The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  She didn’t fall last night. I heard her turn on the TV and sit on the couch. I imagined her lighting a cigarette and pulling her knees to her chest, to keep herself warm. I imagined tiny reflections of Johnny Carson on her freshly polished fingernails when she brought first the cigarette, then the wineglass, to her mouth.

  Mom never watches more than fifteen minutes before going to bed. Sometimes, in the summer when she and Dad fight, she doesn’t watch TV at all. I hear the sliding glass door open and the clatter of a metal lawn chair on the patio when she turns it to face either the moon, or the newlyweds’ house. She calls it the newlyweds’ house because they’re always getting new furniture and cars, or taking trips to beautiful places. “Pretty girls get lots of nice things when they’re young,” she tells me.

  * * *

  After twenty minutes, I blow out the jack o’ lanterns and lock the front door.

  When I listen in at Lauren’s door, everything is quiet; Mom must have fallen asleep too.

  Back in the family room, it’s my turn to curl up on the couch and watch TV.

  “A wolf? A gypsy woman? A murder? What’s going on here?” asks an old English guy with a mustache and pipe.

  Poor Lawrence Talbot turns away, tears in his eyes, wringing his hands. Only a skinny flat-chested woman notices. She touches his shoulder and asks if he’s all right.

  I scoot closer to the TV. Will he tell her he’s a werewolf this time? It’s okay if he does. Everybody likes Lawrence Talbot; he’s big and quiet and sweet, just like Hoss Cartwright. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

  I don’t want to hurt anyone either. So I never tell Mom how, after the gypsy lady tracks the werewolf into the dark foggy woods and hides him in her buckboard, she drives the wagon right up to the movie camera and looks at me. Me. Lily Asher of Portland, Oregon.

  Or how, after I go to bed, I pray that God won’t change me into something everyone is scared of. Even though that would make it even-steven because I killed Mrs. Wiggins and fair’s fair.

  A few minutes later, Mom sits down next to me on the sofa. “Horror movies on Halloween, that makes sense. You tired yet?”

  I shrug. “Do I have to turn it off?”

  “Are you okay? You’ve had a long day.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Mom puts her head on my shoulder. “Why do things always happen when your father’s out of town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Even though Mom smells like the regular stuff—cigarettes, wine and that special shampoo Dad says is too expensive—she seems different. Her body is wider and heavier, her voice sad and tired. If Mom isn’t herself, who is she?

  Did Jesus kidnap the real Mom while I was in the lake? Is He buying her lobster dinners and new art supplies? Judy says a boy cat will eat his own kittens to make a girl cat come into heat again. Would Jesus eat Lauren and me?

  What if He falls in love with her? “Everybody does,” I’ve heard Dad say.

  Suddenly Mom bursts into tears. “Your father and I thought if you girls learned how to swim, everything would be okay. But if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. You’re struggling to . . . be yourself and . . . find your way, and then there’s the lake and Mrs. Wiggins, and even these monster movies—they get under your skin, don’t they? They get under mine.” She reaches for my hand in the dark. “I’m so sorry, Lily.”

  Mom doesn’t usually apologize. “You didn’t do anything. Besides, I can still swim a little.”

  “You mean dog paddle. Dog paddle! Like the whole thing with Mrs. Wiggins was some kind of sick ironic joke,” Mom sniffs. “If I talked less and listened more, if I kept an open mind . . . Jamie said I’m small-minded. I guess I am.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “And today? With the Halloween costume? Sometimes I think I have no maternal instinct at all. Jesus.” Mom glances toward the kitchen. The wine calls to her the way the costume called to me. “You and I are family but we aren’t even on the same page, sometimes. How can that be? Maybe if I didn’t . . . You’re the most interesting person I know, Lily. I could learn from you.”

  Page? Interesting? Learn? “I’m not a book.”

  Mom sits up. Her body stiffens when she says, “Of course you’re not.”

  * * *

  The next night, Dad comes home from the airport in a taxi, with new roller skates for Lauren, origami papers for me, and a big bottle of perfume for Mom. He tells us over dinner that “the newlywed couple is selling their house. Did you notice? How much are they asking?” He suddenly stares at Mom. “Jesus, Kit, you look beat.”

  “Thanks,” she says, pinching her cheeks for color. “I am. We’ve been busy.” She tells him about our special lunch that afternoon. How she put out a lace tablecloth, and filled the brandy snifters with red Kool-Aid and frozen fruit. And made deviled ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and served us big slices of grasshopper pie with real Oreo cookie crust. “There’s plenty of pie left in the fridge.

  “Good.” Dad smiles at Lauren and me. “Good. Sometimes I think our little house on Aiken Street is the only place in the world that makes sense. An oasis, an island. Asher Island.”

  “Like Gilligan’s,” Lauren smiles.

  “I get to be Ginger!” Mom says. She’s happy again. “What a figure!”

  Dad whistles.

  I’ll never get off Asher Island. Dr. Madsen, a.k.a. Dr. Giraffe, says to be patient—that I’ll be winning swim competitions again in no time, but I know better.

  I don’t even miss it.

  * * *

  I wait until everyone falls asleep and enter my parents’ room. I smell their fear when they realize something or someone dangerous is standing in the shadows.

  Mom is naked and I see her big tanned boobs when she sits up.

  Dad’s brave, and when he jumps out of bed his protective blood makes a big whooshing sound, like the walk-in heart at the science museum.

  He’s scared but ready to defend Mom. I pounce on them both. Lauren’s blood already smears my face; her body is in shreds in the hall. Her guts all over the fancy grass wallpaper and Mom’s new shag carpeting.

  I wake with a start. My room is dark and quiet.

  Dad’s home. Mom cut up my old Halloween costume and threw it in the trash. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said.

  I touch my crucifix and feel a small patch of dog fur growing underneath it. Jesus died for our sins. What did Mrs. Wiggins die for?

  I pull out the scrapbook from under my bed and make a new list.

  The Things I’ve Killed:

  1. Lots of flies and mosquitoes.

  2. Peace Lake.

  3. Mrs. Wiggins.

  Chapter 6

  Jesus’s Secretary

  The open window at the end of Judy’s bed is covered with a rice-paper shade. It looks out on a small Oriental courtyard, with the miniature bridge we used to walk our Barbies across before they had a tea party under the bamboo.

  We’re both too old for dolls now, but I sometimes think about Barbie, my Barbie, who lives on a tropical island but drives her speedboat to the mainland where she plays piano in a jazz bar.

  The magnolia tree in Judy’s courtyard is in full bloom today and shades the front door. Her mom planted it for her the day she was born but Judy hates it. She hates her room too, with its mile of rosy wallpaper between her bed and the small churchy window near her ceiling. Judy hates lots of stuff these days.

  I hear them yelling at each other as I stand outside their house. Judy’s voice is loudest. I don’t want to go in but I have to: Lauren’s with Jamie, Dad’s out of town, and Mom’s taking a class at Portland State.

  I knock quietly. When the yelling stops, I knock louder and Mrs. Marks finally opens the door.

  “There you are,” she smiles. “Come in,” she says, while holding out a plate of homemade sugar cookies. The house smells warm and sweet, and even though she made cookies, her apron is spotless. My mom can’t even walk through the kitchen without g
etting something on her. I step inside and take a cookie.

  “Go ahead, sweetheart,” Mrs. Marks nods to Judy’s door down the hall. “She’s waiting for you.”

  Every room in the Markses’ house is modern, colorful, and neat. Especially Rusty’s room, which is weird because in person Judy’s brother is a real slob. He even buttons his shirts wrong. When I walk into Judy’s room, she hands me a bottle of smelly fingernail polish and directs me to sit on the edge of her bed, take off my shoes and socks, and stick cotton balls between my toes. Her hair is in rollers but her bangs are trimmed, straight and shiny.

  “I’ve never painted my toes,” I say.

  “It’s easy. Just don’t use much.” Three toes later she asks, “Who do you think is the cutest: Adam, Little Joe, or Hoss?”

  Judy always asks me that question. It’s our way of saying hi. Sometimes when we’re watching Bonanza the Cartwrights burst through the burning map of the Ponderosa Ranch, stop their horses right in front of us, and smile into the camera wondering the same thing.

  “You always ask me that question. Cutest? Adam is, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  I look at her guiltily with the little pink brush poised over my big toe. “He’s handsome,” I say, “but he’s a snob.” Even though Judy thinks Adam is “moody and self-centered,” she still likes him best. She likes me best when I agree with her, but sometimes I just can’t. “I don’t like Little Joe either. Dad says he’s ‘slick’ like the guys who sell cars downtown.”

  “No he’s not,” Judy grumps. “If Adam died, I’d marry Little Joe.”

  Not me. I love Hoss. I want him to love me too. We’ll build a little ranch in the middle of the pines, have a baby, and live happily ever after. Some Sundays we take the bouncy buckboard to the Ponderosa Ranch, and eat lunch in the kitchen with Hop Sing. Outside, after lunch, I rest my head on Hoss’s chest, and he wraps his big arms around me and tells me my hair smells like warm biscuits with butter. Later, we sit in the living room with the stone fireplace. “There’s my big boy,” Grandpa Ben says when we pass him Hoss Junior. Adam stands off to the side, one foot on the hearth, thinking of something moody or self-centered to say.

  Hail clicks and clatters against Judy’s window. It never hails on the Ponderosa.

  “Hoss,” I smile. “Hoss is my favorite Cartwright.”

  Judy sighs. Then, with tears in her eyes, says, “I don’t get you sometimes. Why do you always have to be different? Why can’t you like what I like?”

  She looks at me funny, and for a minute I think she’s going to say something important, maybe even share a secret (like why she’s so mean these days), but then her mom walks into the room. Mrs. Marks carries a basket of folded laundry and sets it on Judy’s bed. On top of the clothes is a tray holding two small glasses of milk and more sugar cookies; underneath are neatly folded pedal pushers and a pink two-piece swimsuit.

  “Your new Seventeen came today.” Mrs. Marks smiles and tosses the magazine on Judy’s bed, then holds out the tray.

  “Thanks,” I say, helping myself to the cookie plate. “You sure are a good cook.”

  “So is your mother, Lily.”

  “My mom is jealous of your mom,” Judy says.

  “Huh?” I stop biting a star shape in my cookie.

  “My mom says your mom is beautiful and artistic . . . oh, and happily married.”

  Judy talks like her mom isn’t standing right there, blushing.

  I smile at Mrs. Marks, nervously. She’s small and skinny with a pointed chin. Mom says she has an “interesting face” which means she’d like to paint her someday. Judy says her mother looks like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “No treat, Judy?” Mrs. Marks asks, still holding out the tray. “Have some milk.”

  “I’ll take water, Connie.” When did Judy start calling her mom by her first name?

  “I like it better when you call me Mom.”

  “Okay, Connie, but no cookies for me. I don’t want to gain weight before my trip to San Diego.”

  Mrs. Marks turns and walks out. When the dishes rattle on the tray, I realize she’s shaking, a small nervous tremble like the vibrato Aunt Jamie showed me on her violin.

  “Why are you acting so . . .” I start to say, then change my mind when she steps up on her bed, stretching on tiptoes to reach the high church window. Judy calls it “the jail window.” Only her fingertips touch it but she keeps stretching.

  “Milk and cookies are fattening, Lily. And water’s important,” Judy sniffs. Is she crying? “People are 85 percent water. The earth is 76 percent water.” Judy’s smart. She always gets As in science.

  “If there’s so much water inside us, why do people die of thirst?” I ask.

  She ignores my question, plops down on her bed, and opens the latest issue of Tiger Beat to its centerfold of teen idol Bobby Sherman.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re full of water but we still need more?”

  “Lots of stuff is weird,” Judy says.

  I know that. But, “Why aren’t people born with enough water inside them?”

  “How the hell would I know? You talk a lot, Lily.”

  “No I don’t.” I look at my toenails. “Just to you.” I don’t like the color. “What color is this, Pukey Pink?”

  Judy sniffs. “Yeah, I puked in it. I put snot and scabs and pus in it too. And blood—that’s where the color comes from. I thought you’d like it.”

  “I do. Thanks.” Usually when we gross each other out it’s funny, but we’re not joking this time.

  “You talk about God a lot too.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Yes you do. You believe in Him, right?”

  “A little. Sometimes.” God is okay, it’s Jesus I have problems with. He’s a selfish ratfink who doesn’t save drowning dogs or children. I pull Judy’s sewing basket into my lap and begin arranging and rearranging the threads, first by color and then alphabetically. Judy doesn’t mind; she never uses them.

  “Do you think if something was wrong,” her voice is softer now, “you know, bad or evil or something, that Jesus would help me even if I don’t believe in Him?”

  “I guess. Maybe.”

  “Because I saw His shadow on my bedroom wall.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jesus was outside my window last night.”

  My heart beats faster. “Maybe it was your stepdad,” I say. Judy turns red. Did I say something wrong? “Or Rusty, or Sherman.”

  “No,” Judy says impatiently. “It was Jesus. Alan saw him the other day too.” Alan is Judy’s boyfriend; they’re going steady but he hasn’t kissed her yet. Next weekend, after Judy gets back from San Diego, is their first official date; Alan’s father is driving them. “Alan saw Him in Bible study, just for a second, standing at the blackboard.”

  There’s an illustration of Jesus “standing at the blackboard” in the kitchen at Gramma Frieda’s church too. I saw it when I helped cut pie one Sunday.

  “Maybe it was a picture,” I say.

  “No, he swore it was true. Do you think, you know, that maybe Jesus came to my house because He wants to help me?” Judy asks. “You said He might help if things were bad.”

  “No I didn’t. I don’t know if He’d help you; I’m not Jesus’s secretary.” I can’t concentrate on organizing the threads, so I put aside the sewing basket.

  “But you go to church, Lily, and you wear a crucifix, and . . .”

  Why was Jesus at Judy’s house? I’m the one who almost drowned. I’m the one who killed my dog. I’m the one who saw Him in the woods, in the jeep, at the bottom of Peace Lake.

  Judy crosses her arms on her chest. “Stop looking at me funny!”

  “I’m not!”

  “You are too. I’m not lying about seeing Him, you know.”

  Which means she probably is. “I know,” I say. I flip through her new Seventeen pretending to be interested, then close it.

  Jesus was looking for me, and
got Judy’s house by mistake. All the houses in our neighborhood look alike, it’s easy to get confused. My hands are sweaty. “How’d you know it was Him if all you saw was His shadow?”

  “You’d know it was Him if you saw Him,” Judy answers, snapping her gum. “He wore one of those boy dresses like in the Bible, and He had a beard and long hair.”

  “How long?”

  “Longer than Prince Valiant’s.” I smile despite myself. It’s a secret that Judy and I both like Prince Valiant; everyone else thinks he looks like a girl, or one of those sissy Dutch guys on cigar boxes. “He didn’t have a crown of thorns though.”

  Good, I hate that.

  My sweaty fists stick to the glossy magazine cover. When I lift them off the paper they make little prints of baby feet, without toes, that quickly evaporate. “Were you scared?”

  Judy shrugs, then burps long and loud from deep in her throat like boys do. I wish I could do that.

  She’s three years older than I am—old enough to take a week off from school and go to San Diego with her stepdad. Mr. Marks is the West Coast sales rep for Kenmore. Every time a new furniture or appliance store opens between Seattle and Los Angeles, they send him out. Judy and Mr. Marks leave tomorrow, before school starts, for the biggest appliance convention of the year. But Judy isn’t excited about getting out of school for five days, or buying new clothes; she doesn’t want to go to San Diego, or “anywhere else with my stupid stepfather.” Judy told me she wished he’d never married her mom.

  I don’t like Mr. Marks ever since he asked me to check his heart with the stethoscope I got for Christmas, then stuck his tongue in my mouth. “I didn’t know doctors tasted so good,” he said. Gross. When I told Judy about it, she got mad at me as if I’d done something wrong.

  Mom must like Mr. Marks though, because when Dad said she flirted with him at the New Year’s Eve party, she turned red. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but people gossip,” he reminded her, “and his first marriage ended in a big ruckus. His own daughter—”