by Averil Dean
When Lyle saw the magnifying glass, he let out a frightened shriek like a bird call.
Molly laughed. “You should see your face. Oh, you should see your face.”
He began to tremble. A long sound came up from his throat, ah ah ah, and a dark spot spread like ink down the front of his jeans. He dropped the kaleidoscope and stumbled away with his arms crossed in front of him, down the row of saplings toward the house. As his voice trailed away, I crept out from my hiding place.
Molly shook her head, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “Did you see his face?”
“He peed himself,” I said reproachfully.
“Hey, man,” said Molly, who had once been made to sleep in a foster’s garage after throwing up on the bedroom carpet. “Things are tough all over.”
* * *
The next day I was angry at Molly.
She had stolen from me. I had been given a strand of shiny beads, and when it came up missing I went straight to Molly and found it hidden at the bottom of her bag.
I confronted her with the beads, dangling them in front of her nose.
“These are mine,” I said, stung at the betrayal. “You stole them.”
She was sullen and unapologetic.
“There’s no place to hide anything here,” she said.
It was because of me that Molly went to Lyle Pax to ask him to hide her things. It was because of me, because I threatened to tell her secret.
There’s nothing worse one person can do to another.
* * *
Some things you don’t need to see. Some things you know.
Molly went alone to the nursery that day with her crumpled bag of treasures. All the small pathetic objects jostling around, a collection that anyone would glance at and toss in the nearest garbage can. But she left the Center and went to see Lyle Pax, to ask if he would hide them for her.
She didn’t realize how afraid he still was, or how unstable.
She walked up the shoulder of the road, pebbles pressing up through the soles of her shoes, the bag rattling gently beside her. She entered at the wooden gate, silently moving up and down the rows of trees.
She didn’t understand how gnomelike she would appear. How strange with her bulbous head and crooked smile, that rabbity pink light in her eyes.
When she laid her hand on his arm, she thought she was meeting a friend.
* * *
From my room with the window open to the balmy day, where I sat with a book across my lap, I heard a high-pitched cry. It began as a sustained whistling note, then broke and deepened to a frantic, throaty wail like something from an animal. The kind of noise you don’t realize that particular animal could ever make.
It took me several seconds to realize what I was hearing.
Screaming. And underneath, a deeper male voice: ah ah ah.
* * *
Some things you see without witnessing.
When I close my eyes, I see a thin man at the end of a tunnel of trees, a spade like a dagger in his hand. And Molly sobbing on the ground beside him, two red pools where her eyes used to be.
* * *
When I get home from Jack’s house, I set down my purse and head straight for the closet. I take my box down from the shelf and carry it to the living room, set it down and arrange my treasures in a row along the edge of the twill ottoman: a picture of me with my mother and Nana, happy and whole, sitting together on a driftwood log with our feet in the sand and our hair blown by the sea breeze into an intertwined mass of black, blond and auburn; an Arbus photograph clipped from a magazine, of twin girls with pale braids—on one twin, I had colored in the braids with a pencil, and on the other I had blacked out the eyes; my birth certificate and my mother’s death certificate, folded together; the brooch Nana used to wear, an onyx raven with a bizarre crook in its wing and a bloodred ruby for an eye; a ticket stub from Les Miserables; a small plastic pack of razors that can be ejected one by one like the candy in a Pez dispenser; an Indian-girl key chain made of beads that my mother bought at a Seattle street fair, because she said it looked like me; and a page of handwritten dialogue from act three of Othello:
She did deceive her father, marrying you;
And when she seem’d to shake and fear your looks
She loved them most.
Slowly I repack the box. I fold the scarf Jack tied over my eyes and place it on top, shut the box, give the wood a quick polish with a bit of lemon oil and place it at the far end of the shelf behind a stack of clothes.
It’s an inadequate hiding place, but I can’t think of a better one.
The box is just too big.
CHAPTER TWELVE
One of the cuts on my foot is infected, swollen and angry red, and it won’t heal. I’ve gone too deep; it happens sometimes. I drive to the quick-care clinic and am seen by a tall gray-haired physician with an aquiline nose and an unexpected West Virginia drawl. He unwraps my foot and raises his eyebrows.
“What happened here?” he says.
“I stepped in some glass on the beach.” My face is open wide.
He cleans it with a piece of gauze and I avoid his eye, knowing he sees the older scars, the telltale crazy-quilt of white and pink and angry red.
As he wraps it, he says, “You want to talk about this?”
“About how to dress a cut? Absolutely.”
He sighs. But the clinic is busy and I am a stranger to him. He gives me a supply of gauze, bandages and ointment, and tells me to wait.
I put on my boot and wrap myself more closely with my sweater, rocking back and forth to keep warm. The exam room is covered with laminated posters of the female reproductive system and flyers urging patients to have their flu shots and pay their bills. The counter is chipped around the edges, lined with jars of paper-wrapped swabs and instruments, everything scrubbed clean and reeking of disinfectant.
One of the cupboard doors is ajar, and inside I see a rag doll on the shelf, peering out with one button eye.
Carla had a doll like that. Black yarn hair and a green dress sewn onto her muslin skin. You couldn’t move that dress, it stayed right where it was on the doll’s flat chest, and under the skirt was a pair of green panties that seemed to be part of the doll, ensuring her everlasting chastity. An odd choice, given the circumstances.
Carla sat next to me on the sofa at her house and pressed the doll into my hands.
You don’t have to say, you can point and show me where...if you were touched, Alice... You can talk to me... I’m here to help, I’m on your side...
As if she hadn’t sent me to that latest un-home in the first place. As if she hadn’t urged me to stay when things became uneasy and assured me that I would learn what it was like to be in a normal house, with a normal family—decent people who only wanted what was best for me.
As if her rescue had not come months too late.
I just sat there with the doll in my hands, refusing to close my fingers. The green dress was an insult, a way of telling me, as if I didn’t know it already, that something unsayable had occurred.
But I was thirteen years old. I knew better than to confess to something that had not been proven.
It was the doll that convinced me to keep my secrets. The doll, and something else. Some venomous snake of shame and fear that had come upon me in the night had risen up inside me and bitten so deep and so hard that I remain to this day anesthetized by its poison.
Alice, close your eyes. Be quiet now, shh....
I get down from the exam table, shove the doll to the back of the shelf and close the cupboard door.
The doctor returns a few minutes later with two pieces of paper: a prescription for antibiotics and a referral to a mental health clinic.
“Think about it,” he says.
“Think about what?” I say, because I’m embarrassed and my foot hurts more than I want, and because I can see he’s trying to be kind when all I need from him is a fucking prescription.
He gives me a tired look and I am instantly ashamed. He tells me a nurse will be in to give me a tetanus shot. At the doorway, he pauses.
“Top of the thigh is better,” he says.
And he smiles—a real smile—which draws a reluctant one from me.
“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” I say as he leaves.
* * *
Jack wants to talk about the men I know. He hasn’t forgotten my dare.
“I don’t know anyone,” I tell him.
“Bullshit. Who turns you on? A stranger, you know what I mean.”
We are in bed. He’s stroking me idly from neck to belly. Sometimes he stops with his hand over my breast, a perfect fit.
“No one. I’m done with that, anyway.”
“No, you’re not. We’re going to do it together. It’ll be a trip.”
“I don’t want—”
He raises himself up on one elbow and looks at me—not at my face but at my breast in his hand. His pupils are wide and dark.
“Tomorrow we’re going shopping.”
* * *
We end at a street market in Seattle. It’s Saturday and the place is packed. We wander around with skewers of chicken satay and cups of peanut sauce, share some warm cinnamon almonds from a paper cone. Jack tosses them in the air and catches them in his mouth; he never misses. He buys me a silver ring made of two pieces that fit together like a puzzle. When I pull the pieces apart, they won’t align properly, but Jack sorts them out with a twitch of his fingers and puts the ring on my thumb.
I am beginning to relax and forget why we’re here, when Jack takes me by the arm and says, “I need a new belt.”
He steers me to a wooden display stand, with three tables in the shape of a horseshoe and a rack of belts that hangs down like a curtain from the pegs overhead. On the other side of the table, the vendor in his canvas apron is helping an old lady select a leather purse. I browse through the selection, picking things up and setting them down. All handcrafted items, notebooks and wallets and cell phone cases, and tough little coin purses that open with a zipper.
“Perfect,” Jack says. He’s found a belt, black and supple, with a plain brass buckle. He loops it around and around his hand.
The vendor has left the other customer, still dithering over her purchase. He’s about thirty, tall and pale, with a straggling beard and a strange, shapeless hat like an empty beanbag. The top button of his shirt is open and a few threads of brown hair reach up to the hollow of his throat.
“Good choice,” he says.
He’s talking to Jack but looking at me, and I am unsure whether he’s referring to the belt or the journal I’m holding. I set it down, running a hand over the embossed cover and murmuring something about the softness of the leather. He shifts his attention to Jack, and I flip through handmade pages, trying to decide whether to spring for the purchase. Finally I set it down and wander a few steps along the display, bored for the moment and ready to move on.
“Nice work,” Jack says. “Are you the craftsman?”
“One of them.”
“Must be tough to make a living these days.”
The man shrugs, grinning. “Wanna help me out?”
“I think so,” Jack says, unwinding the belt from his hand. “I just want to try this on first.”
“Yeah, go for it.”
But Jack is looking at me, and for a second I am disoriented. There is an odd shift, as of a pause in the middle of a play, with the audience uncertain whether to applaud or wait for more. He walks a few steps to where I am standing.
“Put out your hands,” he says.
His voice reverberates in the warm summer air. There is an intimacy in his tone, in the way he’s turned his focus to me. I glance at the leather man and know from his face that Jack has given our secret away. Here in plain view, Jack wants me to show myself and what I am to this stranger, to anyone else who happens by. He wants to expose me.
Jack is waiting, the belt stretched between his hands.
I start to turn away, as if I haven’t heard. As if I don’t understand what he wants.
“Alice,” he says. “Give me your hands.”
It’s an adult voice, like he’s talking to a recalcitrant child. And suddenly I am sliding from this happy bustling scene where people are laughing and items around us are being bought and sold, from this shining ordinary day to a dimly lit room at the end of the hall, where I am accountable to no one but Jack.
I hold out my hands.
Jack winds the belt three times around my wrists. He threads the end into the buckle and slowly pulls it tight.
The edge of the leather is sharp; it’s digging into my skin. I imagine myself as he wants to see me, bound and quiet on his bed, slowly opened and held that way, all the decisions and the power in his hands. With the image comes a second sensation, a surprised rush of excitement that drains all the strength from my legs. I take a half step toward Jack, stumbling, blinking the water from my eyes.
Jack lifts my hands with the tail of the belt as if weighing them. Then he releases the buckle, unwinds the belt, runs his fingers over the red marks crisscrossing my wrists.
The man behind the curtain of belts doesn’t say a word. His body is rigid, frozen, but a deep red flush swarms up his neck and he’s looking at Jack like he’s found the new messiah.
“This is a good choice,” Jack says, watching me.
* * *
Four days later, Jack says we’ve got a date. His face is alight but he is calm, dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. He’s freshly shaven and his mouth tastes like peppermint.
“You’ll need a pair of gloves,” he says.
* * *
We’ve crossed the Sound and pull up now in front of what looks to be a converted warehouse. The brick front bears the last peeling traces of the original sign: Holsum Bread Co. Below, a modern font in cerulean neon: HOLSUM LOFTS.
“Noah will be out tonight,” Jack says.
“Noah?”
He hooks a thumb under his leather belt to remind me, and I feel an echo of heat between my legs, and a single, dense pulse.
“How do you know he’s not coming back? He could—”
“He’s got a hot date. And from the sounds of it, he’ll either be occupied with her or propped up with his friends at the back of a bar. Either way, he won’t be home for hours.”
I’m mystified. “How do you know all that?”
“Eavesdropping. I had no idea the amount of information people give away when they think no one’s listening. Kind of fascinating.”
He opens the driver’s side door.
“Come on, baby. This is your dare.”
The road is quiet and empty, lined with dark-windowed cars that crouch in the damp night like fat, shiny beetles. My heartbeat thuds in my ears; my skin is alive, coursing with electricity. Fear has lightened me. I can hardly feel my feet touching the ground.
In the center of the building is a pair of stripped metal doors. Jack opens one for me and I step inside. We are in a small vestibule, where several bikes are piled together as though one of them fell over and took the others with it. I peer up the aluminum staircase and hear two or three heavy footsteps, the opening and closing of a door.
Jack is watching me. He grins, makes a spooky face with his eyebrows raised. I have to laugh as he leads the way up the narrow aluminum stairs.
The bread factory has been divided into three stories. At each landing, a hallway stretches the length of the building, suspended by chains and steel beams. We go all the way to the top, our footsteps echoing against the c
oncrete walls. Jack turns right at the walkway of corrugated metal. I am right behind him, staring through the hexagonal holes to the floors below, thinking what a stupid design this is; anyone below could see right up my skirt. He stops in front of a blue door marked 3B, reaches up to the light fixture, a circular lamp on a long metal cable that drops from a steel beam. He pats around and comes up with a key.
“People are so unoriginal,” he says, and starts to put the key in the lock.
I stop him. “Jesus. Knock first, will you?”
“Good manners for breaking and entering?”
“Common sense.”
I knock instead, hoping we will hear footsteps from inside and see the leather man’s face appear at the door. But there is nothing. No sound at all. When I raise my fist to knock again, Jack shoulders me out of the way and puts the key in the lock. He opens the door and we step into a stranger’s house.
The apartment is smaller than I expected. It’s a studio loft, with a glazed cement floor and a high ceiling. The facing wall is of worn brick, the same as the outside of the building, with two small windows covered inadequately by a makeshift curtain made of sheets. The other walls are covered with cheap posters of foreign cities in plastic frames, and in the corner is a small kitchenette adorned with a desiccated spider plant and a plate covered with crumbs.
The air is filled with the scent of leather—and leather is everywhere. Bits and pieces, scraps of half-formed bags and book covers and belts without buckles. Every surface is covered with this kind of debris, and with small, sharp utility knives, hole punches and awls of varying sizes. Buckles, clasps, buttons and snaps. The tools of the leather man’s trade are everywhere.
Jack moves first and I follow, drawing deep full breaths. I circle the coffee table and pick up a small pouch made of fine kidskin; it will be a change purse, maybe, or something to carry jewelry. It feels like a warm rodent in my hand.
“Talented guy,” Jack says. He’s thumbing through a sketch pad—not one of the expensive ones the leather man is selling, but the cheap kind like they used to give us at school, of thin gray paper that disintegrates when you try to erase something.
