Stranger Things Happen (26 page)

In the evening Louise calls her mother and tells her that Louise
is dead.

"Oh sweetie," her mother says. "I'm so sorry. She was such a
pretty girl. I always liked to hear her laugh."

"She was angry with me," Louise says. "Her daughter Anna is
staying with me now."

"What about Anna's father?" her mother says. "Did you get rid of
that ghost? I'm not sure it's a good idea having a ghost in the
same house as a small girl."

"The ghost is gone," Louise says.

There is a click on the line. "Someone's listening in," her
mother says. "Don't say anything—they might be recording us. Call
me back from a different phone."

Anna has come into the room. She stands behind Louise. She says,
"I want to go live with my father." "It's time to go to sleep,"
Louise says. She wants to take off her funeral clothes and go to
bed. "We can talk about this in the morning."

Anna brushes her teeth and puts on her green pajamas. She does
not want Louise to read to her. She does not want a glass of water.
Louise says, "When I was a dog … "

Anna says, "You were never a dog —" and pulls the blanket, which
is not green, up over her head and will not say anything else.

#

Mr. Bostick knows who Anna's father is. "He doesn't know about
Anna," he tells Louise. "His name is George Candle and he lives in
Oregon. He's married and has two kids. He has his own
company—something to do with organic produce, I think, or maybe it
was construction."

"I think it would be better for Anna if she were to live with a
real parent," Louise says. "Easier. Someone who knows something
about kids. I'm not cut out for this."

Mr. Bostick agrees to contact Anna's father. "He may not even
admit he knew Louise," he says. "He may not be okay about
this."

"Tell him she's a fantastic kid," Louise says. "Tell him she
looks just like Louise."

#

In the end George Candle comes and collects Anna. Louise
arranges his airline tickets and his hotel room. She books two
return tickets out to Portland for Anna and her father and makes
sure Anna has a window seat. "You'll like Oregon," she tells Anna.
"It's green."

"You think you're smarter than me," Anna says. "You think you
know all about me. When I was a dog, I was ten times smarter than
you. I knew who my friends were because of how they smelled. I know
things you don't."

But she doesn't say what they are. Louise doesn't ask.

George Candle cries when he meets his daughter. He's almost as
hairy as the ghost. Louise can smell his marriage. She wonders what
Anna smells.

"I loved your mother very much," George Candle says to Anna.
"She was a very special person. She had a beautiful soul."

They go to see Louise's gravestone. The grass on her grave is
greener than the other grass. You can see where it's been tipped
in, like a bookplate. Louise briefly fantasizes her own funeral,
her own gravestone, her own married lover standing beside her
gravestone. She knows he would go straight home after the funeral
to take a shower. If he went to the funeral.

The house without Anna is emptier than Louise is used to. Louise
didn't expect to miss Anna. Now she has no best friend, no ghost,
no adopted former dog. Her lover is home with his wife, sulking,
and now George Candle is flying home to his wife. What will she
think of Anna? Maybe Anna will miss Louise just a little.

That night Louise dreams of Louise endlessly falling off the
stage. She falls and falls and falls. As Louise falls she slowly
comes apart. Little bits of her fly away. She is made up of
ladybugs.

Anna comes and sits on Louise's bed. She is a lot furrier than
she was when she lived with Louise. "You're not a dog," Louise
says.

Anna grins her possum teeth at Louise. She's holding a piece of
okra. "The supernatural world has certain characteristics," Anna
says. "You can recognize it by its color, which is green, and by
its texture, which is hirsute. Those are its outside qualities.
Inside the supernatural world things get sticky but you never get
inside things, Louise. Did you know that George Candle is a
werewolf? Look out for hairy men, Louise. Or do I mean married men?
The other aspects of the green world include music and smell."

Anna pulls her pants down and squats. She pees on the bed, a
long acrid stream that makes Louise's eyes water.

Louise wakes up sobbing. "Louise," Louise whispers. "Please come
and lie on my floor. Please come haunt me. I'll play Patsy Cline
for you and comb your hair. Please don't go away."

She keeps a vigil for three nights. She plays Patsy Cline. She
sits by the phone because maybe Louise could call. Louise has never
not called, not for so long. If Louise doesn't forgive her, then
she can come and be an angry ghost. She can make dishes break or
make blood come out of the faucets. She can give Louise bad dreams.
Louise will be grateful for broken things and blood and bad dreams.
All of Louise's clothes are up on their hangers, hung right-side
out. Louise puts little dishes of flowers out, plates with candles
and candy. She calls her mother to ask how to make a ghost appear
but her mother refuses to tell her. The line may be tapped. Louise
will have to come down, she says, and she'll explain in person.

#

Louise wears the same dress she wore to the funeral. She sits up
in the balcony. There are enormous pictures of Louise up on the
stage. Influential people go up on the stage and tell funny stories
about Louise. Members of the orchestra speak about Louise. Her
charm, her beauty, her love of music. Louise looks through her
opera glasses at the cellists. There is the young one, number
eight, who caused all the trouble. There is the bearded cellist who
caught the ghost. She stares through her glasses at his cello. Her
ghost runs up and down the neck of his cello, frisky. It coils
around the strings, hangs upside-down from a peg.

She examines number five's face for a long time. Why you, Louise
thinks. If she wanted to sleep with a woman, why did she sleep with
you? Did you tell her funny jokes? Did you go shopping together for
clothes? When you saw her naked, did you see that she was
bow-legged? Did you think that she was beautiful?

The cellist next to number five is holding his cello very
carefully. He runs his fingers down the strings as if they were
tangled and he were combing them. Louise stares through her opera
glasses. There is something in his cello. Something small and
bleached is looking back at her through the strings. Louise looks
at Louise and then she slips back through the f hole, like a
fish.

#

They are in the woods. The fire is low. It's night. All the
little girls are in their sleeping bags. They've brushed their
teeth and spit, they've washed their faces with water from the
kettle, they've zipped up the zippers of their sleeping bags.

A counselor named Charlie is saying, "I am the ghost with the
one black eye, I am the ghost with the one black eye."

Charlie holds her flashlight under her chin. Her eyes are two
black holes in her face. Her mouth yawns open, the light shining
through her teeth. Her shadow eats up the trunk of the tree she
sits under.

During the daytime Charlie teaches horseback riding. She isn't
much older than Louise or Louise. She's pretty and she lets them
ride the horses bareback sometimes. But that's daytime Charlie.
Nighttime Charlie is the one sitting next to the fire. Nighttime
Charlie is the one who tells stories.

"Are you afraid?" Louise says.

"No," Louise says.

They hold hands. They don't look at each other. They keep their
eyes on Charlie. Louise says,
"Are 
you 
afraid?"

"No," Louise says. "Not as long as you're here."

The girl detective looked at her reflection in the mirror.
This was a different girl. This was a girl who would chew
gum. 
—
DORA KNEZ, in conversation

The girl detective's mother is missing.

The girl detective's mother has been missing for a long
time.

The underworld.

Think of the underworld as the back of your closet, behind all
those racks of clothes that you don't wear anymore. Things are
always getting pushed back there and forgotten about. The
underworld is full of things that you've forgotten about. Some of
them, if only you could remember, you might want to take them back.
Trips to the underworld are always very nostalgic. It's darker in
there. The seasons don't match. Mostly people end up there by
accident, or else because in the end there was nowhere else to go.
Only heroes and girl detectives go to the underworld on
purpose.

There are three kinds of food.

One is the food that your mother makes for you. One is the kind
of food that you eat in restaurants. One is the kind of food that
you eat in dreams. There's one other kind of food, but you can only
get that in the underworld, and it's not really food. It's more
like dancing.

The girl detective eats dreams.

The girl detective won't eat her dinner. Her father, the
housekeeper—they've tried everything they can think of. Her father
takes her out to eat—Chinese restaurants, once even a truckstop two
states away for chicken-fried steak. The girl detective used to
love chicken-fried steak. Her father has gained ten pounds, but the
girl detective will only have a glass of water, not even a slice of
lemon. I saw them once at that new restaurant downtown, and the
girl detective was folding her napkin while her father ate. I went
over to their table after they'd left. She'd folded her napkin into
a swan. I put it into my pocket, along with her dinner roll and a
packet of sugar. I thought these things might be clues.

The housekeeper cooks all the food that the girl detective used
to love. Green beans, macaroni and cheese, parsnips, stewed
pears—the girl detective used to eat all her vegetables. The girl
detective used to love vegetables. She always cleaned her plate. If
only her mother were still here, the housekeeper will say, and
sigh. The girl detective's father sighs. Aren't you the littlest
bit hungry? they ask her. Wouldn't you like a bite to eat? But the
girl detective still goes to bed hungry.

There is some debate about whether the girl detective needs to
eat food at all. Is it possible that she is eating in secret? Is
she anorexic? Bulimic? Is she protesting something? What could we
cook that would tempt her?

I am doing my best to answer these very questions. I am
detecting the girl detective. I sit in a tree across the street
from her window, and this is what I see. The girl detective goes to
bed hungry, but she eats our dreams while we are asleep. She has
eaten my dreams. She has eaten your dreams, one after the other, as
if they were grapes or oysters. The girl detective is getting fat
on other people's dreams.

The case of the tap-dancing bankrobbers.

Just a few days ago, I saw this on the news. You remember, that
bank downtown. Maybe you were in line for a teller, waiting to make
a deposit. Perhaps you saw them come in. They had long, long legs,
and they were wearing sequins. Feathers. Not much else. They wore
tiny black dominos, hair pinned up in tall loopy curls, and their
mouths were wide and red. Their eyes glittered.

You were being interviewed on the news. "We all thought that
someone in the bank must be having a birthday," you said. "They had
on these skimpy outfits. There was music playing."

They spun. They pranced. They kicked. They were carrying purses,
and they took tiny black guns out of their purses. Sit down on the
floor, one of them told you. You sat on the floor. Sitting on the
floor, it was possible to look up their short, flounced skirts. You
could see their underwear. It was satin, and embroidered with the
days of the week. There were twelve bank robbers: Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Mayday,
Payday, Yesterday, Someday, and Birthday. The one who had spoken to
you was Birthday. She seemed to be the leader. She went over to a
teller, and pointed the little gun at him. They spoke earnestly.
They went away, through a door over to the side. All the other bank
robbers went with them, except for Wednesday and Thursday, who were
keeping an eye on you. They shuffled a little on the marble floor
as they waited. They did a couple of pli?s. They kept their guns
pointed at the security guard, who had been asleep on a chair by
the door. He stayed asleep.

In about a minute, the other bank robbers came back through the
door again, with the teller. They looked satisfied. The teller
looked confused, and he went and sat on the floor next to you. The
bank robbers left. Witnesses say they got in a red van with
something written in gold on the side and drove away. The driver
was an older woman. She looked stern.

Police are on the lookout for this woman, for this van. When
they arrived, what did they find inside the vault? Nothing was
missing. In fact, things appeared to have been left behind. Several
tons of mismatched socks, several hundred pairs of prescription
glasses, retainers, a ball python six feet long, curled
decoratively around the bronze vault dial. Also a woman claiming to
be Amelia Earhart. When police questioned this woman, she claimed
to remember very little. She remembers a place, police suspect that
she was held hostage there by the bank robbers. It was dark, she
said, and people were dancing. The food was pretty good. Police
have the woman in protective custody, where she has reportedly
received serious proposals from lonely men and major publishing
houses.

In the past two months the tap-dancing robbers have kept busy.
Who are these masked women? Speculation is rife. All dance
performances, modern, classical, even student rehearsals, are
well-attended. Banks have become popular places to go on dates or
on weekdays, during lunch. Some people bring roses to throw. The
girl detective is reportedly working on the case.

Secret origins of the girl detective.

Some people say that she doesn't exist. Someone once suggested
that I was the girl detective, but I've never known whether or not
they were serious. At least I don't think that I am the girl
detective. If I were the girl detective, I would surely know.

Things happen.

When the girl detective leaves her father's house one morning, a
man is lurking outside. I've been watching him for a while now from
my tree. I'm a little stiff, but happy to be here. He's a fat man
with pouched, beautiful eyes. He sighs heavily a few times. He
takes the girl detective by the arm. Can I tell you a story, he
says.

All right, says the girl detective politely. She takes her arm
back, sits down on the front steps. The man sits down beside her
and lights a smelly cigar.

The girl detective saves the world.

The girl detective has saved the world on at least three
separate occasions. Not that she is bragging.

The girl detective doesn't care for
fiction.

The girl detective doesn't actually read much. She doesn't have
the time. Her father used to read fairy tales to her when she was
little. She didn't like them. For example, the twelve dancing
princesses. If their father really wants to stop them, why doesn't
he just forbid the royal shoemaker to make them any more dancing
shoes? Why do they have to go underground to dance? Don't they have
a ballroom? Do they like dancing or are they secretly relieved when
they get caught? Who taught them to dance?

The girl detective has thought a lot about the twelve dancing
princesses. She and the princesses have a few things in common. For
instance, shoe leather. Possibly underwear. Also, no mother. This
is another thing about fiction, fairy tales in particular. The
mother is usually missing. The girl detective imagines, all of a
sudden, all of these mothers. They're all in the same place.
They're far away, some place she can't find them. It infuriates
her. What are they up to, all of these mothers?

The fat man's story.

This man has twelve daughters, says the fat man. All of them
lookers. Nice gams. He's a rich man but he doesn't have a wife. He
has to take care of the girls all by himself. He does the best he
can. The oldest one is still living at home when the youngest one
graduates from high school. This makes their father happy. How can
he take care of them if they move away from home?

But strange things start to happen. The girls all sleep in the
same bedroom, which is fine, no problem, because they all get along
great. But then the girls start to sleep all day. He can't wake
them up. It's as if they've been drugged. He brings in specialists.
The specialists all shake their heads.

At night the girls wake up. They're perky. Affectionate. They
apply makeup. They whisper and giggle. They eat dinner with their
father, and everyone pretends that everything's normal. At bedtime
they go to their room and lock the door, and in the morning when
their father knocks on the door to wake them up, gently at first,
tapping, then harder, begging them to open the door, beside each
bed is a worn-out pair of dancing shoes.

Here's the thing. He's never even bought them dancing lessons.
They all took horseback riding, tennis, those classes where you
learn to make dollhouse furniture out of cigarette boxes and
doilies.

So he hires a detective. Me, says the fat man—you wouldn't think
it, but I used to be young and handsome and quick on my feet. I
used to be a pretty good dancer myself.

The man puffs on his cigar. Are you getting all this? the girl
detective calls to me, where I'm sitting up in the tree. I nod. Why
don't you take a hike, she says.

Why we love the girl detective.

We love the girl detective because she reminds us of the
children we wish we had. She is courteous, but also brave. She
loathes injustice; she is passionate, but also well-groomed. She
keeps her room neat, but not too neat. She feeds her goldfish. She
will get good grades, keep her curfew when it doesn't interfere
with fighting crime. She'll come home from an Ivy League college on
weekends to do her laundry.

She reminds us of the girl we hope to marry one day. If we ask
her, she will take care of us, cook us nutritious meals, find our
car keys when we've misplaced them. The girl detective is good at
finding things. She will balance the checkbook, plan vacations, and
occasionally meet us at the door when we come home from work,
wearing nothing but a blue ribbon in her hair. She will fill our
eyes. We will bury our faces in her dark, light, silky, curled,
frizzed, teased, short, shining, long, shining hair. Tangerine,
clove, russet, coal-colored, oxblood, buttercup, clay-colored,
tallow, titian, lampblack, sooty, scented hair. The color of her
hair will always inflame us.

She reminds us of our mothers.

DANCE WITH BEAUTIFUL GIRLS.

The father hides me in the closet one night, and I wait until
the girls, they all come to bed. It's a big closet. And it smells
nice, like girl sweat and cloves and mothballs. I hold onto the
sleeve of someone's dress to balance while I'm looking through the
keyhole. Don't think I don't go through all the pockets. But all I
find is a marble and a deck of cards with the Queen of Spades
missing, a napkin folded into a swan maybe, a box of matches from a
Chinese restaurant.

I look through the keyhole, maybe I'm hoping to see one or two
of them take off their clothes, but instead they lock the bedroom
door and move one of the beds, knock on the floor and guess what?
There's a secret passageway. Down they go, one after the other.
They look so demure, like they're going to Sunday School.

I wait a bit and then I follow them. The passageway is plaster
and bricks first, and then it's dirt with packed walls. The walls
open up and we could be walking along, all of us holding hands if
we wanted to. It's pretty dark, but each girl has a flashlight. I
follow the twelve pairs of feet in twelve new pairs of kid leather
dancing shoes, each in its own little puddle of light. I stretch my
hands up and I stand on my toes, but I can't feel the roof of the
tunnel anymore. There's a breeze, raising the hair on my neck.

Up till then I think I know this city pretty well, but we go
down and down, me after the last girl, the youngest, and when at
last the passageway levels out, we're in a forest. There's this
moss on the trunk of the trees, which glows. It looks like paradise
by the light of the moss. The ground is soft like velvet, and the
air tastes good. I think I must be dreaming, but I reach up and
break off a branch.

The youngest girl hears the branch snap and she turns around,
but I've ducked behind a tree. So she goes on and we go on.

Then we come to a river. Down by the bank there are twelve young
men, Oriental, gangsters by the look of 'em, black hair slicked
back, smooth-faced in the dim light, and I can see they're all
wearing guns under their nice dinner jackets. I stay back in the
trees. I think maybe it's the white slave trade, but the girls go
peaceful, and they're smiling and laughing with their escorts, so I
stay back in the trees and think for a bit. Each man rows one of
the girls across the river in a little canoe. Me, I wait a while
and then I get in a canoe and start rowing myself across, quiet as
I can. The water is black and there's a bit of a current, as if it
knows where it's going. I don't quite trust this water. I get close
to the last boat with the youngest girl in it and water from my oar
splashes up and gets her face wet, I guess, because she says to the
man, someone's out there.