Make Believe

by Joanna Scott

  Sooner or later he’d like to come back and be seen again, but for now he’d enjoy himself and explore the emptiness. Maybe his head didn’t hurt so badly anymore. He knelt on the ice, touched his tongue to it, relished the metallic taste of cold, and tried to see all the way to the one place forbidden to angels. There it was, goddamn hell, as dark as the space underneath his new bed.

  Run! Run away from there! So he ran and slipped and fell, dragged himself up off the cold sheet of ice and ran again toward the center of the lake, trying and failing to work up the speed that would enable him to jump high and far enough to reach the other side in a single superman bound. Ice is like a bad joke, like a bully, like a headache, like a story that won’t end. You keep running and slipping and getting nowhere, even if you’re an angel.

  So what you do is step carefully one foot in front of the other like you are sneaking out of your bedroom when everyone else is still asleep. You run away by walking.

  He made slow progress, but when he finally looked back to shore he was surprised by how far he’d actually come. Josie was still heading toward him, stepping delicately across the frozen lake. Somewhere near here Eddie had pulled fishes out of the water, wrenched the hooks from their mouths, and thrown them back. The birds had chortled and beavers slid below the surface with a soft splash. Not now. Everyone and everything had gone away, and Bo was a lonely, wingless angel stranded between Heaven and hell. That was as it should be, for the story had reached the point when anyone listening would start to worry. But Bo, despite his real fear, wasn’t worried, for he knew that any story worth telling has a happy ending, and already enough had happened for him to be convinced that in this story everything would turn out all right in the end. Just the fact that he’d escaped the other story, the one that left him crumpled and not-knowing on the dining room floor, was enough. Having come this far he couldn’t go backward or begin again. So on he went — — and saw the glint of fresh water rippling ahead of him, black water sprinkled with diamonds, a lovely sight that drew him forward, luring him with light, sparkling light that reminded him of the light he’d seen between his fingers when he lay crumpled on the dining room floor and Marge had covered him with her body, weeping over him, calling, Bo, you Bo! as if he were already far away. Then with a roar Eddie had pulled her up, they’d staggered away, locked in each other’s arms, and that gave Bo a chance to escape.

  All life is going somewhere, even when you are sitting in one place, even when you are hanging upside down, even when you are sleeping, so it was funny to Bo how sometimes you go in circles and end up seeing the same light sparkling ahead of you. This comforted him — the simple, unexpected repetition of things — just as the light had comforted him back in the beginning, representing all that was beautiful in the world and drawing him out from underneath the weight of Marge’s body, spurring him to run. He’d run through the lights and out the door and now here were the lights again.

  There is magic and there is what happened. Sometimes the two come together in a glittering sheet stretched out ahead of you, and you run through it, or over it, and are transformed into something else.

  Yet this time Bo didn’t feel the urgency to fly away; there was no Eddie around, no wall, no ceiling he could almost touch. There was just the gray ice, the blue sky and cotton clouds, a far-off voice, a cat stepping toward him across the ice, and the glittering black strip of water ahead. He watched the way the setting sun danced off the edge of the ripples, felt with each sparkle that he was witnessing a magic trick, the black water shedding tears of diamonds that flattened into stepping-stones of light for him to skip across.

  He could do anything, go anywhere, hang upside down in the bubble of a car, pass through walls and dance across the water, and no one could stop him, not even Marge, fat old Marge.

  “Bo!”

  Why, that’s her! Look: she wasn’t just a remembered voice anymore. While Bo had been watching the diamond lights, she’d made her way to the edge of the frozen lake and now stood there bellowing for Bo to come back. But he knew that back there was a deadend crumpled story lying at the foot of a white wall, while here he was near enough to stepping-stones of light and with one giant superman leap could…

  “Don’t!”

  Or fly…

  “Stop! Bo, you Bo!”

  How could she see him when he was an angel, the color of air, and she was Marjory Gantz, whose bulk made the ice crackle like rice in a hot dry pan as she stepped toward him? She was what she was and Bo was no longer what he’d been, yet still Marge managed to point her big fat self in the right direction and approach him. Did it feel to her like walking toward a mirror that should have held her reflection but instead reflected only the background? Walking toward emptiness. Stop, Marge! She drew closer, decorating the ice with silver cracks every time she shifted her weight onto her forward foot. She extended her hand toward Bo as she would have for a timid colt, tempting him to come closer to see what she might be holding. Bo wasn’t fooled. Neither was his cat, who with one last awkward, hindquarter push hurtled herself against Bo’s leg and turned her head to the side so she could rub the slope of her forehead against his pants. Giddy with the pleasure of contact, she tried to curl herself into a knot around his ankle, kept spiraling round and round Bo’s leg, her tail a rope that tightened and then slipped loose. Bo reached down to touch Josie on the nose while the voice of Marge begged him to please come back to the beginning, to a time even before the white wall, a time before Eddie.

  She was only about twenty sliding steps away by then. Bo tried to move in the opposite direction but discovered that somehow Josie had managed to wrap his legs in thread so fine he couldn’t even see it and so strong he couldn’t wiggle free. A web spun by a cat? It was magic, and magic could happen in a story about angels. You, Josie! Evil, clever cat, fooling him with affection while she trapped him.

  “Come on, Bo, come with me. I’ll keep you safe. Please believe me.”

  What should he believe? What should anyone believe?

  To someone standing on shore watching this, the picture might seem a painter’s embellishment: puffy clouds against a deepening blue, late-afternoon sunlight angling from between the far hills across the ice, a young boy standing on the frozen lake, a small black creature — a dog? — dancing around the child’s feet, and a woman scooting slowly toward the pair. But even from a distance of two hundred yards the tense, high pitch of Marge’s voice could be heard, and the onlooker would have to wonder, What is going on? So he’d stop and watch more carefully to make better sense of the scene, and the first thing he’d think strange would be the fact that the boy had left his house without a hat and coat, which would arouse in the man an acute, sympathetic discomfort. He’d immediately blame the woman, for wasn’t it her job to dress the child appropriately? And then he’d conclude from her lumbering manner that she understood her mistake and had come to correct it and call the child inside again. But the child was a defiant sort, apparently and would not come when called. So the woman had no choice but to go out and carry him off the lake herself, and oh would that kid be in for it back home, that rascal, whoever he was. If the man happened to be from around these parts he’d probably recognize the boy, though if he hadn’t lived in Hadleyville for a while he wouldn’t know Bo but most likely would recognize Marge. Marge was an old-timer, she’d lived in the village for more than thirty years and had hardly changed at all, had only grown wider as she’d grown more satisfied with life, though maybe the man would remember her as a lovely young woman, movie-star quality, that’s what people used to say, and once in a while, he might recall, Marge would really get going. If the right music were playing and her mood matched the opportunity she’d dance on tables, she’d spin, yeehaw! and kick her feet up, causing Bo to wonder what she had in mind, kicking her one foot high in the air and then pulling the other one up, too, so for an instant that in Bo’s impression seemed to defy the usual rush of time, she hovered, weightless as an angel, in the air. And then
with an “oof,” she landed splat on her big fat ass, her body folding at her hips, one leg crossing over the other as the ice gave way beneath her, and she plummeted into the black water in a single smooth motion, as though someone had pulled a panel out from beneath her, so from the shore she seemed to have fallen into a space designed by a magician to give the illusion of disappearance, a secret drawer with an exit to the space beneath the stage, voila! She was gone. The man held his breath and waited for her to reappear. The child waited as well, staring at the place where any moment the woman would be standing, intact and dry, as thick and satisfied as ever. Only the dog moved — no, a cat, a cat scampering away from the boy, slipping, dragging itself away from the broken ice back to shore. The man’s disbelief corresponded with his growing awareness, so he went on waiting, telling himself that what had happened couldn’t have happened, not while he was watching. Then it became suddenly, brilliantly clear to him that he must do something, so without considering the peril he stepped out from the shore and swept with agonizing slowness across the ice, the magical ice that was and wasn’t and now was again, though broken, like Bo, who watched the shards of gray ice bob to the surface and understood what had happened. Marge had gone into the water and would never come out again unless he helped her. So he tried to step forward, but the silk spun by Josie the cat would not yield, and he fell forward, catching himself with his hands. He felt the hard surface shifting beneath his weight, and he heard the water slurp and splash in the hole where Marge had disappeared. He moved toward the water until he could stretch out a hand and curl a finger over the ragged edge. The cold! He wouldn’t have believed cold could be so cold! To go into such cold would be much worse than flying headfirst into a wall, no one deserved to endure that cold, and Bo must pull out Marge not the way Eddie pulled out a fish but with his own bare hands.

  He gripped the rim of the ice and pulled himself closer. Cold, slurping hell. Slosh of water. Creak of ice. A gull called above him, called, there, there she is! The glow of her flesh appeared and then receded like a distant torch into the darkness. Stop! Would he have to go after her just like she’d come after him? Would he have to decide not to go into the cold and so prove himself a coward? Still he stretched out farther, stirred the water into a froth with his hand, and then, with the suddenness of a cough, the ice crumbled beneath his chest and he felt himself falling, falling forward into the cold, then falling backward across the ice, sliding, as though the whole surface of the lake had suddenly tilted. Was this what was supposed to happen? It was a true story. Or a fake story. He had slid into the water long ago, in a dream, and so what was happening now was meant to happen. Or he was in the midst of a story told to him, a story he’d made up, or a fairy tale, a riddle, a joke.

  Life had been promised to him — that was the only thing he knew for certain as he felt himself being pulled by one ankle away from Marge, away from the cold and from the hero he might have been. He didn’t struggle as he slid up off the ice and into the embrace of a stranger, a man, a bearded man who clambered up from his knees and with wobbly strides started across the ice, clutching Bo, whispering into his ear, “You goddamn kid, you goddamn stupid kid.” A stranger who was not a stranger. And even though he cursed Bo, he would not hurt him. Bo hung in his arms, let himself go wherever the man cared to take him. This man wearing a faded red baseball cap, this man who smelled of smoke and lemons, this man, a stranger, not Eddie, not anyone Bo knew. This man cursing him. This man carrying him across to the shore. This man did not frighten him because in the only story Bo really believed right then, the story that was happening, this man belonged.

  PART SIX

  Do you hear the rain striking the ice? Do you hear the ice melting and the sputter of whitecaps? Do you hear anything at all? Do you see the gray mist rising from the lake? Can you describe your underwater world, the sleepy fish gliding past in slow motion, the muddy bottom, the liquid cold? Didn’t you know the ice wasn’t thick enough to support your weight? Why weren’t you more careful? Why are you gone, Marge?

  Did you know that your ex-husband was watching you from the shore? Tony Templin, drunk as usual, but not so drunk that he couldn’t stagger across the ice and rescue Bo. Did you see Tony standing there? And what about Eddie? Where was Eddie Gantz while you were drowning?

  Why, he was dialing the phone number of Sam and Erma Gilbert to tell them to come get their grandson — devil child — and take him away. Eddie didn’t want anything more to do with him.

  Where’s Eddie now? Why didn’t he say anything when Sam Gilbert answered the phone yesterday afternoon? Why did he just hang up? What had he done that he didn’t want to admit?

  Tony said that Bo slipped and hit the side of his head on the ice, thus the bruise and swollen eye. But what does Tony know? He’s never sure of anything.

  What do you know, Marge? Do you know why Eddie converted his certificates of deposit to cash this morning? And why is the dining room window cracked? There’s a story that should be told, isn’t there, Marge? What does Ann need to know?

  Tony won’t be much help. He remembers yesterday as a hazy dream—you swooping into the air and falling back through the ice, the blur of sound, a clapping noise like applause at a concert heard from outside the gates, and the kid, your grandson, Tony’s grandson, too, though Tony had to wait until Joe Simmons arrived on the scene to learn about the family connection. Wasn’t it just like Tony to disappear for years at a time and then reappear to watch you drown?

  Listen, Marge: your daughter Ann wants to know why you are gone. She wants to know what you would have done differently in life if you’d had a second chance. What will you miss most? What was your highest bowling score? Why did you marry Eddie Gantz?

  And what about Tony? How did that all start?

  Tony was useless when it came to the facts — he couldn’t say whether or not Marge had recognized him standing on shore, and it turned out he couldn’t for the life of him remember the first time they’d met.

  But you remember, Marge, and Ann wishes she’d paid more attention on those occasions when she was alone with you and you started reminiscing, your cheeks puffing with a mixture of pride and love and scorn as you thought about your misguided sense of the future back then, mid-1960s and you were already an old maid, twenty-seven years old and single because no man was good enough to be your mate, not until Tony came along, snappy Tony Templin who happened to be sitting next to you on a Hudson-line train that stalled en route to Albany. As luck would have it — that’s what you used to say about meeting Tony Templin. As luck would have it, he was sitting in the seat across the aisle from you, and the train broke down and didn’t budge for two hours.

  You married him because you loved his promises; that’s what you told Ann. You told her other things, too. She wishes she’d been paying more attention. She would listen now, Marge, if you’d just set the record straight and begin at the beginning, the stalled train, Tony sitting across the aisle, the two of you talking — and then what?

  Something about Tony reading your address on your suitcase tag and calling you the next day.

  Ann hadn’t paid attention to you, Marge, because she didn’t want to hear you go on about your foolishness. Clucking, shaking your head, chiding yourself for believing Tony Templin’s pack of lies. All those promises about happiness, and that billboard on a hill near your rented house in Penn Yan, an advertisement showing a young couple buzzing along in a motorboat — for a while that billboard was the image of Tony’s promises. And then and then and then.

  Marge, tell Ann what happened. Tell it start to finish, and while you’re at it let your daughter know that her suspicion is right: Eddie Gantz is to blame for everything.

  Does anyone know where Eddie is?

  Do you hear the slight hissing sound of melting ice? It is supposed to rain through Sunday, and then another cold front will move down from Canada. The divers must find you before the ice seals the lake for the winter.

  Tony isn’t sure w
hat happened — all he knows is that he arrived at the lake in time to see Marge fall through the ice, that the child he carried to safety is his own grandson, and that the mother of the child, his eldest daughter, died in a car accident nineteen months ago.

  Bo went up to the city hospital with his other grandparents to be checked over. Eddie wants nothing to do with him and last night called the law office of Krull and Krull and left a message on their machine directing them to drop the malpractice case against the hospital. Just like that. Paul Krull called this morning to talk it out, but Eddie had already left.

  Ask Eddie and he’d say, Leave judgment to Almighty God. So where is Eddie anyway? Whatever he’d done, his sin had not been so grave that the merciful Lord saw fit to consume him in punishment. Eddie escaped unharmed. Not Marge, though. The way Eddie told it to Joe Simmons last night, Bo was a devil child who had lured Marge out onto the thin ice and laughed when she fell through.

  No, Tony had corrected him — Bo hadn’t been laughing. But what did Tony know for sure?

  He knew about the beef Stroganoff Marge used to make back in the old days. Her roast duck. Her Sally Lunns and soda bread, her corn dodgers and mont blanc and blancmange and pineapple soufflé. The good old days.

  Ask Marge’s next-door neighbor Dorrie Jelilian, and she’ll tell you about how at the end of a meal Marge would fill finger bowls with water scented with geranium leaves. Marge could entertain like you wouldn’t believe!