Bentley Little: The Collection

"Was she already dead or did you ... kill her?"

"Does it matter?"

"No. I guess not." Steve looked into the box and hesi­tantly put his finger forth. The girl's skin was cold and springy. He felt an instant of admiration for Seun. "How long have you had her?"

"Since yesterday. I got the box last week and painted it, but I didn't get her 'til yesterday."

Steve stood up. "Let's take her out there."

Seun looked nervous. "Think He'll like her?"

"There's only one way to find out."

Seun drew out a black cloth from his pocket and spread it over the top of the crate. All four of them picked up the baby, each taking a corner of the box. They lifted it through the secret entrance. Seun closed up the clubhouse and they started through the oleanders.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Seun's mother came out onto the back porch and stared at them. "Where are you going?"

The four boys stopped, looking first at each other, then at her. "Nothing," Seun said. "We're just playing."

"Playing what?"

"Church."

She looked surprised. "Church?"

All four of the boys nodded.

She smiled and shook her head. "Okay. But you better be back in time for dinner."

"We will," Seun said.

They carried the box through the oleanders and started walking toward the warehouse.

Coming Home Again

A friend of mine's parents divorced when he was ten. His father remarried when my friend was in high school, but my friend never liked his father's new wife. She seemed all right to me, but in his mind she was a complete witch.

The two of us lost touch, but years later I saw him again, and he was still complaining about his wicked stepmother. I thought, "Your father could have mar­ried someone so much worse...."

***

On the plane ride over, I tried to think of what I would say. The situation was bound to be awkward. I had been trying for over a decade to get my father to go out with other women, but now that he seemed to have found someone he cared about I was torn with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I wanted him to be happy—he was my father and I loved him. On the other hand, I had also loved my mother and I couldn't help feeling, on some gut emotional level out of reach of my rational mind, that by finding someone else he was betraying her memory.

And he might love this new woman more than he 'd loved her.

I guess that was my real fear. What if he found someone he loved more than my mother? What if his emotions found not just a substitute for her but a replacement for her? A woman who would supersede my mother's place in his emo­tional hierarchy.

It was a babyish fear, I admit. An immature, childish worry. My mother would have been happy for him. She wouldn't have wanted him to live forever in that celibate state of self-imposed social exile that he'd been inhabiting since her death. And I, too, wanted him to be happy.

I just didn't want his happiness to come at her expense.

I glanced down again at the folded letter in my lap. "I have found someone I care for very much," he'd written in his typically formal style. "I'd like you two to meet."

I leaned my chair back and closed my eyes. I wanted to like her; I really did. I hoped I would.

The plane landed in LA two hours later. I disembarked, found my luggage, and walked across the street to the cof­fee shop where my father had said he'd meet me. He was standing next to the open trunk of a new Pontiac in the park­ing lot. He was smiling, and he looked better than he had in years. The gaunt tiredness which I thought had settled into his features for good had disappeared, and his formerly sal­low skin looked tan and healthy. As always, he was dressed in a formal suit—vest, tie, the whole works. My own clothes were nice, and comfortably stylish, but next to him I felt pitifully underdressed.

"It's good to see you," he said, and held out his hand.

"You too," I said. I couldn't help smiling. He looked so good, so fit and healthy and happy. I shook his hand. Our family had never been big on physical demonstrations of af­fection, and the pressing of palms was about as close as we ever got to a public display of closeness.

He took one of my suitcases and loaded it into the trunk; I put the other one right next to it. "How are things with you?" he asked.

"Oh, about the same as always." I grinned. "But your life seems to have taken a turn for the better."

He laughed heartily, and I realized suddenly that it had been years since I'd heard him laugh that way. "Yes," he said. "That is true. That is very true."

He unlocked my door and I got into the car, sliding across the seat to unlock his side. "So what's her name?" I asked. "You never did tell me."

He smile cryptically. "You'll see."

"Come on," I told him.

"We'll be home in ten minutes." He put the car into re­verse and looked at me. "It's good to see you again, son. I'm glad you came out to see me."

We drove over the familiar side streets toward home. It was not a ten-minute drive from the airport. It was not even a twenty-minute drive. Our home in Long Beach was a good forty-five minutes from the airport even without traffic, and we happened to be driving during rush hour. But I'd known that ahead of time, and I didn't mind. We talked a lot, got caught up on new gossip, restated old positions, and fell into our old familiar patterns.

By the time we pulled off the freeway onto Lakewood it was approaching dinnertime. I hadn't had a thing to eat save an almost inedible lunch on the plane, and I was starved. "Is she going to have dinner ready for us?" I asked.

My father shook his head. "We'll eat out."

I'd been trying to determine, through subtle questioning, whether or not his new girlfriend lived with him, and I gath-ered that she did. I was surprised. My father had always been ultraconservative, the most proper of men, and I could not imagine him lowering his concrete moral standards enough to live with a woman outside of wedlock.

He must really love her a lot, I thought.

The house looked the same as always. The lawn was im­maculately manicured, the trim on the house recently painted. Even the hose was curled into a neat circle. "The place looks good," I said.

He smiled at me. "I try my best."

We got out of the car, leaving the luggage in the trunk for later. My father found the house key on his ring and un­locked the front door, stepping aside to let me in first.

The inside of the house was demolished.

I stared in shock. Both the couch and the loveseat were overturned in the middle of the living room, their upholstery torn and ripped, stuffing leaking out. Scattered about were the broken pieces of our old dining room chairs and frag­ments of the dining room table. The china cabinet and its contents were heaped in a pile in the corner of the room. The walls were bare and covered with crayon scribbles. The liv­ing room rug, the rug that had been tough enough to with­stand even my Tonka attacks and my G.I. Joe invasions, was a tatter of unraveled threads. Through the doorway of the kitchen, I could see smeared piles of food and bent food containers on the broken tile.

Everything was covered with a dusty white powder.

I whirled around to see my father's reaction. He was smiling happily, as if he did not see the disaster in front of him, as if he were viewing paradise itself. "How does it feel to be home again?" he asked.

There was the sound of something shattering in the back of the house, and a second later a naked boy came bounding into the living room on all fours. He was brown with filth and he smelled horrible. His hair was matted with grime, and his too-large teeth were a moldy green. He could not have been more than ten or eleven. He hopped onto the re­mains of the china cabinet and grunted wildly, snorting through his nose.