Illumination Night

by Alice Hoffman

  Your heart is beating much faster than a human heart.

  The flight attendant at the door is watching her and Vonny is certain that whatever is happening to her shows. She has read somewhere that the average time for an ambulance to get to you in New York is three and a half hours. By that time, she will be dead.

  “Are you all right?” the flight attendant asks.

  The flight attendant, who has come to stand near Vonny, is blond, with a smooth southern accent.

  “Oh, sure,” Vonny says. “A bad ankle.”

  You can tell she believes you.

  “Do you want to lean on me?” the flight attendant asks.

  Vonny smiles and leans on her shoulder. “I love Boston,” the flight attendant says.

  “Me, too,” Vonny says.

  You’re a dead woman, you might as well make conversation.

  During takeoff, Vonny is amazingly calm. Her heart stops racing. After five years of not smoking, she asks the young man next to her for a cigarette and lights up as soon as the No Smoking sign is turned off. The sky is filled with thin, spidery clouds. Vonny feels nothing at all. She doesn’t think about Simon or Andre or her father, but of the cool perfection of the clouds. When they prepare for landing Vonny notices a purple streak in the far horizon. A dangerous color for this time of year. She shuts her eyes and imagines flying right into that color. She gives in to it, lets her energy go. By the time the plane sets down, she is limp. She has to force her legs to work. She manages to get out of the plane. She knows she is almost home, and yet she is convinced she is lost.

  You might think you have contracted some sort of madness, but it has descended upon you too quickly. You walk slowly. You don’t dare run.

  Out by the parking lot, Simon waves to her from Andre’s shoulders. Against the blue sky, Simon’s hand is like a flag, and Vonny follows it blindly. When she reaches them, she lets her bag drop to the ground. Simon leaps into her arms:

  “I’m double-parked,” Andre says. He wears sunglasses so she cannot see his eyes. He jangles his key chain in one hand.

  “Did you get me something?” Simon asks.

  Andre picks up Vonny’s bag and she points to the side pocket where there is a stuffed animal Vonny bought at Jill’s local drugstore. A small yellow chick that squeaks. Andre tosses the chick to Simon, then starts walking toward the truck.

  “Yippee,” Simon says as he makes the chick squeak.

  “My father said no,” Vonny tells Andre. No one could tell there was anything wrong with her, even though her legs feel as though she’s just run a marathon. “He won’t give us the money.”

  “That figures,” Andre says. He is sick of summer and all this heat.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Vonny says.

  “I wish to Christ you would stop saying that to me,” Andre tells her. “Don’t turn everything I say inside out.”

  They have reached the truck. When Simon climbs into the truck, Andre and Vonny are face to face. Andre looks away.

  “He hasn’t had anything to do with you for years. I don’t know why you expected it to be any different now,” he says, cruelly he knows. “How’s Jill?” he asks, wanting to back off, to be on safer ground.

  They both get into the truck. Vonny fastens Simon’s seat belt as he examines his new stuffed animal.

  “She says she’ll come visit,” Vonny says. “Her daughter wears purple sneakers. She reminds me of Jody, only a little less sullen.”

  Andre starts the truck and backs up too fast. He just misses a Jaguar with New York plates. Last night, he checked on Simon once an hour. Even when he heard Simon’s deep, sleepy breathing, he still was not comforted. He has the wild urge to tell Vonny everything, right here and now. He promises himself that if he can just drive home without saying anything, it will be all right. He can no longer be certain of what really happened. He is angry, as though he’s been tricked. If he isn’t careful, he’ll start blaming Vonny. She wasn’t there; she had to go ask her father for money when they both knew it was hopeless.

  They do not talk to each other on the ride home. Vonny tells Simon about the airplane and promises one day he will go on one. Simon announces that Samantha Freed can walk a tightrope. Vonny smiles, then looks over at Andre, curious.

  “He went over for the afternoon,” Andre says, a defensive edge in his voice. He holds the steering wheel tightly. Vonny looks beautiful to him, but extremely far away. “Eleanor Freed invited him.”

  Having been reminded of Samantha, Simon now looks at his new toy with distrust. He had forgotten that what he really wanted was a Care Bear, just like Samantha’s.

  “An idiot friend of Jody’s ran over the Harley,” Andre says.

  “Oh, great,” Vonny sighs.

  “Is it my fault?” Andre says.

  Simon looks down at his shoes. There are scuff marks all over the toes.

  “I didn’t say that,” Vonny says. She is exhausted. She doesn’t care if it’s his fault or not.

  Andre clamps his mouth shut and turns down their road. When they pass by the Freeds’, Vonny sees that there is indeed a tightrope stretched beneath two trees. High above, where the branches of the trees do not meet, there is a circle of intensely blue sky. Vonny puts her arm around Simon’s shoulders and pulls him close. She has missed him terribly. She doesn’t want to let him go.

  When they park in the driveway, Vonny sees Elizabeth Renny outside feeding birds. She no longer needs her canes. Startled by the sound of the truck, Elizabeth Renny spins toward them.

  “I see you’re much better,” Vonny calls across the lawn.

  Andre grabs Vonny’s bag, then walks up the porch steps. Nelson is at the door, whining to be let out.

  “Much better,” Elizabeth Renny calls.

  When Nelson is let out, he runs to Vonny and jumps on her. She laughs, then pushes him away. As she walks toward the house, her legs tremble. All she has to do is keep going.

  It is cool inside, you know that for a fact. You will feel better once you’re inside. Today you will hang laundry out on the line, but tomorrow, when it is time for you to pick up your son at his new friend’s house, you will get only halfway down the road, then have to run back home. Your legs will be rubber again. You will feel yourself being sucked into the sky. You will tell your husband that you’ve turned your ankle, and of course he won’t doubt you. When he gets into the truck and drives down the road to get your son, you will sit at the kitchen table until you stop shaking. You will actually feel the circle closing in until you know exactly where you are safe. In less than a week it will be impossible for you to get past your front door.

  By then, the grocery and the post office will be as unreachable as distant planets.

  Chapter Five

  THE GIANT OF CHILMARK

  THE Giant of Chilmark sells zinnias and eggs in the summer, pumpkins and chrysanthemums in autumn. None of his customers ever sees him. They buy his goods from a roadside stand made out of rough planks of pine. They comment on the difference between country and city life as they slide their money through a slit in the top of a coffee can. Cowed by good faith, people are usually honest, paying for their squash or bunches of flowers, making their own change. A few times a year, teenagers pocket the money they find in the coffee can. Local children occasionally steal eggs with which they gleefully pelt each other. The Giant sees the remains, bits of cracked brown shell and streaks of deep yellow, along the center of the road. When it grows dark he carries a bucket of water up from his house and washes away as much of the dried eggs as he can. Crows will take care of whatever is left.

  Contrary to the reports of the delivery boy who brings groceries and chicken feed, the Giant is not an old man. He is not eight feet tall, although he has to crouch at certain points in his house so that his head won’t graze the ceiling. His is an old house, built for a shorter man, the Giant’s grandfather, Edward Tanner, who was five foot six. The Giant, who drinks coffee every morning from a blue-and-white Staffordshir
e cup his grandfather brought with him from England, is twenty-four years old. Most people in Chilmark haven’t seen him in so long they’ve forgotten he ever existed. A few old women remember his grandfather Edward Tanner well; they were kissed by him on summer evenings.

  The Giant arrived in October. It was a rainy, wood-scented night and his grandfather was drinking beer and polishing his boots. When there was a pounding on the door, the Giant’s grandfather had the urge to jump into bed and pull the quilt up. Something told him not to open the door. He’d had quite a few angry husbands come looking for him, and although he was old for that now, there were other scores unsettled. He owed a little money and he had never believed in taxes. He had the feeling it was someone official because of that sturdy knock.

  The Giant was out there, swallowing rain. He was ten years old and already six feet tall. When Edward Tanner opened the door all he saw was a tall man in a black overcoat.

  “Don’t come looking for me unless you’re looking for trouble,” Edward Tanner said. He held his boot up, menacingly.

  The chickens in the henhouses were clucking like mad. It was raining so hard all the sweet potatoes in the garden were unearthed and washed away.

  “Grandpa?” the Giant said in a high tentative whisper. It was as though a hidden ventriloquist were throwing a child’s voice into this man’s shape.

  “Don’t kid a kidder!” Edward Tanner said. He could not have been more afraid if a ghost had appeared at his door.

  “It’s me, Eddie,” the Giant said in his sweet boy’s voice, and Edward Tanner the elder fell on the floor in a dead faint.

  There is such a thing as rotten parents, and the Giant’s parents were as rotten as they come. They might have had problems even if their son hadn’t been a giant, but Eddie’s height put an end to their marriage. The Giant’s father was nearly forty when Edward Tanner’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Sharon, who was easily persuaded, followed him off the Island. In fact, their marriage lasted longer than Edward Tanner had predicted. The Giant’s parents were together for eight years before the Giant and his mother were deserted in southern New Jersey.

  Sharon set out to find another man and dragged her son around four states before she found what she wanted at a naval base in Rhode Island. She figured Eddie was her punishment, and she preferred him to stay well out of sight. When her boyfriends came over he hid in the hall closet and prayed that night’s sailor hadn’t worn a coat. Finding a giant in the closet when you’re merely reaching for a hanger is enough to give even a strong man a heart attack. The Giant knew what he was from the time he was two. He had seen pictures of himself in books. He was the creature beneath the bridge who devoured goats. He was the owner of the harp who fell asleep at his own dinner table. One morning he would wake and find his head through the roof, his arms and legs akimbo out the windows. Vines would grow over him. Birds would perch in the crook of his elbows.

  The Giant went to school until the fourth grade, but when they moved to Rhode Island he didn’t bother with it anymore. He couldn’t take the merciless teasing and there was no one to check up on him. Sharon was gone more than she was home. To fill up his days, the Giant began to make pictures, at first using pencils and tubes of lipstick and eye shadow stolen from his mother’s purse, later saving enough money for cheap watercolors and brushes. Because he wanted to keep his painting from his mother, who’d only laugh at him, and because paper was scarce, the Giant worked at miniatures. A whole year’s worth of his paintings could fit in a rubber boot. An entire state, New Jersey for instance, could be reduced to the size of a strawberry. Painting one perfect, tiny face or a tree filled with flowers might take him an hour. If he was lucky, he would not finish before he went to bed and would then have a reason to wake up in the morning.

  The Giant often caught Sharon staring at him, as though she were disgusted by him or, worse, afraid. She may have kept him just to spite her father, whom she alternately adored and despised. She urged her boyfriends to use the one photograph she had of Edward Tanner as a dart board. But sometimes she took the thumbtacks out and brought the photograph down to show the Giant. The Giant’s grandfather was sitting on a chair in his living room. He looked directly into the camera and he seemed annoyed. When she had lived with him Sharon had dreamed of burning down the house and escaping to New York. Now she described each room lovingly. She had, after all, named the Giant after her father. And, the Giant knew, she was capable of changing her mind with startling quickness, for no apparent reason. When she was kind, offering him a chocolate or cooking him dinner, he never trusted her. When she was awful, he knew it wouldn’t last. He had learned, early on, that he must be careful. He couldn’t afford to have fits of temper. Not with Sharon. Once she had borrowed a car from one of her boyfriends and had taken the Giant with her on a picnic. The Giant was nine years old, and because Sharon was being so nice to him, he felt a little too comfortable. On the way home they drove along 95. The Giant was in the passenger seat holding a paper bag in which there were still some sandwiches and cupcakes. He had saved the best for last, a chocolate cupcake with rainbow-colored sprinkles. He reached into the bag, but when he pulled it out the cupcake broke into pieces. All he could think about was how much he wanted that cupcake. He forgot himself. He forgot who he was with. He let out a wail and kicked the dashboard.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Sharon said to him. “Don’t be such a baby. Take another one.”

  “I don’t want another one,” the Giant had said.

  “Take another one,” his mother told him.

  “No,” the Giant said. “I won’t.”

  When he kicked the dashboard, Sharon reached over and grabbed his leg. The car swerved out of its lane.

  “Are you a moron?” Sharon shouted. “Do you want to ruin this car and get me in trouble? Take another cupcake. Now.”

  The Giant looked at the sprinkles sifting over the car seat and started to cry.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  Sharon pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road. It was nearly rush hour and crowded.

  “Get the fuck out,” she said.

  The Giant stared at her.

  Sharon leaned over him and threw open the door. She gave him a shove.

  “You heard me!” she said.

  When the Giant put his hands on the seat to steady himself he left streaks of chocolate frosting on the upholstery.

  “Do it!” Sharon said, and she pushed him halfway out of the car. He wouldn’t let go of the door, so she slapped his hands, and as soon as the Giant loosened his grip, she pulled the door closed.

  She stepped down hard on the gas. Without bothering to look at oncoming traffic, she pulled into the highway, cut off a station wagon, and kept right on going. The Giant followed her, running along the side of the road. He kept right on running, even when he didn’t see the car anymore. His eyes and throat were filled with tears. He was screaming “Mommy” over and over again until it wasn’t even a word. Up ahead, a car was pulled over on the shoulder, black exhaust rising from the tailpipe as it idled. The Giant wasn’t certain it was the right car until he got up beside it and saw Sharon inside, crying.

  The Giant stood on the side of the road and wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. He was so hot that his hair was soaking wet. Sharon got out of the car and walked around to him. Every time a truck went by the earth shook. Sharon kept crying and didn’t even try to hide it.

  “Look, I don’t want you,” Sharon said.

  There was goldenrod along the side of the road, and a flat tire someone had left behind.

  “Can you understand?” Sharon said.

  The Giant had a stitch in his side from running so fast. Every time he breathed he could feel the stitch tighten.

  “I’m a person, too,” Sharon said. “You know?”

  The Giant was so grateful to her for not driving on without him that he almost started crying again. He didn’t care what she said to him. He didn’t care what she thought of him. What
he wanted more than anything was for his mother to hug him but he knew it was too much to ask.

  “Get in the car,” Sharon said to him. “Just get those goddamn sprinkles off you before you sit down and ruin everything.”

  Sharon started staying out more often after that, and the Giant never asked where she was going or when she was coming back. He learned to cook, he set his own bedtime, he washed his clothes in the bathroom sink. He was so used to being alone that when Sharon disappeared for good, it took a week before the Giant realized she wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t really surprised, he didn’t feel much of anything, but he couldn’t sleep. He kept checking the light bulbs in the apartment to make sure they wouldn’t burn out and leave him in the dark. He slept during the day, in a chair by the window, and when he ran out of food, he put on an old black overcoat that used to belong to his father and went out to buy groceries at a local market. He knew his voice would betray him, so he pointed to what he wanted. Hot dogs and rolls, a carton of milk, mustard, M&Ms. He found his grandfather’s address in a drawer beneath a black nylon slip. He still wonders if his mother left thirty dollars in the sugar bowl on purpose or if, in her hurry to cut her losses, she simply hadn’t bothered with it.

  The Giant, who has lived on his own since his grandfather’s death five years ago, sometimes forgets the sound of his own voice. The chickens he raises for eggs are great-great-grandchildren of his grandfather’s stock. He has continued to paint and some of his miniatures are so small he needs to use a magnifying glass for the more detailed work. He mailorders paints and the heavy cream-colored paper he prefers. The farmstand and the inheritance of his grandfather’s life savings—eight thousand dollars kept in a metal strongbox in the chicken coop—allow the Giant the luxury of avoiding other people. He knows he has missed out on many things: owning a car, friendship. Mysterious things like movie theaters and hardware stores. He has never been to Lucy Vincent Beach, which is less than a mile from his house. He can live with these small losses. He despairs only when he considers his chances for ever falling in love.