The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  “No thanks,” he laughed, mimicking me as he slow-pedaled along the sidewalk. I felt his eyes on me when I climbed the little rise to our house and slipped inside, hiding behind the living room drapes. I counted by twos to one hundred, before looking outside again and finding him gone.

  Inside the TV was on, and Lauren sat in front of it, digging through her cigar box for the right crayon.

  “Lily?” Mom called, and I followed her voice to the bathroom where she stood in front of the sink rinsing out nylons. I sat down on the edge of the tub and sighed.

  “Everything okay?” she asked. “Things better between you and Judy?”

  No. Yes. “No.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  So, Mom and I talked about how Sandra Dee should have married Troy Donahue instead of Bobby Darin because they’d have had beautiful blond babies, but then neither one of them was a natural blond so it didn’t really count. Mom said Pamela Tiffin married James Darren but James married Miss Denmark 1958, and Pamela someone rich we’d never heard of.

  I didn’t correct Mom. I didn’t care what we talked about that afternoon as long as it wasn’t penises.

  * * *

  I stand in front of my mirror, making my mouth into a big O like the Coppertone girl in the billboard sign on the way to Rooster Rock.

  Yes, I’m growing boobs. My nipples hurt even when I accidentally brush them. Mom says my period will be here any day. She bought me a bra and slip to celebrate and I model them in front of the closet mirror, holding them over my knee-length cotton nighty.

  Across the street, someone opens his garage door. Someone else drags his trash can to the curb; he’s early—pickup is Monday.

  Down the hall the coffee pot perks, Mom opens the fridge, Dad pulls back the drapes. On the morning after their sixteenth anniversary, he whistles “All day, all night, Marianne,” over and over. A moment later I hear the squeak of his favorite kitchen chair and the newspaper’s crisp pages when he gives it a snap open. “Good coffee,” he says.

  Mom turns up the radio. She loves Arthur Godfrey.

  There’s that sound again.

  My room’s on the sloped side of the house and sometimes phone wires, dead birds, tree branches, balls, and rackets get stuck in the shingles overhead. Usually a breeze will bring them down but this is different.

  There’s movement, a figure. Someone outside my window.

  “Dad?”

  “Lily.” It’s not Dad or Jesus. The window screen is old and dark. It needs replacing.

  “Lily.” It’s a boy’s voice, a man’s. Quiet, secretive.

  “Who is it?” I whisper when I kneel beside the window. I see no one until . . . the Savage Boy peeks around the corner of the window frame.

  I cry out in surprise and fall back. “What are you—”

  “Hi,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry about the other day. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  “That’s okay.” I pull my nightgown over my bare knees.

  “You look nice this morning.”

  “Thanks.” I guess he’s being polite; I haven’t gotten dressed yet.

  “Nice day, huh? Hey, I saw your bra and slip. Did your mom get them for you?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Would you model them for me?”

  “No.”

  Why isn’t he going? He already apologized. His arm is moving. He’s holding something in front of his pants, something alive that’s trying to get away. “Hi-Lily . . .” he quietly sings. “Hi-Lily . . . Hi-Lo. I bet you like that song, huh?”

  “No.” When I stand up, my heart’s pounding so hard, I’m dizzy and grab my bed frame. “I’m not supposed to talk to you. Go away or I’ll call my dad.”

  The boy’s arm stops moving. “You talked to me the other day. Besides, your parents can’t hear you, they’re on the other side of the house. So’s your sister. The radio’s up, no one can hear us.”

  Maybe it was the Savage Boy who peeked in Judy’s window, not Jesus.

  Mom says there’s a Peeping Tom in the neighborhood. I heard her laugh that it wouldn’t be so bad. “Really,” she said to her girlfriends over cocktails last week, “we’ll never be so young and sexy again!” And all the moms giggled and clinked their martini glasses.

  I don’t want anybody peeking through my window. I head to the door.

  “I won’t hurt you,” the Savage Boy says. “I said I’m sorry. I’ll leave in a minute, I promise. I’m just lonely. Can’t we be friends?”

  “It’s easy to be nice to nice people,” Gramma Frieda told me. “We do God’s work when we befriend the unfriendly.” I stop and turn back. The Savage Boy must have stepped up on the faucet because he’s taller now, and when he cups his hands around his face and presses himself even closer to the screen, I see his eyes, teeth, lips, and the front of his white T-shirt where a big white shark is pictured above the words, Monterey Man-Eater, California.

  A curtain falls between me and the Savage Boy. I smell Mrs. Wiggins’s cancerous breath.

  “Like the shirt, huh? My old man finally took us someplace.” He sticks a hand under the T-shirt to make the shark move. “Spooo-oky, huh? You like to be scared, Lily?”

  “No,” I say firmly.

  “I’ll give you my shirt if you come closer.”

  He’s not going to leave. “Mom?” I say softly.

  “She’s making breakfast. Her sweater slipped off her shoulder so I saw her bra strap. Your mom’s sexy.” The Savage Boy’s moving his arm again.

  The lake’s current pulls at my legs. I press my toes into its sandy bottom.

  “Mom?” I say louder.

  “Don’t bug her. She’s tired, remember? They were out late last night. You and Lauren were alone in the house while they were gone.” He was watching us? “Besides, like you said: you’ll get in trouble for talking to me, and you don’t want to get in trouble, do you?” His teeth shine through the watery curtain. “Come here,” he whispers. “Pull up your nightgown.”

  “Lil-ee?” Dad calls from the kitchen. He turns down the radio to say, “Five minutes, or I’m dragging you out of there!” He turns it up again.

  “Go away,” I tell the Savage Boy.

  “Sharks have perfect lives; they swim and eat all day. They’re man-eaters. Or, in my case, a girl-eater.” The Savage Boy leans his forehead against the screen, licks it, then begins to pant. Faster and faster, like his arm.

  At the front of our house there’s a knock at the door. “Get your paper this morning, Asher?” It’s Mr. Marks. “The kid’s bike is leaning against the telephone pole but he didn’t . . .”

  “They know you’re here,” I say quietly. “Go away.”

  “I will if you show me your panties. Do it, Lily. Come closer and show me your panties.” His voice is deep and serious. “Do it, Lily,” he repeats. He breathes even heavier now.

  Is he sick? Does he have a disease?

  “Please, please, Lily. No one will ever know you talked to me. They’ll never know I saw your mom’s tits.”

  “Shut up!” He saw Mom’s boobs? “Leave her alone!” I say as I lift my nightgown and show him my underwear.

  “Now pull them down with the other hand.”

  “No,” I say, but I grab the waistband anyway.

  “You’re so pretty. Prettier than your mom. That’s right, pull them down, Lily . . . A little more, that’s it.”

  I drop my nightgown and glare at him.

  His hands stop moving. “Do it or I’ll tell everybody that you wanted to show me your pussy. Everyone will believe me too.” His voice is calm and quiet, like Dr. Giraffe’s when he’s telling me something “important,” something he wants me to remember.

  My eyes fill with tears. “No they won’t. They won’t believe you.”

  “Yes they will. You’re retarded. You killed your dog and you go to a shrink.”

  “No I’m not! You’re the retard! You’re the Savage Boy!”


  “Lily?” Dad calls. He’s standing at the end of the hall, waiting. “Two minutes and counting!”

  Mom turns off the radio.

  “Do it, Lily.” The boy’s voice is soft and sweet. “Do it for the Savage Boy.”

  But I don’t, and when I don’t he takes out a pocketknife and rips at the hole in the window screen, the hole Jesus climbs through when He visits.

  “I’m coming in, Lily,” the Savage Boy says. He digs at the screen with his knife then his mouth, widening the hole. Using them both, he pants and moans, ripping the metal mesh open, pulling up woven threads with his teeth, tearing aside great hunks of the screen. Stabbing at it with his bloodied fingernails and knuckles, he tears the shark curtain wider. Spit rolls down his chin.

  I stare in disbelief, terrified and fascinated.

  His eyes burn through the watery scrim, beady, black, and small, and he gurgles and pants as he chews it open, its sharp metal ends tearing his lips and gums. The metal makes angry stubborn sounds; tears and sweat streak his scratched face as he gnaws the screen like Mrs. Wiggins used to gnaw on bones. There’s blood everywhere, but he doesn’t stop.

  What is he doing?

  Why is he here?

  I should have locked my window. Things get out if you’re not careful, things get in. The house has fallen silent. Behind me, on the wallpaper, sixteen sharks pull sixteen Little Mermaids off sixteen rocks. Little air bubbles appear in the same place in each scene and pools of blood slosh against the fishing boats.

  His heavy breath gurgles when he stops to stare at me.

  The hole is bigger.

  He’s coming in.

  He’s getting in.

  “Dad!” I finally yell.

  Mrs. Wiggins’s tooth appears in my hand. There’s a hard thump when it hits the metal screen in front of me and tears at the Savage Boy’s face. He falls back in pain. I’m quiet as I stab the screen again, harder and harder, until there’s more than a scratchy sawing sound that I taste in my fillings, more than a rip. I taste his blood too; it mixes with mine and Mrs.Wiggins’s. My hands are red with it.

  “Paul!” I hear Mom cry out when Dad bursts in and rushes past me to the window.

  “You son of a bitch!” he screams, running out again.

  Outside, the Savage Boy struggles to stand up. I hear a zipper and Dad’s cursing as he dashes around the house.

  I’ve ruined his screen. I talked to the Savage Boy. I hold Mrs. Wiggins’s tooth tight and, without asking, take three giant “Mother May I” steps backward.

  There’s a loud tumble in the front yard, curse words, and more panting. Dogs bark. A car horn honks. Doors open and close, and Mr. Marks yells, “You got him, Paul!”

  “Lily?” Mom stands in the doorway.

  I turn to face her. Slowly. I want to take it back. All of it. Everything that happened in my bedroom this morning . . . and you do that slowly, going backward, taking back time.

  My feet are as heavy as the cement pier blocks under Gramma’s porch. My hair is stuck to my face in sweaty strands. The palm of my hand is bleeding and I think of the stigmata. Why wasn’t Jesus here?

  Suddenly, Lauren races down the hall toward us. “Mom, Mom!” she shouts. “Dad’s hurting the paper boy!”

  “It’s fine, sweetheart.” Mom doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  “But Dad’s on top of him and—”

  “It’s okay. Your father knows what he’s doing.”

  “But he put the boy’s arm behind his back, and they’re shouting at each other, and Mr. Marks and Mr. Davis are—”

  “Lauren!”

  Mom takes baby steps toward me, then pulls me in, wrapping her arms around me, carefully, the way she handles her fancy art paper. I rest my head on her shoulder; I’m almost as tall as she is.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “You’re tired. You were out late last night.”

  Mom looks at me funny. “I’m fine,” she says, crinkling her eyebrows. Her makeup is old; she isn’t as pretty as the Savage Boy thinks.

  Dad calls the police first, then Mr. and Mrs. Savage. Later he orders new locks and new screens for all the windows. After everybody “calms down,” he goes to the office for a while. Mom says it helps him relax.

  “I’m okay,” I repeat even to Dr. Giraffe, who doesn’t mind Mom calling him at home on a Sunday, but she gives me a Valium anyway, and treats my scratches and cuts.

  “The pill will make you sleepy,” she promises, then makes me a bed on the couch in front of the TV, brings me a big icy glass of 7-Up, and says, “Better get you a tetanus shot,” before leaving the room.

  A minute later Lauren runs in, drinks most of my soda pop, and sings, “You’re getting a tetanus shot, you’re getting a tetanus shot.”

  “Jerk,” I mumble.

  “Dummy,” she says.

  * * *

  I dream I’m sitting on the Savage Boy’s roof, howling at the full moon. Below me is an ocean of empty rowboats. Suddenly he’s sitting beside me. He hands me a cigarette, even though I don’t smoke.

  It’s not a scary dream but I wake up anyway. I can’t get back to sleep, so I walk to the kitchen and look around.

  On the counter by the phone is a scratch pad, and on it—in Dad’s writing—the name Mike Savage, with Mike underlined.

  Savage. Mike Savage. His name is Mike.

  “Mike,” I say to myself. “The Savage Boy. Mr. Mike Savage. Mrs. Mike Savage. Mrs. Lily Savage.”

  I feel strange inside.

  Scared but excited.

  In the center of the kitchen table is the empty champagne bottle with two red roses stuck in its throat.

  On either side of the bottle are paper-doll cartoons, Mom’s cartoons, of Dad and her. Pablo, it says on tiny Dad’s tiny shirt. Marianne, it says across tiny Mom’s. They face one another and each hold out a cardboard hand toward the giant bottle between them.

  Chapter 10

  If It Weren’t for Kevin

  Aunt Jamie died in a plane crash in Kenya during a photo safari with Kevin.

  In a description at the bottom of her death certificate, which the government sent to us by courier, Jamie was located approximately twenty feet from the fuselage, and died on impact, her body crumpled, though even in death, it was determined that the victim was a young female Caucasian. Mom cries like crazy when she reads it out loud. And rereads it, over and over, until Dad tells her to stop.

  The form describes Kevin, at the crash scene, as unconscious and pinned between the pilot’s seat and the crushed console. Currently hospitalized at Kwame Tsongi Convalescent Clinic for a concussion, two broken legs, and one broken arm, he requests contact with his fiancée’s family.

  “Fat chance,” Mom mumbles.

  * * *

  I close my eyes and see Jamie’s body facedown and splattered like a water balloon on the hot, dry African dirt. I rub suntan lotion on her shoulders and move her arms and legs, tracing and retracing a chalk outline around her like the murdered people on Dragnet.

  The thirsty plants in the ground underneath her soak up her 86 percent water and start growing immediately, and when Mrs. Wiggins and Jamie’s Heinz 57s drag her into the thorny African brush, seedlings pop up through the soil and wave at the sun.

  Crunching, tearing, chewing noises come from behind the couch where I sit with Mom and Lauren who are hugging each other and crying. Mom soaks her shirtsleeve and two of Dad’s neatly pressed hankies with her tears. Her eyes are swollen, her shiny cheeks streaked with black mascara. Lauren cries too, even harder when she looks at Mom.

  I cried when I first heard the news. I try to cry more, but I can’t. Losing Aunt Jamie is deeper than tears. I don’t know what to do, so I just sit there.

  Dad sits across from us. Every once in a while he sniffles and wipes away a tear, or says, “It’s one of those freak things, Kit,” or, “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” or, “We’re really going to miss her, aren’t we, girls?” which means Lauren and me, of course, but we don’t answer either, a
nd while I sit there like a paper doll, Lauren hugs Mom even tighter.

  Finally, he goes out for a bucket of fried chicken. “Gotta keep up our strength,” he says.

  An hour later he’s back with the food, a pack of cigarettes, and a new bottle of vodka. He pours Mom a glass and sits down across from us again.

  Later, when Lauren falls asleep on the sofa, he carries her to her room.

  It must be around eleven thirty because Ed McMahon is introducing Johnny Carson on TV. I wait until Johnny swings his imaginary golf club before I glance at the clock again.

  I’ve been quiet for two hours and seventeen minutes. No has told me to go to bed yet. I want to feel special about it, I want to think that Mom and Dad are letting me stay up with them because I’m older and I loved Jamie more than Lauren, but when I finally ask, “Should I go to bed?” no one answers and I realize I’m invisible.

  They don’t see Mrs. Wiggins either, but her slobbers are all over my hand.

  My parents have forgotten I’m here.

  The three of us stare at the TV until 11:54 when I walk into the kitchen and check the drawers, closets, and cupboards. Mom doesn’t say anything, but when I start on the living room, Dad tells me to stop.

  “Now you’re opening them first?”

  Sometimes I do.

  Things get out if you’re not careful, things get in.

  “Closing them isn’t enough?”

  Is he mad at me? He doesn’t sound mad.

  “Not tonight,” he says, as he walks me down the hall. “Not tonight, Lily Lou.”

  I only want to keep my family safe.

  Aunt Jamie would understand. She loved dogs and smiled when they dragged her body into the dry thorny brush. Her long red mermaid hair threads its way through their guts.

  The next time they bay at the moon, they’ll remember her little yellow house with the red shutters, and how she boiled their dog bones with a tablespoon of brown sugar because she loved them so much.

  * * *

  I like to pretend Jamie didn’t die.

  She moved to England instead.

  She swam there, across the Atlantic all by herself, breaking world records as she went. She was in movie newsreels and on TV, and after reading about it in the London Times, a rich handsome merman fell in love with her and they got married.