Joyland Trio Deal

by Jim Hanas

  “This is not a life,” says the wife.

  I ask myself, am I dangerous to them? That young waitress — will her friends multiply or divide? I consider the possibilities. I eat.

  “It’s the recession. Everyone is suffering. Dan Brown lost every contract for the Spring. You act like it’s my fault.”

  “You act like there’s nothing you can do.”

  “Knock knock.”

  “Three monkeys walked into a bar. No, two monkeys and a panda.”

  “How is the chili?”

  “I am a mountain . . .”

  I recall the first time I imagined an act of extreme violence. I was watching my mother’s back while she washed the dishes and I imagined stabbing her with a knife from the block on the counter. That same day I imagined grabbing and throwing my infant brother against the floor, his head breaking open like a watermelon. Then in the afternoon I thought of grabbing the wheel and crashing us all in the car. What stopped me then? What didn’t stop me later?

  And there have been other times when I should have felt something, but I didn’t. I know about the feelings I am supposed to have. I see them and learn them and imitate them. This is all just idle speculation, the kind of thing that puts people into therapy. I am too introspective. What good does it do to think about yourself? Everyone thinks violent thoughts. Everyone owns a number of things that could be used to kill themselves or someone else. I’m not so special. I wonder if all this is just tiredness and the road. I heard rabbits popping under the wheels while I drove and at least once I saw half a deer pushed into the soft shoulder. That was funny.

  The chili is really terrible. The little waitress has disappeared. Perhaps if the chili had been better I might left her alone. I stand and remove the beloved metal fruit and turn the timer and pull the pin and set the little sweet meat on the table and stride quickly to the exit. Maybe I’ll see a movie. I’m sure to get a good seat.

  Heather Rabbit

  THIS ISN’T FICTION. THIS IS me trying to talk to you not to our family or to the world. I have such a hard time writing this even though I speak the story so often now I barely react. Why does writing hurt more than speech? I just want to tell you what happened. You’re the only one who doesn’t know.

  You were my cousin. You were older than me by several years. Your sister Sharon adored you. Your mother —

  (Wait. I’m going to try it a different way.)

  Once upon a time a little girl was born in a place where language was more valuable than religion. Her father was a giant and her mother was an angel and so, the poor little thing had no chance of living as a simple being like the other children who played in the dirty streets all around her house. This little girl was not beautiful and she had no magical gifts like the power to move objects with her mind or to walk on water. But she was a loving, good child.

  One day the giant left. Giants leave when they outgrow things, but the thing this giant did that was so wrong was that he took the little girl aside and he said, “I have found another, younger child who needs me less and so I’m leaving you because you are big now and the way you love me keeps on changing and will keep on changing all your life, and I don’t like that.”

  The little girl was overwrought. She fashioned a doll in the shape of her father and she dressed it in the clothes he left behind. It smelled of him. She took this doll with her everywhere and she sniffed it and it made her cry, but it made her happy too. Now, what I haven’t told you was that the little girl did not walk until she was three and did not speak until she was six. And so, when her father left her she could not rise to grasp him or raise her voice to beg him to stay or to cry out with rage at her abandonment. All her feelings went unknown, even to her mother, even to her older sister, and the other angels who tried in vain to decode the little girl’s expressions.

  One day an angel came to her mother and said, “We must test her. We must know if she should be cast down with the other human beings, the imperfect ones. She does not speak or move as we need her to, and, although she is good, that is not enough.” The mother flapped her wings and made a great noise. But in the end even she could not be sure what was best and so she allowed the angels to test her daughter, thinking all the while that if her daughter was cast out then she would go with her.

  A great angel dropped out of the sky. She had at her side a leather case filled with tests and books of statistics and handcuffs and other sad items that most angels never had occasion to see. This angel sat down with the little girl and put out pieces of paper and coloring pencils. She asked the little girl to draw what she felt, or to draw anything. The angel asked the girl to make a sound, any sound, happy or sad, angry or random. But the little girl stayed silent. Hours and hours of tests were unpacked and packed again before the angel sighed and placed her hands on her glowing hips. “What will we do with you?” she said.

  But the little girl stayed silent, playing with and kissing her doll.

  “Oh, how it stinks,” exclaimed the angel, catching a whiff of the rotten alcohol and sweat that emanated from the doll. “You shouldn’t play with that. I’ll wash it,” she said. And she took the doll and walked to the sink and filled the sink with scalding water and soap. She submerged the doll and scrubbed it. Of course she did not understand that the doll had come to represent the little girl’s father. The little girl leaped up and shrieked and let loose a torrent of the most obscene language and dark accusations that has ever left the lips of a creature of any origin. The angel, shaking and very pale, exited the room and faced the girl’s anxious mother.

  “There is nothing wrong with your child,” she said. “But you should be more careful how you speak in front of her.”

  (Wait. Let me try again.)

  Once upon a time two kittens traveled across an ocean to a place where little trains cross little mountains and dolphins swim laps around lazy sailors. In this place lovers carve spoons and each spoon tells the story of what the lover hopes the future holds. Monks live on bird sanctuaries where they tend to the seabirds and make perfume from the wildflowers. The two kittens were tired and wired from the very long journey, but they were very glad to arrive at the house with a steep staircase where their grandmother lived.

  After kisses their mother and father settled in the parlor with their aunty cat and their grandmother cat and the two kittens were left with their cousin (who was older and more like an adolescent cat). The three did not know each other well and so it was proposed that they should play a game. The game was knights-in-shining-armor and the three happily galloped on invisible horses and charged each other across the room until one kitten knocked over a box. Out of the box tumbled some strange animals. The kittens were frightened and backed into a corner together, holding each other. The animals lay still on the rug. One kitten threw a glass paperweight. The new animals in the room still did not move. Another kitten snuck forward and stuck a claw into the pile of fur and then leaped back. The animals were still. The last kitten strode forward boldly and demanded that the animals introduce themselves. When the room remained silent this kitten sniffed the pile and poked it with her paw. She laughed so hard the other two kittens became indignant.

  “Well, what are they then?” one kitten asked.

  “Wigs,” she laughed. “The lady who lives here wears wigs.”

  They spent the rest of the day trying on the wigs and making up roles to play. This is how they became friends.

  (Wait.)

  Something terrible happened and I can’t get there, can’t even name it. I love you. You are you were my cousin.

  (Wait.)

  A man had a child and he did not stay with his child. Actually he had two. And he had a dog. He loved his two girls when they were small. But when he saw that they were beginning to know how imperfect he was he left them. For years they courted him. But he gave his love to the dog. When at last the man died from lifestyle-related illne
ss, the poor dog howled with grief. The youngest of the two girls could not bear the sound; it made her feel exposed. She took the dog, which was, by now, old and sick and blind and smelly. In fact it was a pile of stink that barely moved at all. She loved that dog as if it were her perfect baby.

  (Wait.)

  Once upon a time I had a cousin. She did not walk until she was three and she did not speak until she was six. She lived on the estates in Cardiff, which is the ridiculous thing that we call government housing. The estate where she lived was the worst in the country and every day someone’s life got broken there. But she had a deal with her landlord that she could keep the dog, even though dogs were not allowed (a small measure to limit ferocity). And so, when a transfer came through to a safer place she refused.

  (It’s not the dog’s fault.)

  I wrote my first book and when it came out she read it and she asked me, why do you write sad stories? Are you sad? That night she ran through the garden with her niece and nephew and they chased her with the hose on.

  “Stop it!” their mother called. But they were all so happy. Later they scraped mudpies out of the flowerbeds and served them to us. She kissed me when I left and hugged me and said, “I’m so proud of you.”

  (Wait.)

  There are castles decomposing everywhere. There are children sitting in classrooms learning a language no one anywhere else can speak. There are open books under glass in the memory book rooms. My husband says Snowdonia isn’t real, but I say it is in the North.

  (Wait.)

  There was a hare who lived in a field overrun with hares. All around the field lived people in nice houses who were afraid that the hares would come into their gardens. One day my hare drank too much and went out too late and she crossed the path of a very young hare who stood with his friends. He said something to her and she said something back. The very young hare lashed out and struck her and she fell to her knees. And then the very young hare took the my hare’s head, so like his own, and put it against the sidewalk and punched one side until the other caved in. One or more of his friends helped to drag my hare into an alley so that she wouldn’t be found for hours. She lay there and her brain swelled until it filled all the spaces in her skull and pushed apart her temples and spilled onto the asphalt that was filled with her blood.

  In the hospital my hare’s mother sat at the foot of the bed and stared at her child who looked like meat. The sister hare, who was always heroic, handled the police, saying, “My sister has been assaulted. Look at her. What are you going to do?”

  But the police lived in nice houses and they were afraid that the hares would come into their gardens and so they said, “We think she fell. It looks like she jumped much too high.”

  The sister found the ring print of the very young hare on her sister’s eye and she said, “Look. You look at her eye and then look at me and tell me that she fell on both sides of her head and dragged herself backwards into an alley.”

  The police could not look at either of them.

  The doctors said that they could think of no reason for hope. But hares are full of hope: it’s what keeps them going when the foxes, wolves, dogs, owls, eagles, hawks, lions, and coyotes come. It is what makes it hard for them to understand the kind of pressures that make a very young hare want to kill someone in front of his friends. My hare slept in her coma and considered her options. The stars stayed the same and the moon lit the black alleys and the green forests alike. We worked and we slept. Nothing seemed good anymore but we couldn’t stop. We couldn’t fall apart in front of our kids and we were less good than we wanted to be.

  (Across the ocean I cried and my little bunnies held onto me.)

  My hare (you) woke up and screamed.

  You came back to us. You came back to us. At times you were a demon’s version of yourself, screeching and thrashing against the restraints, screaming obscenities. The nurses became afraid even though they could walk and talk and go home. Finally you spoke. You said, “What happened to me?” and you were told and a few minutes later you asked again, “What happened to me?”

  You were stuck in a loop. You knew that you were not the same hare, but you couldn’t remember why. Everyone explained, but it was like handing sand to a lobster; you couldn’t grasp it.

  You suffered. Your brain hurt and you felt lost and angry. The things you were told were not fair. You could not go back to your apartment and you were sure that all the answers were there. People you didn’t know told you that what you felt was normal and you wanted to kick them in the balls. You thought you recognized me. I thought you did too, but in fact you called everyone from that side of the family by my name.

  On the third floor of the brain injury clinic you met someone who reminded you of your ex-boyfriend, Bob. This patient was an older hare who thought that you were his dead wife. Every day you had tea together and chatted — you with Bob, and him with his wife — it made things a little bit better. The other thing that made things better was that your mother and her sister stayed with you and cried and held you and said how scared they were, how much they needed you. You found friends in the groups and clinics that dominated your days and people were encouraging. You were strong in a way that we didn’t know you could be. You fought and fought and fought and I don’t even know what kind of energy it took to come back to us. You were amazing, so amazing, Heather.

  Eighteen months passed and we started to relax. It was a miracle; don’t some of us have miracles? If there is always one story that defies the general narrative why couldn’t it be ours? In the pictures you looked the same as you did before you were killed. Your mother and I sent emails every day and she said that you were happier and in safer housing and that the last night she saw you, you were skipping and you said that your whole life was turned around.

  (Wait.)

  My hare (you) died getting into or out of bed and you were dead before you hit the floor and so we think that it was quick and not painful. But let’s admit we need to think that. It’s better for us that you did not die alone in an alley after a beating. Instead, you came back you fought all the way back from that alley to show us how to cope, how to be good, how to be both gentle and strong. You told us to be happy and you forgave your killer, which I don’t think I can do.

  (Wait.)

  I need to tell you something. All I can think about is how good you were. How hard it must have been to be so good. I am not as good as you and even if I tried forever I couldn’t be. But in answer to your long-ago question, I’m not sad. Sometimes I feel that I could fall off this world. Sometimes I think I am totally okay and then I read an article about some terrible world thing completely unrelated to you and I spin out with grief. I can’t absorb what has happened or why. But, no matter how sad I get, or how angry, very shortly I become happy again. I think I write sad stories because I feel guilty for always recovering. Because it crushes me to think that something terrible could happen to you and we could lose you and your mother and sister could live every day with the memory of you, beaten and dehumanized, killed by a posturing child, while I could be happy again. I want to record how important you were and how wrong it is that your life was hard and then it was destroyed, for absolutely nothing, before my happiness starts to make you disappear. I’m afraid that you will disappear because I am happy. I love you still and I am sorry that my life has been so much easier than yours, Heather.

  The Little Seamaid

  FAR AWAY FROM THE FIELDS where the bent bodies of women pull sticky cotton, far away from the castles where naked princesses lament their solitude in turrets, far away from the sidewalks of cities where children dress as adults and offer their arms up to monsters from hell, out in the ocean where the water is deep and blue and moved by the great bodies of ancients live the beautiful seamaids in a library as vast as your imagination. The water is very, very, very deep, so deep indeed that no cable can fathom it; all the windmills and church
steeples and lighthouses of the world stacked upon each other to make a great tower would drift apart and disappear before the bottom was ever conceived. This is where the seamaids live together as each other’s subjects, never alone and yet each one no more under the control of the others than a neon tetra shoaling through the dark river of the Amazon.

  The library is a vast network of caves carved from the movement of water over millions of years. The most singular flowers and plants grow there. In each closed bell or furled leaf another story awaits release. The slightest agitation of the water causes them to stir and open, and intermittently release stories into the surrounding landscape with silent sighs of satisfaction. Fish, big and small, bright and dull, glide between the chambers of the library, through the cascading marine narratives. In the deepest spot of all sits a chamber that contains a flowing coral lacework like an underwater rosebush, which is the master network of all the narratives. The walls of the chamber are like long, Gothic windows of the clearest amber. And the bush inside is reflected as a slow-moving creature acting out the stories in shadow play. The roof of the chamber is encrusted with thick-lipped shells that open and close as the water flows over them. In each shell lies a glittering pearl, which would be fit for the diadem of a monarch, but whose removal would mean the death of its maker and world.

  The seamaids are capable of changing sex when it seems amusing and they intermarry at will taking from among themselves dear companions until each one has known the face of the other in all its expressions and has kissed the sweet faces of all her peers and felt devotion in all its measures. The rosebush plays out their love stories as well as the love stories of strange land creatures until it seems as if love has threaded the lives of every creature that has ever existed onto one shining necklace that hangs about the Earth. The stories from the land people are not all happy; they also warn of times when love has been scarce and even forbidden. The land creatures have seen dark families disrupted by light ones, separated and never rejoined. Marriage has been at times a fierce and dangerous net. Men have been bound to women and women to men. Love has been contorted to fit painfully narrow forms. Love has been disregarded completely. These stories send shivers of passion across the dithering bodies of the youngest seamaids. These are the ghost stories, the horror tales that they devour with the most appetite, but that they never quite believe to be true.