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

A week later, Carol Stempel was moved to another second-grade class. I believe that saved her. I saw her sometimes on the playground, sticking up out of a new group of girls in her towering slouch.

ON THE CORNER of a small shady side-street, across from the tall wire fence that borders the playground above a kind of cliff or steep drop, stands Rapolski’s. To the right, as you enter through a door set in the angle of two windows, stands the shining globe of a bubblegum machine on its black base, resting on a recess before a tall window with red backward letters. On the left, before a window with green backward letters, lies a low glass case covered with brown wood and containing pencil cases, erasers, colored pads, yellow pencils, brass fasteners, and bottles of blue-black ink. Beside it lies a taller glass counter with a sloping face, filled with black licorice pipes, red licorice shoestrings, red-hots, packages of bubblegum cards, black mustaches, packages of white pumpkin seeds, packages of black Indian seeds, chocolate babies, root-beer barrels, Mary Janes. The tall sloping counter stretches past the window with green backward letters and continues in front of a wall that is hung to the ceiling with rubber daggers, plastic water pistols, whistles with white balls inside, strips of tattoos, false noses, one-way silver eyeglasses, handlebar mustaches, black masks, silver masks, rubber cameras, blue harmonicas. On top of the glass counter sit bright orange-and-green yo-yo’s, small blue boxes of red caps for pistols, odorous stacks of bubblegum cards, turning stands hung with potato chips in waxpaper bags and small games wrapped in cellophane, and a transparent plastic container attached to a standing piece of cardboard, holding a layer of brown pennies mixed with nickels, for the March of Dimes. Old Rapolski stands behind the counter, smiling with broken teeth and watching with small dark suspicious eyes; across from him, before the dark windowless wall filled with shelves of cookies and cans, the older boys stand in noisy groups, flipping cards, combing their hair, drinking soda out of bottles, and playing crude games like Paper Scissors Stone.

The morning of Edwin’s return was a bright gray morning. Even as we crossed the wide busy street in front of the school, past the wide busy policeman with his arms held out, Edwin began to look about anxiously to the right of the building, where a narrow flight of stone steps, bounded by the wire fence, led up to the high playground from the shady side-street. Slowly we climbed the wide flight of steps between the tree-covered slopes in front; more slowly we walked to the right along the high sidewalk that led to the top of the narrow stone steps; and as we turned to the left onto the side playground, through the space between the school and the wire fence, Edwin stopped in his tracks and searched the crowd nervously. His gaze swept along the wire fence on his right, turning where it turned to run along the shady side-street, and returning suspiciously to the massive oak that sprang out of the cement in the angle of the fence. An unknown girl stepped out from behind the tree. Turning away, Edwin walked slowly along the side of the school toward the back, gazing about and smiling at absolutely no one. At the corner of the building he stopped. Together we looked out at the crowded playground in back. It was only a matter of seconds before we saw the yellow pigtails: they were far away on the other side of the playground, near the willow on the narrow grass slope. Quickly Edwin withdrew to the safety of the side wall, peeping out from time to time to make certain that he was not taken by surprise.

In class he buried himself in his seatwork. Only once did I see his eyes rise from the page in the direction of my table, but he quickly lowered them as he met my stern gaze. She herself was having one of her good days, minding her own business and keeping quiet; twice she turned around in her seat, but luckily he was bent over his workbook. I had noticed immediately, with a mixture of relief and annoyance, that she was not wearing his ring. Of course he had noticed too. But after the lunch bell he did not hound me with anxious questions, as I had feared; instead, not looking me in the eye, he said that he had to go to Rapolski’s. “You’ll be late for lunch,” I said, but I had the distinct impression that he did not know what I was saying. At Rapolski’s he brooded intensely through the glass counter and even reached up to one of the wire stands on top, turning it slowly, like a fifth-grader.

Mrs. Mullhouse was disturbed by our late arrival. She was even more disturbed by our early departure, for Edwin insisted on leaving for school before the usual time. Back at Rapolski’s he quickly made up his mind. His purchase surprised me: I had expected nothing less than a rubber spider. But perhaps he did not wish to overdo it; perhaps he wished to learn if she shared his taste; perhaps he had only five cents left (at this time he was receiving an allowance of fifteen cents a week). Even before he turned to me, looking directly at my nose, I knew that I was the one who had to deliver the goods.

The playground was practically deserted when we arrived. Edwin paced up and down before the tall wire fence, looking down at the little side-street along which Rose Dorn always came to school; a block past Rapolski’s, the familiar street became suddenly strange, inhabited by tall frowning houses and dark twisted trees. Slowly the playground filled from three directions: from the wide busy street in front of the school, from the long sidewalk that bordered the far side, and from the flight of narrow stone steps that led up from the shady side-street, immediately across from Rapolski’s. “Maybe she’s sick,” I ventured; he gave me a ravaged glance that made me feel ashamed. She appeared just behind a group of three girls who were walking arm in arm along the sidewalk, marching in step and giggling. She was dressed in her bright red coat with its hood in back, and as she walked she held her arms straight out at her sides, swinging them together for a clap and swinging them apart as far as they would go. Gray bounded along beside her, stopping now and then to pounce on a piece of cellophane. Edwin clung for a few moments to the wire fence, his fingers curled through the diamond-shaped openings; then he dashed over to me, uttered some nonsense or other, and immediately headed for a remote corner of the playground, beyond the willow, where the tar passed into dirt and weeds.

I took up my position against the oak in the angle of the wire fence, with Rapolski’s behind me and the narrow stone steps on my left. I watched her head rising above the level of the playground as she climbed the steps on the other side of the fence; seen through the wire she resembled a jigsaw puzzle. As she turned in through the opening between the fence and the school, she saw me leaning against the tree but pretended not to. She walked along the inside of the fence, looking down at the steps and dragging a popsicle stick along the wire; she passed within two feet of me with her clicking stick. As she disappeared behind the tree the clicking stopped; I waited, but she failed to emerge along the fence on the other side. Sighing, I pushed myself erect, turned to the left, and proceeded to walk around the tree. To my surprise she was not standing in the angle of the fence. She was not standing anywhere; she had disappeared; and it was with an eerie feeling that I continued to walk around the tree until I had made a complete circle. Perhaps she had spread her arms and flapped away into the sky, perhaps she had fallen through the spaces in the fence onto the street below, perhaps she had simply melted away. I was pondering these possibilities when suddenly I felt a hideous sensation on my leg. I tore the vile thing off, suffering a nasty scratch, and hurried around the tree, just in time to see the end of a pigtail whisk out of sight. But I was not about to be made a fool of twice. I stopped, turned, and tiptoed in the other direction. She was standing with her back to me, bending forward and peering in the wrong direction; one pigtail lay on her back, the other hung down in front, invisible. Sharply I tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled around. A momentary look of wide-eyed terror gave way to narrow-eyed anger. She looked as if she wanted to punch me in the nose. I was determined to waste no time. “From Edwin,” I said, holding out to her five long narrow strips of white paper covered with hard sugar spots in neat rows: two pink, two lavender, and one pale yellow. They were his favorite candy at this time: starting from the upper left-hand corner he loved to eat the bits of sugar from left to right, tearing each spot from the paper neatly with his teeth. She took them sullenly, as if she were doing me a favor. Suddenly she stuck the end of one strip in her mouth, letting it hang like a tongue, and looked up at me with a ridiculous false grin. I frowned in disgust. She frowned back, imitating me. Annoyed, I crossed my arms over my chest; she crossed her arms over her chest; I put my hands in my pockets; she put her hands in her pockets; finally I could stand it no longer and said: “Stop that.” “Stop that,” she mimicked, and the paper tongue fell; I frowned; she frowned; and I was wondering how to disentangle myself from this madness when all at once her face emptied and she began to stare past me into the distance. I feared a trick; if I turned, would she disappear? As she stared, again I felt a sense of something alien about Rose Dorn; for one brief moment I thought she was trying to cast a spell. I was relieved, this time, by the sound of the bell. She continued to stare, and I must confess that I had a start when, turning at last, I saw lone Edwin far away, standing on the grass slope beside the willow, slashing the grass with a willow switch.