by Kit Reed
In a few of these tales Reed employs a favorite technique of using multiple points of view, sometimes to give us contradictory views of a situation, sometimes to avoid privileging a single character, and sometimes (I strongly suspect) because she just likes doing different voices. In “Denny,” the effect is particularly chilling, as we shift between the viewpoints of each of the parents and Denny himself, watching an entirely avoidable tragedy of miscommunication unfold toward a bitterly ironic ending. Sometimes the multiple viewpoints may be used for comic effect, as in “Wherein We Enter the Museum,” in which we visit the pretentious “Museum of Great American Writers” from the viewpoints of a focus group of ambitious young writing students, a docent who is also an embittered failed novelist, the committee charged with determining the exhibits, and the wealthy philistine donor, who just wants to honor his favorite writers from childhood, like Longfellow, and is outraged when the committee insists that George Eliot was not only not American, but a woman. (Writers and readers come in for Reed’s satiric treatment with some regularity, as in “The Outside Event,” in which a writers’ workshop retreat turns into a kind of reality TV à la Survivor). A voice not too far removed from that museum donor, but with a decidedly darker edge, is that of the venal wealthy tourist taking his wife on an ill-fated exclusive tour bus to a remote mountain observatory in “The Legend of Troop 13.” Supposedly a Girl Scout troop disappeared into the wilderness near the observatory some years earlier, and the tourist has concocted a fantasy of nailing what he imagines are now nubile young wood nymphs. But as the expedition spirals toward disaster, we also see him from the viewpoints of the resentful bus driver and several of the Girl Scouts themselves, who have formed a kind of self-sustaining society that is at least as functional as that of the rebellious wives in “Songs of War.”
It’s appropriate that an observatory should be the setting of the penultimate story in this collection, because in a very real sense that’s exactly what this book is. Reed may take us into the minds of some decidedly unpleasant or demented characters, she may show us wars, catastrophes, dysfunctional families, were-wolves, monsters, feral children, plagues, dystopias, cannibals, zombies, and weird small towns, but always with the cool yet sympathetic intelligence of an observer both outraged and wryly amused by the labyrinths we make for ourselves. Her fiction may, collectively, seem rather dark, but it may also be that by showing us the ways into these labyrinths, she’s giving us hints of the ways out as well. Reed has called this attitude “protective pessimism,” and it’s as good a phrase as any for describing the characteristic tone of her best fiction. “Dealing in worst-case scenarios doesn’t depress me,” wrote Reed in the introduction to her earlier story collection Dogs of Truth. “It makes me hopeful and resilient. Expect the worst and you’re always prepared. You scoped the exits when you came in, just in case something comes up. Something comes up and you know the quickest way out. Given a chronic imagination of disaster, I always have a Plan B.
“This is the way lives—and stories—get built.”
Author’s Note
Combing through more stories than I’d care to admit for this project, I got interested not in chronology, but in the fact that they organized themselves around certain of my—well, preoccupations is a politer word for what drives me than obsessions. Interesting to me to see what shows up in my work, with what kind of frequency. I’ve arranged the stories accordingly, with notes on where and when they first appeared in print, from back in the day up through this year, including some new and previously uncollected ones.
KR
The Story Until Now
Denny
We are worried about Denny. We have reason to believe he may go all Columbine on us.
Experts warn parents to watch out for signs, and it hurts to say, but we’ve seen plenty. Day and night our son is like an LCD banner, signaling something we can’t read. If he implodes and comes out shooting, the first thing to show up in the crosshairs will be us.
He was cute when he was little but now he’s heavily encoded: black everything, hanging off him in tatters—Matrix coat in mid-August, T-shirt, jeans, bits of peeled sunburn and cuticle gnawed to shreds. Black lipstick and blue bruises around the eyes. That glare. Shake him and dirt flies out—grot and nail clippings, crushed rolling papers, inexplicable knots of hair. Stacks of secret writing that Denny covers as you come into the room and no friends except that creepy kid who won’t look you in the eye.
Shrinks list things to watch out for, and it isn’t just to protect the innocent, sitting in class when the armed fury comes in and lays waste. They’re warning us! Some lout killed his parents with a baseball bat not far from here, they were dead before the sleeping neighborhood rolled over and shut off the clock. In addition to knifings and ax murders, I read about deaths by assault weapon or repeating rifle, people executed by their own children on their way out of the house to massacre their peers.
It’s awful going around scared, but there you are. Poor Stef and I are forever on the alert.
Our mutant enemy blunders around the house at night making messes and bumping into things, and, worse? We’re the ones who apologize for being in the way. Back in our room, my wife throws herself down on the bed and sobs, “I’ve failed,” but, listen! There may be an enemy within but in spite of the cycle of guilt and mutual recriminations, we know it isn’t us.
I don’t know what’s up with Dad. He and Mom are getting all weird and creepy, lurking with their knuckles hooked under their chins like disturbed squirrels, jumping away with uh-oh looks and shifty eyes when I come in. It’s not like they’re avoiding me. Unless they are.
How did it get so bad? The tiptoeing and the shrinking, the nights when I go to bed in tears? I want to hug my boy and make it better, but it’s like making overtures to a porcupine. Every gesture I try goes astray and if I get too close, I get hurt. What’s a mother to do? He was a hard person when the doctor dragged him out kicking and screaming, and it’s been downhill ever since. Maybe we were too old to be parents, unless we were too young. We had a baby because we were that age and it was expected, but nobody told us what it would be like. The event? The glories of childbirth thing is an atrocious myth. It was painful and scary and astounding. Stan and I spent the first months exhausted and terrified, but that’s nothing compared to now. We love our son, but he’s not very easy to like.
Denny’s always been sweet with me—well, except at certain times, but God it’s hard, and I’ve tried everything. We need to sit down and talk but my son is hooked up to his music like a patient to an iv and I don’t even know what’s going into his ears. If I ask him to pull out the earbuds so we can have the conversation he gets all weird and hostile and slouches away with a look that frightens me.
Denny, if it’s something I did, then I’m sorry. Isn’t this punishment enough?
When you’re warned about the enemy within, the first thing you do is blame yourself. It must be something you did, like failing to pay attention or hitting, which can make schoolyard assassins of kids. Hit Denny? I just wouldn’t, although God knows there were times when I was close. The flip side of guilt is things you failed to do, but on that score Stephanie and I test clean. Believe me, we read all the books and covered all the bases—lessons, therapy, Ritalin or Prozac as indicated, contact lenses and braces, of course. Dermabrasion. Comedy camp. Implants to replace teeth trashed by playground bullies, a trigger parents are urged to report which we dutifully did, which made our son furious, I don’t know why.
We brought home video games, tabletop soccer and a Ping-Pong table to help him win friends, but nobody ever comes over. Why, Stef and I spent last summer redoing his room. We’ve done everything for the kid, and what do we get back? Black polish on the fingernails, a show of teeth so sharp that I could swear he’s filing them down to points. We try to give him everything he wants and the hell of it is, he won’t even tell us what he wants.
To this day my wife spends hours on the birthday bunny ca
ke with shredded coconut fur and jelly bean eyes and a combed cotton ball for a tail. She does it with tears in her eyes because it pleased him once, and she has hopes. It does no good to remind her that he was two. Nobody’s going to tell us that we don’t love Denny, especially not him.
Take a letter off Denny and you get: DENY. Stan and Stephanie don’t know it but in study hall I am making a tattoo. It hurts but it’s easy to do. It isn’t a heart, although I drew an arrow through it to represent Diane, from Spanish class. What I put, with a ballpoint and this safety pin? DENY.
Nobody told me what it would be like. One day you’re a normal, perfectly healthy woman with a day job, a sense of who you are in life, the next …
You wake up the next morning like a slate that God erased. Your baby howls and everything you used to be is wiped away.
For thirty years of my life, Denny wasn’t.
Then he was.
I was so scared. He was so small! Breakable! Like a Swiss watch I had been given to maintain with no idea when the maker would come back to check on me, just the knowledge that I was accountable. There was no clear list of instructions, either, just the expectation that I would take care of it. The machinery was complex and mysterious, but I could tell that it wasn’t running right. You try, but what do you do when this precious object entrusted to you is congested with rage? Do I pick him up when he screeches or should he learn to put himself to sleep? Should I feed him now or is he not hungry, should I change him even though I just did and, I ask you, who’s supposed to be in charge? Which of us is supposed to have the upper hand? What if he gets so mad that he breaks?
Dear God, did I crack something in Denny while I wasn’t looking and is that why he grew up withdrawn and angry and sad?
It’s like sharing the house with a wild animal. He slinks around like a night-blooming menace, glowering, thinking tainted thoughts. Denny hates me, I’m sure of it, and I don’t know why. Still, we are coexisting here until he’s old enough to get a life, so I try. I sign his report cards without comment because anything I say will lead to a fight and the last thing we want here is to set him off. Although I don’t much feel like it, I make a smile. I go, HELLO, DENNIS. HOW WAS SCHOOL? and he flinches like I slapped him in the face.
I come into a room and they go silent, you can tell they were talking about me. Then Dad gets all stiff and polite and goes: “Well, Dennis, how’s school?” and I hackle. Get out of my face. How the fuck does he think school is? I’ll tell you how school is. It sucks. I have eight guys lying in wait to beat the crap out of me for eight different reasons, Diane Caldwell being only one. Miss Gleeson in English made me come up in the front of the room and read my story that I wrote; I had to read it out loud which is why seven of the guys are out to get me and the eighth, I’m guessing it’s about Diane; if I was sitting in the back and forced to listen to me reading this lame story I’d beat the crap out of me too.
But Dad is all up in my face, “How was school?” and he won’t lay back and let me walk away quiet until he gets an answer so I go, “OK.”
They want you to believe that when they put your new baby in your arms, it’s love at first sight, but instant mother love is another myth. I don’t know who puts it out there, greedy grandmothers bent on posterity or men who want to see their spit and image popping out of you. You want to love your children but the truth is, you get used to them. You get used to being baffled and helpless and weepy and you accommodate, over time. I went through the first year terrified. Was I giving him everything he needed or warping him for life? Now he’s fifteen and the jury’s out and it won’t come back. You tell me, did I do it right?
God knows I tried. I tried so hard to do it right that I’m afraid I did everything wrong.
She plants fifteen candles on this year’s cake. They bristle like armed cannons on a battleship. We knock ourselves out over presents we chose to change him for the better, whatever that means. Nice clothes. A leatherbound book to write his thoughts in, along with a box so he can lock it away from us. Games, maybe we can bond over cribbage, or chess. After he blows out the candles she cuts off the bunny’s head and presents it to Dennis with that heartbreaking tremulous smile.
Why, when we tried to give him everything, does he look like he wants to cry?
Over the years we tried everything. Tricycles and Christmas trees. Skate-boards, sleds. Rollerblades. I used to throw the ball around with him when he was small! Now my son and I circle like boxers and my wife has to hold it in all night because she’s scared to go out in the hall.
In school today I accidentally knocked off Diane’s notebook when I accidentally went by her desk which I did so could I pick it up, and when I handed it back, we could talk, at least a little bit. That was an assaholic thing to do but it was cool. She thanked me with this look but when I came out after, eight assholes were lying in wait for me, so does that mean she likes me and they know it or what?
After I finally lost them I stayed back at the foundation to the new gym. Even though I knew the folks would be pissed off at me, I stayed until I was good to go, which took a while. There are times when you just don’t want people to see your face, you know? At home I have to hide what I am thinking or they’ll ask.
I have to be in the right head so I can walk in strong and tough.
In China a kid killed his folks with a knife because, he said, they neglected him. When he woke them up complaining that he was unwell they exploded and sent him back to bed. What was he thinking, crouching in his room? Neglect? I’ll show you neglect. Whatever he thought, whatever they did or failed to do to offend him, his father had thirty-seven gashes in his hide. His mother got almost twice that, now what does that tell you?
It tells you that no matter what you think you’re doing, they’re there to tell you that you did it wrong.
You go along doing what you always did under the illusion that it’s OK and nothing changes. Then menace creeps in like a cat when you aren’t looking and goes to sleep on the hearth. Every once in a while it wakes up and licks its balls. It settles back down and watches through slits, regarding us with malevolent yellow eyes because unlike you, unlike Stephanie and me, it knows what’s coming and it is content to wait.
There is a hidden clock set for an hour not known to us. Something big that we don’t know about is counting down to detonation and everything we see and hear tells us that it is Dennis. Our own flesh and blood!
Sometimes mothers have to be Geneva, the neutral party juggling warring factions, trying desperately to make peace. I try, but this is nothing like Switzerland. My house is an armed camp. Stan turns on the boy at the least provocation. Look at him with his jaw set in stone and his shoulders bunched, waiting for the shooting to start.
Why is he all the time going around ahem, Dennis, how are you today, like we are friends? Like we were ever friends, when I know the bastard never liked me, hates the sight of me, doesn’t want to be caught walking with me anywhere that anybody from the office will see, and when we do go out somewhere big and anonymous, like a basketball game, he’s always fake-smiling at me with that tight mouth and a mean little squint. At least thank God he’s quit trying to talk baseball or make me play racket ball with him, or fucking tennis, when he knows my hand-eye coordination sucks and if I see a ball coming at me, I flinch. I don’t know whether I hate sports more than sports hate me but I’m fucking sick of it and I’m good and sick of being locked in here with the two of them, like we are in jail together, doing life. If I was old enough I’d join the Army and get blown away in some foreign country that parents never go.
Everybody knows the joke about the eight-hundred-pound gorilla, when he talks you listen, or is it, he sits down wherever he wants? We need to be careful with Denny because, until we see the size and shape of the hatred, we can’t begin to deal with it. In Canada, I just saw on TV, the cops are hunting for a kid who shot his parents when he asked for money and they didn’t cough up. He emptied their wallets and took off.
; You bet I am researching these things on the web.
High school junior knifes his dad after a fight over the family car, and this is only last year. Almost makes it to the border before his mother phones 911 and the cops catch up with him, there’s a documentary on it scheduled for HBO.
On the web, everybody has a theory. There’s the outsider theory, the video-game/TV-violence theory, the suspicion that shooters were abused at home and then there’s the chance that it’s not something we failed to do, they destruct for no known reason because fate is arbitrary and vicious and it’s nothing anybody did.
One psychologist thinks they blow up because the adolescent’s brain isn’t fully developed until he’s twenty-one. So how do we get through the next six years with our big son? I try to get on Denny’s good side, but I can make a 360 around the kid and still not know which side that is, unless he’s turning as I do, so I’ll never see. Sometimes I walk into a room and find him hunched in a corner like a bag of feed that somebody dropped on the floor, and I wonder, How do I start the conversation.
Do I say, “Who do you like for the World Series?” Or do I sit down creaking, so he and I are sitting with our backs to the wall, shoulder to shoulder, and go, ahem? When I think I have his attention I’ll try this. It works on bad TV: “We need to talk.”
Like that ever works.
When Stan does try to make nice, being Stanley, he says the wrong thing. Or Denny takes it wrong. One word and my firstborn clenches like a shaken fist. I love him, but, oh. It was OK when his dad outweighed him, but that was a while ago. Denny thinks that as he’s bigger than Stan, he’s probably smarter too. This is quite possible, but I wouldn’t dare suggest it to Stan, who for reasons I can’t fathom needs to be the personal best, no contenders, no argument.