by Lisa Howorth
“Man, look at this,” I said. My Brownie had a crack on its side, and it rattled. “Do you think it’ll still work?”
“My dad can fix it. He can fix anything.” Max was rubbing the angry red spot on his arm. “We need to get back at that moron. We’ve got to find a spider that’s at least as cool as his black widow and we’ve got to find it now.” He slapped his leg with the Big Chief pad for emphasis.
“Yeah,” Ivan said. “If we don’t find one soon, all the spiders will be dead.”
“I’m telling you guys,” Max said. “Pond Lady’s.”
“Maybe we should think about it,” I said.
“ ‘Maybe we should think about it’!” Max echoed me with a prissy voice. “Think about this!” He cocked a leg and cut a big one, one of his specialties. “I say we go for the Pond Lady’s tomorrow.”
Ivan said, “I do, too!”
I reluctantly agreed, remembering that I had to go to the beach with my dad the day after, so this might be my only chance.
“All for one and one for all!” Max put an arm around me and Ivan and we stumbled up the lane together, singing the only verse we knew of a Coasters song we liked to associate with ourselves:
Three cool cats, three cool cats
Parked on a corner in a beat-up car
Dividing up a nickel candy bar
Talking all about how sharp they are, these
Three cool cats
I couldn’t resist asking Ivan, “Have you ever seen Elena naked?” I’d walked in on my sister once and she slapped me, even though it was accidental. Sort of. Also not very interesting, since she was about ten at the time.
Ivan said, “I saw her in her slip once, and I could see through it. It was scary! But she didn’t care.”
“My sister told me if I ever tried to peek at her she’d make earrings out of my nuts,” Max said. Then, “I hope that black widow bites Slutcheon on his stupid butt and it rots off.” He broke away from our embrace and pulled down the back of his shorts, mooning us, and started hopping down the lane, hands on his rear, crying, “Oh, no! My butt’s rotting off! My butt’s rotting off! I’m pooping everywhere!” Ivan and I doubled over, laughing at him.
* * *
——————
Later that evening, as we were idly riding our bikes in circles, Beatriz appeared, coming toward us up the lane, her red hula hoop rotating expertly around her hips as she walked. “That’s amazing!” Ivan cried. “How can you do that?” We boys weren’t great hula-hoopers—maybe it was not having hips or butts? We could only hula hoop on our arms. Or get them hung up in trees; mine was actually on our roof. Beatriz stopped in front of us and kept swiveling, a big grin on her pretty face.
“Cool, man, cool!” Max didn’t hand out a lot of compliments, especially to Beatriz, but that’s how impressed he was.
Still hooping, Beatriz said, “Wait till you see my routine for the Fiesta!” We begged her to show us, but she wouldn’t. “Surprises are more fun!” She stopped her hoop and we threw down our bikes by the Friedmanns’ porch. Then she declared, “And I decided that for the entertainment you guys can do what you’re already good at—Max can do his yo-yo tricks, Ivan will do magic tricks, and John can do archery! That way we don’t have to worry about learning anything new!”
Max said, “Good. I’m sick of learning all the time.” He was always cranky about having to go to Hebrew school and regular school.
We told Beatriz—we could trust her—about our miserable encounter with Slutcheon earlier and spelled out our plan to get into the Pond Lady’s yard to find a revenge spider, although I was having serious reservations. She said, “I want to come, too!” She didn’t care about catching spiders, but she also wanted to see the iron lung. “I like adventures and I never get to have any.”
“How can you go with us?” Ivan asked. “You can’t spend the night with boys.”
“My mama and papa are going out tomorrow, and they’ll be home late, and my brother just stays in my parents’ room and talks on the phone all night.”
We agreed to meet the next night at eleven o’clock, among the yews across the lane, where there wasn’t a streetlight. “Everybody wear dark clothes!” I said, sucked into the excitement and proud that I’d thought of something.
Beatriz said, “I don’t have any dark clothes. Except my school uniform.”
Max said, “Well, wear that, Miss Priss.”
“Okay,” said Beatriz, concerned. “But I can’t get it messed up.”
“Anybody who’s worried about messing up their clothes isn’t ready for an adventure,” Max scoffed.
“Well, I am ready, and I’m coming,” she said defiantly, stomping a foot. “So there.” I wondered why so many females, with the exception of Elena and my mother, seemed like our leopard-legged silver argiope, who would eat the males in her life if she felt so inclined.
7
The Pond Lady’s yard on the corner was extremely overgrown—Dimma said that it wasn’t overgrown; it was an English garden and was supposed to be natural—and her stagnant pond was irresistible to us and all manner of creatures. When we’d snuck in before, we managed to get some good frogs’ eggs, which turned into tadpoles and then died. Ivan had fed them to Linda and Rudo, who gobbled them up like they were caviar. But we’d gotten caught and been cruelly punished by being separated for a weekend.
“You just want to see the iron lung,” I said, still worrying.
“I. WANT. A. SPIDER!” Max shouted.
Surprisingly, Ivan yelled, “I. DO. TOO! We only got caught last time because there was a full moon,” he said, always thinking. “And Josephine was still awake. It’s cloudy today, and if we go really late this time, we can do it.”
Max said, “I also wanna catch Peachy.” Max was obsessed with the transparent frog in the pond.
We decided that we’d use our usual ploy to sneak out that night: The adults would be told that we were all spending the night at Max’s house, which was easy to get in and out of because there was a good climbing maple outside the Friedmanns’ upstairs bathroom window.
* * *
—
That night, the boys and I quietly played poker in Max’s disheveled room to stay awake. We were prepared with a tiny penlight that would give us enough, but not too much, light. Brickie had all sorts of gadgets that he’d bring home from work. Sometimes he gave them to me, and other times, like this night, I lifted them from his bureau drawer.
A creaky hassock fan made enough noise to cover up any of ours. Brickie had taught me to gamble—he played a lot of cards with a group of friends at the Chevy Chase Club who called themselves the Jolly Boys. I taught Max and Ivan. We didn’t play with money because we rarely had any, and instead used things from our collections. So far, Ivan had won the promise of my neon-green grasshopper and a scarab beetle from Max.
Just before eleven, when everyone in the house seemed to be asleep, we tiptoed to the bathroom, where the window was already open. We had to jimmy the screen out, but it wasn’t a problem because the wood was soft with rot. I went first, then Ivan. Max came last in case someone caught us—he could think up the best lie. It was an easy climb down. We slunk to the yews across the lane. No Beatriz. Or so we thought—she was hiding, invisible in her uniform, and scared us to death when she whispered, “Hi, you guys!” Ivan and I pulled her up from her squatting position.
Max whispered, “I see London, I see France, I see someone’s underpants.”
Indignantly, Beatriz shot back, “These are not underpants. They’re shorts.” She lifted her skirt to show us pink shorts. Wiesie came prancing across the street and said loudly, “Wow.” Wiesie was talkative and could often sound human.
“Shhh, Wiesie! Be quiet!” Beatriz petted her to placate her, but she said, “Wow,” again. “Go home, Wiesie!”
“Let’s g
o before someone sees us,” Ivan said.
Walking single file, Max in the lead, we hugged the hedges until we passed the Shreves’, and at the Montebiancos’ we crossed the street to the edge of the Pond Lady’s yard. There didn’t appear to be any lights on in the house, but the vines were so thick it was hard to tell. Just then we heard “Wow” again. Wiesie had followed us. “Rats!” Max hissed at her. “Go home, you dumbbell!”
I said, “Forget it—she’s not going to listen. You just keep quiet.”
As we tunneled one by one through the Virginia creeper, ivy, and honeysuckle, Ivan whispered fearfully, “I hope there’s no poison ivy in here,” although he knew better than any of us that poison ivy was everywhere in the neighborhood. Webs clung to our faces. It was a noisy night: Frogs croaked in the pond, crickets chirped.
We emerged in the yard to see the lazy twinkle of lightning bugs and the blue light of a TV screen glowing through a curtained window; the rest of the house was dark. We crept to the azaleas under the window and peered in through a gap in the curtains. There was the iron lung, looking as metallically space-agey and weird as it had in The Monolith Monsters: a shiny contraption the size and shape of a coffin, with wires and a lighted control panel. “Wow! Look at it!” Beatriz breathed. The TV glared with the sign-off pattern, its blue light reflecting off the machine, making it appear extra-extraterrestrial, or like some kind of Frankenstein experiment. The Pond Lady appeared to be asleep—we could see only her white head sticking out from the top of the thing. Josephine was dozing in a rocking chair, her feet propped on a low stool.
“I told you guys it was cool!” I said.
“How do you think she goes to the bathroom?” Max whispered.
“Maybe she has to wear a giant diaper, like astronauts,” said Ivan. “Or maybe there’s some kind of drain underneath.”
Once we’d gotten an eyeful of the iron lung, we moved silently toward the pond. Tall phlox and orange daylilies grew around it, and we could already see—and feel—more webs everywhere. I pulled out my penlight and snapped it on, keeping it low. Something plopped in the water and Beatriz squeaked. Wiesie, a striped shadow, prowled around and pounced on something, or nothing, and trotted off the way we’d come. A couple water striders were skating on the pond’s surface, but they didn’t interest us. Mosquitoes began buzzing in our ears and biting. I pointed the light around the decorative rocks. We saw a few ordinary spiders, and then some tiny eyes looked back at me—another wolf spider attempting to wrap up a luminous Hebrew moth. Then I shined the penlight on the webs draped on the tall daylilies, spotting a spider with a yellow ball on its back. “Marbled orb weaver!” I squealed, too loudly. I pulled a pill bottle from my pocket and trapped the orb weaver between the bottle and its cap. “Yay!” Beatriz whispered. I knew Ivan badly wanted to find something, but it was Max who spotted a six-spotted fishing spider next, and clapped it in his pill bottle.
Suddenly loud barking erupted from inside the Andersens’, two doors down. “Foggy!” I cried. Lights came on in the Andersens’ and the Pond Lady’s. We looked at each other in alarm. My neck prickled.
“Run!” Max hissed. As we were scrambling back through the vines to the street, Josephine spat out from the back door, “James, if that you tryin’ to creep up to this door, I told you we done, get on outta here!” Then, “If you boys be out there again, y’all better get gone fast ’fore I call your parents!”
“Help!” Ivan whispered urgently. “I’m stuck!” I turned to see Ivan struggling with a thick Virginia creeper vine around one leg. I quickly helped him wrestle it off, and we followed Beatriz and Max out of the thicket.
To avoid the lit-up houses, we beat it across the lane to Beatriz’s, where she turned and blew us a fast kiss and hurriedly tiptoed into her house. The boys and I slunk behind the Shreves’ and Goncharoffs’ front hedges, stopping when we got to the dark spot across from the Friedmanns’.
“Do you think anyone saw us?” Ivan whispered, breathing heavily. The barking had stopped and the Andersens’ and the Pond Lady’s houses were black again. Max pointed to his house, and we dashed across the lane.
At the maple, we caught our breath and composed ourselves. “Made it!” Max breathed. “I think we’re okay.” There was Wiesie, waiting for us. I clicked on my light. At Wiesie’s feet was Peachy, splayed out on his back like a tiny person. There were a few holes in him, and he was decidedly dead.
“Oh, no!” Ivan cried. “She gigged Peachy!”
“Wiesie! Why’d you do that! Bad kitty!” Max whispered angrily, shoving her with his foot. “We’ll bury him in the morning. If Wiesie or Linda and Rudo don’t eat him. Or we can dissect him.”
There was movement on Ivan’s porch across the street that caught our attention. A car—too dark to see the make—was parked in front of the house. We could see two figures in the shadowy recesses of the porch.
Ivan whispered, “It’s Elena and her date. If she saw us, she won’t tell.”
The screen door slammed and suddenly there was Josef, speaking loudly and angrily in Ukrainian. One of the figures—a man, we could see now—stood up from the swing and came quickly down the walk, got into the car, and drove off. Josef’s voice rose to a shout, and Elena answered, still in a normal voice, but excitedly. Then the two figures came together silently, in what seemed like a hug. We heard a loud slap, and a sharp gasp, and then the unmistakable sound of sobbing. It looked like Elena shoved Josef, and then she began coughing hard, making a hacking rasp between breaths. Josef shouted some more and the screen door slammed again. Elena stood alone, coughing and crying. Ivan pulled out his pocketknife. “I have to go help her!” he cried.
“You can’t!” Max whispered urgently. “Then we’ll get caught!”
“But it’s her asthma!” Ivan said, beginning to cry. “And it sounded like he hit her!”
Max said, “She’s got her inhaler and her pills, right? She’ll be okay. Just wait a minute.”
“What were they saying?” I asked. “Why was he so mad? Did Elena sit on The Throne?”
“He was yelling about her dates, like always. That she’s making him look bad with her boyfriends and refugees,” Ivan answered, pulling open his little knife. “She said he’s just jealous, and he is bad—a khlyst.”
I said, “What’s a ‘khlyst’?”
“I’m not sure. A creepy criminal, I think.” He kept crying.
Max said, “Jealous? Why would he be jealous?”
Elena continued to fumble around on the porch. We waited. We heard the swing creak beneath her weight. After a few minutes the coughing stopped, and we heard only sniffling.
“See? She’s better,” I whispered to Ivan.
“Stop blubbering,” Max said.
Ivan got quiet, and then so did Elena. We heard the screen door screech open and close as she disappeared. Some time passed, and the house went dark.
“She’s okay, Ivan,” I said. “It’ll be okay. It’s just another little fight.” But we all knew it wasn’t a little fight.
“Your dad reminds me of another Josef—Josef Mengele,” said Max grimly. “Come on, we’ve got to get upstairs.”
Ivan pointed the hand with the knife at the porch, crying in a strained voice, “I hate him! I wish he was dead!” Max and I looked at each other. This was the kind of thing he or I might say, but was shockingly out of character for Ivan. We’d heard the fighting before, but the hitting was new—at least to me and Max—and had shaken all of us.
One by one, we clambered up the maple and into the bathroom. Wiesie came up behind us. “We’re not friends anymore, Wiesie,” Max said. She licked her lips. Max put the screen back in place. We turned on the light and saw that we were covered all over with webs and greasy orange-daylily pollen: hair, arms and legs, shorts, and T-shirts.
“We look like we’ve been rolling in Cheetos,” I said.
; Peeling off our clothes, we all hopped in the shower and soaped up, trying to be quiet. Ivan was very subdued. I knew he was miserable about Elena, as well as sad about Peachy, and disappointed he hadn’t caught anything. We dried off with one towel and hung it back neatly. Ivan and I put on some of Max’s “clean” shorts from a pile of dirty clothes on the floor.
Max and I put our orange pill bottles on the windowsill, where we could see our new spiders, and he and I got in his bed. Ivan wanted to sleep on the floor, where the fan blew best, so he raked together a pallet from the dirty-clothes pile.
“Do you think we got away with it?” I asked sleepily. “Josephine said James. Why would James be in the Pond Lady’s yard at night?”
“Jeez. You’re such a dodo,” said Max.
“Takes one to know one,” I said back. But I really didn’t want to think about James at all and regretted bringing it up. “Do you think our new spiders are better than Slutcheon’s black widow?”
“ ’Course not,” said Max. “The marbled orb weaver and the fishing spider are cool, but we still don’t have a poisonous one for that creep.”
“Yeah,” Ivan said. “A spider that can really hurt somebody. Or at least rot somebody’s wiener off.” More rough talk from Mr. Tenderhearted. Max and I chuckled, but I was worried about Ivan.
Wiesie came in and Max told her, “You’re vanished from my bed, Wiesie.”
She went over to the pallet and stretched out alongside Ivan, who curled an arm around her. I was glad to see that. “You didn’t mean to be bad, did you, Wiesie,” Ivan said. “You probably thought you were bringing us a present.” Lit by the streetlight, Ivan’s sweet face was so clean and pale that I could see among his freckles the little circular scars that were vestiges of last summer, when he and I had had chicken pox. I thought about how much I loved Ivan, with only a drowsy twinge of guilt because I knew boys weren’t supposed to love each other. I didn’t feel wiggly about Ivan, but I would have done anything to protect him from what was soon to happen.