Everybody Loves Somebody

by Joanna Scott

  She felt the thumping work of her heart as she closed the door behind her—a common-enough symptom of her rising anxiety. A dog barked in the distance. Nearby, branches rustled under the paws of some nocturnal animal. Helen set out on a walk through the neighborhood, and though nothing seemed amiss, she felt the need to stay acutely alert. She imagined she was a guard for her family and neighbors. As long as she was awake, nothing terrible could happen. The night would pass without disruption. No child would be stolen, no band of ruffians would come to prey on roaming bums.

  By the third turn around the circle, Helen’s anxiety had begun to subside, replaced by a pleasant fatigue. She was already looking forward to her Scotch and the sleep that would finally release her from her vigilance. She paused in a pocket of air rich with the scent of honeysuckle and turned her face up to contemplate the strands of clouds that floated across the moon. She felt as proud of her vigilance as she was sure that the last hours of the night would pass uneventfully. Her neighbors would never know what she had done for them. The phantom warrior of Wakeman Road. The obvious irony of the street’s name struck her for the first time, and she slowed her pace to better appreciate her neighborhood. Behind the bayberry hedge was the Raymond house, number 35, a large brick Tudor with a slate roof. The Raymonds, it was rumored, had suffered dearly from the Crash, and since then they’d been kept afloat by Willie Raymond’s parents. Mrs. Parsons, who lived in the Cape at number 33, had been renting out rooms ever since her husband’s death two years ago. The Owens owned the shingled Colonial, number 31. Separating each house were spacious yards, the grass still fragrant with rotting dogwood blossoms.

  How unreal Helen suddenly felt—so strangely voluptuous. Imagine lying on a sheet of freshly fallen blossoms, your body still slender with youth, a boy leaning over you, your mouths latched. Imagine a touch made more electrifying by the fact that it is forbidden. Imagine lying naked beneath him, feeling him inside you. The night seemed to insist upon romance, and for a moment she found herself remembering something she had never experienced. She’d known only routine courtship, everything correct, from the rings exchanged to the devotion that bound her to her husband for life, and her memory sternly reminded her of this: there had been no backyard romance in her life, no secret passion that, had it been discovered, would have ruined her, no inappropriate desire impossible to contain. Mrs. Helen Weech Owen had lived a contained life. Of course, all that could change in an instant. She could stand here in the middle of the road and howl at the moon, rousing the whole neighborhood with the sound, an awful temptation that swept over and past her, leaving her drenched in sweat but sedate.

  She walked on, recovering her dignity with every step, so by the time she was crossing her own yard she could scold herself for getting so worked up over nothing.

  She slept fitfully and at dawn fell into a deeper sleep that lasted until noon. The sound of automobile tires on the brick drive woke her. Her husband was home from his business trip. She felt an immediate rush of joy, which subsided as she watched him slip out of the car. He would be disappointed to find her still in her nightgown, and the thought of trying to make up excuses irritated her. By the time she had arrived downstairs to greet him she felt angry at his intrusion, though he asked no questions about her apparel, and as soon as she had him settled in with his coffee, she returned to her room, where she dressed with the slow, self-conscious movements of an invalid who has forced herself to rise from bed after many months.

  The children would already be finished with classes for the day, since the school was holding its annual spring fair in the afternoon. Helen decided to catch up with them there, and since Dexter opted for rest, she walked alone to the school yard, where the small carnival, complete with booths and hayrides and a hot-air balloon, seemed dwarfed by the expansive playing fields. She spent most of the day wandering through the crowd in search of her daughter and son, unable to believe that no one had seen them or knew where they were. By 4:30 p.m., panic made it impossible for Helen to speak coherently, so it was Dexter who finally called the police.

  DEVIOUS CHILDREN. Mustering all their guilelessness, they convince the Rialto’s red-coated ticket taker to let them in without paying so they can search—unsuccessfully—for the lost purse, then they scurry back across Times Square, west on Forty-second, and down to Pennsylvania Station. Jackie blames the theft on the mad old crow man, but Gimp reminds her that they’d used money from the purse to buy the malted milk. Which reminds Jackie that she is thirsty, though for now there is nothing they can do about it, not with two measly cents between them.

  In the station they are drawn by the clash of a tambourine to a crowd that has gathered around a performer, a clown of sorts, only half in costume, with a fool’s cap on his head and a frothy pink collar pinned to his T shirt. He is balancing three eggs on a spoon while he hits a tambourine against his thigh. Except for a few laughing children tucked against their parents’ legs, the crowd watches silently as an egg drops and explodes on the floor. Jackie and Gimp push to the front, and she clutches his hand so she won’t lose him like she lost the purse. People press against her on all sides. She becomes aware of something—a book, perhaps a package—rubbing uncomfortably up and down, up and down against the small of her back. She shifts forward, but the pressure increases until she begins wondering whether a spiteful stranger is twisting a fist against her back. She jerks her elbows to gain herself more room. In a moment the pressure ceases, and she turns to catch sight of a short, bloated man with balloons for cheeks and a blunt goatee slipping backward through the crowd. As their glances meet, his flushed face and strangely friendly smile give away his intentions, igniting in Jackie a peculiar humiliation she has never felt before. She pulls her brother forward into the space left open for the clown and then through the sparser crowd behind. They run across the main hall and out through an end pavilion. Gimp lets his sister tug him across Seventh Avenue. They keep running until Jackie stops right in front of the side entrance of Macy’s department store to catch her breath.

  “Let’s go home,” she says between gasps.

  “We don’t have any money.”

  No money, no tickets, no passage home. Across the street shirtless workers are edging squares of cement for a new sidewalk. Gimp watches them for a while then turns to eye the revolving doors of Macy’s. His sister just stands there hugging herself, panting, looking vacantly ahead, so he gives her a playful push, causing her to stumble a few steps, and he runs into the store, knowing that Jackie will have to follow.

  She loses sight of him almost instantly, for the interior dazzles with its glittering ribbons wrapped around Corinthian columns, its many mirrors positioned at various angles, its jewels displayed on beds of blue velvet. Even the hundreds of hats propped on racks pulsate with light. And such heady perfumes, the scents spun into swirls by fans. And the scarves and purses, so many purses, leather, straw, alligator, cotton, all of them stuffed with paper to look plump. It is a magical place, as remote as a painting, populated by slender ladies so comfortable in their elegance that Jackie wonders whether they are actresses hired by the store to complete the displays.

  “Oh, sister!” Gimp’s voice rises above the crowd—there he is, halfway up the stairs, taunting his sister with his grin, beckoning her to follow. He turns, bumps into a woman carrying two large shopping bags. She boxes him on the ear—serves him right—as he dashes by. Jackie tries to pursue him, bounces like a pinball through the aisles and finally reaches the stairs, only to see her brother disappear around the corner of the second floor. Women’s wear, perfect for hide-and-seek. Jackie ascends two stairs at a time, dives through racks of shin-length dresses that smell of moldering hay, pushes through the clothes straight into her brother, who lunges toward her, tackles her and knocks her down, then scampers off.

  Stupid coot! She’ll show him! Still on her hands and knees, she crawls beneath the dresses into the next aisle, catches Gimp’s ankle as he runs by, leaves him sprawled on the dus
ty wooden floor. Ha! Score one!

  What a fine adventure this is turning out to be after all. Gimp chases Jackie, Jackie chases Gimp, until a salesgirl catches them both by an arm and starts to drag them toward the rear stairway. But they yank free and each hurtles off in the opposite direction, one upstairs to the third floor, one downstairs to the first.

  Safely alone, Jackie decides to let Gimp come after her rather than pursuing him. She wanders through lingerie and shoes and finds another stairway leading to the basement, where she discovers a vast market made to look even more expansive with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on all sides. There are chocolate bars, pints of fresh raspberries, peaches, cheese, fresh breads and rolls, packets of cookies and lemon drops. Jackie imagines herself a poor orphan set loose in Paradise. She manages to stuff her pockets without anyone noticing and even brazenly stops to ask a deli clerk for directions to the water fountain. She is feeling utterly pleased with herself as she bends over the curling stream of water. But when a pair of arms wraps around her from behind she shrieks, choking on the last sip of water, causing nearly everyone in the area to stop what they’re doing and stare.

  “Gotcha!”

  She wipes her lips with the back of her hand, smiles uneasily at all the strangers, and grabs a fistful of her brother’s hair. “Never, never do that again!” she whispers, releasing him with a shove. There’s still plenty of fun to be had, though Gimp is smart enough to wait until they’re outside the store, the two of them sauntering through the exit and up Broadway like flush crooks, feeling ever so proud of themselves, which is only suitable in a city where retailers and restaurants all hang signs advertising themselves as the world’s best. The Owen children fit right in to this cosmopolitan machine—already they’ve learned how to take advantage of those who’d like to take advantage of them.

  They are inexperienced in the delicate art of shoplifting because the opportunity has never before presented itself. During these hard times, stores in their town tend to keep anything of value on shelves behind the counter. Macy’s and its ten acres of treasures offered itself up to them, and they’d taken what they could use—two peaches, candy and cookies, and, voil�a matronly brassiere, size 36C, which Gimp whips out with a shout from beneath his shirt, looping it into a noose around his sister’s neck.

  So here’s one more lively jest, one more farce to break up the monotony, Jackie galloping along a city street, a brassiere strung around her neck, her little brother with the buckled reins in his hands. Giddyup! But there’s a change in Jackie’s frenzy, so subtle that even Gimp doesn’t notice until it’s too late. Whoa, wild girl! This bucking, runaway mare won’t be stopped, and now Gimp can hardly keep up with her, so without thinking he pulls with all his strength on the elastic strap, forcing his sister to spring backward while her legs lunge forward. She topples like a tower of blocks, the back of her head landing with a dull crack—sickening sound—on the sidewalk.

  The world stands absolutely still, a hush falls over the city, and piles of clouds slide across the sky to shield the sun from this awful sight. Gimp can’t make himself move to help his sister, and she’s not moving at all. If she is dead, and her appearance would have it so, then he has killed her. He watches strangers come to his sister’s aid just as he watched the newsreels, mouth open, eyes wide. History rolls on, and there is nothing Gregory Dexter Owen can do about it.

  A man loses his hat as he goes down—genuflects is what it seems from Gimp’s point of view, his beloved sister the object of worship, a martyr laid out on a warm stone bed, soon to be beatified. Gimp snatches the hat before a woman crushes it beneath her foot, and from behind he restores the hat to the man’s head, the least he can do for this Samaritan, who in turn restores life to his sister. She moans while the man cradles the back of her head with his open hand. “That’s quite a lump, sweetheart!” he murmurs. Two women standing nearby begin to titter, as though the man had said something obscene. Gimp reaches for the brassiere and unwinds it from Jackie’s neck, not to relieve his sister of any discomfort or indignity but because he’s scared someone will identify the garment as a stolen article. Anyway, isn’t it time to get going, Jackie? Gimp wishes his sister would scramble to her feet and tell all the gawkers to mind their own business. But she’s still moaning, unaware of the attention she has drawn to herself, so it’s up to Gimp, now that he’s fairly composed, to send the spectators away.

  “That’s all right, we’re fine,” he says, trying to drag Jackie up by her elbows.

  “You wait a minute, half-pint,” a voice advises from the rear of the crowd, which parts to let the policeman through, brass buttons, billy club, and all, a terrifying sight to a young boy who has just stolen a brassiere from Macy’s department store and nearly offed his sister on Broadway. It takes all the control he can muster to keep himself from darting away, but he does more than that, he summons his youthful nerve and manages to stare at the policeman with teary, hound-dog eyes while he helps his sister to her feet.

  “I’m fine,” she lies, finally coming to her senses though her head pounds.

  “See, she’s fine,” echoes Gimp, and they start walking away from the law’s scrutiny and the curiosity of strangers. Within seconds the small crowd disperses, leaving the man with the hat standing beside the policeman, who calls after the children, “No more funny business, you got me?”

  “Yessir,” replies Gimp, stuffing the brassiere into his trouser pocket.

  So the children are on their own again. They keep wandering, but Jackie’s aching head makes it impossible for them to have more fun. They eat the two peaches and pause to contemplate the displays in bakery windows. Toward four o’clock the sky darkens to the color of asphalt and a few plump raindrops fall. The children don’t hold hands as they walk—they will probably never hold hands again, since they no longer care enough about each other to offer comfort. For no precise reason, they have lost a crucial bit of interest in each other and prefer their inward selves. And somehow they both suspect that they will lose more interest over the weeks and months to come, until they are strangers to each other, their sympathies as different as their personalities.

  They feel bored rather than sad. At Jackie’s suggestion they return to the train station and explain to one of the conductors waiting near their gate that all their money has been stolen—which isn’t quite true, since they still have two pennies. The conductor motions them onto the train, and later, after the train has left the station and the conductor is collecting tickets, he winks at the children and walks past them, clicking the money changer on his belt as he goes.

  They ride in silence. When the train emerges from the tunnel, they expect daylight but are greeted with a low cloud bed darkened by dusk. Gimp falls asleep, his head bobbing forward on his chest. Jackie rests her face against the window and wonders with unfamiliar melancholy about all the people she will never meet.

  COULD BE—NO—then what about—about what? Never mind all that, the possibilities, just the possibilities, will kill her, but wouldn’t that be a relief, heaven the antidote to worry, how she hates to worry when there are so many possibilities, none of them comforting, though she’d much rather find out that the children have run off instead—instead of what? Never mind about that. This: the possibility of their disgust? Oh, they have every right to be disgusted with their mother, it’s her fault they’re missing, and she should hack away at herself with a cleaver until her blood fills the streets of this quiet American town. Then she’ll never have to know what she doesn’t want to know, coward that she is, a failure, and her children will suffer for—but no, don’t say that! Having been born, they must live, all children must live, except they won’t, not all, and her children may be among the few...now there’s no use thinking the worst, Helen Weech, no use thinking at all, and if she could she’d lock the door against the possibilities, though the worst has a way of waiting around to avail itself of the right opportunity, so she mustn’t let that happen, mustn’t give any of those awful stor
ies a chance to be told, as if she were in control of what might have already happened and could go back to that moment when she held them both in her arms, the last time she held them, the day that unlucky drifter over in Huntington burst into flames, her children in her arms squirming to free themselves. If only she had taken a knitting needle and stitched them to her, skin to skin, then they wouldn’t be missing—ridiculous, Helen Weech! You should listen to your husband, who has pointed out that most children get themselves lost, and most of those children are eventually found. Leaving the few possibilities allowed by God...and then there are the causes to consider, all of them unthinkable until they are revealed, while for the time being there’s the worry, thunder in the sky portending nothing more than possibilities, darkness closing in on her from all sides, her voice like the chirp of a lone cricket when she calls out into the night for her children, such a weak, useless noise, though Dexter doesn’t want to hear it and is asking her to please stop, stop, stop it, Helen! holding his hands over his ears while Mrs. Parsons and Mrs. Raymond are busying themselves putting away dishes left to dry in the dish rack, pretending that such an effort will help. Here, this will help! Crash of china on the tile floor—but you see, Helen, it doesn’t help, the sound disappears into the silence of their false pity, poor dear, why don’t you sit down, but sitting only makes it worse, at least when you’re up and on your feet you can kick out if need be, or you can bolt, escape from the premier possibility, the one that squelches its fellows and becomes real, like a toy in the nursery brought to life by the power of a child’s affection, tender fingers caressing, little lips curled around first words, everything ordered to carry on the process of life, a slow, ordinary turning, no accidents, no interruptions, flesh displacing the air, life miraculously sustaining itself—until something stops or falters or something else intrudes, obstructs, strikes, turning meaning into nonsense, hickory dickory, and the children are suddenly missing, the space around you squeezed by darkness, danger crushing you until you can’t bear the pain of it, so you swallow the syrup offered by the doctor—where did he come from?—without feeling yourself swallow, your throat numb beneath the weight of the night, and don’t you know about the possibilities contained within the night? You, Helen, are an expert, a nocturnal archangel who can find what others can’t in the dark. Minute by minute.