No Book but the World: A Novel

by Cohen, Leah Hager

  “What?”

  “What do you want from the genie? Come on, make a wish.”

  “Oh.” Ava’s eyes went vacant. Her gaze slid from Kitty to her brother in his turban and his bound hands, then off toward the trees. She did that irritating thing where she kneaded the fingers of one hand with those of the other. “Uh . . .”

  “Oh my God. Is everyone in this family retarded?” Kitty swiveled back to Fred. “Lie down, genie.”

  “Don’t we have to untie his hands?” ventured Ava.

  “Of course not.”

  “But how’s he supposed to—?”

  “He’s a genie,” said Kitty, and clapped twice. “Lie down.”

  Without use of his hands he accomplished this more awkwardly than he might otherwise, and she could see him thinking it through, how best to do it. He knelt first, then tilted himself sideways, and finally, with little pricks of sweat breaking out along his lip and brow, worked himself into a prostrate position on the warm slab.

  “Faceup,” snapped Kitty. “Chop, chop.”

  He rolled with some effort onto his other side, arching his back for his hands, which were trapped underneath. Sunlight struck down at his face; he shut his eyes. Ava stepped over him, shielding him with her shadow, while Kitty darted away behind the bushes.

  “What are you doing?” Ava asked.

  “Nothing.” Kitty was already back. “Okay, genie, now grant my wish: I want a kiss.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Shut up. He wants to play.”

  “But he doesn’t . . . He can’t kiss.”

  “Of course he can. Can’t you, Fredericka? You like being the genie, right? You like granting our wishes.”

  “S’ah-yeah.”

  “See?” Kitty knelt beside him. “Now pucker up. That means push your lips together. No, out. No, push them together and out. Yeah. But keep your eyes closed. And your lips. Oh my God, can you stop laughing for one second? Pucker.” She was laughing, too, and now so was Ava, laughing in a protesty little way but still, whickering along with them, and the sun flocked them with coins of light and licked the colored silks, and the breeze that flittered through the woods smelled richly of dead pine needles and all the soft dense clumps of new-grown moss. Fred managed to stop laughing long enough to hold his pucker in place and Kitty whipped out what she’d gone to get from the bushes and kept hidden behind her back: the tarry rag, stiff as an old carcass, which she mashed now against his lips for a full second before leaping up and away, shrieking with laughter.

  Fred roared. When he saw what he’d been kissing he sat up and began to spit, and then to cry and hack and heave and drool and gag and grunt and retch and groan.

  “Kitty!” said Ava with such sharp reproach that Kitty felt unfairly maligned and also uneasy.

  “It was a joke.”

  Ava knelt by Fred and tried to pick apart the knot that was still binding his wrists together. “I can’t get it,” she said miserably after a minute. Kitty came forward and gently pushed Ava’s hands away. “I have longer nails.” While she worked at the knot, she delivered a kind of patter. Sorry, Fred. It was just a joke. You know that, don’t you? You’re all right. We were just playing, right? And he calmed down while she loosened the silk, and nodded to each of her questions. When she saw the knot was undone, she did not announce it but, still holding the silk around his wrists, brought her face close to his.

  “It’s time for your reward now.”

  Something, fear or interest, flickered across his face.

  “It’s something nice, I promise.”

  “Ah . . .” He was still flushed from struggling and then from his violent reaction to her trick; his cheeks were stained pink and the bow of his lips was full and red and all at once with his dark and shining eyes he gave her a rare steady look.

  Kitty bent, her heart gonging, and laid her mouth on his. Warm, soft, soft as a raspberry. She darted her tongue in and out and sat back quickly. “See?”

  “Kitty,” breathed Ava, horrified, furious.

  They watched. Would he spit again, would he hack and gag?

  “Fred, Fred, are you okay?”

  “No, no-ah, no.” He shook his head from side to side. “Not-ah Fred. S’ah Fredericka.”

  IV

  FRED

  One

  THE MAN SAID Get up you have a visitor.

  He figured it would be the lawyer again who came yesterday but they went down a different hall and the man brought him to a different room. Instead of one table and two chairs, this one had a bunch of tables and a bunch of chairs, and lots of people sitting at the different tables, not just men in greens but women and some kids, too. Some of the people were wearing regular clothes like skirts and sweatshirts. Some were dressed fancy. One woman was wearing a red dress and sharp red shoes like she was going to a fancy restaurant.

  He was standing there just looking at some babies, and there were people talking Spanish and people talking English, and people talking something else he didn’t know what, and one man and woman, they were both crying and neither of them using any tissues, just their sleeves. It was funny seeing all these different kinds of people after days of having everybody be a man and everybody dress the same, either in blue uniforms weighed down with buttons and badges and zippers and snaps, all that sharp shiny metal that made you blink, or else like him in these loose green pants and loose green shirts that hung off you and smelled of cooked peas. And these black rubber sandals that weren’t his either. Where were his shoes? He couldn’t remember.

  He was blinking his eyes, looking around the bright fluorescent room, searching for the lawyer. He remembered the lawyer from yesterday, or maybe the day before: a tall sit-up-straight man with little glittering eyes in his big dough face that hung in folds around his neck. The man who brought him in said Don’t see your visitor? and he shook his head no but then he saw her.

  His throat went clank like he was a metal bank and someone had stuck a big coin through the slot.

  He had never called Ava because her number was in the little book back at Dave’s house on the Cape, and he didn’t know how she’d figured out where he was or what happened or how to find him or anything. He didn’t know how she’d gotten herself here or how she could’ve known to come. But Ava always knew stuff he didn’t know. Seeing her made him feel happy and scared. He started to rub his hands on the side of his pants. She was wearing a sweater that was brown, and pants that were gray. Some birds were brown and gray, and he wanted to tell her Hey, you look like one of those birds, but he saw that she had seen him now, too, and her eyes went all tilty, like a roof that was too steep.

  She started to stand up and the man behind him said, just like he was cracking a stick over his knee, Ma’am! and she sat back down and the man said That your visitor? and he nodded and the man said You go sit over there. Remember no touching.

  Also, in case he forgot, the rules were screwed right into the wall:

  NO TOUCHING

  NO FOOD

  NO GUM

  NO PROFANITY

  REMAIN SEATED

  NO LOUD TALKING/LAUGHING

  VIOLATIONS OF VISITING PRIVILEGES MAY RESULT IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION AGAINST THE INMATE AND APPROPRIATE ADMINISTRATIVE OR LEGAL ACTIONS AGAINST THE VISITOR

  He sat in the tan plastic chair opposite Ava’s tan plastic chair and he swallowed and he folded his hands on his lap. He folded them with the fingers going this way and that way, every other one. This is the church, this is the steeple.

  “Hi,” Ava said. Softly. She must have been memorizing the rules before he came in.

  He was looking at his hands, trying to remember how June used to do it, the way to fold them so you get the people.

  “Fred?”

  He could get the steeple. He could get the doors. He opened the doors and it was empty inside, noth
ing but smooth palms. He couldn’t remember how to get the people.

  “Hey, Freddy.” That was her old-fashioned name for him. It got his eyes to jump up. They jumped up and saw Ava looking at him with her eyes tilted so steep it made him feel like he was sliding, so he started looking at who else was in the room. Nine guys in greens like him, and across from every one of them, visitors. In all, thirteen visitors. There was a baby bobbling on its mother’s leg and it had sparkle things tied in its little pigletted hair. There was a woman with lips like a bitten-into chocolate when it’s one of those chocolates that has raspberry filling. There was a man with a T-shirt with words and a picture. The words said Sparky’s Marina and the picture was a fish standing up wearing a chef’s hat and holding a spatula. His eyes were swallowing hard at all that color, all that noisy brightness.

  “Freddy, please look at me,” said Ava.

  He looked at her and her eyes were tilted and sparkling with too much sadness and he felt like he was sliding fast, falling off a roof. He looked over her shoulder and studied the rule sign.

  “How are you?”

  He nodded his head. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. Bouncy bounce.

  “Are you doing okay?”

  NO TOUCHING

  NO FOOD

  NO GUM

  “Why don’t you look at me, Freddy?”

  He couldn’t.

  “Look at me.”

  He would fall.

  “Please.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Ah-fall.”

  “Fall? Did someone fall?”

  He was nodding his head up and down. The rule sign was bouncing all over the wall. Darting up and jumping sideways, running slantways and scampering down. Breaking all the rules.

  Ava was talking.

  Our parents left us, she was saying. They were poor. The cupboards were bare. They took us into the forest with them to cut wood, and they left us there to fend for ourselves. We made a trail of white stones, and when the moon came up it lit the stones and we found our way home.

  He knew this story.

  “Do you remember being in the woods?” she was saying. “Did you talk with the lawyer about it? Bayard Charles? What did you tell Mr. Charles? Freddy, do you remember what happened in the woods?”

  “Bread-ah-crumbs,” he said. Nodding a little faster, bouncing his knees and his whole bent spine.

  Bread crumbs, Ava agreed. The second time they led us deeper into the forest, and again they left us to fend for ourselves. This time we tore off bits of bread to make a trail, but when the moon came up there were no more crumbs. The birds had eaten them up. We were lost.

  “Birds,” he said. “Ah-lost-ah.”

  “Who is lost?” she asked. “Did you and the boy get lost in the woods? You and James, Jimmy. Were you lost?”

  Nodding, bouncing. The rules scuttling and darting all over the wall, broken.

  “Freddy, please won’t you tell me what happened? What were you doing when they found you in the woods? Were you looking for the boy, for Jimmy?”

  NO PROFANITY

  REMAIN SEATED

  NO LOUD TALKING/LAUGHING

  “Freddy. Fred. Look at me.”

  Noddingnodding. His knees were bouncing. And his hands, locked together, bounced on his knees. Here is the church, here is the steeple.

  “Why can’t you look at me? Freddy, did you do something? Did you do something to make the boy run away?”

  Open the doors. Where are the people?

  “Did you hurt him? The doctor—they said his wrist was broken. And,” she touched her side—

  NO TOUCHING

  “Two ribs. Do you know about that? Can you tell me? Did it happen by accident? Did he fall?”

  He felt himself sliding. He would fall.

  “Just tell me, please. Please. Fred. Tell me the story.”

  No, he said. He put his hands over his ears. No loud talking.

  Hush, said Ava. Calm down. Hold still. You want to hear more of the story?

  Noddingnoddingnodding.

  Take your hands off your ears.

  He let them fall.

  After three days of wandering, we came upon a cottage made of bread, with a roof made of cake. Windowpanes of clear sugar. Remember? You broke off a bit of roof, and I began to nibble on a window.

  Nibble, nibble.

  Yes, I began to nibble and then we heard a voice come from inside the house: Nibble nibble little mouse—

  No!

  —who’s that nibbling at my house?

  “No!” His voice roared out of him. It scared him. “No loud-ah talking!” He banged his hands over his ears. It didn’t help. He banged them again and banged them again and he roared and roared and roared. “No loud-ah talking! No loud-ah talking! No loud-ah talking!”

  The man hurt him when he tried to pull his hands off his ears.

  Another man had to come and hold his other arm.

  They held his arms behind his back again, like in the woods.

  It took three men to get him out of the room.

  Two

  IN HIS WHOLE LIFE he’d only ever known three people who reminded him of the Little Prince.

  The first had been Kitty the day he’d met her, twenty-five years earlier: the day she’d sprung down to the ground from the sassafras tree with her short star-colored hair and her pin-striped conductor’s overalls and her bare feet and he’d hit her cheek with a wooden spoon. Never mind that the Little Prince doesn’t have overalls. Or bare feet. She had been like the pictures of him in Neel’s book that he had first seen when he was very small and Ava read it aloud to him up on the couch. She was like the Little Prince in more ways than her hair, although he could not have said how. Something unfamiliar and brave and a little fierce about her, and she sometimes talked in riddles.

  The second person had been Thor, but he didn’t like to think about Thor.

  The third person was brand-new and standing there right this second: the girl beside him at the bar. She, too, had short star-colored hair sticking out in tufts around her head. She wore a stretchy denim jumpsuit that clung to her, and she also talked in riddles. She kept calling him Sailor.

  “Hey, Sailor,” she said. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

  When he didn’t say anything back, instead of cutting her eyes and sucking her teeth, she turned to Dave. “What’s the matter with your friend?” she asked. “He shy?”

  At first he hadn’t liked how dark it was inside. When they first got here, him and Dave and Dave’s friend Umberto, the summer evening had still been light, and the bar was so dark he was afraid he’d bump into things. He had to hold his hands out like a mummy while he walked, and then he did bump into something, a man, who swiveled his head around like an owl and looked Fred up and down. Fred said, “Ah-sorry,” but by then the man had already turned back around.

  They got seats at the bar and Dave and Umberto ordered beer, and Fred asked for a Mountain Dew and the bartender said we don’t have Mountain Dew, only Sprite. And Fred said to Dave he was just going back outside to the deli on the corner, which he’d seen when they were driving up, so he could get himself a can of Mountain Dew. But Dave had taken a handful of Fred’s shirt, not roughly but in a way that meant they were friends and everything would be okay, and Dave said, “Just have Sprite, okay? It’s the same thing.”

  So Fred got Sprite but it wasn’t the same thing. For example, Mountain Dew had caffeine and Sprite didn’t, and also Mountain Dew was special because it had real orange juice in it. He mentioned this to Dave, and Umberto said, “Bullshit,” and Fred said no, it wasn’t bullshit, you could check the ingredients on the label, and Umberto said, “Remind me why the fuck we had to bring this wacko,” and Dave just clapped a hand on Fred’s shoulder and said, “Okay, Buddy, I believe you, let it go.”

 
The reason they had to bring Fred was Fred couldn’t be left alone anymore in Dave’s house on the Cape.

  The reason they had to be in here was they had to meet a friend of Umberto’s that Umberto had some business with.

  But when they first came in, Fred really hated to leave the summer evening’s hay-y smell and the last snips of light blinking like sequins on the surface of the mill river that ran through the town. Fred knew it was a mill river from his map, one of the boxful from the old house that he had taken with him when June died. A shoe box stuffed with maps she’d picked up at gas stations when they were little, when their family used to go on trips. Some of the maps were still smooth and crisp to the touch, others were faded and soft as silk. These were easy to fold back up again, but also easy to tear, and he was careful to handle them gently whenever he went on a road trip with Dave. He would pull out the right map for wherever they were, find their position, ask Dave the name of where they were headed, and trace their route, counting up the miles between exits and intersections, those tiny black numbers inked in beside stretches of highway like a secret code. June had taught him they were mile numbers. She had taught him how you could count them all up and know how long your journey was.

  Sometimes he could see how near they were passing to someplace he’d been long ago, someplace June had marked with a pink or yellow highlighter pen: a state forest where they’d camped, a college town where Neel had given a talk, a beach where they’d swum. Sometimes, to pass the time on those long trips, he would read the maps like they were picture books with illustrations too tiny to see. He’d spend long minutes with the map held close to his face, smelling the musty sweetness, filling in with his memory the microscopic details: the green tent they’d all slept in; the college students with their fringed jackets and Frisbees; the peanut butter sandwiches they’d eaten on the beach and the peppermint stripes on the umbrella and the cut he’d gotten on the bottom of his foot from a piece of glass.

  The town he and Dave and Umberto drove to was called Perdu. This word was printed in the smallest-sized letters on the map, next to the smallest-sized dot. A blue thread ran beside it. Fred had looked up from the thread and connected it to the narrow mill river running alongside the car. The map didn’t show the low brick buildings backed up along its far bank, or the laundry blowing on lines that ran between these buildings.