Gene looked at his wife. There was something in her face he had never noticed before but would always see from this day on. If he had to name it, he would call it “grim determination,” but even this description seemed to fall short. Amy was an attractive woman, but the set of the jaw and the cast of her eyes undercut her beauty. It was as if another Amy, the “real” Amy Underhill, had surfaced at last. Gene felt a sinking sensation in his abdomen, which he misconstrued as excitement.
When they were at an altitude where only stunted dwarf trees grew, they stopped and got out of the truck. There were a few beetle-killed trees, none of them more than twelve feet tall, on the upslope side of the truck. Gene went after these with the smaller of his saws. Amy took the children for a walk to gather berries. She herded them across screes of unstable shale, through thick, angry patches of scrub pine, across snowfields, and, finally, to a sheltered area where an abundance of huckleberry bushes grew. She gave the children a large plastic bag each. “Fill them with berries,” she said, “while daddy cuts a load of wood. Then we’ll go into town and eat at McDonald’s. You’ll have a real appetite by then.”
She walked swiftly back to the truck, which was half loaded with firewood. “Shut off that saw and let’s go!” she yelled at Gene, who was about to fell another dwarf tree.
Gene switched off his saw. “Hey, no sense in going back with half a load,” he said, grinning sheepishly. She still had that look on her face, the look that made him believe no one ever knows the person they live with, and that nothing in the world is constant.
“Don’t play for time. It won’t work. We’re going through with this, Gene.”
“Whatever,” Gene said, realizing that he could not match her resolve. He started the truck, hoping the children would not hear it, then hoping they would. “We are pretty darned evil,” he said, mostly to himself.
“Uh-huh,” Amy answered. “We’re real novelties.”
“But people just do not abandon their kids in the mountains!”
Amy didn’t respond to this outburst. How could she respond to a silly remark that represented, so unconditionally, the generic pudding that served as her husband’s brain?
I left them just as Gene was about to notice that Amy had changed again, and not just in her expression. She seemed physically different now. The bridge of her nose, for example, was beaky and shinier them before, her lips thinner, the angular jut of her jaw more acute, her tall forehead striated with astonishing areas of depleted pigments. He would tell himself (what choice did he have?) that these were only shades of difference that he might have noticed earlier had he been more attentive—people do change, after all—but this threadbare argument would be shredded before the honest rage of his nightmares.
I soared into the sky on my glossy black wings and sailed toward the children. They hadn’t heard the truck start and were still picking berries. I watched them from a majestic altitude, enjoying the thermals, the heckling squadrons of starlings, and the unmatched beauty of the northern forests.
By the time their plastic bags were nearly filled with the dark red berries, the sun had slipped below the horizon. The cold mountain air crept out of the shadows, where it had survived the day, to reclaim the evening and coming night. “We’d better head back to the truck,” Buddy said, looking up into the deepening sky, where the brightest stars were already twinkling.
But the long shadows the mountain put down obscured the trail. When they arrived at the steep scree of shale it was too dark to find the path that crossed it. And as Buddy stepped out onto the precarious slope of loose rock, he started a small landslide. The lonely echo of clattering rocks made Jill whimper. Buddy scrambled back to safety.
“What are we going to do?” Jill cried.
Now an ambassadorial bear with cubs, I ambled out of some huckleberry bushes behind the children, my long, red mouth dripping with my favorite fruit. My two cubs rollicked alongside.
“Oh no!” Jill cried. “It’s a bear!”
“Don’t move,” Buddy said. “They can’t see very well. Maybe she hasn’t noticed us.”
“Don’t be afraid, children,” I said, sweetly as my crude vocal cords would allow. I stopped directly in front of them and rolled on my back. My playful cubs pounced on me and bit my furry breasts. I slapped them away and growled, startled somewhat by the aggression of the little beasties, then gathered them up in my arms and we rolled together through thick spears of bear grass, chuffing and moaning with bear-family pleasure.
The boy hugged his little sister protectively. In the dying light their pale faces glowed supernaturally. Bears can see these auras; most humans cannot. “Follow me, children,” I said. I turned from them and ambled away, downslope, into the thicket below.
It was almost dark by the time they arrived at my house. I vanished into my own shadow and watched them from several vantage points at once. What fine, holy animals they were!
“What is that?” the girl asked her brother.
“A house,” he said. “A funny-looking little old house.”
They came closer, close enough to reach out and touch the delicious walls. “I think it’s made out of food,” the boy said, licking his sticky fingers.
“Cake!” shrieked the girl. “It’s a cake house!”
They pushed open the hard marzipan door and entered. I was seated at the table in more customary form. “Good evening, little ones,” I said, my ancient voice scratchy and dry.
The girl screamed and the boy picked up a piece of firewood, which he held in both hands as a weapon.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, children,” I said, smiling.
“It’s a witch!” cried the girl. “A horrible old witch with dead gray teeth!”
“Let’s go,” the boy said, pulling his transfixed sister toward the door.
“You must stay at least for supper,” I said.
Because they were very hungry by now, they approached the table but took seats at the opposite end. I smiled at their caution. “Too much caution can become a bad habit, my dears,” I said, though they could not understand the significance of my words. I changed the subject. “Let’s play a game, children.”
“First we eat,” said the boy. He was a hardheaded little rascal who appeared far brighter and more sure of himself than his slipshod, weak-willed father.
I set a good table of venison, broiled grayling, wild asparagus, goat’s milk, sunflower bread with dandelion honey. They ate like little pigs. Their naive unchecked appetite made my heart expand. Too soon they would be concerned with calorie counting, cholesterol content, and all the other drivel that makes the alimentary canal a quivering battleground of false causes.
When they finished this fine meal, they sighed in real contentment and gratitude. “You’re welcome,” I said, not in rebuke but in response to their little burps and the slack-jawed trance of happy satiation.
The girl became drowsy and fell asleep at the table. I carried her to a bed-room I had prepared in advance. When I rejoined the boy, he said, “Jill’s had a hard couple of days, ma’am.” His eyes held mine and did not blink. I liked him. He seemed to grow more mature by the minute. He would do well in the difficult world ahead.
“How about you?” I said. “Are you ready for a little game? You might win a nice prize.”
“Sure,” he said. His trust was edged with a steely-eyed wariness, but he was not one to play it safe, knowing instinctively that the only real way to lose was to not play at all.
“Then come with me. I’ll show you something you won’t forget.”
I took him out to my bam. “Where are the animals?” he asked. I held up my stick and pointed upward. “Hey, there’s no roof on this bam. How come?”
“To let the starlight in,” I said. I touched his shoulder with my stick. He jumped straight up as if I’d given him an electric shock.
“What’s that music?” he asked.
“Stars,” I said. “They sing on long wires of light. Listen.” What the boy h
eard was this:
only the child
can see the hand
that made the wild
mysterious land
I touched his other shoulder with my stick and he jumped again. When he came down, he landed on his hands and knees. “Enjoy yourself,” I said. “I’ll be back for you later.”
The boy had jumped the line that separates human folly from the natural order, and he was at that moment running through the woods on all fours with a pack of wolves. He ran and ran, chasing the hart, feeling the joy of speed and strength, the comfort of the tribe and the unchecked lust of the hunt. When he grew tired, he returned to his slumber, then woke to the music of the stars, which he would forget only at his peril.
The next morning the girl demanded to know what I’d done with her brother.
“He’s been playing a game,” I said.
“You lie,” she said, stem as her mother.
I gave her a witchy smile, sinister and cunning. “Help me clean this house, you snot,” I said.
My profound ugliness intimidated her. She picked up a broom. Then, as was customary, I made what all the children see as my fatal mistake. I bent over next to the open door of my oven, pretending to scour a spot of grease from the floor, and waited for the blow. She delivered it on schedule. The broom whacked me across my bony old buttocks and I obliged her by falling headfirst into the oven. For effect, I let loose a blood-chilling scream of vile curses that antedate the development of speech organs in the so-called Homo sapiens. She slammed the iron door shut and wedged her broom handle against it so that it could not be opened. Then she turned the gas up high. I heard the pilot light ignite the ring of gas, and searing heat blew up into my face.
The boy entered the house then. He was still groggy from his hard sleep and was trying to adjust the vagrant grammar of his dreams to the tight parsings of authorized reality. When he understood what his sister had done, he became upset. “She didn’t mean us any harm, Jill,” he said.
“Yes, she did!” Jill cried out, wounded by Buddy’s ingratitude. She had saved them, hadn’t she, from the witch’s evil schemes?
Buddy noticed the Polaroids I had taken of them while they slept. I’d tacked them up on the wall. He went to the pictures and stared at the angelic towheads, who resembled their parents only superficially. “See,” he said, “she liked us well enough to take our pictures, Jill.”
“What’s that smell?" Jill asked, her eyes widening in delight.
The house was filling with a fragrance that was so sweet, so tempting, that their mouths began to water instantly. They forgot the Polaroids, forgot their argument, and could think of nothing else except the wonderful aroma and where it might be coming from. It was coming from the oven, of course, and as if to underscore this fact, the buzzing of the timer rattled the air.
The boy went to the oven and peeked in. Inside, perfectly baked, was an angel food cake. (C’est moi.) The boy took it out, using pot holders, and set it on the table.
“Maybe I was only dreaming about a witch,” the children said in unison.
Only dreaming or, worse, It was only a bad dream are the formulas that have exiled me from the world for several hundred years. Children would have those scoffing catchphrases stenciled into their brains and the useful truth of their dreams would be dismissed time and again until the children grew into gray, dreamless entities of no consequence who would commit blunder after blunder on their murderously banal trip to the grave.
I suppose the story must end there, though the writer is pressing for one of his patented, neatly delivered, full-circle endings. For instance, he would like to see Buddy and Jill, older and honed to an edge by the harsh world, make their way home and confront their parents. Buddy would have a Ruger.357 Magnum in his belt and Jill’s purse would be stocked with street drugs. (The writer has other murky ideas, generated by his need for what he thinks of as neatness. He calls these blind spots “satisfying endings.” My motto is: Never trust an anal narcissist. The flattering mirror he cavorts in front of shows a geometrically precise world, tied up neat as a Christmas package.)
The writer would like to tell you something about me, as an object of (in this case) blame. But he hasn’t understood yet the extent of my influence, the depth of my interest, or how he is my last refuge in a world that has excluded me. He is one of you, after all, no better and no worse. For example, he would like to know where I am now, when he needs me most. He doesn’t realize that I’m always here, in his word processor, among the binary digits of the software, in the wiring and microchips, in the copper and silicon atoms, down among the leptons and quarks and gluons, and further, where time and space no longer exist, in the null of nulls, riding the crest of wave after wave of pulsing energy, a cosmic surfer, everywhere and nowhere, inside and outside, locus of a geometry of tucks and puckers. And I am in the stymied axons and dendrites of the writer’s poor brain, break-dancing on the cerebral dunes as he rises from his desk and goes out to the kitchen for his twelfth cup of coffee, hoping for the final rush of syllables that chase and comer all the meanings of the story and truss them up with granny knots of inevitability. But there are large densities in the dross of his being, crazy opacities, flashes of perfect nonsense. He tries so hard, but he never says exactly what he means. (Though he means everything he says.) He is my puppet, but, alas, he is on very loose strings.
Just now, he’s in his backyard sipping tequila from a flask, refusing to let the story go. He has climbed up to the top branches of his willow tree. It is a windy summer’s night, and the stars are blowing through the whipping leaves like hissing, incandescent moths. “If I end it there,” he complains to me, “no one will get the point!”
Let’s leave him up the tree. He’s not quite bright enough to trust you. Also, if we allowed him to design an ending and bandage it to the story, who’s to say he wouldn’t produce a monster? No. It’s your story, reader, and you are always in the middle of it.
Pagans
The gray Bavarian yodeling in the bathroom sent the New Year’s party into a terminal slump. It was Dr. Selbiades’s annual get-together for his patients. I’d been there less than an hour and had watched the party go from white-knuckle cheerfulness to unapologetic gloom.
Selbiades had been my shrink for almost a year. He was known as Doc Dow, after the chemical company. He believed in psychoactive drugs, not psychology. Psychology, he said, is rooted in semantics and semantics is rooted in the mind and the mind is a myth. There is the brain, the central nervous system, and there is the World. Sometimes they don’t mesh. Chemistry is learning how to make them mesh. “We’re in the Model T era of psychopharmacology,” he once said. “The future is gleaming with Volvos, BMWs, and Ferraris.”
I believed him. Why shouldn’t I have? The yodeling Bavarian only last year was a cataleptic wallflower in the State Hospital. One dose of a new compound and he was goose-stepping to Wagner and asking for beefy women. I’d been brought from severe, broad-spectrum anxiety to chronic sulkiness in less than a year. I expected, any day now, a new ordering of the psychoactive rainbow to nudge me into a semipersistent state of kindhearted tolerance. Nirvana, according to Doc Dow, always happens on the molecular level, regardless of the method used to achieve it. Without drugs it takes Spartan restrictions of sensory inputs, dietary extremism, and a kind of self-hypnosis. Our Puritanical heritage, said the Doctor, makes us scoff at the notion that spiritual bliss can be gotten by swallowing capsules. But we are learning how to play the brain note by note, he said.
I was still a half-turn out of tune. It made me snappish and fussy. I affronted strangers for reasons I could not later explain. The yodeling Bavarian in the Selbiadeses’ shower was a good example. He had wanted the tiled walls of the shower to call up the effect of sheer alpine slopes so that he could show us how it had been with him when he was a Nazi ski trooper during the War. I was in the bathroom at the time, taking my second Elavil of the evening. The Bavarian had left the bathroom door open so that e
veryone could hear him. When I went out, I closed the door behind me. His yodels softened to a chirping lament. The stiffly seated guests looked at me, some with anger in their eyes, some with cruel hilarity. All rode the black horse Despair.
“Some Nazi bastard like him killed my uncle,” I said to the group. It was a lie, but I was shameless. That was another feature of my untuned brain. Cheap lies. I used them like salt and pepper. They gave an edge to the watery soup of my life.
I put on my parka and cap. “Leaving us so soon?” said Beth Selbiades, the Doctor’s stunning wife. What a full-blown, fine-haired animal you are, I wanted to say, but one does not speak churlishly to the high priest’s wife.
“Got to get home,” I finally mumbled.
I went out into a whirlwind of snowflakes. A warm, southerly blizzard had moved in, blanketing our town with heavy wet snow, pretty to remember from the safety of July, but a misery to stroll through. I was dressed for it, except for my shoes, which were loafers.
I had walked out of my own New Year’s party. Raquel had kissed Sloan Capoletti, our milkman, hours before midnight. I took umbrage. Having been out of work for some time, I was oversensitive to the carefree revels of the employed. Sloan had been giving us free cottage cheese (unsalable cheese that had survived its expiration date) because he felt sorry for our economic plight. Or so I thought. Then, as I watched the prolonged, open-mouth kiss, I understood that his dated cheese was meant to woo. After the hot kiss under the parasitic tree-killer, mistletoe, they went into the kitchen, where Sloan showed Raquel how to brew saloop, a hot drink made of sassafras, sugar, and milk. A blood purifier, Sloan said. I was suspicious. Why did Raquel keep sassafras in her spice and herb cupboard? To please the milkman? Excellent for the bowels, Sloan said. Why did the milkman want the bowels of my wife to be excellent? The party became a forest of symbols, all of them unfriendly to me, even dangerous—pagan symbols, witch symbols: mistletoe, sassafras, and scented candles, the over-decorated Christmas tree fat and gaudy as an old whore leaning drunkenly in the comer. And then, as if I’d been the victim of an openly wicked practical joke, I began to receive heartening winks from total strangers. I needed to walk.
Borrowed Hearts Page 15
