by Donnna Salli
I wiped a bead of sweat from my eyelid and caught sight of my hand. It didn’t even look like mine. The nails were polished. I held my hands up side by side. They looked like Gen’s, my best friend in high school. Except hers were smaller. Gen kept her nails perfectly shaped and done up in mother-of-pearl. Spring of sophomore year, she cracked a pinkie nail closing her locker, cracked it so deep it never had time to grow out.
The thought gave the poltergeists a new angle. They flipped the switch on an invisible motion picture machine. Suddenly, a jerky clip, like an old eight-millimeter, played on the backstage wall.
It’s that night, a Friday. Gen and I are coloring eggs. The wax crayon seems to be part of her hand, she uses it so naturally. My designs are crude. Gen’s are elegant. She cradles each egg on a thin wire circle and lowers it into its bath.
There’s no sound, but when her lips begin to move, I remember what she says. “Look, Claire. Look right now, while it’s being born.”
I look. Gen’s face is shining. She could be three years old. The whiskery rabbit she’s pulled out of her head looks up at us, as the shell turns blue around it.
“Claire.” When I heard Paul say my name on the phone, a few weeks into spring semester, it startled me. I almost dropped the receiver. “Claire.” He said it again, like he was practicing. “This is Paul Collier.”
I was stunned. My mind turned into one of those revolving, crank-handle picture machines you’ll see at museums. Only with the pictures out of order. You turn the crank, and the still photos come alive. I couldn’t believe it. I had a new advisor in the psych department. I’d thought my Paul Collier days were done.
For our first date, we drove through falling snow to a dilapidated movie house in a town an hour away. It was twilight, and the dashboard of Paul’s car cast a coral-green light through the interior. Our first kiss—which occurred at the city limits, Paul pulling over and pulling me to him—seemed to take place underwater. When I opened my eyes, the snowflakes looked like tiny angelfish darting around.
Gen had angelfish. Her dad got them for her when he set up his new house after he and her mom divorced. The aquarium was behind the sofa in the TV room, where we squandered away hours watching old movies, the fish hovering behind us.
First thing every morning, Gen and I would meet at our lockers. One day she grabbed my arm the moment I walked up. She put her mouth to my ear. “My dad dumped Marlena Hardwicke’s mother.” Marlena Hardwicke was a ghost of a girl in our homeroom, with knock-knees. “I’m glad,” she said. “That Myrtle, she’s—well, you know.” Gen lifted her shoulders, a shudder, let them drop. As the bell rang and we headed to homeroom to face the ghost girl, she summed the situation up. “Dad’s seeing a new woman now, and this one’s all right. I even like it when he brings her home.”
I peeked out at the house. It was full, and there was someone I knew in it after all: Toni Sprague-Heller. She must have come in late. She had this fierce expression on her face and was looking like she was going to write a review. She was mentally going down some list, weighing, considering. Not decided as to tone, maybe. Trying on different points of view.
Great, I thought. Just what I need. The woman who’s always intimidated me, sitting in the third row.
I met Toni Sprague at the first dinner party Paul took me to. She and her husband Sam were just living together then. I’d never been to a dinner party and didn’t know what to expect. Every couple there had at least one half who taught at the college. The faculty types were amazing conversationalists. But all they talked about was academics. Well, themselves and academics. Over every course: the shrimp, the soup, the rib roast, the salad—served last. The only thing in greater supply than talk was wine.
Not that I had any of it.
Hal and Kate, our hosts, didn’t know what to do with me. Before dinner, Hal served every drink imaginable to everyone else, while Kate engaged me in conversation. It wasn’t idle patter or insincere. She was gracious. But she clearly didn’t know what to say, and it was also clear she didn’t want the underage thing who was sleeping with her husband’s colleague to be drinking on her premises.
“Claire,” she said, “what can I get you to drink?”
I felt bad for her. I said, “A Pepsi, if you have one.”
“A Pepsi,” she all but sang. “Hal,” she called gaily. “Would you get Claire a Pepsi?”
“Pepsi coming up.”
A buzzer rang on the stove, and Kate said, “He’ll be a moment, dear. He’ll have to go down to the family room for that.” She smiled and disappeared into the kitchen. Paul, to my surprise, had deserted me as soon as we arrived. I got left sitting alone, out of place, on a large, brown sectional sofa. I resorted to staring at my hands.
Someone sat down hard next to me. It was Sam Heller.
“So, Claire,” he said. “It is Claire?” I nodded and felt encouraged enough to smile, and he said, “I’ve been noticing the way you smile. Your face lights up, but when your mouth first moves, it looks for just a moment like you’re going to cry.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks, I guess?” The man had a smile of his own, and he knew it. I dropped my eyes back to my hands.
“Claire,” he said. “Stay with me. . . . Can they go on and on, or what?” He tipped his head in the direction of the others, as if I might not know who he was talking about.
I laughed. “Well . . . they are smart.”
“Yes. But you’re no dumb bunny, and neither am I. Let me tell you something about this bunch. They’re smart, yeah. Toni—she’s scary sometimes. She can focus like no one in this world. But they got big egos. Am I right? And big insecurities. You’re smiling now. . . . We’re not giving them a pass because they’re brains. They’re just like—”
“Excuse me, Sam.” Hal had appeared with my Pepsi in a chunky blown-glass tumbler. “I’ve got Claire’s drink here.” He handed it to me and shimmied away backwards. “Let me know when you want a refill.”
“Thanks.” I lifted the glass to my lips, but halfway, Sam extended his hand and stopped me.
“Claire. Honest now. If we weren’t here, would you maybe drink something a little more interesting?”
“Well . . . maybe. I mean, sometimes.”
“Now, how did I know? Let me take this for a stroll and bring it back more palatable. Pal-at-a-ble,” he said, drawing out the word. “Bet you can guess I’m a whiz at Scrabble. Now, Claire, try not to call attention to yourself.” He shifted his eyes toward Toni, who was deep into it with Paul, shifted them back. “Don’t get me busted here.”
Sam Heller saved me. He kept tabs on me, kept drawing me in. By the end of the evening, he was on my list of men I could marry. But Toni . . . By the time we finished the cheesecake, and some of us the amaretto, I was glad I hadn’t been able to get into Marriage and the Family, which turned out to be her course. The woman would complicate marriage to within an inch of its life. Even with the rum Sam pilfered for me, she made me feel inferior. I made the mistake of mentioning that to Paul in the car later, and he said, “Don’t blame your issues on anyone else, Claire—you’re your own worst enemy.” Maybe I am, but it didn’t change the facts. Toni was sophisticated, she threw around words I’d hardly ever heard. And at the end of the meal, she smoked one long, skinny cigarette after another. She wasn’t loud. But she liked to be the center of things. It was only her second year on the faculty, and I could see she was the darling. Of course Paul thought she was great, maybe a little too great. There was some complicated flirting going on. Toni kept making these comments that I didn’t even know were funny. But they must have been. She had the table in hysterics.
When Paul had first told me about the dinner, it sounded like a lark. He said, “What do you say? We could have some fun, could put on a show. We’re a couple now, and they’re dying of curiosity about us.”
Some show. Paul spent the night trading narratives with everyone but me.
My mother tells a story. It starts, “I had this feeling.” She was in bed—alone,
Dad was working graveyard shift—and all at once, she woke up. She knew someone was there. She said, “I was on my stomach, and suddenly I felt someone. I turned my head. There was a man standing beside the bed, a man with long dark hair and a long white robe. His hands were folded, crossed low in front of him. He looked at me so compassionately. . . . It was Jesus,” she said.
We hadn’t been to worship in a while, I don’t know why. The day before had been a Sunday, and that morning Dad followed his “Rise and shine” with “Put something presentable on, we’re going to church.” Mom had taken communion. She ate the bread, drank the wine. She said there hadn’t been anything special about it. But now, here was Jesus. When she told her mother about it the next day, Grandma said, “What do you think He was trying to tell you?” Mom didn’t tell me what answer she’d given.
So . . . there was Jesus, standing by my mother’s bed—Jesus, putting a whale of a dent in the universe. He put a dent in my psyche, too. I don’t mind saying, I’ll wake up at night and look, just to see if He’s there. Wishing, I guess.
My mother was scared. She put her head down, her heart doing jumping jacks, and she kept saying in her head, Go away. Go away, Jesus, what are you doing here?
But Jesus wasn’t fazed. Every time she dared a peek, she’d see the robe, those folded hands.
Finally, she looked again, and He was gone.
When it was my turn, Jesus didn’t show. He had bigger fish, maybe. A stray thought, haphazard metaphor, a sound or a smell—real, or not—can unleash in me a hurricane of havoc, and havoc unscripted is not a good thing onstage. I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them, barricaded the door in my brain, and listened hard for my cue. But a sudden, sharp odor of vinegar popped every nail . . .
Gen and I are at her house, coloring eggs. Her dad, Tim, and the new girlfriend are in the TV room. Outside, a car door slams. Gen looks up from the egg she’s decorating, flashes a smile, and makes goo-goo eyes.
“Brett’s home,” she says.
She knows I think her brother is cute. She puts the egg and crayon down and flutters to the window. It’s dark out, but the yard light is on. “Oh, no,” she says. “What’s she doing here?” I hear the front door open and close. Gen looks over her shoulder and says, “It’s Myrtle. Get ready for a loony scene, with Alison here. Come on. Let’s go listen.”
I don’t really want to, something in me doesn’t like to. I shake my head and glue my butt to the chair. But Gen says, “Come on,” and pulls me by the sleeve, and I go with her. There are raised voices coming from the TV room. Tim’s and Myrtle Hardwicke’s. Myrtle’s voice is tight, spiking high, so high, a lot of her words get lost. But we can hear enough. She calls Tim a bastard, a fucking son of a bitch, and Alison a cunt. Gen grabs my arm and gives it a squeeze. We sneak through the dark of the dining room and living room to the TV room door. I stay back from the light. But Gen moves up close.
“Myrtle,” Tim is saying, “you don’t need that. Put it down.” He’s scared—I can hear it. “You don’t want to do something that will hurt anyone. Think, Myrt—think of Marlena.”
Myrt says nothing.
Tim says again, “Put it down . . . Myrt.” As I struggle to make sense of what he’s saying, a fist closes around my heart. Alison is whimpering. The back of my neck tightens as if a hand grabbed hold from behind. Gen has inched one eye past the doorframe. She jumps back so fast she knocks us down. She rolls into me, hysterical, her voice small and right inside my ear. What she says makes my brain shut down. “A gun, she’s got a gun, oh, Claire, what should we do?”
I don’t have time to open my mouth. The first shot all but blows my eardrums out. Behind it is a shattering of glass, and a fishy tidal wave rolls through the doorway. My hands are to my ears. The floor could have opened—it’s pandemonium. Someone is screaming. It’s Alison, calling a strangled version of “Tim.” Gen and I bolt for the sharp, bright lines of the kitchen door. I’m drenched and scared and can’t breathe. My jaw is clamped to keep from crying out. My teeth hurt. When we get to the kitchen, it smells of vinegar and gunpowder. On the table, the Easter eggs blink blue and green, like eyes out of their sockets.
Gen pulls the wall phone off its hook. There’s a second shot. “The bathroom,” she hisses. “The bathroom. We can lock the door.”
The phone cord is long and just fits beneath the door. Gen is breathing hard, crouched down, dialing. I’m in a hunched posture on the side of the tub. “Oh, God,” she says. “Oh, God.” She’s rocking on her heels, her lips move silently. She’s counting, waiting for someone to answer. Then her eyes bulge, her free hand flies to cover the mouthpiece. It makes no sense for her to do that. “It’s dead, it’s dead! It went dead!”
We sit there, looking at each other. The doorknob turns. Gen and I jump as if joined at the hip and throw our weight against the door. Our palms spread against it, our feet are planted. That’s when I first notice the blue dye on her fingertips. A label from a bottle in Collin’s chemistry set, Christmases ago, flashes before my eyes. Gentian violet. The third shot fires directly outside the bathroom door. The door explodes, wood splinters into and around us. It’s such a surprise. Why, I think, didn’t we get out of the house?
On the set, the third shot sent a body crashing to the floor. The thud of it hitting the boards wrenched my attention out of my head and back to the show. The shots were real. They were part of the action.
Then—another shot . . . and another.
Something’s wrong, I thought. The script says four shots, only four. But the part of my brain still in Gen’s bathroom just accepted and watched Gen and Claire go down. It was slow motion. The last shot was there, but it wasn’t. I was there, but I wasn’t. One of the poltergeists stepped in and, with a bow and flourish, handed me a flower.
I’m on the floor against the bathtub, smelling lilies of the valley. For Gen’s birthday, Alison gave her a box of bath beads, and it’s behind me on the tub. Gen is on the floor beside me. She extends five straining, blue-tipped fingers and says, “Claire?” Her lips barely move, and I’m afraid to think why.
When I tell Richard that part, he cries.
“Claire.” Someone did speak my name, but it was Lydia, from the stage crew. She touched my arm. “Claire,” she whispered, “you all right? You were whimpering.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry. Was I loud?”
She shook her head.
“Good,” I said. “We’re supposed to live the part, aren’t we?” I blew across my fingers, which were freezing. My face was hot. I said, “Thanks for checking.”
Lydia started to walk away. I stopped her. “Lydia, wait.” She came back, and I pulled her head close. “Poke me, when I need to go on?”
“Sure.”
I was having trouble focusing. I looked out on the set. The body that had fallen was on the floor, rolled into a rug. Out of the chasm in my brain a thought emerged. I don’t know who that is. A spasm, rolling panic, rose into my throat. How could I go out on that set? Someone was down, someone was dead, and I didn’t know who. I backed against the stage wall, slid down, and dropped my head between my knees. What, I thought, am I doing here? I can’t bear the sight of a gun, can’t bear the thought of one—people use them, use them horribly, and no one does a thing. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy. The audience was laughing. Were they supposed to be? Get a grip, I thought. Get a grip here, Claire.
But—too late.
I get up off the bathroom floor and keep on going. I’m a helium balloon. I somersault, an astronaut on a tether. I float past the sink, take a right at the doorknob, go up to the ceiling. It’s a rock. I bounce and think, Cool. I roll over and look down.
Poor things, I think.
There are bodies below. One—mine—is slumped against the wall of the tub. It’s a chrysalis, abandoned, pale against the dusty rose porcelain. I think, Is that how I look? I’m a mess. The other body, Gen’s, is sprawled across the floor. Its limbs are spread at odd angles. If you ignore the blood, she—
or rather, it—looks like an Egyptian woman frozen on the wall of a tomb. Oh, Gen, I think.
She’s not down there, though. She’s at my elbow. I think, Am I dead?
I hear her voice in my head. They’re coming, see? She laughs. Come on—come on, come on.
I don’t actually see Gen. I just know she’s there. Then she’s not. She’s gone up through the ceiling. It was such an easy thing for her to do, but I can’t. I want to but I can’t. I don’t see anyone, either. Isn’t someone supposed to come? A grandmother? An angel in white? Jesus? But I see no one.
What am I? I think. Chopped liver?
I scratch at the ceiling, but it stays material.
Gen, wait! I wail it in my head and start clawing at the plaster. The wail blooms into a scream. Let me through! I beg the molecules of the house to stand aside, but they hunker down, become obstinate, silent, dark.
The first year Paul and I were together, I drove home one night by myself to spend a weekend with my folks. It was two-lane roads, and I hit bad weather. Snow was the last thing I’d expected—the forecast had promised two days of nothing. Well, here was nothing, falling hard and heavy through the beams of my headlights. I had to keep the low beams on, to see at all, and my muscles were seized up from behind my ears to the base of my tailbone.
The farther I went, the deeper it got. Soon, a veil of snow blurred the line between the highway and the ditch, and there wasn’t a plow in sight. I was locked in, four slots back in a line of cars that extended a ways behind me.
I was already half loopy from staring so hard—from steering so hard, to keep the tires in the ruts—when into the left headlight’s cone of illumination came a white horse at full gallop. My jaw dropped. Time bumped into itself. The horse was velvet and ethereal in the heavy snow. It seemed to have wings. It flew though the moving line of traffic between me and the car ahead of me—its legs parallel to the ground, its blink-of-an-eye outline tinged taillight red.
Just as suddenly, it was gone.
I drove the next miles in a stupor, the only sound the squeak of my wiper blades. In the pit of my stomach, I felt touched, brushed by something I didn’t understand. I noticed I had wrapped my gloved hands fiercely tight around the wheel and was still holding them that way. Not one of the drivers traveling with me braked or slowed down. Not one who had seen what I’d seen stopped to flag the others down, to say, “What did you make of that?” No. We all just drove. The farther we went, the more the wipers collected ice and the louder they got.