Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders (23 page)

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“You,” he said, and he looked around the little living room. He flipped the lacy curtains up. “You’re a cat, though. You land on your feet. You want to tip me?”

“Tip you?”

“You know.” He swiped his hat off his head, his hair bristling orange. “I drove out all this way.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t want to tip you.”

He walked up close. I stepped back, my heel against a wall. He reached up and touched my face with three fingers. “Mr. Wesler told me to make it clear we mean business.”

“That’s been made clear.”

“Mr. Wesler wants me to make it crystal clear.” He reached around my back and pressed himself against me. His chest was tough with muscle.

When he touched my face again, I growled and bit his fingers as hard as I could while pinching and twisting skin through his thin shirt—the savage defenses I’d learned as Hairy Wolf at the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children. He screamed and tried to pull back. I kneed him in the crotch. He doubled over. I ran to the bathroom and locked the door.

“Get out!” I shouted. “Get out!” I whipped back the shower curtain. There was a small high window.

“You bitch! You’re crazy!”

“Yes!” I shouted, climbing into the tub and working the window’s latch. “I’m insane! I’m a killer! A moron! A savage! A Wolf Woman!”

He crashed around the house, but just as I’d loosened the latch on the window, I heard his feet clomp out and the door slam shut. I slid down the wall and sat in the tub, the taste of blood in my mouth. Eppitt had once found me in the tub at Isley Wesler’s house. He wasn’t coming for me now. I realized that I needed Gerald. How else would I get word about Eppitt?

“Margaret Shipley.” I’d been so many people. What was one more? I pushed myself up and out of the tub and walked to the front door. I locked it.

I turned my suitcase to its side and unbuckled it. There, on top, sat Eppitt’s homemade hiding box. I fit my finger into the ring and pulled. Tightly rolled dollars fell out—mostly fives and tens. Lots of them. Had he sold a secret hiding place? Was he a real criminal who lived among criminals?

Last of all there was a piece of wound string—brown, as if it had been soaked in blood. At first I thought that Eppitt had another marriage pact, another woman somewhere out there. But the tape read “E. C. and I. W., blood brothers, 1922.” Isley Wesler, of course. The string was brittle. I was Margaret Shipley. But who was Eppitt Clapp?

I stayed in bed until it seemed my legs had been sewn into the sheets. I was love-blanched and listless except when my heart hammered: Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead? I remembered the water nozzles of Sheppard Pratt, the cold sheets, the lumbar puncture. I was light-headed. Feverishly, I imagined old-world cures for my old-world lovesickness—leechcraft, the tight suction of leeches on skin. I thought of the word “kleptomaniac.” There’d been one at Sheppard
Pratt. Indiscriminate, he stole tea towels, flowerpot labels, and a few cards from each deck. I was being stolen from, again.

Klept, klept.

Heartklept, loveklept, breathklept.

My platelet disorder caused the place where Isley had gripped my cheeks to bloom into splotched bruises. Could I die like this—scrawny, abed, alone? No, I couldn’t. I was a mother now. My blood was not my own. My body seemed to know this.

The curtains gusted full sail. It was summer at the beach. People out roving.

I dressed and walked to a small corner grocery store run by Poles, who reminded me of Mrs. Funk. She had seen God in me. Little Girl Jesus of the Dreaming Wounds. Where was Mrs. Funk now? For that matter, where was Little Girl Jesus? I ate lemon Popsicles and salty chips—for some reason the only things I could keep down. I walked to the beach, long and broad and cluttered with people. Short-skirted bathing suits boxed women’s thighs. Some of the men’s suits were belted high at their waists. Family members poked one another’s scalded skin and shouted over the roaring ocean.

Isley had taken us to the bay a few times. We didn’t have swimsuits so I’d taken off my stockings and waded in fully dressed. Isley and Eppitt had worn their drawers. And then, at night, after we’d eaten from a picnic basket, we took off our clothes and slid naked beneath the glassy moonlit surface. Neither Eppitt nor I could swim. We kept our toes in the muddy silt and bobbed. Isley spouted water from a thin gap in his front teeth, and then sang, operatically. This wasn’t the same person who’d grabbed my face.

The beach turned into a misty haze in either direction and the ocean went on forever. I watched the families pack up shovels, sandwich tins, books, and chairs.

I couldn’t shake what Gerald had said about Eppitt taking a turn. Maybe if he knew that I was pregnant, he’d fight harder to live, instinctively. I felt hollow even though I was far from hollow.

When the beach cleared out and it was nearly dark, I took off my shoes, lifted my skirt, and walked toward the waves, which washed up over my stockinged knees.

Eppitt Clapp belonged to Isley Wesler, not me. I was no one’s wife. I was Margaret Shipley, and maybe Margaret Shipley was owned by Isley Wesler too.

I remembered the Lings’ niece drowning in the fishpond, and the marathon dancer, arms whirling, legs scissoring, but not enough to keep him afloat. I imagined one of his shoes slowly drifting to the ocean floor. What would it be like to let the ocean hold me, suspended, like the eight-legged calf that Isley kept on display on top of his upright piano? To be preserved in sea salt?

I imagined the baby inside me, tumbling in my waters, swimming madly. Every time I jumped to keep my head above a wave, I felt it tug me back to shore.

I pinched my nose and dipped under. The water was cold and dark. There was another tug.

I lifted my wet head, turned, and looked back at the boardwalk’s lights, those frail gimmicks of human invention. I thought of Dr. Wolff. The world doesn’t need me, but I need it. That was no longer enough—but you, Eleanor, you were the reason. I wasn’t alone. I had a baby inside of me. I had to live for you. And in this way, you saved my life—as well as your own.

I couldn’t save my mother, Eleanor. But you saved yours.

The ocean shoved me in the back and then drained away from my legs. I felt heavy and unsteady, like a newborn colt. I tottered, and then I staggered to shore and looked for my shoes.

They were gone.

A few nights later, while I was asleep, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw Eppitt, but his face was monstrous—his jaw wired shut, nose broken, eyelids puffed so tight they were nearly sealed, shining in the dim light. The bruises on his face were black. He was listing to one side; his left set of ribs contracted.

“Lie down,” I said. “Here.”

And he sat on the bed. I got up and untied his shoes, took off his socks. One foot was purple. He winced.

“My God,” I said.

He said nothing.

“Lay back,” I said. I unbuttoned his shirt. I unhooked his pants. I undressed him until there was his body before me—raw, bloodied, a pulp of a thing, broken inside. What had they used to do this damage? I was thinking of bats and chains. “Eppitt, what did they do to you?”

His throat strained. The cords of his neck flexed. He was speaking. I put my ear to his lips. “Remember…” He pointed to his chest and then mine. “Feeble-minded,” he whispered. “Crazy.”

“At school, yes. When we were kids,” I said.

“Love,” he muttered through his clenched jaw, “is how we’re bloomed.”

I leaned in close to his face. “Bloomed?” I said.

He shook his head. No, he’d collapsed words. That’s not what he had meant. “Doomed,” he whispered, “and blessed.” He wanted to say more. I put my ear to his lips. “I love you,” he said.

Stay. This was what I wanted to tell him. Stay. I had to ask if he was going to. If he said yes, I would tell him I was pregnant. And if he said no, I wouldn’t. “Are you going to stay?”

But as soon as I said the words, I knew the answer. He couldn’t. Either it was still too dangerous or someone owned him now. It was the middle of the night. Somehow he’d stolen away, and this would be fleeting. I put my fingers to his mouth. “I like ‘bloomed’ better than ‘doomed’ and ‘blessed.’”

He raised his hands. He fit one inside the other and then pushed that hand up and spread his fingers like a flower, blooming.

I washed him with a soft rag from a kitchen bowl of soapy water. I rinsed him clean. There were so many questions I wanted to ask: How did he get here? Where would he go? But I didn’t want to force him to talk. I kissed his body and said, “One more pact.”

I got up and pulled a thin red ribbon from the belt of a dress. I pressed my hand to Eppitt’s, which was scabbed, the knuckles blue and raised. He’d fought for his life. I wound and wound until there was no more ribbon, and then whispered in his ear,
“Sterbe nicht.”

He looked at me, uncomprehending.

“Don’t die,” I said. “Promise me that. I wouldn’t survive it.”

“Sterbe nicht,”
he said, the two words thick in his throat, on his tongue.

I fell asleep, and in the morning he was gone.

A few days later, a man knocked on the door. I felt immediately sick. Someone was coming with news. I opened the door a crack and blinked into the bright sun.

“You Margaret Shipley?”

“Yes, I am,” I said. “Please just say it. Say it fast.” If Eppitt was dead, would I become the girl on the sunporch after her mother died? Who would take me away this time? Where would I be strapped down?

“What?” the man said, perplexed. He was squat and balding. He rubbed his nose in a small angry circle. “I’m Dobish. Mr. Dobish. Is that what you want me to say fast? I run the Motordrome.”

“Do you have news for me?”

“I’ve got a job for you. We have a friend in common who said to give you a job. My wife, she gets sick sometimes. Sick and tired. Our mutual friend owed me a favor so he said you can be a substitute. You can come on Saturday? At noon? Unless—” He cocked his head. “Unless you don’t need the money.”

Was he told to ask this? Was he hinting that any money I had was money that wasn’t rightfully mine? “I need the money,” I said. “Who doesn’t?”

“Not that it pays a lot. But you can stay here, in addition.”

I didn’t want to stay, but this place was now the tie between Eppitt and me. If he was going to come for me, he’d come here. “Where can I meet you on Saturday?” I asked.

“Like I said. The Motordrome. You know how to drive a motorcycle?”

“No.”

“You only got to ride it in circles, though. It’s not so hard. You afraid of animals?”

“Not really,” I said. “Like pets? A dog or something?”

“A dog!” He laughed. “You think people on vacation from Philly would pay to see you ride with a dog in the sidecar? Philly people—I tell you, they want bang for their buck. You coming on Saturday or what?”

“I’ll come,” I said. “Is our mutual friend…” I didn’t say Isley Wesler’s name, though I was sure it was him. I wasn’t supposed to look for him. “Did our friend have a message for me? Something personal?”

“No,” he said, “no news. Sorry.” I couldn’t tell if he knew more than he was saying. “Saturday noon. The Motordrome. The Wall of Death. Wear some makeup. Doll up a little. You know, for the crowd.” He turned and walked down the front steps.

I called out, “If it’s not a dog, then what is it?”

He turned around and looked up at me. “Well, a lion, a course. Nothing else would be worth the price of admission.”

A lion.

This is what I mean. The world is astonishing, mainly because of its persistence. It keeps going on, but sometimes we need lions to keep us transfixed, to remind us that we’re human.

I
t’s called trespassing, technically speaking. But I’m banking on George Tarkington not calling the cops on his own daughter. And if he does see someone skulking through his wilting rhododendron and he calls the cops, I’ll say I wasn’t really trespassing. I was merely pausing at the waist-high chain-link fence visible in his side yard while on my way to the front door.

I should knock on the front door, but for the moment I have a clear view to the backyard, where my father is in his natural habitat—skimming the pool with a long-handled skimmer, wearing a Speedo and an unbuttoned shirt and loafers, no socks. When the wind kicks open the shirt, it exposes his belly, a pinkish-tan stripe down the center where the shirt parts, fading to pale skin on both rounded sides, which means this must be familiar attire for him, at least in the yard. He’s got a Scotch in his other hand, half resting on his belly. As far as bellies go, the word “cauldron” comes to mind. The firmness almost makes it seem like something he’s worked for, a protective fatted armor, like he belongs to an era in which people drank mead and complimented the cook with flatulence. I imagine telling this story to Ron. “I could describe my father better if I’d actually taken Marcus’s course in Old English,” I might say.

George walks across the lawn to a shed and pulls open the door. The grating of metal on metal alerts a collie that bounds over, albeit arthritically. George takes out a bucket of old tennis balls and sets it on the patio. He talks to the dog, ruffles its ears, riling the old boy up. Is he calling him Chauncey? He throws a ball across the yard, out of my line of sight. The collie runs off, fur rippling. George waits, one hand on his hip, in an almost matronly way.

The house looks like it was built in the 1980s—dark brick, pitched roof, winding footpath through a wooded front yard. It sits on more than an acre. The shed is likely home to a riding mower.

I imagine my father riding the mower in his short-sleeve button-down, his Speedo and loafers, drink in hand. How could I have feared being rejected by him? That man, right there, stirring his Scotch with his finger? Banana-hammock George?

I stand up tall and lean over the metal gate as if I’m one of those neighbors who stops by with news about some other neighbor’s nesting termites. “George!” I call. “George Tarkington!”

He turns his head and waves without knowing it’s me. Likely he has glasses he doesn’t wear, and after refusing them for so long, he’s become used to waving at blurred faces. “Hey there!” he calls back. “What can I do you for?” This practiced folksiness reminds me that my father sells houses for a living.

“I’m Ruth,” I call, as if this is casual.

He takes a few steps forward and it washes over him. My face must be coming into focus. Ruth. Maybe he’s doing calculations to try to gauge how old I would be now. Sixteen plus how many years has it been? “Ruth?”

“Yes,” I say. “Ruth, your daughter.”

He stops. The collie rushes up and shoves the ball at his slack hand. “Stop it, Chauncey. Not now.”

“Chauncey, huh?” I put my hand up to the chain link for Chauncey to sniff. “A collie.”

“Ruth. Jesus. Do you want to come in? I could get dressed, for shit’s sake.” His pink thighs are nearly hairless.

“I wouldn’t want to barge in on your family situation. Isn’t it
delicate?
” I ask. “You know, on the home front.”

“It’s just me,” he says. “Edie died three years ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

“Edie,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” And then, just to underline the fact that George hasn’t been in my life for many years, I add, “That was your wife, I take it? Edie?”

“Yes, yes,” he says. “Do you want a drink? Celery with cream cheese?”

“Um, no thanks.” I’m angry now. Had I expected him to be more contrite? What happened to Marie Cultry? “Tilton wants to see you,” I say, hoping it will sting a little. “I mean, I have vague memories and saw you briefly that one time. But Tilton, well, for her you don’t really exist. And Eleanor has had some recent health problems.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” I say. “She’s, you know, Eleanor.”

“That’s what I always liked about her.” He smiles warmly.

“Are you drunk? If you’re drunk, I can come back later.”

“No, no. Sober as a church mouse, more or less.”

“How would you feel about coming to the house?” I ask bluntly.

“With Eleanor there? She’d hate the idea. I thought you’d
all
hate the idea. Persona non grata!” Chauncey runs to the other side of the yard, barking at a squirrel. “Chauncey!” George yells. The dog doesn’t listen.

“Tilton doesn’t leave the house much, but I can probably get her out, for this kind of thing.”

“Doesn’t leave the house much? You mean, like Harriet was?”

I shrug. “I guess. Can we not go to a Steak ’n Shake this time?”

“Of course not. Jesus!”

Chauncey’s still barking. George yells the name again. His loafers are worn at the top, over the big toes, which protrude from his shoes ever so slightly, perhaps because no one has loved him enough since Edie died to help him keep his toenails clipped. Is this my future if I leave Ron? Long toenails?

“Your mother,” George says. “She has a presence in the world! I’ve always known that I’d be able to feel it when she died. Not a blackout—just a dimming of the lights.”

He swirls his Scotch, takes a sip, winces. “I wanted to stay in it, you know, but she wouldn’t have it. I might have been able to get partial. Weekends or some shit. But that would have killed me, seeing you being torn apart again. I was forced to become otherwise engaged.”

He’d wanted to stay in it? “What about after I turned sixteen? You knew I wasn’t under her thumb anymore.”

He stretches out his hands, mea culpa. “What could I do?”

“Edie,” I say. “I get it. It was delicate. And it’s been delicate with her dead too? Three years now? Do you know how I found you? A Google search. A couple of seconds. Why haven’t you tried to get in touch?”

“What would we have to talk about?”

“We’re talking now,” I say. But then the conversation stops. I look around his yard, the leaves in the pool, the tall brick house. “You never had any intention of trying to make this right. Did you?”

George squeezes his forehead with one hand. “I can wear a suit and tie. We can do dinner. I clean up nice.”

“Well, it’s got to happen quickly,” I tell him. “I’m leaving town soon. I’ve got a life to return to, I think. Either that or I have to make one up, which will be time-consuming. This is how we would have talked, I guess, if we’d worked this out sooner.”

“I don’t really know what you’re saying, what you mean.”

“And you’re problematic for me on many levels,” I say.

But then, almost as if he’s actually responding to a fatherly instinct, he reaches over the chain-link fence and puts his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t know he was capable of it. “Your mother is going to pull through,” he says. “She isn’t going to die. It’s not her style.”

“We’re all going to die one day,” I say flatly.

And he pulls his hand back and holds his glass with his fingers knit. He looks at the deep end of the pool, at Chauncey nosing the nearby shrubs, and then back at me, as if I’ve hurt his feelings. “Don’t tell the collie,” he says. “They’re a sensitive breed.”