Adults and Other Children

by Miriam Cohen

  “She might be around here,” Karin said. She felt happier than she had in maybe years.

  “Her body,” she said.

  They compared arms for goose bumps. Molly’s hair was growing back stubbly in a way that made Karin glad, and sure, she wasn’t her.

  “Probably the forest,” Stella said. She shivered. Possibly it was not for show.

  They didn’t speak as they walked away from all the houses, into the forest. There was just the soft crunching of their boots over ice-crusted and blackened snow, the slight skid of their rubber heels on salt. Their breath ribboned out before them like misty shines of flashlight. All the leaves were covered. Above them, the trees were stripped and bony.

  “Do you think he took her here?” Molly said, and, at their faces, their eyebrows rising up in obviously of course, she bounced back on her heels, the synthetic puff of her hood scratching her cold-rashed cheeks.

  “I mean do you think he took her here. For stuff.”

  She eyed one mitten-linted fingernail elaborately before biting.

  Stella and Karin looked away. Stuff. They knew only vague outlines beyond the clearly delineated facts to be found in the pink pamphlets pressed seriously into their palms after Sex Ed, which Stella’s mother, laughing, had tossed away. Laughing why, they weren’t sure. Because the strange glories and terrors described between those pages weren’t true? Because were? They were, among the three of them, from big enough families: They weren’t innocents. But when Karin tried to imagine Allison Eve Johnson and the predator, she could come up with only floating mimeographs of faces, the one grinning in a piano show of teeth.

  Stella rubbed her knuckles just beneath her nose, where it was beginning to chap.

  “Probably he said something first.”

  Their voices became cats slipping past each other.

  “Like maybe, ‘Come here, gorgeous.’”

  “Or, ‘Honey, you’re so pretty.’”

  “‘I’d like to pop your cherry.’”

  They paused, Karin picturing ice-cream sundaes, the round glisten on top, redolent, ripe.

  They were a throat to sky chorus of Ewww.

  But he would be gruff, also, they had to remember. He was a predator.

  So: “‘You get over here or else.’”

  So a gun bulging from one worn denim pocket, greasy and cool to the touch. So pressed up against the temple of Allison Eve Johnson. And her parka ripped off, cotton stuffing everywhere, but buried by now, no one would find it. All the buttons of her school blouse, popped. Just her round collar kept miraculously intact, a rare winter butterfly spotted by a strong and chiseled boy just close by enough to save her. Her screams muffled by the deflated parka, and the boy, Karin could imagine him well, newspapers slung over his shoulder—though their newspapers were not delivered by boys on foot, but by men on trucks—only wondering idly at the hazily drifting butterfly, white as milk or bread.

  They were breathless.

  They fell back and made angels against the hardened snow, staring up at empty branches. They were laughing, and shy. Who knew? Who would have guessed, to look at them, three girls, the ends of their hair occasionally paintbrush-stiff from sucking, always in vaguely out of fashion hand-me-downs, what they did know? What they might imagine. Because, Allison Eve Johnson had been brutally, brutally, murdered, all signs pointed to, and they were laughing. They had some nerve, Karin could almost hear her mother saying. When would they wake up and smell the coffee?

  Karin sat up, using her elbows and all the rest.

  “What would the predator do if he found Victoria?”

  Molly said something, but it was muffled from her still lying down. But they were done with lying down! They were sitting up now. Now they were talking about something else. Karin felt as if someone had taken a bicycle pump to her chest, and she wanted to feel something else. They were nice girls, their mothers said, the skin at their mouths tightly stretched, weren’t they?

  “Why don’t you just sit up?” Karin said.

  Stella said, “Hey, Karin,” because of the way her voice got. It became just like her father’s when he was maybe looking for something he couldn’t find. So even. So calm.

  “What?” she said. “What? I’m not doing anything.”

  Her spine was a twig that would not snap.

  “You’re such babies,” she said. “Both of you. You don’t understand.” And then she had to stop speaking and start crying because she didn’t either understand. Victoria was their age. That she was never going to grow up was not true. Her age was piling on and on, every day for her was also another.

  Their hands were on her, patting, soothing: Shhhh. Because of course it was perfectly understandable, crying out in the frosted woods, a predator looming on the loose. She shook them off, shoulders tight to ears. The old snow-covered leaves were too ruined to crackle beneath her. If the predator found Victoria, she would be in the perfect disguise, a stooped and ugly witch really a swan-necked princess. Or the reverse. But the predator wouldn’t find Victoria, not unless he went foot by careful foot up the unevenly placed bricks on the sides of what Karin’s mother called, Oh, a modern house. Not unless he, with foresight-purchased tools, pried open the window, and entered. She was so safe. All this time, she had been so safe.

  Karin’s heart was in her ears. She found a tree to lean against. The roots pressed up from the ground. Their hands were back, and they were laughing, pressing Reallys and Come-on-alreadys through the down, fingers pausing to tuck their stray grown-out-bangs behind ears, and then returning to her, hovering, uncertain now, just at the center of her back. Really, seriously, they wanted to go home. Wasn’t Stella’s mother waiting. Wouldn’t Stella’s mother be worried. But Karin was hearing Victoria’s mother in her mind, that soft, lotion-smooth voice, You girls must have your own lives. And she felt, then, how Victoria’s mother was afraid of them, and of what they were becoming.

  CARE

  They were in our yard. I watched them from the window, the son’s mushroom cap of hair lifting, electric in the wind, the wife without her shoes. I listened to her shout, Max. Max! Sun caught her stockings and made them glisten. I’d never seen the son off his leash before. They were perfect: husband, wife, son. She was a cellist, the wife. I saw her leave the house sometimes with the case, sheets of music fluttering in the breeze. I didn’t know what the husband did. I imagined something wonderful. Lion tamer.

  They had nothing to do with us.

  We were having breakfast.

  Amelia patted butter into her socks. She was fantastic at it. She didn’t have to look down. She made perfect eye contact with our mother, nodding. Yes. And, Interesting. Her hand all this time down her sock, smearing.

  My mother was saying, “It doesn’t matter as much when it’s summer. No one does anything when it’s summer.”

  She meant the plans Amelia and I hadn’t managed. Dr. Feingold said, Absolutely, Amelia needs to have summer plans. He also said Amelia would die if she stayed out of the hospital. Maybe not today, he’d said, leaning forward, fingers steepled exactly.

  He was just a regular doctor—he still tried to give us lollipops, even Amelia. We were asking too much of him, he said. And my parents said, yes, they knew. But now they were trying an at home approach.

  My father passed me the milk. It poured out close to clear.

  “This tastes like water,” I said. Amelia kicked me under the table.

  “So strange,” I said. I kicked her back.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” my father said. He knocked a fist to his lips.

  I cut into the stack of pancakes my mother had set out for everyone.

  No one laughed. “Mom,” I said. I waved my fork.

  “Good,” my mother said. “It’s good to see you girls eating.”

  I knocked back my chair, slammed it three times to the wall, indenting already-indentations. The family was gone. The wife had captured the son somehow while I wasn’t watching. She’d brought him back ins
ide. And there they would eat a careless breakfast of cereal, standing up. Over the sink.

  My father put his hands on my shoulders. Pressed. “I love you,” he said.

  He kissed me just above my head. I felt it on my spine. My mother was with Amelia, telling her goodbye, and then they switched, my mother’s kiss smudging onto my cheek, my father’s hands on Amelia’s bones.

  We love you too, we told them.

  And then they were gone, and I was here, so watching her. Watching her! She was my older sister. I missed the way it used to be, when she lived in the eating disorder unit of the hospital, a feeding tube taped many times to her nose, tangles of wires tracking the rhythms of her murmuring heart. She’d seemed like a kind of ambassador then, introducing me to the world she lived in so easily, her paper gown fluttering around her like a cape. And even though the other girls, with their caved-in faces, seemed related to her, I was the only one who was actually her sister.

  “Hey,” she said now. “Check this out.”

  She unzipped the sweatshirt she wore as a regular shirt—she was always so cold—and there were her ribs, misplaced wings broken free. She danced her fingers underneath. There was a diamond dip I could press my thumb inside where her chest gave way to pleats of rib.

  “Neat,” I said.

  She re-zipped herself. I hated her fingers. They’d turned at some point to scales. She told me she was going running. I watched her try to hold her smile down.

  “So go running,” I said.

  I went to my room and parted the curtains.

  It was so easy to get into that house. I asked Lily did she need a babysitter, and she tilted her chin and said, How much did I charge an hour? Just like that. I left Amelia lunch in the mornings, and threw it out at night before our parents got home. I told them, Yes, she’s eating. She drank pounds in water before stepping on the scale for my mother, and everything was balanced at fine. We were taking a homecare approach, I listened to my parents say, over and over, sometimes to no one.

  I didn’t find out the husband’s name right away. He was never there. Every day, I waited for him, or at least her mention of him—that he was the love of her life, maybe something more secret, but all she’d said to me were pleasantries like “Thanks” and “Good morning” and “Have a good night.” I mostly didn’t even see her. She practiced her cello in the basement, a room without windows.

  The way I found out the husband’s name, finally, was less exciting than I’d hoped. Lily said to me, “George has been away on business,” and I said, “Who?” just to make sure. “George.” She let some seconds go by as she looked at me.

  She walked past me, to the front hall closet, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to follow her or not. She came back with Max’s leash just as I was standing to follow her.

  I sat back down.

  “You two should get out of the house, go on a walk,” she said, almost like a suggestion, except I knew I had to do it.

  I nodded, and she called for Max. He stepped carefully down the stairs, as if there were a rod in his spine. There was something more wrong with him than I’d thought, I could see that now that I’d spent time with him. His eyes only seemed to focus, and the smile on his lips wasn’t actually a smile, but an accident of facial arrangement.

  I squatted down in front of him the way I’d seen mothers sometimes do. Immediately, he reached for my hair and tugged. I’d spent an hour that morning arranging my hair in the perfect messy bun. The point of the bun was for it to look like I hadn’t tried, and this required mousse and bobby pins and hanging my head upside down for a while before flipping it over again. Max pulled my hair harder. I bit my lip so as not to hate him. I guided my fingers over his and pulled them out of my hair like a stuck comb. Then I stood so he couldn’t reach my hair.

  “Max is having a bad day,” Lily said, either to me or to Max, I wasn’t sure.

  “Oh, no,” I said, trying and failing to sound dramatic and fun-loving.

  “Be good, okay?” Lily said. She cupped Max’s head.

  Max wiggled away from her hand.

  “Here’s the child-safety harness,” Lily said.

  She showed me how to clip the leash to a loop in Max’s jeans, and then to wrap it twice around my wrist for a good grip. “You can take him to the park,” she said. “For a few hours?”

  I hated it when people didn’t give exact measurements for time: a few hours could mean anything. All I knew was she meant more than one. “Like two hours? I said.

  She looked at her watch. “Would three hours be too much?”

  “Sounds great,” I said. She could have told me to do anything, and I would have said it sounded great. I didn’t know how we’d pass three hours at the park. The only one nearby didn’t even have regular swings, only the buckets. Also, even if Lily spent the entire time I was at her house downstairs, there was always that chance she might come up. At the park, there would be no chance.

  I thought Max might refuse to walk, but once I tugged on the leash, he followed me without protest. At the door I turned to say goodbye to Lily, but she was already downstairs, the basement door closed.

  I didn’t make eye contact with Max because what was the point. I wanted to have called in sick today, if only so Lily would have been forced to speak to me, to sigh into the phone and say, “Oh, Karin, I don’t know how we’ll manage without you.”

  I saw Amelia’s shadow in the window as we crossed from their lawn onto mine to reach the street. I thought of how long three hours in the park was.

  “Hey Max, how about if we skip the park today?” My voice was flat and loud, and it made me afraid of myself.

  If Lily were watching at the window, she would have seen and shaken her head. The park, she would tell me. But she was downstairs, and she wasn’t watching us from there.

  In my house I swung the door shut, hard, because I lived there and could. Amelia didn’t come down, so I slammed the door again.

  “What’s your problem?” she called. Her voice was faint, floating from I couldn’t tell where.

  “I brought the kid over.”

  She didn’t answer me. It was improbable that she was dead. If she were dead, it would have happened so suddenly that this would be the story I would tell for the rest of my life: “She said ‘What’s your problem?’ and then she died!”

  I unclipped Max’s leash. He wandered over to the front hall closet. He sat in front of the shoes as if there were something moving for him to watch.

  Amelia came down the stairs. She’d taken on a smell I recognized from nursing homes.

  “I was supposed to take him to the park,” I told her.

  “Now you can babysit us both.” She smiled with her waxy, bluish lips together.

  “We can have lunch,” I said to Amelia.

  “We could’ve had lunch, but I already ate,” Amelia said. She sat on one of the kitchen chairs, her knees pulled to her chin. The stones of her spine were visible through her sweatshirt. I covered her spine with my hand. It felt like my mother’s strand of black pearls, which she wore to dinner parties. It made me dizzy, touching my sister’s bones.

  I went to the fridge and saw the sandwich I’d made her, the apple and Ensure and energy bar tucked neatly beside it.

  “I ate something else,” she said, and it made me want to thank her, for pretending, for once, for me.

  I washed off the apple and called Max into the kitchen. I’d seen him eat apples before. He held the apple by its stem. I put Amelia’s sandwich on a plate. The bread was smashed and soft, and I picked up one half of the sandwich, squeezed it between my fingers.

  “I already ate,” Amelia said, again. She tapped her fingers over her collarbone. She did this absentmindedly, the way pregnant women reach for their stomachs.

  “What did you eat?” I said.

  “I had cheesecake,” she said. “Coated in chocolate.”

  Sometimes, if I looked at just at my sister’s eyes, I could imagine her as delicate instead o
f ugly. “Deep-fried in butter cream icing,” I said.

  We had still had to pass almost two hours with Max.

  “He doesn’t really talk,” Amelia said. She was sitting on the sofa with her head tossed back, her skin only barely protecting the long and lumpy bulge of her throat.

  “There’s something wrong with him.” It felt like heartburn, saying this in front of Max, but I also liked the way it felt. Here I was, a girl with her sister.

  Max didn’t appear to notice either of us. He walked in slow circles around the kitchen. And then I noticed the dark splotch on his pants. I’d forgotten to take him to the bathroom. I’d forgotten to stand patiently outside, listening to the sound of his pee, and then the flush. Extra air floated in front of my eyes. I thought I might pass out or cry.

  I laughed.

  I was just his babysitter.

  “I bet you have some pants he can change into,” I said to Amelia. “I bet you have pants that are too small for him.”

  Sometimes, when she thought I wasn’t watching, I saw Amelia wrap her hand around the string of her bicep, forefinger to thumb.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “We could wash his pants.”

  “You don’t even know how to do laundry,” I said.

  Amelia bent over Max and tried to unzip his pants, but he squirmed away from her. I should have told her that she needed to hold him tightly at the shoulders.

  “Max,” Amelia said. “Hey, Max.” He wouldn’t look at her because he wouldn’t look at anyone. I didn’t go over to help Amelia.

  She wrapped one arm around his shoulders as if someone had taught her how. With the other hand, she undid his fly. Her fingers were chapped and torn, but tender in the ways they moved.

  I walked over to them and held Max’s arms to his sides so my sister could help him step out of his pants, and then his underwear. She tied a towel around his waist. He shimmied out of it almost immediately.

  We let him run naked around the house, as if we were parents and this was a decision ours to make. Amelia smoothed the pants over her legs before placing them into the washing machine. I watched her shake detergent into the box in the corner of the washing machine. I’d never done laundry before, and I’d never watched my mother. Amelia was my older sister, and she possessed life skills I didn’t yet have. I wanted to take this moment and carry it between my palms like water.