American Elsewhere (56 page)

A light goes on in the top room of the house next door. Margaret stops weeping, and looks. The light goes out, then comes back on again. Then it goes out.

Her heart trembles at the signal. She sniffs and wipes her tears away. Then she stands on her tiptoes, looks around over her fence for any watchers (
But would I even see them if they were there?
), and walks to the fence that runs between her house and the house next door.

She stands beside the fence—exactly in front of one fence board with a large hole in it—and she waits.

She has been waiting for this moment all month.

She hears the back door of the house next door open and close. Feet crunch through the grass. The person comes to stand just on the opposite side of the fence from Margaret, and Margaret longs to look through the cracks, but she cannot bring herself to.

A woman’s finger extends through a hole. It is not an unusual finger: it is longish, with dark red nail polish, and it has a few freckles on the last knuckle. But new tears spring to Margaret’s eyes at the very sight of it, like she is a pilgrim finally reaching her shrine.

Her hands quake, but she manages to extend her own finger and curl it around the one poking through the fence. The finger curls as well, embracing Margaret’s, and the two squeeze each other tight, so tight it hurts.

She is so, so lucky that she happens to live next to Helena. And she is so lucky that she happened to look up one fall evening nearly two years ago when she was raking leaves, and see the wife of her next-door neighbor watching her with a strange, distant look in her eye: a look of longing, of quiet grief, and of awe. It took her a moment to understand this look.

Helena, her next-door neighbor of nine years, thought she was beautiful. It was likely she’d thought Margaret was beautiful for a long time.

Margaret turned away and pretended she had seen nothing. But she kept that moment close to her heart, as if that one look were a burning ember that could keep her warm no matter what happened.

They pursued their relationship without ever admitting they were doing so. They spoke in glances, in nods, in tiny, insignificant gestures invisible to the rest of the community: a certain audaciousness in Christmas decorations, a sudden predilection for listening to Bach on the radio outside at night, and, most importantly, a tendency to go to their fence one night once a month, poke a finger through the fence, and revel in one brief, glorious minute of touch, genuine touch. They do not dare more. They have not even
spoken
to one another, not honestly: to do so would be to risk the punishment that awaits anyone who breaks one of the rules in Wink. And everyone, especially natives like Helena and Margaret, is bound to them; and while no one knows what the punishment for breaking the rules is, everyone knows they don’t want to find out.

After their minute is done, they release one another. It is like coming down off a thundering, blinding high, like trying to regain your legs after a moment of paralyzing sexual ecstasy: they must return to this muddy world they briefly circled above, like albatrosses dancing on the breeze, and soil themselves for one more month, one more agonizing month.

They smooth down their skirts and return to their homes. Margaret sits down on the couch beside Dale, who is watching
Bye Bye Birdie
for the fortieth time. But as Margaret watches Dick Van Dyke dance around, begging Janet Leigh to put on a happy face, something within her starts to crumple.

She begins to weep again. She is not sure why. She got her moment, didn’t she? Shouldn’t that be enough?

Dale coughs and asks if she thought to buy bourbon this week, and did she buy that expensive stuff again, because he really can’t taste the difference between the expensive stuff and the normal stuff, so she bought the normal stuff, right? Didn’t she? Didn’t she?

Margaret says, “Yes.” And she stands and goes to the pantry to fetch it.

“So… they want to be
people
?” Mona asks.

“That is their wish,” says Parson. “Some are more successful than others. They have turned their prison into a paradise, though a misguided one. They kept the people here, and said to them,
We can provide a wholesome life here, if only you agree to live it, and to live it on our terms
. And the people here, to my surprise, agreed.”

“They
did
?” says Mona. “They’re here by
choice
?”

“Yes,” says Parson. “You must understand, Mona, that my brothers and sisters came here and fell in love with a dream.
Your
dream. A dream of your country, your people. A quiet, small life… I do not know if the dream was ever real or not, but it is yours. I believe it appeals to your people just as much as it does mine.”

“Everyone gets their four-bedroom house, their shiny car, a place of their
own
,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “The grass is green even though it should not even grow. Everyone here is happy.”

“Until recently,” says Parson. “Until Weringer.”

“He was one of you?” asks Mona.

“He was the leader of this place,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “In a way. Much of Wink was his idea. He was the one who suggested we take the names of the vessels we inhabited, and live their lives as if they’d never died. It was amusing, for a while.”

“It was never amusing,” says Parson. “It was foolish. To pretend to be something you are not will always end poorly.”

“There we disagree,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I do not consider it to be as grave as you. It is a triviality, a diversion.”

“And yet here we are,” says Parson. “With members of our family dead. When we were told they could never die at all.”

The subject of family brings one question bobbing to the top of Mona’s mind. “So… what does any of this have to do with my mother?” she asks.

“What?” asks Parson.

“My mother. How is she involved with this at all?”

“She isn’t,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Like I told you, I don’t think she was ever here, or if she was, she wasn’t involved.”

“She was,” says Mona. “I’m sure of it.”

Despite Mrs. Benjamin’s otherworldly origins, she has obviously picked up a few human affectations, for at this she scoffs quite noisily.

“She was here,” says Mona, “when Coburn was first operating. And before she left, she did something to that fucking mirror up on the mesa. She changed something in it. Something to bring you all here, I think.”

Parson scratches his chin. Mrs. Benjamin starts sneaking glances at him, gauging his confusion to see when she can be honest about her own.

“We were never told of such a thing,” says Parson. “I have not ever heard of any previous contact with this place at all.”

“Why would she do that?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“I think the mirror did something to her too,” says Mona. “The records said she would just stare into it for hours. I think that’s why she went… mad. She wasn’t schizophrenic. She saw something in it. And maybe something saw her. Maybe one of you.”

“If this is true,” says Parson, “then it was kept secret from me.”

“And me,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I always thought it was all Mother’s doing. But a woman? A human woman? How could she—” Mrs. Benjamin freezes, but does not stop exhaling, turning her last word into to a sustained, croaky
eeeeeeee
. Her wide eyes swivel in their sockets quickly enough to be revolting.

“What is it?” asks Parson.

She lets the
eeeeeeee
taper off, then draws a slow breath. “Someone is here,” she whispers.

“Who?” says Mona.

Mrs. Benjamin’s eyes resume wheeling at such a rate that Mona thinks she can hear wet clicks issuing from the lining tissues. “I do not know,” she says. “But they are here, on this property. They have announced themselves to me. They do not even try to hide themselves.”

“But you do not recognize them?” asks Parson.

“No,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

Despite their emotionless, limp faces, the two appear very perturbed by this. Mona supposes that their kind—or the things in their heads—must have a manner of communicating their presence to one another. And whoever is here is being impolite, and refusing to identify themselves.

Mona sees her Glock resting on the bedside table, and reaches out to pick it up.

“No,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“No what?”

“That would do no good.”

“A bullet between the eyes would do no fucking good?”

“You presume,” says Mrs. Benjamin, “that it has eyes. Which might not necessarily be the case.”

Mona pauses to reflect on this.

“Help him,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Help him move. Help him get out. Help him run, very fast. They aren’t here for you. They’re here for me, I think.”

“Well,
fuck
,” says Mona, and she grabs Parson by one arm, pulls him to his feet, and partially throws him over her shoulder. She’s had a lot of practice at this in her day. “But don’t you want help?” she asks.

“Of course I want help,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “But help is not something you can give. Not with this. This is—let’s say—a family matter, or so I suspect. And you would not hold up well during our squabbles.”

She silently flits out of the room and down the hall like a magenta
ghost, leaving Mona to limp out the back door and unceremoniously dump Parson over the fence. He groans upon contact with the grass, while Mona hops over, squats, and watches.

Parson grabs her ankle: “No, no. You do not want to even be
near
for this.”

She thinks. Then she gathers him up and leaves.

The sun is crawling back under a blanket of black. Swallows skim the dancing grasses in the park, snatching moths out of the air. Two black squirrels in a spruce hear her walk out to her porch, freeze, and swivel to watch, ears perked and pointed. Mrs. Benjamin outwaits them: after three minutes, they snake away. Then the streetlamps come on, with one rusting malcontent taking a full minute to persuade its bulb to shine.

Mrs. Benjamin stands on her porch staring at the street. Once the entity that wore this body before her sat in this spot and watched lightning weave down from the sky like penguins snatching fish. And though this scene is much more quiet, much more calm, it is no less deadly.

Mrs. Benjamin sits.

Waits.

Watches.

And then:

Her eye registers movement, then identifies a white hat in the darkness below the spruce.

“Well, come out then,” she says.

The figure does not move.

“Come on then,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Be polite. Don’t just stand there.”

But he does not move.

“Come out!” she commands.

The white hat tips to the side, just a touch. She imagines its wearer is pleased to see her so frustrated.

“What do you want?” she asks, more softly.

A long pause.

“What?” she asks.

“For you,” says a voice, “to stop.”

“Stop what?” she asks.

The hat slowly teeters to the right.

“Such a nice house,” says the voice. “Such a nice yard. Such pretty flowers. Good porch. Good place to put your heels up, if your hips permit. If I were you—and I am not—I would wish to spend many an evening here.”

“Kindly get to your point.”

The hat tips back and forth like a ship on turbulent seas. “I wonder,” says the voice, “why one would ever want to leave this place. No. No, one shouldn’t want to. Better to stay here. Stay here, on your porch, in your town. And do not come out to the wilderness. Leave what is there alone.”

Mrs. Benjamin stands. “Who are you?”

Silence.

“Come out.”

“But if you
do
come outside,” says the voice, “out to the wilderness, it would be tolerated only if you ventured out with purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” says the voice, “with us.
Help
us. You
are
with us, whether you know it or not.”

“Who is
us
?” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Who are you?”

The man steps out of the shadows. He wears a pale blue suit, but his face is decidedly nondescript, clean-shaven and unassuming, the face of a father, criminal, brother, son.

Yet Mrs. Benjamin recognizes him. “Mr. Deirdry?” she says. “From… the doughnut shop? What are you doing here? You aren’t… you aren’t involved in this. I should know. Who told you to say this to me?”

He smiles wider.

“But, Mr. Deirdry… listen, you’ve nothing to do with these affairs. Whoever told you to do this or is making you do this, I can help you, I can protect you against—”

“Mr. Deirdry,” says the man, “is dead.”

This stops her short. He smiles wide enough for her to see his teeth. And as he smiles, there comes a sound like a particularly vicious cicada buzzing from somewhere around the man, like it is hanging on his back.

Mrs. Benjamin’s mouth opens in shock. “What? Where did you… did you come from the other side?”

The man just smiles.

“We are all accounted for… everyone who came here is still here. There is no one new. Who are you?”

“All accounted for,” says the man, “except two. They have been laid low. Because they forgot.”

“What are you talking about?”

He does not answer.

“You?” asks Mrs. Benjamin, shocked. “Do you mean you are behind Weringer and Macey’s deaths?”

“They forgot who they were,” he says. “Willfully.”

“But who are—”

“They chose complacence over truth, comfort over reality. I tried to wake them from their slumber. But still they slept, so I made them sleep deeper, sleep forever.” He walks to the front path and stands before her porch. “Do you betray us?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She said to wait,” says the man. “To wait for Her. But She never said not to look. None of you old ones have looked for Her. You sat, and waited. You grew soft.
I
had to be the one.
Me.
And She was
here
. Waiting. All around us.”

“What do you—”

“All of us younger ones, we knew. We knew we had to look for Her. I went to where they sat or slept in their prisons, be it in the hills or under stones, and they joined me gladly. They were eager. They had been waiting for their chance. They knew that anything would be better than living like this.”