Wonderland (6 page)

Their mother made breakfast for them. She still looked pale, shaky. Jesse wondered if the girls noticed. Her bathrobe was damp from where she had wiped off the vomit—a large damp stain in the blue material. But no one else would notice. She put plates on the table, gave them hot oatmeal in spoonfuls. She avoided Jesse’s eye. He hated himself for seeing so much, always seeing so much. He couldn’t help it. They lived so close together, he could not help noticing the straps that sometimes slid down Jean’s shoulder, the flushed, mottled flesh of his mother’s chest if her bathrobe swung open. Sometimes he found himself staring at his father—that strong, large face, the strong jaws, the grinding, relentless motion of his teeth as he ate. He wanted to see, and yet he did not want to see. He wanted to see the underclothes Jean kept in her bureau drawer, the top left-hand drawer, and yet he did not want to see.… He couldn’t help noticing his sister’s breasts. Her firm legs, the hint of her thighs. At school, he saw other boys watching Jean. The boys even watched his mother when she came to town in the summer, wearing slacks, sometimes with her hair done up in a bandana, looking like a gypsy, Hotly, warily, his eyes took in these sights. The moist out-sides of his eyes became seared with such sights.
His father going out to tramp in the woods, hours before dawn
.… Once, in the Brennans’ woods, he had come upon a heap of cigarette butts and ashes, and he knew this was where his father had sat, unable to stay in the house or in bed. Unable to sleep. He had kicked at the pile with his foot, as if this were a secret that embarrassed him.

His mother pulled a chair out and sat down. Wiped Bob’s nose. Now Shirley wanted something; her whining. Jean went to the cupboard
and stumbled over Jesse’s feet. “Biggest feet in the world,” she muttered. Jesse drew his feet under his chair angrily. “Watch out for yourself,” he said. “You two,” said their mother, sighing. The table was crowded with things. Now his mother must sit down, with a bowl for herself, a spoon, a glass, a cup filled with hot coffee. Everything was crowded. Jesse wanted to knock things off, clear a path—He wanted to shout to Jean to let him alone. Who did she think she was? But he ate in silence, sullenly, quickly. Too much sugar on his oatmeal; he’d spilled a teaspoonful on in one place. Sickening sweet on his tongue. He glanced up to see Bob wiping his nose with the back of his hand. If his father were to come in now, they would have to make room for him. Another chair. Another place at the table. No hiding here. His father’s coarse, discolored teeth, the grinding, rhythmic motion of his chewing, his swallowing. Hypnotizing Jesse. Jesse’s stare, his habit of staring, would get him into trouble. Must not stare. Must not notice.
His mother’s bathrobe, loosely tied at the waist
. He could hear his mother and Jean and Shirley talking, talking about Christmas. The Christmas tree. Presents for Grandpa Vogel. The three voices blended together, mingling and clashing, drawing apart, easing together. Disagreeing. Agreeing. Switching sides. It was like music. The radio was turned on to the morning news, but the station must have shifted, most of the sound was static. Why didn’t Jesse’s mother notice that and fix it? Jesse ate fast, gulping his food. Since he had seen his mother being sick, he felt a little sick himself. And what was behind that static, what was behind the noise of the radio and his mother and sisters? Was there something he should be listening to?

He said abruptly, “Where’s Pa?”

His mother did not look at him.

“He’s gone out already,” Jean said.

“Why?” said Jesse.

“How do I know why?” Jean said.

“Where did he go?” Jesse asked his mother.

She was picking at something on the edge of the table. Picking it off the faded oilcloth.

“He couldn’t sleep, so he went for a walk,” she said finally.

“It’s cold out to take a walk,” he said strangely, staring at his mother.

“He couldn’t sleep,” his mother said.

They were silent. Shirley sucked at her milk, oblivious to their
silence, not understanding. Jesse and Jean and their mother sat so close together that their faces were like balloons hovering close, about to knock together lightly. The windows were frosted with ice on the inside—a very thin, flaky, delicate coating in odd designs. Jesse stared at the window behind the stove. What if his father appeared there suddenly, staring in at them? He must be hungry, out walking in the woods for so long. His breath coming in puffs of steam. His breath smoking about his mouth. Walking with his head down, bowed, his dark hair spiky and wild, uncombed, his eyes straining in their sockets to see, to make sure nothing was being kept from him, hidden from him—that was Willard Harte. Everyone knew Willard Harte. He was from Yewville and everyone in Yewville knew him.

Jesse felt his father’s presence, as if that face was really in the window, spying on them. So he said daringly, hoarsely, “What is he going to do now? Are we going to move?”

“Go ask him yourself,” Jean said quickly.

Their mother did not reply. She was wiping Bob’s mouth.

“Ma,” Jesse said deliberately, “are we going to move again?”

“Are we going to move?” Shirley asked, surprised. “How come? When?”

“Shut up,” Jean said. “You keep out of this.”

“Where are we going?” Shirley asked. She had a full, moonish face dotted with freckles. She gaped at Jean. In this family, Jean often knew secrets; what passed between their mother and father, unvoiced, might be put into words by Jean.

“He’s going to ask some people … maybe ask around.…” their mother said evasively.

“Ask around what?” said Jesse.

“To see if he can sell it,” their mother said.

“All it says is
Closed
. Nothing about being for sale,” Jesse said.

His mother glanced up at him. Pale, transparent, fed by tiny glowing veins, her face seemed to be confronting his boldly. Her eyes were a faint gray, a faint green, slightly slanted, almond-shaped, their playfulness now gone stern.

“Jesse, if you want to know so much, go ask him yourself,” Jean said angrily. “Go on out, you’re so smart—big goddamn loudmouth!”

“Jean,” their Mother said.

“Don’t ‘Jean’ me, Ma. Listen, Ma, don’t ‘Jean’ me,” Jean said quickly.
“I’m not a goddamn little baby like these two. Don’t look at me sideways like that. Today is Christmas assembly and he tries to start a fight right away, and
he
is acting crazy like always—outside tramping around, what if somebody sees him! I heard him drinking last night. Stumbling around in the dark. Why’s he always going out like that, out late and up early, roaming around like a bum—the kids ask me about him, they say they see him as far away as town, on foot—Now he put that goddamn sign up and boarded everything up, and the kids are going to ask me about it—just in time for Christmas assembly—”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” their mother said.

“I wish I was dead!” Jean said.

She began to cry. The dog ran in from the other room, barking. Bob stared at Jean, amazed, and struggled to get down from his mother’s lap.

“You hate me! I wish I was dead!” Jean cried, jumping up.

“Sit down and be quiet. Who hates you? Who the hell hates you?” their mother said in a light, hot, sullen voice. She was brushing at the front of her bathrobe. Short fluttery motions of her hands, as if brushing off crumbs. She eyed Jean sideways, turning her head sternly, severely aside. Jesse saw how her eyes pinched at the corners.

“Cut out that sniveling. It’s only more trouble,” their mother said.

Jean’s face, streaked with tears, was not so pretty now.

“Do you want more trouble?” their mother said.

“Jesse started it,” Jean said.

“I only asked if we were going to move. If he was going to sell the gas station,” Jesse said. He felt shaky, uncertain. The tension in this room was between his mother and Jean; it seemed to exclude him. By raising his voice, by avoiding their eyes, he was able to blunder into it, to capture some of it for himself. He said recklessly, “Sure, this morning the kids on the bus will see the sign—why’d he have to put a sign up anyway? And they’ll kid us about it, they’ll want to know what happened—”

“So tell them to go to hell,” their mother said.

“But what is he going to do?”

“I don’t know. Ask him when he comes in. Ask him yourself.”

This confession of his mother’s—that she knew no more than Jesse himself—stunned him. He stared at her. He felt perplexed, resentful,
cheated. The food he had been eating was cold. What he’d eaten was a cold hard little ball in his stomach. The hell with food. The hell with breakfast, this breakfast table, these people sitting and staring at one another, their faces flushed and frightened.

“All right,” Jesse said, “I will.”

“You damn little loudmouth!” Jean said savagely.

“Watch your mouth yourself,” their mother said. Her face was weary and yet bright, as radiant as Jean’s. It was as if she were dancing closer and closer to a central, furious heat, a core of brilliance she did not dare touch. Once or twice she glanced over her shoulder, to the window Jesse had been staring at. Did she expect to see
his
face there …? Yet when she looked back at them it was Jean she looked at. Always Jean. Jean, two years older than Jesse, with the figure of a small, mature woman, her lipstick too brightly red, her breasts pushing too aggressively against the front of her dress. Jesse felt how they excluded him, his mother and his sister. He hated Jean. He hated his mother too when she was like this—united in that fierce, sullen, silent understanding with Jean, the two of them selfishly shut off from everyone else.

“If you’re going out, go on and go,” Jean taunted Jesse.

Jesse got to his feet.

“I hope he lays your fat mouth open,” Jean muttered.

“Jesse,” said their mother.

“What?”

“Sit down.”

He remained standing, his legs apart. He stared at his mother.

“Sit down and finish your breakfast.”

“Why?”

“I said sit down.”

“I finished it, I’m through.”

“Don’t you go bothering your father, not this morning. Get it out of your head. He wants to be alone.”

“I’ll ask him.”

“I said not to bother him.”

Jesse was so angry, so agitated, that a flame seemed to pass over his brain. He seemed to see his father’s face, right here at the table, an ordinary suppertime and his father’s reddened, muscular face, his cheeks bunched with food, his jaws moving with the effort of grinding
up food—chewing, chewing, eating hungrily, eating fast, never getting enough—his neck not clean, lined with grease from work in the garage, the cords of his neck standing out strong and hungry.

“Why?”

Around the table in this kitchen, all of them frightened. Outside there was air so cold it might hurt. Inside, their breaths mixing hotly together, and Jesse standing above them, staring at them, around at the faces, looking from face to face, his own eyes powerful, as if protruding slightly from their sockets, pushed forward by an enormous angry hurt.… They were all quiet. Even Bob. Even the dog. Jesse wanted to shut his eyes and turn away from them.
The hell with this, all of this
. But something tickled in his throat, the beginning of a sob. He could not speak. He loved them and he could not speak. He did not want to see, so clearly, his mother’s tired, frightened face, the way her head lifted from her neck, birdlike and wary and sharp, as if listening all the while to that sound that was behind the static on the radio, the sound of someone’s boots outside on the crusty ground.… He did not want to see his little brother’s face, his silky hair, he did not want to trade looks with Jean, who always knew more than he did, and whose scared, bold, make-up face might tell him more than he wanted to know. He did not even want to look at Shirley—her dumb freckled face, her brown hair in snarls, her amazement at the way this breakfast had turned out.

“All right, I’ll go live with Grandpa!” Jesse shouted.

He had not known he would say this. He had never even thought about it before.

But his mother accepted his words, his ugly shout, and with an ugly shout of her own brought the flat of her hand down hard on the table.

“Go to hell, then, if that’s how you feel, go right to hell and get out of here!” she cried.

Jesse ran out of the room.

He went to the woodshed and yanked on his boots. His heart pounded violently. The tickling in his throat became painful. He began to cry soundlessly. Back in the kitchen his mother was saying something—her voice mixing with Jean’s in exasperation and anger. What had he said? But he would not go back to say he was sorry. Would not go back. No. He would go to school and get out of here. The stink of that gas stove! The stink of this woodshed, piled with junk, boxes and crates of junk, probably hiding the corpses of little animals that
had crawled in here for warmth and died! And his mother’s anger, his mother’s fear.… He could not stand it.

He ran out to wait for the school bus.

Shivering. A light rain fell. In a few minutes Jean and Shirley trudged out to join him. Jean handed him his lunch bag.

“Little bastard,” she whispered.

Shivering, he could not stop shivering. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He would not let them see he’d been crying; the hell with them. The cat wandered over. Jesse took no notice. Shirley stooped to pick it up, crooning to it. Jesse looked back at the gas station—there, the windows boarded up, the sign that said
Closed
—a small stucco building at the corner of Yewville Road and the Moran Creek Road, with two gas pumps. Behind it a patch of land, gone over to dump heaps of motorcycles and cars, partly dismantled, a few jalopies on blocks, a pile of rubber and metal and lengths of wire. And, behind that, across a small ditch that had frozen over, the house itself—the house. Attached to the house a woodshed. Behind the house an old coop. In the driveway their father’s car, a 1930 Ford. Behind this was a clump of trees that divided their land from the Brennan land, at this end mostly trees and bushes.

Was his father hiding in the Brennans’ woods? Sitting on a log, smoking, tossing down the cigarette butts and grinding them out with his heel?