Julia Elliott - The Wilds

“I’m sorry,” he says. “She’s suffering from memory problems, and we don’t know. . I mean, she sometimes says peculiar things.”

“Racist things,” you add, feeling another stab of shame, as though you yourself are racist, and perhaps you are. Perhaps racist ideas embedded in your brain by society explain the intense feelings of guilt that overcome you as you watch the black couple’s hard eyes go soft with understanding. And then they turn away from you and your pitiful parents and pretend that the incident never happened, though their children keep glancing back at your mother while whispering and giggling into their hands.

“Jenny,” says your father, “you can’t say things like that.”

“Like what?”

“Racist things,” your father whispers.

“God told me to say it,” your mother says with a haughty simper, and then she, too, gazes out at the distant island.

“Here comes the boat!” your mother screams. “Here comes the boat!” And the black family cannot help but turn to inspect her again.

“I can’t wait to get on the boat!” your mother says to them, pressing forward, defying American proxemics customs.

A teen captain eases a glittery fuchsia pontoon into the channel and coasts up to dock. Tourists file out on the other side of the canal.

“What a big boat!” cries your mother. “When can we get on?”

“Just a minute, Jenny, be patient,” says your father. “The other passengers have to get off first.”

The captain, watching the crowd through purple sunglasses, chews gum and lolls in the fighter’s chair. When it’s finally your turn, your mother pushes forward and sits in the same row as the black family, right beside the shark expert. There’s one seat left in the row, and your father takes it. You sit behind them.

“I’m Captain Jack,” the pilot announces into his bullhorn. “Welcome aboard the Sea Urchin .”

Captain Jack guides the boat through the fake channel, which is connected to a fake inlet, the whole system fed by the blinding blue ocean. You smell marsh and tar and gasoline. You hold on to your hat as the boat lurches into open water.

“Here we go!” your mother screams, squirming in her seat. Your father smiles a martyr’s grim smile.

“Back in 1974,” says Captain Jack, “a great white shark named Jaws murdered dozens of innocent people. They even made a movie about it. We’re going to tour a few spots where the evil fish made its kills. But don’t worry, Jaws is long dead. And if we do have any trouble, this boat is protected by a forty-millimeter grenade launcher, courtesy of the US Army.”

The boat churns sluggishly, then stops. Pointing toward the horizon, Captain Jack informs the crowd that a young female swimmer was slain twenty yards from Amity Island. You hear mock gasps. You hear laughter. And then the primordial vision of a fin appears, knifing through blue water — the theatrics laughable but faintly, viscerally, horrifying.

“Jaws!” cries the shark expert, grabbing his little brother by the shoulders.

“Where? Where?” asks your mother. “What is it, James? What is that thing?”

“A shark, Jenny.”

“What’s a shark?”

“A huge killer fish with sharp teeth, but it’s not a real shark. It’s Jaws.”

“Jaws?”

“From the movie.”

“Here it comes,” says the shark expert. “Here comes Jaws.”

“Here comes Jaws, Jaws, Jaws,” says your mother.

As the fin weaves toward you, and the huge back of the beast darkens the clear water, someone behind you lets out a fake scream.

“OH MY GOD A SHARK. WATCH OUT!” the captain’s voice booms from the PA system, mock dramatic, as though he’s reading a children’s book.

And up pops Jaws’s mammoth head at the familiar angle, all gulping mouth and gleaming teeth, the tongue slick and writhing — the archetype of engulfment. It’s a little rubbery and mechanical, but pretty impressive. And huge.

Your mother sits stunned, staring into the abysmal mouth. Then she yelps and jumps into your father’s arms. Their physical contact makes you uncomfortable. You look out at the water. The murderous beast sinks back into obscurity.

“It’s not real, Jenny. It’s a robot,” your father says.

“What’s a robot?” your mother asks.

The shark expert snickers and elbows his brother.

“A machine, Jenny.”

“Is it trying to kill us?” she asks.

“Of course not,” says your father.

“THERE IT IS AGAIN! IT’S TRYING TO KILL US!” declares the captain, the words booming from the sky as though narrated by God.

Jaws pops up on the other side of the boat, and your mother begins to cry, her face ripped open at the mouth, loose around the eyes, ravaged by decades of cheap food, polluted air, carcinogenic sun, and disappointment. Your father’s well-composed expression is devastated by a twitching grin.

The captain lazily grabs a harpoon gun and shoots the shark in the back. A geyser of steam bursts from the wound, and then magenta blood spurts out.

“Kill it! Kill it!” shrieks your mother.

But Jaws, hard to kill, sinks out of sight. The monster lurks around in the vast deep.

“Is Jaws dead?” your mother asks.

“I don’t know,” says your father. “But it’s a robot, Jenny.”

“Is Jaws dead?” your mother screams at the captain.

Everyone is looking. You feel another surge of adolescent shame — wasps in your stomach, fire in your cheeks. You contemplate the husband situation . You picture your husband disappearing into the woods with his field bag, his mushroom book, his canteen. You wonder what you would do if he didn’t come back. You picture yourself pacing around the cabin alone, walking from window to window to watch fog float up from the darkening wood.

Jaws’s next appearance, unannounced by the captain, takes everyone by surprise, and the entire boat lets out a primal wail, quickly followed by chuckles that subside as the prehistoric fish gnaws at the boat hull with its razor teeth, jerking the vessel from left to right.

Your mother, screaming like a terrified lab monkey, attempts to climb onto your father’s lap. She won’t stop screaming, ruthless and earsplitting, and people are struggling with the shapes of their mouths.

You try to stand up to help your parents, but they are locked in an embrace, exclusive and distant. And the shark is circling the boat, darkening the ocean with its blood. Captain Jack has no choice but to fire grenades into the boiling sea. Bombs strike the bank, exploding with outlandish displays of smoke and flame. When one of the grenades hits a fuel dock, a gas tank bursts into a fiery blob the size of a hot-air balloon.

“OH MY GOD!” cries Captain Jack. “I CAN’T STOP THE BOAT AND WE’RE HEADED RIGHT FOR IT!”

The Wild family moved into the house behind ours. For two years the split-level had been dead, open to prowling neighborhood children; its sunken den had become a nest of slugs and millipedes, its attic a froth of bats. Now eight brothers flung their restless bodies around the property. The largest Wild, a bearded boy of seventeen, shut himself up in the basement den. The littlest Wild, a tangle-haired half-naked thing, rumored to be a biter, lurked around in the shrubbery. The Wilds kept cats, lizards, and ferrets. Rabbits, hamsters, turtles, and snakes. A bubble of musky, ammoniac air enveloped their home like a force field, and the second you dared step through it you felt dizzy; a hundred arrows whistled around your ears. Their mother was frequently seen hauling in bags of supplies, and when she climbed from the battered shell of her station wagon, the boys would jump her like a band of hunger-crazed outlaws, snatching cookies and chips and tiny shrink-wrapped cakes. They’d scuttle up into the trees. They kept quiet up there, waiting out their mother’s fits. She was a lumpy, old-fashioned lady, forever in a rumpled dress and panty hose, with a pouf of hair as golden and crunchy as a pork rind. She’d tear her hairdo into wilted clumps and shake her fists at the trees. “I’m having a nervous breakdown,” she’d say, sometimes falling to her knees.