by Dan Chaon
Her grandmother shrugged, put a cigarette in her mouth. The flame of the cigarette lighter made the grandmother’s eyes glint. The grandmother breathed in deeply, and then the smoke came curling from her nose, wisping through the bars of sunlight that slanted from the windows.
“They’ve got to be kept at room temperature,” the grandmother said. “Cool in summer, warm in winter.”
The room they were in had once been a bedroom. Arlinda could recall when she and her mother had slept in a big, quilt-covered bed in this very room. When her mother was a child, this had been her room.
“Do you really think it will smell up the house?” the grandmother asked. “Even if I keep the door shut?”
“It smells like a barn,” Arlinda’s mother said. “You might as well have a house full of goats.”
“Well, I don’t care. It doesn’t hurt anyone but me. I’m the one who has to live here, and I can’t smell a thing.”
Arlinda’s mother shook her head. As she always did when she saw someone else smoke, she put a cigarette to her own lips and lit it.
“They’re so soft,” her grandmother said. “Do you want to hold one? They’re tame as rabbits.”
Her mother wrinkled her nose, exhaling a stream of smoke.
“Arlinda?” the grandmother said softly, as if something magic were about to happen.
Arlinda looked at her mother, then at the chinchillas with their bright, sharp, waiting eyes. She shook her head.
“I don’t care,” the grandmother said again. “I’m the only one that has to live with them.”
The grandmother locked the door to the chinchillas’ room, and Arlinda watched as she carefully slipped the silver key into her sweater pocket.
The grandmother made coffee. Arlinda got to drink some, too, with cream and three sugar cubes. Everything in her grandmother’s house seemed to happen in the kitchen, and her grandmother was almost always there. After the grandfather had died, she had even moved the small couch and the television into the kitchen. Nowadays, when Arlinda and her mother came to the house, the grandmother would be in the kitchen on the couch, with her legs drawn up, her knees almost touching her belly. She was always wearing sweaters or coats in the house, draping herself with blankets.
The grandmother and the mother talked in secrets. Arlinda could sometimes guess what was being said, though the meaning always drifted just beyond a certain edge of clarity.
“Went to see O’Connor,” Arlinda’s mother said, “like you said.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t give me anything.”
“Why?” The grandmother cupped her hands over her coffee, as if to gather warmth. Arlinda, pretending not to pay attention, swung her legs gently, fascinated.
“Harvey goes and talks to them,” Arlinda’s mother said, giving the name a sharp twist, as if it were dirty. “Don’t they think I know when it hurts?” She glared at Arlinda, as if she were about to protest. “I know when I’m sick.”
“I’ve got something,” the grandmother said, and Arlinda’s mother cast another sharp glance at Arlinda.
“Little pitchers,” she said, and the grandmother, too, looked at Arlinda.
Arlinda felt her skin prickle. Were they speaking of the little pictures she’d found in her mother’s drawer? She stared down at her swinging legs, as if she hadn’t heard, and she saw her grandmother take a pill from her sweater pocket, passing it quickly under the table to her mother’s hand. Her mother brought the hand nonchalantly to her mouth, and then took a swallow of coffee.
So that was all, Arlinda thought. She already knew that her mother and grandmother shared their pills. She scorned them for thinking she was too dumb to notice. She had decided that they had the same illness. She could tell this by comparing them to women she knew to be normal. Her Aunt Sharon, for example, had breasts; most women did. Aunt Sharon’s breasts were large and round. They were not like lumps of fat, which was what her mother said breasts were made of; instead, they seemed like a part of Aunt Sharon’s body, like an elbow or an ear. Arlinda’s mother’s breasts were not fleshy—her chest was almost as flat as Arlinda’s, except that her mother had two pointy, purplish nipples, hard and angry looking. The mother in the dirty pictures had real breasts, but that was one of the things Arlinda found frightening.
Also, she knew that her mother and grandmother had babies that died. The grandmother would go on Memorial Day to lay flowers on their three tiny graves, but her mother’s baby had no grave. Her mother did not like to talk about it, but Arlinda pressed her, once, and finally the mother had snapped: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, it wasn’t a real baby. It wasn’t developed. It was like a fish.” Most women, Arlinda knew, did not give birth to such things.
The mother and grandmother sat for a long time in silence, their hands folded on the table like closed wings. The coffee cups sat in front of them, untouched. After a while, Arlinda began to wonder whether they were somehow talking without her hearing, making signs with their eyes, reading one another’s minds. When her mother breathed in, she closed her eyes, and then opened them as she breathed out, a kind of sleepy rhythm that seemed to mean something important. Finally, after trying hard to see what they were saying, Arlinda got up and left the kitchen. “I’m going outside,” she said, and her mother mumbled under her breath.
Arlinda walked around the side of the house, peering through little tears in the plastic-covered windows. She stared for a long time at her mother and grandmother, and she pretended that she was a girl who was going to steal a magic potion, and that they were the witches who guarded it. They sat there like stones, casting their spells. After a time, Arlinda crept back around the house, imagining she was following an ogre who would lead her to the hidden entrance of their den. But as she slipped along the wall, sliding around corners, it began to seem that the ogre she was following was now behind her, watching. The idea so startled her that she immediately stopped making believe, half afraid, almost wanting to run. The grass in the yard looked dense and wild, jungle green, and the branches of trees suddenly seemed to be snatching the birds from the air, rather than the birds alighting on the branches. She shivered and hurried inside.
Her grandmother and mother were no longer in the kitchen. She called out nervously, walking through the living room, down the hallway, peeking in the doors. She found them in the grandmother’s bedroom. They were sitting on the grandmother’s big double bed and didn’t look up when Arlinda came to the doorway. They were sorting through a drawerful of things dumped on the quilt between them. They touched letters, gently as feathers they smoothed their fingers across the faded handwriting. Her mother held up a dull-golden earring, her eyes closing as if she were falling into a dream, and whispered “Oh!” as if it were a butterfly.
But when Arlinda approached them, the spell was broken. She picked up the earring and saw that the gold paint was cracked and peeling off, like the shell on a boiled egg. “What is this?” Arlinda asked, and her mother just shrugged.
“Old junk,” she said.
“What’s this?” Arlinda asked, lifting a letter.
“Oh, why don’t you go play,” her mother said, her voice slurred and tired.
And so Arlinda went back to the kitchen and turned on the TV. All that was on was the news, and she quickly fell asleep.
When she awakened, it was dark outside, and the phone was ringing. The sound of the phone had reached into her dreams—at first just a distant echo, but then growing into an alarm that made the dream people freeze, looking into the air above them as if something were swooping from the sky.
The phone kept ringing, and when she went into the living room, her grandmother and mother were both asleep. Arlinda picked the phone up herself. “Hello?” she said.
“Arlinda?” her father’s voice said. He sounded far away, his voice just a tiny, angry hiss of static.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said.
“Is your mother there?” He spoke in his lowest voice, as if he were go
ing to spank her. She set the phone down quickly and went to the couch where her mother was sleeping. Arlinda shook her, and she opened her mouth as slowly as a fish, lifting her head, her eyes squeezed shut. “What the hell do you want now?” her mother slurred, as if her tongue was hard to move.
“Daddy called,” Arlinda said, and backed away.
Her mother sat up suddenly. She was hunched, breathing hard, looking as sluggish and furious as the mole the dogs had caught in the garden and pulled into daylight, where it hissed and bared its teeth, circling around and around. “Tell him I’m not here,” her mother said, and Arlinda went hesitantly back to the phone.
“Mommy’s not here,” she told her father.
“Arlinda Sue!” her father barked. “I’m not fooling around. Now, you tell your mother to get on the phone right now. I’ve been calling everywhere, and I’m very worried and very angry.”
“She’s not here,” Arlinda said again, dully. Her throat felt like it was closing up. She watched as her mother rose like something ancient and heavy from the couch. She stumbled down the hallway toward the grandmother’s room, where the other phone was hooked up.
“Arlinda,” her father said, low and menacing, “you can tell your mother that if she doesn’t come to the phone right now, I’m going to drive out there myself. Tell her that.” Arlinda heard the click as her mother picked up the phone in the other room. “Has your mother been taking pills, Arlinda?” her father asked. Arlinda could hear her mother breathing on the other line, and she said nothing, knowing her mother was there, waiting, hidden. Did her father know she was there?
“I asked you a question, Arlinda,” her father insisted. “Has she? Has she been taking pills?” Arlinda could hear her mother’s sharp intake of breath, could almost feel the heat of it.
“No,” Arlinda said. “Yes. No.”
“Arlinda . . . ,” her father said, and suddenly her mother broke in, her voice rising like a shape out of the fog.
“So!” her mother snapped. “You’re turning Arlinda against me, are you?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Arlinda’s father roared.
“Arlinda, get off this god damn phone,” her mother cried, and Arlinda slammed it down—startled as her mother’s voice leapt from the receiver to the bedroom on the other side of the house, shrinking away. From where Arlinda stood in the living room, her mother’s shrill voice became abruptly tiny, her shouts and denials and accusations like the curses of a genie shut up in a bottle. Then, they stopped.
Arlinda stood very still, listening. Everything was quiet, and then the door to her grandmother’s bedroom slammed open. Her mother appeared in the hallway, slumping toward her, holding the walls and still swaying.
“So!” her mother said, in a mincing, mock-sweet voice. “I hope you’re happy now, liar!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Arlinda cried. But in an instant, it seemed as if everything she’d done—all the jewelry she’d taken, the pills she’d buried, the pictures she’d seen—all of it was suddenly clear to her mother, who could see it in Arlinda’s eyes.
“Do you like to tell your daddy lies about me?” Her mother tried to grab her, but Arlinda slipped away. “Good!” her mother crowed. “Now you’ve done it! He’s never going to come back! Are you happy now!” Her mother caught her by the edge of her shirt, and she screamed. Her mother’s fingers clutched her shoulders, and Arlinda was shaken from side to side, wailing. Her father was gone, she would never see him again. “Oh, you’ve done it now, you brat!” her mother screamed. Arlinda tried to pull away, and as she did her shirt ripped and she toppled back. Her mother fumbled to catch her, but she slipped through her mother’s fingers, her chin striking the floor. “Oh,” her mother cried in alarm. “Honey, are you okay?”
“You pushed me down!” Arlinda cried. She could feel herself beginning to heave with tears. “You hit me!”
“No—liar!” her mother said, but her expression was confused, as if maybe she wasn’t certain of what had happened. “You fell yourself. I never touched you!”
Arlinda curled herself into a ball, pulling away from her mother’s touch. “I hate you!” she screamed. “I’m going to tell Daddy all about you!”
“Fine!” her mother said. But she was wincing, moving away, and Arlinda could see how her eyes suddenly sparked with hurt, then narrowed. “Good! You hate me? Why not, just like everybody else. So tell your precious daddy, see if I care!”
Her mother sat down on the couch and closed her eyes. Arlinda watched her furtively, thinking she might suddenly spring up and strike her, but her mother merely put her head in her hands, and Arlinda hurried past her, arcing as far away as possible as she neared her mother, then running down the hall and into the scary bedroom, the one where her grandfather had slept before he died. It was full of boxes of his belongings.
She stopped crying even before she closed the door. She felt numb, as if she were hollow and her body might collapse, like a paper bag filled with air. She could hear, as she sat on the bare bed, the scratch and rattle of the chinchillas in their cages in the next room.
She wondered what would become of her. Had her father really abandoned her? Or would he come and take her away, so she would never see her mother again? How long would she have to stay here? What would happen to her dolls and books at her real home? Did her mother hate her? Did her father?
For a long time, she just lay there, her eyes open. She was afraid. The dusty-smelling cardboard boxes crouched around her, circled the bed. The shadows of the trees shook and trembled against the walls, thin and crooked pantomimes of lurching figures, of people dancing. Beyond the wall, the sound of the chinchillas was like voices—tittering, whispering, telling secrets.
It was late; she had been vaguely asleep, vaguely dreaming, when her mother came in. At least, it was a woman who looked like her mother, in her mother’s nightgown, which was transparent in the moonlight, so that she could see the outlines of the woman’s body, like branches behind a thin curtain.
“Arlinda,” the mother whispered, as tender and gentle as a real mother. “See how pretty. See how soft.”
There was a chinchilla in the mother’s hands. Arlinda could see its eyes glistening.
“Momma,” Arlinda said, softly, as her mother sat on the edge of the bed. There was no way of knowing that this would be the most gentle moment she would ever remember passing between them. There was no way of seeing that her parents would fight again and again in the coming months, that in two years she would have a new mother, a mother like the ones at other children’s houses, a mother who baked cakes and went dancing with her father. There was no predicting how little she would see of her crazy mother when they moved away, or how she would come to hate and dread visiting her. She couldn’t have foreseen that her mother would live on in the house with the chinchillas even after the grandmother had died, even after Arlinda and her father had gone far, far away. All Arlinda knew then was that, for a moment, she had the key to all those secrets.
She felt her mother’s hands on her own, felt the softness of the chinchilla pressed against her palms. It was its shivering, it was the heaving of its lungs, it was the quick muffled beating of its terrible heart.
THIRTEEN WINDOWS
1.
It is set in a wall of yellow brick, third floor, no curtain. The house next door. Neighbors, but he’s met them only in passing and can’t recall their names. Behind their window is a room so pink that it must be lit by a colored lightbulb. Davis can see a dresser with a rolled-up window shade on top of it, and another window, also uncurtained, which faces the street. A small dog comes in and stands on his hind legs, with his paws on the windowsill, his ears pricked up. He watches the cars passing on the street intently. Standing like that, the dog’s body is reminiscent of a tiny, nude man.
2.
A red sports car, idling in the lane beside Davis, waiting for the light to change. The girl inside it is black, pretty, with professional-looking make
up and a turbanlike hat, made of silvery, metallic material. She is singing. Davis watches her lips moving, and she doesn’t notice him looking. The song she is singing along with is apparently a sad one. It makes her feel sad, too, and she is moved, involved in the sound of her own voice mingling with the voice on the radio.
3.
He needs new glasses, and here is a storefront. Rows and rows of lovely eyeglasses, expensive frames. He smiles. Some of them are fairly outrageous! Davis wonders what he would look like if he wore those ones with the tortoiseshell along the top, arched like surprised eyebrows. He needs new glasses.
4.
The new town is larger and more discreet. When their moving van pulled into the driveway, none of the neighbors came over to introduce themselves. It is not a close-knit block. The elderly woman across the street folded aside her curtain for a moment, idly curious, perhaps noting the out-of-state license plate on their car, observing as Davis’s wife hustled their young son around to the backyard, watching briefly as Davis and his wife struggled down the van’s ramp with the old sofa. When Davis glanced back over to the house, the neighbor was no longer peering out.
5.
Davis can imagine his wife pausing for a moment beside their big front window and looking out, expecting, for perhaps the third or fourth time, to see the car pulling into the driveway. He can picture the curve of her neck, her head inclining slightly as she tries to peer through the transparent outlines of her own reflection through the glass. In the background, the boy may be crying, or asking for something. She stares out into the growing dark. Leaves fall.
6.
When Davis and his wife were first married, they lived in the upper half of a duplex. Their next-door neighbor was a woman who may or may not have been crazy. They would see her from time to time in her backyard, wearing her nightgown and galoshes, filling a bird feeder with millet. She was in her late forties, apparently unmarried, childless, and she talked to herself. She kept a coop of pigeons in her living room, in a large chicken-wire cage that must have spanned the length of the wall, and in the morning Davis would see the birds flutter briefly past the frame of window. There were always two or three rising up for a moment, a convulsion of wings, and then stillness. All the other windows had their shades drawn.