six
IN MAGDA’S CARRIAGE house Ruth can feel Mrs. Warren, smiling her sad-eyed smile at them from the shadows. The smell in here has been the same for years, long-gone hay and horses’ breath and the sawdust from things eating through the wood. This is the place where Ruth first learned the truth about shadows and gravity. Now it’s time for them to work the magic Magda asked them for.
“Take the dress,” Isabel says from the doorway. “Just take all of it.”
She is a silhouette against the big opening, looking out into the night and whispering back over her shoulder. Isabel doesn’t feel anything here. This is just another place to her.
“I can’t do that, Isabel!”
“Woman, there are still cops driving around. Can you just hurry up?”
Ruth creeps up to peer over Isabel’s shoulder at a police car across the street. A guy in uniform is talking to some lady on the front porch of her house.
“The smell in here reminds me of Magda’s mom shouting,” she says. “For some reason it scared her if we came in here. We were supposed to play in the backyard, where she could see us from the window. If we were quiet for a while, she’d come looking. If she found us in here, she’d get really upset. The carriage house creeped Mrs. Warren out. She could sense stuff.”
“Be quiet,” Isabel hisses.
The cop walks back to his car, parked in front of the Warrens’ house.
“It was always Magda’s idea to come in here and pretend to be bandits hiding out, but I always seemed to be the one coming out the door when Mrs. Warren came around the corner of the house. Magda would have already disappeared into the trees, and it would just be me standing there, knowing I was wrong, and Mrs. Warren saying, ‘I told you, Ruth!’”
“Do you have it?” Isabel says.
“She was so beautiful. I would always just stare up at her while she was telling me off and think, ‘Be my mother. I want to run away with you.’ When she left, my first thought was, ‘She left without me.’ How weird is that?”
“Ruth! Do you have it?”
“Yes. I stuffed Mrs. Warren’s wedding dress in a gym bag. Happy? This is just so wrong.”
“Yeah, but is the stash in there? I mean, they must have searched in here today. That cop’s gone, but more will just keep coming back all night.”
“Yes, it’s here! Listen, Magda’s probably inside, Isabel. Maybe we should try to talk to her?”
“No, Ruth. It’s Magda’s day off. Me and you are on it.”
They leave through the little woods at the side of the carriage house. The moon isn’t up yet; they have to keep their hands in front of them, to feel their way. The house behind the Warrens’ has lamps on downstairs. They skirt around a yellow square of light and out into the road. People live in boxes. Even the light their lives give off is square.
“You know what I think, Isabel? I think we have no idea what we’re doing. We just make shit up and we expect the world to be rational or something.”
“It’s not rational. It’s magical. People just don’t notice.”
“Really, Isabel? That’s what you’re saying? Right now, today, you’re saying, ‘Wow, man, the world is, like, such a magical place’? Sunshine and daisies, yep.”
“You are so wrong about me, Ruth. You have no idea.”
“Yeah, you’re actually a violent head case. You told us, remember? Do I have to carry the stash all the way?”
“It’s okay. If anyone stops, I’ll do the talking.”
“Oh, good. That makes me feel better.”
It seems like everyone they pass on the sidewalk knows it all, like it’s obvious what’s in the bag, and it’s only a matter of time before some washed-out cop comes and proves himself on them. So Ruth leads Isabel the back way, off the road, in between things. Loading bays and scrubby woods, alleys full of rats and people who don’t want to live in square houses. There must be routes you could take through the world where you never come out of the in between.
Behind the twenty-four-hour supermarket four guys are sitting with their legs hanging off the loading bay. Their white T-shirts look green in the security light. A murmur starts up as soon as Ruth and Isabel come into view. The guys straighten up, coming to attention, and the shouting gets louder.
“Look at the tits on that one.”
“Fuck off, you no-necked piece of shit,” Isabel says, like she’s so tough now.
Ruth slaps her arm. “This really isn’t the time to play street kid. Just keep walking,” she says under her breath.
“Come on, honey, just a quick one. I got five bucks.”
The four of them are passing a pint of vodka one way and a joint in the other direction. They’re already beyond the tipping point. They’ve had enough to drink and smoke so they can pretend they’re not responsible for anything they do.
Ruth and Isabel will have to pass that loading bay to get through to the gas station. They can’t turn around and go back the way they came, because it’s an alley no one can see into. Every few seconds there is a blur and a rush as a car slips by the gap between the buildings.
Now one of the jocks is standing up and passing the pint bottle to his friend. “Where you going so fast? Look at that one. I could just lift her right up.”
“She’s little, but she’s got a body, man.”
“I’m not taking the skinny one again.”
“You’re not taking anything, sweetie,” Isabel says in some kind of pretend Vicky voice. “Sit yourself back down.”
“Isabel! Seriously. Shut up.”
The vodka bottle comes flying over and smashes at their feet, broken glass all around them, and Isabel has no shoes on. Blood blossoms from a vein on the top of her left foot, like the stigmata they saw on the news. Ruth imagines a nail passing through Isabel’s feet, and her mind gets stuck like a scratched record on the image. She stares at the blood and the picture is so clear it takes her a minute to shake it free.
There is only one way out and they both realize it together, without saying anything. They turn at the same time and run out between the cars on 25A, fast enough so it looks like suicide to run after them. On the road, everything is headlights and the separate, specific wind from each rushing car. The only way to do it is without thinking at all. Someone swerves into the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and someone else slams on their brakes and burns a set of tire marks into the road. Then they’re in the side street that runs behind Dunkin’ Donuts.
“Hey, Jayne Mansfield!” Doris is sitting alone in the sidecar of her boyfriend’s pink trike. “That how kids get their kicks around here? Actually playing in traffic? I thought it was just an expression.”
“Jocks.” Ruth is breathing hard. “Behind the supermarket.”
Doris looks down at Isabel’s bleeding foot. “Well, you got the battle scar. You otherwise unscathed, girlies?”
“Yeah. This is my friend Isabel.” Isabel just stares at the trike, or maybe at Doris’s impressive thighs. Ruth has to slap her arm to get her to respond.
“Hi. Really good to meet you.”
“Let me tell you the secret,” Doris says. “Put it right out there.”
“Excuse me?” Isabel is trying to take in Doris’s hair now. There seems to be too much blond for her tiny mind to contain.
“Sex,” Doris says. “Men are actually terrified of it. All this crap about libidos and blue balls and frigid housewives—it’s a scam. Trust me. Never been with a guy who wanted to fuck more than I did. Acting like you don’t want it just helps them feel in control. Is that your mission?”
“No!” That’s it. Isabel is hooked. Doris is her new guru. She’ll be following her around now, repeating everything Doris says. Next thing you know, she’ll be bleaching her hair.
“So, put it right out there. Wear that shit on the outside. Nobody’ll bother you unless they already feel up for it. They won’t need to cut your feet to get their hard-ons back.”
Well, that’s bullshit, but it seems to impress Isab
el. A couple weeks ago, Doris seemed like the answer, or at least a signpost that pointed towards transcendence. Maybe she is, in a way. Here they are, doing the stations of the cross, putting one bleeding foot in front of the other, trying to get to the sacrifice that will save everyone. Doris is here on the side of the road to wipe their faces while they take a break between illusions.
Five minutes later, they come out through someone’s front yard, still breathing hard, and see Charlie heading straight at them down the sidewalk.
“Jesus,” Isabel says under her breath. “What is with this night?”
“Hi, Isabel. What are you doing over here?” Charlie almost sounds like a nice guy.
Ruth slings the gym bag farther onto her back, trying to look nonchalant and sure she’s failing. “I happen to live over here, Charlie. Just like you.”
Charlie looks at her like she’s only just become visible. Like he didn’t try to jump her behind the brake repair shop just last week. Everyone is doing that lately, looking at her like she’s just flickered into reality, materializing out of dots of light like someone on Star Trek. They’re all astonished, as if it’s a magic trick, her acting like an actual person.
“So what are you up to, then, Isabel? Coming to work later? Vicky’s on tonight, too. So, you know, tell me now if you’re coming.”
“We don’t have time, Charlie.”
“Oh, right.”
“There’s stuff going on. It’s a long story.” Isabel stares down at the sidewalk while she says it.
Ruth looks at Charlie, and she can see straight through him, like he’s perfectly transparent with the night shining through from behind. Charlie’s not bad or good, just a person with a set of empty actions to perform, just an extra. It’s almost hard to focus on him, to make him stand out of the background. He stares at the cuts on Isabel’s feet, but he doesn’t ask about them.
“Uh, listen, tell Magda I said sorry. I kind of went off on her the other day. A little, you know. For a second, I thought . . . well, whatever. She’ll know what I mean.”
“Charlie, we gotta go. Sorry.” Isabel looks up now, straight into Charlie’s eyes.
And now it’s her who has just materialized. She looks taller and more solid, and a lot more like the person who hits back at creeps in parking lots in the middle of the night. No one is who she thought they were last week. Everyone is reincarnated. Maybe it’s Isabel who will float away out of here, up into the sky with the blood falling from her feet like rain. That is the thing Ruth will draw, as soon as this is all over. The Assumption of Isabel. She can see it perfectly.
seven
BY TEN O’CLOCK, Isabel only looks small and bored. They stopped at Ruth’s house, and Henry is still missing. No clues even, as far as her mom and Danny can figure out. Now they’re in the trees at the back of Matt’s neighbor’s yard, have been for almost an hour. They can’t smoke, even, or someone might be able to tell where they are. Does it occur to Isabel that they are out in the woods at night, alone together again? Does it even register? Apparently not; she’s just staring at the yard Virgin.
“Do you think there is such a thing?”
“Shh, Isabel. Not so loud. Such a thing as what?”
“You know, people pray to the Virgin and they get healed and whatever. Magda was doing it today. What is that about?”
“That’s the power of the human mind, Bel. It can make anything happen. If you need to, you can make yourself disappear. Trust me. All this, the ground and the grass and the trees and the houses, it’s transparent. It isn’t actually solid until you make it solid with the power of your mind.”
“Why isn’t everyone just floating around, then?”
Does she really think they’re not?
“Not brave enough,” Ruth says. “Easier to pretend all this is really here. That part is only hard work for some people. People like Lefty.”
And me.
“Ruth, what if the cops come again? What if the napalm guy dies?”
“Then you’re screwed.”
“Thanks. Good to know you’ve got my back.”
“I don’t. Guess what? Everything on the planet is not specifically engineered to make Isabel O’Sullivan feel better. Deal.”
Finally, Matt and his friends are leaving on the Saturday night beer run. They all pile into an old, beige Chevy II and head off to fill the trunk with cases of beer and boxes of Pop Tarts for when they get the munchies after The Twilight Zone. Their voices and the slamming doors sound different in the summer air. You can hear the heat in the way noise travels. In the winter, sound is small and brittle, but in the summer it’s like liquid. When they pull away, the engine sounds like Danny’s boat when you’re underwater.
Ruth and Isabel hop the fence and come around through the backyard. There’s a light on in the neighbor’s living room, but he’s an old man and his wife and kids are long gone.
“Last time, that window was open.” Isabel points up at the side of Matt’s house.
“Yeah, it was me that opened it, remember? Watch the bag.” Ruth throws and Isabel only half catches it. Mrs. Warren’s wedding dress is spilling out through a gap in the zipper. There’s a rim lock on the kitchen door and it takes Ruth about half a minute to pop it with her library card.
“Skills of South Highbone. Doubt me some more, why don’t you?”
“All right,” Isabel says. “We’re assholes from the right side of the tracks. Let’s get this over with, woman.”
“Actually, you know what? Magda taught me how to do that.”
Matt’s house smells like decay. The garbage hasn’t been emptied and no one has opened the windows to let out the cigarette smoke. It’s hot and stale. Ruth wants to run back to her mother’s kitchen and bring some basil and peppermint and incense, anything that will cover up the smell of neglect in here. She opens the window over the sink.
“What the hell are you doing? He’ll know someone was here.”
“Uh, duh, Isabel. Pretty sure he’s gonna know that anyway.” She pulls the bag out of the garbage pail, stuffs in the overflowing milk cartons and beer cans, and ties it up.
It only takes a minute to go through and put the pot back, dumping it out of the wedding dress onto the bed where Matt will see it right away. The bed is full of laundry, so they put it on the top of the pile. Matt’s room smells like Tide and Thai stick. He has glow-in-the-dark stars painted on the ceiling, looking half-charged and sad.
The sound of breaking glass makes them hit the floor like ’Nam vets in the park on the Fourth of July. They can hear a car squealing away. Not muffled and summery at all. Angry, like something from a movie soundtrack. Ruth crouches with her head down until everything’s been quiet for a few, long minutes, then she creeps out first.
The living room window is smashed and there’s a bottle on the rug with a burning rag hanging out of it. She can smell the gasoline, but the flame is already petering out. Whoever it is doesn’t actually know what they’re doing, as usual. Ruth jumps in and smothers it with the wedding dress while Isabel is still in the doorway, taking everything in. She looks around at the daisy curtains and the sagging couch and the bong, like it’s some kind of habitat at the zoo.
“Come on, Isabel. It’s not a museum. People live like this. Get over it.”
“Ruth, you could have blown up.”
“There’s gonna be cops in about two minutes, Isabel. Let’s go.”
It’s smoky in the room and Isabel looks like someone walking through clouds. There’s an empty pizza box with a constellation drawn on it in blue pen. The names of stars are written in, then crossed out and written in again.
Isabel has cut her feet again, and she wants to wipe up the trail of blood on the kitchen floor, but Ruth won’t let her. There isn’t time.
They wait in the woods behind the neighbor’s house, listening for the cops. They never arrive, and Matt doesn’t come back, either. Neighbors pour out into the street and stare for a while, then they leave again. Long after Ruth sto
ps shaking, Isabel is still frozen, staring at Matt’s house.
“The whole thing could’ve burnt down. We saved it. Christ, how did Magda know?”
“Um, I saved it, Isabel. And Magda just knows. Trust me. She’s been like that my whole life. You get used to it.”
There are sirens, but the sound is coming from far away in the village. Ruth moves away to sit with her back against a tree, while Isabel talks and talks, dealing with her nervous energy by babbling on and on, as usual. After a while she’s running through some kind of fantasy about absinthe and lace and cities in Italy. There’s no need to hear the separate words. If she just lets go, Ruth can turn the sound of Isabel’s voice into wind and water, melt it back into the elements it came from anyway.
“I said, he thought it was cool. Hello, Ruth! Are you listening?”
“Nope. What?”
“Charlie thought it was cool. Sexy, even.”
“You told him it was us! Why didn’t he say anything when we saw him? Wasn’t he mad?”
“Mad? Why? Ruth, pay attention. I’m talking about me and you, the other night.”
“You told Charlie what you did, in my backyard?” Ruth can feel the bark of the tree, scraping against her back. She can feel the leaves under her feet, the air on her skin.
“What I did? What we did, you mean.” She laughs. “Yeah, I told him. He thought it was cool.”
“You know what, Isabel? Tell people whatever you want. It doesn’t even bother me anymore.”
From 25A, she can see a cloud of smoke filling the sky above the harbor, darker than the western sky. When a car goes by, she feels the rush and realizes she’s off the sidewalk, standing in the road. She looks at Isabel, staring past her towards the village.
“Why are you still here?”
“What? We fixed it, like Magda said. Now we have to see what happens. This is where we’re supposed to be, Ruth.”
“Job done, Isabel. You don’t have to keep following me.”
Is that black cloud really there? Can Isabel see it, too?
“Look, how was I supposed to know you’d be pissed off? I’m sorry, all right? Jeez.”
Little Wrecks Page 23