a twinkling fortress, but there is at last his acknowledgment, which goes as follows: he pulls the bottle of aspirin from a chest pocket, struggles a while with the childproof cap and seal and fake cotton, pops a couple into his mouth, then holds out a palm, and the palm fills with rain like a cup, and he swallows his aspirin with this water, and he gives Ivy a squinched look like she is indeed giving him a headache, and then he walks away from her and the man and boy are waiting in the truck and as Gordon pulls open the door and climbs in, everything has become again too ordinary, and as the amber parking lights come alive and the truck rumbles out of the lot, the story leaves, profoundity leaves, newsworthiness leaves, and Ivy remains standing there in desolation.

  Okay, so theatrics didn’t win him. Or charm, of which Ivy has none. Nor has she ever perfected begging. But Gordon St. Onge has a weak spot. She sees it. Weak man. Will cave in. Ivy, the crowbar, yes! Her gift.

  She runs back into the store and questions people about the Home School and Gordon St. Onge but none of them will open up to her, she just gets smiles and affectionate head shakes. No full sentences. No quotable remarks. No weak spots. Is the whole town sealed against her now, their loyalty to Gordon like sandbags against the storm? How far can Gordon St. Onge’s brand of charisma go in protecting him? Ivy, once again, is pissed. Soggy and wet as she rides along in her sporty car, passing people on curves, tailgating, radio blaring now, drums clashing and bonking and yang yang yang, Ivy Morelli is warmed by her rage and, of course, planning her next move. The crowbar and hammer. Fuck theatrics. The fun is over.

  Out in the world.

  Somewhere in America, in a sunnier time zone, along a street with maple trees and parked automobiles and a helpful red light at the intersection, an SUV in a nice shade of tan whizzes along importantly. On it’s back bumper, this message: MY CHILD IS A FAIRWAY REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT.

  The grays.

  Even here in this galaxy of shadows, everything has vigor, molecules do-re-mi, protons in and out as rabbits now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t wise guys. The queens of all matter are spinning and shivering, filled with the jelly of promise, little nice-guy microbes, even in backward time, pregnant with their ghosts.

  Once ghosts were in everything here. Every atom bore a ghosty face, as gold will freckle certain rocks.

  We grays are an advanced folk. Not much for gear, nor the “high” tech. We are as naked as . . . yes . . . ghosts. The barren interior of our craft is not impressive to the tool folk of this world. We are just sniffers, like dogs. It is our skin that reads and detects such as the turquoise deep blue symphony of Earth’s nights . . . ahhh. We open the hatches of our craft and with the force of our bellies draw in the specimens to study, to test, to save in our monumental mission to document Earth’s endangered ghosts.

  The specimen compartments of our laboratory drip and overflow and twinkle. We select from
open stretches of the buzzy fields, infant forests, and shaded brook sides the perished dragonfly, fish bone, brown leaf. Death. The ghosts treat us in a friendly manner. Hello! Hello!

  But also we have stashed some other stuff, roadside finds: cans of the aluminum, plastic diapers from human babies’ rears, concert tickets, tax bills, charge cards, canceled checks, Popsicle sticks, “floppy disks,” Styrofoam cups, dental floss. We try to understand these samples, those that neither live nor die and therefore carry no ghosts.

  Here now spread out on our laboratory table is a copy of the Record Sun. Flat as a pancake. Fresh off the press. Its mouth is very open, breathing. But no hello. Just paraphrases.

  Even the trees the paper is made of, no pine ghosts remain, so raped and mortified, churned into a sulphurized turd. The rows of newsy words, the smelly ink makes our bones whir. We grays stand hunched elbow to elbow and the weariness of our findings causes vapors to grope grizzlishly up off our small, bald, newsprint-color heads as we agree that even the last page is terrible. The worst! Sports . . . yuck.

  Observe our Ivy being poisoned.

  It is Friday. The end of a long hazy corrosively hot gunky funless day. Ivy returns to Egypt. Her little pseudo sports thing churns up into the St. Onge dooryard, stops next to the green-and-white pickup. No other vehicles in the lot. In the bed of the truck is a small cement mixer, gritty mucked-up plywood, and a mess of rope. Ivy takes mental note of these things but doesn’t write anything down. Instead, still seated in her car, she reaches to the other bucket seat for an aluminum foil package and a bouquet of flowers she made; wallpaper petals and coat-hanger stems. She jerks her shoulder bag from the floor. She checks her light eye shadow and barely detectable lash thickener in the rearview and sees something moving, somebody in the doorway of the screen piazza, stepping down. Screen door slaps shut.

  She steps like a fresh breeze from her car but pretends not to notice the sound of a heavy walk, the crunching of sand. She squares her shoulders and pretends to show a deep interest in nature. The warm sweet early evening is leaving off into warm sweet night, that never-ending twilight gray of June. Frogs are glunk-glunking nearby. Robins and wood thrushes madly tweedle from every direction.

  No rest. Everything frantic and crazed and fertile. The bald rock summit of the near mountain is the last to give up the sun, glowing greenly gold. And that movement up there, slight and wavery. Another mystery contraption. The horrors of the Home School. Ivy sniffs the air.

  She whirls around to face him just as he is ducking under the low limbs of the old ash and coming around the tailgate of his truck. He doesn’t look pissed or wary but he’s not smiling one of his various kinds of smiles, either, nor do his pale eyes have that sensuous grip on her eyes like the way he looked at all those women in the IGA, and none of his bewildered Tourette’s-type blinking either. From under the visor of his billed cap he just looks at her in a direct way as if she were a tape measure stretched out along a short two-by-four. And he looks at her shoulder bag. Then back at her face, his face still expressionless.

  She squares her shoulders again, stares him down, not a yearning soap opera stare, more like in a Western where this would be Main Street, and both he and she would have six guns.

  His eyes lower to her feet, raising up across her dress to her beret, back down to the paper flowers. Her dress is dimpled cotton with a girlishly short full skirt. Blue and lavender check as from times when things were sturdy and well made, soft and stirring to the touch. And the beret, of course, he would remember that beret, stiff and black, squashed down low on her head, not a pretty angle. And what are those on her feet? Shiny black bootlets, patent leather, little buttons, heavy heels. Bought from a costume shop in some mall that sells everything? And really funny socks. Green and white candy stripes.

  She insists, “There’re no tools of the trade in this bag. Honest Injun.” Oops! She squats down and dumps the contents of her shoulder bag out on the sand. “See? Just my personal beautifying equipment and these ol’ addresses . . .” She flips through a little paisley notebook. “And many, many, many credit cards.” She smiles a small hard smile. “I have perfect credit.” As she sorts through the stuff, the homemade flowers tucked under one arm wag about.

  With his arms crossed now, he stands there. His eyes sort of percolate in the shadow of his billed cap, which reads MOFFIT & SON/PAVING & SEAL COAT. Maybe he is noticing something about our Ivy’s forehead and chin and dark-lashed blue eyes. “Black Irish” and Italian? Maybe he is thinking of the long, long rivers of humanity that merge in little creeks and freshets all over the planet. Seeking more frontiers. Is this the direction of his thoughts? Or is he the punishing self-made prophet of a punishing God, his head howling with gooey illogical frettings and sheer hot disgust for Ivy Morelli, who represents all the freedoms and “disorders” of a cut-loose generation?

  She gets to her feet, a mean defiant posture, small shoulders squared. “No frisking of the body. You’ll just have to take my word.”

  He smacks a mosquito on his neck. Now a small smile. And now above one whiskered cheek, the eye gives way to several involuntary squint-blinks.

  Up in the house the phone rings.

  She says, “I’ve given up on you as a story. Honest Injun.” (Oops again!) “I just want to . . . hear more of what the teacher has to say. I have come here to . . . oh . . . you know . . . be one of your followers . . . drink poison . . . pray . . . handle snakes . . . go to heaven.” She scooches down again and stuffs the credit cards, comb, wallet, and little pouches and makeup tubes into her bag.

  He sidles over to her car, places an open hand on the roof, and, in a sad voice, tells her, “I wanted to mention this before, that my mother has one just like this. Even the same color.”

  “Cool mother,” Ivy says pleasantly.

  “Yuh,” he says sadly.

  Ivy hefts her bag back into position, the strap in place over her shoulder, and pushes the foil package into his hands. “My offering, Allah.”

  He holds it up to the dying light to get a good look at it.

  “Prune bread,” she explains. “My sister’s kids call it Junebug bread.” She sighs happily. “You know.” Chuckle. “If you use cranberries, it’s Ladybug bread. Poppy seeds make it Black Fly bread.”

  He says, “I thank you.”

  She thrusts the boingy waggling paper flowers into his other hand.

  He smells them. Deeply. “Mmmmmmmmm.”

  A pair of mosquitoes claim Ivy’s throat. She smooshes one. The other gets away.

  He says, “Come on,” and trudges along ahead of her to the house, which has only the same fluorescent light in the ell’s kitchen windows as there was the last time she was here, a dim melancholy light. Up on the piazza, he holds the screen door wide for her. As she clomps up the steps in her heavy fearless goth shoes, he does a quick bow and swipes off his billed cap, paper flowers rustling, aluminum foil crinkling, and with a voice still sad says, “Enter,” then stands back like a soldier, back flat against the door frame as she passes him. She glances down the long porch. No people. Just feeble rockers. Lawn chairs. Straight-back chairs. Steel folding chairs. Footstools and a couple of raggedy stuffed arm chairs.

  No barking dogs or murmuring women inside.

  She looks back up at her host’s face. His beard and hair are darkened by wetness. He has just showered or something. And maybe a few doses of aspirin? He has a refreshed-tired-end-of-the-day look. He asks, “Coffee?”

  She replies, “Decaf only . . . please.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  Now he screws his billed cap back on purposefully and goes ahead of her into the house.

  She follows. Again there’s that mildewy summery rummagy old farmhouse smell. She looks around. Everything is the same as the last time, although there’s another two or three layers she missed before, more tools, more paperwork, a box of kindling wood with a cardboard box of glass jars on top, and along in front of the mopboards are boots and empty plastic m
ilk jugs, everything screaming with purpose. Yet nothing screams with scholarship, as a school ought to do.

  Ivy wonders to herself, What’s that paint smell? It mixes well with all the other smells swirling through the heat trapped in here from the long hot day.

  And she asks herself, Okay, so what is the definition of school, Ivy? Lots of plastic chrome-legged desks. Lined paper. Plain paper for math. Glossy texts updated as often as possible. American flag. Gold stars, the kind you lick. Fire extinguisher, chalk board, big clock that makes burping noises, hidden bell or buzzer that goes off when it’s time for you to stand up, intercom for the principal to tell you the thought for the day and to announce assemblies and late buses, classroom smell, locker room smell, ketchuppy lunch smell. Surprise quizzes. Report cards. Computers. At least one. She glances over at the boots. All adult-sized. None child-sized.

  He finds an old empty one-gallon brown glass vinegar jug to stick the paper flowers in. The dim fluorescent light gives both his and her skin an officy papery-blue tinge, while making the flowers look real. He shakes the flowers so they wag around cheerily before he leaves them in an open window.

  Right next to Ivy’s dangling left hand is the small wooden table she remembers. As its centerpiece now, her Junebug bread is still wrapped in foil. Running her palm over the painted smoothness of this sturdy little table, it seems it’s a different color than before. An unusual shade. Almost cerulean blue, like artists oils. And there, the chimney behind the woodstove, which she didn’t even notice before. Enamel red. And there a door, crayon yellow. Yes, the storybook house where the giant lives, all the elements here for a medieval lesson, to charm, to instruct, to scare.

  “Decaf. Decaf. Decaf,” the giant chants, noisily ransacking his cupboards. Clonk! Biff! Crinkle.

  So many windows. The old stiff wooden kind, painted thickly in . . . yes, three pinks . . . cotton candy, cherry, and Day-Glo, all screened. A few held up with bottles and sticks. Ivy steps over to the nearest one. Out there in the west is the last smear of creamy light behind that chirping complicated dark business of seemingly endless trees. She sighs. “I rented a place like this once. Old farmhouse.” She rather speaks this to the window and the view and the tackily wallpapered and cluttered walls than to Gordon. “Only it was empty. Unfurnished. And I didn’t have much stuff then. But the rent was cheap.”