Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

The children ran across the grass.

“That woman made us each say ‘He was taken too soon,’ ” Teddy said. “Then she gave us both a little box of chocolate-covered cherries.”

Willie held Little Dot’s hand, Liberty held Teddy’s. Clem followed behind them. They were like any couple out with their children and dog on Halloween.

“How did you hurt your arm?” Willie asked Little Dot. From elbow to wrist, her arm was bruised. Little Dot stopped and set down her bag. With the index and middle fingers of her right hand she squeezed her arm, twisting it like a key.

“No,” Willie said. He pushed the duck mask off his face, kissed her fingers, then spread them flat and patted them.

“Do you know what a bruise is?” Teddy said excitedly. “It’s blood that’s leaked out of a blood vessel under your skin. It’s in a strange place and whenever blood is in a strange place, it begins to change. The spilled blood has to be cleaned up and you know what’s happening right now?”

Little Dot looked at him.

“White blood cells are cleaning up that blood right now. They’re like little garbage men who wander around your body looking for garbage. When they find it, they swallow it up. The spilled blood is like garbage and the white blood cells are gobbling it up and when all the blood’s been eaten, the black and blue marks will be gone!”

Little Dot hid her arm behind her back.

Cars crept along the streets, transporting small, ghastly beings. The children moved forward, grazing the landscape as thoroughly as Mexican goats. Six dwellings. Nine. The swimming pools were lit. The sprinklers cast their slow, soft arcs. Thousands of dollars of lighting and millions of kilowatts of electricity were used to make green plants red and blue. Thousands of gallons of water from the sulfurous, shrinking aquifer were pumped up to make thousands of bags of cypress shreddings dark against the pale trunks of palms.

A man wearing red trousers and no shirt opened the door of a small house. Cold air fled out into the muggy night. He feigned great horror at the sight of Teddy and Little Dot and, most particularly, the duck, and extended a bowl of candy bars.

“Can I use your toilet?” Little Dot asked.

“Sure,” the man said.

Little Dot squeezed past him and disappeared down a corridor to the right. Little Dot loved utilizing people’s bathrooms and had an unerring sense of where they were.

“Can that dog do tricks?” the man asked Liberty. “I had a dog once that was so well trained, you give him a cookie, he’d get halfway through it, you’d tell him to spit it out, he would.”

“He can’t do that,” Liberty said, looking at Clem.

“Not inclined that way, huh,” the man said.

They waited for what seemed a long time for Little Dot to reappear. “Why don’t you come in,” the man finally said, “and collect your kid.” He didn’t seem annoyed.

Inside, on a white bamboo table, were a dish of peanuts, two empty martini glasses and a ceramic dildo.

“That’s an old one,” Willie said.

“Why, yes, it is,” the man said, looking at the dildo with pride. “It’s from Martha’s Vineyard. It belonged to one of those poor whaling wives.”

“Little Dot!” Liberty called.

“The bathroom’s this way,” the man said. Liberty followed him down the corridor. The door was partially open and she saw a white towel in a ring, a mirror picturing the tiled wall of a shower, a urinal. The man she was following had a thin, young neck from behind. Liberty’s hands dangled at her sides. She felt as though she, somehow, were the threatening party. The sound of a television came from another room.

“Little Dot!” Liberty called.

“Here she is,” the man said.

Little Dot was sitting on a bed with a man in a linen suit. They were watching a documentary on the Renaissance. The large screen on the wall showed Ghiberti’s bronze doors of the Baptistery in Florence.

Little Dot bounced on the bed which was covered by a dark, synthetic fur. “Eden,” she said. “The sacrifice of Isaac.”

Little Dot went to Sunday School. She knew these people. She made them out of modeling clay. She drew them with her crayons.

“You’d be disappointed in Florence, kid,” the man in the suit said. He was smoking a cigarette. “Too many cars. It’s a filthy place.”

“C’mon, honey,” Liberty said, bending to touch Little Dot’s knees to keep her from bouncing. Thank you for not hurting her, she wanted to say. She knew it was an inappropriate thing to say.

“I flushed,” Little Dot said. She patted the man’s arm. “This is Gordon.”

“They’re going to show Michelangelo’s Four Captives in a moment,” Gordon said. “I’ve seen this program many, many times.” He looked at Little Dot as though he realized she was a captive too, a part of her imprisoned in a stony, unworked region of her mind.

Little Dot looked at the screen. “A doll,” she said.

“Nah, not a doll,” Gordon said. “You like dolls?”

Smoke lay in levels in the room. “You know what I can do?” Little Dot said. “I can fix zippers. I can get them back on track like nobody.”

Gordon stubbed out his cigarette and opened the drawer of a bedside table. Blunt, blurred features in stone filled the television screen. He put something in an envelope and handed it to Little Dot. She dropped it in her bag.

At the door, the other man murmured, “That is the most generous, the most genuine human being you will ever meet.”

Outside, the street looked peculiar to Liberty, as though dipped in milk.

“One more house,” the children begged. “One more!”

A truck drove toward them, a light on in the cab. A man was driving, and there was a dog on the seat beside him. The driver noticed Clem and put one hand over his dog’s eyes as they passed by.

“All I have left is gum,” the woman said. “You shoulda come earlier.” She appeared somewhat loaded. She was wearing a two-piece bathing suit and drinking a beer. The top of the suit did not resemble the bottom in its pattern. “Just gum, but even so, you got to do a trick before you get the treat.”

“I could tell your fortune if you give me your hand,” Teddy said.

“No thanks and I’ll tell you why,” the woman said, tapping Teddy’s chest with a long, painted nail. “You’re a little doctor, right? Doctors give me the shivers. They give me the heebie-jeebies. My first husband was a doctor. You know what he knew about? Livers. His whole world was livers. He was a little dark Iranian, always smiling. He was creepy beyond belief.” She looked at Willie. “What are you going to do for me, duckie?” she asked coyly.

The duck spoke without moving its beak.

All would be well

Could we but give us wholly to the dreams ,

And get into their world that to the sense

Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly

Among substantial things; for it is dreams

That lift us to the flowing, changing world

That the heart longs for .

“My god,” the woman said. “That’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard. You wait right here.” She went into another room and came back with a bottle of Cuervo Gold. “That was truly lovely, duckie,” she said, handing the bottle to Willie. “Now I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we tell the very worst thing that ever happened to us. How about you?” she said to Little Dot. “You look as though you’ve got a tale to tell.”

Little Dot sat down beside Clem and put her thumb in her mouth.

“Okay,” the woman said, rolling the beer can across her midriff, “I will tell you the worst thing that happened to me . I was just a little kid like you and I was at the circus. I was having such a wonderful time at the circus. The thing I liked best were the aerialists. I didn’t like the clowns and I didn’t like the man who caught the lead balls on the back of his neck and I didn’t like the tigers, I liked the aerialists. I loved seeing them up so high, flying through the air, the sequins on their costumes flashing. I wanted to be an aerialist. Well I was at the circus and a man on a trapeze missed the net and fell into the audience. He fell on me and broke my collarbone. He smelled terrible. I mean, really terrible, like a big mouse or something.”