by Brian Hodge
"We're so sorry to do this to you, Bart." Madden's wife brushed water from her clothing. "But we thought the twins were really too young to, well, exactly have their faces rubbed in it."
Bart smoothed a hand over his protruding, black-T-shirted belly. "The kids are in the bedroom. Rain must have got 'em drowsy. Left them staring out the window, counting drops or something," he added gently to Madden, testing a smile.
"Let me see to them." Madden's wife started across the room.
The men waited until she was gone.
Bart faced him. "Come over here and have a drink."
"No."
"Really, boy, really now. You know how I mean it. Come on."
At once Madden felt his joints chilled and tired. "No, Bart. I…I don't need it." He lowered himself to the sofa that was bulging and splitting like a fat man's incisions.
Bart watched the misty screen door and compared it to the pale Scotch and water in his hand. Twice he shaped his lips to stillborn beginnings. He shook his head and said nothing.
"You look at the hole, and the mud," Madden began finally in a low voice, "and you think of… that human being there in a box, being lowered into the ground, and you wonder how it can be that—that a part of your body, a piece that has come from you like an arm or leg, can be cut off, killed and buried away, and you never being able to feel with it again.
"But you know, I worked with a man once who had lost in arm in the Korean War; and he said he could close his eyes anytime and suddenly it was there again, the nerves were restored and he could feel down into his fingertips. But when he opened his eyes to see why he hadn't touched what he was reaching for, his eyes told him there was nothing there anymore."
Rain began to tap erratically on a metal vent somewhere in the roof.
"And you know, I can still see the world through my little girl's eyes, feel it as she felt it, even…even though she's been cut off me, like one of my sense organs. I still feel her, feel through her, and my nerves, my ganglia just won't listen to the goddam facts."
Outside, water continued to fall and fall illogically, relentlessly, in what seemed to be the result of a vast macrocosmic defrosting.
Giggling, the twins came out of the bedroom.
Madden saw them and smiled wanly from the sofa. The two little boys acknowledged him peripherally and grinned, grasping their mother's hands more securely.
"How did it go, boys?" inquired Madden, generating concern, and immediately hated his own detachment. You are my sons, now, he thought, my only sons, and I should hold you tight against me—
"We had fun, Da-da. We had samiches."
"An' we tooka nap an' went out an' played an'—"
Why, noted Madden wearily, they're actually speaking directly to me….She almost never lets them do that. What is this, some kind of show for Bart?
"Out? But it didn't let up today, did it, Bart?" he said.
"Well, uh," the dark man gestured firmly to Madden, "they—" and he dropped his voice, ready to spell out words before the children, "they begged to go out. You brought them in their raincoats and, you know, it was one of those things. For a few minutes is all. Made 'em real happy. God knows I have no practice in child-rearing. Jesus, Jim, I hope they didn't catch anything."
"Tad and Ray never catch colds," stated Madden's wife, smiling her wide, smooth, peculiar kind of smile. "You did fine, Bart."
Madden watched his wife. Svelte in the gray light, she snaked an arm around each of her children's shoulders.
"We'd better go," she said. "It's Sunday and I have Women's Guild meeting tonight."
"Thanks, Bart. I mean it more than I can say."
They walked together, heads down, to the door. Sunday comics section for her hair and Lorelei and the giggly children clamored down the shiny, fragmented driveway.
Bait gripped his arm, looking deep into his eyes and nodding.
"You know I know. I can't say it. But I remember the Sunday we buried Mama." Hearing it said now, Madden felt no longer a memory of pain but a bond with manhood. "Just so's you know I know." And a slap caught Madden between the shoulder blades and sent him into the rain.
To a car where a somehow strange woman and children waited.
He switched off the ignition and sat very still, staring into the liquid pattern on the windshield.
"Ready, children?" asked Mrs. Madden, not looking to the back seat, taking her purse into her lap.
From the back seat came giggling.
Madden lay his head back to let his eyes trace the headliner of the car. Half a minute earlier, shutting off the wipers, he had caught himself hypnotized as the twin arcs of the wiper blades melted away. Now, the motor silenced, he listened to the sound of endless beads beating their pattern into the top of the automobile.
In the back seat, there was whispering like the swishing of cars down an empty street.
"Let's go, children," prompted their mother. "There'll be plenty of time for secrets when we get in the house."
Abruptly Madden snapped to. He focused his eyes from the windshield to the woman next to him, attuned his ears from the drumming overhead to the whisper of cloth on plastic as the children slid across the back seat. He touched the handle of his wife's door; it was cold. Almost as cold as his hand.
Behind him, someone giggled.
Outside the picture window, premature dusk settled along the block like silent black wings.
"Won't…won't you eat something?" asked Mrs. Madden tenuously. She leaned into the living room, spoon in hand and spoke in silhouette from the yellow kitchen doorway.
He cleared his throat. "What?" Madden's five fingertips moved involuntarily to the pane. The glass was cold.
"Well," she intoned maternally, "you should have something. It's almost dark. Let me turn on the—"
"It's all right, Lorelei." For God's sake, he thought, don't patronize me. Not now.
Chilled and fatigued to the marrow, he sat in the newly rearranged and alien living room and tried to release his senses from the pain of here-and-now. He shut his eyes and tried to let his thoughts blow with the storm on down the blurred panorama of empty street.
She puttered for a time in the kitchen and Madden, curiously detached in the dark and the overstuffed chair, noticed again her effortless, liquid movements. The way she had of gliding over a floor as though it were polished glass, her legs flowing out and back with each step in a charming suggestion of no gristle or bone. No deliberate, angular bend to Lorie's arm, no; in her, stirring and pouring out and rinsing away became a Siamese rubber-arm ballet.
"Your soup is in the oven, keeping warm. And the twins are tucked in, so don't—I mean, they shouldn't give you any trouble."
Mrs. Madden paused in silhouette, then glided behind the enormous sagging hand that enclosed her husband.
"Lorie," he swallowed. Away in the bright kitchen, an electric clock hummed.
She sat on the armrest.
"Lorelei, do you ever…think about the decision you made ten months ago?" He tried to stop his teeth from chattering. "I mean—"
Her arms reached a pale circle around his shoulders. "You are the finest father my boys could possibly have. And I…" And she smoothed his hair with her oddly flat hands and did not finish. "Do you need to talk, Jim? The Guild meeting—"
Yes, he thought, pressing his eyes tightly shut until shards of gray light fired inside his eyelids, yes, I need something. I hear your words but they're only words, I need more than talk, I need you warm against me, I need to live—
He drew her into his lap. And at once it struck him.
She was not warm. Her skin was cold, cold almost as—
He pushed her away.
"Jim, I'm sorry. Is there something I can do for you?"
"No." He stared ahead into the night-filled room. "They're waiting for you already. There isn't anything you can do for me."
Picking up coat, purse and overshoes, Mrs. Madden pulled back the front door to a sheet of rain. A reminder about t
he soup, and she entered the falling sea.
The telephone refused to warm in his hands.
A sputter and crackle of rain and whispers on the wires between and across town, a mile away, a phone purred to life.
And purred. And purred.
"Yeah?"
"Hello, Bart. What am I interrupting?"
"Jimmy? That you, boy?"
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"No, no. Listen. Lorie gone to her meeting?"
"That's right."
"Then you're alone." Pause. "Everything all right over there?"
"Yes. Aw, look, I shouldn't have called."
"You wanna talk, Jim?"
"I guess. No….Bart, is someone coming over tonight? You going out?"
"In this weather? Look, is everything all right?"
Pause. "Uh, Bart, I wonder…I just wondered if…aw, never mind, I shouldn't have bothered you."
"Look. You wanna come over here? We could talk, if you want."
"Can't leave the kids."
"They're asleep, then, and you're alone over there. You want me to come over? Talk or something until Lorie gets back?"
Pause. "I have no business bothering you."
"Crap. Look, I'll come over, okay? We can talk, you know, like we used to."
"I'm pretty bad company tonight, I'm afraid. And the weather. Sure you want to?"
"My idea, isn't it? And look, how can you turn down a lonely ol' bachelor like me? See you in ten minutes."
"Thanks very much, Bart," but he had hung up.
Madden waited on the back porch, listening.
Far down in the darkness, the throaty thrumming of the frogs met with the rushing of running water.
All about his thin figure, dirty streams dripped from the roof to mingle with puddles at his cold feet, to slip on down over the slanting yard, to join larger tributaries that splashed their way through the thorny shrubbery of the ravine to feed at last with violent churning into the shrouded riverbed far below.
From in front, Madden heard wet brakes grip to a splashing stop. Shivering, he turned inside.
The two men sat across from one another in the living room, two men who knew each other best of all in the world. There was only a pale-moth glow from the kitchen. They spoke, and they did not speak, and from time to time Bart laughed and sipped from the brandy snifter in his lap.
"…But then they threw the next game to the motherin' Angels," Bart was saying.
"Yes," said Madden.
Bart rose and ambled to the black picture window.
Abruptly Madden was aware that his brother had stopped talking.
Madden stared with him. He saw his brother frown. Do you feel it too? he thought. Vaguely illumined beneath the street lamp was Bart's car, leaning against the curb, weathering the storm. Idly, Madden had a vision of the rain pouring off the metal top, streaming over the rolled-up windows and down into the innards of the door, where the handle and lock mechanism were.
"Jimbo. God damn it."
Madden watched him. "What's wrong?"
Bart drained his glass. "I don't wanna say it. I don't even know I'm right. Or if I oughta say it."
"It's all right—I can talk about Darla. Probably it would do me good." He massaged his face, trying to relax. "I know I have to face—"
"No. That's not what I'm talking about." Bart pivoted from the window and the rain. "Listen to me, kid. Do you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"Something, about this house, this town. I don't know how to say it. But can't you feel it?" Bart glared into the empty brandy glass.
"Something like what?" Madden lounged back into the cushion, ready to listen. Now, thought Madden, this is the way. It won't prove a thing unless he says it first.
"Damn," breathed Bart. He turned back to the night and lit a cigarette. "Maybe I'm going off the deep end. Look. Can I ask you a question?"
"Shoot."
"Something about this house. I don't know. The way it smells now, the way the chairs creak when I sit down, the color of the light, for God's sake, like the room is underwater or something. And all since she moved in." The cigarette reflection burned in the window. "Naw. Man, you're the one needs to talk at a time like this. I'm supposed to cheer you."
"So you're cheerin'. Shoot."
"Look, it's just that—haven't you noticed anything, well, different about the place since Lorie and her kids moved in? That it isn't really yours anymore? I mean, it's like every person has a rhythm, a pattern to his everyday life. You go into a man's bedroom, it smells like him, the bed bends a certain way when you sit on it, because it's been shaped to fit every angle and bulge just right over the years. And you go into the kitchen, the way the dishes are piled up in the sink tells you more about the guy than a look at his diary, if you know what I mean. It's like the house soaks up what you are, the way you feel about life, and everything in the house gets to feeling the same way, too. And not only the place, but the woman he marries: she seems to fit right in, fit him, and the house…and that's part of it, too, Jimbo. She's—and I know I'm steppin' way over the bounds on this, but dammit, man, she's not you, you know? Let me ask: don't you notice anything unusual about Lorie?"
Madden shut his eyes impatiently. "She's an unusually attractive woman, if that's what you mean."
"No. But then I promised myself not to bring up any of this with you, at least not for a long time…
"But it isn't just this house. Hell, we both grew up in Greenworth, I knew every turn in the river like the lines on my hand years before the government moved in. And it's changed now, somehow. First, it was just the way the trees started growing crooked along the banks, but lately the whole town seems, I don't know, funny. The way the air smells, the paint on the houses…I don't know. I just don't know. But I'll tell you this: if I were blindfolded and left here, I'd never in a year guess this was the same town we grew up in."
Outside, the moon slipped for a moment through a pocket of clouds, washing Bart's face fishlike-pale by the window.
"Bart. What is it?"
"I wish I could be sure, kid. Maybe you should forget it. I pray to God I could. Jim, do you know how many storms like this we've had in Greenworth in the last twenty-five years?"
Madden stirred.
"I'll tell you: three, before two years ago. And not one raised the river more than a few inches. But in two years, five big ones. Here." Bart spilled his coat pocket onto the coffee table. "What the hell—I spent yesterday in the library looking things up, I don't know what for. Something made me do it. But God, I've gotta show you."
Madden reached to the lamp.
Little white slips of paper fluttered in Bart's hands. For the first time in his life Madden saw his brother trembling.
"God!" he laughed nervously. "Help me, will you, Jim? Here are the pieces to a crazy jigsaw, it doesn't make any sense, but something in the back of my head keeps me from getting any sleep lately. Here, look, read it all and then tell me I'm nuts and send me home, but do something!"
"'Deaths by drowning, County Beach: this year and last, total 31. Previous two years' total, 9.' What's this for?"
"Don't stop now." Bart fumbled at the liquor cabinet.
'"Total rainfall in inches, adjacent counties last year, up 300%.'"
"See! It's spreading."
Another slip of paper. " 'New residents in Greenworth, past 24 months: Broadbent, Mr. and Mrs. C. L.; Marber, G.; Nottingham, Mr. and Mrs. Frank R…' " Madden leaned forward intently.
"There's two dozen more."
He scrutinized his brother's now twisted face. "So?"
"So? So you're right, they're nothing separately, but put them all together—Let me ask you: Lorie never told you where she moved from when she came here, did she?"
"Now that you bring it up, no. But what—?'
"Listen to this. Last night I got out the phone book and dialed these new listings. Twenty-one are married couples. And every woman—" Bart emptied his glass. "Every
woman is in the Women's Guild."
Ice water poured into Madden's stomach. "So?"
Bart jerked forth a folded clipping. "This was in the Gazette when one finally moved in twenty months ago."
Madden fingered the newspaper photo of 'Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hallendorf, newly-established real estate broker and his lovely bride.'
"Use this." A pocket magnifier hit the coffee table.
She was lovely. There in the enlarged dots was a face that was— "I don't see—"
Bart's shaking finger jabbed at the indistinct eyes, the mouth.
At first he didn't see it. Just that her eyes were softly, lethargically lidded.
Bart snatched a framed photograph from the bookcase and tossed it to his lap.
And there.
There were two sets of lidded eyes, two wide, smooth, peculiar smiles, side by side. They might have been sisters.
Madden groped. At the bottom of his consciousness, the pressure was rising now and he felt his finger giving way in the dike.
"Jim," grunted Bart. "I called the Community Center this evening. They never heard of it. There is no Women's Guild!
"And now. Just one more question. I hate to remind you, boy, but you've got to have all the pieces in front of you." Bart leaned over him, breath coming fast and pungent. "Tell me again how it was your little girl died."
Madden bit his knuckle. "Man, I don't know what you're driving at. Please—"
"Just say it!"
"She…she, you know. She drowned—in the—bottom of the tub." He fought up out of the chair.
Both men faced each other, white-faced.
"Goddam," breathed Bart, turning back to the darkness. "Goddam me for saying it."
Walking in the wet, Madden knew at last that he could leave the house behind and give himself up to the storm. Slimy, tangled brush grabbed at his sopping clothes, but he did not think of it and slid down the ravine to the churning riverbed. In the glistening night he saw the swelling rush muddying over collapsing banks, and he remembered the first and worst storm, two seasons ago: how the ravine filled steadily to the brim, spilling up over the back yard; and then, weeks later, how the yard blossomed alive with all manner of new, unnamed wild plants and shoots and bloomed-faced flowers. And how he suddenly awoke one night to discover the moldering ravine an amphitheater of swollen hordes of singing insect life, a thundering of bullfrogs, a sweltering din of mosquitoes, a screeching chorus of crickets. Latent with life, pollen and cyst and egg had been carried by the water and given birth at long last.