The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  “It would never have happened if I’d gone with you,” Mom interrupts. “Or if we went to Van’s the next day, or waited until I . . . felt better.”

  “I drove too fast and totaled the car.” Dad sniffs. “The whole thing is my—”

  “Stop it!” Lauren cries, jumping to her feet. “Everybody did something wrong. Jeez! Lily’s awake, so can we please go home now?”

  Someone places Mrs. Wiggins’s tooth in my hand, and curls my fingers around it. The room turns foggy and milky white.

  I stand in the bushes as Beauty walks toward me. He lifts his head and sniffs the air.

  “It’s just a little morphine, sweetheart,” Mom whispers. “Just sleep. All you have to do is sleep.”

  A gum bubble pops nearby. It startles me awake and I imagine flying off the bed, running into one wall then another like a pinball.

  “Lauren, please,” Mom says.

  Snap. Crackle. Pop. The cereal elves tie me down like Gulliver in Lilliput, doing cat’s cradles with my tubes, and somersaults off my drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  “Aren’t you better yet?” It’s Lauren, standing next to me.

  “She’s coming home tomorrow, remember?” Mom says. “The doctors want to be sure. We want the doctors to be sure.”

  How long have I been here? “How long have I been here?”

  “Three days. They were worried about the concussion. Get all the sleep you can, Lily. You’re back in school on Monday.”

  “You ruined my slumber party,” Lauren glares, “and Mom won’t let me see Simone until next week! I have to come here every afternoon after school, even when you’re sleeping.”

  “Sorry,” I say, only it doesn’t sound like “sorry,” and Lauren rolls her eyes.

  “Quit bothering your sister,” Mom says.

  * * *

  My beautiful barefoot mother sits in front of her easel on a rocky beach in the Greek islands. Canvases are everywhere, catching in the wind, flying into the sea. Two large, white, paint-splattered wings fold neatly against her back. Her hands are a blur as she covers one canvas after another with bright colors. Her face is tan, her cheeks speckled with freckles like Lauren’s. Her teeth are white; she can’t stop grinning.

  “Doesn’t your father seem happy?” Mom asks me. She points her paintbrush at Zorba the Greek, dancing at the ocean’s edge. “Lily, where’s your easel?”

  * * *

  “Ah-CHOO,” Lauren sneezes.

  Amen.

  Ah, Man.

  Lauren left her spiral notebook here, accidentally-on-purpose. It’s full of doodles, spelling tests (one B minus, two Cs), and a half-finished essay on our trip to Lake Tahoe. Lauren loves talking on the phone, so she drew a receiver in the upper left-hand corner of the page, and a thin telephone cord that curls all over the things she wrote about: the restaurants, the gift shops, the trip we finally took to the phony-baloney Ponderosa Ranch.

  She didn’t write about the pool; or how Mom danced with Ben Cartwright and everyone in the restaurant watched while she fell in love with him and wanted to run away with him, run away from us, even if it was only for a few minutes.

  Lauren didn’t mention Mrs. Ford either, so I added:

  Mrs. Ford and her boyfriend sit together on the square dance bus.

  On the drive to Lake Tahoe, he gives her the seat by the window, and they share the meat loaf sandwiches (lots of ketchup, no lettuce) Mrs. Ford made for them. Afterward, he falls asleep with his head on her shoulder. She smiles and looks out the window at the cacti and jackrabbits and the beautiful deep red canyons, and imagines wagon trains seeing the same things on their way to Oregon. Mrs. Ford’s boyfriend doesn’t sleep long and when he wakes up, she digs a sack of sugar cookies out of her knitting bag and gives him three (no, four) before sharing the rest with the bus.

  Mrs. Ford doesn’t care what her hair looks like. She doesn’t worry about her weight. She doesn’t like one-calorie Tab or Roman Meal bread. Inside her fridge at home is whole milk not skim, packages of thickly cut pepper bacon, and sticky jars of homemade blackberry jam she puts on pieces of potato bread with the crusts cut off.

  She rescued two long-haired dachshunds and a three-legged cat from the Humane Society. She knits hats for orphans all year long and she plays bridge at least once a week. She likes the Three Stooges (even though most grown-ups don’t). Mrs. Ford knows the first and last names of every clerk at her favorite grocery store, sends brand-new twenty dollar bills to each one of her grandkids on their birthday, and gets her hair done every third Wednesday morning at Betty’s Beauty College. The last thing she looks at, when she crawls into bed at night, is a framed photo, on her bed stand, of the late Mr. Ford. She’s danced with the Cheyenne Squares for fifteen years, and only missed two performances: when Mr. Ford died, and when she had her appendix out. Her new boyfriend and dance partner is Mr. Ed Boetcher (pronounced “Butcher”), the man on the bus.

  Maybe they’ll get married someday and take long summer bus rides to square dance conventions all over America.

  Maybe they’ll even fly to Paris and dance in front of the Eiffel Tower, where dark handsome men in turbans and beards, and graceful women in kimonos (with chopsticks in their hair), will clap for them and take pictures.

  I glance at the wall clock at the end of the bed. It’s 10:32. My door is closed and the blinds are drawn. It’s late, way past visiting hours.

  Mom said I’m going home tomorrow.

  Next to me on the bed is an empty shoe box. Inside it are two handwritten notes. The first one, in Mom’s writing, reads, This coupon is good for one UN-BIRTHDAY lunch with Mom, any restaurant you choose. AND, which she also capitalized, fifty dollars worth of art supplies. Coupon good until December 31, 2050.

  She’ll be dead by then.

  PS, Mom also wrote. I know you’ll make something amazing with the shoe box! Then, PPS. I promise to get help for my drinking.

  I give Mrs. Wiggins’s tooth a squeeze. Don’t count on it, it squeezes back.

  The second note, on pink stationery with a gold embossed JC at the top of the page, reads, You’re my miracle.

  Stay out of my shoe boxes, SOG! “I’m not your miracle!” I scream. “I don’t belong to you! I don’t belong to anyone!”

  Jerk.

  His note flies out of my hand and under the bed when the nurse bursts in.

  “Lily?” she says, rushing to my side. “You were screaming. Are you all right?”

  My head hurts. She gives me an aspirin, turns off the bed light, and props the door open when she leaves. In the hallway, she greets another nurse and they both laugh.

  “Close it!” I yell, and throw the shoe box on the floor.

  Chapter 22

  God Bless the Midway

  Mom says I should write an article for the local paper about all the crappy TV I’ve watched since the accident: game shows, talk shows, soap operas, cartoons. Dark Shadows is okay, but I get tired of Jesus showing up on it. He thinks it’s funny to creep up behind Barnaby Collins and bite his neck when the aging vampire’s not looking. But I’m not laughing. It isn’t funny when He shows up scrubbing toilets or selling cars during commercials, either.

  Most of all, I hate that weird European clown with the white leggings on The Ed Sullivan Show.

  “Why, you sound like a teenager, Lily. You hate everything these days.” Mom looks up from her darning. Dad’s long toes wear holes in his socks all the time.

  “But he’s not even trying to be funny,” I say, pointing at the TV.

  “Not all clowns are funny.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  I like Emmett Kelly better, even though he just mopes around. Mom told me he paints too, only it’s always the faces of sad clowns. Kind of spooky, I think. Rod Serling should write a story about him for The Twilight Zone.

  Mom kneels beside the TV and flips the channel. On the next station, David Niven pops his monocle at platinum-haired, big-boobed Jayne Mansfield. M
om says I’ve inherited Frieda’s body type, which means I’ll be tall and skinny, get arthritis, and never have big boobs like Jayne or Diana Dors. Or her.

  “Remember Manners the Butler?” Mom asks. “You loved him when you were little. Didn’t he have a monocle?”

  My heart jumps into my throat. “You mean the TV commercial? The little butler who stood by the dining room table and handed you a paper napkin when yours slipped off your lap?” I stare at the cover of Vogue: a super-tall, half-clothed, lion-maned model barely fits on the cover. “No. No monocle.”

  “You remember!” Mom says. “I’m surprised. You were hardly more than a baby.”

  Of course I remember Manners the Butler. He moved in under my bed when I started my period; he even moved with us to the new house. He’s always quiet and never complains. When he can’t sleep I read him Tom Thumb, or something from Gulliver’s Travels; he likes hearing about other tiny people.

  “The man who played Manners was a good actor,” Mom says, “but the ads were popular and he was typecast as an English butler and couldn’t find any other work.” It must be hard when you’re fifteen inches tall. Still, I made a list of all the TV and movie butlers I could think of and slipped it under my bed for him: William Powell, Leo J. Carroll, and Alan Napier, the actor who played Alfred the butler on Batman.

  Move to Hollywood! I wrote. Maybe Jesus could go with him.

  Mom puts down her darning and begins sketching my hands. She likes variety; she likes to keep busy. Frieda says, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

  “Manners is weird,” I say.

  I hope he hears me; I want him to go away.

  Mom grabs a poker chip off the coffee table and, using it as a monocle, mumbles, “I say, I say,” in a bad English accent.

  I found a pair of my panties under the bed, covered in dust bunnies. Manners is usually very neat; I think he didn’t want me to find them.

  The butler list was under there too; a tiny teacup stain in the corner told me he’d read it.

  Lauren said it was spider poop.

  * * *

  I dream that Mom’s the fat lady at the circus.

  She sits on a throne in the Midway, surrounded by trash, with tufts of angry grass pushing through the straw. Emmett Kelley and the weird clown with white leggings sit on bales of hay on either side of her. I’m there too, crouching behind her Eva Gabor wig and thick dimpled arms.

  Manners, the miniature butler, stands on her knee, lifting her skirt for anyone who’ll pay. Her legs lead to something too dark to see, but the men still want to look, and passing by slowly they stop to check their pockets for change.

  Actor David Niven pays. So does Santa Claus.

  I run to the man with the waxed mustache who keeps the ponies for the kiddy rides. I help him brush them, and braid their tails. He pats their flanks and smells their ears. “Sweet,” he says.

  When the pony man’s wife goes to bed, I sit between his legs facing the campfire, and we talk. I tell him stories about Captain Nemo, Tarzan (Lord Greystoke), Robinson Crusoe, and Sherlock Holmes. The pony man tells me about the love affair between the Bearded Lady and Cleo the Pygmy Contortionist, how one of the Flying Dutchmen has three nipples (“Guess which one!”) and all the clowns are drunks.

  With his arm around my waist, the pony man holds me against his pinstriped vest. I don’t mind. He presses his nose in my hair and whispers, “Sweet.” His breath quivers. His mustache twitches.

  He prays in a language I don’t understand, but then says in English, “God bless the Midway.” Sparks from the fire snap and fly, landing in the soft duff around us. “Watch over my ponies,” he adds, then moves his warm hand between my legs. “And the fat lady’s beautiful daughter.”

  I know the dream is about sex, but Mom calls sex “hormones.” She calls everything hormones.

  Now that I’m fifteen, she’s even more afraid that I’ll embarrass her. She blushes when I ask for more information, even though Dad and Lauren are out of the house and I’m only writing it down on my clipboard.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Nobody will want to have sex with me anyway.”

  “Yes they will. You’re going to knock them dead,” Mom says, which doesn’t make me feel better. Since Jamie died, nothing about death makes me feel better.

  I don’t sit on the end of my bed anymore either, petting an imaginary Mrs. Wiggins, howling at the moon. Instead I sleep with my head under the pillow, and bite my tongue until it bleeds. Sometimes my tail throws back the covers, slips over the edge, and thuds to the floor—fleshy, thick, and heavy—taking me with it.

  The school nurse told us that teenagers need at least eight hours of sleep every night, but my body doesn’t listen to anyone.

  The car accident makes me sleepy at the craziest times. Like falling asleep during dinner. Other times I can’t sleep at all.

  Tonight I lie in bed, rubbing my bare foot on my leg stubble for thirty-six, er, thirty-seven minutes. I rub my leg clockwise, then counterclockwise, then clockwise, then counterclockwise . . .

  “You’ll never catch any z’s if you don’t get up and shave.”

  “Manners?” I’ve read to him, but we’ve never actually talked. I lean over the bed, pull up the dust ruffle, and whisper again, “Manners?”

  No answer. He must be out. I hope he’s looking for another flat. That’s what they call apartments in England.

  I fill the bathroom sink with warm tap water and soap my legs. Thin islands of scum spread over the water, reminding me of the islands on the flight maps Dad found in the basement. Dad loves those maps. Last Sunday, he pulled up his favorite overstuffed chair, drank beer, and stared at the maps for most of the afternoon.

  “Up kind of late, aren’t you?” Jesus asks, suddenly appearing in the doorway.

  Startled, I drop the razor and bang my hospital bracelet (Head Injury, Possible Seizures) on the enamel basin. I look for Jesus’s reflection in the bathroom mirror, forgetting He’s half-vampire and doesn’t have one.

  “Late?” I ask. Which isn’t really a question, and I pick up the razor and draw it the length of my leg. When I look again, He’s tossing a baseball hand to hand. “Besides, you’re dead. Dead people know nothing about time.”

  “Dead?” Jesus says, pretending to be shocked. “Nobody told me I was dead.”

  “Hardee-har-har,” I say, and promptly cut myself. I’d like to ask why He’s dressed like a baseball player, but I don’t want to encourage Him.

  His cleats snag the pink bath mat when He sits down beside me on the edge of the tub. I blot at my leg with toilet paper, and He takes off His catcher’s mitt.

  His stigmata is bleeding again. “Damn thing,” Jesus mutters.

  “Want some?” I hand Him the hydrogen peroxide. Not because I’ve forgiven Him or even want to talk to Him; not because my head isn’t right since the car accident (like Lauren says), or because He’s SOG, either. I just want to be a good person.

  “Son of God, huh?” Jesus says, reading my mind. “Until the crucifixion I was just Jesus of Nazareth, the blowhard know-it-all. The Pied Piper of the Lost and Disenfranchised.”

  Jeez, did He have too much communion wine?

  “I should have stayed dead. Being on earth for thirty-three years was good enough; being mortal was great. I misled everyone with that Heaven business.” Jesus sits up straight and shakes His head. “Woulda, coulda, shoulda, huh?” When I turn and look at Him, His dull halo glows. He’s like the brother I never had: an older brother who leaves his dirty clothes by the bathtub.

  Dad makes a loud rutting snore and two smaller ones. The headboard slams the wall when he rolls over.

  Okay, I’m asking. “What’s with the mitt?”

  “It’s a prop,” He says. “Seeing that you were up and everything, I thought it was a good time for the ‘Who’s on First?’ speech. But, uh, I don’t think you want to hear it.”

  There’s a quiet knock at the bathroom door. “Lily? Who are you talkin
g to in there?” Mom asks.

  “Kit?” Dad calls from the master bedroom. “Everything all right?” Since the concussion, he’s worried about me all over again.

  Jesus quickly writes, I’M NOT HERE, on the steamy surface of the mirror.

  “No one,” I answer them. “Just me.” Mom walks away and I turn back to Jesus.

  “You’re familiar with Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First’ sketch, right?” He waits for a second. “Well, just substitute me for who.”

  Huh?

  “Abbott and Costello?”

  “I don’t like them. Got any Marx Brothers?”

  “Never mind,” Jesus says. “I was trying to be clever. You know, find an entertaining way to remind you that, no matter how crazy things get, I’ll always be here for you?”

  What time is it?

  His shoulders sag. “I’m keeping you up. Go get your eight hours of sleep.”

  “Actually,” I say, rinsing off the razor, “it’ll be more like four hours.”

  “Right, right.” He nods and stands up. “You went to bed at 9:30 . . . you read for two hours, and rubbed your legs for . . . It’s 2:35 right now . . .” He slips in and out of the ether, and I remember that He isn’t good at math either. “You’re shaving your legs. Growing up. I know you started your, you know, awhile back.”

  “Period?” I stare at the bathroom trash basket that includes today’s New York Times crossword puzzle, which Mom does in pen. Must be a big deal, because Dad always brings it up at cocktail parties.

  Getting my period is the only thing I have in common with the other high school girls, and it’s kind of big if you think about it. I mean, girls bleed five days every month for forty years, whether we like it or not. Boys don’t have anything like that.

  Jesus follows me to my room.

  “You said you’d always be there for me?” I ask. “You’ll always be around?”

  “Yep.”

  “Until when? When am I going to die?”

  Jesus gets drifty-looking. “Everybody always asks me that question . . . How would I know? Lots can go wrong, just don’t sweat it.” He turns off the lamp beside my bed. “You’ll wonder what’s the point of living when you’re only going to die, but you’ll figure it out. I’ll help you.”