Stella Descending (11 page)

Amanda

When Bee was born, at first I thought she was really strange, because she never cried and because she had big eyes, like a cat. But Bee’s not strange.

The old geezer showed me a magic trick once; he made this little doll all dressed in red disappear before my eyes. It was one of those old-fashioned dolls with big blue eyes and long eyelashes and red lips that open and say
Ma-ma
. I asked him if he could do the same thing with people, get them to disappear like that. He thought I meant Bee. He thought I wanted Bee to disappear. He said it was normal for children to be jealous of their little brothers or sisters. He had felt like killing his own little sister when he was a boy, a long time ago. But that wasn’t what I meant. I was wondering whether he could make
me
disappear, because I wanted to be where the vanished people are, to see what it’s like there, to round that world.

Corinne

“I had a dream right after Bee was born,” Martin said. “A bloody clump on the operating table, a shapeless living thing, frail and exhausted, a thing that was dying but still breathing, and Stella was crying and saying, ‘But we can save her, Martin, we can save her!’ And when the clump pulls itself up, when the clump stops being a clump, Stella shouts at me to take her in my arms so she won’t fall and hurt herself.”

Martin lit a cigarette.

“I never used to dream before Bee was born. Stella said, ‘Of course you dream at night, Martin, you just don’t remember. Everybody dreams,’ said Stella. But I was sure I had never dreamt before. I had slept soundly every night, and if scenes were being played out in my mind’s eye, I certainly wasn’t aware of it. My nights were still and blue.”

“But then Bee came into the world, and the very first night after she was born you had a dream about her, right?”

“A horrible dream. A bloody clump, half alive, half dead, pulling itself up.”

And it didn’t stop there. The next night he had another dream. This time he dreamt about Bee’s eyes. Bee was all eyes, eyes that were far too big. He had fathered a baby with eyes that were far too big, far too round, the eyes of a beast of prey. And so it went. Every night he dreamt about the child, and every dream was worse than the one before. Bee came to him in his sleep in a succession of different guises. She was disgusting things that he had spat out or with which he had fouled the street, she was battered, abused, covered in bruises and sores.

Sometimes in his dreams he was abusing her, lying on top of her in her bassinet. She was all eyes.

She was all eyes, and yet she was always Bee.

“She was Bee, born of woman, not quite a month old, and yet,” says Martin, “and yet. . . .”

He showed me photographs of Bee from those first weeks. Martin was not the type to whip out the family pictures every chance he got, so it was me who asked.

“Did you take any photographs?” I asked.

“I didn’t, but Stella did,” he said.

I bowed my head over pictures of Bee. In her bassinet; on the floor at the moment she lifted her head for the first time; on the changing table enveloped in a red towel. Exceptionally big eyes, yes, there was no getting away from it, but otherwise, as far as I could see, just another pink-and-white baby girl.

“I woke up every morning with these images, these pictures in my head,” Martin told me. “Not the photographs you’re looking at here, but night pictures I was powerless to ward off. She’d be lying in her bassinet in our room, and Stella would get up to hold her, though she didn’t cry much. People told us we were lucky to have a baby who never cried. Stella would get up and put Bee to her breast. ‘Look at her,’ Stella would say. ‘Look how she feeds.’ But the pictures were still there. I mean, she was lying right there, I could see that, I could accept that, a helpless little creature sucking at her mother’s breast, and it would be light outside, I’d hear that it was morning, hear someone slamming a car door or calling to a dog. You’d think I could have stroked the back of that soft, furrowed infant neck or taken one of those tiny hands in my big one. But no! Because night after night I was haunted by this child. This alien child. This alien child. She was so alien; do you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Of course Stella noticed that I wouldn’t touch our baby. That I turned away every time she came toward me with Bee in her arms. To begin with she was furious. ‘What is your problem?’ she’d scream. ‘What kind of way is this to behave?’ ‘Give me time,’ I’d say. I told her I was jealous, that the baby took up all her attention and there was none left for me. She’d shake her head and stalk out of the room. But after a while she retreated into herself. The sound of her crying would reach me in every room. I’d go to her and put my arms around her. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she’d say. ‘Don’t you love her?’ ‘Of course I love her,’ I’d say. ‘Of course I do, Stella.’ I’d work myself up into a temper. ‘Of course I do! Do you think you’re the only one who knows how to love a child? Is yours the only love that’s good enough?’ I’d yell at her, even though I knew how hollow it sounded. She would yell back that it was hard to believe a man loved his own child when he couldn’t even touch her. And after a while she began to challenge me. She turned nasty—that’s the only way to put it. In the blink of an eye, Stella could turn downright nasty. I would see it in her face, the little smile twisting her lips, a hand brushed swiftly through her hair, her accusing—no, mocking—eyes.

“We’d be sitting at the dinner table, Amanda, Stella, and me, this table here,” and Martin thumped the table. “Stella would be sitting where you’re sitting. I’d be sitting here. Amanda would be over there. Bee would be in her bassinet in the bedroom, but sometimes we’d hear her grunt. Even though she never really cried, she did make some sounds. Stella would keep on eating. Bee would grunt louder. Grunt is the wrong word, though. She whimpered. Yes, that’s it. She whimpered. And Stella would go on eating.

“Amanda would say, ‘Mamma, Bee’s crying.’

“Stella would say, ‘Yes, so she is.’

“Then Amanda would ask, ‘Should I go get her?’

“And Stella would say, ‘Martin should get Bee.’ Then she would add softly, ‘Thanks, Amanda, you’re a good big sister, but it’s Martin’s turn to get Bee.’

“So I would get up and go to the bedroom to get Bee. Lift her out of her bassinet, walk back to the dining room, and hand her to Stella.

“And the dreams continued. Sometimes I would get it into my head that the baby was evil. That this baby was, in fact, willfully haunting me. I grew convinced that Stella had given birth to some evil thing.

“It became more and more difficult to deny Stella’s accusations, silent though they were, now. We’d been looking forward to this, she and I, to Bee, little Bee, named after my great-grandmother with the ostrich-feather hat.

“To make amends I tried to devote myself to my stepdaughter instead. I tried to get closer to Amanda. I took her to the movies, picked her up from school, attended PTA meetings. For her seventh birthday I took her to Copenhagen. We went to Tivoli Gardens and ate popcorn and cotton candy. I had managed to persuade Stella not to come with us, to stay at home and take it easy with Bee.

“ ‘We all need a bit of time,’ I said, tugging Amanda’s hair. ‘Time together and time apart. Amanda and I will manage just fine without you two for a couple of days.’ This said in a gently teasing, tender manner. Stella, happy that I was at last taking an interest in Amanda but disappointed, nonetheless, that things still weren’t working out with Bee, merely nodded and smiled. Amanda hissed at me not to tug her hair.

“Afterward, when Stella was out of earshot, Amanda turned her face up at me and said, ‘We’re not friends, you and I, and don’t you forget it!’

“ ‘No, no, of course not,’ I said, somewhat taken aback, although in my heart of hearts I felt the same way. And then I said, ‘So why do you want to go to Copenhagen with me for your birthday?’

“ ‘Because I want to go to Tivoli,’ Amanda said. ‘I want to ride the Ferris wheel.’

“And that was that. We went to Copenhagen. We celebrated her birthday in true time-honored fashion. We went to Tivoli. We rode the Ferris wheel. And best of all, in the hotel room that first night, in the narrow bed next to Amanda’s narrow bed, I slept. And I slept. A sleep without dreams. A sleep with no pictures. And the night after that, too, and the night after that. Three nights in a hotel in Copenhagen with no dreams of any sort, the pictures in my mind’s eye faded away, and I thought, Now I can go home to Stella and Bee and put my arms around them both and tell them that I love them.”

When Martin and Amanda got back from Copenhagen, Martin walked straight into the bedroom, where Stella was lying asleep with Bee. He hugged them both. Later that evening, he gave Bee her bath, lowering her into the lukewarm water, filling his cupped hand with water, and trickling it gently over her head. He did this several times, filled his cupped hand with water and trickled it over her head, until she actually smiled. She’s smiling at me, he said to himself. You’re smiling at me. He lifted her out of the tub, laid her on the changing table, and wrapped her in a big red towel. Two huge eyes gazed at him with wonder, and he gazed back with wonder every bit as great.

But that same night the dreams returned, and he was jolted awake.

He reached out for Stella, but Bee was lying between them. Bee was awake. She stared at him. He stared back. It’s not normal for babies to stare like that, he thought. Babies howl and drool and laugh and suck, but they’re not supposed to stare! Martin lifted the eiderdown as if he fully expected to find a coiled serpent under there instead of a baby’s body. Bee was naked except for a diaper full of poop. He picked her up and laid her in her bassinet. She whimpered. He put a finger to her lips: “Ssh.” She whimpered again. He pressed his finger against her lips. “Ssh! I said. Go to sleep!” At last he turned away, grabbed a pillow, and went off to lie down on the sofa in the living room.

Stella woke up and called him. He heard her pad over to the bassinet and take Bee in her arms, heard the words she said.

Sweet, gentle words, I imagine, words murmured to a child in the middle of the night.

Video Recording: Stella & Martin
The House by the Lady Falls
8/27/00, 4:30 A.M.

MARTIN: Everything of value. How exactly would you define that, Stella?

STELLA: I knew this substitute teacher once, in sixth or seventh grade. She was actually a dressmaker, but the dresses she made didn’t pay the rent, so she substituted at school. She used to ask me if I’d like to go for a walk after class. She wasn’t particularly good-looking, short and plump, but she had nice eyes that really saw me. She said, “Stella, you’re tall, you play the flute well, you have five fingers on each hand, you can be whatever you want to be. There is no end to you. You have unlimited depths.” Her name was Frederikke Moll. I remember, because I used to say her name over and over again inside my head. Frederikke Moll. Frederikke Moll.

MARTIN: Why are you telling me this now?

STELLA: Because you started babbling about “everything of value,” and this is a memory I value.

MARTIN: But we’re talking about things here, Stella, not memories. Everything of value, said that most excellent insurance broker Gunnar R. Owesen, and off he went. Everything of value. Every thing’s value. The sofa. The glass table. The candlesticks. The flower vases. The bookcases and the books. Nothing of value, really. The photographs on the wall. What else? The silver, did you say? Okay! Passing through the living room and into the dining room. Eight red chairs, one large dark dining table, a picture on the wall of a red sun sinking into a black sea, another picture, of a puddle on tarmac, welcome to our home, and on we go. Look! This lovely room painted blue is the kitchen. Do you think Mr. Insurance Broker Gunnar R. Owesen and his colleagues sit and watch these videos, Stella? This documentation of rooms and things? Should we open the cupboards? Should we open the drawers? Now, what have we here? A perfect mess! A potato peeler, a corkscrew, a pencil sharpener, an Easter chick, a receipt for something, an unsent letter from Stella to Axel Grutt, three unopened bills, a broken knife, an old drawing of Amanda’s depicting, not surprisingly, a red house that also happens to be some sort of ferocious monster—wouldn’t you say, Stella? And what would the child psychologists say if they could see your daughter’s drawings? A pack of PP pastilles—you can’t buy them anywhere these days—three pot holders, a bunch of keys, a copy of a tax return from . . . let’s see . . . three years ago, a collection of poems by e. e. cummings. Nope! Back into the drawer, all of it. Nothing of value here.

STELLA: Try the third drawer to the right.

MARTIN: Third drawer to the right it is!

STELLA: D’you see anything?

MARTIN: Do I ever! All glittering and gleaming.

STELLA: No it isn’t, Martin. I doubt if it’s glittering or gleaming. It hasn’t glittered and gleamed since we polished it two years ago. I believe the first and last time we ever got that silverware out was for Bee’s seventh birthday.

MARTIN: Dear little Bee.

STELLA: And what’s that supposed to mean?

MARTIN: It means I can just picture her sitting at the table eating, with those shaky scab-encrusted hands of hers, or lying in bed, asleep and panting as if she were on the run, even in her sleep. I don’t know what else to say, Stella, except
dear little Bee
.

STELLA: You say it with such a . . . such a note of contempt in your voice—dear little Bee, like that—I can’t help wondering whether you mean it.

MARTIN: Mean what?

STELLA: That word dear. Whether your daughter is . . . well . . .
dear
to you.

MARTIN: Your body, Stella, is dear to me, and everything that issues from your body—all the sighs, groans, words, tears, laughter, excrement, blood, vomit, discharges, kids, the one that isn’t mine and the other one that is—I love it, all of it.

STELLA: I was trying to talk to you, Martin. Seriously. It’s all a joke to you, isn’t it, even when we’re talking about our child. Put that camera down! I’ve got something to tell you!

MARTIN: All a joke. Stella wants to be serious. But I’m not going to put the camera down. We’ve got stuff to do. We’re supposed to be talking about things, not children. Gunnar R. Owesen isn’t interested in our children; he probably has a whole fucking houseful of kids himself. But precious objects, on the other hand! Gold and silver! These he wants to hear more about. . . . Let’s see, now. Nine big forks. Nine small forks. Nine big knives. Nine small knives. Ten tablespoons.

STELLA: They’re soupspoons.

MARTIN: I beg your pardon, soupspoons! Ten soupspoons. Ten teaspoons. Maybe we should explain to the insurance broker why we have nine of some things and ten of others and a complete dozen of nothing. Take the camera for a minute, Stella, and I’ll explain. Can you see me?

STELLA: I’ve got you in close-up, Martin.

MARTIN: What do you see?

STELLA: Your face, your eyes.