The Marriage of Sticks

by Jonathan Carroll

  His face was a few inches above mine. Some of the bristles of his beard were gold, others black. I rubbed my hand across his scratchy cheek. Then I stopped my hand and left it there.

  He stared at me. Something distracted him and his head snapped up. His eyes widened. His face changed into an expression I had never seen before on him: fury. Outrage. He leaped up. Before I could say anything, he was already sprinting down the hall.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Hugh!” I grabbed my pants and stood too quickly. Again came a whoosh of dizziness. It passed slowly and I went after him.

  He was in our bedroom looking frantically around. “There was someone here! He was watching us. I looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway watching us!”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I thought in here. But he’s not. The windows are closed… I don’t know. Jesus.”

  “Should we call the police?”

  “It won’t do any good if he’s not here. When he saw that I saw him, he stepped back in here but now… nothing. What the hell…”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. A man. He was in the shadows. I don’t know.” He kept checking around. He opened a closet door. He went to a window and, throwing it open, stuck his head far out and looked in every direction.

  We spent a long time searching the house from top to bottom. But Hugh was much more upset about it than I. Perhaps because he had actually seen the man. What disturbed me more was that it was the second time something strange had happened in Frances’s house and we hadn’t even moved into the place yet. While we searched, I kept thinking of the little boy and his birthday party. That little beautiful boy.

  “Look at this!”

  An hour later I was in the kitchen making lunch when Hugh came in holding something large in his hand. Or rather his fingers—he held it far out in front of him, as if it wasn’t at all nice. I smelled it before recognizing it. A bone. The kind of big cow bone you give a dog to chew.

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “Under the desk in my room! But touch it—that’s what’s weird.”

  I pointed to the food on the counter. “Hugh, I’m making lunch. I don’t want to touch a bone.”

  He jiggled it as if trying to guess the weight. “It’s still warm. Warm and slimy. Like it was chewed five minutes ago.”

  “In your room?”

  “Under my desk. I haven’t seen any dog around here. But this thing is warm. Something has been chewing this bone in my room. Recently.”

  I put the knife down. “Do you think it had anything to do with the man you saw this morning?”

  He looked at the floor and shrugged. “You mean maybe the dog was chewing this while his master was spying on us? I don’t know. I was wondering along those same lines. It’s weirder thinking he might have had a dog with him.”

  The phone rang again. I picked it up and was relieved to hear Frances Hatch’s scratchy voice on the other end. She asked how we were doing. I told her about our morning of the intruder and the warm bone.

  “That house has been empty a long time, Miranda. Who knows who’s been going in and out of there over the years? McCabe says he’s been watching it, but he can’t be there the whole day long. I’d call and tell him. You two be careful.”

  She asked to speak to Hugh. I handed him the phone and went back to preparing our meal. When I was finished, I brought it to the table. Hugh continued talking to Frances while he ate. I was about to sit down when I realized I had to go to the bathroom.

  That was one of the few annoying things about the house—there was no toilet on the ground floor. I trudged up the stairs again and walked down the hall. Approaching the bathroom, I stopped when I heard something inside: water running. The door was cracked. A moment’s hesitation before I pushed it open and felt for the switch on the wall. The light came on and I saw a thin thread of water running out of the faucet. I went over and turned it off and looked at myself in the mirror. Something else. Something else was wrong but it didn’t register for some moments. The doorknob. The old porcelain doorknob to the toilet had been warm when I touched it. I went back and put two fingers on it to be sure. Warm. How could that be if no one had touched it for hours? I took a deep breath and said a good throaty “Shit!” before I started out on my own investigation of the upstairs rooms. Although Hugh was downstairs, I still hated the idea of looking on my own but knew I must. I couldn’t be afraid of this house and I would be if I got spooked now and ran for cover. As I opened the door of our bedroom, my hand paused on the doorknob for a moment to gauge the temperature. Cool. No problem. Our bedroom, Hugh’s study, what would one day be the guest room and in time, the baby’s room, were only full of boxes and stacked-up furniture. Nothing more. No shadow men or dogs chewing bones. In Hugh’s room, I even got down on my knees and felt the floor under his desk where he said the bone had been. Nothing.

  Then I did something that was strange but seemed right at the moment. I tipped my forehead till it was touching the floor. And I prayed. Or I said to someone powerful and important and in charge, “Please let everything be all right. Please let us be safe.” And then I went back downstairs to finish lunch with my love.

  I watched as a red + sign slowly appeared in the middle of the blotting paper. Though I already knew, sensed, had felt it for days, it was still a storm in my head to actually see the physical proof. I was pregnant. The druggist told me these home tests were usually 98 percent sure.

  I bought it at a pharmacy near my store. I’d put it in my purse and carried it around for three days, equally excited and frightened to use it. Every time I took it out and read the instructions again, turned the box over and over in my hands and shook it next to my ear as if it might have something to say, I ended up dropping it back into the bag and saying, “Later.”

  After too many strange things happened—continued dizziness, fatigue, sudden nausea at the smell of coffee—I knew I had to find out what was going on inside me. At home Hugh had a book of medical symptoms. When I read those describing pregnancy—dizziness, fatigue, nausea—I closed the book and bit my lip. What would he say on hearing that it had happened so soon after we’d moved in together? Right in the middle of all the turmoil with Charlotte and his children. How would he react?

  The day I decided to take the home test, we rode together into Manhattan on the train. Just past Spuyten Duyvil, I carefully curved our normal morning chitchat around to the subject of children. Hugh had been looking at a Sotheby’s catalog of rare musical instruments to be auctioned.

  He drummed his fingers on the cover. “I love Fellini films and my favorite parts are when there’s a scene of a big family fest: a marriage or birthday party. Tables have been set up in an empty field and everyone’s eating, having a wonderful time. A bad local band is playing, children are running around. The wind is always blowing and crepe paper or balloons are flying around, and leaves…” Looking out the window, he blew breath against the glass and made a small patch of fog. He rubbed it away with the heel of his hand. “Sometimes you hear a train passing in the distance. A couple of sad toots.

  “I want to be at those parties, with my five kids running around. They’ve eaten too much cake and are tired of sitting still. Or maybe they’re my grandchildren and I’ve got white hair and am beginning to get sleepy because I’ve had too much wine. I love the Italians. All those big families and their kids. I love kids. I’d be so happy if we had some. But of course only if you want them too.”

  I stared at the vivid red cross on the test and realized I was humming the Beatles song “I feel fine.” I had a plan. I put the test in a small Ziploc bag and slid it into my desk. Then I went to a liquor store and bought a bottle of their best champagne. My first thought was to go to Hugh’s office and surprise him, but I realized I didn’t want his assistants to know yet. I called instead and asked if we could have lunch. To my great dismay, he said no. He had to meet with clients all afternoon and might not
be home till late. I was on the verge of telling him then, but that would have been wrong. Over the telephone? This was our greatest event and it deserved special treatment. The announcement had to wait till later.

  I stood in the middle of Eighty-first Street with a bottle of champagne and the best news I’d ever had but no one to share them with. If only my parents were still alive.

  To make matters worse, ten feet away across the sidewalk a well-dressed middle-aged woman suddenly started screaming, “Where is everyone going?” again and again in a voice that could have opened the eyes of the dead. In typical New York fashion, people steered a wide path around her, but I was mesmerized. Her fists were against her cheeks, and she looked like a mad Edvard Munch character. Naturally she ended up staring at me, her audience of one. Snapping out of my trance, I didn’t know whether to flee or try to help her.

  “Where are they going?” she pleaded, as if I knew who “they” were or where they were headed. She continued staring at me in the most beseeching way.

  The only thing I could say was, “I don’t know.”

  “But you have to know; you’ve been here longer than any of us!” And with that she moved off down the street in a swift stagger that was as awful to see as the look on her face.

  After making sure she wasn’t coming back, I returned to the phone booth and called Zoe. Halfway through tapping out her number I hung up, remembering she had flown out to Los Angeles two days before to visit Doug Auerbach.

  Frances! Frances was always home, thank God. She answered after the fifth ring. When I asked if I could visit, she happily said, “Of course!” I went to a specialty market and bought tins of pate and Russian caviar, a beautifully fresh French bread, and a box of Belgian chocolates.

  When I hailed a cab the sun was shining brightly, but on the way uptown the sky darkened abruptly and thunder rolled. The rain began just before I saw the madwoman again. She was now walking briskly in a purposeful stride that said, Outta the way I’m in a hurry. So different from minutes before when she’d been standing on the sidewalk looking like aliens had landed inside her skull. Now she looked straight ahead and her arms pumped back and forth, rump rump rump.

  But the moment we passed, her head jerked toward me. She raised a hand and shook a scolding finger. Shocked, I turned away. The rain swirled silvery down the window. The street shone glossy black. Cars hissed by. Umbrellas were everywhere. I wanted to look at her again but was afraid. The rest of the ride uptown I tried to keep my eyes closed. I listened to the rain and the bumpity-bump of the tires hitting ruts in the road. I thought of the baby. I thought of Hugh.

  Arriving at Frances’s, I paid the driver and ran across the courtyard into her section of the building. The rain soaked the paper bag full of food and I felt it coming apart in my hands. I stopped on a landing and took the things out. Cradling them in my arms, I started up the stairs. They weren’t heavy, but in a moment they were much too heavy. Suddenly I was dizzy and too hot to go on. I was barely able to lower myself to a step without keeling over. I put the food down and put my head in my hands. Was this what pregnancy was going to be like? Nine months of feeling great and then abruptly feeling like you were going to keel over?

  Normally the building was as loud as a train station. Kids ran shouting up and down the stairs, dogs barked, radios and TVs blasted. Today it was virtually silent but for the rain pattering outside. I sat trying to will the dizziness away so I could go up and tell Frances my joyous news.

  At the same time, it was enjoyable sitting there alone on that cold step, listening to the rain outside plink on metal, splat on stone, gurgle urgently down into the drains. I had never realized before what a variety of rain sounds there were. Rain had always been rain—something to avoid or watch dreamily through a window. It made the familiar world wet and shiny and different awhile and then you forgot about it till the next time. But alone now surrounded only by rain noises, I was able to recognize more and more distinctions: rain on wood, sliding down glass, rain on rain. Yes, there was even a sound to that, but a hidden one, altogether secret,

  I lifted my head and said aloud, “That’s not right. No one can hear those things.” But I was already hearing other things too: conversations, channels changing on a television, someone peeing hard into a toilet. What’s more, I knew exactly what each of the sounds was. Feet crossing a floor, a cat purring, a person licking their dry lips in sleep, toenails being clipped.

  I looked around to check if any doors were open nearby. No. Only the rain outside and now this relentless cascade of sounds falling over me. From behind those closed doors, from apartments twenty or thirty feet away. Noises I shouldn’t have heard. Impossible from where I was sitting.

  Back in some bedroom behind closed doors where two kids were supposed to be taking a nap, one little boy was whispering to his brother, both of them under the blanket on his bed. Somewhere else in the building a woman sang quietly along with the radio in her kitchen as she washed dishes. It was the Dixie Cups song “The Chapel of Love.” I heard the rush of aerated water in the sink, the squeak of the sponge on glass, her quiet melancholic voice.

  “I fuck you good. You know I fuck you good.”

  “Fuck me hard.”

  I could hear their grunting breath, the smack of kisses, hands sliding over skin. I could hear everything. But where were these people? How was this possible?

  I stood up. I didn’t want to hear. But none of it would stop. Cars ssh’d and honked outside on the street, a heating pipe clanked in the basement, pigeons chuckled on the windowsill, food fried, people argued, an old woman prayed. “Oh God, you know how scared I am, but you not helping me through this.” All the sounds of a rainy day in Manhattan were too near and I couldn’t stop them. I covered my ears and shook my head from side to side like a wet dog. For a moment the sounds of the world stopped. Silence again. Beautiful, empty silence returned.

  But then it came and it was the biggest sound of all. My heart. The dull, huge boom of my beating heart filled the air and space of the world around me. I could only stand and listen, terrified. What was worse was the irregularity. Boom boom boom, then nothing for seconds. It started again, only to go and stop and go with no evenness, no rhythm or structure. It beat when it felt like it. Then it stopped. It was moody. It did what it liked. But it was my heart and it was supposed to be the steadiest machine of all.

  I knew it was me because I had had arrhythmia all my life. A few years before it had grown so serious that I spent a night in the hospital being rigorously tested and monitored by a twenty-four-hour EKG.

  The loudest noise I ever heard pulsed and stopped and pulsed again but with no pattern, no safe recognizable rhythm. Maybe it would beat another time. Maybe not.

  “Miranda? Are you all right?”

  A moment passed before my mind focused on her voice and face. Frances stood several steps above me. She wore a red robe and matching slippers, which made her intensely white skin glow in the dark of the stairwell.

  “What’s the matter, dear?”

  Her voice brought things back. I tried to speak but couldn’t. She slowly worked her way down. When she got to me she put a hand on my elbow. “I was sitting by the window and saw you come in. I got worried when you didn’t ring.”

  She helped me up the rest of the stairs. Without that help, I don’t know how I would have made it.

  “It’s all my fault.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Frances. Unless you made all these things happen to me.” I tried to sound facetious, but the words came out sounding self-pitying.

  “You don’t understand; it’s more complicated than that.” She began walking around the room.

  I had just finished telling her everything. From the day I saw the ghost of James Stillman on the street, right up to the impossible sounds I had heard out in the hall. Once I’d started, the whole story leaped out like an animal that had been trapped in a cage too long. Simply recounting all of the strange events made me feel better.

/>   Frances was silent throughout and spoke only after a long pause. “I knew you were pregnant the day we went to Crane’s View. I don’t know if you remember, but when we got to my house I stood on the porch and asked to be alone while you two went in.”

  “I remember that. Hugh mentioned it.”

  “I didn’t want you to see my face because I might have given it away. That’s when I knew.”

  “How, Frances? Are you psychic?”

  She shook her head. “No, but when I was a young woman in Romania I met people. Shumda introduced me and they taught me some things. That was the greatest mistake of my life: they were willing to teach me much more but I wasn’t interested. Incredible. Incredibly stupid.

  “Shumda was Romanian. He had been raised in the country, and to country people, real magic is no big deal. Things like that shouldn’t be a big deal. They are to us because we’re so sophisticated and skeptical that we’re above all that primitive hocus-pocus.

  “But there is another world, Miranda. Most of us refuse to accept that because it scares us. It threatens to take away our control. But that won’t make it go away. Let me read you something.” She walked to a table and picked up one of the many notebooks she kept around the apartment. She called them daybooks and filled them with her thoughts and quotes from things she had read and liked. She leafed through this book. “Here, listen to this: ‘Maybe what comes from elsewhere will make me do crazy things; maybe that invisible world is demonic and should be excluded. What I can’t see, I can’t know; what I don’t know, I fear; what I fear, I hate; what I hate, I want destroyed.’”

  “But Frances, I do believe in those things. I always have. I’ve just never had any contact with them until now. Did you really know I was pregnant that day? How?”

  “Your smell. And the color of your fingertips.”

  “What does a pregnant woman smell like?”

  “Like hope.”