J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

In the kitchen, Heather has located a flashlight and is waving it about, intermittently illuminating rusty metal tins, unwashed utensils, countertops filthy with mouse shit. She is muttering oaths under her breath. A careful listener might discern a version of the conversation she just had with Fern and Roy. Hrm. Nothungry. Maybesomecoffee. Nogoddamcoffee. Maybesometea. Wantsafuckintea. Hrm. Wantteadowehavetea. Fuckinwehavetea. Heresyourgoddamtea. The flashlight’s beam rests, trembling, on a glass canister, furred with grease-adhered dust. There are tea bags inside. At some point, moisture has gotten into the canister, and the tea bags have been stained by their own contents. But they appear dry now. Heather grabs two, drops them into a pair of dirty coffee mugs, fills the mugs with tap water, and shoves them into a microwave oven. As they heat, sparks jump from the staples that affix the tags to the strings. One of the tags catches fire and burns up. The other is merely singed.

A few minutes later two mugs are deposited in front of Fern and Roy, along with a china sugar bowl filled with dead ants. Heather then returns to her table and magazines.

Moments pass. Fern pushes the bowl of ants to the far corner of their table. She leans over and sniffs her mug.

“I think this is chamomile.”

Roy sniffs his mug.

“Mine’s black. I think. But it smells burnt.” He turns the mug, revealing the blackened string with staple attached. “Here, this is why: something burned here.”

“Mine’s burned too. A little.”

“Are you going to drink it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Should we leave now?”

“I’m thinking yes.”

A sound has been asserting itself outside the restaurant, subtly at first, but now more confidently, a wobbling, droning note that can’t seem to decide whether it is deep or shrill. It is both, perhaps. It’s the wind. It is picking up strength. The light from the restaurant illuminates only about ten feet worth of parking lot, enough to reveal the dim outline of Fern and Roy’s car, which would appear to be rocking, trembling perhaps, in the new, stronger wind. It is now loud enough outside to make quiet conversation inside difficult. There is also a frantic, wooden knocking that Fern and Roy can’t discern the source of — it might be close, or it might be something much louder and farther away.

Bruce and Heather know what it is: it’s the wooden Buck Snort sign, flapping helplessly in its log frame. They do not connect the sign, however, to what happens next: a popping sound, a blue flash, and the fluorescent lights inside the Buck Snort dimming, flickering, going out. And then, one empty second later, blinking back on, one by one.

Bruce is sanding the seams and corners of his model car with one-thousand-grit wet/dry sandpaper. The comforting sound of sanding is too quiet to hear over the roar of the wind and rain, but he can feel it through the plastic model: it is the feeling of everything is going to be all right. His memories of their parents have become confused, but he is certain, absoutely certain, that their father used to sand their mother every evening before they went to bed. It was a process related to beauty. Their mother sat at her vanity, the mirror surrounded by colored globes of light, and stripped her face of makeup and removed her wig. And then their father would carefully sand down the edges of her face until they were smooth and dully gleaming, and then she would reapply the makeup for bed. Instead of the wig, their mother wore a head scarf to bed, and their father wore flannel pajamas that took the form of a three-piece suit: pants, vest, and jacket.

A new sound reaches Bruce’s one good ear (the other became clogged during a bad cold he had several years ago and has not worked right since): a thin, keening wail. He knows it well. It is the sound of his sister crying.

This sound has a galvanizing effect on Bruce. He stands up suddenly, his chair barking out behind him and falling over on its side. Across the room, Fern and Roy react with animal instinct, wrapping their arms tightly around each other. Bruce does not see this. He sees only his sister, hugging herself and trembling before her pile of magazines and papers and scraps.

Bruce is a big man. His heavy belly and stocky upper body belie a pair of long, strong legs. They are clad in overalls. He heaves himself across the room like an ape. His shaggy head descends to his sister’s and they appear, to Fern and Roy, to engage in whispered conversation.

Fern and Roy begin their own whispered conversation.

“Is she upset about the tea?”

“I don’t know.”

“We have to leave.”

“But the wind.”

“Still.”

Heather, for her part, is not upset about the tea. In fact she has, like her brother, forgotten that Fern and Roy are here. She has merely been overcome by futility and exhaustion, and the sense that something has been left unfinished — perhaps many things. She feels her brother’s arm around her shoulder and his breath in her ear and is temporarily soothed. She has a memory of the world outside this place. There was a time when she thought she might be able to outrun whatever it was that has made her this way. (She is able, occasionally, to recognize that their existence here is strange and perhaps dangerous. Maybe this is the thing that has been left unfinished.) She went to New York City. She accomplished it by hitchhiking. This must have been nearly twenty years ago. A man picked her up, a man twice her age with a mustache and a Stetson hat, and they drove to the city and he got her to ingest and smoke various things and they spent a week in somebody’s apartment having sex, which she liked. Then she got lost going out for cigarettes and ended up crying in a police station and her parents wired the cops money for a bus ticket home. And she was pregnant, and they went to a doctor and got it cut out of her, and then had her insides tied up so it wouldn’t happen again. Not much point since she didn’t have sex again. When his truck is too cold, Heather and Bruce sleep together, in the mattress in the storeroom. Now he’s saying “There there there there,” and she can’t remember what she was blubbering about.

Fern and Roy are convinced that Bruce is going to turn around and attack them any minute now. He’s big enough so that they would be helpless. They have to leave. They have to. Slowly they disentangle themselves and squeeze out from behind the table. Roy leaves a five-dollar bill on it. They are inching toward the door. The wind is screaming, and the mysterious knocking has intensified. Fern is remembering the wooden yardstick, painted red with black markings, that her mother used to punish her for forgetting the words to prayers. You can still see the marks on her behind: the thinnest and straightest of scars, tiny ridges. Roy runs his thumb over them after sex. In their cabin. On the lake. They should have stayed in the cabin. The trunk of their car is full of bass, and she will fry one for breakfast tomorrow if they can get home in the storm. Among their tackle is a filleting knife and she will go for it if the bearded man follows them. On her mother’s deathbed, her sister said “I forgive you, Mother, I forgive you,” but Fern would not. They are almost to the door.

Bruce notices their reflection in the reflection of a window in the window. He turns. He raises his arm and leans, every so slightly, in their direction.

Fern and Roy bolt for the foyer. Inside, it is like an echo chamber. The knocking and wind are deafening. Then Fern opens the outer door and it is ripped out of her hands and slams against the outside wall and the glass shatters. She screams. Roy screams. He thinks they will go back inside but no, Fern has dragged herself onto the stoop and now is clinging to the wrought-iron railing set into the cement front steps. She is making her way down. She turns back and looks at him, beseechingly, and he follows.