October (2 page)

But always I land, the disease a firm hand on the controls (there, another metaphor!), and even now I feel it pressing so insistently against my spine, against the soft, lost sponge of my brain, guiding me to a landing.

The Time Machine . . .

Oh! Oh! The sky is falling!

I laugh, thinking about Chicken Little, and Danny thinks I have forgiven him and puts his hand on me, but I push him away. Cold, the first chill morning of autumn, heat ticking through the radiators, frost covering the grass when I looked out the kitchen window and there he was coming home, the bastard. He entered through the back door smiling, sheepish, unrepentant, little huffs of breath steaming from the outside cold, all those toys in his arms for Lydia and the boys, that big Irish grin and everyone melted,
 
melted for a little while, and the children playing in the parlor with their presents while he ran his big hands over me in our locked bedroom and we were wed once more.

He puts his hand on me and I push him away again.

"What's wrong?" he asks, and I try to rake his eyes out, but he holds my arms and hits me in the face once with the flat of his hand and laughs again. I tell him I will leave and he almost hits me again, but instead he laughs. "Remember Rhea?" he says. That was 1940, only ten years ago, and things haven't changed. Her husband, Brant, beat her, she tried to kill him but he beat her even worse, and the cops laughed about it and drove away. They called her Wildcat. I saw from the curb as I walked home from school. Her lip cut down one corner, two eyes black like a raccoon, I think he broke her nose but they didn't set it because he wouldn't bring her to the hospital, they had no money except for his beer. After the police left I watched the door close and heard him beat her some more. That's what happens when girls try to leave, the unwritten code of men. I felt sorry for her, but like everybody else I avoided her after that. When you try and fail, you're a failure. It was as if she had a disease. Wildcat, they called her, bad wife.

So the children play and Danny laughs. But it is an uneasy laugh. To see me mad again he lies back and smokes a cigarette, looking at the ceiling with a wistful look on his face. Then he turns toward me, bedsprings creaking under him, and says quietly, but not gently, "It's not as if I love 'em, Eileen." He rolls back, staring at the ceiling, smiling. "You can always write about it," he adds. He concentrates on his cigarette, waiting for me to scream and beat at him or leave the room, so I leave, and I hear him just laugh once, a snort, and I wish I could hate him more (bad wife) but I know this is his only weapon against me, against memory. . .

The Time Machine, back to the present . . .

It's so dark now, the cold through the window, that horrible cold in my hand, my arm . . .

Time . . .

Eddie, stop eating like that!

Pawing the food into his mouth as if he has two stomachs, ignoring me, just like his father. And he the youngest. He even laughs like Danny. I thought Bobby would be like Danny, the influence of proximity, but he's quiet and reads all the time. In my secret heart, where I keep my dreams, Bobby is my hope just as Lydia is my little girl and Eddie is lost to me. I dream for Bobby. Danny calls him names, when he's deep in his six-pack, yells at him for not going out for sports like his brother. Bobby answers by getting sullen. I fear for him because there's fire beneath his brooding.

One day I tried to talk to him but he would not confide in me. It would be nice to have someone confide in me. Mary Wayne used to confide in me—

"I just like to be alone," he said.

My heart was bursting with hope for him, for myself. "I found some of the things you wrote."

His face reddened in embarrassment and anger. It was as if I had asked him about wet-dream stains on his sheets.

"It's only that—" I began, wanting to tell him how beautiful his thoughts are, that he should continue to express himself. But these words would not come out, only my fears. "I'm afraid you'll run away."

His face was still flushed with anger. "Anything to get out of here."

I didn't know what to say. A gulf between us, one I didn't know how to bridge. I realized that Bobby was lost to me, too. All children are lost to their parents. We never possess them—only cradle them until they learn to cradle themselves. From birth they are their own.

"Never let guilt, or fear, rule you," I said to him, thinking of his father. I left him to his brooding, and I'm afraid, lying here next to Danny and his beery snores, that Bobby will indeed run away . . .

Time. . .

That freeze in my arm—I've felt it before . . .

Again, to the past . . .

Oh! The sky is falling! Bright red and gold! Chicken Little, just like they told us in grade school . . .

Yes, Mother, I said, I lost my reader, please don't hit me, it was an accident. Please—

But of course she hit me, and here I am with the sun going down, the sky cooling, and she's airing the quilts out on the line. They blow, giant autumn leaves, that's a metaphor. Mrs. Greene would approve. And, like Chicken Little, I say the sky is falling, which is something like a metaphor, red and gold and shades-of-brown leaves, dropping pieces of the sky. The sun makes patches of deep gold light on the spaces between the trees. It shines like a gold beam on the carpet of falling sky. Oh! The sky is falling! And it feels so good to dance away from the window, my pigtails flying out, I see them from the corners of my eyes, I feel like I'm in the sky, falling with the leaves, falling!

Yes, Mother, I'm sorry I was making noise. No, I mean yes, I would like some supper. I'm sorry, I didn't think before I spoke. Please, Mother, I promise next time—

"Damn you," I whisper fiercely as the door closes, but she doesn't hear and I clamp my hands over my mouth to keep from saying more. I'm sorry, God, for saying such a thing to my mother, but she hasn't been kind to me lately and I don't think it's all my fault. She thinks I don't know she wasn't married to my father, but I know. I found one of the letters he sends her with money. Columbus, Ohio. He must be a good man to do that. I may run away to him if she doesn't let me go to the party next week. I hear Mr. Fields out there now, in the parlor. I'll ask her when he leaves.

Would that be a bad thing, God? To run away? I wonder if you can hear me up there. Above the falling sky.

The sun is almost gone. Squinting, I see sparkles of it low through the oaks. The dropping leaves break up the sparkles and give them different colors. Mrs. Greene said I am good at reading, have a good imagination, but that my penmanship should be improved if I want to be a writer. I told her I would buy a typewriter. I think she thought it was funny, though she continued to look at me sternly. She doesn't think I'm silly, I hope. I do want to be a writer, unless I fall in love and marry a prince, and live in a castle. If that happens, I'll have supper whenever I like . . .

The Machine once more, pulling me back to now . . .

Lydia, is that you? Why don't you come? My arm, it feels frozen, as if it's made of cracking ice . . .

And pushing me back, firmly, to then . . .

No, I didn't mean to be sharp with you, Mother. Yes, I forgot to get the bread and the milk as you asked, but that's only because I'm so excited. You did say I could go—but you did! Last week, when Mr. Fields was here—

Damn you! Damn you!

I'm sure she heard me, but all she did was slam the door harder. Damn her. I'll run away to Columbus, to Father. He would let me go to parties. A banker, written on his bank stationery. I wonder what she does with the money. Assistant manager. I wonder what Columbus is like.

The trees look like skeletons, shorn of acorns. The squirrels have squirreled them away. Apt, Mrs. Greene would say. I'll run away, be a writer, in my room with a typewriter in Father's house. It would be a big house. A banker. I'll be like Emily Dickinson. Is Columbus like Amherst?

Tree skeletons, flecks of red and gold skin shed around them. A broken carpet of flesh. Creepy. So is Jerry Martin, of course, but—

Damn her!
Everyone will be at that party, and they'll know I'm the wallflower they think I am. Eileen the Meek. When all I am is a tragic princess, trapped in a movie. Cary Grant will stroll in, smiling, and save me. "
Darling
, how simply dreadful for you to be in this condition." Dancing, dinner, banter, a kiss under moonlight—

Halloween moon. I bet they're all getting their costumes on now. I wonder if Mother even lit the candle in our pumpkin, the one I bought, damn—

Mother? I didn't hear you come in. Yes, I'm sorry I used that word. Yes, I asked His forgiveness. I'm sorry, God, heartily sorry—

I can go? Oh, Mother, thank you! Yes, I'll get dressed now. Thank you! Thank you!

Of course I hear Mr. Fields cough out in the parlor and that's why she wants me out of here. But who cares! Thank you, Mr. Fields! with your bad breath and dry, nervous hands. He looks like a bird on a perch. I throw on my costume and walk out past the parlor. He looks at me with those tiny eyes of his behind his steel-rimmed glasses as I go by. He gives me the willies, but I almost laugh, I have to put my hand to my mouth because I'm dressed like a black cat and he looks so much like a bird. I hear him cough again as the storm door closes behind me, and then I do laugh out loud.

Then, I'm running down the steps, into the night—I can't believe I'm going to this party!

And such a beautiful night! How to describe this night? Mrs. Greene would like this: stars white as cold milk against raven-black sky, trees like skeletons (that's still the best!), leafless oak and birch branches rattling like bones in the wind. Leaves, fallen, the colors of a red rainbow, fighting each other, twirling, crackling down the gutters, snapping at the roots of trees they've left, as if trying to decide whether or not to jump back on.

Too flowery, of course. But Mrs. Greene would love it. And I love this night! Pumpkin flames snapping in the breeze, children flying from door to door like wind-borne wraiths.

Suddenly I'm running, wind-borne, too, a black cat with wings! Pumpkin eyes wink as I fly past.

I can't wait to get to this party!

And—there it is!

The party house!

A strange house. How to describe it for Mrs. Greene?

Too grim for metaphor: what's a metaphor for darkness? No pumpkin, no light on the porch. Too dark even to be haunted. It looks like an inside-out house, wearing its soul on its gutters and shingles. Metaphor, after all: the porch running the length of the house a mouth with missing railing posts for gap-teeth, the door in its center a gullet; slate-blank windows for eyes; at either end of the top floor, jutting above the roof, peaked gables are horns.

Wary of going in, I hide behind a hedge. I watch as someone dressed like a witch (Marsha
Denby
? How appropriate!) runs up the tongue of the walk, skips up the steps onto the porch-mouth, jumps into the esophagus.

I can almost hear the house belch as Marsha disappears into darkness.

I don't want to be swallowed by this house.

I don't want to go into that darkness.

But then here comes another one, in a miniature baseball uniform, number 3 on the back, fat like Babe Ruth, too. It must be Jackie Farmer, followed by a white-sheet ghost, twin spacemen (Bobby and Billy Seavers), a bat with flapping black wings. All are gulped down by the house. It belches muffled cheers and laughter discreetly through the front door.

Still I don't want to go in.

And then Mary Wayne appears and disappears into the house, and I
have
to go in.

Mary is dressed like a princess, of course: pink taffeta, jeweled crown, sparkling wand. I decide to call out from my hiding hedge, but she's up the steps and through the front entry before I can open my cat's mouth.

And then I'm running from my hedge, and over the lawn (the grass looks black, feels dead), up the porch steps (creaking like old bones, the wood rotted in spots). The door leans off its hinges—

I'm
in
.

I feel the house burp over my digestion.

Apt, Mrs. Greene?

It's so
dark
. Isn't there any light? Yes, ahead, an orange glow down the hallway. The floor creaks like the porch steps. The dry smell of dust. No furniture, until—
there
, a table covered with a sheet. I lift the sheet; under it—a milk carton.

Ahead, orange light strengthens. I hear laughter, still muffled.

A turn at the end of the hallway—and there's the jack-o'-lantern belonging on the front porch, set on another milk crate beside the cellar door. A very bad carving job, the eyes different sizes, barely triangular, large on the rind, chiseled down to tiny openings on the pulpy inside. The nose barely a slit, the mouth crooked, filled with peaked fangs.

A stifled cheer from the cellar. Someone says, "Of course, Mary . . ."

I take a step down the stairs, hesitate. Behind me, at the front of the house, two laughing voices. I know them. Danny Sullivan and Barry Meyer. I feel like a cornered feline. My heart is going too fast, thinking about Danny, what Mary and I have written in our diaries.

They're getting closer. Barry is making mock frightened noises. Danny tells him to be quiet. I step to the far side of the cellar door, backing away from pumpkin light. I watch them appear—Danny in football jersey and helmet, tall, Barry trailing bands of gauze bandage, a defective mummy.