Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

  Otto nods, his eyes wide, almost all pupils in the dim light.

  The porch door squeals loudly. The boys turn in unison. Eve stops midpush, realizing she has unsettled the magic hour.

  She struggles to slide out between the door and jamb without any more creaking. Once out, she slowly closes the screen door behind her. The boys have returned to their scanning.

  “Fourteen?” Otto points.

  Ecco shakes his head no.

  “It’s an old one?”

  Ecco nods.

  Eve crouches down behind Otto. “What are you doing?” she whispers.

  “Counting bunnies. They’re everywhere. We’ve counted thirteen so far.”

  “Your grand-père hates rabbits. He shoots at them with an air rifle.”

  “He does . . . ?” Otto asks in a tone heavy with horror.

  Eve laughs. “Don’t worry, he never hits them. He curses too loudly while rushing to get his gun and always scares them all away.”

  Otto nods, clearly happier about his grandfather’s poor hunting hygiene. A thought strikes him, “Why does he hate bunnies?”

  “Because they eat the vegetables out of his garden.”

  “Oh,” Otto says. “Like Bugs Bunny?”

  “Oui, exactly like Bugs. Come on, bath time.” Eve stands and picks up Otto.

  “Five more minutes.”

  “No. You said that ten minutes ago.” Eve heads for the door.

  “But—”

  “The only butt I care to discuss is yours simmering in a bath.”

  The door screeches open and claps shut with a patter of afterclaps.

  From inside, Otto’s voice trails out. “Maybe we should go visit grand-père at his garden.”

  Outside, the shadows have melted into the gloaming. Cricket chirps dot the dark. Stridulations rise and fall along Arrhenius’s tempo. A rabbit flinches out of the bushes and freezes into its rock impression. Keeping its body still, it nibbles on some grass. “Fourteen,” Ecco murmurs to himself, still sitting on the step.

  Ecco appears nonplussed. A few minutes later, he wanders into the dark kitchen and retrieves an object from a drawer (footage is unclear as to what object due to poor lighting, possibly a flashlight), goes back outside, and out into the yard, seeking out more bunnies to catalog.

  NB Footage: Providence, May 24, 2008, 10:45 p.m.—

  The porch light turns on. The screen door squeals in protest as Reidier backs open the door with his rear end. One arm carries a full, tied-closed garbage bag. The other is wrapped around two six-packs full of empty bottles.

  As Reidier clears the radius of the door’s reach, he catches it with his foot before it impatiently slams shut. In a practiced movement, he eases the door closed.

  Reidier tromps down the steps and heads across the lawn toward the garbage bins next to the garage. Halfway there, an automatic floodlight casts its beam out to meet him. Reidier slows as he approaches. He scrunches up his nose and pulls his chin back. The closer he gets to the garbage, the more severe his expression becomes, and he turns his head away in reflex.

  Reidier puts the garbage bag down and lifts the lid off of the first bin. He peers in and takes a precautionary sniff. Reidier shakes his head and tosses the bag in and replaces the lid. Still holding the empty six-packs, Reidier goes down the line of bins, lifting each lid and sniffing. None of them appears to be the culprit; however, judging from his cringing behavior, the odor seems to have intensified.

  Standing back from the bins, Reidier holds his free forearm across his nose. He takes them in and looks around. Something behind the garage catches his eye, when the floodlight goes out. Reidier takes a step toward it, triggering the motion sensor. He tilts his head to the right and takes several more steps toward the back of the garage and then stops dead in his tracks for a moment, clearly struggling to make sense of whatever it is he is looking at. Suddenly, Reidier leaps back, dropping the empty beer bottles to the ground.

  The CLINKs and SHATTERING of glass almost mask his first retch. His second wave of nausea heaves up with an aggressive spasm. Reidier rushes to the closest bin, rips off the lid, and violently vomits into it. Once the first torrent wanes, Reidier crouches down next to the bin, his hands still clutching its rim for stability. He tries to catch his breath, but in doing so inhales another blast of fetor. Reidier yanks himself up and vomits again.

  In a brief pause between seizures, Reidier half collapses, half retreats his way back across the lawn, gasping for breath, struggling to flee beyond the circumference of the stench. Exhausted and convulsing, Reidier clutches at the grass, as if he were afraid he would fall off the ground itself.

  Finally, after several dry heaves, his body relents its cannibalizing assault. Reidier stays on his knees, lying face down. His grip on the grass relaxes. After several moments, he manages to sit up, rest his arms on his knees, and catch his breath.

  He sighs into his legs, when an altogether different spasm ripples through his body. The sounds are muffled within the dome of his fetal body.

  The automatic floodlight turns off, leaving him alone in the dark with his sobs.

  Later that night, Reidier does not even bother to try to sleep with Eve in their bed. He climbs the stairs, turns right instead of left, goes into Ecco’s room, and crawls into bed behind the sleeping little boy facing the wall.

  Reidier spoons Ecco.

  He sighs. Then reaches across his son to the group of stuffed animals that sit facing the wall themselves, and he turns each one around to varying degrees.

  Reidier gently drapes his arm over Ecco and curls himself protectively around the boy.

  *

  * * *

  * I wake up in the Lexus. My cheek pressed against the chilled window coated in my condensation. The sun is just rising, lighting up the dome of the Providence Capitol, a spectacular view from where I’m parked at Prospect Terrace Park. Loose leaves of Eccos are scattered all over the passenger seat and center console. I peel my face off the cushioned edge of the driver’s side door, start up the car, and head to the Starbucks at 454 Angell. Sudafed only gets you so far.

  The escape from McMayflower Rock was surprisingly easy. Waited until 3 a.m., the magic hour when Stalin’s predators used to be set loose from Lubyanka. Duffel bag in one hand, oversized briefcase in the other, tiptoed past Lorelei’s room (avoided checking to see if she was sleeping there or in the WASP’s room . . . sometimes a mystery is more merciful). Snatched the Lexus keys from the kitchen counter, emptied McMayflower’s wallet (all hundreds of course, that’ll teach Donny Deutsche Bank to carry D-bag denominations), and pilfered a Ping-Pong ball from the game closet. I loaded my duffel and briefcase into the backseat of the Lexus, but not before dropping the Ping-Pong ball into the Maserati’s gas tank and retightening the cap. Mr. Maserati McMayflower would make it five, maybe ten miles before the ball clogs up the intake valve, and the car sputters out as if it were out of gas. Then after he floods the engine, the car will start up, go maybe another few miles, and stop again. (As a teenager I might have downloaded the Anarchist’s Cookbook off of a BBS and dabbled around the “kitchen.”) Too bad I wasn’t going to be there to see the WASP’s face.

  The driveway fortuitously ran down a slope, so I could simply cruise in neutral almost all the way to the road before starting the Lexus up. The Beavertail Lighthouse winked at me as I crossed the Jamestown Bridge. I felt a pang of regret leaving Lorelei behind, but I just couldn’t know where she stood (or slept), and I sure as fuck couldn’t risk it on either account. For all I know, she and McMayflower both donned Michelin Man jackets.

  Made it to Providence in twenty-two minutes. Parked on Congdon between Bowen and Cushing across from Prospect Park. This place had been a guaranteed panty dropper in college. As long as I could get the girl to agree to a stroll, all I had to do was “happenstantially” wander us into the park, lean against the wrought iron gate, and take in the view. The setting was the foreplay. Now it was just a quiet place for me to read, rev
iew, and rest.

  I sat in the Starbucks on Angell, enjoying the interminable consistency of its viciously mediocre coffee. I knew the burnt liquid bitterness would slide through me faster than a butter-rubbed fat kid rocketing down the Summit Plummit at Disney on the day they accidentally pumped olive oil down the slide instead of water. But I needed the caffeine, and I had time to kill until the Sci-Li opened. The Starbucks bathroom would be my purification shrine, and upon its porcelain altar I would unburden myself of all the adulterations and pollution that had built up inside. Purged and atoned, I could begin anew.

  The barista and I shot the shit about how H. P. Lovecraft used to live there. He was way too into it. Dropped his voice and whispered an old rumor to me about how when they demolished the old house to build the strip mall, they found over a dozen decomposed kid corpses buried in the root cellar. Apparently you can tweak out on caffeine fumes. I half expected him to pull out a worn copy of Necronomicon and perform an incantation.

  * * *

  It happened at the beach. I didn’t see it at first. Forest for trees, forest for trees . . . Out of the basement on Angell Street and back to the Stone’s Throw Inn.

  I took a walk down to the breakwater and followed it to the Narragansett town beach. I watched as small waves curled up the shore, reaching at the sand, trying to grab hold, only to be dragged back to the deep. The tide was going out whether the water wanted to or not.

  The beach was a good mile long. It ended in a sandy point with the ocean on one side and the Narrow River snaking around the other, rushing back into the sea, at least while the tide was going out. Quartz-speckled boulders jutted out of the water a couple hundred yards downstream of the estuary, they themselves having refused to be washed out to sea for millennia.

  The sensation was immediate, a little seizure of déjà vu flickered through me.

  I had been here.

  I had never been here.

  Another wave crashed down. I had been here with the Reidiers: their day at the beach that afternoon in June.

  Reidier had suggested the trip to the beach over breakfast. “It’ll be fun. No one’ll be there. Everybody’s still at work or school. It’ll be our secret little getaway for the day. We’ll play hooky.”

  Eve raised an eyebrow toward Reidier, while she wiped jelly off of Otto’s cheek. “I can’t play hooky, I don’t have any classes today.”

  “I don’t understand, why can’t you play hooky then?”

  The toast popped to attention, peeking out the top of the toaster like twin prairie dogs. Reidier’s chair squeaked against the floor as he pushed it back.

  “Because I don’t have anything to play hooky from,” Eve said. Her French accent warped the word into two disjointed syllables: who-key.*

  * * *

  * NB footage? Hitcher feed? Hilary’s referencing habits have gotten a bit lax. It’s in the house, so NB makes sense. Or is this just some Hilary short story at this point made from memory? Past tense and all. She’s slipping. Her patterns are unraveling. Or maybe she’s just making a point about how the Reidiers seem to have moved past tense.

  * * *

  Ecco watched as Kerek gingerly yanked the toast out of its heated holster onto a plate. He scraped the knife across the surface, leaving a smooth smear of blood-red strawberry jelly behind. The boy lifted his chin and flared his nostrils rhythmically like he had seen the neighbors’ German Pointer, Lady, do when strolling past their flower beds on her morning perambulation. Ecco only mimicked the flare of the nostrils, however, as he hadn’t been close enough to hear the relentless staccato of inhales Lady made as her snout sharked through the sea of blossoms. His efforts did little to enhance his olfactory enterprise.

  Nevertheless, Otto found his brother’s nostril augmentations both hilarious and appealing. He lifted up his chin in the same manner as Ecco and giggled while working to flare his own nostrils.

  Eve gently slapped the back of Otto’s hand. He instantly stopped. His mother looked him in the eye and asked, “Are you still hungry or no?”

  Otto shook his head no.

  “Then if you want to play, you can go to the playroom while Père and Mère finish their café.”

  Reidier frowned at this and slid Ecco’s toast in front of him and sat down between the boys. He knew Eve’s mood was left over from their fight. It hadn’t been anything new or out of the ordinary, but the aggregate of their bedroom tiffs was getting to both of them. It was why he was so unproductive afterward.

  Otto hesitated, risking a quick look down the table to Ecco. He knew better than to ask his mother what about Ecco. Otto slid down from his chair to stand. Eve kissed the top of his head and patted his bottom lightly in the direction of the den.

  Ecco turned to watch his brother go out while biting off a corner of the strawberry toast.

  Reidier poured some half-and-half into his coffee and watched the blackness stained by plumes of cream until finally settling into a uniform dark beige. Entropy was everywhere.

  “So then is that a no?” Reidier asked. “You don’t want to take a nice break, enjoy a pleasant day at the beach, and feast your eyes on the sublimity that is me in bathing trunks?”

  Eve smiled into her coffee. She knew what he was doing with this peace offering. It wasn’t the outing to the beach so much as the day away from Bertram that he was offering her.

  It didn’t change anything. But it was nice.

  “Oui. Why not? We will play pretend hooky,” Eve acquiesced, without looking up. She knew he might misinterpret her lack of eye contact. He’d infer an aloof resignation, internalize it as a form of dismissive punishment intended to let him know she was still mad.

  She wasn’t. Quite the opposite, actually, she was touched by his gesture and even excited for a day at the beach with him and Otto. That’s what kept her from looking at him sitting at the other end of the table next to the simile of her son. If she looked, if she saw them sitting there, him feeding Ecco, mirroring the morning ritual she had just finished with Otto, she would say no. She might not even do that. She might just kick her chair back from the table and storm off upstairs, leaving her café to slowly collapse down to room temperature.

  Instead she kept her eyes cast downward and pretended to read the paper. Her nonchalant oui a minor, though effective, act of denial. It kept her from seeing a pyramid of eggs in the refrigerator, kept her from smelling the acrid, bitter stabbing aroma of boiled skin on the stove, kept her from hearing the crunch of toast in the simile’s mouth.

  “All right then,” Reidier said. “I’ll make the lunches if you pack the suits and towels and such.”

  Eve nodded. She stood up, her café held in one hand, the Providence Journal clutched in the other, and she pretended to keep reading the article she had been staring through for the past five minutes, while she headed out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  Reidier sang along to Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Irving Berlin’s “Slumming on Park Avenue.” The boys laughed from the backseat as he changed the lyrics—substituting swimming for slumming and Narragansett for Park Avenue—all while attempting to dance in the driver’s seat. Reidier’s silliness was so charming and contagious that Eve couldn’t resist singing along the next time the chorus came along. She leaned on the armrest and smiled back at Otto, who sat behind the driver’s seat.*

  * * *

  * NB footage from car?? Were there nanobots in the car? More hitcher feeds . . . I guess smart dust could have inadvertently been transported to car.

  * * *

  Reidier pulled his tweed sport coat out from under her elbow where it had been lying on the middle armrest.

  Eve rolled her eyes. “It must be your blanket for security. Who brings a sport coat to the beach, honestly, mon chéri?* It’s thirty-five.” In spite of having lived in America for well over five years, Eve still evaluated weather with a vestigial sense of Centigrade.

  * * *

  * Nope, QuAI footage. Gotta be. From the lapel pin on the spor
t coat.

  * * *

  “You tease me now, but when that ocean breeze picks up, I will not be chivalrous and offer it to you.”

  “You hear that?” Eve directed her comment to the backseat boys. “Père is a monster.”

  “A warm monster,” Reidier corrected.

  “Just for that, I’m going to put sand in your pockets.”

  “Now who’s the monster, boys?”

  “Monster? Moi? No, no. I am merely the incarnation of Madame Justice.”

  Reidier rolled his eyes, mimicking his wife. Eve slapped his arm playfully in response. The boys giggled in the back.

  Reidier was right. The beach was pretty much their own, save for a couple of lifeguards and about half a dozen or so people running their dogs. With so few people in the water, the lifeguard nearby busied himself with a regimen of sit-ups and updates on his chalkboard about water temperature readings, undertow warnings, and tide status.

  The tide was on its way out.

  Eve sat next to their towels and beach chairs on the sand. She preferred the sensation of the heat and graininess on the bottom of her thighs to the texture of a towel. Her hands were planted behind her, her arms and torso forming an A-frame.

  Her knees were bent and oscillating slightly back and forth as she twisted her feet down, away from each other, and circled them back, burying her feet deeper and deeper into the sand. It was a soothing, almost meditative act she had done ever since she was a little girl. She loved burrowing through layers of temperature, the scratchy heat at the top, to the soothing warmth just beneath the surface, to cooler darkness below, to the cold, dense level of sand that was so cold it almost felt wet, and then, if she was close enough to the water, down into the mud beneath. It was a slow process by design. Eve wanted to enjoy each different sensation as she delved into the not-so-firma terra. Once she reached the depth where it would start to hurt her toes to dig more, Eve would pull her feet out, stamp down the pile left in her wake, and start the process all over.