by Devon, Gary;
One hot day, the goldfish died because, she said, the water wasn’t any good, but they knew she didn’t like the goldfish. She had done it. She forgot to feed it and it died; the mason jar full of water, the colored rocks that grew into a weird knotty castle, the little box of food—all were gone. They would have buried the goldfish, but she threw it out with the trash and they never saw it again. Walter asked if they could get another one, but she said no, she didn’t want to take care of it. Walter said he would take care of it, but she said no and that’s final.
By July, she was drinking whiskey every day. She didn’t worry about her looks, left her hair in bobby pins most of the time, day and night, with a cloth wrapped around her head and knotted in front. She didn’t powder her face or bother to put on lipstick, and she looked as if she had washed her face too hard, it was so blank. Some days she didn’t even change out of her nightgown. For a while, she hardly scolded the children at all, barely went through the motions, leaving them to their own devices. And they knew she didn’t want to be bothered—she was cross most of the time—knew she didn’t want them around. Every day when they were up and had dressed themselves, Patsy asked her what she wanted them to do today, and usually she said, “Don’t bother me,” or “Go play,” or “Just get out of my way.” And then she would look from Patsy to Walter. “Look after him, Patsy. He’s your baby brother.” She didn’t like to hear the picture-show stories any more, and one Saturday she forgot to come and meet them for an extra long time. After that she just told them to come home with the Turnbull girls.
On rainy days when they couldn’t go outside, she sometimes let them make her drinks. They knew how she liked them. Walter stood on the kitchen counter to get the glass and Patsy climbed on a chair to reach the ice cubes. Four ice cubes in the glass, fill it up with whiskey, then dig a red candied cherry from the slim jar and float it on top. Patsy hopped down from the chair and, using both hands, carried the full glass to the bedroom. Once, when they reached the doorway, Walter said, “Let me give it to her this time,” and carefully, not spilling a drop, they switched hands on the glass. She took the glass from him but, hardly glancing at it, flung it against the wall, the glass breaking, the amber liquor splashing everywhere. “Don’t ever serve me my drink in a short glass,” she said, the tip of her cigarette bouncing up and down as she spoke. “I want my drinks in tall glasses. Gimme another one and do it right.” Another time, when they were late coming home, she threw her drink in Patsy’s face so fast she couldn’t blink, and the whiskey hurt her eyes. Then, because it was their fault, she told them to mop it up.
Adrift, they did all the things she would never let them do. They climbed the high trees behind their house; they swung on grapevines; and once Walter even went to the river with the older boys. Patsy said, “You better not, Walter. She’ll be mad at you. She’ll be awful mad.” But he didn’t fall in the river, as his mother always said he would. No currents sucked him under.
When she thought they were really bad, she made them hold out their hands. They would beg her: “Mommy, please don’t milk my mouses.” But she would catch their fingers in hers, folding them down in a deep indrawing clench until the fingers nearly ruptured at the joints. And they squealed and squealed. “See,” she said, “that’s what bad little mice sound like.” The one time Walter went to the river, she asked where he’d been and he didn’t lie. He told her he didn’t fall in. That night, giving him a bath, she was supposed to be washing his hair when she dipped him back to rinse it and plunged his head under the water. She held him under till he couldn’t breathe. He thrashed and kicked, water flying, his body squeaking and thumping on the bottom of the tub until at last she drew him up. Patsy stood screaming in the doorway, afraid to come in and afraid to leave, shouting at her to stop. “That’s what happens to bad boys who won’t listen,” his mother said while he coughed and spit bathwater and tried to scream. “Next time you’ll drown.”
Afterward she held him on her lap and pulled Patsy up in her other arm. She hugged them and asked them to forgive her. “Mommy’s sorry,” she said, her words slurring, “Mommy gets a little under the weather sometimes and she don’t know what she’s doing. But you kids have to do your part, too. You should stay away from Mommy when she’s like that.”
“But I told the truth,” Walter said, weeping. “You said to tell the truth.”
“Then let’s pretend this never happened. That’s what we’ll do. Forget all about this like it never happened, and go back to the way we used to be. Okay? Whaddaya say?” But she couldn’t go back, and it was as if they had two mothers and most of the time they couldn’t tell which one she was. They tried to stay away from her, ran from her. “I’ll look out for you, Walter,” Patsy said. “If I yell, go hide.” But now, when their mother wanted to give him a bath, he hid all by himself until she said they wouldn’t use the bathtub, only a washcloth and soap, or until she just forgot and changed her mind.
Sometimes the neighbors let Patsy and Walter come to their house for supper, something the children liked to do, except that their mother might decide to come find them. She always smiled to the neighbors and made excuses, but she turned on them at home. One night, she told them to go in the shed outside and lock the door, she was so mad she didn’t know what she might do otherwise. They hid under the house where she couldn’t crawl. Other nights, they would go home dreading that they would find her crying or reaching from place to place to get across the room, or mad at them, ready to slap them with her wedding-ring hand that cut.
Mrs. Petrie, a big bouncy woman from down the street, appeared every so often to “wet her whistle,” as she put it, with a jigger or two of whiskey. “Adele, honey,” she said, “you’ve got to pull yourself out of this thing. You’re a living mess. Why don’t you come out with me sometime to the Capri Club, down on Delacroix? Have yourself some fun?”
Their mother said she didn’t think so.
But it didn’t take many of Mrs. Petrie’s visits before the picture came down from above the divan: the black ribbon, the gold tassels, all of it gone, like the goldfish—only “put away,” their mother said. Where it had hung, the wallpaper was lighter and it was worse than having the picture there, she told Mrs. Petrie.
Even when the days began to dwindle and darken, as long as it was warm enough to play outside, she let them stay till night in the neighbors’ yards—the Turnbulls’, or the Snyders’—and she would leave in the late afternoon for the Capri Club in a clean dress, her hair brushed soft and pretty and her lips wet red, almost the color of their daddy’s red Ford coupe she’d promised she wouldn’t drive, but did.
About the same time, she had the telephone put in her bedroom where she spent hours, talking and laughing. On the first day of school, she took Patsy to meet her teacher, leaving Walter in the car while she was gone. But after that Patsy walked to school with the neighborhood kids. One evening, Suzie Turnbull told Walter he couldn’t come to their house any more because her mommy didn’t want them to associate with each other because she didn’t think highly of his mommy because she had sex and that’s bad. “You ask her,” Patsy said as they went to the kitchen. “No, you do it,” Walter whispered and they argued, in whispers. Most of the time it was Patsy who got them in trouble, but it was Walter who got punished.
“Mommy, what’s sex?” Walter finally asked her.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Is it like a fever?”
“It must be.” And all the time she kept telling him it was a bad dream when the noise woke him at night and he went to crawl in with Patsy. “It’s just a bad dream, Walter,” she would say, coming to their door. “Just an old nightmare. Go back to sleep.”
But when the night noise woke them up, it didn’t end like a dream—it kept going a little louder and on and a soft, sawing, creaking noise, like a train rumbling and squeaking far away. “What is it?” Walter said, staring at his sister in the dark. Patsy stared back at him. “I think it’s some monster!” And th
ey hid under the covers—until they decided it was a train—the sound of a train bringing their daddy home, and they listened to the creaking lullaby rhythm, and threaded through it came their mother’s whimpered complaints as if she were sad and fighting for breath, Uh-ah, again and again and quicker until it was louder than the train noise, and Patsy said “It’s Mommy!” and Walter said “She’s hurt!” And he had to use the toilet.
Moonbeams lit the hall in intervals. Their feet padding on the hardwood floor, they hurried to her bedroom door and took turns peeking through the keyhole where a soft light glowed on the other side. Patsy turned the knob and pushed the door open far enough for them to slide into the shadowed room; there was a smell in the room like candle wax. A man’s pale back rode up in the shadows and the loud creaking noise ricocheted around the room; their mother’s moaning flattened in their ears and Patsy said, “Don’t hurt Mommy,” but her voice faded to nothing, and then Walter tried to speak but he was too afraid—he had to go to the toilet too bad to step farther into the room. The man fell off to the side and the bed bounced. They heard him mumbling in the pillow, his voice smothered, and their mother was sitting up, holding the sheet across her. “It’s okay, sweetie. We were only fooling around with each other. Just carrying on. You needn’t worry. It’s okay. Really.”
Patsy took a step forward, but drew a quick breath and stepped back. It flickered across Walter’s mind that the last time, when his dad brought the little box with the holes in the top so the fish could breathe, there had been that same noise in the morning before the funny papers and she had been hiding his dad in her room all night as a surprise. He scooted a step into the room and whispered, “Mommy, is Daddy home?”
“No, baby … Ah, Davy, don’t be mad, don’t be mad, he’s just a baby—he don’t know.… I told you, sweetie … I told you. Oh, hell, goddammit, Walter …” She put the back of her hand over her mouth because she had said a bad word, and she rubbed her eyes with the insides of her wrists the way she did when her hands were dirty and she had a bad cold. “Go back to bed now.”
“I hafta go to the toilet.”
Patsy said, “Walter, let’s get outa here. Come on.” She reached out and grasped his arm, but he pulled away from her, and their mother said, “Well, go ahead, then, Walter. You can go by yourself.”
“Can’t either, in the dark.”
“You can turn the light on. Just close the door first and then turn it off when you leave. You can do that.”
“Can’t reach it.”
“You can too. You reach it all the time. Do it this once for Mommy.”
Louder. “Can’t reach it.” He looked for Patsy, who had backed all the way out to the hallway.
“All right, then.” She yanked her robe into bed with her. Flopping from side to side, she covered herself. “Come on. Hurry up.” She flipped the bathroom light on; the light shone fan-shaped in the bedroom and he walked through it into the bathroom. She shut the door.
On the other side of the wall, they had words, angry and hurried. The man said, “That’s it, Adele, that’s it.” And before Walter had finished, he heard their voices trickling away in another room. He’s going away, Walter thought, and flushed the toilet. The razor strap was gone from the nail. She had taken it when she reached for the light switch.
He felt a prickly quickening in his groin. Stretching above the top row of tiles, he turned the light off and went out. The pink bedside light was on and his mother sat perched on the side of the bed, legs crossed, pressing a glass of yellow ice cubes against her forehead. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” she said. “Couldn’t quite reach the light switch, huh? C’mere.” She had on her high-heeled slippers with the puff feathers on the toes, and by swinging her leg and flexing her toes, the slipper swung and clapped against her heel. Next to her on the bed was the razor strap.
“It wasn’t any nightmares,” he said, his voice fluting. “You lied.” He looked toward the hall again; the bedroom door was standing open and empty. “Where’d Patsy go to?”
“C’mere, Walter.” Her voice was low and steady. “If I have to come get you, it’ll be twice as bad. You’ve been asking for this for a long time.”
Now the man was slouched against the door frame with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and she was off the bed, her robe falling loose and open, the dark taper of hair and the rosettes of her ponderous breasts rushing toward him. She grabbed his arm as he ran, threw him over the bed, and pushed his head down with her hand between his shoulder blades. She didn’t take time to lower his pajama pants, but it didn’t matter. The razor strap sizzled as it flew and struck. The sharp pain slashed into his clenched buttocks again and again.
When she let him up, he stood away from her slowly, choking to find his voice. “I don’t like you no more,” he told her. “You lied to me, you killed my fish. We can’t ever go to the Turnbulls’ again.”
“I never said that,” she said, returning from hanging up the razor strap, her robe shifting apart, her thighs and stomach and breasts blotchy with dark bruises.
He let loose with all his venom. “They did, though. They said we couldn’t. Cause their mom don’t think highly of you and she don’t want them and us to adsoserate together with each other cause you’ve got sex and that’s why!” He choked and pointed at the bruises. “See,” he said, “you’ve got it.”
She stopped in midstride, pulled her robe shut, her face awry. “Well, that old windbag. If that’s what they talk about, it’s a damned good riddance. But who taught you to talk to your mother like that? Suzie? Talking about things you don’t know a damn thing about.” She shoved him toward the door. “Now go back to bed, and leave me be.” He started to go, but the truth of it struck him and he turned, lifting his hands up in supplication. “Now I can’t never go with ’em to the picture show no more.” But she pushed him—“Get going”—and he fell, scrambled up, and ran past to their room, where Patsy was hiding under the covers.
He climbed in beside her and lay there, crying, the tears running into the pillow. He cried about the letters that didn’t come and the goldfish in the trash and the hundreds upon hundreds of cheering people in the newsreels he couldn’t go see. And when he couldn’t breathe from crying, he sat up and wiped his face and wept noisily.
Suddenly the ceiling light was on and Patsy was screaming, “Go hide! Walter, go hide!” jumping up herself and running from the bed, but the man was bending over him. “Puttin’ up quite a little ruckus in here, ain’t ya?” There was a strange smile on his face. “Sounds like to me you like to cry. Enjoy it. Keeping people up all night. How’d you like something to really cry about?” Quick as lightning, the man boxed his ears, first on one side, then on the other, box, box, that quick and hard, hands like iron, and it happened so fast there was no pain at first, just a drumming sound in his ears, and then the pain flowed into his head and everything blurred. His mouth sprang open, but nothing came from his lips and the room was turning dark, the light going out in dim washes, and his mother was in the room. He barely heard her say, “You’ve really hurt him,” but the man took her by the arm and turned off the light, drawing her away, and the scream grew out of him, riding out of his body on the waves of his pain.
Walter stayed in bed most of the next morning, holding his hand on his left ear that wouldn’t stop hurting. Patsy didn’t go to school, but stayed with him in their room, trying to get him to play. That’s when she told him, “We have to find Daddy.” And they made their secret plan.
Their mother was talking on the telephone. When he went to the bathroom, he found a drying rack in front of the door to her bedroom, so he had to go in from the hall. And she told them not to come to her room any more at night unless they knocked. She didn’t go to the Capri that evening, but the next day, in the afternoon, she told them to stay in the house, in their room, and behave themselves, she wouldn’t be gone long.
When the front door closed and the house was quiet, Patsy wanted to leave right away, but Wa
lter went to his mother’s bedroom. He looked in all the bureau drawers, then went to the closet, which was full of a dry, woolly smell. “Come on,” Patsy said. On the floor in the corner he found the picture with the dusty black ribbon and the faded red cord. Heavy as it was, he managed to get it up in his arms and was turning to bring it out when his shoe snagged on a fallen coat hanger and sent him sprawling. The picture flew out of his arms as he fell—flew out into the room and crashed. Patsy went to it and turned it over. The glass that had protected the picture was now broken in chunks and pieces.
“Uhhh,” Walter moaned. “Oh, no,” Patsy murmured, and they sat down, feeling across the splintered, jagged surface. All he had wanted to do was take it with him so they could pick the right face.
The picture had buckled forward on one side and he thought he could get it out, but when he tried to, he cut three of his fingers and blood drops fell on the picture. His fingers didn’t hurt, just stung, thin white cuts oozing his blood. “Now you’ve done it,” Patsy said. Walter let out a long sigh, reached in, and pulled the picture out. The jagged edges of the glass scraped white grooves diagonally across the pictured face. He wiped the blood off the picture with his shirt, but now there was blood on its back. Patsy ran to the bathroom and got the Band-Aids. She put one on each of his three cut fingers and one on his forehead like the prizefighter in the newsreel. Walter folded the picture small and put it in his back pocket. Then they went to get their coats.