Kelly Link - Stranger Things Happen

Myron says, "I think she's dead," and Hildy snorts.

"I can see her breathing," she says, handing him the binoculars.

"Is she asleep, then?"

"I don't think so," Hildy says, considering. "I think she just turns herself off, like a TV or something."

They are sitting in the gazebo that Hildy's older brother James made in woodworking the year before. The gazebo is homely and ramshackle. The white paint has peeled away in strips, and bees float in the warm air above their heads. With the aid of a borrowed set of binoculars, Hildy and Myron can spy privately upon Jenny Rose upon her bed. Hildy picks at the paint and keeps an eye out for James as well, who considers the gazebo to be exclusively his.

The three of them sat in the boat on the water. They weren't necessarily people, and it wasn't necessarily a boat either. It could be three knots tied in her shoelace; three tubes of lipstick hidden in Hildy's dresser; three pieces of fruit, three oranges in the blue bowl beside her bed.

What was important, what she yearned for, was the trinity, the triangle completed and without lack. She lay on the bed, imagining this: the three of them in the boat upon the water, oh! sweet to taste.

Jenny Rose is the most monosyllabic, monochromatic person Hildy has ever laid eyes on. She's no-colored, like a glass of skim milk, or a piece of chewed string. Lank hair of indeterminate length, skin neither pale nor sunny, and washed-out no-color eyes. She's neither tall nor short, fat or skinny. She smells weird, sad, electric , like rain on asphalt. Does she resemble her parents? Hildy isn't sure, but Jenny Rose has nothing of Hildy's family. Hildy's mother is tall and glamorous with red hair. Hildy's mother is a Presbyterian minister. Her father teaches at the university.

The Reverend Molly Harmon's brother and sister-in-law have been missionaries in the Pacific since before Hildy and Jenny Rose were born. When Hildy was little, the adventures of her cousin were like an exotic and mysterious bedtime story. She used to wish she was Jenny Rose.

During the 1965 coup in Indonesia, Hildy's aunt and uncle and Jenny Rose spent a few months in hiding and then a short time in prison, suspected of being Communist sympathizers. This is the way the rumors went: they were dead; they were hidden in Ubud in the house of a man named Nyoman; they were in prison in Jakarta; they had been released, they were safely in Singapore. Hildy always knew that Jenny Rose would be fine. Stories have happy endings. She still believes this.

Jenny Rose was in Singapore for the next four and a half years. When her parents went back to Indonesia, it was proposed that Jenny Rose would come to stay with the Harmons, in order to receive a secondary school education. Hildy helped her mother prepare for the arrival of her cousin. She went to the library and found a book on Indonesia. She went shopping with her mother for a second bed and a second desk, extra clothes, hangers, and sheets. The day before her cousin arrived, Hildy used a ruler, divided her own room into two equal halves.

Hildy hugged Jenny Rose at the airport, breathed her in, that strange hot and cold smell. She hauled Jenny Rose's luggage to the car single-handedly. "What is Indonesia like?" she asked her cousin. "Hot," Jenny Rose said. She closed her eyes, leaned her head against the back of the car, and for the next three weeks said nothing that required more than one syllable. So far, the most meaningful words her cousin has spoken to Hildy are these: "I think I wet the bed."

"Give her time," Hildy's mother advised, putting the sheets into the washer. "She's homesick."

"How can she be homesick?" Hildy said. "She's never lived in a single place for longer than a year."

"You know what I mean," said the Reverend Molly Harmon. "She misses her parents. She's never been away from them before. How would you like it if I sent you to live on the other side of the world?"

"It wouldn't turn me into a mute, stunted turnip-person," Hildy said. But she thinks she understands. She read the library book. Who wouldn't prefer the emerald jungles of Bali to the suburbs of Houston, the intricate glide and shadow jerk of wayang kulit puppets on a horn screen to the dollar matinee, nasi goreng to a McDonald's hamburger?

Hildy and Myron come inside to make hot chocolate and play Ping-Pong. They go to Hildy and Jenny Rose's room first, and Myron stands over Jenny Rose on her bed, trying to make conversation. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty, whatcha doing?" he says.

"Nothing."

He tries again. "Would you like to play Ping-Pong with us?"

"No." Her eyes don't even open as she speaks.

There is a bowl of oranges on the night table. Myron picks one up and begins to peel it with his thumbnail.

Jenny Rose's eyelids open, and she jackknifes into a sitting position. "Those are my oranges," she says, louder than Hildy has ever heard her speak.

"Hey!" Myron says, backing up and cradling the orange in his palm. He is afraid of Jenny Rose, Hildy realizes. "It's just an orange.

I'm hungry, I didn't mean anything."

Hildy intervenes. "There are more in the refrigerator," she says diplomatically. "You can replace that one – if it's such a big deal."

"I wanted that one," Jenny Rose says, more softly.

"What's so special about that orange?" Myron says. Jenny Rose doesn't say anything. Hildy stares at her, and Jenny Rose stares, without expression, at the orange in Myron's hand. The front door bangs open, and James, the Reverend Harmon, and Dr. Orzibal are home.

Myron's mother, Mercy Orzibal, is a professor of English and a close friend of the Harmons. She is divorced, and teaches night classes. Myron spends a lot of time at the Harmons under the harried attention of Hildy's mother, known as the Reverend Mother.

This afternoon was a wedding, and the Reverend Mother is still in the white robes of a divine: the R.M. and Mercy Orzibal, in her sleeveless white dress, look like geese, or angels.

James is wearing black. James is almost seventeen years old and he hates his family. Which is all right. Hildy doesn't care much for him. His face is sullen, but this is his usual expression. His hair is getting long. His hair is red like his mother's hair. How Hildy wishes that she had red hair.

A cigarette dangles from the lips of the Reverend Mother. She's reached an agreement with Hildy: two cigarettes on weekdays, four on Saturday, and none on Sunday. Hildy hates the smell, but loves the way that the afternoon light falters and falls thickly through the smoke around her mother's beautiful face.

"Do we have any more oranges?" Hildy asks her mother. "Myron ate Jenny Rose's." There are several in the refrigerator, when Hildy looks. She picks out the one that is the most shriveled and puny. She tells herself that she feels sorry for this orange. Jenny Rose will take good care of it. The good oranges are for eating. Jenny Rose has followed Myron and Hildy, she stands just inside the doorway.

"Oh, Jenny!" says the Reverend Mother, as if surprised to find her niece here, in her kitchen. "How was your day, sweetheart?"

Jenny Rose says something inaudible as she takes the orange from Hildy. The R.M. has turned away already and is tapping her ash into the kitchen sink.

Hildy retrieves three more oranges out of the refrigerator. She juggles them, smacking them in her palms, tossing them up again. "Hey, look at me!" James rolls his eyes, the mothers and Myron applaud dutifully – Hildy looks, but Jenny Rose has left the room.

Hildy plays Ping-Pong in the basement every night with her father, uncrowned Ping-Pong champion of the world. He tells silly jokes as he serves, to make Hildy miss her return. "What's brown and sticky?" he says. "A stick."

When Hildy groans, he winks at her. "You can't disguise it," he says. "I know you think I'm the handsomest man in the world, the funniest man in the world, the smartest man in the whole world."