Demonology

by Rick Moody

  —Gerry.

  —Oh, yeah. Are you going to help me carry all this bedding?

  —Must be a lot of beds.

  —Have any gum?

  He did have gum, of course. Sugarless, according to recommendations of four out of five doctors. She handed him the stack of flat sheets as she worked to finish up the fitted counterparts. And it was true, she had a perfect intention, a complete knowledge of tactics, if not the total command of muscular adjustments required for fitted sheets. Later in life she would be as good at folding sheets as the German army was at lockstep, but she would pay someone else to do it. The transfer of sheets into his arms, an important symbolic exchange, and the exchange of gum, these required the abandonment of his beer, unfinished, on a rattling Maytag dryer. Polly demurely snapped the gum as she led him down the corridor at the rear of the house. Through the pantry. There was an empty gallon crate of ice cream sweating off its remains that he hadn’t noticed earlier. And in a door jamb, at the rear of the pantry, was the Fosters’ genealogical measuring station. Nick Foster had once been little Nicky, who smiled recklessly and admired the action of waves on lifeless Long Island Sound. A wobbly line, made with Old Man Foster’s golf pencil, indicated Nicky, Age 6yrs, 6mos, another, Nicky, 8th birthday, and so on, likewise for his little sisters, whom Nicky had terrorized into submission, and who were nowhere to be seen this night, Annabelle and Grace. With his mother, they had relocated, probably to the Fosters’ pied à terre in the East Fifties. Next right was the servants’ staircase to the second floor, half in shadow. He bolted up these back stairs, and Polly, who waited behind, likely understood the implications of these researches. Every kid who came to the Fosters’ house had to know its complete architectural layout, as if this were to understand all American power, its implied antagonism of classes, its scant beachhead against wilderness, its scantly concealed totalitarianism. Polly was impatient, though. She sighed. Nevertheless, he embarked on his frolic, without leaving aside the fitted sheets, no, carrying them upon his person. There weren’t enough lights at the top of the servants’ staircase. There were low doorways, irregular construction, pneumatic tubes, messages from below. Spiders everywhere, their astounding constructions brushing against his brow, spiders of finality, existing beyond the great net of causality. The servants’ rooms were closed, storage vaults, now, in which boxes of neglected dolls’ dresses and cadets’ uniforms moldered. An aunt had climbed these stairs in search of Christmas ornaments, several years past, never to return. But Gerry survived these adventures. But soon he passed into the larger corridor of bedchambers on the second floor. These were constructed on a plan of increasing size and ornament. The bed in each was more floral than the last. Simple double beds gave way to fabulous poster beds with too many pillows. (A subject on which subject his father had recently expatiated, Interior designers make their margin on the pillows. It’s a percentage of whatever fabric you use, so they buy these pillows, different kinds of fabric, put the pillows all over the goddamned place. Any time you want to sit down, you dislodge pillows.) There were sheer window dressings, draperies as convoluted as the waterfall outdoors, there was wallpaper with velvet upon it. And a television in every room, a stunning luxury from Gerry’s point of view, since his mother’s regulations allowed him to watch two hours of television per week. No more. He was permitted to bank time from one week and use it toward the following week, but more frequently he squandered it spinning the dial.

  All the screens in the various rooms of the second floor of the Fosters’ house were tuned to horror films. From the sacred to the profane: Bride of Frankenstein juxtaposed with The Fly, Plan Nine from Outer Space with Night of the Living Dead. In every room, a huddle of teens, as if born there, each in his or her Platonic cave, taking in the broadcast fuzz of UHF stations. Gerry and his sheets swept past one of the guest rooms, where the mirror over the vanity captured in reverse the image on the screen, Raymond Burr, from the original Godzilla, rumbling in monotone about destruction and waste, This is Tokyo. Once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which, up until a few days ago, was entirely beyond the scope of mans imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this moment still prevails. In the deep space of the mirror image, featureless backs of teenaged heads. For a second it seemed that these were the faces of his acquaintances, each a blank mask. In each of the six bedrooms, this stultified tableau. In each, Gerry stopped and inquired after the story:

  —I was a Teenage Werewolf, said Margaret Nagle, stirring from anesthesia.

  —The part where he’s in front of the bathroom mirror? Gerry said. —You know, sprouting fresh growth on his —

  —Didn’t get there yet.

  —Want to kiss me, Margaret?

  And so on. From one tomb of lethargy to the next. The sheets, in his arms, grew heavy. Wherever he paused he leaned against a wall with this burden. As with any kid of his age, he avoided the master bedroom. Everyone knew that the beds of parents had been protected with hexes of witchcraft and if you glimpsed them, especially unmade beds of parents, you’d be turned into a pedophile or a foot fetishist or one of those guys who could tell you the weather on the day of Lincoln’s inaugural but couldn’t hold a job. According to blueprints of the second floor, the master bedroom was immediately to his left, here, at the top of the main staircase, where Danny Henderson and Pete Mars, the harlequins of his school, were engaged in a sinister prank. They were attempting to roll an enormous fire extinguisher down the main staircase of the Fosters’ house. A chemical fire extinguisher. As Gerry came upon them at the summit of the staircase, Henderson, practical joker, tried anew to lift the extinguisher. This should have been feasible, since Mars was captain of the wrestling team. But no. There was a danger of herniated disks. They dropped the extinguisher again, narrowly avoiding crushing metatarsals. The thud of the cylinder on ancient beams rippled along the main staircase.

  —Can I get by? Gerry said.

  —Don’t help us or anything, Abramowitz. What if we had an emergency? Sheets might come in handy in an emergency like this. You never know.

  —I promised to get these sheets to Polly Firestone.

  They twisted the extinguisher around, another revolution, and its penile hose swiveled and whacked Gerry on the back of his thighs as he passed. Henderson giggled, and then, in a heroic attempt to keep the rusted bottom of the extinguisher from fouling the maroon carpeting that ran the length of the main staircase, he put another tremendous effort into lifting it up. But, having failed to warn Pete Mars, he dropped it altogether and only Pete’s body block kept them, Danny and Pete and the fire extinguisher, from plunging down the staircase.

  —Make sure the pin is still in the handle, Gerry volunteered from higher ground. —Or you’ll discharge chemical foam all over the house.

  —Shut up, Abramowitz, Mars said. —What are you, fire safety commissioner or something?

  —Yeah, Henderson said, —buzz off. This fire extinguisher’s been in this house longer than you’ve been in this town. You jerk. If we wanted your opinions, we’d torture you.

  Their remarks emboldened him to push by, to descend. His relatives had been oppressed in every country in Europe. His suffering was immemorial. And there was no time to dwell on slights, because Polly Firestone was waiting by the screen door that led to the porch, and, beyond the porch, into the woods. She’d disposed of her sheets.

  —You’re still late.

  The forest beyond her, beyond the porch. Remember it? There used to be forest in Fairfield County. A little forest anyhow. Woodpeckers, foxes, turkeys, muskrats, skunk cabbage, trees thickly competing, trees for climbing. The idea of tree-climbing outlasted the moment when it was age-appropriate to climb trees, well into your teens, you were alone in the woods, in the density of woods, you had one eye out for the right arrangement of boughs that would reward your nimbleness. Conifers were better than decid uous trees. They dropped their mattress of needles below.
Here was one, on this very spot, and before you could get too panicky about the heights involved, you were halfway up the tree, never mind stories you heard, that kid in the wheelchair, that one who fell to his death, you were halfway up the tree, with a view. Just like all those real estate people were always saying. You had a view. I’m what I see, lord of what I see, I’ll give it back sometime, I’ll be a kid again, later, a kid who cant do anything right, cant say the right thing, cant put a sentence together or sing in tune, a kid cutting through the woods, on the way home, but for now I’m surveying the expanse of my empire. That forest you remembered with a catch in your throat was itself a falling off from a prior forest, a primeval forest that was more grand, more impenetrable, more wild than the forest you remembered. The moment you sentimentalized, therefore, was a watered down conception of something more genuine that preceded your nostalgia by centuries. Thus, any true account of a suburban forest should feature a neglectful hunter grinding down a home-rolled cigarette in a bed of pine needles, underneath the very tree you once climbed, this after he has drunkenly fired thirteen times into a white-tailed deer fawn, to make sure it won’t move anymore, after which he vomits during disembowelment of the animal. Its for the best that we’re out here pruning the weaker individuals of this herd today because otherwise these animals will get into your gardens and eat your landscaping. The hunter grinds out the stub of the cigarette in the bed of pine needles, and the woods burn.

  In the case of the Fosters’ Halloween party, the ignition was different.

  Polly led him out, down the steps, and then they were at the bank of the creek. All the time Gerry had spent in the house, in the consideration of its interiors, turned out to be time squandered. If the elusive center of the party could be said to be anywhere, according to the barometers like median chatter decibels, recycling potential, egg fertilization percentages, and so forth, it had to be here at the bank of the Fosters’ creek. The waterfall —a dozen feet of glacial moraine with a froth overspilling it —emptied here, into the creek, which in turn went meandering into town, under the Boston Post Road, over by the Good Wives’ Shopping Center (where they filmed The Stepford Wives), down into the Five Mile River, which emptied into the Sound, which emptied into the Atlantic. A host of the invitees from Nick Fosters Halloween extravaganza were gathered in this vicinity. On the banks. In a window upstairs, an LP skipped in its last groove. No one made an effort to correct it. Carnival dynamism was the eminent force: The center of the party was wherever the greatest amount of intoxicants was located, and therefore here was the missing keg, in the shallows of the river, where it was cool, and one of the girls who had come with Polly Firestone, Nancy Van Ingen, was knee-deep in the creek, handing effervescences of beer back to the celebrants on dry land. Nancy’s beige corduroys were wet up above her knees. Her carelessness seemed oddly seductive. There was an expectation in the air, Gerry recognized, and it had to do with more than beer. Polly Firestone accepted his pile of sheets.

  —Someone’s going over the waterfall in a barrel.

  —No, stupid. Her face obscured by a mound of bedding.

  —What’s your costume anyhow?

  —Florence Nightingale, Polly said. —Or maybe I’m a fresh tampon. Just put on one of these.

  —A sheet?

  Was it a toga event? A stylized reenactment of ancient Greek civilization? Or a Mayan sacrifice? An impromptu surgery on the first volunteer? Or were these the chasubles of priests, these sheets? The hooded garments of southern prejudice? It wasn’t that anyone was taking off their nondescript corduroys, but they were all beginning to wrap the Fosters’ sheets around them, the doubles, the full-size sheets, the queens from the guest rooms. It was surprising that the kids would look this stupid. You almost never found that among teens. Their objection to being Young Republicans was that Young Republicans dressed badly. Gerry wasn’t sure he could do it, wear a sheet, but his hesitation was interrupted, when Julian Peltz called to him, suddenly, from behind a nearby spruce. He could see one of Peltz’s hands, plump, diminutive, beckoning.

  —Be right back, Gerry said to Polly Firestone, who no longer listened. She was complaining to Lynn Skeele about having to read Henry James for English class.

  If it was the last good conversation that Gerry Abram-owitz had with Julian Peltz, it was still more troubling than good, as conversations were when friendships sheered apart. Julian led them out toward the winter tee of Old Man Foster’s practice course. Peltz was quiet where he had been prolix; pale where he had been rosy; uncertain where he had been witty and sure-footed. Moonlight had brought some crisis down upon him. Though the front yard had been like a crowd scene from some movie, it was empty now. There were just the two of them, the boys of Darien with the unusual surnames. The groundskeeper had doused the flaming pumpkins, or switched them off. There were just a few exterior spotlights. If, in the backyard, facing the creek, adolescence was arriving at its crescendo, elsewhere in Darien it was business as usual Two boys sat at the edge of a tee. They hadn’t soaped a window, they hadn’t rung a doorbell and fled, they hadn’t beaten a smaller kid, they hadn’t stolen anyone’s candy, they hadn’t smoked pot, they hadn’t seen vampires.

  —Time to tally up? Gerry said. He was trying to be good-natured, though the circumstances no longer seemed to merit it.

  —Okay. Peltz hesitated.

  —Let’s see, I had a longish chat with Dinah Polanski. About some book she was reading.

  —Dinah Polanski?

  —I know, I know. Maybe it was going to be the best I could do for the evening. How did I know? Anyway, I didn’t go through with it. She wanted to talk about college. I saw Sally Burns asleep on a chaise longue. She looked beautiful. She probably wouldn’t care, since she was asleep, right, but I got all cowardly and couldn’t do anything. Dee Maguire was with her too. I saw the Fosters’ cook in the pantry. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Who else? Polly Firestone. I used all my debating skill. Not a chance. She’s sort of nice, though. So it was just a lot of conversations, really.

  Julian didn’t say anything. Because there was history between them, Gerry knew intuitively that Julian hadn’t talked to anyone that night, hadn’t said a word to any of the other kids, hadn’t spoken to any girl, hadn’t even attended the party, if attendance meant exchange of human pleasantries. Peltz, when born, had been rubber-stamped Lonely No Matter What, so it seemed, didn’t matter what crowd he was in, what birthday he was celebrating. He was sixteen years old, but he might as well be forty, or sixty-three, or eighty-five. The valleys of his character were carved out and he would dwell in them from now on. Gerry understood what it was like to have a friend with bad prospects, a homely friend. It didn’t mean that you didn’t care for someone, just because they were awkward or had horrible acne or rarely went outside. On the other hand, it was also important to know when a friendship was stale.

  You know the reputation that Percocet has, among major pain relievers, for nightmares, for taking the component material of dreams and distorting them? Part of chronic pain, when you are a sufferer thereof, as Gerry Abramowitz was, at the time of this remembering, had to do with terror, simple implacable terror, the atavistic memories like I’m going to be left out on the steppe and fed upon by wolves, because of my disability. If you closed your eyes, on this your present medication, to embark on the family of human experiences known as memories, you’d find that you were automatically inclined toward the most painful of these reveries, as if Percocet, especially when taken in excess of the recommended dosage, could relieve physical discomfort only by creating a mental analogue. So when Gerry embarked on this outline of the Foster’s Halloween party, in recollection, a bleak outcome was assured.

  —Want some of this beer? Julian had evidently found a can somewhere on his travels. It foamed liberally. He handed it over to Gerry for a sip. —I’ve been thinking, about the plan, and you know, about whether or not it was a good plan. And I decided that for me, it really wasn’t that good. I
had some reservations, about the rules and regulations of it, you know, even at the beginning. And not just because I don’t think I ever, you know, just had a conversation with a girl. Not even once. Well, maybe once or twice, but not very many times. I should have known, but I realized pretty fast, you know, that I couldn’t get anywhere near where you were going to get with all those heiresses, because you’re a natural. You’re a guy, and everybody likes you, and when you walk into a room, everybody’s happy that you’re there, even if they don’t show it, and I thought about how the plan, well, it had a thing about it that wasn’t on the level. You know, there was a part of it that wasn’t entirely honest, and the more I was out here thinking about it, the more I was thinking that maybe I just couldn’t live up to it exactly. Not in the way I thought it. Because I just can’t talk to people the way you can talk to people, I get panicky, then I do something stupid. And so that’s why I went out the window of the bathroom. It was a small window. There were a couple of kids outside who saw me come out, you know, out of the window, but I didn’t want to explain. So I just ran off into the woods. I sat out there in the woods, and my ass got really moist, from sitting on stumps and logs. And that’s how it went.

  They passed the can of beer back and forth.

  —So you’re saying I went through a conversation where I asked Dinah Polanski to kiss me —

  —You asked her to kiss you?

  —While you were going out the window of the bathroom?

  —Well… yeah.

  —And why did you do that?

  Some people had cruelties inflicted on them because cruelties had been inflicted on them in the past. These initial cruelties acted as magnets for further cruelties. You saw the wound, you saw the way victim loved the wound, you saw the way he tended it, how lovingly, how pridefully, and you couldn’t do anything but reopen this wound. In fact, it was almost pleasurable to be the source of renewed trauma for this unfortunate, because it was something the victim knew well. Therefore, you were reassuring him even while you were inflicting discomfort. That’s how it was. Friendships turned on a dime. When Gerry ran off and left Julian on the golf tee, on the winter tee, when Gerry went to join the throng beside the creek, he knew he was doing something awful, but the worst part was that he had no remorse. There was a total absence of sympathy for Julian. He couldn’t even imagine there was an inside to Julian Peltz; he couldn’t imagine that Julian wasn’t just some ugly kid with braces on his teeth who worked at the library and who was constantly hanging around. It was only later that Julian’s face, receding in sheets of night, floated through the heavy conscience of Gerry Abramowitz.