Dawn Raffel - Further Adventures in the Restless Universe

“Nothing.”

“Nothing. You know what I think?”

“No, what do you think?”

“Forget it,” he said.

“No, tell me,” she said.

“Please,” she said.

“I ’m thinking. That story you told…”

“Which?” she said. “What’s that?”

“The wind,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“The woman?”

“What woman?”

“The lake,” he said. “The woman on the lake.”

“The river?”

“The river. I guess it was the river. The woman who drowned.”

“I’m beat,” she said.

“Who was she?”

“No one.”

“Everyone is someone.”

“Okay, someone. But no one we knew. A story my mother told,” she said.

“You sure?” he said.

“I’m sure,” she said. “I think so.”

“Oh,” he said. “Still—”

“What made you think of that?” she said.

“Just…” he said.

“Shhh,” she said.

“What is it?”

“The children?”

“The children are sleeping.”

“But—” she said.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“It’s late,” she said.

“This house,” she said. “It moves in the night.”

“You mean it creaks,” he said.

“It spooks me.”

“Nothing but the wind. The woman,” he said.

“What of her?” she said.

“How was it that she drowned?”

“Who knows,” she said. “She couldn’t swim. Or cramps. Maybe undertow. The undertow was wicked.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, what do you mean?”

“I mean people were there,” he said. “That’s how you told it. A crowd on the shore.”

“That’s what the myth is: Drowning is noisy. It isn’t,” she said.

“It isn’t,” she said.

“I heard you the first time.”

“Tired, I said.”

“Broad daylight,” he said.

“And shallow,” he said. “No one could see her?”

“No one could see her distress,” she said. “They looked too late. Or else they didn’t look.”

“I love you,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“Me too,” she said.

“Goodnight,” she said. “Listen, I’m sleeping.”

“You are?” he said.

“I am,” she said. “I told you I was.”

“Look into the pumpkin’s face,” he says. Wiping the pulp off, side of a leg, he needs her to pay attention, he says.

“Mind yourself”—her mother’s voice inside of her, serrated and worn. She should clean up the mess.

“Madre,” he says. “Mama mia. Maman!”

The eye he has cut is a heart, she sees, if a heart were heart-shaped. “How do you say it in French?” he says.

She fires the oven.

“Salt,” she says.

“You aren’t even listening. Mother,” he says.

“Buddy,” she says, either scolding or pleading: Can’t keep her hands off, not for long, and never could. “Hands to yourself ”—it is the story of her life.

Once upon a time, there was a girl with an empty place in her glove, an actual person known to Faye or, at least, described to her, minus the details. There but for the grace of God.

A slip of the knife has ruined the mouth.

All of the faces she has known, has loved, has watched fall!

All along the walls, there are the marks of the boy, in pencil and in fingerprint. In crayon and craypa, wax, sweat, on paper and not, in pulp, in ink, in shadow, scratched.

The oven clicks.

She is squatting to his level. “Here is the way that you say it,” she says.

“Hold still,” she says. “Don’t move.” She is tying a knot, or trying to. He holds a sword.

“Dagger,” he tells her, by way of correction. Rubberized and bendable.

“I cannot allow,” she says.

“I simply forbid,” she says.

“You cannot walk alone,” she says. “The river, and who-knows-who about. You know what could happen.”

“How do you know?”

“Not going to say it again,” she says. There is a hand in her pocket searching for something, a residue she feels against her teeth. “Not going to say it. Unpleasant,” she says.

He is pulling the costume off himself, up over his head, the ends undone. Up, up in arms. Silvered legs are on the floor. She picks up the garment. The weapon has fallen. “Buddy,” she says.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Señor,” she says. “Monsieur?”

“Hello?” she says. “I’m hanging up.”

She is holding a jacket, an empty sleeve. “I could tell you a story,” she says, and does not. She is the keeper of mishaps: flukish and apocryphal, occasionally true. She holds it close: the story in the news about the woman who drowned. She’d been a woman who stole things, reckless and possibly somewhat distractible or, Faye thought, aloof. She had a beautiful name. She had a lopsided sidestroke, a light plait of hair. She had appeared, Faye thought, to be engaged, in a hurry, as Faye is herself, as if to finish up or polish something off.

She says, “I haven’t got all night.”

She says, “Speed it along.”

She says, “Here is a flashlight. Other hand.”

She says, “At least.” She is always, she is thinking, doing most of the talking.

“What at least?”

“At least,” she says. She rights a strap. “At least it’s not raining. Not too cold. Look,” she says, for here they are, walking, persuaded into costume — the boy is, at least — and out of the house. “Ghost,” she says, “Look, look, a little goblin! Lower the beam.”

He does as he’s told, illuminates a foot, the curb, a leafy menace.

The child of the woman who drowned is in the walkway, surrounded by men. She is smaller than Buddy, golden-haired. She is wearing a tiara.

Buddy says no. “Halo,” he says.

“Where is a match?” Faye says to him or else herself. “At least it’s nice and warm in here.” Disorder of the day: the newspaper spoiled with vegetable matter, marker, salt.

“Why did we walk away?” he says.

“Look up there”—there is a shelf full of things that are presumably dangerous and easy to reach.

She has the phone off the cradle.

“Mom,” he says.

“Who is there?”

“Why?” he says.

She says, “I won’t repeat myself,” into the receiver. “Tell me what you want,” she says. “This must cease. Buddy,” she says, “please give me that.”

“Why not just hang up,” he says.

“I am,” she says.

Flint. He is lighting the candle inside of the pumpkin, precariously balanced. Flesh is burnt inside the thing.

Faye has heard the breathing. She opens her mouth to feed herself handfuls. “Want some?” she says.

“You need to drip the wax,” she says.

“Careful,” she says.

“Let me,” she says, and knows he won’t.

“Seeds?” she says.

“I thought you were hanging up,” he says.

“I did,” she says, depressing a button. “Buddy, listen, at least you have me.”

“Curr?” he says.

“Coeur,” she says. “The way that you say it,” tucking him in. She knows it won’t last. He’ll be up in a minute. “A cur is a dog.”