The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  I lower my eyes. Mrs. Wiggins nudges my leg.

  “I’m fine now, really,” Mom says.

  “No you’re not. You have a fever. You should be in bed.”

  Mom touches his back, but he doesn’t feel it.

  “I don’t want to know what you did,” Dad goes on, “or why you thought you had to sneak out! I don’t want to hear anything about your fantasies . . . your fairy tales. I’m tired of all of it!”

  “Paul!”

  “You either want to be part of this family or you don’t.”

  Are they kicking me out? Should I leave?

  When Mom touches him again, he takes a deep breath and turns to face her. “I know, I know,” he says, patting her hand. “It’s just so damn frustrating.”

  It’s always been the two of them. Maybe they never wanted to have kids. Maybe Lauren and I were accidents. They’d probably be happier without us. Maybe they’d live on a tropical beach somewhere. Mom would paint all day and Dad would learn to play the ukulele.

  “We love you, Lily,” he says. “We were worried about you. That’s not so hard to understand, is it?”

  “I love you too.”

  “Good. Now take a shower and go to your room.” Dad rubs the back of his neck.

  “Keep the splint out of the water,” Mom adds.

  Later, Dad writes me an excuse, and Lauren takes it to school where she’ll tell everyone that her weirdo sister spent the night at the bottom of the quarry pit.

  I stay in my room and read.

  By ten a.m., Mom’s temperature is normal again and Dad goes to work. After lunch, she takes me to the doctor who puts another cast on my arm. He’s surprised to see me again so soon, and when he says so, Mom blushes.

  I have a slight concussion, but it’s “nothing a few days of rest won’t cure.”

  I’m still in trouble when we get back, so I’m sent to my room. Mom brings me dinner, magazines, and aspirin. Finally she reads me a chapter from Robinson Crusoe, but I still can’t sleep.

  Because my arm hurts.

  Because it rains, and it’s a beautiful sound, and I don’t want to stop listening.

  Because it’s a full moon and I love full moons.

  I sit at the end of my bed, petting Mrs. Wiggins. We both bite our tongues when a fire engine races through the neighborhood. By my radio alarm clock, it’s 2:00 a.m.

  Exactly.

  * * *

  Beep . . . beep . . . beep.

  The sun is rising. I rub my eyes, get out of bed, and walk to the window.

  “Back her up . . . back it up . . . a little more . . . little more,” Howard, the garbage man, calls to the driver of the truck. “There you go. You got her.”

  Dogs bark. Cans rattle and bang. Howard looks around self-consciously. He’s making a lot of noise, and it’s early.

  A dark blue Cadillac inches down Crawford Heights Boulevard, then stops in front of him. The driver points at his sandals. Both of them laugh.

  “Whatcha looking at?” Dad asks, walking into my room. His cup of coffee smells good. He looks over my shoulder and laughs. “Holy Howard loves his sandals, doesn’t he?” He takes a noisy sip. “Hair’s getting long; sure wish I could let myself go. Maybe if I quit my job and put you kids up for adoption.” He blows on my ear. “Just kidding, Lil.”

  I swallow a tear. “I want to be part of this family,” I announce, strong and clear.

  Dad kisses the top of my head. “I’m glad,” he says.

  The garbage guy looks at my window and waves. Dad waves back; I give Howard the Vulcan greeting with my good hand, then take a deep breath and ask, “How’s Mom?”

  “Still cutting the old z’s. She isn’t going to be happy about that, though.” He reaches over my shoulder and traces the masking tape letters in the window. “I’M . . . NOT . . . HERE,” Dad reads. “Bass-ackward.”

  “I’m . . . not . . . here,” I echo.

  “Who did you write it for?” Dad asks, taking another sip of coffee. “Or is that whom?”

  “No one.” It’s my first lie of the day.

  “I’m not here sort of announces that you are, doesn’t it?” He looks concerned. “You must have written it for someone.”

  Lauren stands in my bedroom doorway. Her red hair is in curlers; it’s picture day at school. “She wrote it for the exchange student,” Lauren says.

  I did not. “I did not.”

  When my sister rolls her eyes at me, cherries, bananas, and apples spin like a slot machine. “Mom says Lily’s been smiling at that Luca kid who’s staying with Mrs. Lockhart.”

  “Scram, Lima Bean.”

  “He’s Scandinavian,” she adds.

  Dad’s face relaxes. “Scandinavian, huh?”

  I shrug.

  “That makes sense. You like Victor Borge. And Hans Christian Andersen, of course; he had a big imagination too.”

  “Only those guys are Danes and Luca’s Swedish,” I say.

  He smiles, happy I’m acting like other girls my age.

  Dad’s okay. Maybe I’ll tell him about Jesus someday. How I used to believe Him when He said He loved me, but I don’t anymore.

  “How’s the arm?”

  “All right.” I look out the window as the garbage truck inches down the hill. Holy Howard grabs a handle and hooks a ride.

  “Scrape off the sticky tape stuff before your mother sees it,” Dad says from my doorway. “If you don’t, she’ll—what do you kids call it?—freak out. Yeah, that’s it.” When was I ever one of the kids? I guess Dad figures now that I’m fifteen, even a young fifteen, there’s an even smaller chance he’ll understand me.

  The garbage truck has stopped. The gears squeak and growl as it backs uphill and stops in front of our house again. Did they forget something? Yeah. One trash lid is crooked, but the other isn’t. They forgot a can. Only this time Holy Howard doesn’t pick it up, the driver—the outline behind the steering wheel—does.

  Jesus.

  Not Hey-Seuss, but the real one. SOG. In His long tattered robe, beard, and stringy hair. He looks at my window and waves.

  I freeze in place, staring at Him. If I don’t blink or move, maybe He won’t see me.

  Stop looking, I tell myself. He isn’t there anyway.

  But He is. Bending over to pet Edgar.

  It’s going to take time, but “nothing worthwhile comes easily,” Gramma Frieda said in her last letter from Miami. Of course, she was talking about the three months left until eighty-year-old Lou Merkin’s divorce became final and they would be free to move in with each other. “Sans marriage!” Mom scoffed. “Must be putting LSD in the water down there.”

  “Lily? One more thing?” Dad sticks his head in my room again. “Your mother and I talked, and things are going to be different from now on.”

  “Yeah,” Lauren says, suddenly digging through my sock drawer. “They’re locking you up.”

  Outside, the garbage truck honks. I smile nervously.

  “School, Lauren? . . . No one’s locking you up, Lily. You’re staying right here. We’re going to take better care of you, that’s all. Maybe get you another prescription, something that won’t interfere with your schoolwork but will help you sleep through the night. Help all of us sleep through the night.”

  I’m better, I want to say. I won’t bark or act strange anymore. I’m kissing boys now. I don’t need more pills. I’m even writing a story about Beauty and Allison—one story, not a hundred. And next time SOG shows up—I glance outside. Jesus is hitching a ride on the garbage truck, holding His free hand over His eyes to shield them from the sun, looking for me at the window—I’ll pretend I don’t see Him and He’ll go away.

  “But Dad, I won’t—”

  “No buts, Lily.”

  “Okay. I guess.”

  “Jah?” Dad says in a corny Scandinavian accent.

  “Jah.”

  Chapter 30

  On Mars

  I’m drawing when my family leaves the house to go shopping. Dad is
home early today. He hates the stores and Lauren hates to tag along, but they do it anyway. Mom insisted. “Teenagers need their privacy,” she said. Meaning me.

  She left a note on the kitchen table, under a new flashlight with a tag that has my name on it. It’s a family rule that we all have workable torches. That’s what they call flashlights in England, you know.

  The Besiegers gave away three hundred autographed torches at a concert in Blackpool last year because the fire marshal didn’t want people waving lighters and matches around. I heard one autographed torch later sold for two hundred dollars.

  Back by 5, the note reads. No sweets. Dinner at 7.

  The drapes are closed, each door is locked. The house is dark, quiet, and cool. I walk through the kitchen, opening and closing each drawer and cupboard like I used to.

  Still do.

  Sometimes do.

  Things get out, I remind myself, things get in, but maybe I don’t believe it anymore. Some things are born in you—determined to keep you company, while other stuff can’t get in no matter how much it tries. For a long time my body needed to do the opening-and-closing thing every night. It was like eating or peeing, even waking me up if I forgot.

  Buddha said, “Everything changes.”

  On the front porch, the mailbox is stuffed to overflowing. In addition to the bills, and the latest issues of Sunset and TV Guide, there is a postcard to Mom from Connie Marks in Puerto Vallarta. She doesn’t mention Rusty or Judy or her mean old husband, just getting sunburned, drinking margaritas, and some guy named Bill. She sounds happy, and signs off, Nice to hear from you.

  Mom knows where the Markses live?

  My grades are in the mail too, but I don’t open the envelope. I’m not worried; I get good marks. Since the car accident, my teachers mail home a progress report each month. They occasionally complain about things like my “stubborn lack of participation in group projects,” but admire my “unique take on almost every subject.” My English teacher once called me, “naïve and willful, but romantic and artistic too.” Mom smiled when she read that part, but Dad didn’t like it.

  I place the mail beside me on the uncomfortable wrought-iron love seat he gave her for Valentine’s last year and stick my fingers between its lacy patterns. Closing my eyes, I trace the leafy curves with my mind. I’m almost asleep when I feel someone standing in front of me.

  A quarry man in coveralls. “Excuse me,” he says, holding out the dogtooth. His halo winks under the bright yellow hard hat. “We found this at the bottom of the pit, and figured it was probably yours.”

  “We?” I stand up and look at him. The raised porch makes me taller than my almost five-foot-nine.

  His work clothes don’t fool me. “First you’re a garbage man, then you’re a quarry guy? This isn’t Halloween. I know who you are.”

  SOG shakes His hand with the tooth in it. Holding out His arms in that familiar, “Blessed are the children for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God” pose, His teeth twinkle like a Pepsodent ad, and at His feet are plump awestruck curly haired white kids, more like cherubs than the Israelites we learned about in scripture class.

  He shakes the tooth again.

  “I don’t want it,” I say calmly. “I left it there on purpose.”

  He’s nervous and fidgety. He shakes a leg until His halo slips down His pant leg, then picks it up and sticks it in His pocket. “Damn thing,” He mumbles.

  “Didn’t you see my message?” I step off the porch and point to my second-story window with the sticky tape residue of I’m Not Here.

  Not that I expected Him to read it. Not that He ever pays attention to His flock. That’s what he calls us, you know: flock, sheep. No one seems to mind that sheep are dumb, but I do.

  He still holds out the tooth.

  “I said I don’t want it.”

  “I know, but it’s yours.” He tosses it to me, and walks off. I follow Him a few yards.

  “I gave it to Beauty!” I stop to yell. “Put it back where you found it!” I throw the tooth at Him but it lands in the boxwood where it glows like Kryptonite.

  Yeah, I throw like a girl, so what?

  No one would ever lock Jesus up, stick Him in pajamas or wire jumper cables to His head. If He sees the Son of God, He’s only looking in the mirror. I’m already a weirdo. Dr. Giraffe hasn’t threatened to put me in a big white house with nurses and crazy people yet, but I’ve seen enough TV to know how it goes.

  “Go away,” I yell, “and never come back!” The words burn my lips and dig little quarry pits in my heart. “I’m not your friend. I won’t be crazy! And you can’t make me!”

  Neighborhood dogs bark. The mailman, walking down the opposite side of the street, stops to look at me. My whole body shakes, though I don’t cry.

  SOG walks toward me again.

  The phone rings. I let it. It’s only Mrs. Singer checking up on me. The family car is gone, and I was shouting; I’m a troubled kid. “A little confused, a little disturbed,” Dr. Giraffe told my parents. “Some people are. It’s a disturbing world, why shouldn’t they be? Treatable, definitely treatable.”

  Mrs. Wiggins’s tail slats the front door behind me.

  Does SOG hear it too? He stops a couple of feet away and stares over my shoulder. He looks angry close up. Has He always looked mad but I never noticed?

  Mrs. Wiggins gave me her tooth. She gave me her last breath. Even dead, she saved my life, bringing me back to shore alive, while Dad rowed around in circles. Okay, the boat only had one oar but Jesus could have helped. He could have created another one; what kind of miracle would that take?

  When I look, she’s not there. When I don’t, she is.

  I’m alone with her. I’m alone without her.

  Mrs. Wiggins can be my god, she can be my Jesus. “She’s all I need,” I say to SOG. “You can go.”

  “False prophets,” SOG replies, smiling sarcastically.

  “False prophets?” He rarely talks Bible-ese. “Are you quoting yourself? Didn’t You tell me You don’t remember saying half that stuff in the New Testament?”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you, Lily.”

  Disappointed? I never considered that. Wasn’t He just being Himself? He always hated His job description.

  “Go away, SOG.” He still flinches at the nickname. “I can’t worship someone who doesn’t worship me.”

  I don’t know why I said that, I don’t even know what it means, but I wish I’d said it to Grandma Frieda too, to Mr. Marks, to Judy, to the mean kids at school and every jerk who ever treated me like I was some kind of dummy.

  * * *

  Jesus whistles the theme to The Andy Griffith Show as He stumbles down our street and His boots and coveralls melt away, the same old yellowing robe, bare feet, and halo appearing underneath. Dad’s new red Pontiac drives past Him, the silhouettes of my parents and sister framed in the midafternoon light, the backseat full of grocery sacks.

  They’ve been shopping for tomorrow, my sixteenth birthday.

  On my last birthday, Jesus popped out of the cake the way strippers do in old movies, but He left a huge hole in the top that collapsed it. No one noticed and Mom cut irregular slices. I know it shouldn’t matter, but between that and Jesus sticking the birthday candles up His nose, I excused myself and went to my room.

  If I’d only ignored Him when He first crawled through the tear in my window screen; not listened when He told me everything was fine, that “the kids who call you weirdo don’t have jungles in their closets or bulters under their beds, that’s all.” If Jesus had gone away for a month or two, maybe fishing with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head like He does in Chapter 3, instead of coming and going from my room anytime He wanted to, I might be an almost-normal almost-sixteen-year-old.

  * * *

  Jesus is off to another neighborhood, another house, another girl’s bedroom.

  At her window, He’ll dazzle her with His sharp white teeth, then wiggle through an insect-sized rip in her windo
w screen. He’ll entertain her with hand shadows and tell her stories she’s never heard before.

  It’s the first time she’ll be alone in her room with a boy.

  When Jesus acts sad, she’ll feel sorry for Him, like I did, and try to help. He’ll convince her that she’s special, and she’ll believe it until something terrible happens.

  Something He could stop but doesn’t, because Jesus keeps His miracles close to His chest.

  And none of them are for you.

  * * *

  My room is enough (for now).

  Its sky is wide, blue, and warm. Its horizon cluttered with windmills, pagodas, circus tents, and palm trees.

  Books are enough. Poems. Stories.

  Paint. Pencils. Paper.

  Numbers are enough.

  Patterns.

  Luca says I have the mind of a scientist. “On Mars!” he snorts.

  The Swedes have a strange sense of humor.

  When I asked if he’d left the rose on my windowsill, Luca said no. Dad hadn’t either. I dried its petals and glued them in my scrapbook.

  When a rose appeared on my windowsill each odd-numbered day after, I left them there to dry and blow away.

  On the coldest day of my sixteenth year, a heart appeared on my frosty bedroom window, with pi = 3.142 written in the middle.

  The next day I cut out a life-sized paper lab coat—with the name tag Dr. Lily Asher, Scientist, Stockholm General Hospital—and taped it to the closet mirror. Each day I stand before it and recite:

  Dr. Lily Asher.

  Former weirdo. Present weirdo.

  Brilliant, tall, and exceedingly well read.

  E-Book Extras

  A Note from the Author

  Discussion Guide

  A Note from the Author

  I suppose everybody feels like an outsider sometimes.

  I was the tallest girl in grade school and junior high, self-conscious and shy but stubbornly rebellious. Killer combo. I've never outgrown being uncomfortable in my own skin.

  Lily Asher, the artistic reclusive heroine of my novel The Shark Curtain, will probably never feel comfortable in her skin either. While the 13-16-year-old is an outsider-squared, living as much in her imagination as in her loving but dysfunctional family, something is still Not. Quite. Right. In another time, this one perhaps, smart, funny, frustrating Lily might be diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive, autistic, bipolar, possibly even schizophrenic. But growing up in the middle-class suburbs of northeast Portland, Oregon, in the 1960s, Lily is simply, poignantly . . . a weirdo.