The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  Lauren and I love westerns. The Rifleman is especially good on our new color TV. Dad said the star of the show, Chuck Connors, used to be a professional baseball player, like Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.

  The front door’s suddenly thrown open with a bang. Dad’s home.

  Lauren and I look at each other nervously. I turn down the volume when he opens the fridge, grabs a beer, and pops the cap, letting it fly across the kitchen floor. There is white gauze wrapped around his hand.

  Before they were canceled, McHale’s Navy and F Troop were Dad’s favorite TV shows. They always made him laugh.

  “Kit?”

  “Right here,” Mom says, walking in from the backroom with the laundry basket. She heads to the stove where she preheats the oven. Dad stands in front of his place setting, staring at the newspaper article she has put there. They mumble something, but Dad’s tone is sarcastic when he says, “I said congratulations, Kit. Didn’t you hear me?”

  Mom takes his chilled salad bowl out of the fridge and places it on the table.

  “Isn’t that something,” Dad says, sitting down. “You told a reporter you were born in Sibiu. You even mentioned that your family died in a concentration camp. You won’t discuss it with me or Frieda or the girls but you tell the whole damn town?”

  “Lily? Close the front door for me?” Mom says.

  Outside, steam rises off the hood of Dad’s car and rain gurgles through the gutter.

  “If you read a little closer, Paul, you’ll see that the article isn’t really about me. It’s about the contest.” Mom stands up straighter. “The museum board loved my painting, why shouldn’t I be flattered? But their goal is to support local artists. Isn’t that fantastic?”

  “It’s only an amateur contest, Kit. It’s not a serious competition.”

  Mom puts down the laundry basket.

  “Hell, tell the newspapers whatever you want,” Dad says. “I don’t give a damn.”

  “What’s going on, Paul?”

  Lauren curls herself around a throw pillow.

  “Paul?”

  “Nothing’s going on. You won a contest. You’re a pretty woman so they put your picture in the paper. Happens every day.”

  I don’t have to see Mom’s face to know her feelings are hurt. “I see you found someone to bandage your hand.”

  “There was a first aid kit at work.”

  Mom sticks Dad’s foil-covered dinner plate in the oven and sets the timer.

  “The reporter must have interviewed you, what, on Monday? I suppose Connie Marks was in on it.”

  “In on it? You mean the conspiracy to embarrass you?” Mom’s hands shake when she stubs out her smoke. “No, Mr. Supportive. I didn’t tell anyone because I wanted it to be a surprise. Silly me, I thought it would be more fun that way.” She looks my way but doesn’t see me. “The painting is in the lobby of the new Bank of America downtown. It’ll be there for a month.”

  There’s a better view of the kitchen from the back of the couch. Maybe I’ll put this scene in one of the stories I’m writing. Maybe I’ll write a play. Mom took Lauren and me to Charley’s Aunt last week; Antigone the week before.

  “My painting will be there for a month,” Mom repeats. “Maybe we should all pile in the car and go see it.”

  Lauren claps.

  Dad looks at the paper again and asks, “How much longer till dinner’s hot?”

  When Mom sits down, her shoulders slump forward. She looks tired and small. “Paul?”

  “For God’s sake, Kit. We don’t have money for you to go to art school.”

  “Who said anything about school? The prize was free classes with—”

  “Christmas is next month, and you just bought the new Mediterranean bedroom suite.”

  “We bought the new bedroom suite. We decided together. We had the money, you said. You said you liked it; you said you were sleeping better.”

  “And what about the house in Crawford Heights? Aren’t you still talking to a real estate agent?”

  Mom turns pale. “What’s going on?”

  “Can’t you guess, Kit? Do I look like Daddy Warbucks? Do you really think I make enough money for everything we want to do? Think about it, Kit.”

  “Stop lecturing me and talk to me. You promised me you were done gambling, so what happened? Was it a poor stock investment or something? We’ll figure it out, Paul. We can tighten our belts around here.”

  “A poor stock investment?” Dad laughs. “Jesus, Kit, you’re so busy being an award-winning ar-teest that you stopped paying attention. The bank. The checkbook—”

  The checkbook. I hate that word.

  “The girls, Paul,” Mom interrupts quietly. “Not in front of the girls.”

  “Go to bed, kids,” Dad says, without looking at us.

  He’s yelling at Mom—we’re not going anywhere.

  “Paul?”

  “Nothing’s going on, damn it.” The phone rings. “Jesus Christ, is there something wrong with wanting a little peace and quiet in your own home?”

  The phone keep ringing. Lauren jumps off the couch and tears down the hall to our parents’ bedroom. All of us listen when she picks up the receiver and says, “Asher residence.”

  “No autographs!” Dad yells. “Picasso’s not home!”

  Mom stands up, walks across the kitchen, takes the ticking oven timer off the back of the stove, and hands it to Dad. “When the bell goes off,” she says calmly, “your dinner will be hot. Again. The salad dressing is in the fridge door. You obviously know where the beer is.” She takes a sweater out of the hall closet. “Ask the girls for help if you can’t figure it out.” When she opens the front door I hear the rain, falling even harder. “I’ll be at Connie’s.”

  “It’s November, Kit,” Dad says. “You’re wearing flip-flops.”

  “It’s just next door.”

  “Damn it, Kit. You didn’t let me explain.”

  “I gave you more chances than you’d give me. Let’s talk when you have a civil tongue in your head.” She slips out so quietly no one hears the door open or close.

  * * *

  When Mom returns, Dad’s still sitting at the table. Next to him is his cold dinner and the Home and Arts section of the Oregon Journal.

  He barely touched the beef Stroganoff. His hand must hurt because he made a face when he picked up the fork.

  Lauren and I sit in the new love seat thumbing through a stack of National Geographics. I’m reading about Cuban cigars, the migration patterns of hummingbird moths, and staring at the black skeletal wing markings of the North African sphinx moth, when Mom kicks a kitchen chair.

  Lauren and I both jump.

  “Goddamn it, Paul. Can’t you be happy for me? Aren’t you proud of me?”

  “I am, Kit.” His chair squeaks when he stands up. “I’m sorry. Something happened—”

  “I figured that. Something big, right? Well, here’s something else that happened, Paul. Something else you won’t like. When I got to Connie’s house, I went to pieces. I cried. I told them everything. I’m sorry if that embarrasses you.” The kitchen falls quiet. “How could you talk to me like that? You know how much painting means to me. I don’t care about some gaudy bedroom suite.”

  “I wanted you to have it. I want to give you everything,” Dad replies softly.

  Mom says the love between a man and a woman is the most important thing in the world. Though I bet right now she’d rather live in an artists’ colony, like the childless divorcée in the book she’s reading.

  Usually after they fight, Dad compliments her on everything for a couple of days. Once, I even heard him tell Mr. Marks how Mom was a “smart, progressive parent” who “reads up on schizophrenia and personality disorders, and signed us up for appropriate treatment.”

  By us, he means me.

  They’ll be at it for a while, so Lauren and I put ourselves to bed in their new Mediterranean bedroom suite. The lamp is on across the room, and we face each other with our
eyes open, but we don’t talk. Lauren’s face is a galaxy of freckles: some big and close-up, others small and far away. I invent constellations for them: Frieda’s Chevrolet, Einstein’s Towel Closet, The Dill Pickle.

  The night she slipped over the edge at Crawford Quarry—and standing tiptoe on a crumbling shelf, she spoke my name so quietly I didn’t hear it at first—I loved her till my heart hurt.

  Tonight, when Lauren yawns and rolls away from me, the room fills with the high-pitched purring of giant moth wings, and I say a prayer, thanking God for my sister, even when she’s mean to me.

  * * *

  I wake up in my own bed with Mom kissing me goodnight. “How are you feeling?” she asks, happy again.

  I touch my tailbone. “Fine.” I think of Dad digging at his hand. Everyone has secrets. “What was Sibiu like?”

  “It was beautiful. Old and important once, but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember much—it was such a long time ago.”

  I reach for her hand, turn it over, and with my finger write T-R-Y in her palm.

  “All right. Once upon a time . . . wait. You’re the one with the imagination,” she says. “Why don’t you tell me what it was like?”

  N-O, I write.

  Mom says she only thinks of Romania when she paints, “but I’ll . . .” She writes T-R-Y in my hand this time. She kicks off her flip-flops and climbs into bed beside me.

  “I can tell you that Mother was pretty and our father was tall and handsome like Daddy. Jamie and I never saw them again after they put us on the train for Bulgaria . . . to Sofia actually, the capital. I was the oldest so our parents gave me a little money for food and directions to a Christian boarding school where Jamie and I would live. Everyone was wonderful. Along with our studies, they taught us to sew and cook. We were lucky, Lily, so lucky! Jewish children everywhere were being rounded up and—” She stops. “It didn’t matter that we were Jewish; they took care of us. More Romanians than Bulgarians were killed during the war. We were safer there.”

  “Did you and Jamie share a room?”

  “For the first year. After that, they moved Jamie to a dorm with girls her age, but we saw each other all the time. We had dumplings on Sunday, and strudel once a month, and each Christmas we were given knitted gloves and scarves and hats, even new coats if we needed them.” She pauses. “Haven’t I told you all this before?”

  Yes. But I don’t want her to stop.

  “I was fifteen and Jamie was ten when Frieda’s church sponsored us coming to Oregon. We stayed with several nice church families and finished school, but we were too old to be adopted. Jamie earned a scholarship to college, and I worked as a secretary, and modeled for White Stag and Jantzen.” She’ll never tell me about Sibiu, but that’s okay. “Remember how your father and I met when I was modeling?”

  Of course. I nod.

  “The rest, as they say, is history.”

  I don’t ask how lonely and scared she must have been, or which church families took them in. Or why she doesn’t go to the synagogue now that the war’s over and she can worship whoever she wants.

  It’s a good story, but I know what really happened: Wolves kidnapped Jamie and Mom because they were beautiful and smart; they wanted to keep the girls for themselves. While they lived in the forest, Mom painted tiny little portraits of the animals and framed each one with twigs and vines. And Jamie wrote poetry and taught the wolves how to play the guitar so they could accompany themselves when they howled at the moon.

  * * *

  It’s Sunday, the last day of Thanksgiving vacation.

  Christmas vacation starts in twenty-four days. Next Thursday, Lauren and I open the first window of our Advent calendars. No big deal, it’s always a candy cane.

  Today is cold and drizzly; yucky weather for hanging the Christmas lights like Dad promised he would. He’s been “up since early morning,” says Mom, handing me her bathroom wastebasket.

  Dad stands at the far end of the yard around the burn barrel, sipping coffee and stirring smoldering leaves and garbage with a pitchfork. An occasional flame stretches above the barrel’s rusty lip, brightening his face.

  I shake Mom’s trash over the fire and look in. Her lipstick-blotted tissues are lightest and burn fastest. A perfect red kiss floats up, suspended in front of me, before turning to cinder, then air. Dad sees it too and clears his throat. “Morning, kiddo,” he says. “Warm enough?”

  I pull my jacket tighter.

  Dad hasn’t shaved, or combed his hair. He glances nervously toward the house where Mom stands in the kitchen window, cutting banana slices over Lauren’s cereal. He catches my eye then throws a large stained paper bag into the burning barrel.

  “Stand back!” he shouts.

  Sparks fly, and I smell turkey and know it’s the greasy turkey carcass Frieda insisted Mom bring home after Thanksgiving dinner. Gramma hates to waste anything. “This would make a great soup broth,” she said. As the carcass burns, the corn stuffing sizzles and smokes. It smells awful.

  Dad burns the empty cardboard box marked Goodwill. I feel like a traitor to my old toys, but poor kids can love them now. If God really loved us, each child would have something to play with. I toss my crucifix into the burning barrel.

  “Lily!” Dad cries, fishing it out with his pitchfork. “What are you . . . ?” He blows on the necklace, and then juggles it back and forth in his gloved hands. After a minute he holds it out and, wrinkling his eyebrows, says, “Here.”

  I open my hand; he drops it in.

  “Whatever you’re going through right now, the necklace was a gift from your grandmother. It’ll mean something someday. Keep it.”

  I put the necklace back in my pocket. “It’s a crucifix. I didn’t even think you liked Jesus.”

  “What I don’t like is you throwing away a present. It was a thoughtful gesture. It cost money. As for Jesus, I never said I didn’t like Him. He kept His eye on you at Peace Lake, didn’t He?”

  Not really. I take Mrs. Wiggins’s tooth out of my other pocket.

  “The tooth! You still have it. I thought you got rid of it after that . . . incident with the Savage boy.”

  Mike Savage. His name makes my heart race. “No. Would you make a necklace out of it?”

  “Sure. Got an extra chain?”

  I nod. “How long will it take?”

  “Not long. I’ll borrow a bit from the neighbor. I should have it ready by dinner.”

  “Groovy.” I hand him the tooth and he smiles.

  “Kind of a lucky rabbit’s foot, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” I dig the crucifix out of my pocket. “Want it? Maybe it could be your lucky rabbit’s foot.”

  “No thanks, sweetie,” Dad says, pointing at his wedding ring. “Got one.”

  * * *

  I’m not surprised when Jesus climbs through the new window screen that night, snagging His robe, scratching His arms. “Here’s the deal,” He says. “You’ve got to cut me some slack. I’m doing the best I can.”

  SOG drags His fingers through His hair. I read an article in Dr. Giraffe’s office about people who have long, thin fingers. Artistic and sensitive, the writer called them.

  Outside, Mrs. Merton’s automatic sprinkler system starts up, which it does for an hour every night, even when it’s cold and rainy, because she doesn’t know how to turn it off.

  “Everyone bad-mouths me,” Jesus says, patting His chest. The sound echoes through Him like Mom thumping a watermelon at Piggly Wiggly. “I don’t know the answers to everything.”

  “But aren’t you supposed to?”

  “It’s the tail, isn’t it? And the bark?” SOG shakes His head. “Nature’s in you up to your eyeballs, Lily. It’s a gift.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  We look at each other for a minute. Then He sighs, and climbs out my window again, squirming and grunting like He’s pulling on a wet swimsuit.

  * * *

  Between Thanksgiving vacation and Christmas vacation, I come hom
e from school to find Mom crying three times:

  Tuesday, December 2, 3:37 p.m., the same rainy afternoon of the same rainy morning I found her new pillows and bedspread with matching skirt in big plastic bags by the front door. Mom wiped away her tears, but her face was red and puffy.

  Wednesday, December 3, 3:42 p.m., when three guys in baseball caps carried the new Mediterranean bedroom suite, the wingback chairs, and the new TV out to the big red furniture truck parked in our driveway. I found Mom crying over the bathroom sink, redoing her eyeliner. Crying. Redoing her eyeliner. Crying. I sat on the toilet and watched.

  Monday, December 16, 4:05 p.m., when Mom got off the phone after canceling the check that stopped the delivery order on the new hideaway couch I didn’t know we were getting.

  “It’s foolish to cry; they’re just things,” Mom said. “I always say that, don’t I, Lily? Just things?”

  I nodded, but Mom was embarrassed and hoped our neighbors didn’t notice.

  Judy did. “Got repo’d, huh?” But I didn’t answer. I pretended she was talking to someone else, or just moving her lips.

  I like ignoring Judy. I like walking away from her too.

  I know what “repo” means, and so does Lauren. When Dad told us to think of it as an adventure and there’d be “no TV again until late January,” Lauren locked herself in her room. I’m thankful we don’t have to watch another Andy Williams Christmas Show, especially if Claudine Longet and the Osmonds are going to be on. The Osmonds are creepy, Claudine talks in whispers, and Andy sings “Moon River” on every stupid show.

  I’m okay with no gifts or Christmas tree too, but I don’t understand why we have to put out Frieda’s decorations when she’s in Florida this year. On the end table next to the couch is the red felt skirt she made us, with green zigzag rickrack on the hem. And on top of that is a mirror lake, surrounded by a family of pinheaded silver reindeer standing in angel-hair snowdrifts, looking at their reflections. Frieda’s crocheted Christmas stockings hang over our fireplace. Everybody thinks they’re ugly, but we still use them.

  A box came from Florida in the mail last week. “I hope Frieda didn’t send another afghan,” Mom laughs, and everyone joins in but not too much because “we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it’s been crocheting three hours every night since Halloween.”