Maud Casey - Drastic - Stories

The door to my parents’ room is the tiniest bit ajar, and through the crack I glimpse my mother pressed against my father’s back, as if she were resting against a wall. In my old room, the door swung wide open, Aunt Bernadette sprawls on her back wheezing her cigarillo breath. I lean against the guest room door to listen to Carl and Kevin’s hushed tones rise and fall in the secret language of couples. Downstairs, Lizzie and George are tangled in each other’s arms, achieving a depth of comfort that eludes them in waking life. I am suddenly and terribly alone. Death is boring. Death is boring. Death is boring .

Out on the back patio, I wait for my eyes to adjust. Death is boring. Death is boring . In the eerie blue of night, the yards seem full of hidden treasure sunk to the bottom of an ocean. The whole neighborhood is submerged in the watery glow of the moon, like Lanie’s dream the first night we were here — my family swimming through our house filled with water, everyone breathing effortlessly, and finally no talking. A dog barks anonymously from the dark corner of a house but stops once I find the shadows again. I watch for sprinklers lurking in the grass, picking my way through yards as if across minefields.

The Barbie tribe has been pillaged — Barbies everywhere, knocked over and legs splayed. Some of them have choppy, dull-knife haircuts and lipstick smears on their tiny faces. Death is boring. Death is boring .

The spitting cherub fountain says I’m almost home. I step over the knee-high stone wall — an unusual variation on the typical faux-wood fence — that separates the house two doors down from the Wallenborns, the family next door who took my father in during my parents’ separation. Death is boring. Death is boring . The lights in their house are out and the house itself seems to be sleeping. The moon reflects off the shallow fountain pool underneath the cherub spitting. I put my face into the cold water so inviting, a relief from the hot summer. I listen to the blood rush through my head. The second time I do it, I’m looking for a different kind of relief. Death is boring. Death is boring . Evolution, natural selection, transcendence, whatever has led me to this moment, I let my head fall like a stone, dipped in the silent splendor of the cold, cold water, not breathing effortlessly, not breathing at all, wanting to feel what it’s like just for a moment to not breathe, to not think, to be that quiet.

I get a noseful of water and come up sputtering and choking. The yard is flooded with sudden light. The Wallenborns’ house has woken up all at once, each window awash in fluorescent yellow.

“There, over there,” Mr. Wallenborn screams.

I spew water.

“Don’t move. Put your hands up. Get down on the ground.”

“Honey,” Mrs. Wallenborn says, squeezing her husband’s shoulder, “it’s Harriet.”

Mr. Wallenborn shines his flashlight onto my dripping face. I hiccup and water dribbles out the side of my mouth. Mr. and Mrs. Wallenborn’s faces are frozen in shock to learn that something so familiar could disturb their night.

“Aren’t you in Illinois, Harriet?” Mrs. Wallenborn asks.

My mother, my father, Aunt Bernadette, Carl, Kevin, George, and Lizzie are standing on the front steps of my parents’ house as Mr. Wallenborn escorts me, his hand on my elbow as if he were escorting me down the aisle. Huge moths click their wings against the front porch light as my mother pulls her sweater closed over her nightgown, though there is no chill in the air.

“She must have been sleepwalking,” Mr. Wallenborn says.

“Did she sleepwalk into a pool?” Kevin asks. “Go get a blanket or something,” he says to Carl.

“Why don’t you get a blanket if you know so much?” Carl says affectionately.

“I’ll get one,” Lizzie says. She turns to George. “Where do I get a blanket?”

“I’ll come with you,” George says. He is only half awake, and the spell of their sleeping clinch lingers.

“Next time, you might find yourself wandering down the middle of a busy street.” Mr. Wallenborn looks at my parents knowingly.

“Come inside,” my mother says, when she finds her voice. “Let’s go inside. I’ll make some coffee.”

“In the middle of the night?” Bernadette asks.

“Decaf,” my mother says, so confused she doesn’t notice that Bernadette is mocking her.

“Thank you, Joe.” My father shakes Mr. Wallenborn’s hand solemnly — for bringing his daughter safely home, for the time he spent sleeping on his couch, for living day after day in the house next door.

We gather around the dining room table in our pajamas, including Mr. Wallenborn, who, after politely standing for several minutes to take a few requisite sips of coffee, excuses himself.

“I don’t want Jean to worry,” he says.

“Of course not,” my mother says, guiding him to the door with a grateful hand on his shoulder. “Thank you,” she says solemnly, as if he had saved my life.

“You might want to strap her in tonight.” He nods toward me and then winks at my mother.

“We’ll do that,” she says.

Bernadette mimes putting on a seat belt. “Click,” she says. For now, everyone is willing to believe I was sleepwalking, though when I sleep, I’m the stillest sleeper in the family.

Lizzie comes in and wraps a blanket around me, though I’m practically dry and it’s unbearably hot.

“Well,” George says.

“I’ve got to go back to sleep,” Carl says. “I’m exhausted.” He stands to take his coffee cup into the kitchen.

“Right,” my father says.

Just then Lanie comes down the stairs, her nightgown fluttering around her.

“Where were you?” she asks me, but doesn’t stop moving for an answer. She walks out the front door, lifting her arms like wings as she walks down the front steps in a way that says she will banish Jack. She floats lightly, bouncing on bare toes.

We follow her out, riveted, waiting for her to tell us what to do next. She spins at the end of the driveway, a ghostly twirl in the night.

“It’s time we all went home,” she says. Watch this small thing, says the arch of each of her feet stepping; watch this because it means everything. This foot making gentle contact with the earth, this is how we will survive.

MAUD CASEY’s stories have been published in The Threepenny Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Georgia Review, Confrontation, Shenandoah, The Gettysburg Review, and Prairie Schooner . She received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention for her story “Dirt.” Casey’s debut novel, The Shape of Things to Come, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Casey’s new novel, Genealogy, will be published in 2005. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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