by Paula Fox
He didn’t look up at the attic. It used to be the first thing he raised his eyes to see on his way up the drive. He would think about all the trunks and boxes he hadn’t looked through yet, the books and magazines he hadn’t opened. He had liked its unfinished look, the places where he had to be careful not to step because the boards were loose and he could see the original lathes and plaster the house had been made from. He had liked the small dusty windows, the narrow stairs he climbed. Because the gun was there in its case, he didn’t care to think about the attic anymore. When there was a splinter in his foot, it was all he could think about; he would forget that every part of his body except where the splinter was felt fine. That’s the way it was now with the attic. The gun was like a splinter in his mind.
He was relieved the old man was feeding the cat. He was worried, though, about Mr. Scully’s memory. He hadn’t ever wondered about what cats ate. Perhaps if a cat was hungry enough, it would eat anything. He made up his mind to save scraps for it and drop them off at Mr. Scully’s. A cat would like meat, he guessed, and Mr. Scully hardly ever had meat to eat. He lived on applesauce, and the soups he made from vegetables, and oatmeal, and the dark brown bread he made once every two weeks, round loaves of bread that tasted the way hay smelled. It was getting hard for him to chew, he’d told Ned, and then there was that memory trouble—he’d forgotten to put yeast in the last batch of dough he’d made and had to throw it all away.
Until Ned started doing chores for Mr. Scully, he hadn’t realized people got old. He knew there were old people and young people and ones who were in between. But he’d not thought about people aging the way trees do, getting gnarled and dried out like the apple trees just above the stable that Papa said were too far gone to prune anymore.
Although the cat was so much on his mind, he found himself thinking often about Mr. Scully, especially at night when he felt the life of his own home gathered around him like a warm blanket, Mama reading a book in her wheelchair and Papa working on a sermon in the study—even Mrs. Scallop making one of her rugs. He would imagine David Scully in his dark little, house lighting his kerosene lamps, though Doris had had electricity put in.
On the porch, near a loose shingle it might have fallen from, Ned noticed a large, light brown husk of an insect. When he picked it up, it felt like tissue paper. Carrying it carefully in his hand, thinking to himself he might start a collection of dried bugs—they would be easier to get than foreign stamps—he walked inside and into Papa’s study.
“How are you, Neddy?” asked Papa, who was sitting at his desk in front of his Remington typewriter. “Did you have a good day in school? How is Mr. Scully?”
Mrs. Scallop glided by the study doors, her nose in the air, looking as though she were about to sail out over the porch, the meadow, the monastery, and plummet into the Hudson River. Nearly at once, she passed by again on her way back to the kitchen. Ned knew she was reminding him that she was waiting in the kitchen with his afternoon treat—as she called it. He could also tell, in the glimpse he had had of her, that she was in one of her imperious, angry moods. He was getting used to them; it never occurred to him anymore to try to find out what had made her cross.
“Mr. Scully says he’s having trouble remembering things,” Ned told his father, looking at the bug on his palm. “He got a post card from Doris today. She always sends the same picture.”
He went to stand beside the desk, keeping his palm steady. His father was staring at the sheet of paper in the typewriter; he didn’t look to see what Ned was carrying, but he put his arm around his waist and gave him a small hug.
“It’s hard to grow old and be alone,” Papa said. “And then, of course, he has no church affiliation. That makes it worse. The church looks after her own.”
“What about the others?” Ned asked. “Like Mr. Scully?”
“Don’t worry!” Papa said cheerfully. “We’ll keep an eye on him. I have a surprise for you.” He turned to look at Ned. “What’s that? Oh, a locust … The surprise is that Uncle Hilary has written about Christmas plans. He’s been assigned to write a series of articles on historic American cities, and he’d like to take you to Charleston during your vacation. I’ve talked it over with your mother and we both think it’s a fine idea.”
Ned held the locust up and found that it was nearly transparent.
“Ned?”
“That’s nice,” Ned said.
“I’m surprised. You don’t sound a bit enthusiastic.”
“Can I go see Mama?”
His father turned back to his typewriter. “She’s quite well today. Neddy,” he said, and began to look through the notes piled up next to the machine. It was like Papa not to press him. Sometimes he was glad.
He walked softly through the hall, hoping he could get up the stairs before Mrs. Scallop heard him. But just as he put his foot on the first step, Mrs. Scallop stepped out from the shadowed corner beneath the staircase and turned on the little tulip lamp that sat next to the telephone. Its rosy light fell on her long apron and the tips of her brown shoes.
“A boy needs a snack after school, after all his work,” she said.
He shrugged and went into the kitchen, where a plate full of hermit cookies and a glass of milk awaited him on the kitchen table. If he ate everything, Mrs. Scallop’s mood might change. He knew by now that she enjoyed seeing people eat what she cooked. Ned put the locust down on the table. He suddenly imagined Mrs. Scallop stuffing the whole Wallis family so full of food that they would all float up into the sky, and she would gather the strings that held them to the earth and carry them around like a bunch of human balloons. This picture in his mind made him grin and he stole a quick glance at her. She was peering at the bug.
“Isn’t that a locust?” she said. She touched it gingerly.
Ned was downing his milk as quickly as he could.
“I suppose you know how locust babies are born?” asked Mrs. Scallop in a challenging voice. Locust babies! Ned had to clench his jaw so as not to burst into laughter.
“It kills the mother, did you know that?” she went on. “They crawl out and the mother dies. That’s the way it is with locusts. Of course, having a baby always costs a mother something. Like your mother.”
Ned looked up, startled, his mouth full of hermit cookie.
“Oh, yes, my darling …” she said in a low voice. “It was after you were born that your mother came down with that terrible rheumatism!”
Ned gulped and choked for a minute, then cried, “It’s not so! I remember, when she could walk and run everywhere. And it’s not rheumatism!”
Mrs. Scallop looked triumphant. “Some sickness takes a while to show,” she said. Abruptly, she opened the cellar door next to the long sink and went down the stairs in the dark as though she were on an errand. He picked up the husk of the bug and put it on top of the cookie he hadn’t eaten. Then he went quickly upstairs to his mother’s room.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, closing the book she had been reading. “Isn’t it amazing how dark it gets? It’s not even five o’clock, yet it could be the dead of night.” She held out her hand and he bent forward until his face was close to hers and she could kiss his cheek. He straightened up and stood silently.
“Ned—what is it?” She was staring at him very seriously.
He looked briefly over his shoulder. “Mrs. Scallop said—” he began, and then hesitated. His mother’s attention at that moment bore down on him like the sun on a summer noonday; he would like to have hidden away in a cool shadow. “She said,” he went on reluctantly, “that when locusts are born, the mother locust dies. She says that you got sick because I was born.”
His mother looked so pained that he would have done anything not to have said those words. Desperately, he longed to tell her about the gray cat, about the shooting he had done at the stable. But how would that make her look?
He knew his mother hadn’t gotten sick because of his birth—perhaps there was an inchworm of doubt sti
rring in his mind because of Mrs. Scallop’s words, but that was all. He knew what he’d done, he’d pulled a false reason down like a window shade to hide the real reason he was unhappy these days.
“If I believed in witches—” his mother began. She shook her head. “No, she’s not a witch. She’s a bully, Ned. Papa keeps looking for someone else but no one wants to be out here, it’s so far from town, and I don’t blame them. I’ve often thought it would be the best thing for us to move to the parsonage, or maybe into Waterville. But your father loves this old house so. Ned, you know that isn’t true, don’t you? What Mrs. Scallop said? Your birth made me healthy. I felt so strong! I used to run upstairs and down, carrying you on my hip. One time, I climbed up into a tree with you. We sat on a big bough like two peculiar birds. I could have walked over the mountains. It was a long, long time before I got sick. Life has its surprises.”
“I didn’t believe her anyhow,” Ned said. It was the nearest he could come to a larger truth.
“Papa has been looking very hard for someone to replace Mrs. Snort-and-Bellow—”
Ned burst into laughter. His mother grinned up at him. In that second she looked like her brother, Hilary.
“When you and Papa are gone, she comes up here and stands in the doorway and gabs away at me. I can’t get rid of her. The funny thing is—she knows exactly what she’s doing, and she knows I need to be by myself and quiet a lot of the time. She’s taught me something, though. I used to think kind, humane people were the only ones to understand other people. It’s not true at all. Mrs. Scallop understands … I think each person is a puzzle for her and, in time, she solves the puzzle.”
“Does she know you’re trying to find someone else?”
“Papa wants to find another kind of work for her first. We aren’t just going to put her out.”
“Wouldn’t it be mean,” Ned asked after a moment, “to give her to someone else?”
His mother laughed. “That’s not what happens,” she said. “Your Papa and I both know she would be very good in certain circumstances. What she needs is a small country of her own to run.”
“Like the Red Queen,” Ned said.
“Exactly,” said Mama. “Now I have pleasant news. Uncle Hilary has written to you.”
Ned started smiling. Uncle Hilary almost always wrote a note to him which was included in the letters he wrote to Mama. The notes were like small presents. One time, the whole note had been about a cat he and Martha, Ned’s mother, had had when they were children. Martha, who was a few years older than her brother, had named the cat Aunt Pearlie, and for a long time, Uncle Hilary had thought the cat actually was his aunt.
Ned’s mother lifted up the book she had been reading and handed him a note written on pale green paper. It said:
My Dear Nephew,
The subject today is friendship.
One time, after climbing an Alp, I slipped and broke my collarbone. Two days later, I came down with appendicitis. After I came home to my apartment from the hospital in Zurich (where I was living at the time), a dear old friend of mine drove 20 miles just to cook me a lunch of two boiled potatoes. To boil a potato properly is not as simple as you may think. It mustn’t be soggy. It must be dry, floury. While I was reclining on my bed, happy to have escaped from doctors, my friend mashed the potatoes with a fork in a large white Swiss soup plate. He dotted them with butter, sprinkled them with a bit of salt and pepper. It was the most delicious meal I ever had. My friend, who is a painter, had given up his whole morning’s work to drive to Zurich and make me my first meal after leaving the hospital. That is friendship. On the other hand, don’t forget that you can have friends who do absolutely nothing for you or for anyone else. You like them for what they are. That’s their gift. See you in Charleston, I hope. Love,
It was signed, Uncle Hilary. There was a postscript which read: Driving 20 miles in Switzerland is no joke!
Ned showed the note to his mother, and she smiled all the time she was reading it. It was the special smile she kept for her brother. Ned wished he had a sister or a brother, a person to whom he could confide that he didn’t want to go away with Uncle Hilary; someone he could talk to about the gray cat and Mr. Scully’s forgetfulness.
The real cold had not started. What would happen in December when the ground might be covered in deep snow? The cat would starve.
Ned had always loved Uncle Hilary’s visits. They had been surprising, like mornings when he waked up and the ground was covered with snow which had fallen all night while he slept. He didn’t want to think about Uncle Hilary now—or to imagine fields of snow.
If he could keep the cat alive, it wouldn’t matter so much that he had disobeyed Papa, sneaked into the attic and taken out the gun. But if the cat disappeared, so that Ned wouldn’t know if it was dead or alive, then his taking the gun would matter more than anything in the world.
“We’ll miss you at Christmas, Neddy,” Mama said. “But when I think of the fun you will have, I don’t mind the thought of missing you.”
Ned went and stood in front of the windows so he wouldn’t have to answer. He didn’t know what to say to his mother, any more than he had known what to say to his father about Uncle Hilary’s invitation. Having to think so carefully before he spoke to his parents was terrible. It reminded him a bit of the time last spring he had neglected to memorize a poem, and when the teacher had called him up to the front of the classroom, he had had to stand there, saying nothing, feeling himself turn bright red, the children beginning to giggle, the teacher waiting, surprised, and then so disappointed in him.
“Maybe Uncle Hilary will have to go back to France,” he burst out suddenly, turning toward his mother. “Before Christmas, I mean,” he added, not looking at her.
“Oh—you needn’t worry about that,” she said. “I’m sure he won’t have to go anywhere but where he wishes to go.”
Ned felt miserable. He remembered a fairy tale Mama had read him about two children who had gotten bits of glass in their eyes, and how the glass had changed their vision of everything. He could sense that she was waiting for him to say something.
“I have to do ten long-division problems,” he said, and walked quickly out of Mama’s room. Another lie! And this one with the added flourish of a number!
That night, he thought he wouldn’t get to sleep because of all the worrying he was doing about Christmas and Uncle Hilary.
He listened to the sighing of the wind outside his windows and looked out at the sky swept clean of clouds, so that he could see the glitter of the stars. He wondered if he was going to stay awake all night long. He began to recite to himself the names of presidents of the United States. Papa had taught them to him before he had started going to school. If that didn’t put him to sleep, he made up his mind to get up, go downstairs and read all the newspapers on the library table. But he fell sound asleep just after he’d whispered, “Rutherford Birchard Hayes: 1877–1881.”
When he woke up, the first thing he thought of was the cat. He dressed hurriedly, shivering. It was a cold morning, and he wished he could get back into the warm bed, into the nest of his own warmth, and hide his head beneath the pillow and sleep all day.
“Count your blessings,” Mrs. Scallop ordered him in her loftiest voice as he sat eating his oatmeal. “You have been fortunate this morning. I didn’t do to you what you did to me—leaving a dead bug on a cookie. What if I’d put it in your oatmeal?”
He dropped his spoon and ran out of the kitchen, hearing Mrs. Scallop announce to the kitchen table that he was a minister’s son, and weren’t they always the worst?
Papa was calling out goodbye to him, but Ned didn’t answer. He grabbed his coat and books and fled from the house.
When he reached the end of the driveway, he paused and looked up at Mr. Scully’s windows. The shades were drawn. No smoke came from the chimney. He imagined how chill the air was inside; he imagined the small old man lying beneath the thin blankets Ned had often made up his bed with. He
went around to the back of the house. Nothing was stirring. Two crows flew past, black streaks against the pale morning sky. There was no sign of the cat.
He walked on down the road toward school wishing he’d meet up with Janet. Perhaps he would be able to speak to her about a strange thing that was happening to him. He had begun to fear animals, even those which he knew lived in other parts of the world.
Last week, as the children were passing the evergreen woods on their way home from school, a red-furred dog had rushed out from among the trees and made straight for Ned, barking and shaking its head from side to side like a pony. He’d fallen right down in the dirt and hidden his face until Billy, hollering and laughing, grabbed his hands and made him see that the dog was lying down next to him, licking the sleeve of his coat.
He had been looking through all the old National Geographies, too. He didn’t go all the way into the attic but sat on the top step and reached out for the magazines, shuddering at pictures of anacondas and cheetahs, even of small creatures like flying squirrels and tarsiers. He’d asked Papa if there were poisonous snakes in the old stone wall that ran along the east side of the Wallis property where the sumac grew.
“Up in the mountains,” Papa had said distractedly. “I don’t believe they come down this low. Oh, perhaps the occasional copperhead.”
Occasional copperhead! Ned had been horrified.
He saw ahead of him Janet skipping down her path to the dirt road, and he called out, “Wait up! Wait for me!” and she paused without turning around.
“Listen,” he said when he’d reached her, “what do you think about Bear Mountain? Do you think there are bears there?”
“They put roads all the way to the top,” Janet said. “When people arrive, animals go.”
“All right, they go. But where do they go?”
“I never thought about that,” Janet said.
“Are you afraid of bears?” he asked her with effort.
“Well, I might be if one was standing on my foot. But I’m not scared of a bear that’s maybe a hundred miles away.”