Pew

by Catherine Lacey

  I was buried by night. The body is already dead, I thought. I was still smiling. The body is your tomb.

  After some time, I got up, went down the stairs lightly so I didn’t wake anyone, went through the blue-black house and out into the yard to see the moon more clearly. How lucky we are to have the moon. It seemed that hardly anyone ever saw the sky anymore. Had we all forgotten it was there? All this time below it, we forget. Maybe the sky will leave us someday, then we will be able to realize what it was.

  I heard a door slam at the house and Jack came out. The air between us like a pool of warm water. Hesitating on the porch, he looked up at the moon, then at me. I half-sensed he wanted to frighten me, but I was not afraid—after all the moon was here, calm night, warm and easy air, and all of it was ours.

  From the porch stairs he began to somehow yell and whisper at once—We don’t even know if you’re a girl or a boy or where you came from or nothing and you’re sleeping in my bed. In my bed. It’s disgusting. You ought to go back to wherever you came from, go back there and leave us alone.

  Across the street a trash can was knocked over and a light outside a house turned on and a dog went running into the street, barking, chasing something. Then a car alarm went off, another car alarm began, and a cat hissed, screamed.

  Jack kept walking toward me, still speaking in that yell-whisper. I moved out farther into the yard and saw an old woman standing in the window of the house next door, gripping her housecoat at the neck. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, my body and I didn’t know where it was allowed to go if there was anywhere I could go and not be seen, and when I looked back at him, Jack was facing the porch again, his father there now, saying a few firm, low words the way owners call back their dogs. Jack retreated, disappeared inside the house. Steven stood there in the porch light, staring at me for a while before I, too, went back inside.

  Stay in your room, he said.

  Halfway up the attic stairs I heard the door shut and lock.

  WEDNESDAY

  HILDA WAS DRIVING, her hair held up in curlers. We passed a green street sign—Stark Street. Maybe there was nothing else to say of that street. The sky was fading into a gray-blue. The moon hung like a ghost in the sky. I watched the light posts flick past the window, cows in wet grass.

  I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, Hilda said. Thin yellow light was beginning to flood into the car. I think about it … I think about how easy my childhood was, and now my whole life is still right here in my hometown—the boys, Steven. My mother passed away when I was little, but I was never lacking a family. I had my father, my brother. And Mrs. Gladstone, the one you met the other day, she was my stepmother. Still is, I guess, and even though she never really got along with me, at least she never hated me, not completely, but anyway, I know everyone in town. Same church all my life. Everyone there knows me and I don’t have to explain anything. Even had the same hairdresser for just about as long as I’ve had hair. This place, I know it’s not much, but it’s not really what some people think it is. It hurts me that everyone gets the wrong idea about it all the time, it really does.

  Though Hilda’s face was completely still, she had begun to cry. She dabbed carefully around her eyes.

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can get so carried away. I can get so emotional. Even a good commercial for something like the army or life insurance—they always get me. She was almost laughing at herself. But I am very concerned about you. Everyone is. We just don’t know what to do. We’re just not sure.

  All feeling left her face, like that final shift at the end of a sunrise. She sat up straighter, exhaled, cleared her throat. She pushed the wadded tissues between the seat cushions. A firm daylight came down. The highway stretched ahead. Hilda pulled out a little bag and unzipped it while steering the wheel with her knee. She opened a tiny jar and spread something around her eyes, then ran a tiny black comb through her eyelashes, blinking.

  I’m not used to an audience, you know. You probably think this is silly. I usually get all this done in the morning but there just wasn’t time.

  She ran a blood-colored lipstick over her mouth, then pressed her lips together. She put everything back in the bag, closed it, and tossed it into the back seat as if she wanted to forget the whole thing.

  Paulina always said you had to make sure you were put together before getting into the car because if you’re in a wreck and have to get picked up by an ambulance, you don’t want to be looking a mess on top of all the rest of your trouble. Hilda laughed. Oh, probably everyone’s mother says that.

  We pulled into a parking lot beside a huge gray building.

  I just have to deal with these, she said, as she started taking her curlers out. I stared the other way. It somehow seemed wrong to watch. Someone in a pale green uniform was pushing a person in a wheelchair up a sidewalk. A row of ambulances were parked next to us, waiting.

  As we walked toward the hospital, Hilda’s shoes clicked on the pavement, and though I had seen her only minutes before crying in the firm morning light, it now seemed she had never cried in her life, couldn’t cry if she tried.

  YOU WAIT HERE, Hilda said, as I sat. I’ve just got a few papers to fill out before you can see the doctors—are you all right by yourself here?

  I looked around. She nodded and went away.

  There were seven televisions around me, all of them playing the same station. A crowd of people had gathered somewhere with signs that said ANSWERS, NOW! and BRING THEM BACK. A man in a suit held a microphone to the mouth of a woman, who spoke loudly into it—

  We have reason to believe that the town council or someone in the government knows what happened to the missing. That’s what we believe, and we know we are right about what we believe. We’re asking for them to tell us what they know, and—to at least tell the victims’ … the families of the missing—

  The woman’s shouting voice softened and her face fell apart and for a moment she no longer looked like a statue of someone screaming, but something more like a pile of papers left out in the rain. She regained herself and continued—My son, Vernon, he’s been gone two weeks, and it’s true some people here in Almose County underestimated Vernon, but I know he’s a good young man and there’s just no way he could just run off for no reason. I want answers. We all want answers—

  The screen cut to a reporter interviewing a child holding a picket sign:

  NO JESUS NO JUSTICE

  KNOW JESUS KNOW JUSTICE

  The child smiled and spoke softly into the microphone held at her face, one hand waving her wide skirt from side to side. I did not watch the television after that, though I felt all the televisions were watching me.

  Nearby there was a man with hair and skin the color of a dead sky, his stomach and chest rounded out, like a whole small person sitting on his own lap. Beside him there was an older woman wearing an apron, her dark hair pulled under a small white cap. In her eyes I could see an intricate calculation was always passing through her mind.

  Sad thing with those people in the television, the man said.

  Yes, sad, she said.

  It’s troubling to see. Very sad.

  Hmm. Painful.

  But they don’t have to be in pain and they don’t know it!

  No, sir.

  I figure we’re lucky to be here where we are. We may have other problems, sure, but nobody goes disappearing.

  Yes, a nice place.

  No one would leave here, no one would just leave.

  I don’t figure so.

  She cleared her throat very quietly and crossed her ankles. Indeed.

  We’re not perfect, of course. No one is.

  Yes.

  We know we haven’t always been fair to everyone.

  Certainly—no.

  But we’ve always been fair to people according to what the definition of fair was at the time.

  The woman nodded and fell within herself. It was somehow clear she and this man went along beside each other. />
  We’ve reckoned with it, he said, and I, for one, I believe we are doing good.

  Good as we can be.

  And ain’t that enough?

  Ain’t it?

  Yes, I’m so glad to be here, aren’t you?

  Aren’t I?

  Yes, aren’t you though?

  She removed the wax paper from a small sandwich and held it to his mouth. His feet and hands, I now saw, were held down by leather straps to the wheelchair he was sitting in. He bit into the sandwich as if to kill it, then bit again and caught the woman’s finger. She yelped a little, dropped the sandwich into his lap, then picked it up and kept feeding him.

  Beside me, a man with little wisps of white hair clinging to his head raised his cane to point at a television. On the screen a man was standing behind a podium now, his eyes calm and distant. Below the man a script—

  Almose County Mayor responds to “Anti-disappearance rally.”

  The man beside me shook his head, bore his hazy eyes into mine—

  If you ask me, they shouldn’t ever put a picture of one of these durn politicians on the television. We shouldn’t know they durn names or they faces.

  He sounded both angry and happy, pleased with himself and displeased with the world.

  It’s what makes the whole thing a mess—they ain’t supposed to be looked at—they supposed to work. Same people that want the power want the fame, too, but I say we should never know them by sight or name—don’t you think that’d work out better? We should just know what they can do and what they’ve ever done for other people and what they believe, what they think of things.

  The man laughed into a cough. His face was falling off his head in a nice way, like an old tree. But ain’t that the problem? They don’t think of nothing and they don’t do nothing. They just want everyone to know they’s in charge, that’s all. We shouldn’t be seeing any of their durn faces. They just want to be looked at. Can’t hardly tolerate it.

  There was a cord running from the old man’s arm to a bag of clear liquid hanging on a metal stand next to him.

  Keep to yourself, don’t you, kid? Always been just the opposite myself. Can’t keep my durn mouth shut and looks like I never will.

  It is strange how two lives can work themselves up to such a moment, idle in a waiting room, just to let something invisible pass between the two.

  I reckon you’ve got it right, the old man said, leaning back, resting his cane across his lap. I don’t know anything, really, never have, never will. Should have kept my mouth shut, at least half the time. He shut his eyes, seemed to fall instantly to sleep.

  The television was playing a cartoon now. Something bonked something else on the head, and the bonked thing chased after the thing that had done the bonking, returning the bonk, turning to run away. The people in the room all watched it with some seriousness, even a kind of tenderness, as if they were looking delicately into the face of another.

  I faintly felt an urge to speak, though I had nothing to say. I had nearly forgotten how to hold my own voice in my mouth. Someone in pale green pants and a loose shirt came up to the old man, leaned down to shout in his face.

  Mr. Gladstone, we are going to have to take you back to your room again for your nap.

  Without opening his eyes, Mr. Gladstone said, I’d just as soon stay where I am. I’ve got this new friend here. Don’t I now?

  Well, have it your way then, the person said, and left us.

  Mr. Gladstone shifted in his wheelchair, trying and failing to find a comfortable spot. His eyes were still shut.

  Some days I’d like to bust out of here, but I tell you, I wouldn’t even know what to do if I did. Here, I get pushed around, they feed me this crap food—but out there, what? Nobody to push me around, nothing to be fed. I got nothing out there, nothing in here either. I reckon I’m here to the end. What a place.

  I heard Hilda’s shoes clicking toward us, slowing as she came near. She took a seat across from Mr. Gladstone, who finally opened his eyes.

  My beautiful daughter, he said as he held a shaking little hand up, reaching and failing to reach her.

  They let you sit out here? Hilda asked.

  They still let me do a thing or two, he said. Hadn’t killed me off just yet.

  Hilda looked at him as if he were some impossible chore, then looked away. So you’ve met Pew.

  Not much of a talker, Mr. Gladstone said.

  I’m sure that suits you just fine, Hilda said.

  We sat quietly a while after that, waiting. On the television someone was mowing a lawn. Eventually someone came over and wheeled Mr. Gladstone away without comment.

  Bye-bye, he said, to which Hilda said nothing.

  A nurse appeared—The doctor’s ready to see her if—oh, um, him?—I’m sorry, well … on the form it’s not filled out—but, anyway, the doctor is ready.

  Hilda said something to the nurse in that soft, lost way of someone who had just woken up, though she had been sitting with her eyes still and open.

  I’ll be out here when it’s over, Hilda said to me. Be good.

  I’m Nancy, the nurse said as we walked, and you can call me Nancy, how about that?

  We rounded a corner and went into a small room with a little padded table and two rolling chairs and a metal scale. I sat in one of the rolling chairs while Nancy lingered a moment in the doorframe, that little pinch in the face of someone trying to remember something. After a moment she said the doctor would be in soon, to just get comfortable for now and not to worry, that everything was going to be fine. Something in my face must have told her I didn’t think anything was fine. She shut the door. Her footsteps retreated down the hall.

  I sat still for a while, then the door opened. A man stood there still for a moment, already examining me, his face blank and hanging.

  I’m Dr. Winslow—he put a hand out to me—but you can call me Buddy, everyone calls me Buddy.

  I left Dr. Winslow’s hand alone. He shut the door, lowered himself into the other chair.

  First I would just like to tell you a few things about myself, about the work I do here, about the sorts of things I can do for you. My name’s Buddy, as I said, and I’m a physician here at the Monroe Medical and Rehabilitation Center and I specialize, in part, in dealing with victims of trauma. Mostly soldiers, battered women, mental disturbance, that kind of thing. Sort of like our friend Roger, though his focus is children, I suppose, and Roger is really—how do I say this?… Well, he’s had a lot less training than I have. I went to medical school, then did a residency up North, then I went back to school for several years, to a medical school that is just for people who study the brain. My degrees are there, you can see them.

  He gestured to the other corner of the room where framed certificates hung useless on the wall.

  Yes, you can see them for yourself, but what I am saying is, I have spent my whole life studying the brain, the human brain that is, and what happens to it over time and what happens to it when it goes through terrible things. Now, maybe you can give me a sign if I’m right, but I get the sense that you’ve been through something very difficult, am I right?

  He stared at me.

  Am I right now? Just give me a little nod if I am … He waited a moment, then exhaled, leaned back in his creaking chair.

  We don’t need to be this difficult, now do we? I even came in an hour early today, just to see you. So I would appreciate if you could also extend some kindness and understanding to me and my staff, is that clear?

  I said nothing, did nothing.

  What we have to do is administer a full physical examination to you in order to make sure you are in a suitable condition for us to have a look at your brain. That may sound a little frightening, but it’s completely painless.

  What’s going to happen is you’re going to be taken to an examination room down the hall. In that room there will be a paper gown. We are going to need you to take off all your clothing and put the paper gown on. Then Nancy will come ba
ck and do the assessment. We need to be sure that you are healthy, and if you’re not healthy, we can find a way to get you to be healthy. And we need to understand what sort of person you are—do you understand? Do you understand what I mean by that?

  I looked instinctively toward the wall as if I might find a window there, but the room, I had forgotten, was windowless. I suddenly felt heavy, that I could not move even if I tried, that there was no way for me to lift myself from this chair.

  For instance, I can do the assessment myself if you’re more comfortable with a man than a woman doing the physical. It’s your choice, and remember—this is the part without your clothing, so which will it be? A man or woman?

  I had not thought so much about the clothing on my body, had not questioned where it had come from or what it was. The shirt and pants were made from the same thick material, something almost like canvas, a gray-black-brown—it depended on the light. There was one square pocket on the shirt, several pockets on the pants, and a loop for holding some sort of tool I’d never had.

  So I assume you’re all right with a woman doing the assessment then? Unless you speak up now, I can only make assumptions about what you might be thinking …

  Dr. Winslow was silent for some time, then there was a knock and Nancy was there and we were all walking down a hallway and at the end of the hallway was a door with a little window in it and beyond the window I could see a bit of lawn before a thicket of trees. There was a large red bar across this door and a sign: EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.

  Nancy opened a door on the left side of the hall and let me into a small room with nothing in it but a padded examination table. At the edge of the table was a paper gown folded in a square. I stood still in the room but I was not in the room. I looked at the paper gown but I could not see it. I thought of the emergency exit.

  Nancy told me to remove all my clothing—socks, underwear, all of it—and put on the paper gown and she’d be back in just a moment to do the examination. My face must have said something I couldn’t hide; she told me there was no reason to be afraid, that it wouldn’t hurt, that it would only take a few minutes. I’ll be back when you’re ready, she said, and shut the door.