As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

And it was all her mother’s fault.

  Ivy went hollow, a husk with no creature inside it. The blankness her mom had put between them, everything unsaid and unrevealed, was all that she had left. She wasn’t even mad at her mom. The frightening thing was that she didn’t feel anything toward her at all.

  —

  After a while, Ivy became aware that her bed had sunk and Harlan was now sitting beside her. She turned chalky, dead eyes on him.

  “Know why I was laughing before?” he asked.

  “Haven’t got a clue,” Ivy said flatly.

  “It’s ’cause I never know anything first,” he said. “Before someone else, I mean. Once someone told me, ‘Even the dog knows what’s going on before you do, Harlan.’ ”

  Oh, how Ivy wanted her dog. Was Mac okay down there? She didn’t want him to be hungry, or thirsty, or have to go and not know what to do if he wasn’t let out. It occurred to Ivy that Mac was the only member of her family she could really count on.

  Harlan’s face bunched up. “That was my daddy. He was the one who told me that.”

  Ivy frowned. That was mean enough—coming from a parent—that she figured she should say something even if she was still so mad that every muscle had clenched up inside her. But she couldn’t think what.

  From downstairs came a voice that should’ve been familiar, but sounded like it belonged to a total stranger. “Ivy! Come down here right now!” called her mother.

  OCTOBER 5, 1987

  Barbara caught a glimpse of herself, reflected in the window as she wrapped a scarf around her head. Perhaps it was the scarf—or more than that, the whole of what she acknowledged was a rather bygone look compared to the shoulder pads and mannish suits all the smart ladies were wearing these days—but Barbara’s appearance took her by surprise.

  How old she looked.

  She paused for a moment, one hand halted in tucking up a tuft of hair. Was that really her face, as crenulated as a walnut, beneath its chiffon wrapping? Barbara had actually been feeling rather jaunty, setting out on errands by herself. She’d chosen her prettiest scarf, a recent birthday gift from Gordon, to wear. Yet the image in the window looked unsettlingly like her own mother, who’d always said that raising Barbara and her five sisters had destroyed her, hollowed her out until there was nothing left inside.

  “Nicholas!” Barbara called in an unsteady voice. An old woman’s voice. “I’m on my way. Make sure to keep an eye on things here. And do your homework.”

  Her son’s voice sounded strong and sure where hers was not. “It’s Nick, okay? And I always do, don’t I?”

  A smile lifted Barbara’s mouth, imparting a feeling of restored vigor. This was one part of her life that had grown easier at least. She had time on her own now, and the ability to move about unencumbered. Nicholas—Nick—was fourteen, one of the cool kids at school, with friends who gave one another nicknames. He was more than responsible enough to hold down the fort.

  “Yes, you do,” she called back.

  She looked at her reflection again, and felt a jolt of relief. Now she appeared almost girlish, flushed beneath the scarf, the pink fabric trembling on a current of air. Raising her son made Barbara feel young again. How sad for her mother that she’d been saddled with so many daughters, rendering motherhood a blood sport, girls trampling over her in their haste to grow up and become women themselves, one by one beating her into the ground.

  —

  Barbara went to the grocery store, she went to the post office, then on a lark, she poked her head into the beauty parlor in town.

  “Help you?” the woman behind the desk asked as the bells on the door jingled.

  Barbara nearly backed right out again. She didn’t recognize the woman now working here. She was young, not much more than a girl, and she had one of those terrible new hairstyles, scalp-short on one side, brushing her chin on the other.

  But she gave Barbara such a bright smile that Barbara hesitated, and the girl let out a laugh. “Don’t worry. I had my asymmetrical done downstate.” She wrapped a piece from the longer side around one finger. “Shelia’s here today and she’ll cut your hair perfectly normal.”

  Barbara began unwrapping the scarf from her head. “I suppose I could do with a freshening up.”

  Shelia looked up from a chair where she was styling another customer.

  “Want to wash her for me, Tiffany?” she asked, and the new girl stood up. She led Barbara back past the customer whose hair was being wound around curlers, and shook out a smock as she waited for her to sit down.

  Until her hair had been trimmed and she was sitting underneath the dryer, Barbara didn’t realize who the other customer was.

  Once she did, she deliberated whether to pretend she hadn’t seen, continue flipping through out-of-date pages of Family Circle, or if she should say something.

  There was no reason not to be friendly, she concluded at last. They had fallen out of touch, but that wasn’t Barbara’s fault, was it?

  “Glenda,” she said, leaning over to touch the woman on her smock. “How nice to see you.”

  The pastor’s wife turned her head inside the plastic bubble. “Yes, Barbara, you, too,” she replied in a way that gave Barbara the sense she might’ve known all along who was sitting beside her. “I hope you’ve been well?”

  “Very well,” Barbara replied. “And you? And the boys?”

  Glenda glanced down at the no-less-out-of-date pages on her lap. “Well, thank you. Everyone’s doing just fine.” Then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she added, “Adam’s finishing up seminary this year.”

  “How nice for him,” Barbara murmured. She waited for Glenda to inquire in kind, but the silence went on until it bordered on rude.

  Finally Glenda asked, “And your own two? How is your son and how is the darling Cassandra? I do get to see her from time to time. She’s taken such an interest in youth group.”

  “Has she?” Barbara replied. Her mouth had gone tight, as if she were trying to hold a pebble between her lips. “Well, Nicholas is doing wonderfully. Nick, I mean,” she added with a merry trill. “We finally found a school that can keep up with him.”

  They had kept Nicholas out of both nursery school and kindergarten in the end—too constraining—and when his first and second grade teachers had proved lackluster at best, hunted for a facility that would provide what all the scholars called for these days. Child-centered education. Curricula that acknowledged each student’s unique gifts, instead of trying to place them in a set mold.

  “Yes, I heard,” Glenda murmured. “That military school in Wedeskyull.”

  “Prep school,” Barbara corrected. “It’s been wonderful. Expensive—but then, we only have the one child who really requires an enhanced education.”

  Glenda set her magazine aside, and twisted around to lift up the hood. Curls clustered like grapes on her head, each glistening with moisture.

  Shelia hurried over, administering a quick pat. “You’re still a little damp, hon,” she said. “Give it ten more minutes?”

  “No,” Glenda replied. “I don’t believe I will.” She pressed a fold of bills into Shelia’s hand and walked out of the shop.

  —

  At the house, Barbara began lugging in her purchases, tossing her new, lighter sheath of hair as she set things down. She had run late in town, meandering around after her appointment at the beauty parlor, and darkness was already starting to fall. Barbara was just returning for the last, considering calling out to Nicholas for help, when she heard raised voices that made her hurry back out to the car.

  Best to leave the children to their argument. Gordon was always saying that Barbara intervened too much and that kids needed to be allowed a fair fight.

  Inside again, she nudged bags with her knee from the hallway toward the kitchen.

  “Do ’em better than that,” came her son’s voice, loud enough to carry. “Mama’ll ream you out if you leave all that grease on ’em.”

  There was a repl
y that Barbara didn’t quite hear.

  “See that speck?” said Nicholas.

  Barbara felt a clamp of annoyance. Could the child not even learn to keep house?

  “Here,” Nicholas said helpfully. “Try this.”

  There was a scream, so high-pitched and sudden that Barbara knew she could delay no longer. She stooped to pick up two of the heaviest bags, before making her way into the kitchen.

  “Nicholas?” she called out. “Nick, I mean? Look at me, I got my hair cut—”

  Nicholas spun around at the sink. “I don’t know what happened, Mama. She was doing the washing and then she just started screaming.”

  Barbara’s gaze flicked to the sink. Cassandra was standing on a stool, arms thrust out before her. They were as stiff as a length of rebar, flaming a livid red. Cassandra clawed at her skin as if she intended to peel it off, still letting out those frightful shrieks. Barbara walked closer. In addition to a bottle of dish soap on the porcelain surround, there was an open jar of lye.

  Barbara turned off the hot water and moved Cassandra’s arms underneath the cold, taking care not to touch the skin until it was rinsed clean. Whether from the effect of the lye, or because the child really had stripped off her own skin, the pieces had a blotchy, bubbled appearance.

  “Nicholas,” Barbara said. “Get me the butter out of the fridge.”

  Nicholas had been leaning back against the counter, but did as he was told, turning and bringing over a tub. Barbara tried to smear the fat on the reddened flesh, but the skin was loose in places, and the child’s screams began anew. Barbara had to settle for dabbing pieces of butter on wherever they would stick.

  “Why ever did you think to use lye?” she asked after she had done the best job she could.

  Cassandra raised her face. The skin on it appeared almost as red and swollen as that on her arms. “I—I didn’t, Mama.”

  Barbara flinched.

  Nicholas took a step away from the counter. He’d stayed here all this time, concerned for his sister.

  Barbara sent him a small smile. “Next time, perhaps, you’ll do housework as I teach you.”

  “I tried,” Cassandra whimpered. “Nick said it wasn’t good enough.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should use lye.”

  “I didn’t,” Cassandra said again. “Nick—”

  Barbara turned on her so suddenly that Cassandra slipped off the stool. She fought to regain her balance without use of her arms.

  “Mama,” she cried. “My arms don’t look right, do they? Do they look okay to you, Mama? They hurt so bad.”

  “It’s okay, Cass,” Nicholas said. “They’ll get better.”

  Cassandra’s shoulders sank, and after a moment she nodded.

  Barbara followed Nicholas’ gaze. “Your brother’s right. They just need time to heal.”

  There was a heavy beat of footsteps, and Barbara, Nicholas, and Cassandra all looked up at once. No one had heard Gordon arrive.

  “Darling,” Barbara said. “I’m afraid I don’t have dinner on just yet—”

  “What happened?” Gordon demanded. He took a single step forward and lifted up Cassandra, his big hands wrapping her waist so that her arms could stay thrust out, untouched. “Oh sweet Lord, baby, what happened to your hands?”

  Cassandra began to screech once more, sounds that made you clap your hands over your ears. Barbara barely heard Gordon begin to comfort Cassandra in singsong.

  “Okay, it’s okay, baby. We’re going to get you help.”

  Car keys clamped between his teeth, Gordon held Cassandra aloft as he ran with her toward the front door.

  “It hurts, Daddy!” came a bracing cry, like cold water thrown.

  “I know it does, baby. I know. But it’s always worse at night. Trust me, this is going to be much better in the morning. Things are always hardest at night.”

  —

  It was two a.m. when Gordon returned from the hospital in Wedeskyull. Cassandra hadn’t required specialized treatment at another unit, or even overnight observation.

  “Only second degree,” Barbara said, once Gordon had come back downstairs, having gotten the girl settled. He sat down in his chair, across from Barbara on the couch. But he didn’t speak or even look at her, and Barbara felt compelled to go on. “It could’ve been worse.”

  “Grease,” Gordon said. “It’s the worst thing you can do for a burn.”

  “Imagine that,” Barbara said, robotically.

  Gordon’s forearms lay along his thighs, his hands fisted. He lifted his head and regarded her in the lampless dark. “How did it happen?”

  Barbara looked away. “I don’t know why she decided to use the lye.”

  “She did,” Gordon said. “Cassandra?”

  “That’s right,” Barbara replied. “Well, I wasn’t there, of course. I had about a million errands to run today,” she added merrily. “But Cassandra was the one washing dishes. Nicholas—did you know we are to call him Nick now, darling?—said something about trying to get off some very tough grease.”

  Gordon looked down at his lap. After a long moment, he nodded. “I think I’ve figured out what to do.”

  Barbara was barely listening. “What to do?” she repeated.

  Gordon linked his fingers together. “We’ve got to give Nick an outlet for his aggression.”

  Her husband said the name as if he had long since made the switch, as if somehow Barbara had missed something essential in their son’s growth and development.

  She responded less rotely. “Nicholas isn’t aggressive!”

  She couldn’t see enough to make out the expression on Gordon’s face, but she sensed her husband sitting there in the dark, his hunched-over form and fast, irregular breathing.

  “It’s what my father did when I was a kid, getting into fights, not caring much about anything.” Gordon braced his hands on his knees and stood up. “Funny as it sounds, it was probably the thing that gave me the most reverence for life.”

  Barbara felt suddenly consumed by a pressing need to see. She leaned over and flicked on a lamp, and the room flooded with brightness. The bulb illuminated pieces of furniture, the walls that contained them, and each shadowed entry into other parts of the house.

  Shielding his eyes against the sudden flash of light, Gordon said, “I’m going to teach Nick how to hunt.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Carolyn Mills was washing up after dinner when she became aware of a noise on the dirt road outside. It happened sometimes, an encroachment, even way out here on a piece of acreage that had been in her husband’s family for generations, bordered by state land. Danny was responsible for the road himself, plowing it, but also laying in fresh gravel after the spring runoff washed the old away. Tasks that to Carolyn were novel and new were for Danny like taking a shower or sweeping the floors. Up here you maintained the road. In the Connecticut suburb where she’d grown up, you took care of yourself and your house, although Carolyn’s family had had a cleaning woman for the latter. Actually, they had people for the former, too: performing mani-pedis, waxing stray hairs while coiffing ones they meant to keep.

  This noise didn’t belong to a car; there was no rumble of an engine. And though a light snow was falling, there wasn’t enough accumulation to merit a shoveling yet. Danny must be in the living room, with the paper and his pipe.

  Carolyn called out to him, setting aside her sponge.

  “Hunter gone astray, I’m thinking,” Danny said, rising from his chair by the woodstove.

  In addition to coming from a completely different background, Danny was also almost twenty years older than she. How her family had blanched when perennially single Carolyn had gone for a ski weekend with girlfriends—women who weren’t single, who had left behind husbands and even children—and simply never come back.

  Eventually her family had rallied, attending the small wedding she and Danny hosted up here. Her husband loved this land, and would never think of traveling out of state to take pa
rt in some white and flowery occasion beneath a tent.

  “This late? With weather up there on the mountain?” Carolyn asked, indicating the occlusion of the moon outside. Even she knew this was no night for hunting.

  Danny gave a shrug she had learned to read. It said: Who knows what folks from downstate get up to? “Let’s see if he needs any help.”

  He walked past her toward the mudroom. But when Danny drew the side door open, there was nobody to be seen.

  Her husband stepped outside, coatless in the cold. The temperature hardly seemed to affect him, but when he came back inside he rubbed the sleeves of his shirt up and down, shaking his head. Snow drifted down like confetti.

  “No one there,” he said.

  And still those sounds, a slow sliding along the dirt, almost a rasp.

  “It’s coming from in front,” Carolyn noted.

  They went to look. With the lamps on, it was impossible to see more than a few inches through the window, so Danny opened the door, and they squinted out into the flakes.

  Only Carolyn wasted time on a gasp.

  One of the reasons she’d fallen so deeply and surely in love with Danny was his air of take-charge capability. Nothing was beyond him. Carolyn had been taking one final run when she’d lost a ski and badly strained her ankle. She was hovering mid-slope, trying to decide whether to try and wedge her one ski back on, or hobble down in her boots—maybe even take the slope butt-first, so badly was her ankle beginning to swell in its constraining cuff—when Danny swooped down amongst the moguls, landing a perfect Christie beside her. Instantly, he assessed the situation, and just as fast, he was skiing her downhill, somehow managing to tow her equipment along. Nobody had to go back up the mountain for so much as a pole. Carolyn had known then and there that she’d never leave this man’s side.

  He told her to go get the phone, and Carolyn cursed the paralysis that always beset her when trouble came. Even she could intuit that this situation was much more dire than the one she had faced on the slopes, and it had landed literally at their front door, in a house that was lost in the woods and a thickening layer of snow.