Chapter 1 #4
A man holding a drink dragged a folding chair to the fence and stepped up on it, trying for a better look over at the home of my charge.
Whisking to him, I entered the orb of his thoughts.
He knew my charge by name and reputation, and part of the reason he had agreed to come to this wedding at all, with his sister, who needed a date, was the proximity of the house of my charge, who he very much admired, being as my charge was a self-made guy and knew what was up and got it about the American dream and was someone this gentleman saw himself as emulating though his own business was on a much more modest scale, consisting, as it did, of (only) three oil-change places.
That is: places one went to get one’s oil changed.
Lloyd had been an “absolute fiend” about that.
“Timely oil changes” having been proven to “prolong the life” of the—
No, no, no.
My place was not here, among these revelers, but over there, in the house of the (ugh) dying.
Shame.
Shame on me.
I vaulted up, through the branches of a magnolia, into the bedroom of my charge.
—
The Frenchman sat in an armchair in one corner, as if awaiting me.
He did not seem the same man. He looked younger, was glowing with good health, was out of his mechanic’s garb and wearing the most beautiful set of evening clothes.
Was even twirling a top hat on an ebony cane.
I have found a better method, he said.
He smiled, stood up, lurched toward me with surprising quickness and, before I could step aside, passed into me.
What’s happening? I said.
He abided there, taking a deep breath in, then letting it out.
And, of the instant, I was not me but a schoolgirl from Pennsylvania.
The nerve! I felt.
And yet:
She had long red hair, was tall for her age, was intelligent, wrote poetry, could do seven back walkovers in a row; was (I could feel it) lovely, and knew it.
She was thinking, just now (or had been, as he’d sampled her mind) about (of all things) the weather.
Always, for her fourteen long years on this earth, the seasons had passed in a predictable way: the oppressive close damp heat at the end of August made a girl feel like summer was shutting down (as if August were a dear friend who’d just learned he was to be sent away and was pleading with you not to forget the beautiful times you’d spent together during those first precious weeks of him) and then came fall’s gradual browning/oranging and, oh, the smell of the covers of one’s new notebooks, plus that good old I am back to learning again among my summer-changed friends feeling, and maybe, let’s say, as you walked to school, a drenching autumn rain converted the leaves underboot into a paint-exuding mush that stained the sidewalk purplish, which, she had to admit, she just loved that.
Especially if, for example, in a window of the old Murphree house, on that dull dark rainy morning, a single candle burned.
Which would be spooky.
But in a good way.
Only this year: uh, no, everything was wonky in the extreme all of the sudden.
The heat positively crushed a gal all through October (Halloween being a big sweatfest because one had chosen to be, duh, a bear) and then more of the same in November, until finally you had to, sadly, bail on the four new sweaters Mom had bought you at Target (sorry, guys, maybe next year) and then came a freaky snow so heavy or even copious it cracked a beam in the roof, or so said Dad, who ought to know, since he spent half his life up there.
Which snow was, at least, you know, seasonal.
Like, festive and all? But then, for two solid days (in December!) August returned, and one morning the yard was this total sudden lake from all the melting snow, and the swing set tipped all the way over on its own for no reason whatsoever just because something underground had fritzed out or whatnot from all the melting (!).
Then, a week later, as you were helping Mom get the Christmas tree in (because that’s the kind of super-thoughtful kid you were, ha ha, but seriously), both of you just pouring off sweat, because it was like eighty or something, you started back for the new tree stand in the trunk only to find hundreds of hailstones zipping down like little lunch boxes or whatnot, and you and Mom had to wait on the porch for the utter madness out there to abate (meaning “stop”) or else get good and brained, which, meanwhile, smaller hailstones kept plunking down and bouncing back up out of the trunk as if the trunk were not a trunk at all but a gosh-darned trampoline, didn’t it seem that way? Mom said.
And she had to admit, yes, exactly, spot-on observation, Mom.
—
The Frenchman stepped abruptly out of me.
And I was suddenly no longer that girl.
How I missed her, missed being her, missed knowing I was lovely, missed looking forward to high school, where, I felt sure, I would do great and make just a ton of new friends.
The Frenchman looked at me with alarm.
That? he said. That is what you take away? From this expérience extraordinaire? That I have provided you? That she is lovely? That she will have friends? Mon Dieu!
Well, also, I said (trying to somewhat redeem myself in his eyes), something’s off with the weather.
Voilà, he said, and cut his eyes down at my charge. Through his words and deeds, he must bear an outsized responsibility.
For the weather? I said.
However, honesty compels me to admit, he said. It was also of my doing. I had a hand in the invention of the beast.
So you’ve said, I said.
Quelle horreur! he cried.
So you’ve said, I said.
Do not mock me, he said. My shame is well-founded. See for yourself.
He skim-popped me lightly across the head with the palm of his hand.
And just like that, I was him, briefly, the Frenchman, in a mechanic’s jumper, crouching before some sort of metal contraption in a squalid barn smelling of cow dung and gasoline.
With a bang the thing went off. From one end protruded a metal claw, which suddenly started turning.
Oily smoke from the contraption poured forth from the barn, drifting over a nearby meadow lush with wildflowers, where I would sometimes go to sit against a boulder while working through a particularly difficult engineering problem.
I had done it.
Triomphe, I had done it!
Wait, I said. You invented the engine?
To my shame, yes, he said.
Well, I beg to differ, I said.
For me? Former me? Jill “Doll” Blaine? My auto, my car?
My “lime-green” Chevelle? In those bygone days?
In “Stanley, Indiana”? Had been a source of such happiness.
To get in it, when it was new, a gift from “Dad,” and drive around town, and have the other kids notice, and wave?
At me? Former big nobody? To cruise, on a Friday night, down Pope Street, in that wonderful new-car smell, and join the long line of other gleaming cars, all filled with kids from school, and park at the Aurora for Cokes, then slowly cruise back out, to wave at and flirt with boys who, at school, in real life, I would never even have dreamed of speaking to?
And he, the Frenchman, had played a part in that?
In making thousands, maybe millions, of young teens happy?
Not to mention: family vacations, ambulances, trucks delivering all sorts of wonderful things to people all over town who needed them?
You don’t understand, he said.
I’m afraid I don’t, I said.
It poisons, madame, he said. I did not know it then. But I know it now. I have been corrected. As he must be. And you? You are here to help. To help me. Help me correct him. Which you will do. Make no mistake.
He was scaring me a little, to be honest.
And what did he think I was going to be able to do about it, anyway?
Lie on top of him, he said.
I beg your pardon? I said.
Lie on top of him, he said. Let yourself sink in. Enter him, show him. Show him what I have shown you. That girl, her feelings, the weather. Then I will leave you to your work. If, that is, you still wish to do it.
My charge’s legs were swollen, his breath terrible, his color bad, his features painted with the early signs of encroaching death, the lips beginning, already, to arrange themselves into the death-sneer.
Why don’t you do it? I said.
I no longer have it! the Frenchman cried.
I gave it to you. Besides, he has an aversion to me.
And is therefore unlikely to receive from me.
Do it. Do it now. Lie on top of him. Sink in.
Breathe in, breathe out. Then abide there for, perhaps, another full minute.
Just to be sure. Come now: no more delays.
Always, in the bygone days, men would tell me with great certainty what I should do and then, if I hesitated, would tell me again, towering over me, smelling of cigars and mouthwash, superior smirks creeping over their huge-pored faces, and then I would, often, nearly always—well, I would do it.
I would do whatever that man had asked me to do, within reason, seeing this as a form of kindness on my part, so as to not force the poor fellow, who no doubt had a lot on his mind, to, uh, raise his voice or otherwise become, well, frustrated.
Frustrated with me.
The Frenchman was frowning.
It was always their disappointment that got me.
Even more so than their anger.
I suggested that, rather than entering him, I might, perhaps, hold my forearms above the torso of my charge? Like so? Then briefly dip them in?
I demonstrated, stopping just short of entry.
No, no, lie on top of him, he said. Enter him. Don’t be obtuse. Trust me. It will be more powerful that way. He will be more apt to receive.
Well, I was not the passive woman I had once been.
I had been elevated, was stronger now, could do what I thought best.
I’ll try it my way, thanks, I said, and thrust my forearms in.
At which the Frenchman let out a terrible groan.
Idiote! he shouted.
But I could tell, by a certain sensation at the base of my skull and the look that passed over my charge’s face, that, yes, he saw.