Nine Inches

by Tom Perrotta

  “This guy Paul, I’m sure he’s perfectly nice. But I just want to beat the crap out of him, you know? Just on principle.”

  Mike scowled approvingly, as if watching a mental movie of the beatdown.

  “Denny’s a graphic designer. But he plays rugby for fun. Who the fuck plays rugby?”

  The only consolation for Sims was financial. He wasn’t sure how much money an assistant principal made, but he figured it had to be a pretty decent amount, which meant that Jackie and the boys would be able to maintain the standard of living they were accustomed to without relying solely on Sims. And who knew? Maybe Jackie would get her real estate career off the ground one of these days. That would give him even more breathing room if he ever decided to make a career change. It was just too stressful being a pediatrician, his stomach clenching up every time he examined a sick kid, not knowing which of his patients was the next Kayla Ferguson, the one holding the unlucky ticket. He just wanted to do something else for a while, a job that didn’t involve telling a mother that her child was going to die.

  What he really wanted to do was start a blues band with Mike, find a drummer and a bassist, play a few local gigs, and see where it led. They’d been talking about it for a while, and Mike had been putting out feelers, checking around with some of his musician buddies to see if anyone was available. In the meantime, they’d been working hard on some songs, mostly covers, but a couple of originals, too, music by Mike, lyrics by Sims.

  When they knew they were ready, they went into the Inner Sanctum, plugged in their guitars, and made a cell-phone video of “Born Under a Bad Sign,” playing along with a backing track Mike had recorded on his laptop. They did six takes before they nailed it, Sims holding down the rhythm without a hitch, Mike singing with bitter conviction and adding some sizzling lead guitar. When they were finished, they bumped fists and uploaded their file to YouTube. After that, there was nothing to do but sit back, crack open a cold one, and wait for someone to notice. On the whole, Sims was proud and hopeful — he thought they’d done an excellent job with the song — but there was a faint current of dread running beneath his optimism, because good things turned to shit all the time, and you couldn’t always see it coming.

  THE CHOSEN GIRL

  ROSE’S FRONT WINDOW LOOKS OUT on the bus stop across the street. Despite the ferocious early March cold — the radio says it’s eight degrees with the wind chill — the middle school kids have assembled as usual in their sacklike jeans and ski jackets, clapping their gloves and stamping their fancy sneakers against the frigid ground, snorting plumes of vapor as they crane their necks for a glimpse of yellow down at the far end of Sycamore. It’s only seven-forty — the bus won’t be here for another five minutes. Rose presses her cheek against the warmth of her coffee mug, releasing an involuntary shudder of sympathy for the Chosen girl. Five minutes can feel like forever on a morning like this, even when your parents haven’t sent you out of the house without proper clothing.

  The Chosen girl stands off to one side, over by the fire hydrant, her primly old-fashioned outfit — long skirt, drab woolen sweater, simple cotton kerchief — intensifying her isolation, making her seem even farther away from the other kids than she already is. There’s a look of vacancy on her face, as if she’s unaware that she’s the only one at the bus stop not wearing a coat. Her brother and two other Chosen boys are dressed for the weather, bundled into nice bulky parkas that let them blend into the scenery at first glance, though they, too, stand apart from the others, a cluster unto themselves. As far as Rose knows — and she’s the first to admit that she doesn’t know much about these strangers who have become such a conspicuous and disturbing presence in her town — the Chosen just don’t seem to believe in coats for the women and girls, though it’s hard to imagine something like that could actually be part of their religion.

  Watching the girl, Rose can’t help thinking of the expensive winter jacket — her grandson’s Christmas present — that’s been gathering dust in her hall closet since November, a two-tone monstrosity emblazoned with the ugly logo of a team called the San Jose Sharks. It would be too big for her, of course. The girl — Rose imagines her name to be Rachel or Sarah, something plain and biblical — is such a scrawny little thing; the coat would just swallow her up, the garish mall colors mocking her sickly complexion, the dishwater pallor of her lank hair. It would be warm, though, and Rose pictures herself carrying it across the street, draped across her arms like a sleeping child, wordlessly offering it up to the half-frozen girl. Would she take it?

  Would you? she silently inquires.

  As if she’s heard the question, the Chosen girl looks up, tugging nervously at her kerchief. Her expression darkens, but it’s not anger on her face, just an adolescent petulance that makes Rose smile in spite of herself. At almost the same instant, the familiar bulk of the school bus slides into view, coughing dirty exhaust. It lurches away a few seconds later, leaving behind a forlorn vista of blacktop, sidewalk, and trampled grass. Rose remains seated in her chair by the window for a long time afterward, still staring at the spot where the girl had been, the coffee mug going cold in her hands.

  MANY YEARS earlier, when her son had waited at the same bus stop, Rose had not been allowed to stare out the window like this. Instead she’d had to flatten herself against the wall, peering through the narrow crack between the blind and the window, seeing without being seen. She’d done this to humor Russell, who’d been mortified by the sight of her face pressed against the glass, her benevolent gaze trained on him as he went about his business in the world.

  “Stop spying on me,” he’d told her a few days into his new life as a fifth-grader. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “I’m not spying. I’m just seeing you off.”

  “Well, cut it out. The kids are making fun of me.”

  Rose would have liked to laugh at his concerns, but she knew what a sensitive boy he was, how easily wounded. It was hard enough being smaller and smarter than the other kids; he didn’t need to be ridiculed as a mama’s boy on top of that. So she’d compromised, retreating behind the lowered blind, actually becoming the spy he’d accused her of being in the first place.

  This arrangement worked out pretty well until the morning the boys stole Russell’s hat. It seemed like a joke at first, a dopey prank. Russell was standing by himself as he often did, not bothering anyone, his face hidden beneath the bill of his brand-new Yankees cap, when Lenny Barton came tiptoeing up behind him. Lenny was an older boy, husky and boastful and unaccountably popular, despite the fact that he was repeating sixth grade and rarely washed his hair. As far as Rose knew, he and Russell had never had any trouble before.

  Lenny snatched the hat quickly and cleanly. When Russell rushed at him to grab it back, Lenny began backpedaling, waving it in the air just out of the smaller boy’s reach. It broke Rose’s heart to see her son jumping for his precious hat like a dog being taunted with a stick. Lenny tossed the hat to another boy, who tossed it to another, causing Russell to careen madly in pursuit, always reaching his target a second too late.

  Rose closed her eyes and reminded herself that it was all harmless play, but it was no use. When she opened them again, the game had gotten worse. Some girls were in on it now, and she could hear their squealing laughter rising above the mocking chatter of the boys. Russell was exhausted, stumbling and flailing, and when she saw him go down — it was hard to say if he’d fallen or been tripped — Rose had finally had enough. She was out the door and halfway across the street before she realized that she was only wearing a nightgown and slippers, but by then it was too late.

  “Stop it!” she shouted, her voice sounding shrill and hysterical in her own ears. “Just stop it right now!”

  The whole bus stop froze at the sight of her, a grown woman standing by the curb in a flimsy peach nightgown, her hands raised as if for a fistfight. Rose looked at the faces of her son’s tormentors as they traded glances and fought off smirks. Already she knew that she’d m
ade a terrible mistake. Before she could say anything, the hat came fluttering out of the crowd — she hadn’t seen who threw it — and landed near her feet. Rose bent down to pick it up, pressing one hand against the collar of her nightgown to conceal her breasts, which felt huge and pendulous and all but naked in the cool morning air. It wasn’t until she straightened up that she dared look at Russell.

  “Here’s your hat,” she said, slapping it against her leg a couple of times to dust it off.

  He was standing about ten feet away, close enough to Lenny Barton that you might have mistaken them for friends. Rose was in her late thirties then and still considered herself an attractive woman, but something in her son’s eyes made her wonder if she’d gotten old and ugly without realizing it.

  “Go inside,” he snapped, as if commanding a dog. It was a voice she’d never heard from him before, though she’d become quite familiar with it in later years. “Go inside and put some clothes on.”

  SHE FINDS the skirt in the attic, tucked away in a cardboard box. It’s only calf length, and plaid to boot, but it’s the longest one she owns. It still fits, more or less, just as long as she leaves it unzipped.

  It’s harder to find a kerchief. Rose hasn’t worn one in years, though she remembers a time when they were not at all uncommon. On rainy days you’d see women all over town using them to protect their hairdos. Women had hairdos then. They wore curlers. Now even the words sound funny: hairdos, curlers. Rose once had beautiful hair, chestnut with auburn highlights. Pat used to love watching her brush it when they were first married. It’s cut short these days, and she’s stopped coloring it now that he’s not around to tease her about looking like an old lady.

  On the way out she examines herself in the hall mirror. The outfit looks awful, even worse than she imagined. The brown and tan of the skirt clash with the peculiar maroon of Pat’s bulky pullover, and the thing on her head — it’s a torn vinyl rain bonnet, decorated with a print of faded purple daisies — barely even qualifies as a kerchief.

  Oh my, she thinks, laughing softly as she slips out of the mirror’s grasp. Am I really going to do this?

  The cold attacks her the instant she steps out the door, stabbing through her sweater, swarming under her skirt, doing its best to drive her back inside. She hesitates for a second or two on the stoop, mustering courage, reminding herself that it’s only a five-minute walk to the supermarket.

  The sidewalks are empty. Nobody around here walks anymore, not even when it’s nice out. Rose leans into the heartless wind, thinking how nice it would have been to invite the girl inside for a cup of tea, to get to know her a little better.

  I watch you, she would confess. Through the windows.

  I know, the girl might reply, sniffing suspiciously at the tea. I don’t mind.

  Go ahead and drink, Rose would say. It’ll warm you up.

  We’re not supposed to. It’s a sin.

  A sin? Rose starts to laugh, then stops herself. I don’t think it’s a sin to drink something warm on a cold day.

  The girl thinks it over, then brings the cup slowly to her lips, allowing herself only the tiniest of sips. She looks up at Rose.

  It’s good, she says, the blankness of her face giving way to shy pleasure. Thank you very much.

  ROSE DOESN’T know if the Chosen girl is forbidden to drink tea. The idea just popped into her head, and she’s not sure if she’s confusing the Chosen with some other strange religion. She’s heard so many rumors since they began moving into town four or five years ago, she doesn’t know what to believe: they’re Mormons, they’re Quakers, they’re ex-hippies making it up as they go along, the men have multiple wives, the women aren’t allowed to speak in public, they don’t own televisions, they keep large sums of money hidden in their mattresses, and so on. All she really knows is what she’s seen with her own eyes and read in the paper about their zoning dispute with the town two years ago.

  The Chosen bought a house on Spring Street, in a nice residential area, and applied for a permit to turn it into a place of worship. After a lot of angry debate and letters to the editor — some of the neighbors were concerned about traffic and noise and parking problems — a compromise was finally arrived at in which the Chosen agreed to sell the property and use the proceeds to buy a house in a mixed commercial/residential zone, where they wouldn’t cause so much of a disturbance. Since then a lot of the tension has died down, and the Chosen seem to have been accepted as a more or less permanent part of the community, both of it and apart from it at the same time.

  Rose didn’t realize how accustomed she had become to their presence until Russell’s last visit, when he stopped by for a day at the tail end of a conference in New York City. Driving back from Home Depot, they pulled up at a red light in the center of town, right in front of a teenaged Chosen boy who was standing on the corner in a business suit, shouting at the top of his lungs the way they sometimes did, testifying to the passing traffic. Rose barely gave him a second thought, but Russell lowered the driver’s-side window and began gesturing to the boy, asking him what was wrong, did he need any help? The boy stepped closer — he was tall and good-looking, like most of the Chosen boys (the girls, for some reason, were another story) — and bent forward until his face was almost inside their car.

  “They betrayed him!” the boy was screaming. There was a note of genuine outrage in his voice, as if the betrayal had happened just a second ago, and he wanted someone to call the police. “They betrayed him!”

  “What?” demanded Russell. “Who?”

  “The son!” the boy wailed. “They betrayed the son!”

  By the time Russell figured out what was going on, the light had changed, and some of the drivers behind them had started honking. Russell stepped on the gas, glancing in bewilderment at his rearview.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “What was that all about?”

  “The Chosen,” she replied, enjoying his confusion more than she would have liked to admit. “They do that sometimes.”

  “The Chosen?”

  “You’ve been away too long,” she told him.

  •••

  ROSE TAKES a cart and starts off for the produce section, ignoring the hostile and questioning glances some of the other shoppers seem to direct at her. It’s mostly old people at this time of day, and she feels suddenly depressed to find herself in their company. I should be working, she tells herself. I should never have stopped. But they had kept changing the computers around on her at the office, and then her arthritis started flaring up. On top of everything else, her boss was replaced by a younger man who talked to her like she was stupid, and one morning she simply couldn’t bring herself to climb aboard the train. Now she’s here, part of a small army of retirees who watch the cashiers like hawks and stand motionless in the parking lot, poring over receipts as if they’re love letters from the glory days.

  “Rose?”

  Startled, Rose looks up from the bananas in her hand and sees an old woman peering at her with an expression halfway between confusion and concern. A dirty-faced toddler is crammed into the child seat of the woman’s cart, sucking regally on a lollipop.

  “Rose, honey, is that you?”

  Rose has to force herself to look from the child to the grandmother, to work her way past the mask of age to the real face underneath. Janet, she realizes. Janet Byrne.

  “It’s me,” Rose confesses.

  “My God.” Janet looks her up and down, smiling as if Rose has just told an unsuccessful joke. Janet leans forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I thought you were . . . one of them.”

  Rose shakes her head, overcome by a sudden wave of embarrassment. She’d like to explain herself to Janet, to tell her about the Chosen girl — I just wanted to know how cold she was — but it all seems crazy now, nothing she feels free to discuss at the Stop & Shop. She turns her attention back to the baby, who is gazing up at her with glassy, placid eyes.

  “Isn’t she precious?”

 
; “I’m too old for this.” Janet shakes her head, but Rose can see the happiness in her eyes as she reaches forward to stroke her granddaughter’s cheek. “You forget how much work it is.”

  Rose wants to tell her that she envies her fatigue, that it’s better to be tired from doing something than from doing nothing at all, but she and Janet have never been more than passing acquaintances.

  “Such a pretty girl,” she says instead.

  “How many do you have?” Janet asks.

  “Just one. Cody. He’s eleven now. I don’t see him enough.”

  “Cody.” Janet makes a face. “The names they give them. This one’s Selena.”

  “Selena.” Rose wishes she’d had a little girl of her own to dress up and fawn over. Eliza they could have called her. Eliza Geraldine. They would have stayed friends, the way Rose had with her own mother. She would have kept close to home. “Such a pretty name.”

  “You son’s in California, right?”

  “Beverly Hills.”

  “I hear he does face-lifts.”

  Rose nods, though Russell’s actual specialty is breasts.

  “Will he give me a discount?” Janet laughs merrily, tugging back the skin on both cheeks. For a disconcerting second, her former face rises to the surface, the slyly pretty young mother Rose remembers from Little League and PTA, the chain smoker with peasant blouses and tinted glasses.

  “He’s coming for a visit soon.” Rose wants to smile, but her mouth won’t cooperate. “We’re going to celebrate Christmas in April.”

  “That’s nice,” Janet replies, as her face surrenders to the forces of gravity. “That’ll be nice for you.”

  “He’s very busy,” Rose adds. “His wife doesn’t like the cold weather.”

  “You must be proud of him.” Janet smiles, but it’s an effort of will. Her boy, Bobby, had a drug problem and now works the stamp counter at the post office. “My son the doctor.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden,” Rose explains, her voice coming out louder than she means it to. “Come when you want, that’s what I tell him. Whenever it’s convenient.”