Ultraviolet

by Suzanne Matson

  Steve holds back his own crying for her sake. He leans up against the front seat on his knees and pats her shoulder from behind. “It’s okay, Mommy.”

  Mom blows her nose and reaches around to squeeze Steve’s hand with her icy cold one. She doesn’t look at him, but says “I’m sorry” at the same time she squeezes, so he knows the words are meant for him alone, though he wishes they were for both him and Dad.

  Dad drives steadily down the mountain and doesn’t say anything more. Finally, Steve settles back into his bed of blankets and pulls them around him, tucking his own self in. Usually they stop somewhere to take off the chains, but this time Dad drives on them all the way home, and Steve likes their predictable thumping, even when it gets loud on the asphalt. When his eyes begin to close, he makes them open up again. Once he sits up so that he won’t feel so sleepy, and presses his cheek against the cold glass. He needs to stay ready the entire trip, just in case Mom needs to hear his voice again to make her stay. He doesn’t know how he got this power to pull her back. But it’s a thing he will carry, with concentration and both arms around it, the way he learned to carry their new baby, because Mom said the baby was depending on him. And he guesses that just about everyone is now—something could break if he lets go. He doesn’t know what, exactly, and he doesn’t know why. But he knows it’s up to him.

  THE FLIGHT OF IVY

  Portland, 1963

  Lessons are in her brother Steve’s room, using his blackboard when he’s at school, and it’s nice, just the two of them, Samantha and her mother. Samantha can’t wait until she’s old enough to be at school, too, so her mother started the lessons. The lessons are serious time, her brother’s delicate model planes shivering on their threads above them. The chalk taps while Samantha sounds out cat and bat and that. “T” and “h” march together, best friends. Silent “e” is lazy: He’s along for the ride and does nothing himself, but he makes the others behave differently, hat to hate. Her mother erases and gives her more words and she gets them all, and her mother shakes her head and says, Look at you, so smart.

  Her mother drinks coffee in the morning and writes things that aren’t for Samantha, sitting in her special armchair with her feet up. She writes pages full of inky lines and crosses them out and writes something else and then, when she has enough pages, she types her words with the heavy black typewriter that she unpacks from its case and sets up on the dining room table. Sometimes she lets Samantha have a sheet of scrap paper and type whatever letters she wants. Samantha likes to makes lists of the words she knows how to spell, and the lists get longer every day. Her mother showed her how to change to the red part of the ribbon, so sometimes she makes red lists.

  Her mother says her pages are stories, but she never reads them to Samantha. She says, “Maybe one day when you’re a big girl you can read them yourself. Maybe they’ll be in a magazine and you can read them there.”

  “What are they about?” Samantha wants to know. She hopes they are about cats like their cat Smoke, or fairies, or maybe elephants in India or children going nanga punga there, like her mother told her. They say nanga punga in India, and it means nudie, like you are when you come out of the tub and your mother wraps you in a towel with a hug. Samantha likes the towel hug and she likes to hear her mother say nanga punga, and she likes to say it, too. Her mother says the stories aren’t about nanga punga or elephants. She says they are about Life As We Live It. Samantha thinks this might still allow for a story about Smoke, who is alive and her best friend besides her mother. Her mother puts the stories in large envelopes and hands them directly to the mailman when he drives up to their mailbox in his truck. She always crosses her fingers on both hands when the truck drives away, so Samantha does, too. She knows her mother wants her stories to Produce an Income, which is something she needs to Get Free, but free of what? When she asked once, her mother said, “Never mind.”

  For a few days after she sends away an envelope, her mother practices shorthand on her tablet, which she told Samantha was a kind of shortcut, so Samantha sits on the couch and writes things on a tablet too, in a series of looped “o”s that come as close as she can to what her mother is doing. Sometimes stories and sometimes shortcut. Shortcut can Produce an Income, too. They do their writing while they are still in pajamas and it’s nice that way.

  Her mother gets busy after tablet time. She jumps up from the armchair and changes into pedal pushers and rushes to do the breakfast dishes. She makes Samantha dress in a hurry, too. “It would be just like them,” she says.

  “Who, Mamma?”

  “Your aunts. Just like them to drop in before I was dressed.” Aunt Celia and Auntie Vera never drop in, but they might. Samantha understands that you never can tell, and she and her mother must not be caught lazing about with tablets while there are breakfast dishes in the sink. Her mother’s tennis shoes go slap slap slap back and forth to the garage, where the washer and dryer are, or she’ll clatter the glass grapes down on the coffee table after dusting. Then Samantha wishes Steve would get home, or her father, to play Go Fish. In the afternoon, she is allowed to turn on the television and watch cartoons, but her mother tells her to keep it low, so she sits cross-legged in front of the screen, with Smoke in her lap, close enough so they can hear.

  Her mother and father are talking in the living room, which is unusual because it’s Strike time, and her mother is always mad at her father during Strike time, and they don’t talk much. Samantha doesn’t like the not talking, but otherwise she likes Strike time because sometimes her dad is home during the day to play Go Fish, or he’ll take her out on errands and let her pick coins from the little rubber change holder that is round like a turtle until he squeezes it from the ends and it opens up. She puts nickels in the vending machines at the supermarket, hoping that the twists of the knob will give her exactly the plastic cat or bracelet she has her eye on, but it never does.

  She listens to her parents from her favorite corner by the bookshelf, which has a table beside her mother’s armchair on one side, and the end of the couch on the other, so it almost makes a little cubby for her. She likes figuring out the titles on every straight soldier of her mother’s books, wedged together on the shelf. A few are too hard, but not The Good Earth or All the King’s Men—those are easy.

  “I’ll just have to do it,” her mother says. “Six months, or maybe eight.”

  “Who will watch her?”

  “Mrs. Miller down the street said she could.”

  “You belong home with the children.”

  “What do you think I want?”

  “It’ll get better.”

  “It won’t, it never does. Even when you go back to work, we’ll still be in the hole.” Her mother’s voice is cold. Then, scary: “I’m so sick of it.”

  When the lamp crashes down by her, the one her mother picked out for herself for a Mother’s Day present, the white glass shade breaks into two neat halves. At first Samantha thinks the lamp must have jumped by itself, but then she sees the cord is wrapped around her fingers. She stays still and small and ready for a storm. But her mother only comes over to silently regard the broken pieces. “You didn’t mean it.” And when Samantha still doesn’t speak, “Look, we can glue it. Don’t worry about Mrs. Miller. It will only be for a little while.”

  Mrs. Miller is just down the street. Her mother says she is nice, but then cries the first morning she takes her there. Samantha decides that Mrs. Miller is neither nice nor not nice. She’s old and fat and sighs every time she heaves herself out of a chair. She gives Samantha a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk at lunchtime. She’s out of jelly and says she’ll get some, but always forgets. There are no other kids there, and no toys, so Samantha brings her own bag of Barbies and coloring books and easy readers. She’s not allowed to bring Smoke, because her mother says Mrs. Miller wouldn’t like it, and Smoke might run away and be too far down the street to know which way was home. Those days pass in gray, with the voices
in the other room from Mrs. Miller’s television stories jumping loud and then dangerously silky and soft. The grown-ups in the stories are always mad at each other like her mom is at her dad, but they do it with slamming doors and music that makes you feel like monsters are coming.

  She likes it better when it turns into summer and the new babysitter is a high school girl named Gladys who comes to the house. Gladys teaches Samantha how to play solitaire and to shuffle, and plays Go Fish as long as Samantha wants to. Every morning after her mother leaves for work, Gladys faces the mirror over the couch to put on makeup, her knees digging into the cushions, and Samantha watches from the arm of the couch: first the brush that draws color across the eyelids, then the tiny comb that blackens the eyelashes. She finishes by dipping a finger in the little pot of pink gloss for the lips. Gladys always puts some on Samantha’s lips; it tastes like strawberry.

  Her brother is old enough to play in the neighborhood, so it’s mostly just Samantha and Gladys all day. Gladys squirts her with the hose in the backyard, or they lie in the sun on towels and listen to the transistor radio Gladys produces from her big bag. Princess, the miniature poodle next door, yaps away at them on the other side of the Driscolls’ fence, but Gladys isn’t bothered. Not like Samantha’s mother, who always shouts “Be quiet” to Princess, which only makes her bark more. Her mother has gotten into an argument with Mrs. Driscoll over it. She says she can’t hear herself think with that dog. She says Mrs. Driscoll is a Fake, and that her fake niceness means nothing, because she’ll just smile to her face but still let Princess bark. Her mother wouldn’t be surprised if she even wants Princess to do it. Then she tells Samantha about her neighbor on Wygant Street who was the real-thing nice, and her name was Dixie, and she had an adorable dog. But Samantha has never been to Wygant Street. Her brother likes the kids on the street they have now. Samantha isn’t allowed to play with them yet, because there are none her age.

  Her mother asks her questions when she comes home: Did Gladys have any friends over? Did she talk on the phone a lot? Sometimes Gladys does both of these things, but Samantha wants her mother to like Gladys, so she says no. Still, her mother finds things to frown over, like Gladys’s long hairs on the furniture where she sits and brushes it, or gum wrappers left here and there, or milk glasses in the sink not even rinsed, so there are little white moons on the bottom. When Gladys has a cigarette, she smokes it in the backyard, and buries the butt in the dirt by the shed where Samantha’s mother doesn’t have flowers. Samantha told Gladys it was okay, her mother used to smoke too, though that was before she saw Samantha puffing on her pencil during morning tablet time. After that she didn’t.

  Her mother takes a picture of her in the front yard on the first day of kindergarten. Samantha holds a plaid lunchbox that matches her plaid dress, and has to squint because she’s looking into the sun. Everything about going to school turns out to be nice. Her brother walks her every day and isn’t allowed to leave her until she’s inside the primary wing. He’s in the upper wing, starting fifth. Even if his friends from the neighborhood join up with them on the walk, he holds her hand on every cross. She has her own desk with her name on a strip of paper taped to it. Six girls can crowd around the wide-angle spray of the big curved sink in the lavatory. You press a ring on the floor with your foot to make the water come on. The warm water on her fingers makes her dreamy, and she is always the last one to dry her hands. At noon she lines up to pay her nickel and take a carton of cold milk from the crate that Mr. McNeil wheels in. You can ask for chocolate or regular and she’d like chocolate but her mother tells her to take regular, so she does. She unlatches her lunchbox and compares sandwiches with Sandra and Carolyn. They listen to Mrs. Field read a chapter of Charlotte’s Web while they eat. After recess, they go back to workbooks or reading group and Samantha collects more stars.

  Her across-the-street neighbor, Mary Ann, got a spider monkey for her birthday.

  Samantha’s mother says Mary Ann gets anything she wants, and that monkeys belong free in jungles like they were when she was a girl in India, and that the mother, Pauline, keeps a filthy house, and that all she does is watch soap operas the whole day and smoke. But Mary Ann’s mother is always nice to Samantha, even if Mary Ann herself is not. Mary Ann is two grades older and not only has a monkey, but also a built-in swimming pool with a diving board. Mary Ann invites certain children in the neighborhood to swim, and the ones who aren’t invited are allowed to stand outside the chain-link fence separating the front yard from the back and watch. Once Mary Ann said Samantha could come into the pool and Samantha ran home to put on her suit, but Samantha’s mother saw that there were no adults watching and told Samantha she could not.

  The monkey is tiny, with a heart-shaped white face and dark eyes. Her name is Ivy. Mary Ann’s father built Ivy a pen in the basement with a swinging hammock and a platform and some toys. Ivy spends all her time jumping from the floor to the platform and back down again. Mary Ann sometimes takes Ivy for a walk in the neighborhood on a leash, but then has to scoop her up and carry her, because Ivy doesn’t seem to know what to do on the ground.

  Mary Ann’s parents, Pauline and Zeb, sit up at night by the pool, drinking beer and smoking. They have a sliding glass door off their bedroom so they can walk barefoot to the patio from the bed anytime they want to. You can see through the open drapes of the sliding glass door that they have a color television in the bedroom, and also a wide bed, a giant one, not like Samantha’s parents with two single beds and a nightstand between. On the nightstand rest her mother’s Guidepost magazines and a box of tissues, one always pulled up like a little white flag.

  Waves of laughter come from Mary Ann’s house. Sometimes there is shouting, too, or the sound of glass breaking—you can hear it when the slider isn’t closed—but the shouting comes in bursts and then it isn’t too long before everyone is sitting around the pool again, laughing. When there is shouting at Samantha’s house, it’s usually her mother shouting at her father, and then, finally, her father shouting back for her mother to shaddup, which only makes Samantha’s mother shout more. Then her mother goes quiet, which should be a relief, but isn’t. Sometimes she stays quiet for days, and though she talks to Samantha and Steve, it’s only enough to feed them and do what needs to be done. The quiet in the house feels like a new, fifth person has moved in, and that person has no name and no shape and no face, but lives in every room and makes them all act stiff and speak in low voices and feel like they are the ones that don’t belong.

  One day Mary Ann invites Samantha to go with her to the Dairy Queen, which Samantha is not allowed to do because it means crossing the four lanes of Division Street. Samantha doesn’t have any money for a cone, but Mary Ann says she’ll pay for hers, and since Samantha really wants ice cream, she goes. When the light changes against them in the intersection, Mary Ann says “Shit!” and “Run!” and Samantha does. The car that is turning stops in front of her and blares her heart out with its horn. But Mary Ann is true to her word and buys Samantha a kiddie cone, and herself a Dilly Bar. Going back, Mary Ann says, “Let’s cross in the middle this time, because at the corners all the cars are doing everything at once.” But then, halfway down the block on the way to a good crossing spot, she says, “I guess I’m going to go over to Denise’s house now, I’ll see you later,” and dashes off down a side street, leaving Samantha standing on the wrong side of Division. Samantha takes a few uncertain steps down the street Mary Ann has taken, but it’s clear Mary Ann didn’t mean for Samantha to come. Denise is almost certainly in second grade, like Mary Ann. Samantha is still in kindergarten; Mary Ann won’t be happy with her if she tries to follow.

  Traffic streams by in both directions. Samantha stands still because the cars keep coming and coming. Then they stop, held back on the right side by a red light, while on the left they are still distant. She begins to cross, but then stops in confusion in the middle turning lane. Some cars have begun coming again from the right, turning fro
m the intersection. Drivers’ faces look at her as they blur past. She hears honks. One car pulls over to the curb and a man starts to get out. She can’t go back because the cars on the left that were distant are now coming to the light, lining up behind her. Samantha sees that the turners have stopped and that the cars that have been held back are beginning to roll forward. Before they can get to her, she runs across the remaining two lanes, dropping the last half of her cone, cutting through the parking lot of Albertson’s so that the man who got out of his car can’t come and scold her as she thinks he is going to. Then she runs across the lot of John and Mary’s hamburger stand and turns right at the flying heart sign of the Douglas gas station, which marks the way home. Even on that street, not her street, but the street on the way to her street, back among the houses whose colors she knows by heart from seeing them on drives home, she doesn’t quit running until she passes the turnoff to her school. Then she goes right at the corner house where the old man yells at kids for crossing his lawn, the greenest in the neighborhood, and then, finally, left at the chain-link fence of Mary Ann’s pool, and across the street to her own house with its gauzy living room curtains and venetian blinds, and the tall rhododendron that is blooming pink right now in front of Samantha’s bedroom window.

  This is the first secret Samantha keeps from her mother, though she doesn’t think of it as a secret, just something she hasn’t told her yet. After that, Mary Ann allows her more visits to the basement to see Ivy, though still not to hold her. Ivy has learned to ride around on Mary Ann’s shoulders, peeking out of the limp curtain of Mary Ann’s blond hair. Samantha has never wanted anything more in her life than she wants a monkey of her own to ride on her shoulder and clutch at her with tiny leather hands.