“I did it myself,” Edgar said quickly.
“That must have been hard.”
“It was.”
Lucy winced. “How’d it look? Your finger.”
“I’ve seen worse,” said Edgar.
“Okay, well, we see the doctor on Thursday.”
“Wednesday,” corrected Edgar. “The appointment card is on the refrigerator.”
Lucy craved another beer. “Probably time for your pill, sweetie.”
Edgar glanced at the clock. “Not yet. In one hour I can take it. You can only take so many a day.”
Lucy tried to smile. “You know everything, huh?”
“No. Not everything.”
“More than me, apparently.”
Edgar shrugged.
“Biggleberry,” Lucy said, but Edgar didn’t laugh.
“It’s not really funny,” he said.
“What’s not funny?”
“Fat people.” His thoughts had returned to Florence. “They were her tomatoes.”
“Enough on the tomatoes. I said I’m sorry.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Treasure,” said Lucy. “Gold.”
“But I gave it to you already. I gave you all of it. She didn’t put any money in the backyard.”
“You know what, Edgar? You really don’t know everything.”
“I know I don’t. That’s what I said.”
“Okay, I think someone’s tired.”
“I’m not at all tired. I’m the opposite of tired.”
She touched the boy’s face, brushing his bangs to the side of his forehead.
Edgar bristled. “The next time you give me a haircut, Ma, you have to do a better job.”
“Do I really?”
“Yes. You need to do it shorter, so I look more like me.”
“What does that mean?”
“More like a boy. I don’t want people to be confused.”
“Who’s confused?” Lucy pushed her son’s hair behind his ears. “I like how you look with your hair like this.”
“But you know me,” he said. “What if you didn’t know me?”
“Hard to imagine.”
“But try. If you saw me on the street and you didn’t know me. Or like if you had a store, and I came into your store.”
Lucy closed her eyes and leaned back on the couch. Sometimes he exhausted her. “I don’t know, Edgar. I’d just think you were Edgar.”
“No, but I’m saying if you didn’t know Edgar. I mean, if I wasn’t your Edgar. Say I belonged to someone else. Like if I had a different name and everything.”
Lucy laughed nervously. “Where’s the switch?”
“To what?”
“Your brain.”
“No, but really. Pretend you didn’t know me, Ma. What would you think?”
“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to take your pill a little early.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I just don’t want you to get wound up before bed.”
“It’s not even bedtime. Where are you going?”
“I’m getting your medicine.”
“It’s not time.”
“Half a pill. You’ll feel better.”
“I don’t feel bad—and you’re not a doctor, Ma. You’re not even a nurse. You’re not even married to a nurse.”
“Stop it,” Lucy said. “Do you hear me?”
“What am I doing?”
“You can’t just let your mind go wherever it fucking wants. You have to control it, Edgar.”
“I am in control. What I was saying is very logical. If you didn’t know me. It’s hypothetical.”
Lucy shook her head and went into the kitchen, straight to the refrigerator. She opened the freezer and stared at the bottle of vodka. Sometimes the boy’s anxious intelligence reminded her of Frank.
Edgar appeared in the doorway. “Are we mad at each other?”
“You know what, Edgar—you do look like a girl. Get a towel, and get my scissors from upstairs.”
“Now?”
Lucy closed the freezer door. “Or you wanna wait?”
“No,” Edgar said bravely. “Now is good.”
* * *
Afterwards, he stared at himself in the mirror. His mother had started with scissors, but then she’d taken up the electric clippers. He was all head now, topped with a short dense bristle.
The boy had said nothing while his mother removed a polar bear of white fluff. She’d been silent, too—serious. Though she’d caused him no physical pain, Edgar sensed that she was angry—that, under the pretext of cutting his hair, her real motive was to cut the thoughts from his head. She hadn’t liked it at all when he’d suggested that there might be two Edgars—one of whom she might not know. When she was finished cutting, she’d swept up the hair—but instead of putting it in the garden, as Florence would have done, she’d opened the cabinet under the sink and thrown Edgar’s thoughts into the trash.
It was odd: even with a crew cut, he still didn’t look completely like a boy. Something about the cheekbones, the lips, the corn-silk eyelashes beating time over the sea-glass eyes. He looked like a girl playing a boy. Somehow, the haircut only increased his androgyny. Before, he would have been more quickly pegged as a girl. Now, he existed more disconcertingly between the poles.
* * *
Lucy sits on the couch to make a phone call—the bottle of vodka sweating on the table in front of her. Edgar leaves her alone. He swipes a photograph from the top of the piano and brings it up to his room.
Using the mirror, he conducts a test: his face beside the face of his father—who’s seventeen and grinning under a tasseled cap. Even with long hair, his father is clearly a man. What makes it so? Edgar goes back and forth between the photo and his own face, but fails to solve the mystery—why similar elements (similar nose, similar ears, similar brow) have conspired toward masculinity in the one, and against it in the other.
Edgar wonders what his father looks like now; if he’s changed a lot. He only knows him from blurry photographs and he wonders if he’d recognize him if he saw him on the street.
Maybe he’s already seen him. Mr. Levinson, Edgar’s science teacher, said a dead person’s hair continues to grow. And so it wasn’t impossible, scientifically speaking, that a dead person might have a beard—even if he’d left the world without one.
* * *
Lucy’s still on hold. She’s called the Friendship Hook and Ladder Company and asked for William. “I think he’s playing pinball,” another fireman comes on the line to tell her. “Let me dig him up.”
As she waits, she can hear the sounds of the station: men laughing, forks against plates, a television, a dog. She can picture the place—brightly lit, convivial, the men slapping each other’s backs or throwing mock punches; someone sliding down the fire pole in boxer shorts. She wonders if they have private rooms.
“Yup,” a voice says.
“William?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Lucy. We, uh … you came to my house the other day, for the fire. Well, there wasn’t a fire but … anyway I just thought—”
“What was the address?”
“Cressida Drive.”
“Yesterday, you said?”
“Lucy,” Lucy says, somewhat irritated. “The redhead?”
“Oh, fuck, yeah … the one with the kid, right?”
“Yes.”
“Right on. No, no, I’m glad you called.”
“You said to give you a ring, so…”
“Right on. Absolutely.”
It’s awkward—he sounds sixteen. Easier if they’d just run into each other at a bar, already a little oiled.
“No, no,” William says. “I definitely remember you.”
Lucy hears more laughter in the background—and she suddenly imagines the other men gesturing to William, something crude, and William gesturing back in the same way.
“I’m off at midnight,” he says. �
��Where are you?”
“I’m at—home,” Lucy says, the word catching in her throat.
“Cressida near Laurel, right?”
“Yes, but … I have to go, I’m sorry.”
“Are we on, though? You want me to pop by when I’m done?”
“You know, I just realized I have to … can I call you later?”
“Why don’t you just text me?” the boy says, sounding annoyed. “Before eleven-thirty so I know what’s up.”
“It’s just that I have the kid here. I can probably get a sitter tomorrow and meet you at Mickey’s or…”
“Yeah, just text me.”
Lucy hangs up the phone and reaches for the bottle of vodka. She presses it to her forehead—the iciness doing little to numb the feeling of foolishness. She senses herself growing fatter and fatter, an overweight joke with big tits. What’s happening to her?
Slippage. Frank’s word comes at her out of nowhere. When the doorbell rings, she doesn’t hear it.
It rings again.
“Lucy!”
She starts, jumping from the couch. Someone’s pounding on the door.
“Luceee!”
Shit, she thinks, hearing in the raspy shout the fury of her father. No doubt he’s been brewing ever since being kicked out of Florence’s wake. What does he want, though? Once, as a child, he’d broken her wrist. Sometimes she still dreams about his drunken rages.
“Edgar,” she shouts from the hallway. “Stay upstairs and lock your door.” She picks up a marble ashtray and moves toward the foyer.
* * *
Edgar is lying in Florence’s bed when he hears the car. Out the window, he sees it parked crookedly at the curb, sees the words painted on the side. Let us MEAT your needs!
Edgar panics as the butcher lumbers from the van. The only lock on the front door is a strip of duct tape—and his mother is downstairs alone.
He rushes about the room, wondering what to grab. On Florence’s vanity he sees the bottle of Chanel Nº 5. He could throw some in the man’s eyes—though it would be a shame to waste the stuff.
He picks up the headless Virgin and runs downstairs.
* * *
Lucy leans against the broken door. “I have a gun,” she lies.
“I just want to talk,” the man says.
“Ron?”
Lucy peels back the duct tape and opens the door—the ashtray still held above her head. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
The butcher’s a mess, obviously drunk. His half-opened shirt shows a plunging triangle of dense black curls. He stumbles forward.
“Don’t,” Lucy says. “You can’t come in.”
The butcher leans against the door frame. “Why don’t you ever answer your phone?”
“I’m busy, Ron.”
“Busy? Too busy for this?”—he moves his meaty hand in the space between himself and Lucy.
“What?” Lucy snaps. “What is ‘this’?”
“This,” the butcher says again—the gesture of his hand more forceful now. “Us.”
“Us?” Lucy parrots. Her only defense against sadness is cruelty. She laughs in the man’s face.
“What we did and everything,” the butcher says. He paws his hairy chest, as if remembering Lucy’s touch. “Just how we…”
“We had sex, Ron. We fucked.”
“I know.” He looks up at her as if she’s named the source of all things. His eyes are hopeful.
Lucy is frightened and makes a move to shut the door.
The butcher moans and forces it back open. Lucy’s been in spots like this before. She brandishes the ashtray.
“What are you gonna do? You gonna hit me?” The man pushes his way into the house.
Edgar screams from the dark at the bottom of the stairs, and Lucy drops the ashtray.
The butcher squints his eyes, but he can’t locate the child in the gloom. “I’m not gonna hurt her,” he says to an invisible Edgar. He holds up his arms. “I’m not gonna hurt your mom. I love her.” He snatches Lucy’s hand. “I love you.”
It’s worse than she could have imagined.
“Shit,” he slurs. “I don’t know.”
“Ron—” Lucy tries to pull her hand away.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, you’re fucking amazing. And I just think we can like … be together.”
With a scoff, Lucy reclaims her hand. Who wrote this man’s material? It reminds her of the lies she’d told herself once—romantic bullshit. She can barely stand to look at him.
Edgar, on the other hand, watches mesmerized as the butcher confesses his love to Lucy—saying the exact things that Edgar often wished to say. Except he didn’t know that it was allowed to say this kind of stuff, especially to a person like his mother. She hated mushiness. How was it possible that this horrible giant could be stealing Edgar’s words—and even Edgar’s tears? Because the giant’s crying now; his voice grows softer. “Beautiful, and fuck, I just wanna, I don’t know, like take care of shit … like a promise and everything.”
“Ron, shhhh.”
Edgar watches as his mother reaches out the hand she’s just won back and uses it to lightly touch the Chia Pet of the butcher’s chest.
The man closes his eyes and moans. He places his watermelon of a head on Lucy’s shoulder, giving her a kiss that travels slowly toward her ear.
“Mom?”
“It’s okay, Edgar. Go upstairs.”
The boy steps into the light so she’ll remember him. “I can stay with you,” he says quietly.
But Lucy doesn’t seem to hear him.
“Mom, I can stay with you.”
The butcher turns his head away to give the woman and her son some privacy.
“I’m fine,” says Lucy. “Mr. S and I are just gonna talk.”
“Talk,” the butcher slurs, nodding.
“I’m gonna sleep in her room,” Edgar says with an edge of threat.
But Lucy only tells him, that’s fine, and to keep the door shut, and to take half a pill if he feels any pain at all. And then she kisses him on the top of his head.
* * *
He can hear them now. They sound like animals. If that’s what lonely people did, he wants no part of it. From what he understands, though, he was made from something like this. But with a different man—and a long time ago.
I came out of her belly, Edgar thinks. Sometimes the thought makes him happy, and sometimes sad.
Tonight it makes him angry.
But maybe he deserves what his mother’s done. Because, for a long time, he’d chosen someone else, too. Someone other than his mother.
“Nana,” the boy whispers—using the name he called her when he was little.
He says it again—and when she doesn’t answer, he tries not to cry. He picks up a rubber alien from his desk, but then puts it down and moves toward the closet. Inside, at the back, he crawls behind the trunk that holds his winter sweaters. It’s a tight fit, but that’s why he likes to lie there when he’s upset. The pressure calms him down. He snakes his arm into his pocket and pulls out the little pink pill he’s stashed there.
With these berries I conspire.
Give me the one thing I desire.
The words from the movie come back to him.
Though what did he desire? He didn’t really need to get skinnier; he was skinny enough. If he ate a biggleberry he might disappear completely.
He swallows the pill without water. A terrible bitterness lingers on his tongue.
In the dark he moves his hand around until he finds the penlight he keeps at the back of the closet. He clicks it on and directs the yellow beam toward the rack of clothing above him. He pulls down the red quilted jacket. From the breast pocket, he removes the little piece of paper.
When he steps into the hallway, he takes the headless Virgin with him. In his grandmother’s room he sits on her bed and looks at the grocery list. Eggs, Tampons, Frosting—followed now by ten numbers. He hesitates only briefly before picking up
the telephone.
BOOK FIVE
THE PINE BARRENS
I like children. If they’re properly cooked.
—W. C. FIELDS
29
The Seventh Day
Edgar had been missing for six days when Lucy discovered she was pregnant. Though she’d felt nauseous for weeks, she’d assumed it was stress. The recent jolts had been significant: Florence’s death, Frank’s letter, followed by the sickening vertigo of Edgar’s disappearance. But when her period failed to arrive, she immediately understood that the universe’s plot to destroy her was far more intricate than she could have imagined. A peed-upon test strip confirmed her condition.
How could this be happening? One baby was gone; another was on the way. It seemed a cruel trick, a sinister fold in the grid of time. Edgar wasn’t here, but every morning she woke overcome by the same physical sensations she’d experienced when pregnant with him.
In the matter of the larger concern, the police had wasted no time—though their reaction was not as militant as Lucy would have liked. They’d contacted the school, the hospitals; Edgar’s image had been disseminated to other law-enforcement agencies; there’d been an unsuccessful local search. During a forty-five-minute interview with a young, granny-bunned detective, Lucy had felt—largely in response to the woman’s manner—like she’d been called to the principal’s office. As if the situation were somehow her fault!
It was true, she’d been slightly lit when she’d arrived at the station (a few late-afternoon beers while waiting for Edgar to come home from school, and then a few more when he didn’t show; it had been after six when she’d finally contacted the police). Every question from the female officer seemed expertly designed to poke a hole in the lifeboat of Lucy’s wave-tossed existence.
The boy’s relationship to his father?
Any problems or changes at home? At school?
Suspicious behavior on the child’s part?
New friends or adults in his life?
Psychological issues? Peculiar mannerisms?
In responding, Lucy had felt cornered, and had softened the truth when she felt it to have no bearing on the situation or to be none of the woman’s business. “I’m a good mother,” she’d said defensively at one point. “I’m sure you are, Mrs. Fini,” the woman said. “We’re not questioning that.” When she asked if Edgar had taken anything with him, like a toothbrush or clothing, Lucy said she’d have to check. “Why is that important?”
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