by Brady Udall
Though she resented Beverly for using her in such a way, she had learned a few things from the woman, and now turned some of Beverly’s own signature icy silence right back in her direction. Then, with a trembling hint of menace, she said, “If you want to blame me for something, maybe you better do it directly.”
“I’m not blaming you.” Beverly’s voice softened into a whisper. “I know how you’re still grieving, dear. I know, better than anyone, what you’ve been going through.” And just like that, with the mere suggestion of her loss, she was able to bring tears to Trish’s eyes. Though Beverly might not have known it, she still had Trish’s loyalty and respect for all she had done for her in the first terrible days after Jack had gone. Still, she hated her sister-wife for knowing her so well.
She held the phone away from her mouth for a moment, swallowed back the little lump of sorrow that seemed to reside permanently at the base of her throat. Sooner or later, she was going to have to get a grip on herself.
“Then what is this about?”
Beverly began to talk, but was overtaken by a fit of coughing.
“Are you okay?” Trish said.
“It’s nothing,” Beverly said. Though she seemed to have been suffering from some kind of respiratory infection for a while now, she wouldn’t admit to it. Beverly did not get sick, did not show weakness; her role was to point out the weakness in others.
Beverly continued, “I’ve been having some conversations with Uncle Chick, and I’ve been praying.” Trish closed her eyes, considered hanging up. She knew that something bad was coming and that there would be nothing she could do to stop it.
“He knows how this family needs to grow, to evolve. We’ve become stagnant.”
Trish didn’t know if the “he” Beverly was referring to was Uncle Chick or the Almighty, but it didn’t matter, it all came to the same thing. Everything she felt at that moment—the anger she’d worked up to a nice, jagged point, the familiar weight of sadness on her chest, the sting of shame brought by Beverly’s suggestion that she had failed in her most basic obligation as a mother (to bring children into the family and thereby glorify God and His kingdom)—all of it dispersed in an instant, leaving behind only the light, trembling emptiness of fear.
“I have to go,” Trish said. “I have a lot to do.”
Beverly continued on as if she hadn’t heard anything. “We’re not thriving, and you know why? Because we’re not living the Principle as it should be lived. We’ve become selfish.”
“Please,” Trish said, “either say what you’re going to say or let’s forget about it.”
“You have to understand, it’s just talk at this point, nothing more. No need to get worked up. Are you listening to me? We all have to pray about it, to see if she’s the right one.”
“She? You already have somebody picked out?”
“I didn’t pick out anyone. The prophet, through Uncle Chick, is the one who brought all this up.”
“Auberly Stills? Is that who it is?” Trish was trying hard to keep the hysteria out of her voice. “Tell me. Is it Sister Fendler’s niece, the redhead?”
Beverly sighed. “It’s Maureen. Maureen Sinkfoyle.”
Trish laughed: a weird, three-octave cackle. “Maureen? But you can’t stand Maureen.”
“I’ve my difficulties with her, but I’ll have to get over them.”
“And does Golden know about any of this?” She couldn’t imagine, with the way he had been acting of late, that taking on a new wife could be anywhere on his list of priorities. Oh sure, Trish knew that by adding a new wife Golden would improve his spiritual standing and his power and influence in the church, and like most plural wives she had been schooled to be ready for the time when a new wife would join the family, because while it might sound nice in theory, it was always much more difficult in practice. The key to plural marriage, she’d been admonished more than once, was not to take any of it too personally. But Maureen Sinkfoyle? The same Maureen Sinkfoyle who sometimes shelled and ate peanuts during sacrament meeting? The one with the juvenile delinquents? The one who used so much Aqua Net you could hear her hair crackle from across the room?
“Uncle Chick has talked to him about it, but remember, he’s not alone here. We’re a family, and we’re going to have to make the decision together. I’m bringing it up to you now because you’re new at this, and you’re going to have to get used to the idea of sacrifice—”
All at once her anger returned in the form of a white-hot star expanding behind her eyes, and she slammed the receiver into its cradle. Sacrifice. As if Beverly had any right to lecture her on that subject. She turned to find Faye watching from her bedroom doorway and her anger doubled. She found herself screaming hoarsely at the girl, and hating herself as she did, to get back into her room and not come out for the rest of the night.
The phone began to ring and she stepped onto the back porch to escape the sound of it. It was a cloudy night, the far-off lights of farmhouses suspended like drifting motes in the void. She went to the back fence and waited there. When the turkeys didn’t appear she made a cooing sound to announce her presence, but there was nothing except the smell of wet earth, and a fitful breeze in the grass. Please come, she thought, please, and she was startled at how much she needed them, to be the object of their steadfast attention. They must have gone back to their pen to roost, she realized, and anyway she had nothing to offer them, but she waited a little longer, just in case.
When the phone stopped ringing, she went back inside to check on Faye, who had already fallen asleep on top of her bedcovers. When Trish lay down next to her, the girl woke up and said in a froggy voice, “I was having a nightmare about giant rats.”
“There are no giant rats,” Trish said. “Just me. Go back to sleep now.”
And the girl did, instantly, as if she had never been awake at all.
For the better part of an hour Trish lay next to her daughter’s hot, thrumming little form, remembering what she had almost forgotten: the shadow-men and devil’s agents of her childhood, the tangled forests full of whispering crows, the rain and distant thunder of restless sleep, the dark weather now edging back into her own muddled dreams.
18.
THE BOY AT THE WINDOW
THE BOY WAITS AT THE WINDOW. FOR THE THIRD TIME IN AS MANY days he has been grounded, confined to his room except to eat his meals and go to school. Though he hates this house and everyone in it, he has come to enjoy sitting on the old radiator, no one but him, waiting and watching.
His father was supposed to have been home for dinner, but dinner is over and he is nowhere to be seen. The house is in a state of anticipation, the children monitoring the windows, checking and rechecking, wanting to be the first to spot the pickup coming up the drive. Up here, the boy has an advantage. He will be able to see the father before anyone else—if he wanted, he could be the first at the door to greet him.
Unlike the others, the boy doesn’t usually get worked up over his father’s infrequent homecomings, but today he has something to show. The children of the house always have something to show: a piano solo or a poem about clouds, crocheted mittens or a dolphin carved from soap. The boy never has anything except dumb art projects from school or his report card, which he generally prefers to keep to himself. But today, for once, he has something.
PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON FITNESS
–
HEREBY CERTIFIES THAT Rusty Richards HAS ATTAINED THE PHYSICAL FITNESS AND PROFICIENCY STANDARDS OF THE 7TH GRADE AGE GROUP AND HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE PHYSICAL WELL-BEING OF OUR NATION.
To earn such a certificate, seventh-grade boys are required to run a mile in fewer than ten minutes, do fifteen push-ups and sit-ups and at least one pull-up. The boy cheated on the mile (ran three laps instead of four), only did push-ups while the coach was watching, and did thirty sit-ups just for the heck of it because even though he is a blubber-gut, the boy can do sit-ups all day long. It was the pull-up that was the problem. Because everyone in th
e gym made a point of coming to watch, you could not cheat the pull-up. Apparently there was something terribly entertaining about watching fat boys and weaklings nearly kill themselves to perform a single pull-up. And even worse, as far as the boy was concerned, Coach had declared that if you failed to earn your certificate you wouldn’t pass gym, which meant you would fail the seventh grade and be forced to relive its miseries all over again.
The boy was third to last. The only two behind him in line were two extreme fatties who had hung back until the bitter end, hoping to be saved by the end-of-period bell or a miracle fire drill.
To save himself the humiliation, the boy said to Coach, Can’t do it, and Coach cupped his hand behind his ear as if he hadn’t heard correctly. CAN’T? Coach boomed, giving everyone a crazy, wide-eyed look as if this were the most astounding word he’d ever heard. CAN’T, Coach said, was not in his personal dictionary. CAN’T was a word for Democrats and war deserters. CAN’T, Coach said, has no place in his gym, or in the US of A and its sovereign territories, for that matter. So get your goldarned butt up to the bar and give it your best goldarned shot.
The boy stepped up on the little stool and grabbed the bar with both hands and hung there for a few seconds, doomed. He decided he wouldn’t even try, would just hang there feeling sorry for himself until Coach told him to get off. But something happened: he started to get mad. He was mad, of course, about Coach turning his pull-up into a larger spectacle than it otherwise would have been, but then he started to think about his sorry life, his bad haircut and foot odor problem, about how everyone in Old House teased and badgered him, called him names like Busty Rusty or whispered, Ree-Pul-Seeeevo! whenever he came into the room, how Aunt Beverly wouldn’t talk to him or look at him for an entire day and then during family prayer would make a special point to ask Heavenly Father to help the boy come closer to Christ and improve his self-control. He thought about his father, who barely knew his name, who not only ignored him but his mother as well, his mother who was spending more and more time up in her dark bedroom instead of trying to bring the boy back to Big House where he belonged, and right there, hanging from a bar in front of everyone with his gym shorts threatening to slide down, the boy nearly wept with rage, his head hot, his mouth filling with spit, and he realized he was pulling himself up, nearly halfway already, his arms burning and fingers cramped, and somebody cried, Go! Go! Go! and somebody else shouted, Don’t strain your girdle! because this was Coach’s favorite saying and it was one of the few insults you could use in class without getting into trouble. And then, for some reason, an image of his Aunt Trish passed through the boy’s mind, her long neck and shampoo smell and full bust stretching the fabric of her sweater, and he began to plead with himself, No boner, please, please, no boner, because of all the bad things that had ever happened to him, a boner while attempting a President’s Council on Fitness pull-up just might be the most tragic. He was able to fight off the boner successfully but in the process lost some of his momentum, which only made his face get redder, his whole body shaking as if electrified, his eyes bulging dangerously from his head, and, lifted by hot gusts of fury and lust and frustration, he made one last pull, groaning and grimacing and straining his girdle so badly it felt like his intestines might fly out of his butt like paper streamers.
Coach, who never cursed in front of the students, shouted, Holy Christ, son, that’s enough! and the boy let go of the bar and flopped to the mat. People clapped him on the back, saying, Good job, good job, and Thor Erickssen, the third-most-popular kid in the seventh grade, nudged him with his toe and said, Nice going, whatever-your-name-is.
Now, only a few hours later, the boy has nearly forgotten all those twisted, uncontrollable feelings, remembers only the glory of the moment, sees only the certificate in his hands, signed by Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America.
He goes to the closet and, from his hiding spot at the back of the unused and difficult-to-reach top shelf, takes down some of his secret things. This is where he keeps his notebooks, into which he empties the messy contents of his head, as well as his other special items, most of them stolen or salvaged: comic books and magazines and canisters of black powder, a crucifix taken from a roadside memorial, a railroad spike, and piece of jasper that in the boy’s mind is a miniature planet over which he presides like a jealous but benevolent god. In this family, nearly all of the children have appropriated some niche or hidey-hole where they can squirrel away their treasured objects, the talismans that embody their most vulnerable selves and so must be protected from the obliterating crowd.
The boy’s notebooks are full of doodles and scribbled observations and endless pages of lists (7 Favorite Ice Cream Toppings, 12 Best Insect Monsters of All Times), the longest by far his comprehensive LIST OF REVENGE, which he revises at least twice a week and comprises, at the present time, thirty-nine names. One entire notebook is reserved for blueprints and strategies and plans, some minor:
Fake Blood Recipes
1. Katchup + water
2. Elmers + food coloring
3. Melt red crayons in pot
some slightly more ambitious:
How to Get More Popular at School
1. take a shower
2. bell bottoms
3. hand out candy
4. mustash?
and the one, of course, he has been developing lately, his Grand Master Plan, which he has already put into motion by giving June the picture of his fake mother, and which will take care of his troubles once and for all:
GRAND MASTER PLAN
Rose-of-Sharon + June
+ = Good Times Forever
Rusty + Aunt Trish
To the boy, this makes perfect sense. It is simple and yet complicated, which he believes all good plans should be. He also believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he can bend the world to his will, that he can manufacture a place in it where he will be happy.
Once the boy saw a commercial that begins with a father and mother and their two children walking around the house stiff-legged and grimacing, in obvious discomfort. They each fix themselves a big glass of Metamucil, drink it down, and the next thing you know they’re sitting around the kitchen table, cheerful and unconstipated, eating waffles and having a good laugh. And then the deep, mellow voice of the narrator comes on: Metamucil: Just One More Regular Family.
The boy can’t get the commercial out of his head. A regular family. That’s all he’s ever wanted. A regular family that can sit around a regular-sized kitchen table drinking some refreshing Metamucil and having a good laugh. But when he tries to picture his ideal regular family, things get a little odd. His mother is there, of course, happy and full of life in the morning sunshine, and June whistles an old-fashioned melody while making waffles and bacon for the boy, who is dressed, for some reason, in full Royal Canadian Mountie regalia and is grooming his noble steed, right there in the dining room, while he waits for his secret admirer, Aunt Trish, to come downstairs for breakfast in her gauzy nightgown.
That his father does not appear in his fantasy or in his plans for a happier life is not lost on the boy. He tries not to, but most of the time he hates his father, blames him for the sorry state of his life, wants to hurt him in ways that make him scared of himself. Sometimes he has no choice but to put him right up at the top of his LIST OF REVENGE at #2 behind Aunt Beverly. But tonight, for these few hours, he is willing to forgive, to suspend his plans and schemes and give his father a chance. For the boy, it is terribly simple: all his father needs to do is come home and remark kindly on the boy’s certificate. It won’t take much, maybe a smile, a squeeze of the shoulder, and the boy will go to bed happy and all will be well.
It is full dark now. When a car comes down the road he can’t be sure if it’s his father’s pickup because all he can see are the glare of headlights. He must wait for the headlights to reach the turnoff into Old House’s driveway, and each time they pass by, keep going over the hill toward town, the b
ubble of anger in his stomach quivers and swells. Downstairs the other children are madly practicing their piano solos and reciting their poems and arguing over who will get to open the door when the big moment comes. Cars pass, one after another, but the boy keeps his position on the radiator until his butt is sore and his head hurts.
It is bedtime now and he has lost count of the cars that have passed—his best guess is six thousand—and his vision is blurry, the lights sprouting strange rainbow colors, and when one more passes, the bubble in the boy’s stomach pops and he is seized by a spasm of rage so intense and electrifying that he misses it when it’s gone. On shaking legs he goes to his closet and from his secret hiding spot takes down a plastic canister, the one with Green Magnesium Flash Powder written on the side. He opens it and taps out some of the powder—black, not green—onto the face of the certificate. He opens the window, letting in cool air and the smell of new grass. He can hear a dog barking, the quiet murmur of the river. He takes a match from the book he keeps in his nylon wallet and waits for a staggered line of cars to pass, one…two…three. He waits for one more car, only one, he will give his father one final chance, and when the headlights pass by he strikes the match and touches the flame to the corner of his certificate.
It doesn’t burn well at first, so he tilts it down a little and when the sifting powder reaches the flame he is blinded for a moment by the bright green flash. Jerking back, he lets the certificate go into the night, where it catches a cushion of air, flaring and spinning for a moment, and softly the boy says, Huzzah, as he watches it circle in the breeze, burning until it is just a husk of glowing ash spiraling into the dark bushes below.
