by Mary Rickert
“Yeah, it’s no problem,” Mickey said. “You wanna call her?”
Theresa considered the small purple phone the girl dug out of her backpack. The truth was, Theresa had no idea how to use these portable devices. She turned to Elli, who was chewing gum as though it was a competitive event. “Well, have a good time,” Theresa said, trying to sound breezy, fun.
The girls didn’t wait a second. They were gone, leaving the scent of gum, as well as something Theresa only noticed after the fact: a worrisomely smoky scent, wafting in the air behind them.
At that point, Theresa discovered everyone had left without her. There were only two places in Voorhisville where a book group could meet for coffee and conversation: The Fry Shack, out on the highway, or Lucy’s, which was a coffee shop in the pre-Starbucks sense of the word—a diner, really; though Lucy was fairly accommodating of the new fashion for only ordering coffee, as long as it was during off hours. Theresa walked out of the library and took a deep breath.
“Smells nice, doesn’t it?” the stranger said.
He was standing by the side of the building. Almost as though he’d been waiting.
Theresa nodded.
“Mind if I join you?”
What could she do? She couldn’t be rude, could she? He seemed perfectly nice, it was still light out, and it was Voorhisville, for God’s sake. What bad thing could possibly happen here?
“I’m not going to Lucy’s,” Theresa said, turning away from him.
“Neither am I,” he said, and fell in step beside her.
What had it been; what had it meant? Over and over again as the leaves fell to the dry flameless burn of that season, Theresa Ratcher asked herself these questions, as though if she asked enough, or in the right mental tone, the answer would appear. What had it been; what had it meant? As leaves fell in golden spiral swirls, on autumn days that smelled like apples. What had it been; what had it meant? As ghosts and vampires and dead cheerleaders carried treat bags and plastic jack-o’-lanterns through town—Theresa had forgotten what day it was—she returned home to find her husband in the living room watching The Godfather again, and she stood in the kitchen and stared out at the lonely unbroken dark.
What had it been; what had it meant? When she said, “I’m pregnant,” and her husband looked at her and said, “Are you kidding?” and she said, “No,” and he said, “This is going to be expensive,” and then, “Wait, I’m sorry, it’s just … are you happy?” and she had shrugged and gone to the kitchen and looked out the window at the lonely dark fields of broken corn.
What had it been; what had it meant? Standing in the frozen yard, snowflakes falling, swirling around her and then suddenly gone, leaving a cold ray of sun and the feeling in her body as though tortured by her bones.
What had it been; what had it meant? Opening the door to Elli’s bedroom, and seeing her standing there, naked, and realizing that she had not merely been gaining weight. “I’m your mother. Why didn’t you tell me?” Theresa asked. “I hate you,” Elli screamed, trying to cover her distended belly with a towel.
ELLI
We are running out of the library, giggling because we are free! I see the guy from the library, not the old one with the tie, but the cute one with the eyes like Eminem. He smiles at me and I smile at him and Mickey goes all nuts and says, “Who is that?” and I just shrug. We are walking down the street and Mickey says, “The graveyard,” and I go, “What?” and she says, “Old Batface’ll tell my folks if we have a party or anything, but I know where my dad hides his peppermint schnapps. Let’s go home and make hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and go to the graveyard. You’re not scared, are you?”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” I say. “It’s real people that freak me out. What if Batface sees us leave?”
“She watches Seinfeld all night long. We’ll go out the back door.”
So we walk down the street to Mickey’s house and that line keeps going through my head: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” I feel like I am in a dream, like I have a body but I don’t feel inside it, like we are surrounded by fireflies, even though it’s light out, like the sky is filled with twinkling; and I feel free. Free from my mom with all her fears and rules and that depressed way of hers, and free from Dad with his stupid jokes, and free from the farm with its shitty smell and the silence except for all the birds and bugs.
Mickey says, “Who should we invite?”
“Where’s your brother?” I ask. “Isn’t he supposed to be watching you?”
“Vin’s got one goal between today and Sunday night, when my parents get back, and that’s to get into Jessica’s pants. He doesn’t care what I do, as long as I don’t get in his way.”
Sure enough, when we open the door, we see a purse and two wineglasses. Upstairs, there is the sound of pounding, and Mickey looks at me and says, “Do you know what that is?” I shake my head. (We are such stuff as dreams are made on.) “He’s doing her,” she says and we giggle until we are bent over. Then Mickey opens cupboards and says, “Here, make the hot chocolate. I’ll be right back.”
I fill the teakettle with water and put it on the burner and think, What are we doing, why are we doing this? Then Mickey is back, talking on the phone, saying, “Yeah, all right.” Through the window I can see right into Mrs. Wexel’s living room where she’s sitting in a chair in front of the TV, and in the TV is tiny Jerry Seinfeld saying something to tiny Elaine, and even from all this distance I think how big their teeth are. Mickey puts the teakettle on and says, “They’re going to meet us there.”
We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
I pour hot water into the thermos and the light begins to fade and we leave out the back door, cutting across driveways and yards until we are on the road walking past the crooked house with the roses that smell so sweet, going up the hill to the graveyard, which is glowing. Mickey says, “You’re sure you’re not afraid?”
I say, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”
“Did you make that up?”
Before I can answer, Larry is standing there and Mickey says, “Where’s Ryan? Where are the guys?” Larry says, “He couldn’t come. Nobody could come.” He looks at me and nods and we trudge up the hill, weaving through the graves, past the angel, back past where all the dead babies are buried. We spread out the blanket and drink hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. I feel like one of those body diagrams in science class. I picture a red line spreading to my lungs and my heart and into my stomach as the hot liquid goes down, and I think, We are such stuff as dreams are made on. The fireflies are blinking around the tombstones and in the sky, which is sort of purple, and that is when I realize Mickey and Larry are totally making out, and just then she opens her eyes and says, “Elli, would you mind?” So I get up and walk away, weaving through the headstones and the baby toys, the stuffed animals on the graves. I head up the hill to where the angel is, and that’s when I see him sitting there, and he smiles at me, just like he did at the library, and I am thinking, We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and I must have said it out loud because he goes, “Yes.”
I thought I saw a light shining out of him, like a halo, but let’s face it, I was wasted and everything was sort of glowing—even the graves were glowing. He didn’t try to talk to me and he didn’t ask me to come over, I just did. He didn’t ask me to sit down beside him, but I did, and he told me I had beautiful bones: “Slender, but not sharp.” I never saw wings, but I thought I felt them, deep inside me. He smelled like apples, and when I started crying, he whispered over and over again, We are such stuff as dreams are made on. At least, I think he did.
I passed out, until Mickey was standing over me going, “Jesus Christ, Elli, I thought you were dead or something. Why didn’t you answer me?”
“Did you do it?” I asked.
“He didn’t bring any condoms.”
“But you still did it, right?”
“What are you, nuts? I don’t wanna get AIDS or som
ething.”
“Larry isn’t going to give you AIDS.”
“Come on, I feel sick. Let’s go home. You all right?”
“I had the strangest dream.”
She was already walking down the hill, the blanket trailing from her arms, dragging on the ground. I looked up at the angel and said, “Hello? Are you here?”
“Shut up, Elli. Someone’s going to call the cops.”
I felt like a ghost walking out of the graveyard. “Hey, Mickey,” I said, “it’s like we’re ghosts coming back to life.”
“Just shut up,” Mickey said.
Dogs barked and lights came on the whole way back to her house, where the two wineglasses were still there but the purse was gone. Mickey dropped the blanket on the floor and said, “I am so wasted.”
I said, “Nobody even knows we are here.”
Mickey rested her hand on my shoulder and said, “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”
I followed her up the stairs into her room where we went to bed without changing our clothes. It wasn’t long before Mickey was snoring and I just lay there blinking in the dark, and it kept repeating in my head, over and over again: We are such stuff as dreams are made on. I fell asleep thinking it and I woke up thinking it and I’m still thinking it and I just keep wondering, Is any of this real?
TAMARA
June in Voorhisville. The sun rises over the houses, the library, Lucy’s Diner, the yoga studio, the drugstore, the fields of future corn and wheat, the tiny buds of roses, the silent streets. Pink crab apple petals part for honeybees; tulips gasp their last, red throats to the sun; butterflies flit over dandelions; and the grass is lit upon by tiny white moths, destined to burn their wings against streetlamps.
The mothers greet the day with tired eyes. So soon? It isn’t possible. The babies are crying. Again. The mothers are filled with great love, and also something else. Who knew someone so small could eat so much!
Cathy Vecker complains to her mother and grandmother, who encourage her to consider bottle feeding. “Then we can hire a summer girl,” her mother says.
Jan Morris calls the real estate office where she works and breaks down in tears to the young receptionist there, who calls her own mother, who shows up at Jan’s an hour later with two Styrofoam cups of bitter tea, bagels from Lucy’s, and a pamphlet entitled “Birthing Darkness: What Every Woman Should Know about Post-Partum Depression” as well as—inexplicably—Dr. Phil’s weight loss book.
Sylvia takes her son into the garden, where she sits in the twig chair and thinks how tired her husband was before he died, and how she feels tired like that now, except alive. She cries onto her son’s shoulders.
Lara dresses her baby in a yellow onesie, checking his back several times, convincing herself that the strange thing she saw had been an hallucination. She is very tired. She can’t believe how much she has to arrange just to walk down the street to her studio. She feels like she’s packing for a week: diapers, socks, change of clothes, nursing blankets, an extra bra, a clean shirt. All while the baby lies there, watching.
The mothers of Voorhisville are being watched. Rumors have begun to circulate about strange births and malformed babies, though the gossip seems unfounded. Sure, the mothers look exhausted, but there’s nothing unusual about that. Yes, they describe the pains of birth as severe, but women have always said so. The only strange thing about the babies, despite what Brian and Francis think they saw, despite the rumors that nurse spreads all the way in Becksworth, is that they are all boys, and they are all beautiful.
Far from the rumors of town, out past the canning factory, over the hill behind the site of the old paper mill, Theresa Ratcher stands in her pantry, staring at glass jars filled with jelly. She means to be assessing what remains from the winter; instead, she is mesmerized by the colors. She stands, resting her hands on her great belly, as though beholding something sacred; certainly something more spectacular than strawberry, jalapeno, or yellow-tomato jelly. Her husband is in the field. She has no idea where Elli is. Theresa doesn’t like to think about Elli, and she doesn’t like to think about why she doesn’t like to think about her. For a moment, Elli, with her long limbs and protruding belly, stands in Theresa’s mind. She shakes her head and concentrates on the jars before her.
Elli is in the barn. She has no idea why. They don’t have any animals except for cats and mice. But Elli likes it in the barn. She finds it a peaceful place, her dad out in the fields, her mom somewhere else. These days, Elli likes to be far from her mother, because even when they are in different rooms, she can feel the hate. Elli stands in the middle of the barn, beneath the beams, which her father still obsesses about. She is biting her fingernail when the sharp pain drives her to the ground. She lets out a scream, which rises past the spiderwebs and silent, hanging blobs of sleeping bats, out the cracks and holes in the roof, where it mingles with Theresa’s scream as she falls to the ground in the pantry, knocking over several jars that shatter on the floor—an explosion of red goo, which her husband, when he returns for supper, assumes is blood. He runs to get the phone, but she screams at him to help, so he kneels before her in the glass and fruit, and she screams the head and shoulders out. Later, she tells him it’s jelly. He licks a finger but it tastes like blood. He helps her upstairs and tucks her into bed, the baby in the crib.
He looks everywhere for Elli, finally going to the barn where he barely sees her in the evening light. She is lying on the ground, surrounded by pools of jelly (he thinks, before he realizes, no, that can’t be right). She looks at him with wild eyes, like his 4-H horse all those years ago when she broke her leg, and she cries. “Daddy? It’s dead.”
That’s when he notices the small shape beside her. As he leans closer, she says, “Careful. They hurt.” He doesn’t know what she means until he sees the tiny bat wings spread across the small back. But that can’t be right. He looks down at his daughter, horrified. “It’s some kind of freak,” she weeps. “Just get rid of it.”
He picks the creature up, and only then notices its barely perceptible breathing. “Don’t touch the wings,” she says. He looks at her, his little girl who gave birth to such a thing. Now she can get on with her life.
“Get it out of here,” she says.
He takes the shovel and walks out of the barn, bats flying overhead. Curiosity gets the best of him, and he touches the wings. The next thing he knows, he is standing in the cornfield, beneath the cold light of the moon, staring at his dark house, listening to screams. He looks around in confusion but he can’t find the creature, or the shovel, or any sign that the ground has been turned. He runs to the barn.
He finds Elli lying on the ground, surrounded by wild cats, and screaming. He hears a noise behind him, the snapping of gravel, and turns to see Theresa slowly making her way towards them. “Go back. Just go back in the house,” he shouts. She stops, washed with white moonglow like a ghost. “You’ll be in the way. Call 911.”
Slowly, Theresa turns and walks towards the house.
He reaches between Elli’s legs, relieved to feel a crown of head there. “It’s all right. You’re just having another one.”
“I’m dying!” she screams.
“Push,” he says, with no real idea if this is the right thing to do or not; he just wants it out. “Push, Elli.”
She screams and bears down. He feels the head and shoulders. Squinting in the dark, he barely sees the cord. He’s already forming a plan for suffocation, if it’s like the other, but what comes out is a perfect baby boy that he tries to hand to Elli. She says she doesn’t want it. He is pleading with her when the EMTs arrive. They help all three of them into the house, where Theresa sits in the dark living room, cradling her baby.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
Elli opens her mouth, but Pete speaks first. “Everything’s fine,” he says. “A boy.”
“And a freak,” Elli says.
“What?” Theresa speaks to Elli’s back as she walks up the stairs, l
eaving the baby with the EMT who carried him inside. He hands the baby to Pete Ratcher, who thanks him for coming all that way “for nothing.” He says it’s his job, and not to worry, but Pete Ratcher watches the man walk down the driveway to the ambulance, shaking his head like a man who just received terrible news. Pete searches the sky for a long time before he realizes what he’s looking for. “I have to take care of something,” he says, and steps forward as though to hand the baby to Theresa.
She looks at him like he’s nuts. “Give him to Elli. She’s his mother.”
He walks up the dark stairs and enters his daughter’s room. “Elli? Honey?”
“Go away.”
“I have to check on something. You know, the other one.”
“Freak.”
“Elli, these things happen. It’s not your fault. And look, you have this one.”
“I don’t want him.”
“God damn it, Elli.”
He thinks that, all in all, he’s handled everything well. It’s been a hell of a night. He tries once more for a calm tone. “I have to go check on something. I’m going to put your baby right here, in the crib, but if he cries, you have to take care of him. You have to. Your mother is tired. Do you hear me, Elli?”
Elli mumbles something, which he takes for assent. He places the baby in the crib. It squirms, and he rubs its back. Only then does it occur to him that the baby is not diapered or clothed, not even washed, but still coated in the bloody slime of birth. He picks it up, and by the moonlight finds what he needs on the shelves of the changing table (a gift from Elli’s high school teachers). He cleans the baby with several hand wipes, tossing them towards the plastic trash can, not troubling to make sure any of them actually land inside. Finally, he diapers the baby, wrapping him tightly in a clean blanket and setting him in the crib. “Elli.” She doesn’t respond. “If he cries you have to take care of him. You have to feed him.”