“Shit,” she said out loud, looking upward. Glancing at the mess her drink had made, she grimaced and went into the hall without turning on the light there. The stairs were dark, but she could see the faint light coming from the upstairs bathroom, the door half shut to cut the glare to his room. From the bottom of the stairs, she looked up and listened. It was quiet. All she could hear was the buzz of the clock in the hall. She stood still, hardly breathing, not wanting to make a sound and wake him, if something had fallen—
—and hadn’t woken him. She listened intently. There was no furtherthump!, he did not call for her, and Barbara relaxed, diverted her attention back to the floor and the spilled drink. She leaned down and righted the glass. The smell of whiskey filled her nostrils and she wondered idly if it would score the varnish. On her way to get a cloth to wipe up the mess, something else caught her attention, again from upstairs.
Whatever she heard was enough to stop her. She paused between living room and dining room and figured she would just go up and have a peek. Petey was maybe having a nightmare. She remembered reading something once about young children sleepwalking during times of trauma and he wasn’t yet used to the stairs.
In the pause between deciding, she heard a giggle. Then something else, not intelligible, but a word maybe. Very distinctly.
Barbara frowned, and went to the bottom of the stairs, one foot on the bottom step, listening. “Petey?” It sounded loud in the dark hall. It was very quiet upstairs, the hush falling into a gap, like breath held.
Feet bare, padding across the floor, quick little steps (too little, she acknowledged before it was too late to take it back but that wasimpossible) across the floor upstairs. Barbara tightened, swallowed.
“Petey?” she said, and for the first time realized how dark it was up the stairs, in the hall, and how she couldn’t see. There was silence up there again, but she was oddly reminded of slumber parties as a child, the little girls spread out over bedrooms (never at Elizabeth Staizer’s house, no way) giggling in the dark, daring each other into darker rooms, down hallways, nasty tales of hooks and prowlers in basements and in closets.
She took the stairs with soft steps.
“Petey?” she said louder, stronger, at the top of the stairs.We’re only fooling! The light was on in the bathroom and she pushed the door open as she passed it, illuminating the hall and Petey’s room, in a band, from the doorway to his bed, pushed against the far wall (by the window).
Party’s over!
He slept. His covers were pulled under his arms, elbow tucked close to him, fist under chin, just as she’d left him. His face was still and relaxed.
She watched to see a smile appear, a suppressed giggle released,fooled ya! fooled ya!, but none came. His lips were parted slightly, eyes still under pale lids. It was not fakery.
Barbara frowned. Her eyes darted around the room, indexing and marking off what might (or might not) have made the noise she’d heard. His comics were still piled as they had been when she putScooby Doo back on top; there was no laundry in a dark corner. Everything was in its place. She began to relax.He hadn’t heard it. Hadn’t woken up. She breathed deep and let it go. Smiled.
She went to him anyway, wanting to touch him, like saying good night, and therewas something out of place. The closet door was open, pressed against the wall, wide.
Pulling the door closed, there was a brief moment when she glanced inside and thought,It’s so dark in there you can’t see the back wall, and marveled at the fact before pushing the door shut. She gave it a final push before turning back to Petey and (with her other hand) touched his shoulder, lightly. It seemed enough.I heard it swing open, hit the wall. That was the thump.
On her way out of the door, the thought crossed her mind that it had been closed when she had put Petey to bed, because she had thought about moving the untidy pile of comic books in there, to get them out of view. The door had been shut, and she had left it for morning. She gave it a second glance. The latch may be loose. Houses move and settle over and over in the spring thaw. She dismissed it with a shrug. Out of the bedroom, she absently wiped her hand on her pants leg, the hand that had latched the little door.
It was only after ten. Even so, once downstairs she cleaned up her spilled drink and went to bed. She wanted to be upstairs.
Let his dreams be good. All our dreams.
Neither Petey nor Barbara woke up again that night.
From inside the closet, the sounds were muffled, as though taking place very far away. Remotely, as Barbara was dreaming about Dennis, and the hiding of things in desk drawers that could not be opened, the strains of red rover penetrated only once, to be quickly lost in the dream sound of a computer’s hum as she checked e-mails that she could not read, and her pace quickened becauseDennis is at the door! Dennis is at the door! In the closet the game changed to a slow and eternal game of tag. Petey did not hear the cries,You’re it! Because he too was far away, in a playground, surrounded.
Dreams covered the sleepy sounds of endless summer and the warm breeze was silent. If either of them noticed the sweet scent of tall grass, or felt the soft brush of dandelion fur under chins, it went unheeded in the upstairs of the house on Belisle. In places distant the sun shone at midday forever.
Petey, more sensitive perhaps to the underscore of summer places, stirred first around threeA .M. He shifted in his bed as, in his own dreams, the children on the playground scattered at the footfalls of a faceless principal in farmer’s clothes. Behind the closet door, clouds gathered, the sun disappearing behind shadows. The sounds of play stopped. For a long time there was nothing, the sound that darkness makes.
Then, awful sounds under thunder.
Two
Barbara got off her knees in the front hall with a groan, and surveyed her work. The floor was so bright and shiny, and more so now, after a good going-over with oil soap and a cloth. It had taken two hours, but the end result was gorgeous. The floor looked brand new, which, of course, it was. It was perfect now. And for a moment, there was slight panic inside her.
What now?There had been no plan for the rest of the morning. She had simply seen the small smudge at the doorway and decided to wash the hall floor. For two hours her mind had been deliciously blank in the repetitive motions and productive labor of housework, and now she was done. Little notions threatened.
Quickly, a list began forming in her head. There was plenty to do. The problem was that most of what had to be done were monstrous, horribly difficult things, enormous life choices that had to be made. Get a job, get a life, get over Dennis, stop thinking about the whore, don’t call your mother, the world is not looking at you, plan for your retirement, figure out a budget, put Petey on a diet, make some friends—
It engulfed her. She decided, languidly almost, to wash the walls in the kitchen. She could use the oil soap. She thought it was okay to use on paint. She would read the label.
She got up with another groan(oh god lose ten pounds) and with mincing, careful steps over her perfect floor—thank god something can still work for me—she picked up the bottle of oil soap from the living room floor(I could do that next, big job, she thought delightedly) and read the back.
She read until she found what she was looking for,painted surfaces and washable wallpaper. She twisted off the cap and took a sniff, closing her eyes and enjoying the soapy, clean smell of it—unnecessary, given that the whole hall, and probably most of the house, smelled of it. She’d been needing a lot of busy work.
It smells good. Some things are still good,she thought, and raised her eyes to see a little girl standing in the dining room. They stared at each other for a moment, just a moment, and then the little girl smiled broadly, revealing tiny, even white teeth.
It was impossible not to, and Barbara smiled back. “Hello,” she said kindly, not sure what else to say. She flicked her eyes behind the girl looking for a mother, the buttercup delivery of the previous week coming to mind.
“Hi,” the little girl
said shyly. She shrugged her shoulders coyly and might have batted her eyes.
Barbara was charmed. She walked over and knelt close in front of the child. “And what’s your name?”
The little girl blushed. “Mariette,” she said.
“I’m Barbara. Does your mother know you’re here?” she asked, and looked again toward the back door, wondering if a mother was indeed either waiting at the door, or looking for her daughter.
“My mother’s dead,” the child said plainly.
Barbara was flustered, her face reddening. “Oh dear, I’m so sorry to hear that—” and all the emotion of her morning climbed into her throat and hit her hard. She blinked away the too-familiar sting and stood up.
“Well, someone must be looking for you, dear,” she said. “Do you live close by?” And she took a good look down at the little girl.
The child’s hair was summer-blond, the sort that would darken in time. It was long and, if tangled some, it looked to be clean. The ends curled up charmingly in a wave. She’d always wanted a little girl. This one was such a pretty little thing; she couldn’t imagine her without a mother. So sad. She wore no coat and Barbara frowned, thinking how cool it had been that morning, although the day now warmed up by noon.
The little girl didn’t answer her. Instead she said, “I want your little boy,” in a voice so much like a baby, it too pulled at her.
Barbara turned away from the child, not trusting her emotions. She swallowed and fussed over the soap bottle, screwing the lid on tight and wiping the clean sides of it with her cloth, finally putting it with a swipe on the bookshelf against the wall. “Oh,” she said. “Well, Petey’s at school. He’s not home until after three-thirty. You could come back then…would you like that? Would you like me to take you home?” Thinking, it would be so nice if Petey had made a friend in the neighborhood—even if it was a little girl who had to be no more than four or five from the size of her—and she turned back to the child.
The child was gone.
“Mariette?” she called and walked into the living room, which was empty. She tried again. “Mariette?” a little annoyed that someone would feel free just to wander around someone else’s home—the thought poking through about the little girl’s mother being dead and maybe she didn’t—
Barbara walked all the way around the house. She did not see the little girl anywhere. The back door stood open and the screen door was loose, but she had left it open herself to air the house.
She shrugged and hoped the child was all right. And hoped that she would come back after school, and maybe(oh god please) bring a brother for Petey to play with.
At least there are kids in the neighborhood,she thought.I was starting to think we were going to be stuck in the house together forever.
By the last week of April, spring was waving its pale arm. The snow had been gone for weeks, but the weather had been unpredictable. The sun had been reluctant to make a commitment and so had hidden itself behind gray clouds and rain.April showers bring May flowers had worn out its welcome. On the first day that the field behind the school was declared dryenough, Petey’s class had gym outside.
Grades four to six had Mr. Casem for gym. He was an enormous man, towering over the littler kids, some of whom only came up to waist level. He coached the school teams with suppressed rage, his face apoplectically red the last half hour of basketball and floor hockey. In the winter he wore his silver whistle with a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants (there was a row of them hanging in his office off the gymnasium) and in warmer weather he wore gray sweat shorts and a white T-shirt, and the whistle. He was tall enough to look down on most of the teachers. He had a deep, manly voice and tended to shout things rather than say them, and it had been decided years before Petey ever got to Middleton School that it would be more appropriate for the classroom teachers to provide gym classes for the younger grades.
June Waddell, a larger, heavier woman in her early forties, taught gym with less enthusiasm than penmanship, but more than second grade reading. She regularly forgot that Wednesdays were gym days and rarely had the appropriate clothing with her. On the days that she remembered, her gym clothes were a pair of brown athletic shorts from ten years earlier when, in a fit of early love, she had joined an aerobics class, and a T-shirt with cats or flowers on it. She almost never had a whistle. She yelled.
On the field with two dozen eight-year-olds, she did a lot of yelling, first calling above the din of grade-school conversations for Betty Smith and Marshall Hemp to be captains and to start choosing up teams.
“And by golly, be quick about it,” she said loudly. When the best friends and second best friends were all chosen, Mrs. Waddell hurried things along by arbitrarily choosing the rest of the players for them.
“Positions!” she called and the kids ambled onto the field, boys running, girls walking, to take their sides. Mrs. Waddell blew the whistle and they ran in random directions, not one of them particularly athletically inclined, but with lots of dig.
“Way to hustle, Betty,” she called out, not really caring, to the little girl playing center. Betty’s best friend Tiffany Winders was right wing and her next-best friend Laurie Perkins was left wing. The boys were defense. Linda Williams—ultimately chosen for Betty’s team—was in goal. She said it waseasier.
“Guard your goalie, defense!” Mrs. Waddell called out, hoping her voice sounded more enthusiastic than she felt. She hated team sports in the vague way of someone who had never played.
With the exception of Bethany Sanders in goal, the entire boys’ team had followed the progress of the ball across the field, without any respect to boundaries or positions. Mrs. Waddell sighed deeply. “Mind your positions!” she called out, entirely unsure suddenly if that was the rule of the game.At least, she thought,Linda had stayed in goal (and was now standing in the middle, uninterestedly postured with shoulders slumped, picking at a scab on her hand). Mrs. Waddell lost sight of ball and key players in the squirming mass. “Don’t bunch up!” she called out helpfully. She was ignored.
Players suddenly scattered in all directions and stopped. Heads turned to look at Mrs. Waddell and she blew her whistle and started toward the field when she saw a pile of kids wriggling on the field.
“Get off me!” Getoff!” someone was shouting from under the pile.
The “pile” was actually the new boy and Todd Campbell, who wasn’t in the pile exactly, but his leg was caught between the other two boys, the bottom half distinguishable only by his shirt. Andy Devries let go of a very bad swear and Mrs. Waddell blanched, unable even to react before his arm swung out and caught Peter Parkins on the side of the head in a good, solid blow.
“Get thefuck off me, youpig!”
“Language, Andy!”
She blew her whistle again, sharply, and called out, “That’s enough, Andy Devries, that’senough!”
Peter had since rolled off the boy, and was now covering his head. Andy kept swinging, smooth, pleasant features twisted up in rage. Several blows had met their mark before Mrs. Waddell managed her way onto the field and past the other kids, soccer now entirely forgotten, the ball resting a couple of feet away from the open net. Linda had left the goal and stood with Betty and Tiffany, all three girls with hands over their mouths, undecided between giggling and horror. Peter lay on the ground, curled up, covering the back of his head and as much of the sides as he could manage while Andy kept punching mindlessly, each sock punctuated with a grunt or a slur. Andy’s neck was red, as though from a scratch. With involuntary dismay, Mrs. Waddell noticed that Peter’s shirt had pulled up over his belly. She had the urge to go and tug it down. Mud and dirt clung to his clothes and his flesh.
“Get off him, Andy! Andy, right now! That’s enough!” she called as, sprinting to the site, she grabbed Andy’s arm in mid-arc and pulled him recklessly to his feet. His face was tear-stained and he looked wide-eyed at her as though realizing suddenly where he was. She felt instant pity for him and let go of his arm.
“Are you all right, Peter?” she said kindly. He did not change his position and she could feel him trembling under her hand. She rubbed his back and asked him again. The boy was crying. “Can you stand up for me, dear?”
“Fat pig broke my collarbone!” Andy screamed. There was a gasp from some girl or other.
June Waddell stood fiercely and stamped her foot. “That’s enough out of you, Mr. Devries!”
“Hedid,” Andy muttered, rubbing his neck in the general direction of his collarbone where a red mark had welted, but would fade within a half hour.
Mrs. Waddell bent over Peter again and rested her hand on his back. The boy continued crying, although it had slowed to sobs. He would not move his hands away from his head. A more sensitive teacher might have realized that the boy, hurt and embarrassed, was hiding. Mrs. Waddell thought he was milking it and was losing patience. The period would be over before this was settled and she had no idea where to go from here. Mr. Casem would have dragged Peter to his feet, made the boys shake on it and walked off, but Mrs. Waddell wasn’t sure she could physically force Peter to his feet. He was a big boy.
She settled instead for patting his back and reverting to toddler techniques. She said (as quietly as possible) to Peter, “Well, Peter, if you don’t want to get up and resume the game, you’ll just have to lie there while we play around you.” Then she stood up and said, “What happened here?”
The children all spoke at once. She signaled for quiet, and got it, and asked Andy what happened. He said Peter leaped on him just as he was about to kick the ball into the goal. Marshall seconded this.
An odd silence descended. She looked over to the group of three girls who stood closest. Linda, who had been in goal, was most likely to have seen what happened.
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