Raising Demons

by Shirley Jackson

  Once in our own driveway, I escorted Sally and Barry from the car up the walk to our back door, opened the door, and we went in. Sally said at once, “If what I smell is lunch I don’t want any,” and fell to coughing wildly. Barry choked, and I gasped, with tears in my eyes. I have never smelled anything like it before—it was dreadful; sickening, and almost visible in the quiet kitchen. In wild haste I shoved Barry and Sally back out onto the porch, thought of the oven, and, with my hands over my face and my eyes full of tears, dashed across the kitchen and turned the oven off.

  The odor seemed less strong near the stove, but I opened the oven anyway and looked in, to make sure nothing was burning inside, although I had never before made a macaroni and ham casserole that turned into poison gas. Sally and Barry peered interestedly through the kitchen window. I soaked my handkerchief at the sink, and covered my face with it; I thought of fire—although heaven only knew what could be burning to smell like that—and hurried through the downstairs rooms, sniffing and looking into corners, but it was clear that the gas existed mainly in the kitchen. The other rooms had a faint trace of that frightful odor, but I could breathe naturally in them, and it was only when I came back into the kitchen that it caught me by the throat again, and I fell to coughing and choking.

  The rattling and creaking of the old refrigerator was so much a familiar part of the kitchen that it was a minute before I realized that a good part of my uneasiness was its silence. Then, understanding that the refrigerator was mute, I went to it quickly, opened the door, and got such a lungful of the gas that I reeled wildly over to the back door and out onto the porch. “What’s for lunch?” Sally asked as, tearful and strangling, I clung to the porch rail.

  Since Barry was too little to leave under Sally’s dubious supervision on the porch, I thought that the wisest thing was to put both of them back into the car. Barry was considerably disturbed at the notion that he was about to be taken back to nursery school without any lunch or dinner or breakfast the next day, but I told Sally to sing to him, and, as her voice rose quaveringly in the kindergarten health song, I went around the house and in through the front door to the telephone in the hall. I called the refrigerator people and got the repairman on the phone. “My kitchen is full of some terrible gas from the refrigerator,” I said.

  There was a short, nervous silence, and then the repairman, his voice unsteady, asked, “Anyone in the house?”

  “Well, the children are coming home for lunch—”

  “Children?” said the repairman.

  “I took them outside,” I said, bewildered.

  “Thank heaven,” said the repairman.

  “Is there something wrong, then?”

  “Where’s the refrigerator?” he asked.

  “In the kitchen,” I said.

  “Near a door?”

  “Well, there’s a back door out onto the porch. But is there something—”

  “Can we back a truck up there?”

  “I guess so. My rosebush—”

  “This is no time to worry about rosebushes,” he said. “We can get a crew together and be over there in about an hour. Meanwhile, don’t let anyone go in the house. Better get the children well away. Don’t go lighting any matches.”

  With trembling fingers I put out the cigarette I was smoking.

  “Lock the doors till we get there,” he was going on.

  “But is there something wrong? I have lunch all ready, and it’s after twelve now, and the children have to be back at school by one, and the table is set—”

  “Look,” he said, his voice rising, “you still in the house?”

  “I had to telephone,” I said.

  “You hang up and you get out of that house as fast as you can go,” he said and so, abandoning my kitchen and my casserole and—as my husband pointed out later—his coin collection and the garnet sunburst my grandmother gave me, I fled.

  Sally was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance when I got back to the car, and Barry was reading Jannie’s library book, which was overdue because I had carried it around in the car for three days, meaning to return it. Sally broke off as I approached to ask what was for lunch. I found a crayon in Barry’s jacket pocket and, deciding that desperate measures were to some extent justified, tore the flyleaf out of Jannie’s library book and wrote on it a note saying POISON GAS DO NOT ENTER which I put on the back door with a pin from my shoulder strap. Locking the house seemed silly, since all the keys were hanging on a hook next to the refrigerator. Through the kitchen window I could see my pocketbook, where I had set it down on the kitchen table. Everything looked very quiet and peaceful inside, with the bright plates on the blue tablecloth and the villain refrigerator presiding silently. A faint whiff of that appalling odor seeped through the crack of the kitchen door, however, and I hastened down the walk to the car.

  Since it was several minutes after twelve, I started off with Barry and Sally, intending to pick up Laurie and Jannie and take everyone to the soda shop for lunch. I found Laurie with no trouble; he was on the corner, fighting furiously with Rob. I blew the car horn and Laurie, disheveled and snarling insults over his shoulder, got into the car. “My mother’s here,” he remarked viciously, rolling down the car window and putting out an evil face, “but you just wait’ll later. Can I learn to play the trumpet?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  “But Rob’s learning clarinet and Stuart and Willie are learning drums and the music teacher says I got a talent.”

  “It’s too noisy,” I said. “Trumpets cost too much and besides the house is full of poison gas.”

  “I’ll practice outside,” Laurie said. “In the barn, maybe. And I can pay you off from my allowance. Besides,” he said with deep pleasure, “I got a talent.”

  “The house is full of poison gas,” I said.

  “All right,” Laurie said. “I told you I’d practice in the barn.” He leaned his head again out of the car window and shouted, “You better run, you rat—you just wait’ll I get back, you rat.”

  Jannie was not in sight, so I drove on to the school. There was no sign of her there, so I turned around and drove back home, with Laurie and Sally and Barry fidgeting in the back of the car, and watching both sides of the street for Jannie. When I got home I turned around in the driveway and drove back to the school again, and then—Laurie by now threatening to leap bodily out of the car and make his own way, lunchless, back to school before he was hopelessly late—back home again. Then, struck by an idea, I ran up and opened the back door, which still said POISON GAS DO NOT ENTER, and shouted, “Jannie?”

  “Yes?” she said, from upstairs. “Where is everybody?”

  “You get out of this house at once, do you hear me?”

  “Why?”

  “Come downstairs,” I howled, beginning to cough again.

  “All right,” Jannie said. She came down the back stairs and I snatched up her hat and coat from the kitchen chair and grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her outdoors. “What’s the matter?” she kept saying.

  “Did you see that sign?” I pointed to POISON GAS DO NOT ENTER.

  “Sure,” she said, “but I had to change to my pink skirt because this morning Kate wore her pink skirt and I told her this afternoon I’d wear my pink skirt too.”

  “That sign says do not enter,” I said.

  “Sure,” Jannie said, “but I didn’t think you meant me.”

  “Didn’t you smell anything?”

  “No,” she said. “Only lunch cooking.”

  Glancing back through the kitchen window I saw my pocketbook still on the kitchen table.

  When I stopped the car in front of the soda shop it was a quarter to one, and our dog Toby, who had been made very nervous by having everyone leave the house when they should have been in having lunch, and then going away and coming back and going away and coming back, had conclude
d that some general catastrophe had occurred and we were planning to leave him behind to face it alone. He consequently followed the car to the soda shop and refused to be left outside. He was far too big to fit comfortably under those little wire tables they have in soda shops, and ordinarily he would have perceived this, sooner or later, but having been abandoned once had so upset him that he was wholly deaf to threats and orders; every time I led him outside he waited till someone opened the door and then sneaked in again and came and tried to get into my lap, his comfort when the whole world has gone wrong.

  The soda shop was, as usual during lunch hour, full of high school students, who regarded all of us, and particularly the dog going in and out, with extreme curiosity, and caused Laurie agonies of embarrassment. “Let’s go home,” he kept saying to me in an urgent undertone. “I don’t care what it’s like.”

  All four of the children ordered banana splits for lunch, and I asked for a cup of coffee. Just as the waitress was putting down my coffee, one of the high school students, pushed by another, came crashing down onto our table, knocking the dog off my lap and upsetting Barry, who began to cry.

  “That was the captain of the football team,” said Laurie, purple. “Let’s go home.”

  I restored Barry, indicating his banana split, and sat down. The dog got onto my lap again. I gave up my coffee, since I could not reach the table anyway. Because my pocketbook was still on the kitchen table I had to borrow a check from the man in the soda shop and make it out and ask him to cash it. I also called my husband at the college and told him he had better come home because the house was full of poison gas.

  When I got back to the table Laurie was propped up nervously, half standing and half sitting, talking to the music teacher from the school. “Here’s my mother,” he said with relief. “Can I learn to play the trumpet?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said. I sat down and the dog got on my lap. The high school students had begun to wander out, on their way back to school.

  “We like to think that all children have an instinctive love of music,” the music teacher said to me.

  “We can’t even get in the house,” I said. “How could he take trumpet lessons?”

  “The trumpet only costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars, and he will enjoy it all his life,” the music teacher said. “Lessons and music extra, of course.”

  “I had to cash a check to pay for these banana splits,” I said.

  “I will enjoy it all my life,” Laurie said hopefully.

  “Small weekly payments,” said the music teacher.

  “—talent,” said Laurie.

  “The house is full of poison gas,” I said.

  “I’ll practice in the barn,” Laurie said.

  “The house is full of—”

  “He said he’d practice in the barn,” the music teacher added sharply.

  “His father doesn’t even know about the refrigerator yet,” I said. “How can I tell him it’s a trumpet too?”

  “I’ll send you an illustrated brochure,” the music teacher said.

  “Well, you sure weren’t very polite to her,” Laurie said to me as the music teacher went out the door of the soda shop. “All she wants is to develop my talent.”

  • • •

  I took the children back to school half an hour late. Barry and Sally and the dog and I came home, to find that the refrigerator people were already there. They had a huge truck and a dolly for carrying the refrigerator, and they backed the truck over the lawn and over my rosebush to the back steps, and they put handkerchiefs over their faces and went in and got the refrigerator with a good deal of grunting and complaining. The dog and Barry and Sally and I stood on the porch watching. I felt a pang, seeing the old refrigerator go—I had had it for thirteen years, after all—but with the back door open I could smell that horrible smell clearly, and the dog put his head into the kitchen once and then went back and climbed in through the car window and sat in the car for the rest of the afternoon. Just as they were wheeling the refrigerator across a bridge of planks and onto the truck my husband arrived in a taxi. “Is everyone all right?” he asked me, and I said yes, everyone except the dog, although I personally did not think my head would clear for several days. My husband put his head inside the kitchen door and breathed deeply and then backed up, coughing. “Golly,” he said.

  “It’s much better now,” I told him. “The man opened all the windows and doors and it’s clearing out fast.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” my husband asked the men, who were settling the refrigerator onto the truck.

  “Take it down to the dump and throw it in,” one of the men said grimly. “This kind of thing is dangerous.”

  “But wait a minute,” I said, suddenly realizing that it was my refrigerator going off like this. “What about the milk and the butter and the eggs and the cold chicken? And the fruit juice and the cheese—”

  “You wouldn’t want this food no more, lady,” the truck man said. He slapped the side of the refrigerator and laughed. “I wouldn’t even want to show it to you.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said helplessly. The men got into the truck, and as it started to pull away from the porch the car of the salesman from the refrigerator company turned into the driveway.

  Since I had been talking about a new refrigerator for a number of years, I was able, unhesitatingly, to put my finger on the precise one I wanted; I even knew the page in the catalogue where its picture was. They let us go back into the house so my husband could write a check. We kept all the doors and windows open and by the time they delivered the new refrigerator late that afternoon the gas was almost gone. My husband, shaken and pale, was sitting in the study looking at his checkbook. The new refrigerator was glittering and bright, rich with shelves that pulled out and pushed in, and freezing compartments and little plastic boxes for keeping things and racks and bottle holders and vegetable bins and it was absolutely silent. Experimentally, the children and I put a jar of jelly on the top shelf. Finally, I went timidly into the study and explained to my husband that all our food had gone away with the old refrigerator and I was terribly sorry but I was afraid that I needed some money because otherwise there would not be anything for dinner; and I knew he had been dined so well in Burlington.

  The refrigerator man had told me to boil all the dishes on the table, and anything else which had been exposed to the gas, and after I had boiled all the dishes I was prepared to take a fairly strong stand on the subject of a dishwasher, since the refrigerator people handled dishwashers too and would give us quite a nice discount if we bought them both at once, and there was, in fact, the exact dishwasher I had been wanting for so long, only a page or two past the refrigerator in the catalogue. I went into the study diffidently and told my husband all this, adding that I was terribly sorry but I was afraid that I needed a dishwasher because my hands were so red and rough from washing all those dishes that I was probably not going to be able to do anything else for a long time, and besides, I told him thoughtfully, it did not become a professional beauty contest judge to have a wife with hands toil-worn from housework.

  When the dishwasher was installed the next day I went to work and washed all the dishes I owned; it took six loads. It was nice to have everything so clean and sparkling, but the children and I felt that although the refrigerator and the dishwasher looked nice in the kitchen, and there is nothing really shabby about our nice kitchen range, although it is six years old, the kitchen floor, which was done by a previous owner in dark red and brown linoleum, was disgraceful. It quite took away the charm of the acres of white porcelain in the kitchen. I went into the study and told my husband that the kitchen linoleum was shocking, and suppose some of his new friends should decide to visit him, how would he feel about the shocking kitchen floor? We decided on a nice light green, with red and blue and yellow polka dots, and I got a new tablecloth to match it. Laurie and I d
ecided that during the following winter we would paint all the kitchen woodwork yellow.

  What with all the installations and getting the linoleum down it was nearly two weeks before we were back to normal, but one Saturday morning at last I was in my bright kitchen, putting dishes into the dishwasher and wondering why I had not had a dishwasher long ago, when Laurie came unhappily down the back stairs and into the kitchen. “Listen,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Dad home?”

  “He’s gone down to get a haircut. Why?”

  “Well, look.” Laurie shuffled his feet, ran his fingers through his hair, and sighed. “Look,” he said.

  “Well?” I said.

  “You know the sodium bisulphite Dad gave me to do in my chemistry set?”

  “Yes. I mean, I guess so.”

  “Well.” Laurie hesitated. “I lost it,” he said.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I put it in a pan with the acid I was using and put it on the radiator there and you remember how cold it was just before we got the new refrigerator because we all said it was too cold for late spring? And the radiator must of gone on? And now I found the little pan but it’s empty.”

  I turned around slowly and looked at him. “Laurie,” I said, “that sodium what-do-you-call-it and the other stuff mixed together—what would they do?”

  “I don’t know,” Laurie said. “That’s what I was going to find out. Why—you know where it is?”

  I looked around at my lovely kitchen, with the polka dots on the floor and the new refrigerator glowing, its great shelves heavy with the fancy foods I had never been able to fit into the old one, at my dishwasher and my new tablecloth. “Maybe you’d better just not mention it to Dad just yet,” I said.