Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  Late that night, sometime after midnight, after Amanda has fallen asleep, and Ivan has turned one last time and finally fallen asleep as well, Polly gets out of bed and pulls on a pair of jeans and an old gray T-shirt. She’s very quiet when she walks down the hall; she doesn’t make a sound. The only problem is that she doesn’t know where she’s going. The dishes have all been rinsed off and put in the dishwasher. There’s no point in pretending to have a cup of tea. Standing in the kitchen, in the dark, Polly hears the squeak of an exercise wheel from the basement and remembers that Charlie asked her to feed his specimens. She switches on the dim stairway light and goes downstairs. It smells like animals and earth; Polly wonders what the mice that run through their house think when they come upon this section of the basement and find Charlie’s hamsters and field mice in their warm cages, so lazy and well nourished.

  The field mice stare at Polly as she gets out their bag of food. They’re not white, like pet store mice, but small and brown with black eyes; if one ran across the floor you’d think it was a shadow, nothing more.

  Tonight, Charlie is sleeping at her parents’ house in Polly’s old room, which was turned into a den years ago, with a pull-out couch for overnight visitors. Polly used to have an oak spindle bed that her father, Al, found at a flea market out on Long Island. Polly watched him refinish the bed on weekends, down in the basement of the building where he was, and still is, the superintendent. It was warm down there in all seasons, because of the hot-water pipes that ran overhead. Al usually gave two or three half-wild cats free run of the basement, to chase away “mouse cousins,” and his cats, which were often large and mean, certainly seemed ready, willing, and able should a rat ever be stupid enough to cross them. Al swiped things from the kitchen for them, cans of tunafish, Swiss cheese, chicken wings. He called the cats his “boys,” regardless of their sex, and he always said to Polly, “Let’s not mention the boys’ dinner to your mother,” when they took a stolen treat down to the basement.

  Polly still wonders if she should have realized that something was wrong between her parents, but what happened to them seemed as much a surprise to Al as to anyone else. On weekends in the summer he went out to Long Island, to Blue Point, to go fishing, and one Sunday he didn’t come back. Polly remembers what she and her mother had for dinner that night: meatloaf, roasted potatoes, and lima beans. There was Jell-O for dessert, the kind only Al liked, with chunks of pineapple in it.

  “We’ll just save your father’s dinner,” Polly’s mother, Claire, had said.

  Claire wrapped the plate in aluminum foil and put it in the refrigerator, where it stayed for four days before she finally threw it out. When tenants called up, Claire lied and said Al was sick with the flu and wouldn’t be able to fix the pipes or paint the hallway until the following week. She wrote down every complaint on a piece of yellow paper, which she kept by the phone.

  “What if he doesn’t come back?” Polly asked her mother.

  “We’ll just tell them he’s still down with the flu,” Claire told her.

  When Polly was in bed she could hear her mother crying, but in the mornings Claire never said a word against Al, never acted as if the morning were anything unusual now that it was just the two of them at the table eating eggs. One night, Polly woke up suddenly, in a sweat. She got out of bed, she had a lump in her throat, and when she went into the living room all the lights were on, but the apartment was empty. There was no one in her parents’ bedroom, in the kitchen, or the bathroom. She was alone, they had both left her.

  Polly knew she couldn’t stay in that empty apartment. She could feel her heart pounding. She put her shoes on and pulled a sweater over her nightgown; she took five dollars from a secret place she knew about under the sink. She was breathing hard and she may have been crying, but she wasn’t about to wait around for them, not when they’d left her. She could starve all alone, she could die of thirst.

  Their apartment was on the first floor, so once she was out in the hallway, all Polly had to do was walk through the heavy double doors onto the street, walk two blocks east, and she’d be at the police station. She would turn herself in as an orphan, and they’d know what to do with her. But out in the hallway she saw that the metal door to the basement was ajar and that the lights were on. Polly slipped through the door and listened for robbers, but all she heard was a tapping sound. She didn’t think about cockroaches or rats. She followed the sound down the stairs.

  Claire was kneeling down, spooning cat food onto the old chipped plates Al kept down there. The cats were crouched in a corner, watching suspiciously. When she realized someone was watching her, Claire looked up and blinked. “The boys,” she explained.

  “You should have let them starve,” Polly told her mother.

  “Polly!” Claire said.

  “That’s what you should have done,” Polly said.

  By the time Al came back, nine days later, Polly hated him. He was visiting a friend, he said, but Polly knew it was a lady friend. She had a little house in Blue Point, with a lawn and a hedge of evergreens. Al had actually taken Polly there once, and she’d waited in the car for nearly an hour, finally falling asleep with her cheek pressed up against the scratchy upholstery.

  “Great fishing in Blue Point,” Al said when he came back.

  “I’m sure,” Claire said.

  “I couldn’t stay there,” Al said.

  “So I see,” Claire said and, because it was nearly dinner, she took out some carrots and potatoes to peel.

  “That’s it?” Polly had said to her mother. “You’re taking him back?”

  “Don’t think you understand everything about grownups, because you don’t,” Al told Polly.

  Polly ignored her father. She watched as her mother searched through a drawer for her vegetable peeler. She hated her father, but what she felt for Claire was worse. She didn’t know what it was called, but it was pity, and it changed something between them forever. Even now, Polly cannot look at her mother without thinking of the night her father came home, and so she stays away. She sees her parents as little as possible, and she prefers to go visit them instead of having them come up. That way, she can always leave. But tonight, as she sits in her own basement, she thinks more kindly of her father than she has in years. She thinks of what he taught her: how to change a washer, how to check the underside of a painted dresser drawer and know if it’s made out of oak or pine, how not to be afraid of dark basements, of the noise steam pipes make when they moan and send up heat. Tonight Charlie is asleep in her old room, where the pattern of headlights on the wall used to be as comforting to Polly as fireflies are now, and Polly hopes that tonight, at least, her son sleeps well.

  In the morning, no one has to wake Charlie or call him for breakfast. He’s dressed and ready by eight, and he’s one of the first inside the Museum of Natural History. It’s nice and cold in the museum, and Charlie’s breath fogs up the glass as he peers into cases of fossils. He loves coming to the museum; it’s the best part about visiting his grandparents, who live just two blocks away. Usually, his grandfather lets him wander around by himself. Today his grandfather accompanies him from room to room, but that’s all right. It’s not as if he were with his mother, who would talk the whole time.

  Charlie’s grandfather appreciates the museum, the smell of it, the darkness, the way footsteps echo. Charlie has begged his parents to let him come to New York on the bus, and they’ve always said no, but now his mother was the one to suggest he go alone. He plans to get Sevrin something from the gift shop, as an apology for not phoning to let him know he wouldn’t be around to take care of the newts. Sevrin has never been to New York and has only been to the Peabody Museum in Cambridge. Charlie plans to get him a patch his mom can sew on his jacket, something tremendously cool—he’s seen some that glow in the dark.

  “Look at those bones,” Charlie’s Grandpa Al says every once in a while, as they move from the brontosaurus to the allosaurus. Finally, in front of the tyrannosauru
s, he adds, “What a monster.”

  When they have been in the museum for a little more than two hours, Charlie’s grandfather says, “My feet hurt. Let’s take a break.”

  They haven’t gotten to many of Charlie’s favorite exhibits, haven’t even taken a peek at the mammals, but Charlie’s grandfather can’t be talked into staying. The one thing Charlie insists on is stopping at the gift shop. There he buys a tyrannosaurus patch for Sevrin and then, on impulse, another just like it for himself. It’s not exactly to show they have a private club; they’re too old for that sort of thing. It’s just a badge of their devotion to science. Charlie pays the cashier, then finds his grandfather, who’s waiting for him at the door.

  “Can we come back later?” Charlie asks.

  It’s hot outside and, after the darkness of the museum, Charlie and Al both blink in the sunlight. The smell of soot and gas fumes hits them.

  “Maybe,” Al says. He’s never been a good liar. “Probably not.”

  “Okay,” Charlie says. “What about tomorrow? We could spend the whole day here tomorrow.”

  “Let’s sit,” Al says.

  They head for some benches and Grandpa Al sits. Charlie intends to sit, but it’s impossible to resist the ledge behind the bench. Just as he’s about to climb up, Al pats the bench with the cupped palm of his hand.

  “Right next to me,” Charlie’s grandfather tells him.

  Charlie sits right next to him, and Al puts his arm around him and squeezes his shoulder.

  “I got a call from your mother,” Al says. “I’m going to drive you home tomorrow.”

  Charlie looks at him, feeling betrayed. He just got in last night, and this is what he gets? Two hours at the museum?

  “This isn’t fair,” Charlie says.

  “No,” Al says, “it isn’t.”

  This is exactly why it’s impossible to have a fight with Grandpa Al; he always agrees with you.

  “Amanda is sick,” Al says. “That’s why I’m taking you home.”

  Charlie is wearing old high-topped sneakers. He suddenly realizes that his sneakers are too small. He can feel them cutting into the flesh above his ankle bones.

  “How sick?” Charlie says.

  “It’s very bad,” Al tells him. “It’s a virus called AIDS.”

  Charlie stands up and faces the museum. “I know what AIDS is, I know it’s a virus.”

  “She got it from a blood transfusion,” Al says. “Before they knew about AIDS, before they tested for contaminated blood.”

  Charlie bites his lip until he draws blood. He is an idiot. He should have known something was wrong when his mother let him come to New York alone. Al comes up behind Charlie and stands close by. Charlie can feel the subway beneath them, he can feel the heat from the sewers. He cannot help wondering if there’s been some mistake.

  Maybe it should have happened to him.

  That night, Charlie has trouble falling asleep, and when he does he dreams he is no longer human. He dreams there are red stars overhead and bursts of fire. The earth shakes with something deep within itself. He thinks water, because he can smell it. Water means warm, so he tracks the smell. He is lucky to be alive; the eggs of the others like him were more exposed to the cold, and each one froze.

  He has trouble remembering anything before now. What it was like following the thing that was like him but bigger, feeding on whatever it left behind, panicking whenever he lost the scent of the thing that was like him but bigger because he knew, if he lost it, it would never turn around to look for him. Turning around, stopping, means the end.

  At the very beginning, there were the eggs of the others for him to eat until he could follow the thing that was like him but bigger. They were together until the thing that was like him but bigger wouldn’t let him near its kill and he struck out at it. He heard a roar from his own throat, and he was so hungry that he wouldn’t give up. The thing that was like him but bigger ran away, leaving behind a pool of blood. He was alone then, he no longer followed the thing that was like him because it was no longer bigger.

  He knows enough to keep going. Sometimes, he is almost tricked by sunlight. He lies down and feels it soak into his body, feels it could nourish him, but if he stays in one place too long the cold will kill him. There are times when he kills his food, but more often he eats what he finds. Things that no longer move because they have been frozen. He breaks his nails tearing apart their frozen hides. He searches inside their bodies for some warm core, perhaps a den of flesh to sleep in, but he finds nothing that brings him comfort.

  Everywhere he goes there were once swamps, water so warm steam rose from the reeds. Things were alive. There was heat, things smaller to kill and eat, endless green plants. That was before his time. He has always been cold. He feels black inside; outside, scales fall from him and freeze as they hit the ground. He doesn’t look up anymore when he hears things explode in the sky. He used to run and hide. He used to claw at the hard, cold earth. Now he just keeps moving. Now he is going toward water. He is looking for something warm. He cannot eat enough to fill his huge body. When he sees others like him he is ready to fight if he has to, but he doesn’t want to use up his strength, so he waits and often the others look at him and flee.

  Tyrant lizard is what he will be called, Tyiannosauras rex. But he is no tyrant; he has trouble lifting his legs to walk because the cold starts at the bottom and goes all the way up. Water. He can smell it. He keeps following the scent, the same way he used to follow the thing that was like him but bigger. The earth he walks on is as cold as ever; a thin layer of ice clings to his back and tail, but somewhere, deep inside him, there is still heat.

  Charlie wakes near dawn, terrified by the sound of his own heart pounding. He puts his hands on his chest; his skin feels hot through his pajamas. He counts backward from one hundred and, as he does, his heart stops racing. He falls back into a dreamless sleep, and later, when he wakes up, he’s still tired. He can’t stop thinking about his dream. He dawdles over breakfast, he watches TV till noon, he takes his time at lunch and forces himself to have two grilled cheese sandwiches not because he’s hungry, but to waste time.

  Late in the afternoon, Charlie’s grandmother sews one of the tyrannosaurus patches on his denim jacket, while his grandfather gets the cooler and packs apples and cheese and beer for the ride. The apartment has old air conditioners, which hum loudly. The slipcovers on the couches are bordered with large pink roses. Charlie’s grandmother will not be driving up with them. She has pointedly not been invited. Claire knows Polly is afraid she’ll break down; Polly has never forgiven her disappointments that happened so long ago Claire doesn’t even remember what they were.

  Charlie notices that his grandmother’s hands shake as she sews on the patch. She was once a seamstress at Bendel’s, but her stitches are not as small as they used to be. Charlie kisses her goodbye when she finishes the jacket.

  “Don’t you dare turn around and drive back tonight,” Claire tells her husband.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” Al says, and he winks at Charlie.

  Charlie’s grandfather has been the building super for thirty-five years. He has his own parking space in the small underground garage, he knows nearly everyone on the block, at least the old-timers, and he can fix almost anything or, at least, make it seem that he has until the next time it breaks down. He built Charlie his first hamster cage, out of wood and chicken wire, and he has several strange habits: he drinks hot water with lemon at breakfast, he refuses to watch a movie made after 1952, and he always drinks a beer when he drives out of Manhattan. The beer is the tangible object that separates the city and Al’s never-ending duties as super. It is what, before today, has always seemed like freedom. Once they’ve gone over the Triborough Bridge, Al asks Charlie to open a bottle of beer.

  “It’s just as well your grandmother’s not coming with us,” he tells Charlie. “She doesn’t handle illnesses well. Although, as far as she’s concerned, doctors can cure anything.
I always tell her she should have married a doctor. Mind if I smoke a cigar?”

  The smell makes Charlie sick, but he says, “Sure,” and gets one from the glove compartment. His grandfather isn’t allowed to smoke at home; he has to sit in the basement if he wants a cigar. Al hands Charlie the cold bottle of beer to hold, then takes the cigar and lights it.

  “Do you think she’ll die?” Charlie says.

  “Well, son,” his grandfather says, “we’re all going to die, aren’t we?”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby,” Charlie says.

  “You’re right,” Al says. “I forget how old you are. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t look good.” He glances at Charlie to gauge his reaction. “Want to try that beer?”

  Charlie looks over at his grandfather to see if he’s kidding. Al’s eyes are on the road. Charlie takes a swig of beer, which stings as it goes down. It is disgusting. Charlie wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Not bad,” he says.

  They take the turnoff for the New England Thru-way. Charlie stares out the window and imagines the tyrannosaurus in his dream. It is taller than any of the trees along the road, taller than the lampposts and the water towers. The sky is clear, the luminous blue it turns on summer evenings, just before dark. Charlie thinks of teeth and claws, blood and bones. He always thought he was smart, and now, quite suddenly, he sees that science has made him stupid. He really believed that, given enough time, science could answer any question, but it cannot answer what is most important: What if there’s no time left?

  “I’ve been up and down this road so many times, I know it by heart,” Grandpa Al says. “Want some music?”

  “I don’t want to go home,” Charlie says.

  “Of course you don’t,” Al says, his foot steady on the gas.

  They drive the rest of the way in silence except for the few songs Charlie’s grandfather sings, old songs Charlie doesn’t know the words to, love songs Al himself can barely remember. After they skirt Boston, the air begins to feel salty. They drive on 95, past Peabody, and Gloucester, and Ipswich. At the exit for Morrow, they see three white herons walking along the side of the road. Charlie’s grandfather switches on the high beams and he has a second beer, not quite cold enough to be good for anything, certainly not for quenching his thirst. There are no more fireflies, and it’s gotten darker earlier than it did only a few days ago. They drive through town, past the green and the shops.