Nursery Tale (13 page)

"That's a lie."

"No it ain't."

"Quiet!"

"Don't tell
me
to be quiet!"

Robin clamped his hand over his brother's mouth. "I said be quiet! Listen!" He slowly took his hand away from Robert's mouth. "Listen," he repeated. "Can'tcha hear?"

"Hear what?"

"The red Indians. They're gone."

Robert listened a long while. "Yeah," he said at last, wonderingly. "They are. Where'd they go, you think?"

"I don't know." Robin sounded annoyed. "You think I can read minds or somethin'?" He started down the path that would take him out of the woods. Robert stayed put. Robin stopped, looked back. His mouth fell open, his eyes widened.

Robert said, "Robin, what's wrong?"

Robin gulped theatrically. "Jees, Robert—I seen her again, right there." He nodded at an area a couple feet to the right of where his brother was standing. "And she was just like before, Robert. Just like before. Naked! Jees, Robert, didn'tcha see her, didn'tcha see her?"

Robert grimaced. "I didn't see nothin', you're full of it!" and he glanced uneasily to his right, said, "You're full of it!" again, to which his brother made no reply, and moved quickly down the path and out of the woods.

Robin followed a half hour later.

M
arge Gellis watched the pen shiver in her hand. She set the pen down next to the sheet of yellow stationery. The sheet was blank. It would stay blank, she realized, because whatever courage, or conviction, she ever possessed had left her long ago (the day she and Norm were married, she knew). And it wasn't as if she had any place to go, any money, or friends, or relatives who could take her in. (Her mother, in that lousy, two-room apartment, certainly wouldn't welcome her, she knew.)

She was probably very fortunate that she had this place, and Norm; at the age of forty-five and never having been attractive, anyway, and with no talents, she was caught here, and lucky for it.

She worked the piece of yellow stationery into her hand, as if her hand were a spider gobbling the paper up. She wadded the paper into a tight ball and held it in her fist for a long while.

To have used it, she thought, to have written the kind of letter to her husband that her impulses told her had to be written would surely have been an act of self-destruction.

T
rudy Wentis wondered if it might, after all, have been a mistake to bring Sam back here, despite what the omniscient doctor had told her and Dick. ("It may act as a spur to his eventual recovery. It's where he was found, you know, and there are memories locked up inside him, memories that can't help but crowd back. And, as well, this sort of thing—the abandonment of a child, and he was, obviously, abandoned, is something we don't like to see set aside. If at all possible, we like to see the parents brought to justice, in time. Sam can help us do that.") Because "justice" was fine, and noble, but not at the expense of a child's peace of mind. That price was too high.

She watched him. He was at the edge of the yard, his back to her; he was very still, and quiet, his eyes apparently on the dark, thick line of woods a half mile off. She pitied him suddenly for the turmoil at work inside him, the forces pulling and pushing him this way and that, and she pitied herself, too, because she had no idea what those forces were, where they originated, or why, and therefore could not help him very much; and, as a consequence, could not help herself.

"Sam?" she called. He did not turn to answer. He said nothing. "Sam, your lunch is ready." There was no response.

Evening

M
alcolm Harris tossed the just-used fireplace match into the fire; he stretched his six-and-a-half-foot frame out in front of the fireplace. "Did she go back to sleep okay?" he asked his wife, Shelly, as she came into the living room from their seven-month-old daughter's bedroom, on the second floor. "Or did you have to shove a tit in her mouth?" he went on, and chuckled a little. (He had tried to talk his wife out of breastfeeding. "I know it was all the rage years ago, Shell, but, my God, times change.")

Shelly chose not to respond directly to his remark. "I had to put her on her stomach," she said. "She was on her back. She's fine, Malcolm."

"'
Malcolm
'?" He grimaced, glanced around at her. "Okay—'breast.' Is that better?"

She smiled slightly.
Not really
, the smile said. She nodded at the fireplace, at the fire Malcolm had built. It was crackling and pulsing nicely. "May I join you?" she said.

He got into a sitting position, patted the floor beside him. "Please do."

She sat beside him, her legs straight, arms behind her, palms flat on the floor. "Do you like it here?" she asked.

"I like it here. Yes."

"Enough for a long-term commitment?"

"How long-term?"

"Oh, I don't know. Until Serena's grown."

"That's a long time, Shell."

"Sure it is. But she needs the security and the stability—we all do."

Malcolm smiled; he had heard the "security and stability" lecture before. He put his arm around her, pulled her to him, kissed her. "Let's make love," he said.

"Yes," she whispered.

R
obin Graham listened a full five minutes to his twin brother's deep, slow breathing. When, at last, he had convinced himself that Robert was asleep, he got out of bed and crossed to the closet. He put his hand on the doorknob.

"I'll tell Mom," Robert said. "If you go anywhere I'll get up and go in her bedroom and tell her."

"I was just going to go to the bathroom," Robin said immediately, and he moved quickly to the bedroom door; he opened it.

"I really will," Robert said. "I mean it."

"I know you
mean
it," Robin said. "And I think you're just jealous."

Robert thought for a moment about that. He lifted his head from the pillow. "Why would I be jealous? I ain't got nothin' to be jealous of, 'cuz yer just
hallucinatin'
!"

"I'm what?"

"Hallucinatin'. That means you're seeing things that ain't there—like naked people in the bushes. Whatsa matter, you didn't listen to Mr. Armstrong in English today—"

But Robin had left the room.

Robert heard the bathroom door close hard, the lock falling into place. Robin would probably spend a good long time in there, he thought. He'd probably whack off or something, thinking about what he saw.

Robert laid his head back on the pillow. Sleep came more quickly to him than he had wanted or supposed it could.

"I'
m going to have to cure you of this," said Malcolm Harris.

"Cure me of what?" Shelly asked, sitting up in the bed beside him. She got a pack of Larks from the nightstand, lit one. "Smoking?"

Malcolm smiled quickly. "That, too. No, I mean your lack of adventurousness."

"Adventurousness?"

"Sure." He paused; her cigarette smelled good; he wished, briefly, that he hadn't quit. "Like—where did we just make love?"

"Huh?"

"
Where
did we just make love? Here, right? In this bed. In this bedroom. And where do you think I
wanted
to make love?"

She grinned. "In the refrigerator?"

He let his head fall back against the headboard; he rolled his eyes as if in exasperation. "Lord Jehovah,
Gott in Himmel
. No, no, Shelly. Not in the refrigerator. Downstairs! In front of that beautiful fire! That's why I made it, so we could make love in front of it. That's called being adventurous."

"Uh-huh. It's also called a good way to catch pneumonia. It's cold
down
there, Mal."

"Shelly, darling," he began, using his most patronizing tone, "that's why I built the fire."

She got out of bed, pulled the blanket from it suddenly, wrapped the blanket tightly around her.

"Hey!" Malcolm protested, quickly covering himself with the top sheet.

"See, it
is
cold, isn't it?" Shelly said, grinning, and she left the room.

T
he brown suede jacket Robin Graham wore (his mother had stitched his name in green yarn near the cuff of the left-hand sleeve) and the blue jeans and sneakers were not quite enough to keep the cold out. He looked back at the house, shivered, took a deep breath.
What
was he doing, anyway? He had school in the morning and he had to get up at 5:30 and it was so cold out here and so warm in there, and if dumb Robert woke up and saw that he wasn't in bed and really did go and tell on him...

He walked quickly to the front of the yard, his anger building. Robert was always such a dud—a damned, dumb dud! Robin smiled at that. He turned his head and glared at the bedroom window: "Damned, dumb dud!" he whispered.

He turned left. He stopped after a couple of steps, momentarily disoriented. He looked at his house again, then at the Harris house next door, and across the street at a big yellow house (a grayish-cream color in the darkness) still in the final stages of construction. Where were the street lights? He turned around, looked across the little island—bordered by asphalt—on which his house, the Harris and Wentis houses, and several others not yet occupied, had been built. No street lights.

Just the frigid, still darkness, and, here and there, in some of the houses, a bathroom light left on for the night. The Wentises' backyard spotlight had been turned off, but he didn't notice this.

He squinted at the western horizon. The thick, dark line of woods a half mile off was barely discernible from a night sky that was clear and crowded with stars.

He took another deep breath.

Then, because he was eleven years old and healthy, and had seen something that had intrigued him—like a gift unopened—and because he hated his brother, but most of all because he was alive, and didn't need to think about it, he ran hard, breathing first through his nose and exhaling through his mouth, as he had been taught, and moving his arms with precision, and, with each step, pushing off with his toes, and all the while his eyes wide open, in wonderment, focused on the rapidly approaching, rapidly widening and broadening line of the forest in front of him.

A
dventurousness be damned!
Shelly Harris thought. Especially on a night like tonight.

She put her hand under the running bath water, found it was too hot, and turned the cold water faucet slightly.

She heard her husband's voice above the sound of the water. She went to the bathroom door. "Did you say something?"

Malcolm stuck his head out from their bedroom doorway. "Yes, I did. I wanted to know if you were downstairs just now."

"Downstairs? No. Why?" She wrapped the blanket more tightly around her.

"I heard something." He shrugged. "At least I thought I did." A pause. "Are you going to take a bath?"

"Uh-huh. What do you mean?—you heard something."

"Just a noise. It was nothing. Can I join you?"

"What kind of noise?"

He started toward her—naked—down the hallway. "Just a noise-noise, Shell. Now can I please—" He stopped, turned his head toward the stairway to his left; he looked puzzled.

Shelly called, "What's the matter?"

"There's someone downstairs," he answered quietly, incredulously. He held his hand up, as if to stop Shelly from leaving the bathroom, though she hadn't budged. "Stay there," he said, still quietly, but Shelly, the bath water running behind her, hadn't heard him.

"Malcolm?" she called, above the rushing noise of the water. She stepped out of the bathroom. "I can't hear what—" She stopped. Her eyes widened.

"Shelly?" said Malcolm. He followed her gaze to a spot about an arm's length away, on the stairs. "Shelly?" he said again, because he saw nothing on the stairs.

And something brushed against him very quickly. Hair, he thought, and the suggestion of a small, warm hand on his rib cage.

"What," he started, "in the name of heaven—"

"Damned, dumb, dud!" he heard. Once. Then again, and again, decreasing in volume down the hallway toward Serena's bedroom.

Malcolm saw the child then. At Serena's door. And the child's huge, pale blue eyes and exquisite mouth were blank, the body motionless, in soft profile, one hand on the doorknob and a dozen of the foot-long, strike-anywhere fireplace matches clutched tightly in the other.

Shelly screamed then—a scream of panic and desperation for her baby's sake. And a moment later, Malcolm felt her brush past him, her touch much the same as the child's had been.

And he watched, dumbfounded, unable to move, as she threw Serena's door open. He waited. Only moments. And she appeared again in the hallway, her daughter held tight in her arms. "She's okay, Malcolm. Thank God, oh thank God, she's okay!"

"Where . . . is he?" Malcolm said. But Shelly's thoughts were for Serena only. "Where in the hell is he?"