Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  Back from their liaisons.

  “Can we be excused?” said Martha Kincaid.

  “Sure,” said Joe Kincaid. Martha and David ran from the table, almost stumbling over each other, and disappeared into the back of the house. Raymond got up too, but somberly, and flopped into a chair.

  Bruce moved from his place, but only to sit closer to Pella. “You get the package?” he whispered.

  Pella nodded. Then, confused, she looked down at the floor beside her chair. Where was the bag of pills?

  On the floor beside Efram’s couch, in his Archbuilder cave of a living room.

  Bruce said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you got them?”

  “Yes. Shhh.” She tried to calculate the meaning of her mistake, the trajectory of a fall in progress. What would Efram do with the pills? Get Bruce in trouble for stealing them? That was the least of it. Efram would think of something worse, something she couldn’t guess at.

  Unless—shouldn’t Efram want her to take the pills? In that he was on her side, wasn’t he?

  “You’ll take them, right?” said Bruce.

  “Quiet,” she said. “Don’t talk about it here.”

  But nobody was listening. Clement babbled blithely to Joe and Ellen Kincaid about Diana Eastling’s field trip, her study of Archbuilder science. Pella wondered if Joe and Ellen knew about Clement and Diana’s affair. Probably. Probably they knew and imagined they were helping keep it from the children.

  She wanted to get away from the table, out of the house. She picked up her plate. “Come on,” she said to Bruce. “Let’s sit on the porch.”

  “You were asleep when I came by,” said Bruce. “You slept all day?”

  “I guess.” It was an odd lie, given that she was on the verge of nodding off here, on the edge of the porch, her plate in her lap.

  The lights of the house were behind her. She knew Bruce couldn’t read her face. She looked up at the shadowy ridge where Efram had last stood. She could imagine him still there, a little back, veiled in darkness, watching the house.

  In her imagination he always stood there, in a place just out of sight, watching.

  “Aren’t you scared?” said Bruce.

  “No,” she lied. Whatever he meant she should be scared of.

  They sat not speaking for a moment, then she asked, “Where’d you get the pills?”

  “Wa’s. The delivery guy from Southport came through. Doug Grant was hanging around, and some Archbuilders. I just stole them when everybody was out back, unpacking stuff.”

  “Why do you want to hang around with Doug Grant?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t.”

  “He’s a jerk,” said Pella, surprising herself with the force of it. “He thinks he’s Efram.”

  Bruce didn’t respond. Probably he wanted to be Efram, too.

  “While you’re sucking up to Doug Grant, my brother and your sister are Morris Grant’s little slaves,” she said.

  “I can’t help it if they want to follow him everywhere. Tell Raymond to watch David.”

  “Raymond isn’t bigger than Morris. You are.”

  But it was hopeless to expect Bruce to chaperone David and Martha and Morris. The unity of the larger group was an illusion. It had formed because Bruce was following Pella, and so were Pella’s brothers, just as Martha was following her older brother. Then Morris had attached himself to the five of them. When Pella retired to her turret, her hole in the ground, the group dispersed, each member seeking new alliances.

  Like her family, now that Caitlin was gone.

  “Okay, okay,” said Joe. “Here, we’ve got something unusual, they were selling it down at Wa’s today. Somebody at Southport concocted a kind of ice cream, Archbuilder ice cream, made from ice potatoes. Bruce, why don’t you help get some bowls?”

  Joe dished out the imported dessert, and it was passed around the table.

  “This isn’t like ice cream,” said Bruce.

  “It’s really sweet,” said Martha, making a face.

  “I hate it,” said David.

  “I don’t know, it’s not bad,” said Clement. “Sweet and gooey and cold—is this vanilla?”

  “Remember when you made that pudding from tea potatoes and froze it?” said Bruce to his father. “That was more like ice cream.”

  “Yeah, but Bruce, that was from tea potatoes,” said Martha.

  “So?”

  “So this is more like ice cream,” explained Martha patiently. “Because it’s made from ice potatoes. Because of the word ice.”

  “I think it’s crappy,” said Bruce. “Did Wa even taste this stuff? He bought about fifty pounds of it off the delivery guy.”

  “Bought from, not off.”

  There was a knock on the door. Pella’s throat tightened with fear. Thinking of him on the ridge, she’d somehow summoned him back.

  What if he’d brought the bag of pills, to return to her, out in front of Clement? Could he want to be that disastrous?

  But when Joe opened the door it wasn’t Efram. On the porch stood Hugh Merrow. His clothes were rumpled and dusty, his expression desperate. He stared at the families gathered at the table, the children spooning up their dessert, as though facing a firing squad.

  “I was looking for Clement,” he said. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “Of course not,” said Joe. “Come in. Let us give you something—a drink.”

  “No. I can’t stay. I just wanted to—I checked your house, I went inside and saw your note. So I knew you were here.” His voice was miserable, like it was wrung from damp cloth.

  “Right,” said Clement. “Here I am.”

  “I wanted to thank you. Before I leave.”

  “Leave for where?”

  “Away from here.”

  “You don’t mean permanently.”

  Hugh Merrow just nodded.

  “How—what about your stuff? Your paintings?”

  “The man from Southport is back at my place, loading his truck. I paid him to change his schedule. We’ll leave as soon as I’m packed. There’s a ship back later this week.”

  “Back? To Earth, you mean?” asked Joe Kincaid. The rest of them were still and silent, hanging on the conversation, even David and Martha.

  “Toronto,” said Hugh Merrow.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Clement burst out. “How can you want to go back? Why are you letting him do that to you?”

  “I’m not letting anyone do anything. I’ve decided to leave, that’s all.”

  “Why not move to another town? Stay here. You don’t have to go back to Earth.”

  “I don’t have to, but I want to.”

  “Don’t you see how this looks, Hugh? He bullied you, and you’re folding up.”

  “Bruce, Pella, why don’t you round everybody up, take the ice cream out back, let us talk,” said Joe Kincaid, waving his hands vaguely at the watchful children.

  “If you want to get rid of us, don’t use that stuff as a bribe,” said Bruce. “And quit calling it ice cream.”

  “I really can’t stay,” said Hugh Merrow. “I should get back and help. I have to crate up the canvases myself.”

  “You came to talk about this,” said Clement. “So stay and talk.”

  “I came to let you know about it,” said Merrow, backing toward the door. “And thank you. That’s all.”

  “You’d be thanking us better if you stayed and fought—”

  “I’m not interested in staying just for the sake of a point. Again—thank you, Clement. Joe, Ellen.” Merrow’s eyes flicked over to Pella and Bruce, then away, seemingly unsure whether the silent children were his allies or his oppressors. “Goodbye.”

  The hilarity was gone from the Southport ice cream. Now they all picked at the feeble dessert in grim, unspoken agreement that it was awful. Clement left the table first, and took the chair Raymond had taken before, the sulking chair. Pella recognized his expression. It said Cl
ement was wrestling with notions beyond any grasp beside his own.

  One more future voter gone, Pella thought, before she lapsed into a sleep so deep that someone—Clement? Joe?—had to carry her home.

  Fifteen

  “Sit still,” said the Archbuilder named Lonely Dumptruck to Martha Kincaid.

  Hugh Merrow was gone, and three Archbuilders—Lonely Dumptruck, Hiding Kneel, and Gelatinous Stand—had claimed his house and were painting over his abandoned canvases. Today Gelatinous Stand was posing for Hiding Kneel, and Martha Kincaid was posing for Lonely Dumptruck. The two models were perched on stools, side by side, in front of the open window. The sky behind them was yellow and pink.

  “I’m thirsty, though,” said Martha Kincaid through clenched teeth, squirming on the stool where she sat. Her pose included a fixed smile, which grew increasingly pained and artificial.

  Bruce Kincaid and Raymond were making lemonade, blending packets of powdery crystals into a pitcher of water from Hugh Merrow’s tap. “Just a minute,” said Bruce. “We’ll bring you some.”

  Morris Grant and David Marsh pawed through the closet like happy animals, examining the things Hugh Merrow had left behind, the books, the piles of drawings and notebook jottings, the scraps of clothing. Pella sat by herself at Hugh Merrow’s table, listening to the chatter. She felt calm among the other children. Her presence had reunified the group. They’d gathered Raymond back in, so he wasn’t out in the valley, elaborately mourning his mother.

  She resisted going out to her hiding place, though it pulled at her, like sleepiness, or David’s need to watch television back when they lived in Brooklyn, an urge just to be watching, not caring what show was on.

  Household deer flitted through the corners of the house. Pella ignored them, too.

  Bruce brought Pella the first poured glass of lemonade, favoring her as he always did. The drink still whirled from being stirred, a tiny galaxy of grains at the bottom of the glass.

  Martha climbed off her stool to take her glass, obviously happy for an excuse to break the pose.

  “Lonely Dumptruck’s not done painting you, Martha,” said Bruce.

  “I’m tired.” She gulped at the lemonade, brow furrowed. “I don’t want to pose anymore.”

  “I will pose and you may paint,” said Lonely Dumptruck to Martha.

  “Okay,” said Martha, brightening. “That’s what I wanted to do anyway.”

  The canvas already featured Hugh Merrow’s sketch of an Archbuilder in a wash of umber and turpentine. The Archbuilder had gone over it with thick globs of red and black to mark out the dark of Martha’s hair and eyes, then worked with white paint and a palette knife to depict Martha’s teeth.

  Now Lonely Dumptruck mounted the stool by the window, and Martha, holding her glass of lemonade in her left hand, took up a brush in her right and swirled the red and black and white paint into a brownish orb.

  “Chocolate pie!” she said delightedly.

  “Lonely Dumptruck,” corrected Hiding Kneel, breaking concentration on its own painting, and looking over at Martha’s work. “Not Chocolate Pie.”

  Hiding Kneel’s portrait of Gelatinous Stand was completely abstract, as far as Pella could tell. It involved a lot of blue.

  “Oh, come on,” said Raymond. “Don’t tell me there’s an Archbuilder named Chocolate Pie.”

  “Why not?” said Bruce. “They’ll use anything for a name. In English, anyway.”

  “English is a language all of names,” said Hiding Kneel.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Raymond.

  Pella reached the bottom of her lemonade, and accidentally sipped in a sludge of sugary dregs. She spit it back into the glass.

  “They think English is funny,” said Bruce, trying to be helpful. “Don’t you, Kneel?”

  “English words are funny,” said Hiding Kneel. “English sentences are grave.”

  “Like to bury people?” said Martha. She was mixing paints together on the palette, making more brown out of the bright colors.

  “Not that kind of grave,” said Bruce.

  “Me and Ray saw a dead body once,” said David, emerging from the closet with a stack of Hugh Merrow’s books tipped back against his chest. “At Coney Island. Tell them, Ray.”

  “You didn’t even want to look at it,” said Raymond. “It made you cry.”

  “I did not cry.”

  “Yes, you did,” said Raymond. “You cried and ran.”

  Morris Grant stepped out of Hugh Merrow’s closet, and jostled at the pile of books in David’s arms from behind so they toppled and scattered on the floor.

  “Cut it out,” said Pella. She wanted Raymond and David to change the subject. The day at the beach was the day of Caitlin’s first seizure.

  We saw two dead bodies at Coney Island, Pella thought.

  David left the books where they’d fallen. Morris kicked one so it skidded across the floor, toward the painters. A household deer scampered out of the way. Hiding Kneel put down his paintbrush and picked up the book, and began reading.

  “Quit,” said Bruce to Morris.

  “Give me some lemonade,” said Morris, grinning like a creature that lived on reprimands.

  Bruce frowned, but poured him a glass.

  “Lonely pie, lonely chocolate pie,” Martha was saying to herself under her breath as she mixed the paint.

  “But what was your name before you learned English?” said Raymond to Hiding Kneel. It was an obvious question. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it.

  “Hiding Kneel Before English,” said Hiding Kneel.

  “That can’t be right,” said Bruce to the Archbuilder. “What Raymond means is—”

  They were interrupted by the appearance of a figure in the doorway. Doug Grant. He surveyed the room—the painters and models, the lemonade drinkers around the table, Pella—and stepped inside.

  “What’s all this?” he said.

  “Hugh Merrow left a lot of stuff behind,” said Bruce. “The Archbuilders wanted to paint, so they kind of moved in.”

  “Huh.”

  “Older Grant, Hello,” said Hiding Kneel. “Are you interested in making a mark in paint?”

  “No thanks,” said Doug Grant. He nudged the books on the floor with his shoe. “I bet you could sell some of this stuff to Wa.”

  “It’s mostly crap,” said Morris.

  “Want some lemonade?” said Raymond.

  “Sure.”

  Raymond poured him a glass. Doug drank it standing in the middle of the room, Adam’s apple bobbing furiously, chin wet. Lonely Dumptruck and Gelatinous Stand retook their poses, and Martha and Hiding Kneel returned to their painting.

  “Hey, Pella Marsh,” said Doug Grant, staring from behind his glass.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’ve noticed you,” he said.

  “So?” said Pella.

  She wondered if saying her whole name came from Efram. Did Efram talk about her?

  “Noticed me what?” she said.

  “Not noticed doing,” said Doug Grant. “Just noticed.”

  Morris, agitated, threw a book at David. It missed, clattered to the floor.

  “Your little brother’s a pain,” said Bruce to Doug.

  “I know,” said Doug, talking like Morris wasn’t there.

  “A pain,” said David tauntingly to Morris. “A pain in the rain.”

  “Paint in the rain,” echoed Martha absently, as she concertedly pushed her brown smudge to every corner of the canvas.

  “Why don’t your mom and dad tell him to cut it out?” said Bruce, not letting it go. “Why don’t they ever show their faces in this town anyway?”

  “You ought to mind your own business, Bruce,” said Doug. He finished his lemonade and put the glass on the table.

  “Isn’t a town,” said Morris.

  “We could show their faces in this town that isn’t a town,” said Hiding Kneel. “We could paint their faces and show them.”

&nbs
p; “Paint their faces, paint their faces in the rain,” said Martha.

  “Well, I just think somebody should tell Morris something,” said Bruce to Doug, a little petulantly.

  “You tell him what you want to tell him,” said Doug, looking surprisingly miserable. It struck Pella that she had something in common with Doug Grant. Like her, he was stranded between adults and children.

  But he was dangerous, like a part of Efram scraped raw, all nerve and fury.

  A household deer stumbled on a book, and did a neat somersault, then flickered into a corner. The room was still, except for the scraping of paintbrushes.

  Doug went to the door. “Come on, Morris. Why do you want to hang out with these kids that don’t even like you?”

  “Shut up,” said Morris. He was drawing in a book.

  “There aren’t any other kids,” said Raymond.

  “I like him,” said David.

  Pella wanted to shift into the nearest household deer and scurry away.

  “Well, I’m going,” said Doug. He’d plainly wanted more of a reaction. But the group of children and Archbuilders was too placid, too imperturbable. It took an outsider to show how much of a group they’d become, each with their place. Even Morris.

  “Might you consider sitting for a portrait, older Grant?” said Hiding Kneel. “I hope to create a town gallery comprised of such.”

  “Isn’t any town,” said Morris.

  Doug peered at the Archbuilder’s painting. “You don’t need models to paint like that,” he said. “See you later.”

  “See you, Doug,” said Bruce.

  “Any town in the rain,” sang Martha, dashing a streak of green across her brown orb.

  Pella followed Doug Grant outside, but he’d already slipped off, trackless, into the valley. She imagined him wandering, a knot of gnarled anger out under the sun, strange to himself. His ugly solitude somehow inspired her.

  So she wandered away. She went to her hiding place.

  A minute later she was running, a household deer.

  First she looked for Doug, fanning out in the direction of Efram’s, crisscrossing the valley. But he’d disappeared. He had a knack for that. She wondered if he had a hiding place of his own, a turret or hole.