Steven Millhauser - Edwin Mullhouse - The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954

When the strange new girl with the blond pigtails appeared, Carol Stempel at first ignored her. Rose Dorn’s noisy need for attention, her fakery, her tantrums, her nasty tricks of scribbling on other people’s drawings and stealing pencils — these things were as embarrassing to Carol Stempel as they were offensive to me. But by the end of the second week, when Rose Dorn’s peculiarities had isolated her from the rest of the class, Carol Stempel began to follow her movements with distinct interest. Perhaps she recognized a bond. Carol too had no friends, at least no close friends, though unlike Rose Dorn she was allowed to join in games of jumprope and could always be seen standing in a group of girls. But you could tell that she was not really one of them. Her height alone condemned her to uniqueness, for despite her desperate slouch she was easily a head taller than any other girl in the class.

It was not simply that she began to watch Rose Dorn — we all did that — it was rather that she watched with such intensity. Often you could see her far away at Table 6, staring across the room at little Rose Dorn in frozen fascination, her lips parted, her eyes wide, her pencil poised above her workbook. If at such a moment the boy beside her exercised his wit by moving a hand up and down in front of her stare, she would look frightened and confused, and blushing faintly she would lower her head and begin writing frantically in her workbook. Once on the playground I saw her jumping rope, holding her eyeglass case in one hand; as she jumped up and down, her long hair jumping behind her, she stared off to the right at Rose Dorn, who stood watching with her kitten some ten feet away. When Rose Dorn began to walk in a wide circle around the girls, Carol Stempel, still jumping up and down, turned her head farther and farther until she was looking over her shoulder. I believe she would have turned her head completely around until her neck looked like a corkscrew; but the girls’ shouts shattered her trance, and like a cartoon character who walks off a cliff into the air, quite at ease until he looks down and sees that the ground has vanished, so Carol Stempel, who had been jumping perfectly until then, suddenly realized that her head was turned the wrong way, and clumsy with confusion she almost fell onto the tar as the rope came cutting into her leg.

But it was more even than the intensity of her watching that marked a change in Carol Stempel: it was the development of a deep mental sympathy with Rose Dorn. She became sensitive to Rose Dorn’s moods. Her restlessness made her restless; her trances calmed her. She suffered her punishments, clenching her fists and frowning in anguish as Mrs. Cadwallader shook Rose Dorn angrily by the shoulder for some piece of viciousness or other. It was as if she were being drawn into the whirlpool that was Rose Dorn. It was as if, dare I utter it, Rose Dorn had cast a spell.

I recall a morning when Carol Stempel was watering the plants. She always watered the plants with great care, neatly tilting a small blue plastic watering can that she refilled at a sink in the back of the room. She was standing at the second window from the back, moving slowly from plant to plant along the windowsill. I was sitting at my table trying not to hear the babble of the middle reading group, gathered behind me in a small semicircle at the front of the room. From where I sat I could see three quarters of Carol Stempel’s face at the far window; across from me, Rose Dorn sat frowning at her workbook. She had been turning pages restlessly as usual, and giving up at last she began to hunt about for something more interesting to look at. At the back of the room she saw Carol Stempel standing at the window. She began to stare intently with those eyes of hers. Carol Stempel was standing on her toes, holding the spout of her watering can over the rim of a red plastic flowerpot from which a dark green plant overflowed. Behind me a whining voice continued to mispronounce every other word; there was a sound of turning pages; I turned around to look up at the clock beside the flag. Suddenly there was a crash and cry. Mrs. Cadwallader jerked up her head. I whirled around. Carol Stempel, holding her cheeks in horror, stared at the watering can at her toes, from which a puddle of water was darkly pouring. Across from me, Rose Dorn was writing away in her workbook.

The climax came one stormy afternoon in early October. The sky had been clear all morning, but clouds began to appear in the early afternoon; by 1:30 a dark thunderhead had spread over half the sky like a seeping stain. Edwin loved days like that: inside, the high hanging lights were turned on, shedding over everyone a rich warm intimate yellow glow, while outside, like a piece of bromide paper in a pan of developer, the bright sky darkened into storm. Through the windows you could see paper bags and scraps of waxpaper tumbling across the deserted playground. The pale willow, drained of color, rippled like a curtain. The class was restless, waiting for the rain; heads at tables kept rising from workbooks to look out at the sky, and it was all Mrs. Cadwallader could do to keep the attention of the top reading group. I was relieved when the group broke up, for Edwin had received several warning glares. Back at his seat he barely pretended to work, but stared out the window with an eager and intense look. Someone gasped as a metal rattle sounded; we all stood up to look through the windows at a madly rolling garbage-can cover that came rattling past our windows, sweeping away from the building in a long wobbling curve and falling at last loudly on its back, where it shuddered to rest like a vast nickel. And still the rain did not fall. The restlessness swelled to excitement as a faint patter of thunder rippled across the gloom. Edwin especially could barely contain himself, for he loved to be frightened by thunder: seated in warm yellow light, on the bright side of darkness, on the warm side of coldness, on the still side of the wind, he loved to abandon himself to danger. Rose Dorn did not share the general enthusiasm. She was restless, certainly, but in a strained uncomfortable way. At the first patter of thunder she had looked up nervously; returning to her drawing, she grasped her crayon not in her fingers but in her fist, and proceeded to make fierce looping scrawls all over her paper.

Quite suddenly, with a sound of crumpled cellophane, it began to rain. The drops were immense; within minutes the playground was uniformly dark. The wind flung rain against our windows with a sound of fingernails against glass, and scraped the gleaming garbage-can cover in short sharp bursts across the tar. A zigzag flash of lightning sawed the sky in half, followed by words like CRASH! and BOOM! Edwin’s nostrils flared; flushed and bright-eyed he searched the sky, as if anything so loud had to be visible. But Rose Dorn sat with her hands pressed over her ears. I remember noticing Carol Stempel: she sat working at her table in the back of the room, resting an elbow on a book and leaning her forehead on the palm of her hand; the fingers were spread over her head like a claw. Two-pronged lightning flashed; I counted to five; and the sound that followed made me think of a gleaming giant in technicolor with gold bracelets on his wrists, slowly swinging a hammer against a vast golden gong. Rain lashed the windows; the dark willow was barely visible on its dripping slope. Hardly had the last ripple of thunder died away when again the lightning came, a precise enormous many-veined flash that stood fixed for an instant, transforming the heavens into a vast nervous system: in the pale intense light, monstrous black telephone poles stuck up into the livid sky; far away white houses gleamed; and palely luminous through the sheeted rain, white crossbeams of distant frontyard fences gleamed. It was a magic moment, like a silver sparkle in roadside grass; but the longed-for dime is only the circle of silver paper on the cork lining of a bottlecap, and darkness, like a sadness, reclaimed the sky. I counted to five, but nothing happened. Donna Riccio rose from her seat and went up to Mrs. Cadwallader at her desk in the front of the room. Mrs. Cadwallader was explaining that the word was “rural,” not “ruler,” when the thunder began. It started as a faint rumble, as of a distant train, and you had the feeling that you were lying on a track as the train came closer, growing louder and louder as in vain you struggled to get free, growing louder and louder but not yet appearing, growing so loud that when at last it appeared you could not understand how so small a spot could make so loud a noise, growing larger and larger and louder and louder until it loomed above you like a falling mountain and you shut your eyes and lay back and let it come hurtling over you like the end of the world. For a moment I thought a window had shattered. Only as the shock subsided did I realize that Rose Dorn was screaming. She was holding her fists against her ears and shrieking at the top of her lungs; her eyes were squeezed shut and her face was twisted. Mrs. Cadwallader vastly rose. But suddenly, as she made her way around the side of her desk, another shriek began. Across the room, hands pressed against her ears and face contorted, Carol Stempel howled in anguish while the boy beside her, leaning away, stared in troubled fascination.