Cursed Be the Child

by Mort Castle

  I cannot hear you. I am asleep. I am snoring. Szzss…

  Melissa, you said you were my friend. I’m lonely. Do you want to make me cry?

  No! When you start crying and calling for your mama, it gets real icky, all cold and everything. Not cold like winter but cold like…

  Talk to me, Melissa. Please.

  Hi, Lisette. How are you, Lisette? How old are you? I’m seven. Do you go to school? I’m in second grade. Do you like hot dogs? I like hot dogs. Here’s a joke. What’s orange and throws rocks? An orange lawn. I lied about the rocks.

  Hey, I thought you wanted to talk, so talk!

  You are being mean to me.

  So what? I could care less. You don’t know how to talk right and you won’t play and the only time you come is when I’m asleep. You’re like you’re all messed up or something, not like a real girl, so that proves it. You are too imaginary, and I don’t need you.

  But I need you, Melissa. I need you to be my friend. That’s why I gave you my beautiful paperweight. That’s real, isn’t it?

  Yeah.

  There’s another gift I have for you, if you’ll be nice to me.

  Show me.

  Here, Melissa. Do you like it?

  Wow, that is neat! It’s not junky plastic or anything. And it’s for me?

  Yes, Melissa, but you have to give me something first.

  I thought so. Don’t you know that’s not the way you’re supposed to act? That’s being selfish. You’re supposed to give somebody something just because you want to and you shouldn’t ask for something back.

  Isn’t it lovely, Melissa? Don’t you want it?

  Yeah. So what do I give you this time? If you want another hair, I guess you can have it.

  Blood, Melissa, one tiny drop of your blood.

  Blood? Lisette, you’re not just imaginary, you’re crazy! What do you think you are, Dracula?

  Please, Melissa, please.

  I had to go to the doctor last year for a blood test, you silly dope, and it really hurt. It made me cry.

  It won’t hurt, Melissa.

  Do you promise?

  I promise.

  Cross your heart and hope to…

  I said I promise, Melissa.

  Okay, okay, if it won’t hurt. But I have to stick my thumb with a needle like at the doctor’s, and I don’t have a needle.

  You’ll think of something, Melissa.

  Okay…yeah, my Smurf button. There’s a pin on the back. I can use that, I guess, but it better not hurt or you won’t be my friend anymore.

  Please, Melissa.

  Okay, okay.

  Do it, Melissa.

  I don’t know…

  Do it now!

  Ow! Oh, it hurts, it does so hurt! It hurts bad. You’re nasty! You lied to me, Lisette. You told a lie!

  — | — | —

  Nine

  Sonofabitch. Son-of-a-bitch!

  What happened? What had gone wrong? He’d been blazing through the manuscript, creativity racing on automatic pilot so that he hadn’t even had to think to transform vision into words.

  Then forget it! After countless attempts, page 79 of his novel was pure shit. He yanked the paper out of the Underwood, wadded and tossed. Two points, right in the wastebasket, a sure sign that was where it belonged.

  Warren leaned back, shoulders tight, the nape of his neck on fire with tension. His reading glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. He took them off and laid them on the desk.

  So the novel wasn’t working right now, but, well, that happened. He’d been flying on the proverbial wings of inspiration, but inspiration had flapped off—meaning he had a writing problem—but that was all. Problems had solutions. So, Warren, engage the brain, think out the problem and find a solution.

  Brandon Holloway Mitchell, the novel’s protagonist, the civilized man of A Civilized Man, has just been told by his wife, Claire, that she is having an affair with Darwin Leaf, Mitchell’s colleague at the university.

  Question: What does Brandon Holloway Mitchell do now?

  Approach it rationally, objectively.

  What did you do when you found out Vicki was getting it on with David Greenfield?

  Remember Warren?

  Christ was there ever a day when he did not remember?

  Hell, time to call it quits for this session. It was nearly one in the morning and he’d been working and getting nowhere since nine.

  It was time for a drink.

  On his way down to the basement rec room, he carried on a silent conversation with himself

  (Say, when you went out for supper, Vicki’s pay day celebration treat, didn’t you have two cocktails before and a Heineken with your meal? Mathematically speaking, Professor, two plus one equal three—and you’re watching it, aren’t you, keeping it to three—and-no-more-than-three? Right, but that was yesterday. It’s now past midnight, a brand new day.)

  At the bar, he put three fingers of Johnny Walker into a highball glass and added two ice cubes.

  He sipped. Excellent, he decided, 12-year-old, peat-flavored ambrosia.

  Another taste. Very good, very good indeed, that fine, familiar spread of relaxation throughout the nervous system. He went to the sofa, slipped off his shoes and put his stockinged feet up on the coffee table. He picked up the television’s remote control. A good idea. Television was a mind relaxer, sure to induce mental paralysis.

  He zipped through the channels with the remote control. All right, the Three Stooges, masters of the mindless! He was grinning, chuckling to himself, as Moe, Larry, and Curly as plumbers destroyed a stuffy heiress’s mansion. He raised his glass. Only ice remained.

  Another drink?

  Why not?

  After all, he needed to unwind. He knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t going to get shit-faced, uh-uh, just slip into some therapeutic numbness.

  Damn, he thought, fresh drink set up, he was feeling the liquor. He was feeling…not drunk and not on the way to being drunk. He was feeling okay, getting back in balance with himself.

  But he couldn’t blot out Vicki and that sonofabitch David Greenfield. Shit, it had nearly killed him. He hadn’t suspected a goddamn thing until she’d told him, flatly and unemotionally. And though he had felt like killing her, he merely said they had better talk it over. He truly loved her, so he forgave her.

  He thunked the glass down on top of the bar. He loved Vicki. He did. All the love he felt for her welled up inside him, the shared years and the good times. There was the celebration when he sold a story to Chicago Review, cheap champagne, all they could afford, but champagne all the same; going to see Rocky Horror, a few years older than the cult crowd, but getting into the trashy excitement, laughing and laughing; a rainy summer night in a leaky cabin in Michigan; that one time winning lottery ticket she’d bought on a whim with that big pay off of $44.00 that she insisted he take and spend on anything he chose (naturally, he bought books); and Missy, that feeling of magical omnipotence when he rested his hand on Vicki’s belly to feel the movement of the life within Vicki’s life, life that they had caused to be.

  Warren felt his eyes sting with a wash of tears. He loved Vicki, loved the unique totality of her that made her Vicki and nobody else. He wanted to be with her, together with her now, wanted to make love, to be inside her.

  He went upstairs to make love to his wife.

  — | — | —

  Ten

  Lying on her side, Vicki was asleep, but not so deeply that she wasn’t aware of Warren getting into bed. He nuzzled the back of her neck, pressed his lips to the hinge of her jaw and kissed her. He put his hand on her hip. “Vicki?” He kissed her again, a light tickling touch on the ear.

  A moment of panicky despair yanked her to full wakefulness as she smelled the liquor on his breath. He was drunk!

  A heartbeat afterward, she realized she was, thankfully, wrong. There was neither slur nor sarcasm in his words as he said, “Vicki, I love you.”

  She rolled to e
mbrace him. Holding her, he kissed her deeply, passionately, and her openmouthed response was immediate. A rush of tingling, electric shocks raced through her.

  Oh, my, she thought, surprised at her explosion of ardor, this was something! She felt like the heroine of a romance novel; she was positively melting.

  Of course, a romance novel heroine wouldn’t giggle at the silly instant of having to lift up her bottom to slip off the bikini panties of her shorty pajamas. And the top of those pajamas wouldn’t get tangled around her head when she sat up to take it off.

  But she was sure no romance novel heroine ever felt more loved than she did at this moment. Warren was touching her everywhere with his hands, his lips, his tongue. It had been a long time (years?) since he had been so wonderfully ardent. She understood, knew he had so many pressures, so much to drain him—his academic career, which had turned out so different from what they had expected or hoped for; the writing, consuming the hours of his life and filling his mind from one waking minute to the next. As for the drinking, well, in those dreadful drinking days, Warren had been married to the bottle, and he had been a faithful husband.

  “I love you, Vicki.”

  “I love hearing you say that,” she whispered. Then, knowing she had never before said anything more truthful in her life, she said, “I love you.”

  She marched up the front stairs. One-two-three…Four-five-six! She stepped onto the porch and went to the front door of the house.

  Missy was dreaming, and she knew it. She was inside and outside the dream. She had had dreams like this before. Sometimes they were scary and sometimes they were fun, and sometimes even after she woke up, she kind of thought what had happened in the dream was real.

  Like when she dreamed she could fly. The secret was, if you got running a special way, and you breathed a special way, and you didn’t take your eyes off what was straight ahead, not even a flicker to either side, and then you held out your arms just right… Wow, you could fly!

  That’s how it was in the flying dream, anyway. When she woke up, it was so real she had to try it. What happened was she ran and ran, squinting to keep her eyes straight ahead, and she kept on running until her eyes burned and the wind stung the tears on her cheeks and her side hurt so bad she thought she was going to burst. Then she fell down and ripped her jeans.

  She didn’t know if she was crying because her knees hurt so much or because she would never ever fly.

  But that was when she was little. She was only in kindergarten then. Now she was in second grade. She knew what was real and what was not.

  And this house in her dream was real. It was the real house she lived in. “My name is Melissa Barringer, and I live at 1302 Main Street, Grove Corner, Illinois. Zip Code: 60412.” That was something you had to know.

  All by itself, the front door slowly opened.

  She walked into the living room. This was her house—but it wasn’t. That was how it worked in dreams sometimes. The living room was big, much bigger than it really was. It was gigantic. There was no furniture.

  Instead, there was a tall mirror. It was the trick kind with wavy glass.

  But there was something weird about the trick mirror. When you stood in front of it, you were supposed to see yourself. Sure, you’d look different, maybe all squashed down or stretched out like toothpaste squeezed out of the tube. You were supposed to see a goofy you—and not someone else.

  But I don’t see myself in the mirror, she thought.

  Yes, you do.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked Lisette in-the-mirror. “I live here. This is my house. This is where I belong.”

  This is where I belong.

  Was Lisette being a snot? You know, repeating what she said. Oh, it didn’t matter. This was just a dream.

  But now she knew it wasn’t going to be a fun dream.

  Then Lisette held out her hands.

  Missy took them. She didn’t want to, but she knew in dreams you sometimes have to do what you don’t want to do. She wasn’t sure if she pulled Lisette out of the mirror or if Lisette pulled her into it.

  Lisette was gone.

  No!

  Oh, this was very scary. It was she herself who was gone. Now she just…wasn’t.

  I am.

  No!

  Mom! Dad!

  She called and called and no one came.

  She was not in the living room, not anymore.

  She was downstairs in the basement.

  But it wasn’t the basement with the sofa and the television and the paneling on the wall. This wasn’t the real basement.

  But, oh, this basement did feel real, awful and real, and it was cold, and it had a hard concrete floor and it smelled like wet coal.

  And she had no clothes on.

  Mom! Please, Mom, come get me. I don’t want to be here. I’m alone. I’m so alone. Mom!

  Mama can’t come.

  Dad! Dad!

  She saw him on the wooden stairs. “I hear you, I hear you…”

  Dad was here, and everything was okay.

  But then she was scared all over again. She was scared worse. Dad’s face looked so strange. Sometimes on Sunday mornings, Dad slept late and Mom sent her to wake him for breakfast. When she saw him asleep, it was hard to believe he was Dad at all. His face was all changed. He looked like a stranger. And even after his eyes opened, it seemed to take a few seconds before his face would get right.

  No, this was not Dad. She knew that.

  “I know what you want,” he said, and it wasn’t Dad’s voice.

  Love me.

  “Whore! I’ll give you just what you want. Yes, I will, whore!”

  He was right by her now.

  Not Dad!

  He was touching her.

  It made her feel crawly. It made her feel sick.

  Be nice. Must be nice. Let him…

  It was wrong. Last year, at her old school, a policewoman came to talk to the first grade. Joey Douglas asked her if she knew Cagney and Lacey. She laughed. Then she told them about adults who wanted to touch you in ways they shouldn’t. They were bad to do that.

  Kiss him and touch him and he will love…

  And if someone touched you the wrong way—it didn’t matter who it was—you had to tell.

  No, I won’t tell. I promise. I’ll never tell anyone! Don’t…

  He raised his fist. “You filthy whore. You see what you make me do? And now you’ll tell the whole world.”

  And he hit her and she screamed and he hit her and she screamed and screamed and screamed.

  ««—»»

  They lay, tired and content, not saying anything. Then they heard the shriek.

  “Jesus.”

  “Missy, oh God, Missy!”

  Jumping out of bed, Vicki wriggled into her pajama tops. Warren nearly toppled over, awkwardly yanking on his shorts.

  The screaming went on and on, so loud it seemed to fill all the house and their minds. In the hall, Vicki shook her head. She was disoriented and felt almost disembodied.

  Then she knew. “Downstairs!” she shouted as the screaming stopped.

  They found Missy in the rec room. She was huddled in the corner, arms around her knees, eyes huge and unfocused. She was naked. Her mouth was shaped around a gigantic silent scream.

  “Sleep walking, that’s all,” Warren said the next morning as he and Vicki sat drinking coffee in the kitchen. It was 8:30, and Missy was still asleep. “It happens. I don’t think we have any reason to be worried.”

  “I hope so,” Vicki said. When they’d discovered Missy in the rec room, Vicki had an instant of paralysis. “It’s okay,” Warren whispered, as he gently shook Missy, calling her name. In a moment, Missy came around. She was bewildered and frightened. “This isn’t my room. This isn’t my bed.” She didn’t know how she got downstairs, didn’t remember taking off her clothes, didn’t recall anything except a “bad dream, a real scary one,” the kind of fright that needed to be assuaged by sleeping with Mom and
Dad. Once she was dressed for sleep, Missy spent the remainder of a restless night sometimes moaning or sniffling and once kicking out so hard that Vicki was guaranteed what would be an ugly bruise on the thigh.

  “She’s never walked in her sleep before,” Vicki said. “I just wonder if…”

  “It doesn’t mean she’s neurotic, psychotic, or autistic,” Warren interrupted. “She doesn’t have epilepsy or a brain tumor or any other awful thing you’ve learned the symptoms of from Reader’s Digest. She walked in her sleep, that’s all, and there’s a first time for everything, right?” Warren grinned. “And how’s that for Reader’s Digest wisdom?”

  “I guess, but…”

  “Lot of excitement in her life, Vicki,” Warren went on. “New home, new school, new people, all kinds of things. So she’s off on a nocturnal stroll.” He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t turn nothing much into a big deal, okay?”

  “I do that sometimes,” Vicki admitted. “You do, too.”

  “I guess neither one of us is perfect. We’ll just have to live with it.”

  Warren pushed back the chair and stood up, a tacit way of telling her that, as far as he was concerned, the discussion was finished. “Think I’ll do something middle-class and go get the car washed.” He glanced at his watch. “Back in an hour, and then we can sit down to a middle-class Saturday morning breakfast, lovingly prepared by a Super-Mom who manages to run the household while being active in her professional career.”

  “Don’t tease.”

  “Can if I want to. Says so in the marriage contract. Tell you what, I won’t work today. We’ll drive the clean car up to Brookfield Zoo this afternoon. Think Missy will go for that?”

  “I know she will,” Vicki said. “Me, too.”

  Grinning, he pointed at her. “You got it.”

  When he left, Vicki poured herself another cup of coffee. That Warren had been the one to suggest a family outing greatly pleased her. When he was working on a book, he often got so wrapped up that he acted as though nothing but his battle with the blank pages was at all important.

  Still, she wished there could be another family outing—tomorrow. Last evening, when they were getting ready to go out for dinner, she’d told him about Laura Morgan’s invitation and suggested he accompany Missy and her to church.