Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  "Evelyn, I feel absolutely positive that this carnage is the work of a werewolf. A g.d. werewolf has contracted an inexplicable passion for you and is trying to get your attention." Mrs. Ransom laughed.

  "Tracy, did you happen to notice the moon last night?"

  "Oh, don't tease her now. It's really very disturbing. Perhaps you don't understand because you don't live alone, Priss."

  "Yes, please, Priss, I'm still so upset, you can imagine." Mrs. Troyes gazed thankfully at Tracy and Priss, whom phone calls had brought across Elizabeth Circle. She squeezed each of their hands.

  "I'm so lucky to have friends so close."

  Tracy's hands were coated with clay; she'd been throwing a pot.

  "Oh, my, I've got you gooey. I was at my wheel and I just ran over. It's infuriating! And they say they don't have much hope of ever catching the person. Why not? What is the world coming to? What is America coming to?" Mrs. Canopy's spring-apple eyes stared at the black coil of cable on the red bricks, much as General Cornwallis might have looked at a "Don't Tread on Me" flag flapped in his face at Yorktown by one of Tracy's ancestors. "Things like this did not used to happen. Did they?"

  "Not to people like us," said Priss. "Except every now and then when the Bastille got stormed." Careful not to lean her white tunic against broken bamboo, she sat down gingerly in one of the wing chairs and, lighting a cigarette, studied her slacks and sandals, which were both also white. "You know, Tracy, this whole scene does have a certain je ne sais quoi that reminds me of your Communist friend, the one that designed your toilet. Do you think he might have slipped into town and done it as a surprise for you? Baby Jesus, I mean."

  "Bébé. My, really, Priss, I don't think this is anything to laugh at."

  "Very little at any rate. But there is so very little that one is forced to be un peu indiscriminate."

  Mrs. Canopy's square jaw jutted slightly. Mrs. Ransom, who was flicking an ash from her slacks, did not notice this very faint warning of revolutionary discontent in one who had for so long admiringly attended her court.

  Polly found the letter first incomprehensible, then disgusting, and then very frightening. Just by reading them, the words had made her dirty and ashamed. She had the irrational feeling, too, that whoever had sent this letter knew she had seen Sidney Blossom and Kate Ransom together in the library—and that that was why he had sent it. Now the kitchen, the quietness, that had been safe a moment ago were suddenly scary. Someone might have gotten into the house already. If she looked up at the screen door, would she see his face there, watching her? Could she hear him breathe? Forcing herself to look, she latched the screen. Forcing herself to move slowly, she walked through the house. It was changed, and was ominous. Finally she reached the front door, locked it behind her, and ran.

  In the backyard next door, the letter held behind her balled up in her fist, Polly asked Mrs. Strummer if Joy were still in her bedroom. She was. Joy had a yellow ruffled room arranged according to the instructions in a magazine. Little dolls in foreign costumes stood in rows on white shelves. Large dolls sat in a yellow rocker. Enormous stuffed animals sat on the floor. So did a record player. A young breathless male voice seemed to be singing from the bottom of a warm vat of syrup, "Make Mine You." Joy was in bed; she hung up the phone when her friend entered. Polly looked around the room and slowly let out her breath. Everything was the way it always was. There were the wallpaper and bureau and rug she'd seen a million times. She was all right. "Your mom says to turn that down. She can hear it out in the yard."

  Her breasts pressed against the letters of a sweatshirt that read "U Mass," Joy reached slowly down to the floor and took the record off.

  "Listen," she said, "I need you to do me a big favor, okay?"

  "Where'd you get that sweatshirt?" Polly replied. Two days ago she had sworn never to share another secret with Joy Strummer as long as she lived. But in the urgency of her need to exorcise the letter's power by exposing it to others, Polly couldn't afford to stay angry with her friend. She uncrumpled the moist piece of paper. "You know when my dad said some people in Dingley Falls had gotten some dirty letters? Well, I just did."

  "You did?"

  "Somebody left it in the door. Listen, this is serious. Tell me what you think I ought to do, if I was you, I mean. Do you think, well, I just don't want to have to show it to my dad. Maybe we could ask your mom?"

  "Give it here." Propped against pillows printed with daisies, her gold hair haloing a heart-shaped face, her lashes deepening shadows below her blue eyes, Joy read the smudgy typed sheet. It said, "Want your cherry busted? Somebody's going to knock you off that bike one of these nights and take you for a Real ride. How'd you like a trip around the world? End up with your cunt in the air, screaming for it like the rest. Smart kike kid."

  Joy wrinkled her nose. "Boy. That's really creepy." She frowned.

  "It's sick, isn't it? I ought to do something, shouldn't I? I mean, suppose somebody really, you know."

  Joy shook her head. "No, I don't think so. No. Forget it. It's just sick."

  Polly took the note back, stared at it, folded it. Then finally she nodded and tore the paper into tiny squares, which she dropped into Joy's flowered trash can. "Yeah, sick, I'll say! What does that mean, 'trip around the world'? Do you know what they mean by that stuff?"

  "No, but I bet it's gross. Just forget it." Sitting up, Joy crossed her legs under the daisy coverlet. "Now, if I tell you something, will you swear you won't tell a soul, especially my folks?"

  "Why should I tell your folks?"

  "I just don't, double don't, want my mom knowing."

  "What?"

  "About Lance."

  "Did he give you that sweatshirt?" Polly stared at the shelf of dolls. She turned a tiny can-can dancer to face a Buckingham Palace guard. "When?"

  "We spent all day yesterday together."

  Polly looked at her friend, but instead of giggling as she expected, Joy stared solemnly back and whispered, "It's different with him, kind of scary. I think he's scared too, you know?"

  "Scared of what?"

  "I don't know."

  "Isn't he awfully old?"

  "That's why I don't want anybody to know."

  Polly sat down in the yellow rocker, pulling a huge Raggedy Ann doll onto her lap. "You're acting pretty funny," she said finally.

  "I guess. So look, that was Lance on the phone, he wants me to go to this party he's got to go to, and I'm going to tell my mom I'm just walking over to the library with you or something. So will you go there tonight and, you know, if she says anything later on, back me up?"

  "You just said you didn't want anybody to know. If you go to a party with him, everybody will know."

  "My mom's not going to the party!"

  "Your mom's not going to let you go anywhere. She said you had a fever and chills last night and everything. You're supposed to stay in bed."

  "Are you going to do me this one little favor or not? Jeez!"

  "Say we're going to the library? I'll say we're thinking about going.

  Okay? But you better figure out what you're going to do if you get into trouble about this. I bet you will, too."

  "Maybe." Joy sank into the hills of daisy pillows.

  From the headboard of Joy's bed PolIy took down a doll in a white dress. She tied the doll's sash, and then smoothed down its blond curls. "Remember when my mom gave you this? I remember when we picked it out, she said it looked like you, the hair and everything."

  "Yes," said Joy sleepily. "The birthday we went swimming at the lake. And she made us the crowns of clover."

  "Yes." Polly put the doll back. "You going to sleep?"

  "Look, if my mom says anything, you tell her you think I look fine. All right? Because I'm perfectly okay, it's just that she gets all bent out of shape if I get a little fever, or tired, or anything."

  "Well, okay, but I hope you start feeling better soon. And, Joy, listen, okay, would you not mention about that letter to anybody?"
>
  "Who would I mention it to?"

  "Well, just forget about it, okay?"

  "Jeez, I promise! I bet I know who wrote it," Joy added drowsily.

  "Who?!"

  Her eyes closed, Joy lay still beneath the daisy coverlet. "It's that creep Mr. Barnum. He wrote it," she said. "Who else?"

  chapter 35

  Deprived for a while of his beloved garden, Father Highwick perambulated among the greenery of Central Park with his ninety-two year-old mother, who moved with the aid of an aluminum walker.

  Mrs. Highwick was a happy little woman in orthopedic shoes who wore a straw sailor hat and an extra-large Aran Island sweater over her dress. Her son was elegant in white.

  "Lovely morning, Ma. Beautiful blue sky. Fluffy clouds."

  "But I don't like those fat hippopotamuses up there. Who let them waddle up there? Call the police before they pee on our heads."

  "Oh, hoo-ho-ho. What a way you have of putting things, Ma. It's not going to rain! Not a chance."

  "It rained on the Pope, didn't it? Yes. It rained on the heathen Moabites in the Promised Land. Yes. It rained, rained, rained until their boots filled up with fishes. They told me it was awful."

  "True, true. It rained forty days and forty nights. It must have been awful."

  Along the path they slowly plunked toward a lake where boats bumped into one another and bottles without messages bobbed to the banks. Roller skaters, cyclists, joggers, pushcarts, and strollers raced past them. Along the path flowers bloomed through the litter.

  "Narcissus." The rector beamed. "We used to have them out beside the front walk, remember?"

  "Nononono. Poison you. Everything in my cabinets is poisoned.

  Every can, every box, every box, every can. Poisoned through and through. Call the police."

  "Exactly so, I know what you mean, Ma. It's those horrible preservatives and artificial ingredients they're putting into everything these days. Not at all like your cooking. Dreadful stuff will poison you. Cereal tastes just like the box, doesn't it? Such is Life.

  But then it's Progress. The stuff keeps forever, they say. Why, my goodness, look, Ma! There, rowing in the lake with a man with a beard. There's one of my parishioners. Beatrice Abernathy. The large woman at the oars. What a marvelous stroke she has! Really. Quite outstrips the rest of them. Too far off now to call after her. I'm sure she'd love to meet you."

  "She stole my purse! Catch her. She stole it. It had a hundred silver dollars in it. She knows I see her. Look how she races away. She's the guilty one!"

  "Oh, no, no, Ma. You forgot, remember? You left your purse at home. I saw you hide it up the chimney flue before the nurse brought your breakfast in, and in fact, now you mention it, I had intended to caution you that might not be the very best place for safekeeping, if you forgot and lit a fire. It isn't safe."

  "Haven't got a safe."

  "No, I know you haven't, that's why I'm saying it worries me to hear you say you have all those silver coins—"

  "She keeps the pills in a safe. Fills them up with poison and makes me swallow them so I can't remember. Throw her out the window."

  "Miss Calley is a trying soul, isn't she? Short-tempered, I'm afraid. But be patient, Ma. Nurses are so hard to keep these days, fly off at any excuse. Now, stop, Ma, wait a minute. Let me just look.

  Yes. That must be the fellow they were talking about. Mr. Mr. Wrath?

  No. Mr. Rage. Well, Priss Ransom must be mistaken about them.

  That's all. He seems a perfectly pleasant fellow. Talking a mile a minute. With really a very nice smile."

  "He's the Czar of Russia. They never killed him. The bullets froze in the snow. She slept with horses, Catherine the Great."

  "Ma. I don't like to hear you repeat ugly rumors like that when you can't be really sure about the facts. You're right, he does look Russian. It's the shirt. No, those rumors about Mrs. Abernathy were really quite wide of the mark. It's obvious they are friends. Out here, on the lake for a row, after all. If they were what, hum, they were accused of being, well, they wouldn't be here outdoors!" That settled, Highwick smiled happily. "I must, remind me, I must preach a sermon soon on believing the worst. Susannah in the garden. Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Motes in the eye. Cast the first stone. Glass houses, throwing rocks. Ma! Ma, come back. No, no, don't throw rocks! Oh, ho-ho, such a clown." The clergyman laughed at a morose individual who leaped up from the rock where he'd been sitting, staring at his cigarette, until Mrs. Highwick pelted him in the back with a fair-sized piece of shale. "My mother," explained the rector.

  "Ninety-two! Always joking. And talented! She paints. Every dish in her house has a scene from the Bible on it beautifully done. And on her walls, Creation, Exodus, and halfway through to Paradise.

  That's why she won't move in with me. Ninety-two!" The man snarled and slumped away. "Good-bye now," called the rector after him. "Careful, Ma. I wonder if you should try to do hills, you know.

  Your walker doesn't seem to be made for them. Let me help here."

  "Who are you? Get away from me. You've got a stethoscope in that pocket and you want to listen to my secrets. Nonononononono.

  You give me back my womb and my kidney, then I'll tell you a secret.

  Nebuchadnezzar is right in this garden and he's hanging all the little fishes up to dry. They don't mind, they're so glad to be here. The secret's not here. Nonononono. The secret's in the Promised Land.

  He promised me, but then he took my womb instead. I told her to let me go there. She stole my pictures away from me and put them in her pills. Lock her in the safe. I'll paint the rowing lady, I'll paint her right into Paradise. Yes. Naked and a banana in her mouth. There's a picnic on the sky. Put down the blanket. Yes. The light's so bright.

  We'll eat up the stars. Yes. We'll eat up the sun. Yes. We'll all eat the secret. Nobody will rain. No. Nobody will rain anymore."

  Father Highwick gave his mother's cheerful cheek a kiss.

  "Exactly so." He beamed. "The Promised Land, the secret, yes. But I never would have thought to put it that way. Ah, Ma, dear, what an imagination you have!"

  Down the path they went.

  Having rowed as fast as she could out of sight of Father Highwick exuberantly waving at her from the lake bank, Beanie had hurried Richard back to the apartment that a friend of Charlie Rolfe's had offered them in place of the $200 Charlie owed Rage. The friend wanted someone to sublet his place for a month and love his plants while he studied at a Sufi center in Marin County, California. They had agreed to do so. But Beanie was ashamed and confused now.

  Didn't she owe the rector some explanation? In his beckoning arm she had seemed to see her past call her home to account for herself.

  Her husband, sons, relations, friends, generations of dead Dingleys in the town cemetery all waved in Sloan Highwick's fluttering white jacket like smiling ghosts. That among all the millions of Manhattan strangers he should appear there and at that moment was a sign to her. "I have to go back," she said, and she saw that Richard's heart leaped. Yet he said, "All right, darlin'. Whatever feels right to you."

  "There're more people involved than just me."

  "Can I help?" he asked her, thinking, How could I help? Help her clear away her past for her? Now, when for the first time in his life, Rage felt with an ache the loss of his own past? Must love now cost the two membership just when he was eager to join the community club, the fraternity of generations? Unlike her, he had been long disconnected. He was as rootless as the plastic rubber plant he'd given a neighbor, along with the rest of his mother's furniture, soon after she'd died in Phoenix without disclosing in some whispered confession her son's heritage. There had been no mysterious past bequeathed him on her deathbed. She'd said only, "I'm so sick of feeling rotten," and then died. Long before that, a car had by chance killed his father. No relations, paternal or maternal, had traveled to Phoenix to mourn and eat and share the same memories.

  Not that it had ever occurred to Richard Rage to ask wher
e he came from anyhow. He came from St. Louis, and he grew up in Phoenix, where, having reached the age of exploration, he was more concerned with getting his own ashes hauled than with poking around in those of his ancestors. All he knew was that his paternal grandfather had hated St. Louis, had worked hard all his life, and had been married to a professional martyr. All he knew was that his maternal grandfather had sung sad songs happily when he drank, had drunk himself to death, and had been married to a saint who worked hard all her life.

  There was never a need to know more. No one in Phoenix, no one at Colorado State, no one at the Chicago Star, no one in the Village, no one in America, had ever asked Richard Rage to show his past-port. He became a poet all on his own. No one said he couldn't.

  He could have become anything he wanted to. Success or failure was his for the making. Poetry was his family Bible, Emily Dickinson was his mother, Hart Crane his father. He wrote poems extolling pastlessness, he glorified the land where everyone could rise out of Phoenix nothing but themselves, everyone an empty canvas on a stretcher, and free to paint whatever vision they chose there.

  But now Rage sighed, now that he needed roots, and it was too late to find them now, now that the files were dead. It was all different today, today he was in love and wanted a future, and men who want the future also feel the need of the past. Richard wanted his Beatrice, radiant there by the window nuzzling Big Mutt, to nurse their future. But what (and the thought sent him to the refrigerator for three of the buttermilk biscuits Beanie had baked at dawn), what had he to offer a child, should it be their destiny to have one?

  Milk glass in hand, Rage looked out the window to the sidewalk, where two small boys sat counting stacks of comic books, and imagined a son. His beautiful little Jacob, who would have no birthright to snatch, his son with a pastless father, an Isaac father who knew no more of Grandpa Abraham than that he had cracked peanuts with his teeth and had been run over by a '52 Studebaker. That was no heritage! Rage wished he were Jewish, or Amish, or Lithuanian; something with shared sufferings and joys passed down with recipes. Something instead of this bland mongrel new American-ness that built houses without attics. If only he were an old American, with his trunk with its Civil War saber, its Rough Rider pistol, its Nazi bayonet. Where were the flat yellow satin of a wedding gown, the thick, scratchy phonograph recordings of Caruso and Al Jolson? Where were the Happy Warrior button, the tattered star for the Christmas tree; where were all the ticket stubs and brown photographs and souvenir programs that sum up lives?