Chapter 1 #2
I am digging away at the surface of “school desk” with the point of “compass” from “Sears” as “Mrs. Kiley” drones on.
The lesson, as always, eludes me. What I want is to go home and play “PrettyPetals.” That, at least, I am good at.
Through a nearby window (so close I might reach over and touch it, if I dared, which I don’t), three children too young for school play among gently swaying “swing set” seats.
Lucky ducks! Butterflies dart about, seemingly more quickly or slowly in proportion to the joy in the children’s voices.
The more joy, the more agitated the butterflies.
Darn.
Darn it.
To my chagrin, I now recalled:
“Jill.”
“Jill Blaine.”
“Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine.”
In the bygone days, that (alas) had been me.
—
Sitting on the edge of the fountain, I resisted several additional recollections:
The feeling of toting in two bags of “groceries,” one in each arm; the “glassclunk” (one, then the second) as these are set down in sequence.
No, no, no.
Dangling one’s feet in the “new aboveground pool” as crazy light-stars danced across the surface of the “heavily chlorinated water.” Having “hopped right in,” one felt, through “plastic liner,” one’s footprints imprinting upon the soft swells of underlying sand.
Oh gosh, oh dear.
Surely that Frenchman must be done by now.
I vaulted up, passed through the bedroom wall, found him standing on the bed sweating profusely, treading on the feet of my charge while rapidly reading aloud from his tremendous stack of papers.
No sooner would he finish and drop a page than it would, as if guided by a gentle human hand, slowly descend and add itself neatly to the accruing stack on the floor.
What he was reading was nonsense, a fantastical poem or rambling drunken narrative.
The cardinal, he shouted, feeds on bits of plastic piping.
In a ballroom filling with mud, chairs squeak in objection.
A groggy hippo (What hippo, I wondered, why speak of hippos in this fearful place, at this somber moment?) rolls yellow eyes up at a hunter seeking its ivory canines.
A juvenile jaguar creeps forward, dismembers a poodle in a bright pink jacket.
Clearly the fellow was unhinged.
Among our ilk, many were.
(Ours was not an easy road.)
Fish nibbling corpses in a lakeside graveyard, he shouted. A squalling infant borne away on a gray-black mudflow.
Enough, I said. Please.
But he only began reading faster, soon too fast to be understood.
From the house next door came a great cry, as if many individuals all at once had glimpsed something pleasing to them.
This celebratory sound appealed to me very much.
How I longed to be over there instead.
Well, why not?
I was serving no useful purpose here and could serve none until he was gone.
—
I cast myself out through the wall, looped over the neighboring yard, had a look down.
A wedding.
An evening wedding by torchlight.
I hovered above at that exact breathless moment before the service was to begin.
A crowd of two hundred or more sat in chairs organized into rows, flaring torches forming the aisle.
The bride, awaiting the first notes of the march, standing beside her father, gave their joined hands a nervous, confirmatory shake, eliciting a ringing of sympathetic laughter from the congregants.
Adorable.
She was a beauty. As for the groom, he was nervous, attentive, awash in an undisguised reverence for his bride, clearly feeling himself the most fortunate of men.
I landed softly among the congregants, finding much that was familiar, even dear:
The impatient flick of a program that one had already read three times.
The tap tap tap of one’s shoetip against the metal chair just in front but one must immediately stop tapping if the fellow sitting there turned his head even slightly.
The urge one sometimes got, for no reason at all, to scrunch up one’s toes inside one’s pumps.
The sudden cessation, just then, of all talk (all chitchat, all gossip; no more leaning over to say to so-and-so, Wow, what a dress, or, Hat doesn’t quite work, or, Can’t believe that homely kid grew into such a looker, or, The mom’s fresh out of the drunk tank but based on the look of her you’d think she just shot over from the beauty spa).
The wedding march began, played by a string quartet.
Oh gosh, goodness.
This wasn’t—this wasn’t good for me.
I burst up and into the bedroom of my charge, cheeks aglow with the joy of it all.
Welcome back, the Frenchman said dryly.
The last of his pages had just been read. He leapt down from the bed as if made spry by this discharge of his duty. The towering stack, reconstituted on the floor, ascended up through the ceiling.
Rather than comforting him, he said, I advise you to lead him, as quickly as possible, to contrition, shame, and self-loathing.
Well, thanks for the advice, I said.
Or do nothing, he said. Simply leave. Any comfort you give will only serve to confirm him in his current state of delusion. C’est exact? How is it said? You let him off a hook.
Off the hook, I said.
You let him off the hook, he said.
Are you finished? I said curtly. I have no idea what you’re even talking about.
I am not, alas, he said. I have failed to make the thing clear. To you, or to him. For all its enormity. I seem—I seem to lack the necessary skill.
His evident frustration touched me.
Ours is not an easy road, I said.
He looked at me. I had not been looked at so intently in quite some time. I felt the warmth rising into my cheeks.
You will see, he said. I will help you see. He is no good. I am off now, to seek a different method. Une approche alternative.
He gave a curt bow and burst out through the wall, contorting himself into the balled-up configuration of someone leaping into a pond for relief from the heat.
Only to thrust his head back in again seconds later, tears running down his face.
Honesty compels me to admit, he said. It was also of my doing. I had a hand in the invention of the beast.
What beast? I said.
Quelle horreur! he cried.
And then was gone again.
—
Reentering the orb of my charge’s thoughts, I found him attempting to counteract the unsettling effects of the Frenchman’s intrusion by recalling his childhood kitchen and its associated smells:
Lard, iced tea, fried meat, bleach.
In a patch of untended weeds outside the back window lay the familiar burn pile. So many happy moments had been spent at that small homebuilt table, the six of them talking, laughing, playing Nail Your Neighbor for pennies.
He let his mind roam over the pile, imagining certain items that had accumulated there over the course of his childhood: a rimless tire, a rusted length of dog chain, the nicked brim of a baseball cap, the pink arm and head of Minky, beloved doll of his sister Willamina, who had one day, for reasons unknown, torn the thing apart in a rage.
I’m gonna need that sink, handsome, said his mother.
His father was washing up, sleeves rolled back, face red with sun, chaw tin in his back pocket.
My charge was a child then, a dreamy child resting one hand on a familiar kitchen counter of warped, stained plywood.
What would he do with his life?
What did he want to be when he grew up?
Wake up, bub, Father said. Tables don’t set themselves.
And why’s your mouth hanging open like that, said Mother.
These memories were having the desired effect of driving away that vision of a crazy foreigner dancing on his feet talking nonsense. They stemmed from that period when he’d first realized he’d probably always be the shortest.
Did I look the shortest? he’d asked after his eighth-grade recital.
You looked fine, Mother’d said warily.
But that night from his bed he’d heard them talking.
We might think about some taller shoes, Father said.
Five inches taller? Mother said.
Then there’d come a silence that felt like shared stifled laughter.
He’ll grow, Mother said.
Hope so, Father said. Seemed like a third grader’d somehow snuck up there.
Well, Father had since met three governors. Had shaken hands with the great Bob Feller. Mother’d once had coffee with Charlton Heston.
They’d lived bigger lives, those simple Wyoming folks had.
Because of him.
Through his good offices.
He’d sent them to the Holy Land. By way of Paris. Only the best hotels. Cars, tour guides, the whole enchilada.
Suddenly irritated, he sternly, even rudely, addressed an underling.
An underling who was soft and admired him.
Perry. Why the hell had Perry let that Frenchie in here?
Did Perry cogitate? Was he capable of using his noggin?
Could he apply that lump of flesh taking up so much damn space there at the end of his neck to solve a thing? Could he at least do that?
Seemed he couldn’t.
Well, get out.
Get out, Perry.
Have a think about all I’ve said to you.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Been wrong before.
Although not very damn often.
Perry, get out.
Send in Lars. Send Marie in. Tell her don’t dare bring that goddamn graph back in here. It stinks to high heaven. Communicates zilch. How much did that piece of trash cost me? Remember those folks called shareholders? Who trust us with their money? That they worked hard to accumulate?
His wife woke, rose, checked a bedside monitor, placed a palm on his forehead, and returned to the love seat, pausing to adjust the position of her slippers such that the invisible person was no longer pigeon-toed and was facing not the couch, but the window, as if looking out of it.
—
I did not understand how the Frenchman’s nonsensical ravings could have upset such a serious and confident man.
But they had.
Outwardly my charge remained motionless (on his back, eyes closed, one hand under the covers, the other above), while inwardly (that is, as he imagined himself from within the dreamlike state in which his illness had trapped him) he rocked from side to side, as if bound and in distress.