“Mother is always after me to eat more. If I ate everything you said I should in a single day, Mother, I’d soon be as fat as Winky.”
“Who’s Winky?” Madge asked. “And how fat is she?”
“Winky was his family’s nickname for Ben when he was a little boy, and ever since Judith found that out from her aunt she’s insisted on calling her father Winky. He hates it.”
“He does not hate it, Mother, he just thinks it’s silly. That’s what a nickname is for, isn’t it, to make you feel dumb? If he’d stop calling me Judy, I’d stop calling him Winky, I’ve told him that a thousand times.”
Henry smiled, recognizing the last phrase from Judith’s mouth an expression he’d heard endless times from Sondra’s lips: “Henry, we’ve gone through that a thousand times,” or “Henry, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times.” Without either of them knowing it, Sondra was having a real influence over Ben Winckelmeyer’s daughter—despite the girl’s insistence on maintaining a skeptical distance from her stepmother.
Madge caught Henry’s smile and by the smallest wrinkling of her forehead gave him to know that it was not good manners to be eliciting these revealing details about the Winckelmeyers’ household from the guileless Judith. Madge turned to the girl with a polite, cheery smile (the one she flashed on children at the hospital whenever she came into their ward) and asked her the question it is always safe to ask of any child. “How old are you now, Judith?”
“Eleven and two-thirds. How old are you?”
“Judith, really!” Sondra scolded. “Can’t you be nice?”
“There’s nothing not nice about her question,” said Madge, who was ten years older than Sondra but didn’t in fact give a hoot about it. For Madge the question wasn’t how old you were but how well you stacked up compared to other people the same age. Despite the smoking and despite the booze, Madge felt herself to be in good shape, relative to Henry’s ex. “I’m thirty-nine,” she lied. She wouldn’t be thirty-nine till January.
“That’s some witch costume you got on,” Henry said, and that was a lie too, or at least insincere. If the compliment had been paid to Sondra it would have been true enough, but the outfit Judith was wearing made her look more like a miniature derelict than a witch. “It’s spooky.”
Judith giggled.
“She’s not a witch, Henry,” said Sondra. “She’s St. Clare.”
Henry looked puzzled. “St. Clair, Minnesota?”
“St. Clare the saint,” Sondra explained, with a little grimace of disapproval.
“St. Clare was the sister of St. Francis,” Judith elaborated. “She founded the order of Poor Clares almost five hundred years ago.”
“Isn’t that unusual,” Madge said. Then, as that seemed more of a criticism of the costume than a simple observation, she added: “I mean, isn’t it unusual to dress up as a saint on Halloween?”
“If I stay up past midnight, it will be All Saints’ Day.”
“I hope you don’t intend to go to Mass as St. Clare,” Sondra said lightly. “Your father wouldn’t appreciate that.”
“Of course not, Mother, don’t be silly.” This time it was Judith’s turn to change the subject. “Where is William?”
Henry sprang up from the couch. “Good question. I’ll go upstairs and get him now. Billy’s been getting into his costume. Wait’ll you see it, it’s a humdinger.”
Henry left the three women to carry on the sparring match by themselves and went up the stairs and down the hall to Billy’s room, but even before he opened the door he knew Billy wasn’t there.
A faint, uncanny flicker of nameless feeling touched Henry’s heart as he looked about the empty room. It was like the poem that all the girls in junior year at Alexander Ramsey High School had memorized and recited time and again. “Little Boy Blue,” by Eugene Field. He couldn’t remember the poem itself, only the groan that had gone up from the boys in the class each time the old tearjerker got put through its paces. There were Billy’s toys and his books. There, in the corner, were the two sets of bowling pins, arranged now in conventional ten-pin triangles. And there, still, on the closet door, was his doctor costume.
But the jack-o’-lantern, where was that?
“Billy?” he called aloud. “Billy, where are you?”
There was no answer.
Somehow Henry hadn’t expected one. He went back out into the hall and saw that the door to Ned’s room was ajar, letting the dim glow of the night-light beside his bed spill out into the dark hallway. Of course, he thought, that’s where Billy would be. He’d taken the jack-o’-lantern to show it to Ned.
But Ned’s room was empty, too—or so to Henry’s blindered sight it appeared. He steadfastly refused to treat Ned’s comatose body as though the boy’s mind and spirit were still alive within its husk of flesh. Henry returned to the hallway without sparing a glance for the body in the bed.
“Billy!” he called again more loudly. “Billy, your mother is here!”
This time there was a muffled reply and a muted clattering sound. But from where? The doors to the other rooms stood open, and they were dark within—all but the door to the attic, and surely Billy would not be there.
But when he opened the door to the attic, Henry could see a faint wavering of candlelight on the bare rafters, and when he began to mount the stairs, Billy’s voice issued clearly from the darkness: “I said I’ll be right down, Dad!”
“What are you doing up here?” Henry asked of the darkness.
“I just brought the jack-o’-lantern up here to see it where it’s really dark, that’s all.”
Henry had reached the head of the stairs, and now he could see Billy at the far end of cavernous space kneeling in front of the jack-o’-lantern and hastily stuffing something that was scattered across the floorboards into his KISS knapsack.
“Your mother’s downstairs, with Judith. If you hurry, they can give you a ride with them to your party. Madge’s not feeling well, so I was meaning to walk you over there, but as long as they’re here with a car—” Henry broke off. He was close enough to Billy now to see that what he’d been stuffing into his knapsack was the missing Heath bars.
“Okay,” Billy said. “I’m hurrying. I’m done. I’ll put on my costume right away.” He buckled the knapsack closed and put his arms through the straps. Then, taking up the jack-o’-lantern in both hands, he got to his feet. The candle flame wavered as Billy turned round, and the jack-o’-lantern seemed for a moment to be a sentient, living thing.
“It does look spookier up here, doesn’t it, Dad?”
“Yes,” Henry agreed, “it does. Now give me the jack-o’-lantern. I don’t want you tripping on the stairs and setting the whole house on fire. Go get into your costume. Pronto.”
Billy handed the jack-o’-lantern to his father and reluctantly headed for the stairs. Halfway there he turned around. “Aren’t you coming down, too?”
“In a bit.”
Alone, Henry placed the pumpkin on the floor and swept his hand about in the dark spaces overhead, trying to find the string for the light, only to discover, when his hand had grasped it, that the bulb had burnt out. Then, using the pumpkin as a flashlight, he examined the area of the attic where he’d found Billy, feeling a little foolish to be playing detective this way, with no idea of what he might be looking for, but feeling also a strange uneasiness. Surely, it was just the contagion of the boy’s Halloween high spirits. Kids have this hunger for blood and gore because… well, because they’re human. Grown-ups, after all, have pretty much the same hunger. Henry had almost persuaded himself to give up scanning the bare floorboards, when he saw, with a start of genuine fear, a black wriggling motion that some ancient deep-rooted instinct interpreted as “Snake!” But that was absurd; the thing he saw, at the farthest reach of the jack-o’-lantern’s light, just where the floorboards gave way to a seeming carpet of insulating wool, was not in motion and not, certainly, a snake. It was (he squatted, set down the jack-o’-lanter
n, and picked the thing up) the broken stethoscope Madge had brought home for Billy’s costume.
And beside it was the explanation for Billy’s being up here: an empty Heath wrapper. Of course. He’d come up to the attic to make sure he got his share of the best candy while there was still a chance. Candy eaten in secret is always sweeter than candy that comes with your parents’ seal of approval.
A good theory, but in fact when he picked up the wrapper, it wasn’t empty. Henry let himself be tempted briefly. He did like Heath bars, but the hard crunchy part was hell on his teeth. There was a gap between two of his back left lower molars that no amount of brushing ever got clean when stuff got impacted there.
Giving himself a mental pat on the back for resisting the temptation, Henry pocketed the little candy bar, took up the jack-o’-lantern with its toothless grin, and headed back down to the lamplit living room and the social sparring and (thinking more positively) the strong possibility, once his ex had taken Billy off to the school party, of having a piece of his favorite candy.
22
“Did she drink her Mickey Finn?” Henry asked, when Madge returned to the kitchen with the tray and the dishes she’d brought in to her mother for her evening snack.
“Down to the last drop. She gobbled the cake, drank the Sanka, and popped right off. Older people are like that with Amytal, it hits them harder. The camera’s wrecked, by the way.”
She put the dishes in the sink and returned the tray to its appointed place on the pantry shelf. Then she rejoined Henry at the kitchen table, accepting a cigarette from the pack he held out to her.
“How’s your stomach now?” he asked.
“No problem. Judith’s cake was a bit sweeter than I like—”
“It was like drowning in marshmallow syrup,” Henry commented.
“That didn’t stop you, I see, from having a second slice while I was with Mother.” She lit the cigarette and waved out the match. “Isn’t that Judith a pill, though?”
Henry grinned. “It’s hard to gauge with her dressed up in that gunnysack, but I thought she was sort of cute. In a year or so she’ll be a regular little Lolita.”
“You,” Madge said, smiling. “You’ve got a one-track mind.”
“Tonight I do.”
“Well, just hold your horses. There’ll be kids ringing the doorbell for a while yet, and you’re not going to want to deal with soaped windows tomorrow. After I’m back from picking up Billy there’ll be time enough for ess ee ex.”
“You’re sure you’re feeling up to the drive? I wouldn’t mind the walk. It’d do me good.”
“I’m feeling fine. Whatever it was, it’s out of my system. And what I’d like right now is a drink. How about you?”
“Sure, name your poison.”
“There’s nothing but orange juice for a mixer.”
“Let me do it.”
Henry got up from the table and started making screwdrivers, talking while he popped ice cubes from the tray and mixed the contents of bottle and carton. “Didn’t Billy get into a state about those Heath bars? He’s not usually like that. Here they bring over that damned five-buck pumpkin and a whole cake, and he won’t let ‘em have one miserable piece of candy.”
“It’s the holidays. Kids go crazy at the holidays. Anyhow Sondra says that Judith doesn’t touch candy of any kind. She’s the ultimate finicky eater. Remember two years ago—she wouldn’t eat anything but peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Now it’s health food. At dinner she eats vegetables and salad but won’t touch meat. I told Sondra if she doesn’t watch out she’s going to have an anorexic on her hands.”
The screwdrivers were fixed. Henry handed one to Madge and said, “Want to go in the living room? Maybe there’s something on TV.”
“Sure.” She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and took a long ice-tinkling swallow from the drink.
The doorbell rang.
“Damn,” said Henry. He took up the serving dish with the candy in it and went to the front door.
It was Billy’s friend Ralph Johnson and, looking on from the base of the porch steps, his father, a guy about Henry’s age but already paunchy from his job at some downtown bank. Ralph was dressed as an Indian, with stripes of lipstick war paint on his cheeks and a homemade headdress of brightly dyed chicken feathers. “Trick or treat!” he shouted, holding up his shopping bag.
“Kee-wah-wah-yu-a-nah,” said Henry.
Ralph Johnson screwed up his face and said, “What?”
“Kee-wah-wah-yu-a-nah,” Henry repeated. “That’s Indian talk for ‘What is your tribe, young warrior?’”
Ralph looked blank, and his father said, “He’s an Apache, I think.” His speech seemed oddly slurred. Henry took a closer look, and the man smiled in reply, exposing a nightmarish mouthful of long, snaggly, discolored teeth.
Henry freaked. The sight of Johnson’s hideous teeth registered as a personal, direct threat to the soundness of his own dental condition. Only when Johnson burst into laughter and popped the trick teeth from his mouth did Henry realize he’d been taken in.
“Jesus,” he said, with a feeble laugh. “I really thought for a moment there—”
“Yeah, they fool most people,” Johnson said.
“Well, here’s some treats for the young Apache here.” Henry scooped candy corn and licorice from the serving dish into the boy’s shopping bag. “And here’s a little something for Old Sabertooth.” He dug into his pocket and produced the miniature Heath bar he’d picked up from the floor of the attic. He tossed it to Johnson, who caught it neatly. “Now remember, brush your teeth after you eat that. Or you’ll regret it.”
“Right, dental hygiene, very important.” Johnson slipped the trick teeth back in his mouth and gave Henry a parting grin. Even knowing the teeth were fake, it was disconcerting.
“You should have seen the Johnson kid’s dad,” Henry said, returning to the kitchen. “He was wearing—oh, no.”
Madge was on her knees beside the sink, retching convulsively into the yellow plastic dishpan from the sink. The onset of the vomiting had evidently caught her by surprise, for most of the vomit—still essentially recognizable as cake—had been spewed across the floor.
Henry got down on his knees beside her. She tried to wriggle away from his consoling hug. There were tears in her eyes.
“Madge, what in hell is wrong?”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and coughed to clear her throat. She tried to answer him, though her only answer would have been to say she didn’t know, but the peristaltic convulsions began again.
They continued, off and on, for another half an hour, and by the time they’d stopped there could be no thought of her driving anywhere in the car. Henry wanted to take her to the hospital, but she refused to consider it.
“I’ll be going there tomorrow in any case. And all I want now is some sleep.”
There was no point in trying to argue with Madge when she was sick, since she could pull rank and insist that as a nurse she knew best what had to be done. So Henry didn’t try to override her veto. Instead he bustled about, cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and seeing that she had a supply of pails and pans beside the bed. Then it was time to set off for Our Lady of Mercy.
A block from the house he had to turn back and get his raincoat and an umbrella. So tell me, God, he prayed, partly in jest and partly in earnest, as he stepped down from the front porch a second time into the drizzle that was thickening into a regular downpour, what have I done to deserve this?
23
All through Frankenstein Billy kept thinking of the candy he’d put in the big bowl back in his homeroom, the bowl into which all Sister Catherine’s fourth graders had poured their various contributions and from which, when they went home, they would be taking their separate portions. In previous years a school-wide distribution of Halloween goodies had taken place here in the gymnasium, but as the principal, Sister Fidelis, had announced at the afternoon assembly, due to incidents
of older children misappropriating the candy of the younger children, now only the games and horror movie and costume awards would take place in the gym, and candy would be doled out in their separate homerooms.
Which made what Billy was doing much more fair, since only the kids who had laughed at him and then refused to say why, only those kids would have their teeth rot.
More fair, yes, but wasn’t there something basically unfair about the whole idea? Didn’t he always resent it when the whole class got detention for something that just one or two people had done wrong? And wasn’t that what he was doing now, only worse? Meanwhile the story on the screen (which Billy knew well from the times he’d seen it on TV) had got to the point where Boris Karloff has met the little girl he will soon throw into the stream, a crime he commits not because he’s mean but just because he’s so incredibly stupid. He had this dumb uncomprehending look on his face that was scarier than if he’d been deliberately nasty and snarly like a vampire. Some of the small girls in the front rows were already squealing with anticipation.
Billy got up from his folding chair and made his way to the aisle, bumping knees and stepping on feet. Clumsily, Karloff picked up the little girl, and there was a general hubbub of screams and cheering as he heaved her into the water.
Sister Symphorosa was standing guard at the exit. At first she pretended not to notice Billy and continued to scowl reproachfully at the figures on the screen. He tugged more insistently at the loosely knit gray wool of her cardigan.
She directed her scowl toward him. “Yes?”
“Sister, excuse me, I have to go to the toilet.”
“Can’t you wait till the movie’s over?”
“But it won’t be over for a long time yet. There’s a whole lot of stuff that happens first. He kills a woman who’s getting married, and they chase after him, and there’s a fight inside a place where there’s this thing spinning around. And I really do have to go to the toilet—badly.”
It was his correct use of the adverbial “badly” that tipped the balance. Sister Symphorosa handed him a hallway pass and let him slip out the exit.
THE M.D. A Horror Story Page 12