by Amity Gaige
Judy pulled the crystal candy dish from the soapy water, and held it precariously with one hand. Her eyes grew wide.
“This,” said the girl, “Is the prettiest thing I have ever seen.”
“It was a wedding gift. An aunt or something,” said Charlotte. “I don’t even remember.”
The girl turned it around in her hands.
“Careful,” said Charlotte, taking the dish out of the girl’s hands. She dried it off with a towel. When she turned back, the girl was looking at her, her head tilted almost to her shoulder, as one looks at a painting.
“You have the most beautiful house and the prettiest things. You must wake up every morning and praise God.”
“Well,” said Charlotte, replacing the dish on the shelf. “That’s very sweet of you. But I don’t think that God is to thank for everything. I’ve seen pictures of space and it sure looks spacious.”
“But I think Jesus Christ Son of God is up at the very tippytop of the darkness, sitting there on a plank. Sitting there looking down very quietly.” The girl rinsed a plate under the tap. “Watching over you. Making sure you’re all right.”
“Well,” said Charlotte. “That sounds nice.”
The girl flipped her coarse hair back over her shoulder, and dove back into the soapy water. “So,” she said. “Do you have brothers and sisters, Mrs. Adair?”
“No.”
“You don’t?” said the girl. “You were an only child? What’s that like? All the candy for yourself?”
“Yes,” said Charlotte, looking down. “All the candy for yourself.”
“I guess your parents loved you so much they didn’t need any more. What do they do, your parents? Where did you grow up? How do you get your hair so straight?”
“Listen,” said Charlotte, going back over to the cupboard. “Why don’t you take this candy dish? As a present from us. For finding Tecumseh.” She pushed the glittering dish at the girl. “Really. It’s the very least we can do. Would you please? I’d like you to have it.”
The girl pursed her lips with emotion. She took the dish.
“Wow,” she said.
“Well, thank you again,” Charlotte put her hands in her pockets. She shrugged, and looked outside. “So why don’t you just sit here and relax? Have some jellybeans. I’m going to go get ready for bed. OK?” As she left the kitchen, she saw the girl with the dish under her arm, studying the photographs on the fridge. Her stare was once again keen and appraising and somewhat invasive. Upstairs, undressing in her bedroom, Charlotte could almost feel the girl’s gaze pass down her body.
Something brushed against her legs.
“Oh Tecumseh,” she whispered, kneeling to where the dog sat, looking up. “Were you scared? All alone. All alone in the world. The worst thing.”
The dog got up and settled in his corner of the bedroom.
“All right,” Charlotte said, smiling. “You win. You can sleep in here.”
She went to the back window, brushing her hair. Outside, in the moonlight, Clark and the boy stood together in the yard.
The leaf pile was enormous. Surely the biggest in history. It looked like the conning tower of a great submarine surfacing in the yard. As Clark and the boy backed up against the hedges and sized up their project, Clark whistled with admiration. It had been years since he’d made a leaf pile, since boyhood. He used to wait on tenterhooks until his father said it was time, and they’d go forth into the autumn yard together with rakes. And now it was dark and moonless and it was Halloween but Clark was not afraid. James was at his side in the darkness. Being out in the night with him was like being underwater with him. No words were exchanged, but Clark felt common notions flit between their bodies like tiny birds in a chute. He noticed the silhouettes of his wife and Judy in the upstairs and downstairs windows. In the distance, the ghoulish music warbled, silly and cheap. The wind died down and the hedges behind them were quiet with anticipation. Leaves blew darkly across the crest of the pile.
Suddenly he remembered his mother pulling him away from the window. Her cold fingers, then the desperate embrace. Don’t stand by the window! she cried. They can reach right through! Now, the hedges fingered his back. He pictured the deranged cannibals hiding inside them, along with the blackbirds and the ghouls and all the other monsters, and he saw that maybe fear was not the point. Maybe the point was, sometimes the thing that hunts you is as lonely as you are.
A LIFE WITH DRAGONS
That night, Clark and the children had sat up in the kitchen talking of movie stars and schoolyard injustices and laughing. Watching them unravel and eat their candy piece by piece, Clark felt rather full of guidance now that he was in his own house and had no party line to tow, and he enjoyed taking their ill-formed prejudices seriously. He did not tell them to conserve their candy. They took turns flipping jellybeans into the air and watching Tecumseh snap them out of the air.
The little boy pounced on the counter, imitating some kind of animal. He panned his head around, tongue out.
“A snake?” said Clark. “A chameleon?”
Judy ate a jellybean. “He’s never seen one of those. Never been to the zoo. Not that I remember,” she said.
“You should absolutely go to the zoo,” said Clark. Suddenly, as he said it, it seemed a matter of the utmost importance. The zoo was good for a child’s imagination, with all those rare creatures, monkeys that cried like kittens, birds with such plumage they had to lug it across the ground like magnificent traveling cases. It cheered him up, just to think of it. “What if I took you? Tomorrow.”
The boy slapped the side of his head with glee. Judy bit her lip and smiled. They looked almost too happy to accept.
“I mean, would your dad mind if I took you guys to the zoo?”
Judy frowned and wagged her head. “Daddy’s very secure,” she said.
Clark saw that Judy enjoyed making mention of her father whenever possible. From her adoring reports, Clark gathered that the mysterious Mr. Nye was a real estate prospector or some kind of traveling entrepreneur, and the mother was long dead and neither child seemed curious or sad about her. They lived in a plain but very clean trailer on the outskirts of Clementine and Judy did the cooking and cleaning while he was gone, but when he returned they stayed up all night talking and Judy was allowed to have beer and once her dad had brought her a Mexican dress with blue rickrack and pretty soon they were going to move out west and sit outside all day holding aluminum sun reflectors. But he definitely had the sense of them as left alone to raise themselves, and this they simply took on the chin.
“The zoo it is,” Clark said. “Tomorrow.”
“But Mr. Adair,” Judy’s face fell. “Tomorrow’s a school day.”
From his desk in the guest bedroom early the next morning, Clark wondered what sort of role model he was to try to pass a forged note off on Gordon Stanberry. Please excuse my son from school today…
“What are you doing?” Charlotte stood in the doorway, dressed for work. She was smiling and brushing her hair. “The Muse calling?”
Clark looked down at his letter. He saw that he had even tried to disguise his own writing into the blockish, unschooled script he imagined for Mr. Nye. He looked up at Charlotte. She looked cheerful and well rested and perfectly available to be told anything. She blinked at him prettily.
“What’s that you’re writing?” she asked. “Is it for me?”
Clark shrugged and put the note in his pocket. Please excuse my son from school as he isn’t feeling well. He did not want her to tell him what he already knew: This was a vaguely crazy, vaguely unreasonable thing to do. For he had promised to be normal. He gave Charlotte a kiss, and she looked at him inquiringly.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a silly little thing.”
At school, he folded the note quickly and slipped it under Stanberry’s door. He ran across the parking lot with his coat in his hand and laughter in his throat. He didn’t care. It was crazy, but it made him happy to run. He
was playing hooky. He could see James and Judy waiting at the edge of the parking lot, hiding behind a car. As he crossed the outer basketball court, they stepped out into the open and watched him run.
They had fun at the zoo. The kids shrieked and swatted at each other and ate cotton candy. The last exhibit they came to was the orangutan. The orangutan lived on a raised concrete platform with some palm trees on it, separated from the onlookers not by a cage but by a dry moat. The children clapped and hollered and tried to get the orangutan’s attention. With his trees behind him like set pieces, the orangutan appeared to be engaged in a silent soliloquy. He had freckled hands and bowed legs, and an orange pate like a monk’s, ringed with hair. In fact, he looked very much like a furry orange man, with the same longing and the same sense of destiny. Seeing him standing on a concrete platform with no privacy left a particular guilty feeling in Clark.
After chewing meditatively on his hand, the orangutan paused, as if something had just occurred to him, and turned his head.
“Look!” Judy said to Clark. “He’s looking at you, Mr. Adair.”
“What?”
“He is!” said James. “He’s looking at you, Mr. Adair.”
And he was. The orangutan’s thick lower lip fell open. The insides were freckled pink. He scratched himself on the nipple. Clark straightened, wondering if the other people crowding around the orangutan’s pen were jealous. What was so wonderfully savage, so recognizable, about him? Well for one, he was a man in working clothes who wasn’t at work. He had his jacket slung over his shoulder, and his dark curly hair, which hadn’t been cut in weeks—his own working man’s rebellion—was beginning to look a little wild.
Clark looked down at James and smiled. “Do you like orangutans?”
The boy’s eyes were wide as quarters. “They’re my favorite,” he said.
“They’re not your favorite,” said Judy. “Your favorite is dragons.”
“You like dragons?” Clark’s heart flipped over in his chest. “When I was a boy, I loved dragons. I must have read a thousand books about them.”
“They’re not real,” James said. “They won’t have one here.”
“Are you so sure?” Clark chucked the boy on the shoulder.
James sighed. “I don’t care if they’re make-believe or not,” he said. “I’d still like them just the same.”
With that, James turned back to the orangutan.
My God, thought Clark. It was as if a fundamental conundrum of his own boyhood had been cleared right up for him. James was right—when a boy truly loves something, maybe his love has no doubt. So what if dragons are make-believe? So what if they’re not? So what if the bear of winter was a crazy story? So what if it wasn’t? So what if the knockings about in the house were real? So what if they weren’t? You believe what you believe, and a story is “just a story” in the same way that a fact is “just a fact.” Every once in a while, someone would tell Clark to “grow up,” to “face the facts.” But why, when you “grew up” did you lose access to the biggest life possible, and your cherished teachings were discredited, and dragons became the most ridiculous of lies, while you kept trying to square yourself with some impossible regimen of adult disbelief? He missed them. He missed a life with dragons in it.
He watched James rub the ball of his nose. His sister had removed herself to a bench and was smiling at some boys.
“My mother believed in dragons,” Clark confessed, in a low voice.
“Really? A grown-up lady?”
“Yes. She’s dead now.”
The boy closed his mouth thoughtfully. Then he asked, “Did the dragons kill her?”
“No. Her mind wasn’t healthy. She wasn’t right in the coconut.” Clark tapped his head. He squatted against the rail, pressing his brow against the chipped metal. “She sure used to tell me some crazy stories though…” He thought of her in sunlight, gesturing mutely toward the lake and sky. Then he said, half to himself, “Who knows? I guess you could say the dragons killed her.”
Clark looked back up at the orangutan. The orangutan looked at Clark. The creature reached out his cupped hand.
“What?” Clark whispered. “What in the world do you want?”
SPECIAL GLASS
One night soon after, Clark came home to a dark house. He had already taken off his jacket and crossed the room before he saw Charlotte sitting on the couch looking at him.
“Hey!” he said.
“Hey, stranger.” There was a tinkling sound from the ice in her special glass. Clark turned on the light. She flinched from it.
“What are you doing?” He sat down across from her.
“Thinking,” she said. “Thinking and drinking.”
“Well, it’s nice to do things that rhyme,” he said. He rubbed his eyes.
“Where’ve you been?”
“I took James and Judy Nye to the Historical Society today,” he said. “They loved it. They got to see pictures of their neighborhood when it was still a swamp. Turns out, this very hill was once used as an Indian lookout and for rain dances. This is sacred land. People have lived here for hundreds of years, from the Indians to the Lippets. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Mm,” said Charlotte.
“They used to climb up here,” he looked around, “maybe right in our yard, and look out over the valley. They’d dance around and sing to the rain god.” He looked at her. “Amazing, isn’t it?” He stood up and walked to the window. At the edges of the yard, the darkness was gathering. “Anyway,” he said. “It’s good to, you know, get out of the house. I don’t think it’s good for a person, to just stay in a house too long. It does weird things to you.”
“I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “I’d like a couple weird things done to me.” She took a sip of gin. “We were supposed to go out to dinner tonight.”
Clark turned around quickly.
“Our anniversary?” Charlotte said.
“Oh Jesus.”
“Aw, it’s all right.” She stood up, steadied herself against the back of a chair. “Don’t be hard on yourself. I never really liked anniversaries. I’m not even hungry anymore. Isn’t gin made out of potatoes?”
“Damn it,” Clark said. “I can’t believe it.” He sat down with his head in his hands, looking genuinely disappointed in himself. Then he looked up. “Wait,” he said. “I’ve got a great idea. Do you think maybe you’d let me make it up to you? It wouldn’t take but twenty minutes.”
“Forget it,” Charlotte said. “I don’t want a great idea. I just want you. Stay. I don’t want to be alone anymore tonight. You know I hate to be alone.” She patted the couch beside her, missing the spot she aimed for. “You know,” she said. “I thought what you were writing at your desk last week, that surprise, I thought it was for me. For our anniversary.” She laughed lightly. “But you know, the truth is, I don’t even like anniversaries and birthdays and any of that. It never turns out quite how you want.”
Clark blinked back at her, his eyes stinging. Then he grabbed his keys from the coffee table. “I’ll bring you something,” he said. “You won’t regret it. Twenty minutes. You just stay put.” He hesitated at the door, peering upstairs. He gazed at her fondly. “Why don’t you cuddle up in front of the TV? It’s on up there anyway.”
“Is it?” said Charlotte.
Charlotte watched the closed door for a while. Her mind was completely empty. In fact, she had a trapdoor in the back of her head and all the cruddy mediocre thoughts had fallen out an hour ago. Jealous and lonely thoughts. Each afternoon for two weeks, he’d come home smelling of some adventure—popcorn, horses. She had been invited once or twice, but had declined, secretly hoping for a second, overwhelming invitation to prove she was really wanted. She ran her tongue over her gin-fuzzy teeth. Tecumseh entered, clicking across the floor to his spot in the corner. She admired the dog’s talent for showing up only after the smoke cleared, and was once again grateful for his animal company and even his moody sighing. After a minute or s
o, she became aware of the sound of the television upstairs. She could not remember having turned it on.
“Silly,” she said to the dog, standing. She grabbed her special glass with one hand and the bottle with the other, using them to balance while she put on her slippers. She climbed the creaky stairs and swung around the banister, spilling a little gin on the landing. As she squatted, mopping it with the hem of her robe, she heard distinctly a queer sound—the sound of a woman laughing. The laugh was long and solitary, accompanied by the sound of the bedsprings creaking.
“All right. Now cut it out,” said a man’s voice.
“But it’s funny.”
“No. It’s not funny. It’s sad. Stop laughing. You’re drunk.”
Charlotte stood. She screwed her face. It did not sound like the television at all, but like actual, human conversation, right behind the bedroom door.
“Hello?” said Charlotte.
Footsteps again crossed the floorboards and suddenly Charlotte found herself pressed against the wall of the hallway, hugging her bottle of gin. She looked around wildly. Was this not her house? Her heart pounded, the darkness of the hallway stretched in both directions. Through the door, she heard further indistinct conversation, and then the man’s voice, briskly, “Come on now. Let’s put on your nightshirt.”
“Upsie-daisy,” said the woman.
Again, the bodies on the other side of the door moved. Charlotte stared in horror at the crack in the door. She took one step toward it, hand stretched out. Blinking woozily, she moved closer.
“Oh my darling,” said the woman’s voice in a whisper. “How I love you.”
“Yes, especially when you’re drunk.”
