The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  A merman. Not Kevin who became infected with giant African worms and died.

  Jamie’s alive, we just don’t hear from her anymore because phones and mail are illegal in England. It’s a silly law and something left over from the war that Jamie works to repeal in her free time (not that she has any).

  When she does, she’ll fly to another country and call us, but her life as mistress of a manor house (with tall stone turrets, hidden rooms, and walk-in fireplaces) in the quiet English countryside keeps her busy until then. So do the flowers, fruit trees, and berry plants people send her from all over the world. It takes time to trim the boxwood to look like elephants and chess pieces.

  It takes time to feed the black swans, peacocks, and rabbits that wander over the big lawns, where Jamie and her husband put on fireworks shows for their new friends, and play croquet with pink mallets that look like real flamingos (but aren’t).

  When their friends stay overnight, the servants (who aren’t Negro) bring feather mattresses outside so the guests can sleep under the stars—except for Jamie and her husband who sleep on big lily pads on a pond clogged with cattails and tiny yellow fish that shine in the moonlight. They have a movie theater and a bowling alley and a bomb shelter in the manor house too.

  There are big dogs everywhere: Irish wolfhounds, greyhounds, and Great Danes with silly names like Sir Otis Fig and Lord and Lady Ticklebutt. And hanging in the entrance hall, between big oil portraits of people who once lived in the manor, is a portrait of Mrs. Wiggins, with real jewels sewn onto her painted collar.

  There’s no church, though. No crosses on the wall; no one’s even heard of Jesus. And when someone dies, even one of the dogs, they hang black ribbons on the gate and drape all the mirrors and windows with black cloth. I like that. I read it somewhere.

  If Jesus were really the Son of God, He wouldn’t have let Jamie die on a photo safari in Africa.

  That makes Him make-believe.

  Just a story, like Jamie’s.

  * * *

  “You okay, Lily?”

  It’s bedtime again and Mom’s come to tuck me in. Since Jamie died three weeks ago, she checks on Lauren and me all the time.

  “I’m fine,” I smile, tucking my hands underneath me.

  Mom doesn’t smile back. “When Kevin got out of the hospital, he had her cremated,” she says. “That’s the way she wanted it, I guess. He said she didn’t want to take up any space. Take up any space? She was here, wasn’t she? Why shouldn’t she take up space?” Mom’s eyes fill with tears. “Jamie . . . signed something, he said.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s going to send us some of her ashes.”

  I know that too. Mom is repeating herself.

  I want to hug her, but fire engines wail, a dog barks, and my hands are turning into paws; if I touch her she’ll see them. Instead I say, “When she gets here, where are you going to put her? The . . . ashes, I mean.”

  Mom stares at me and asks, “Don’t you cry anymore, Lily?”

  Down the hill, in town, noisy ambulances and police cars join the fire engines. One by one the neighborhood dogs start howling. It’s a high-pitched sound that hurts my ears and tickles the back of my throat. My muscles tighten. Even the pulsing hardness at the end of my spine, where my tail grows—and doesn’t grow, grows and doesn’t grow—stops to listen.

  I pretend to stretch, like I’m sleepy. Maybe Mom will take the hint and say goodnight. Maybe if I close my eyes, she’ll be gone when I open them again. Only she isn’t even looking at me. She’s sad and staring at her hands, remembering her sister. She isn’t moving, she isn’t leaving my room.

  I have to stretch, I have to move, I have to throw back my bedcovers and kneel on all fours.

  I have to. And she isn’t going to like it.

  My eyes are glued to the window. I try to think of something else; I try not to listen to the noisy dogs outside. I try to sit down on the bed instead of kneeling, but my body doesn’t listen. I feel myself blush when Mom looks at me. I hear her gasp, and feel her hands reach out for me, then hesitate and pull back.

  She’s scared.

  I’m scared too. Something is inside me, something that wants to come out, like barfing or hiccuping, only bigger. Something that’s going to come out, no matter what.

  I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to howl.

  I’m going to howl.

  Any second now. I swallow to keep it in, but I can’t.

  And finally, finally, I tilt my head back and . . .

  “Oooooowwwwww!”

  It feels good; better than anything I’ve ever felt before.

  Lauren pounds on the wall. I’m bugging her again.

  When Mom jumps up and stares at me, I want to say, I can’t help it, but dogs don’t talk. Except for Mrs. Wiggins, of course.

  Mom’s face changes. “Lily,” she says slowly, “sweetheart, I’m going to get your father. Okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Alone in my room, I hear them talk through the walls. Dogs have good hearing. I’m exhausted, but I’m still on my knees when they come in. Dad closes the door, and stands next to my bed while Mom hugs herself.

  What do they see when they look at me?

  Am I half-animal, half-person like the Savage Boy?

  Am I still Lily Elaine Asher of Portland, Oregon?

  It’s done. It’s over.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage to say, and finally sit back on my heels.

  But I’m lying. I’m not sorry. I’m tired, out of breath, and scared. I’m a scared, tired, out-of-breath liar.

  “I must have been dreaming,” I say. “I fell asleep and dreamed I was a dog.”

  “She wasn’t asleep,” Mom says. “She was wide awake, Paul.”

  Good. They recognize me. My words make sense. I’m still me, still Lily Asher, neighborhood weirdo.

  “Do you think it’s Tourette’s? I’ve been reading about it, Paul. Maybe it’s Tourette’s.”

  Dad touches my shoulder. “It’s okay, kiddo, we’ll figure it out. We’ll see Dr. Giraffe—I mean Dr. Madsen—in the morning, okay? Lily?”

  “Okay.”

  Across the street, Mr. Davis opens his front door. Frosty, his late wife’s miniature poodle, tears into the front yard barking. The neighborhood is still, the sirens long gone. Frosty is old, like sixteen or something. He’s always the last dog in the neighborhood to do anything doggy. He’s crippled and mostly deaf, but he must have heard me howl.

  Mom says Frosty has been a lap dog so long, he’s more human than anything else.

  * * *

  Dr. Madsen is tall and thin with a long neck, red spiky hair, and blotchy skin.

  Like a giraffe, a talking, know-it-all giraffe.

  I tell him everything: how I killed Mrs. Wiggins; how Aunt Jamie died; how I felt about stabbing the Savage Boy with the tooth, how I’ve felt about him since. How, despite what Frieda says and what Jesus promised, Jesus keeps turning His back on me. He even turned His back on the big apartment-house fire in town last night. A five-month-old baby and her teenage mother died.

  “Did He punish her for having a baby out of wedlock?” I ask, but Dr. Giraffe only says, “What do you think?” So I decide yes. Yes, He did.And then I tell Dr. Giraffe how even my outsides and insides don’t match anymore.

  Mom calls it puberty—which the dictionary says has more to do with a chrysalis turning into a butterfly than having your period and bleeding all over your white pants. Judy says girls “should never wear white pants.”

  I’m growing a tail, I tell Dr. Giraffe. Sometimes, anyway. Mom doesn’t believe me. “You still have ten fingers and toes,” she says, “and that makes you human no matter how much you want to be Mrs. Wiggins.” I don’t want to be Mrs. Wiggins.

  Finally, I tell my psychologist that howling was the “best thing I ever felt, ever.”

  Dr. Giraffe nods his head when I say it and makes lots of notes. I tell him that howling was okay with Aunt Jamie because she loved dogs. “They don
’t pretend,” she told me. “They are what they are.”

  “If it weren’t for Kevin,” I say, “you could call her up right now and ask her yourself.”

  If it weren’t for Kevin.

  “I only howled once,” I repeat.

  Dr. Giraffe smiles. And makes another appointment.

  Chapter 11

  Legless Cuckoos

  Since Jamie died, Mom’s been weird. She calls Frieda every day and writes long letters she throws away. She sent a box of shiny yellow pears to a friend she hasn’t seen since high school, and she’s painting a picture of a big family dinner in our backyard. An imaginary picnic on an imaginary day. She put Jamie between Lauren and me, and adds strangers and people I’ve only seen in Dad’s family albums. They don’t look so old when they’re laughing and reaching for a bowl of supersized strawberries.

  When Dad said Mom was “rewriting history and someday people will think it really happened that way,” she said, “It’s art.” When I ask about the old, sad-looking couple at the end of the table, she cries.

  Dad says she’s still mourning Jamie. He says to give it time.

  Mom says “genes” are everything. “You are what you get from your family. When you don’t know who you are, look around.”

  Now that Jamie’s gone, the only family I see, besides Mom, Dad, and Lauren, is Frieda. And sometimes Aunt Cass. Rarely Uncle Po.

  We’re headed to Po’s right now.

  It will be the second time Lauren and I stayed over, and Mom said it’ll be our last. “You girls are getting older and so is Po. Your visits exhaust him but he wanted to see you one last time.”

  Exhaust him? We’ve only been there once and we just sat around, reading and playing cards. One last time? “So he’s dying?” I ask.

  “He’s old,” she says. Then, “Aunt Cass will be there.”

  Lauren rolls her eyes.

  Mom reminds me it’s my turn to sleep with Cass. She reminds us of the phone in Po’s kitchen and the emergency phone numbers in the kitchen and bathroom “in case you need help.” Lauren leans forward, straining her seat belt; she wants to be a nurse. Or a private detective like TV’s Honey West.

  Does Cass know her brother is dying? Mom once said she’s like a dog, kind and sweet though not very smart, but Jamie told me animals understand their world better than we understand ours.

  The three of us listen to the car radio for the remaining 17.2 miles it takes to pull into Po’s driveway.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom says to the rearview mirror, “you’ll have a good time.”

  When we let ourselves in, Po’s asleep in his rocker in front of the big brown gas heater. The house is hot. Mom says old people’s houses are always hot.

  He looks more like King Tut than the handsome young man in the sepia portrait I’ve seen. Po used to be a farmer, but he never got married. He never cared that Cass had Down syndrome and can’t read or write either, or that she scrapes her plate over and over until it hurts your ears, then burps so loudly it even embarrasses Mom.

  Lauren looks around the living room and whispers to Mom, “Do we have to spend the night?”

  Cass inches out of her bedroom, sees Mom, and smiles. There’s a sweater over her arm. Behind Cass stands her tall brass bed, with the two wooden steps leading up to it.

  “It’ll be fun,” Mom replies in an exaggerated voice. “Your father and I will be here first thing in the morning.” They’re driving to the beach overnight; Mom says they need a getaway. “You girls can play cards, and read all you want. Won’t that be nice? Did you bring everything?”

  “Yep,” Lauren says, holding up her old Chatty Cathy pajama bag. Inside is her doll Irene. Lauren’s too old for a baby doll, but Mom says it relaxes her. She brought other stuff too: Black Beauty, a small loom for weaving potholders, flip-flops, underwear, pedal pushers, pajamas, two sweaters (one red, one blue), and a tube of Bonne Bell lip gloss.

  “Yep,” I say, though my “everything” is way less stuff than Lauren’s overstuffed bag.

  Cass points at Po and knits her eyebrows saying, “Quiet,” in her slow flat voice. My sister can say, “Yep,” but I can’t? Does Cass still remember me pinching her? She walks toward Mom who helps her with her sweater.

  Mom kisses Po on the forehead and the two of them head out. “Going to grab some groceries, be right back,” she says.

  “Groceries,” Cass echoes. As the door closes, the clock strikes twelve and Po wakes up.

  “High noon,” he announces, sitting tall. Then looks us over. “Kit’s girls.” Then he singles me out: “You look just like her.”

  “Who do I look like, Po?” Lauren asks.

  He rubs his stubby chin. “Alice,” he answers. Alice? Who’s Alice? “If you need anything, shake me.” He rocks three or four times, rubs his stockinged feet together, and closes his eyes again.

  There are curtains on the closets but no doors on the cupboards. Not a picture on the wall or a book anywhere. Po’s work clothes hang on nails in the kitchen near the rust-stained kitchen sink. On a shelf by the window (where an emergency number is posted) there’s a row of pots with green seedlings just breaking through the dirt. In a basket are six rotten bananas. There’s a mousetrap on the counter.

  Lauren stands beside me and whispers, “I don’t like it here,” then heads to her book, passing Po and the ticking popping heater, the piano with its locked keyboard and piles of bundled magazines on the bench, into Cass’s room.

  Dad says Lauren’s a nervous Nellie, but everything is different here, even Po’s magazines.

  Cass’s room is sunny and clean, and tucked into the mirror over her chest of drawers are school pictures of Lauren and me, and an autographed color glossy of Rock Hudson.

  Lauren squeals when I untie a magazine bundle and pass her a Photoplay with “The Rat Pack” on the cover. She flips through the pages until she finds a picture of Sammy Davis Jr. standing between Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, the three of them laughing so hard Dean almost spills his drink. “Do you know Sammy has a glass eye?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think he’s cute.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I guess this is your boyfriend then,” she says, pointing at a grainy black-and-white photo of a blond boy on the cover of True. Behind him is a giant swastika and the words, bold and red: Discovered Photo Cache! He wears a Nazi uniform and taller older boys in uniforms stand with him. All three are laughing. Before them is a pit of naked twisted bodies.

  Lauren thumbs through Photoplay. She doesn’t see the bodies. The naked bodies. Of dead people.

  “Look, Lily!” Her hands are under her sweater, making gun-barrel nipples with her index fingers. In front of her is a color photograph of Diana Dors in a red two-piece swimsuit.

  When the Nazis stand on their tiptoes to look across the bed at the movie star, Po’s heater suddenly roars, and I jump.

  “Nine times ten is ninety. Nine times eleven is ninety-nine. Nine times twelve is one hundred and eight.” Nines are the best.

  Lauren puts down her magazine. “You okay?” She sounds more and more like Mom.

  I take True into the living room and plant myself beside Po’s rocker, staring at the heater’s window, wondering what old men dream of.

  “Open the magazine and find out,” says a tiny voice like Colonel Klink’s on Hogan’s Heroes. “What are you are afraid of?”

  I’m not afraid. They’re just pictures, like pictures in Photoplay or Life or Look or TV Guide. Scary pictures, ugly terrible pictures, but still just pictures.

  The heater whooshes, and even though I whisper my nines again, forward and backward this time, the magazine falls open to the center, to the place I don’t want to look, to the pictures I shouldn’t see, and my sticky hands hold it there.

  My heart races. I try closing my eyes but they spring open like cartoon window shades.

  So I look. At the face of the same handsome blond Nazi from the cover: the Savage Boy, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue,
James Dean. He smokes his cigarette down to a stub and throws it in the pit of dead bodies; it lands in Diana Dors’s platinum hair and sizzles.

  Jesus died for our sins, so that everyone is forgiven, and Mom always says, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” so I put the boy in a baseball outfit and set him at Mom’s picnic table.

  She sends Lauren and me to the house for iced tea with umbrellas.

  The sun is high and hot. “Pleez pass duh strawberries,” the boy says politely. His accent is thick, but his English is good. “Is der any cream?”

  Women in high white collars and men in walrus mustaches drop their spoons and stare in surprise until the sad-looking man at the end of the table stands up. “What are you doing here?” he cries, pointing at the boy. “Get out! Get out!” and the boy, startled and blushing, stumbles to his feet, grabs his rifle, and—

  Shoots.

  Every.

  One.

  The picnic table becomes the pit, and my family—whoever they were, wherever they’re from—instantly, quietly slump against each other. Their faces twist in pain and surprise like dead Jewish pickup sticks, all bony knees and cauliflower ears, bruises and baggy skin, twisted feet and pelvises like snow shovels. Skeleton faces with eyes so dark and deep they drill holes all the way to China. They fall and tumble, more naked than they’ve ever been, and I see their boobs and penises and hairy patches—private places they’d have covered up when they were alive.

  I slam the magazine shut, and Po snorts himself awake.

  “Lily?” he asks, scratching his whiskers. He knows my name.

  My heart pounds like crazy. Should I talk to him? He’s old, he knows stuff. Instead I answer, “Hi,” and watch his eyelids grow heavy and close again.

  Over Po’s shoulder, sunshine pours through the café curtains, lighting the plastic tablecloth on the dining room table and a three-story card house.

  Everything is winding down at Po’s. Po, Cass, even time is dying. If the clock isn’t wound each day it stops. Every hour, on the hour, a small wooden door flies opens and the cuckoo, glued to a tiny red perch, pops out, singing and trying to free himself. He worries he’ll be stuck inside, forgotten, abandoned when Po dies, so he takes a big gulp of air and pulls up his legs, trying to break the grip before he’s jerked back inside again. If he succeeds, he leaves his legs on the perch; if he succeeds, he flies but never lands because that would kill him too.