Rikki Ducornet - Brightfellow

Watching Asthma. Those transcendent moments when everything dissolves and something epic takes over, something coherent, a thing that again and again surpasses itself. The moments surpassing themselves — as once, when he was a tiny child, his father had opened his little valise and one by one taken out the packages of seeds and taught him the names of things.

Much later, long after Billy has gone to sleep, Charter once more dozes off on the screen porch. He awakens to the sound of Dr. Ash wandering and is afraid that if she ever wandered away and was forever lost, the Circle would be intolerably still. As she passes in the shadows not far from him, he understands that all it would take is a few small steps from the porch to the yard to find her. And so he does this, he takes those steps, and as soon as he does, Dr. Ash stops her pacing and stands perfectly still. And he finds that he is holding her, that she is holding him. They cling to one another for dear life. Silently, she begins to cry, her tears spilling from her eyes like rain. The front of his shirt is wet where her face presses against his chest.

After a time she lets her arms fall, and stepping back, her hair clouding her face, smiles at him. It is a moonless night but the sky has a glow. He sees this smile of hers and returns it. Thank you, she says, turning away, waving once with a sweet, small gesture of her hand. Off she glides; he hears her enter her dark house, sees her move through the house as she illuminates it room by room; he stands there alone taking this in, strangely moved, a profusion of blue shadows and lustrous scents pressing around him.

Dr. Ash is beautiful. But Charter is desireless; desire is a thing unknown to him. In some vague way he thinks the best lives are somehow disembodied, suspended. . not bruised by imperious need or weakened by the renouncements of day-to-day living. Perhaps Dr. Ash shares this idealism. Maybe idealism is the place from which she stands, scorched and lonely. Not without desire, clearly— Beloved, she had said the other night, my dearest heart. But her desire has become idealized — or so he imagines — a perfect thing, perhaps too perfect to endure. (Of course he knows nothing of what she has endured. He does not know, cannot know, that she was speaking of a child.)

The world is a riddle, quarreled and tormented. It is threaded through with darkness, or, worse, its fabric is dark through and through. Rarely does a bright thread work its way into the weave.

He retires early. He takes the coin out from under his pillow and gazes at it for a long time. It is an unsettling thing, as old as time, he thinks. Yes. It’s like holding a small slice of time between his fingers. Made of copper yet with the weight of lead. Its unsettling little figure is familiar; looking at it now he feels an old malaise. And then he recalls a drawing of Vanderloon’s that had served as a frontispiece for Rules of Rage, his most disquieting book. A book so disquieting Charter had never managed to finish it.

He decides he must rid himself of the coin at once. He pulls on some clothes and slips into the night, walking in the deepest shadows until he reaches the woods beyond the library, and there, finding two good stones, hammers the coin between them, smashing it to bits. After, he returns to Billy’s and sleeps, but the little coin continues to exert some influence, or so he fears, and he thinks he must undo this nefarious influence by taking something of Asthma’s — an animal from her tabletop town. He will replace the coin with one of the many creatures she rules over with such devotion. He begins to watch her house differently, like a man in a fairy tale whose life depends upon a treasure he knows is just within reach. But the weather turns — thunder and all the rest — and everyone is caught in place. Asthma in her room, Blackie at her typewriter, and Blackie’s Rod glued to his stamp collection.

He is weary. He has been watching for too long and has torn open a can of worms. He is fractured and leeched. Because today, as he stands in the shadows, the ornithologist’s binoculars burning his eyes, he sees Pea Pod and Asthma at play — an enigmatic game that involves scolding and finger wagging; it involves shouting. Something savage is unfolding, savage and absurd. It is as if Blackie and Goldie are straddling the rafters and tugging at their offspring’s strings.

The game intensifies and accelerates. The girls are shouting with such force their voices carry across the Circle and into the woods. He sees Pea Pod raise her fist in the air, throw herself at Asthma, and pummel her heart. He sees Asthma slap Pea Pod across the face with such force Pea Pod stumbles and falls, vanishing as if swallowed by the floor — only to rise again and fly at Asthma and, like a wild thing released from its cage, bite her arm.

Charter turns away. Repulsed and despairing, he falls to his knees, his hands held to his ringing ears. When an instant among the many rises above all the rest to seize the mind, what are the consequences? He shivers. He has seen something primal, grotesque. He has seen two little girls transformed into harpies before his eyes.

Or maybe not. Maybe he is overly sensitive. Overly concerned. Perhaps little girls, just like little boys, inflict these punishments on one another thoughtlessly, in the spirit of play, with no ill intention. In childhood he was never in a scuffle; he would watch other boys bewildered, their passions inscrutable, given to an animal impulse. Like the hissing of kittens. After all, he knows his Asthma. Knows her tender ways. Knows her sweetness, the innocence with which she took his hand, whispered in his ear. .

It’s Sunday. Billy and Charter relax with bowls of café au lait and the Ohneka Tribune. The calm is breached by shouting: a child howls, then another. The scene that haunts him infects another hour. Muzzle her! Goldie screams. Pea Pod! Little thief! Billy leaps from the sofa and closes the windows. “It never stops!” Billy mutters, “I think it’s getting worse.” Moments later the doorbell rings. Charter goes to the door. A small, intense woman gazes up at him with impatience.

“I’m Santa,” the woman says, and then trots in to greet Billy. Dr. Santa Fofana, anthropologist, now retired. Back for the weekend for the sake of nostalgia, something like that.

“Divorce suits you, Billy!” she cries. “You’ve never looked better!”

“It’s Charter here,” Billy says. “He has lifted my spirits immeasurably. Come to us from Australia. On a Fulbright. A fan of Loon’s.”

“Loon!” she erupts with laughter.

Charter feels trapped. How does he justify the harebrained project Billy has so eagerly embraced? Needlessly he explains his Fulbright is singular.

“Good for you,” Santa says, “to have been singled out. Loon! ” She laughs disdainfully. This burns him. When Billy goes off to fetch more coffee, Santa makes herself at home among the new cushions. Charter feels compelled to say more.

“There are a few of these, uh, singular grants, ah! Sponsored, I should say, by a family foundation—”

“Is that so?” Santa digs into her purse for a cigarette that Charter is quick to light with the gleaming and somewhat ridiculous lighter Billy keeps on the cocktail table.

“Nadine. .,” Charter begins. “Nadine Hettering.”

“Who?” Santa frowns at him. “Who’s this?”