NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

by Rebecca Stowe

  “C’mon, Goob,” I said and we sneaked out of the bushes to see if the coast was clear. I disliked having to sneak around the Bensons’. First you had to hope their monster St. Bernard wasn’t out—that dog would attack anything that moved and he’d already bitten half the boys in the neighborhood. Getting past Hans was an endurance test the boys imposed upon one another and having a bite scar was a badge of honor in Edison Woods. Then you had to hope Clara wasn’t out. Clara was the Bensons’ daughter and there was something wrong with her. She was as old as my mother and the Bensons kept her shut up most of the time, or let her walk to the beach and back with her “companion,” who was as crazy-looking as Clara, only she wore a uniform.

  Clara had red hair and big green eyes that never looked at anything. They were always darting around in their sockets, like hummingbirds, hovering but never lighting. She was tall and skinny and Mother said she’d been quite beautiful as a girl and that she’d been normal all through high school. “What happened to her?” I asked, but Mother didn’t know or wouldn’t tell; she just said Clara came back from her first semester at college and never went out of the house alone again. “Didn’t you ask?” I asked. “Didn’t you want to find out? She was your friend, wasn’t she?” Mother said she’d tried to see Clara, but the Bensons wouldn’t let her in. “They were probably ashamed,” she said, as if that explained everything. “I assume they felt it was their fault.”

  That was the first time I realized that if I went crazy, not only would I suffer from the craziness itself, but also from the guilt of having made my parents feel bad. They’d have to build a wall round the house and get a bunch of Dobermans to keep out the neighborhood kids who would come to gape and taunt. I vowed to be more diligent about hiding my crazy streak—I hated the idea of being walled in and never being able to make a move without some white-shoed attendant following me around like my conscience. Everyone would whisper when I shuffled by like a zombie and mothers would tell their children I had been perfectly normal, in fact I had baby-sat for them when they were little, and then all of a sudden something snapped and I had to be walled in with my parents for ever.

  “What happened to Miss Benson?” I asked Wally, who knew everything. Wally had the corner store, up on St. Joseph Avenue, and he was my fourth favorite person in North Bay “I don’t know, Toots,” he said, shaking his head. “She was a nice girl, but she was flighty Kind of like Blanche DuBois.” I wanted to know who Blanche DuBois was and Wally said she was some crazy southern belle. “You mean like Mrs. Moore?” I asked and Wally laughed so hard he spat his coffee all over the counter. “She never looked you in the eye,” he said as he wiped up his spit. “Remember this, Margarita: there’s something wrong with somebody who won’t look you in the eye.”

  I asked him if he meant there was something wrong as in the person was bad, or something wrong as in something bad happened to them and he said that was a good question. He thought about it for a minute and then said, “Wrong as in they’re hiding something. There’s something they don’t want you to know and I guess it doesn’t matter much whether it’s something they did or something that was done to them. Whatever it is, it’s not exactly right.”

  Luckily, Hans wasn’t out so I climbed over the Bensons’ fence and crept along it, hoping nobody was looking out the window. Mr. Benson would come out with a rake if he saw kids sneaking around, and chase after them as if they were stray cats. “Go on, get out of here!” he’d shout and the kids would shriek with fright and joy. Then he’d kind of shuffle back to the house, looking old and defeated. I felt sorry for him, but not as sorry as I felt for Clara. You were always supposed to feel sorry for the parents rather than the children; after all, the parents worked and slaved and sacrificed and bent over backwards and for what? “You, you ingrate!” they’d shout. “And what have you done for me? Nothing! A big fat zero! After all I’ve done for you, you go crazy and now I can’t go out of my house without a rake!” In the movies, it was always the parents who were good and kind and sweet and self-sacrificing and it was the children who were evil and who tormented their poor, bewildered parents for no reason other than sheer wickedness. I hated those stupid movies. They gave kids a bad name.

  Goober had already crossed the Bensons’ yard and I could hear her at their gate, barking for me to hurry up. Tom Ditwell said one night he saw Clara come out and run about in the yard, screeching like a hawk, circling around in some weird Indian dance. That was when the rumor started that the Bensons belonged to a cult and had sacrificed Clara to get in. It was a stupid rumor, but the kids liked it because it was scary. It didn’t help that the house itself was spooky: a two-story dark pointy house with tiny leaded windows with shutters on the inside that really closed. It had been surrounded by big old elms, but they all got sawed down, like ours, when the Dutch Elm disease hit North Bay and turned Edison Woods into Edison Shrubs. The Bensons replaced their trees with fat, prickly bushes that grew right outside the windows. We used to dare each other to sneak up to the house and peek in, to see if Clara was running around in a black cloak and a pointed hat, and I guess that was why the Bensons got Hans.

  There was music coming from their house, some kind of opera, and I ran the last few yards, hopped over the fence and jumped down. Safe! I looked back and there was Clara, standing in the window, waving at me as if I’d just been to tea. I waved back, sadly, and thought about how lonely she must be, stuck in that dark house with only her parents and that fat old nurse, who was about as friendly as Hans. I wished I could talk to her—I’d ask her what happened, straight out, and I bet she’d tell me. She’d probably just been waiting, all these years, for an opportunity to tell someone what happened but no one ever asked because they were afraid to hear. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid to ask and I wasn’t afraid to hear. I was only afraid of being locked up for the rest of my life.

  DADDY wasn’t home yet, which meant it wasn’t six o’clock. We had dinner every night at precisely six and the only one who was ever allowed to be late was Donald, and only on days when he had baseball practice. We didn’t wait for him, we’d start at six and Mother would keep his dinner warm in the oven. I missed him when he wasn’t at dinner; I adored Donald and I could usually rely on him to stick up for me, even if it was only by rolling his eyes and kicking me under the table. Sometimes we’d be through eating by the time he got home and I always felt sorry for him, having to sit at the table all alone to eat his crusty dinner, as if he were being punished, but Daddy said, “We eat at six and we don’t wait for anyone.” Even when we had company we started at six and if they were late we started without them, even though Mother cried and said it was rude and what would our guests think?

  “They’ll think they should have been on time,” Daddy would say, chuckling as if it were the funniest joke in the world. He thought it was an insult to be late; it showed a lack of respect and it appeared as if you thought your time was more valuable than the other person’s. Once, when I was ten, we were going on a trip up north and I ran over to Ginger Moore’s to say goodbye and I guess I took too long because when I ran back, Daddy had already pulled out of the driveway and was rounding the corner. I could see Mother, straining around, looking out the side window, and I chased after them, feeling like a fool, shouting and waving my arms and pretty near crying. “Robert! Robert!” Mother was shouting. “Stop the car! What will the neighbors think?” He stopped and waited for me to run up before he answered. “They’ll think Maggie must have done something really bad to get left behind,” he said, giggling, thinking it was the funniest thing since whoopee cushions. “We were going to leave without you,” he announced as I climbed in and shoved Ruthie over. Mother said no, they wouldn’t really have left without me, but I suspected they would have, if I’d been two seconds later. They would have driven off to Sault Ste. Marie and left me all alone in the house without even Goober, who was imprisoned in some horrid kennel.

  When I got home, Mother was standing in the kitchen, looking at the
pile of dishes left over from the Bridge Ladies’ lunch. Ruthie was sitting at the table, ready for her dinner, even though the place settings weren’t on yet. That meant we were having chicken and I’d have to sit next to her while she gobbled up the wings, getting covered in grease and making horrible slobbering noises. “You cannibal,” I’d say. “How can you eat your own kind?” but she’d just squawk and flap her arms and keep right on eating.

  I didn’t know why she was the only one who didn’t have to have table manners. If Donald or I so much as crunched our lettuce too loudly we’d get sent from the table, but Ruthie was allowed to peck at her plate, like some kid bobbing for apples in a barrel, and it drove me crazy.

  “I can’t stand it!” I’d always say “I can’t stand all her noise!” and she’d start crying, saying, “I can’t help it! I can’t help it!” but of course she could and they just let her get away with it because she was a psychopath.

  She really was. She was only eight years old and yet she’d taught herself how to stuff birds. She had a regular little taxidermy shop in the garage and all the neighborhood kids would bring us any dead birds they found lying around and Ruthie would take them into the garage and start operating with a Projecto knife, cutting the stiff body open and pulling out its insides and then filling it up with cotton balls or something. She made Daddy take home movies of it and then she’d show them, along with her bird movies. “That’s the epiglottis,” she’d say as we sat around the living room with the drapes drawn, looking at bird guts, and Daddy would say, “I had a real hard time holding the camera for that one.”

  She kept dead birds in the freezer and sometimes I’d come running home from the beach to get a Popsicle or something and I’d reach in the freezer and pull out a sparrow. It was really sick.

  “I’m hungry, Maggie,” Ruthie said. “Hurry up and set the table.”

  “Set it yourself,” I said and she started to blubber and Mother moaned and said, “Margaret Sweet Pittsfield, can you never be pleasant? You’re in the house five seconds and you’re already being mean to your sister.”

  “Yeah,” Ruthie sniffled, “if you were nice to me, I’d be normal.”

  I doubted it, but still I felt guilty. I always felt guilty; it was a way of life for me, but it didn’t change my behavior. If I had to feel guilty no matter what I did, I might as well do what I wanted.

  “You have to set the table,” Ruthie said, sitting there like some sultan’s wife. “It’s your job.”

  “I just walked in the door!” I shouted. “Can I at least go to the bathroom? Can I take a second to go to the bathroom?”

  “Hurry up,” Mother said. “Your father will be home any minute and he’ll have a fit if the table’s not set.”

  Let him, I thought, let him have a fit. He acted like it would be the end of the world if dinner wasn’t steaming in his face at precisely six o’clock, as if the whole universe would be set off balance if we weren’t in our places, saying grace, as if God would leave without us if we weren’t on time.

  I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat, wondering what I’d do now that I was friendless. “Nice work, dumbo,” Margaret said and Cotton Mather wanted me to drown myself in the tub. “Now, now,” Sarah said, “it’s not as bad as all that.”

  When Sarah wasn’t busy crying or whining or wringing her hands, she liked to be a Good-Do-Bee. She was always saying things like “Forgive and forget,” and “Turn the other cheek” and all that blessed-are-the-meek stuff.

  “Count your blessings,” she said and I had four. The first was Goober, who was everything a friend should be. She listened to me without interrupting and never threatened or teased or turned on me, like real people do. Ginger used to have a dog, a silly hotdog named Fritz who she called Bean. “Bean as in human bean,” she said and it was true, dogs were more human than people, or at least they were all the things that everybody kept telling us we were supposed to be but never were themselves. Loyal. Trustworthy. Devoted. Loving. Protective. Playful. That goofball Fritz was the best thing in Ginger’s life—he’d get on his back and scoot across the floor like a swimmer doing the backstroke. “Swim, Fritz!” we’d say and down he’d plop, with the corners of his muzzle turned up as if he were laughing too. Too bad Mrs. Moore had him gassed. He pooped in her bedroom once and that was his death sentence.

  My second blessing was the Lake. I knew how lucky I was to live in a house right on the Lake, to have my very own beach and a place to run to. In the summer I was in the Lake more than I was out of it. I had a bright yellow raft with a clear plastic view-hole in the pillow, and I’d lie on it and paddle out, looking straight down to the rocks below and watching the fish swim by. Last summer a foreign freighter had brought some lampreys into the Lake, stuck on the bottom of the boat like barnacles. They attacked the fish and all summer long hundreds of dead fish washed up along the shore, making it reek like a sewer. Goober loved it—she couldn’t wait to get out of the house and run down to the beach and roll around in all those slimy silver bodies. I guess the eels must have frozen to death during the winter, or gone back to the ocean, where they belonged, because we didn’t have a problem any more. “Nature takes care of itself,” Mother said.

  My third blessing was my family. I should have put them first on my list, and it would have hurt their feelings to be third, even though they didn’t know I had a list. They gave me a nice place to live and they were nice to all my friends and weren’t too embarrassing, for parents. They were the kind of parents you could go places with and while they might not be outstanding in any way, at least you didn’t have to worry that they’d end up dancing with a lampshade on their head or getting up to sing with the band or falling down the stairs dead drunk, like Cindy’s ex-dad used to do. We were all terrified of Mr. Tucker—he used to come home and if Cindy wasn’t there, he’d come tearing out of the house screaming for her and drag her all the way home by her ponytail. It made me understand why Cindy was so mean, but understanding it didn’t mean I had to like it.

  For my fourth blessing I counted all my bodily parts, which were all in place, except my tonsils and adenoids, and all in good working order. I was healthy and at least I didn’t have a wooden leg, like Wilma Bosniak. Wilma was in Donald’s class and had got polio and had to have her leg removed. The fake one wasn’t really wood, it was plastic, kind of skin-toned, and it was hooked onto her body with metal clasps and I thought it must have hurt like hell. Wilma lived in a stone house on Beach Street and I remembered playing with her when I was little, before she got polio. I remembered the wonderful playhouse she had in her basement: a miniature, kid-sized house with little chairs and tables and cupboards and everything. I wanted to go live there and Mother nearly had a fit when Mrs. Bosniak told her I’d asked if I could move in. I loved Wilma’s basement—it was so safe down there and whenever we’d have tornado warnings, I’d sit huddled with everyone in the downstairs closet, wishing I was safe over at Wilma’s, but of course I would never desert my family, let them get sucked up in the funnel while I stayed safe and sound in Wilma’s playhouse.

  We didn’t have a basement. We just had a little utility room, which wasn’t even underground and would have been no use whatsoever in a tornado, much less an atomic blast. A few years ago, when the Prittles put in a bombshelter, Daddy had a contractor come over to build one for us, too, but we were too close to the beach and there was nothing under our house but sand. In a way, I was glad. Before we knew we couldn’t have one, I’d lie awake all night, wondering who I’d invite to come hide with us if we got attacked. It was horrible, some people would have to get left out and I thought it would be our fault for not letting them in and I just hated the idea of it. Now that I was friendless, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but I was still glad we didn’t have a bombshelter. I think I’d rather have been blown to bits than spend ten years in a windowless room with my family.

  When Wilma got polio, we weren’t allowed to play with her any more; she was quarantined a
way in her house and she was never the same after that. She kept herself apart, out of shame, I guessed, and fear of being ridiculed and rejected. She couldn’t bear to have anyone watch her walk, and I could hardly blame her. It wasn’t very pretty. Her fake leg had a kind of metal hinge at the knee, but either it didn’t work or Wilma couldn’t figure out how to use it, because she’d keep it straight and stiff and every time she took a step, she’d move her good leg forward and then swing the fake leg around, from the hip, like a sack of potatoes. When the bell rang to change classes, everyone would run through the halls and then when the second bell rang, you could hear Wilma slowly thudding down the hall like Frankenstein’s monster. I thought she should just forget the fake leg and get crutches. Then she could move faster and she could just jab anyone who dared to make fun of her.

  So, when I thought about Wilma, hiding herself away because of her leg, or about the poor people in Riverside, living in their rickety houses with their grey scrubby lawns and their kids who were always falling through the ice or getting sucked into the swamp, or about Mrs. Moore and Cindy’s ex-dad, I thought I must be the luckiest girl in the world and it was a sin I wasn’t happy, grateful, cheerful, kind and normal.

  “You are the most morbid child in the world,” Mother always said, but look who was talking. The woman who would shut herself up in her bedroom, crying for a week, because she couldn’t cook broccoli.

  “Margaret Sweet Pittsfield!” Mother shouted up the stairs. “You get down here this instant! The table needs to be set!”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I growled, hating the poor table and its important needs, as if it would crumble into dust and die of shame and loneliness if it weren’t set exactly right and exactly on time. “I’m coming!”