Behind the Curtain

by Peter Abrahams

  “Day off? Next game’s West Hill.”

  Ingrid got up with a sigh. If the Red Raiders went down to defeat, it wasn’t going to be on her.

  Ty loaded plates on the bar: one eighty-five. Ingrid took her place, watched the bar go down to his chest, back up. Three sets of ten, clank clank, no breakdown in form, no help needed getting the bar back on the cradle. He added the two tens, just like last time. Except now Ingrid said nothing—this was one of those controlled experiments.

  Ty lay down on the bench. He wriggled his feet around, wriggled his body, got his hands on the bar, went still. She looked into his eyes. He didn’t even see her. His concentration filled the room. He took a deep breath, lifted the bar out of the cradle, let it down to his chest, breathed out. And then raised the bar. Got it right up there, lowered it, raised it again, form still good. Breathed in, lowered it, breathed out, lifted. Now his arms started to shake, form breaking down, but when Ingrid made a little movement forward, he barked, “No!” And got it up into the cradle, three successful lifts at two-oh-five, unlike last time, and no help necessary. No human help.

  Ty lay there, breathing heavily, chest rising and falling, face flushed, partly with effort, partly with pride.

  “We need to talk,” Ingrid said.

  He sat up, wiped his face with a towel. “’Bout what?” he said. “See that? I did two-oh-five.”

  “Yeah,” said Ingrid. “I saw.” No human help. Ingrid began to understand what this was all about. It wasn’t the acne, the tantrums, the liver damage, the cancer, all Mr. Porterhouse’s mumbling stuff in health class. Bad, yes. But the worst thing was the nagging wonder: Who was lifting the weight, winning the race, scoring the touchdown, getting the glory—you or some supernerd in a chemistry lab? And if it was the supernerd, why bother playing the games at all?

  “Why’re you looking at me like that?” Ty said.

  “I know you like football.”

  “Duh.”

  “But you wouldn’t do anything stupid, would you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “For example,” said Ingrid, “where’s your DVD player?”

  “Huh?” said Ty. But as he said it, his eyes shifted as though he were checking his rearview mirror, just like Dad.

  “The DVD player that’s normally on the shelf in your room,” Ingrid said.

  “What’s your point?”

  “It’s not there.”

  “It’s not?”

  “You didn’t know?” she said.

  They looked at each other. Her own brother, who she’d known all her life, and she had no idea what he would say next. Was it possible he really didn’t know, that maybe Sean had stolen the DVD player and she had misread everything?

  “Oh yeah,” said Ty. “I lent it to someone.”

  “Like who?”

  Ty’s chin tilted up and his eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”

  “Just tell me.”

  Ty got up off the bench. He’d always been bigger than she was, but the difference had never been like this.

  “You’re a pain,” he said.

  “Why is it a big secret?”

  Ty came very close. He’d pushed her around once or twice in the past, but weren’t they beyond that now? Ingrid stood her ground.

  Ty took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m related to you,” he said. “You’re the nosiest person I ever met.”

  “That’s not a crime,” Ingrid said. A good word to fall silent on. It hung there between them. Ty’s eyes did that rearview mirror shift again.

  “No goddamn business of yours,” he said. “But I lent the stupid thing to Sean.”

  “Sean Rubino?”

  “Yeah. Sean Rubino. I can get it back anytime I want.”

  “Why’d you lend it to him?”

  “Ever heard of being friendly?”

  “You’re not friends with Sean Rubino.”

  His voice rose. “Now you’re telling me who my friends are?”

  “He’s a loser.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “You’re a moron.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “No.”

  He pushed her out of the way, so easily, headed for the stairs. The lights shone on his bare back. He was a liar.

  “Look at those zits on your back,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  He whirled around and mimicked her. “Look at those braces on your teeth.”

  She ignored him. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Ty yanked on his shirt. “Know your problem?”

  “My problem?”

  “Yeah, yours, you stuck-up little bitch. Ever since that whole Cracked-Up Katie thing you’ve been living in a fantasy world.”

  Her face got red-hot. “That’s not true.”

  He smirked at her, a look she’d never seen on his face before, although she had on Sean Rubino’s. Then he turned and went up the stairs.

  “THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

  Ingrid awoke in the night, a sudden awakening as though some loud noise had startled her. She listened, heard nothing but rain on the roof and Nigel softly snoring. Was it possible she’d got it wrong? Zits on the back might be just zits on the back. Maybe weight lifting alone could make you strong quickly if you happened to hit a growth spurt or something. Maybe Ty actually thought Sean was cool, or maybe it was simply that he was older and had his own car. That didn’t explain the $1,649 in Sean’s drawer. Couldn’t there be lots of explanations for that, mostly bad but not necessarily rubbing off on Ty? And therefore all the rest of it, all that connecting the dots, might be her imagination and nothing more. And if so, could it be that Ty was right and she was living in a fantasy world?

  She sat up. Was it true? Was that her? If it was, she’d have to change her whole personality. Could that even be done?

  The rain fell on the roof, not as hard as drumming, not as soft as pitter-pattering. Her imagination and nothing more. Except. Except what? Something was bothering her.

  Ingrid got up, started getting dressed. She was lacing up her shoes when she remembered: the medicine bottle from Mexico, up in the tree house. All that Spanish writing on the back, and the only words she’d understood—anabolic steroids—halfway down. But what about that Spanish writing? Did it say, “Do not mix with anabolic steroids,” or “Sale and consumption of anabolic steroids are illegal” or some other innocent thing?

  “Stay,” she said to Nigel, very softly. He whimpered once but slept on. Ingrid went down the hall. Ty’s door was closed and so was Mom and Dad’s. The house was quiet and dark, no lights on. Ingrid didn’t need them, could have gone anywhere in the house with her eyes shut. She went to the kitchen for the flashlight kept in the drawer by the sink, then continued down to the basement, where she opened the slider and stepped outside.

  Cold rain fell invisibly from a sky the color of charcoal. Ingrid crossed the lawn, entered the town woods. The trees were a little darker than charcoal, the path darker than that. She turned off the path, came to the huge dark form of the oak with the double trunk, felt for Dad’s footholds.

  Flashlight between her teeth, Ingrid climbed to the tree house, pulled herself through. She switched on the flashlight, shone it on the leaf pile in the corner. Only there was no leaf pile in the corner. It was swept clean.

  She panned the light around, saw the two stools, red for Ingrid, blue for Ty; and the sign: THE TREEHOUS. OWNR TY. ASISTENT INGRID. Even the Ping-Pong ball was still there, lying against the wall, in case of any surviving Meany Cats. But that Fabricado en México bottle was gone. Ingrid got down on her hands and knees, covered every inch. Gone.

  She switched off the flashlight, gazed out the window. The woods spread out in the distance, dark and spiky.

  Back in the mudroom, Ty’s sneakers were wet.

  “I’ll protect you,” he’d said. Only a game, yes, and even then Ingrid had been ninety-nine percent sure that Meany Cats didn’t e
xist, but still, she’d felt safe.

  “I hate when the days get so short,” Stacy said. The next day, in Stacy’s bedroom after school, homework scattered all over the place.

  “What’s the Continental Congress?” Ingrid said.

  “Is that the tea thing?” said Stacy.

  “This packet is huge,” Ingrid said.

  Shadows were already falling outside.

  “This country has way too much history,” Stacy said. “If we lived in 1770, we wouldn’t have to study the Continental Congress.”

  “How about 1491?” Ingrid said. “No history homework at all.” She closed her packet.

  “Did any women go with Columbus?” Stacy said.

  “I don’t know,” Ingrid said. “There were women pirates.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bonnie somebody.”

  “Cool.” Darker and darker outside, real fast, like someone was turning a dial. “My mom made brownies,” Stacy said.

  “Those almond ones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  Stacy left the room, went downstairs. The Rubinos’ house was quiet, Mr. and Mrs. Rubino at work, Sean God knows where.

  Sean, one of those dots, possibly unconnected.

  The next thing Ingrid knew, she was down the hall, slipping into Sean’s room, quick and silent. No defense for this, the kind of invasion of privacy she would have hated if it had happened to her. But she couldn’t stop herself, didn’t even really try. Ingrid had to know what was fantasy, what was real.

  Sean’s room: squalor as before, maybe worse. Plus those bare walls with bits of masking tape where posters had once hung. For some reason that bothered her. She stepped over a pile of dirty clothes and opened the bottom drawer of Sean’s desk. Still crammed—wrinkled homework, car magazines, and down at the bottom, the baseball glove. She took it out, opened it. Nothing inside. The $1,649—gone.

  Ingrid replaced the glove, closed the drawer, straightened. Her gaze fell on Sean’s TV. Something else wrong—Ty’s DVD player was gone.

  Reality or fantasy? You needed data, Holmes said, but what if the data kept disappearing before you could fit things together? Had Holmes ever—

  Sean walked into the room eating a brownie, his hair gelled up in spikes.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Ingrid’s heart started beating fast, like she’d been caught doing something terrible; which was kind of true.

  “Um,” she said.

  The expression on Sean’s face was in transition from puzzlement to something nastier. Ingrid glanced around, hoping for an idea and quick.

  “I was looking for a book.”

  “A book?”

  There didn’t seem to be a single one in evidence.

  “About—” The name, please. It came to her, thank God. “The Continental Congress.”

  “What the hell’s that?” Sean said.

  “This history thing. Sorry. Didn’t know you were home.”

  “I wasn’t,” he said. The expression on his face was changing again, maybe getting ready to settle on mild annoyance when another kid—no, a man—walked in, three brownies in his hand. He saw Ingrid.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “Just a friend of my sister’s,” said Sean.

  The man looked down at her. In his twenties probably, not particularly tall, not as tall as Sean, for example, but he did have that beaky nose. Plus long stringy hair and eyes a little too close together. If Ingrid had seen him before, it had been from a distance. She had to be sure.

  “Hi,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Ingrid Levin-Hill.”

  He gazed at her hand as if he’d never done this before. Then he remembered his manners and shook it, grinding a few brownie crumbs into her palm. Also he forgot to say his name.

  “And you are?” Ingrid said.

  “Carl,” he said. “Carl Kraken.”

  Carl the third, assistant caretaker at the Ferrands’. He let go of her hand, then did something that no one had ever done before to Ingrid, something that made her feel weird. He looked her up and down, real fast, but she caught it. What had Grampy said about the Krakens? A rotten family from way back.

  “Ingrid,” Stacy called from downstairs. “Your mom’s here.”

  Mom drove her home.

  “Something wrong, Ingrid?”

  “Nope.”

  She went up to her room, peeking into Ty’s on the way by. His DVD player was back on the shelf. Like nothing was wrong.

  eleven

  INGRID AWOKE IN THE night. She wasn’t used to all this waking in the night, had always been a good sleeper, dreaming the nights away in her seaworthy little boat.

  Voices came from down the hall. Mom and Dad. Dad said something that ended with “Chicago.” Mom said, “What about the kids?” followed by fainter words, but Ingrid’s hearing was sharp: “Their roots are here.”

  Dad’s voice rose. “Means nothing without a job,” he said. “They’re squeezing me out.”

  “Maybe you’re blowing it out of proportion,” Mom said.

  His voice rose some more. “That’s you, every time—no help.”

  “I’m trying,” Mom said. A long pause. “There may be an offer on Blueberry Lane.”

  “Whoopee.”

  After that came Dad’s footsteps, into the hall, downstairs. Then silence.

  Ingrid felt around for Mister Happy, found him in his usual place, jammed against the wall. She held him close. Beside her, Nigel sniffed the air. He was awake too.

  “Have you been wearing the appliance?” asked Dr. Binkerman. He loomed up close like a figure in a nightmare, but Ingrid, although tired from her restless night, was wide awake. If, in some universe gone totally crazy, she ended up as an orthodontist, wouldn’t she make sure she didn’t have long nose hairs poking out her nostrils? Damn sure.

  “The appliance?” Ingrid said. She was supposed to wear the appliance, a Spanish Inquisition kind of device, every night to make her teeth unjumble faster. “Sí, señor.”

  Dr. Binkerman got a funny look in his eye. “What was that?”

  “Yes to the appliance,” Ingrid said. Not a lie: She had worn it since her last visit, three or even four times.

  “Doing your best?” said Dr. Binkerman.

  “Yes.” True as well, especially if he’d known how crowded it could get in her bed—Nigel, Mister Happy, appliance, Ingrid. She was doing her best under the circumstances, which is what he’d meant to say.

  “Keep it up,” said Dr. Binkerman.

  Mom paid on the way out.

  They drove to soccer practice. Warm in the MPV—Mom had the heat way up, as usual—but cold outside, with a line of low clouds scudding across the silvery-blue sky.

  “How much do these appointments cost?” Ingrid said.

  “There’s a contract for the whole treatment,” Mom said. “We pay in installments.”

  “How much is the whole thing?”

  “I forget the exact figure,” Mom said. “It’s reasonable.”

  “What’s reasonable mean?”

  “A lot less than if we lived in a big city somewhere.”

  Chicago. Big city, essence of.

  Ingrid pulled down the visor, flipped open the mirror, bared her teeth. “This is good enough,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “My teeth.”

  “Don’t start, Ingrid.”

  “Start?”

  “We’ve been through this a million times,” Mom said. “The braces come off when Dr. Binkerman says so.”

  “God almighty,” Ingrid said. She snapped the mirror shut.

  “What’s your problem?” Mom said.

  The answer: It was about saving money, not getting the braces off. But Ingrid, pissed now, let her glare do the talking.

  They drove up hospital hill in silence. Ingrid got off at soccer field one, closing the door harder than she had to. Eyes on t
he girls over by the bench, gathering around Coach Ringer, she didn’t really notice the Boxster until Julia LeCaine stepped out.

  “Hello, Ingrid,” she said, adjusting the whistle around her neck. “That your mom?” The MPV turned out of the parking lot, headed back down the hill.

  “Yeah.”

  A little smile flickered across Julia LeCaine’s face, like maybe she’d caught Ingrid’s temperamental exit. “Haven’t met her yet,” said Julia, “but I hear she’s very nice.” They walked across the field. “Has your father mentioned we work together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hear you and Chloe are friends.”

  “We—I’ve known her for a long time.”

  That little smile came to life again; Ingrid had never seen one quite like it. It almost made her believe there was a third party to the conversation, smarter than the others.

  “Maybe we can get together sometime,” Julia said.

  “Get together?”

  “You, Chloe, and I,” said Julia. “Lunch in West Hartford, say. There’s supposed to be a halfway acceptable oyster place.”

  “Well—”

  “Or a trip to the mall—maybe that would be more your style.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  Julia’s cell phone rang. “Yes?” she said.

  Ingrid recognized the voice on the other end—Dad. After ten or fifteen seconds, Julia interrupted him.

  “I thought we agreed on three and a quarter,” she said.

  Dad started saying something. Julia cut him off again.

  “Three eighths?” she said. “You can’t be serious.”

  Dad was silent. Julia clicked off, glanced down at Ingrid. Julia was vice president of long-range planning. Dad was vice president of making the numbers work. But they’d been arguing about numbers and Julia had won. So what did that mean? Ingrid tried to make her face a blank, but did it wear that defiant look she saw on Ty’s from time to time? Probably. Julia smiled her little smile.

  “Gonna work on shooting today,” said Coach Ringer. “Our shooting’s been pis—been not too good. You don’t put the ball in the net, you don’t score.” He paused to let that sink in. Rain began to fall, light but icy. “Guarantee you one thing, ladies—don’t score, you won’t win.” He let that sink in too. We could still tie, Ingrid thought. Lots of times she might have said it out loud. Today she wasn’t in the mood.