by Suzzy Roche
EIGHTEEN
FELIX SPOON SAT alone on the school steps during the lunch recess. Across the playground, boys in their heavier autumn jackets ran back and forth kicking a ball; some gathered in circles throwing jacks, and in the far corner girls were busy with clapping games. The clouds, gray and purple, rolled far out into the sky, and at noon the air had already turned chilly. Felix twirled a stick in a small dirt pile.
Recently he thought about his mother less and less, but today, as it was nearing Halloween, and they all were told to draw pumpkins before lunch, his mind wandered to another Halloween, when his mother had dressed him up as a devil and brought him to a place called The Duchess. Though the memory floated in and out of clarity, in red footed pajamas, rubber horns, and a tail, he remembered feeling proud about his costume. It was a whiskey and beer bar with a sign on the door that said Women Only. Dark and smoky, and dotted with muzzy red lights, the place roared with talk, and loud music from the jukebox. He recalled that a woman had lifted him onto a stool, and his mother came toward him with a tall glass of beer in her hand and raised it to his lips. When he felt its bubbly foam under his nose, he licked it, drawing back from the bitter taste, and some of the women laughed. Some of them wore costumes, too. One chomped on vampire teeth while one sported a bright orange wig and smoked a cigar. Felix remembered how he sat on his red rubber tail and fingered its pointy tip, observing how the women’s shoes made patterns in the sawdust on the floor.
Most of the time, thoughts of his mother filled him with longing, but today the memory gave him a good idea. He’d be a devil for Halloween, but this year he’d find a real pitchfork, and he’d be a fire-spitting devil, the very one who stole God’s rock, and had superpowers. He’d have to ask Luke how to make the costume.
Oh, if only. The first thing he’d do was crush Mike Fitzpatrick in the jaws of a garbage truck, and Jimmy Ginty would get it between the eyes with the pitchfork, and he’d secretly feed poison to Mike’s brothers, and capture Alice O’Brien from the McCarthys, and take her to the cave of God, because he knew that God and the devil were friends, in the same way that night was just the other side of day, and sometimes boys were girls, and people were dogs or cats, and living was a dream. Felix loved to travel around his brain and wind up in a place where he decided the rules, a place where he could make a jumble of his thoughts and watch them mix with each other like the way Luke had taught him to mix paint and wind up with a new color. But people interrupted him, pulled him away from this place, and he didn’t like it.
Now, as he sat on the steps, he saw the one-eyed nun, making a beeline toward him.
She walked as if she wished she could run, and always seemed to have her eye on him. Maybe she even saw him with that magic, ugly, missing eye that had worked its way into his drawings, and he didn’t know why. Was he in trouble again? He thought about the day so far and couldn’t remember anything he’d done. He put on his worst face as she came closer.
“That’s quite a mope, young man,” she said, standing before him.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Felix.
“Is that how you say good afternoon, Sister?”
“No.”
“So?”
“Good afternoon, Sister,” he said, poking his stick in the dirt.
“Better. Now, I have a question for you. Where’s my rock?” she said.
Felix peered up at her, pretending not to know what she was talking about.
“Do you have it? Have you kept it for me like you promised?”
Felix thought about lying. He didn’t like to lie, as it proved more difficult to keep track of the truth, but at the same time he didn’t want her to take the rock back. “What?” he said.
“I want to know if you are trustworthy. As I recall, you promised to keep it for me. Well?” she said.
“I have it, yes,” and his eyebrows furrowed to a deep V.
“You mean, yes, Sister?”
“Yes, Sister.” It would be bad to have to part with the rock. It was one of his favorite things.
“So, then, where is it?”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of toilet paper, and unwrapped it to reveal the rock, holding it out for her to examine. “Are you taking it back?”
“Let me have a closer look.” Felix handed her the rock and she rubbed it together in her palms and then held it up to her eye to inspect it. “Interesting,” she said. “It looks pretty good. It’s the only one I have, so I’m glad to see you’re taking care of it. That’s one incredible rock.” She threw the rock in the air and caught it with her other hand. He was surprised that she would throw it around like that. She handed it back to him and he carefully wrapped it back up and put it in his pocket.
“Usually, I keep it in a velvet box that belonged to my mother, but for recess I put it in my pocket.”
“I see. Interesting. Well, I suppose that’s as good a place as any to keep it. Whatever you do, don’t lose it,” she said, and Felix was relieved that their exchange had come to an end, but the nun wasn’t done. “Oh, and one other thing,” she said. “Did you and Alice O’Brien go to the cafeteria together after school the other day?”
Felix thought quickly. Was there something wrong with that? The fact that he had shown the rock to Alice might have not been such a good idea. Maybe the nun would get mad. But just being in the cafeteria didn’t seem like such a big deal to him.
“I guess,” he said.
“What were you doing there?”
“Just … Nothing.”
“Now that I know you’re trustworthy, I suppose you wouldn’t tell a lie,” she said.
Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? On one hand, he liked that she called him trustworthy, but she was hard to figure out. She seemed mean, but maybe underneath, she really wasn’t. “If I tell you, you’ll probably get mad,” he said.
“Then tell me a lie,” she said.
“A lie? What? But then … then I won’t be trustworthy,” he blurted out, regretting that she could see that he cared what she thought.
“Your choice,” said Sister A.
The nun towered over him like a huge tree and blocked his view from the rest of the playground. For a fleeting moment he wondered what it would be like to be wrapped in her arms, with all her robes around him. “Maybe what I did was bad, but I wasn’t trying to be bad,” he said.
The sister frowned. She straightened the patch on her eye and took a deep breath.
“Felix, just tell me what you did.”
“Okay,” he said. “I … showed her … the rock of God.”
Sister Annunciata said nothing for a moment, and Felix couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad, because she lifted her face up to the sky, closed her eye, and shook her head.
“Oh Mother of us all,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” said Felix.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. Alice must be a good friend of yours.”
“I don’t think so. She doesn’t have any friends. She told me she lost her friend.”
“Oh? Who would that be?” she said.
Felix shrugged. “How do I know?”
“Perhaps you should ask Alice about her friend. Sometimes a simple question can shed light on things.”
The school bell clanged, and it was time for all the children to line up and go back to their classrooms. “Sister,” said Felix, as she turned to go. “My father said there’s no such thing as the cave of God.”
The sister smiled.
“Did he? Well then how come you have a piece of it in your pocket?” Sister Annunciata paused, and reached her hand to Felix’s cheek. “Just remember, boy, I like you.”
Felix pulled away, but there was something about the touch of her fingers on his face that felt okay.
Sister Annunciata took a last look at him before making her way back across the playground. “You’d better get going, your class is all lined up. And child … one of these days you’re going to have to learn ho
w to tie your shoes. Maybe Alice-who-has-no-friends can show you how.”
AS SCHOOL was letting out that day, Felix waited for Alice to pass him in the hallway. He tugged on her jacket sleeve.
“What?” she whispered.
“Can you help me do something? Just for a minute, under the stairwell by the first-grade door?”
“I can’t. I have to go. Mrs. McCarthy said don’t dawdle.”
“Just one little minute, it’s not like the other day. No one will catch us.”
Alice let a line of other kids pass and scooted under the stairwell. Felix did the same.
“What is it? Can’t you hurry?” Today she wasn’t quite as patient with him as she’d been in the cafeteria.
“It’s my shoes. I don’t know how to tie them. And don’t laugh.”
“You don’t know how?” said Alice.
“It’s true,” said Felix, crouching down to show her his untied laces.
Out of the corner of her eye, Alice caught a glimpse of Mrs. Sepolino, who was rushing toward the front office, her shoes clunking on the floor.
“No,” said Alice, still whispering. “Ask another person. I can’t do it. I’m not supposed to talk to you.” Alice hurried down the hall and slipped out a side door.
Felix felt bad. He wished Alice would be his friend. He wished he could learn how to tie his shoes. But wishes were a waste of time. He’d wished for his mother, and to know God’s cave, he’d even wished that he could fly, all to no avail.
He waited until the school emptied, took off his shoes and left them under the stairs, with their laces stuffed inside. His stockinged feet were cold on the pavement as he made his way home to the Post Road. What did he care? He didn’t care at all.
Later, when his father asked him what had happened to his shoes, Felix told him that he didn’t like them anymore, so he left them underneath the stairs. He didn’t say that he was lonely; that whatever untold sin his mother had committed he wished he could follow her right down through the gates of hell. He didn’t say that he was mad, mad that other kids knew how to tie their shoes and he did not. He didn’t say that he couldn’t understand why his father was too impatient to teach him how, or that Alice, who had absolutely no friends, didn’t think enough of him to at least pretend to like him.
Luke Spoon put a hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Felix, we’ll find you some other shoes to wear.”
NINETEEN
SISTER ANNUNCIATA HAD been transferred to Immaculate Conception School three years earlier to replace an unpopular principal. Sister Linda Rose had had a fondness for rulers, not for the purpose of measuring feet and inches, but for slapping, prodding, and threatening. It was hard to believe the woman didn’t take pleasure in making children cry.
By the time she was ousted, the children were terrified of nuns. It didn’t help that the new principal had only one eye; the patch could be intimidating, even to adults.
In order to improve relations, Sister A. introduced the idea of a Halloween Masquerade Party that would culminate in a contest for best costume.
At first, Father Bruno had to be convinced. The notion of parishioners roaming around the convent was radical. But when Sister A. explained that he and Father Aloysius might enjoy being the honorable judges of the costume contest, he caved.
It turned out to be a savvy move, for although Sister A. remained a formidable figure at school, the party generated much good will, and created an excitement in Hanzloo that was hard to pinpoint.
This year Lil O’Brien received a handwritten invitation from Sister Annunciata:
Dear Lil O’Brien,
Remember me from church a while back? The crow? The shame? Please come to the costume party, Tuesday night at 7:00. I’m sure Alice will be there. You don’t have to wear a costume. You’re scary enough.
~Sr. A.
P.S. That was a joke.
Lil folded the note and put it in her apron pocket.
Of course, Alice would be there. Clarisse McCarthy took pride in making elaborate costumes, though neither of the twins had yet to win a prize. She often complained that the contest was rigged against her, and her thirst for first prize only grew.
To see Alice in public would be hard, but it was better than a visit in Clarisse’s living room. She’d have to take it up with Jim.
For two weeks Lil had seen no one but her husband, and he’d been particularly icy to her. They’d had words about her refusal to take the pills.
“You need them,” said Jim.
“I don’t,” she said, though she had an awful craving for them. The clearer her head became, the more she understood that they would only make things worse.
“I’m trying to get better, Jim.”
“I don’t see any evidence of that. Look at this place.”
Having adamantly refused Clarisse McCarthy’s offer to hire Mrs. Tanner to straighten things out, restoring the house to sanity was a miserable, all-consuming job, but essential in order to get Alice home. She’d have to clean it to the bone.
Wandering from the dishwasher to the sink, from the bathroom to the bedroom, she balled socks, dusted, and sorted and folded clothes. Restless in the quiet hours of the afternoon, without the drugs, she could not escape a feeling of dread. Still, she didn’t take a pill. Sometimes, pausing at the kitchen window, she followed the sky to the end of the horizon, and was seized by a longing so deep and inexplicable that she’d resume her chores just to flee from the feeling.
She stacked her poetry books in the hall closet behind the bags of summer clothes. As she cleared a shelf for the books, she thought back to an encounter she’d had with Clarisse McCarthy at the post office, shortly after she’d moved to town, almost five years ago.
“Lil O’Brien, right?” Clarisse had said, her arms full of envelopes. “Pardon me if I look a wreck, I’ve been working like a dog on Father Bruno’s birthday invites. I wonder why I do it. Sending a letter home?” asked Clarisse eyeing Lil’s mail.
“No, it’s a poem for a magazine,” Lil said.
“A poem?” said Clarisse. “Well, that’s fancy. You wrote it?” asked Clarisse.
Lil lied. “My sister wrote it.”
“I don’t get poetry. I don’t know. It’s a little too stuck up for me. Is your sister stuck up?”
Lil had waited until Clarisse left the post office before she slipped the envelope into the mail slot. A few weeks later, she received a letter from the magazine. One sentence: Thank you for your submission. The memory alone was a good enough reason to hide her books.
LIL DECIDED she’d make a dinner for Jim. Maybe then she’d approach him about going to the Halloween party.
When she opened the freezer, it looked as if a winter snow had fallen there. Prying loose a frosty package, she discovered a steak. Behind it she found a box of green beans encased in frozen crystal flakes. And what else? Potatoes. Jim loved them, and he stored them in the basement, in his new abode.
She started down the creaky stairs uneasily, pausing at the bottom step to see how he’d arranged his things amid the taped-up boxes, rakes and shovels. The room was damp and chilly, and smelled like dirt.
His clothes spilled out of a laundry bag, and work shirts hung from wire hangers on a clothesline above the washer and dryer.
A comforter lay across his narrow cot. She sat down and ran her hand over it, noticing a photograph sticking out from under an ashtray littered with butts. In the picture, which was taken on Clarisse’s front lawn at a Fourth of July party, Jim and Alice were smiling, wearing baseball mitts and Yankee caps, but Lil’s gaze veered off to the side. The whole problem was right there in the photo: her remote ways, her wish to be elsewhere, to set herself apart.
Beside a small tube of ointment that he used to soothe the skin on his legs and back, Lil saw Jim’s wedding ring. She supposed he had taken to leaving it at home.
It had come to this, and it struck her that making dinner was the least she could do.
BY THE
time Jim came home, Lil had prepared the food for cooking, showered, laid her favorite cloth over the table in the dining room, and even put on a dress. She’d set the table and lit two slender tapers. The preparation had taken all her concentration, and with a relatively clean house, she felt a shimmer of respectability, and hoped Jim would be pleasantly surprised.
When he walked in the front door and found that the lights were off, he called out. She sensed the alarm in his voice.
“I’m here,” she said. “In the dining room.”
Seeing the candles and the set table he said, “What’s this?”
“A surprise dinner.”
“Uh, okay.” His tie was already loosened underneath his overcoat, and he carried his briefcase. He looked worn out, and she could tell that he’d been drinking.
“I found a steak in the freezer,” she said.
“Hey, hey!” he said, sarcastically, but that, she forgave.
“Go change your clothes. I’ll start cooking.”
In the kitchen, dread swept over her as she stared at the strainer full of potatoes. She put them in a pot of water and set them on the stove. Boiled potatoes were Jim’s favorite, and something about that disappointed her. Could there be anything duller than a boiled potato? She turned her attention to the steak, realizing she wasn’t quite sure about the timing. Was it five minutes a side, or ten?
Jim emerged from the basement, out of his work clothes. Even at thirty-seven, he still looked boyish. But Lil was struck by his weary eyes, the slight stoop of his shoulders, and, of course, the recent ballooning belly.
He came into the kitchen rubbing his hands together. “Smells good.”
Lil smiled, but at that moment she couldn’t remember ever loving him. He might as well have been a stranger. “I hope I still know how to cook a decent meal.”
“Do you want a drink?” he asked, desperate for one himself.
“Nah,” she said. “You go ahead, I’ll bring the dinner in.”
In the dining room he poured himself a whiskey and sat at the table. “The candles are pretty,” he called in to her.
“Yeah,” she said, carrying the plates of food.