Stranger Things Happen (3 page)

I don't know if this is how I died. Maybe I died more than once,
but it finally took. Here I am. I don't think this is an island. I
think that I am a dead man, stuffed inside a box. When I'm quiet, I
can almost hear the other dead men scratching at the walls of their
boxes.

Or maybe I'm a ghost. Maybe the waves, which look like fur, are
fur, and maybe the water which hisses and spits at me is really a
cat, and the cat is a ghost, too.

Maybe I'm here to learn something, to do penance. The loolies
have forgiven me. Maybe you will, too. When the sea comes to my
hand, when it purrs at me, I'll know that you've forgiven me for
what I did. For leaving you after I did it.

Or maybe I'm a tourist, and I'm stuck on this island with the
loolies until it's time to go home, or until you come here to get
me, Poppy? Irene? Delores? which is why I hope you get this
letter.

You know who.

Tell me which you could sooner do without, love or
water."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, could you live without love, or could you live
without water?"

"Why can't I have both?"

#

Rachel Rook took Carroll home to meet her parents two months
after she first slept with him. For a generous girl, a girl who
took off her clothes with abandon, she was remarkably close-mouthed
about some things. In two months Carroll had learned that her
parents lived on a farm several miles outside of town; that they
sold strawberries in summer, and Christmas trees in the winter. He
knew that they never left the farm; instead, the world came to them
in the shape of weekend picnickers and driveby tourists.

"Do you think your parents will like me?" he said. He had spent
the afternoon preparing for this visit as carefully as if he were
preparing for an exam. He had gotten his hair cut, trimmed his
nails, washed his neck and behind his ears. The outfit he had
chosen, khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt—no tie—lay neatly
folded on the bed. He stood before Rachel in his plain white
underwear and white socks, gazing at her as if she were a
mirror.

"No," she said. It was the first time she had been to his
apartment, and she stood square in the center of his bedroom, her
arms folded against her body as if she was afraid to sit down, to
touch something.

"Why?"

"My father will like you," she said. "But he likes everyone. My
mother's more particular—she thinks that you lack a serious
nature."

Carroll put on his pants, admiring the crease. "So you've talked
to her about me."

"Yes."

"But you haven't talked about her to me."

"No."

"Are you ashamed of her?"

Rachel snorted. Then she sighed in a way that seemed to suggest
she was regretting her decision to take him home. "You're ashamed
of me," he guessed, and Rachel kissed him and smiled and didn't say
anything.

#

Rachel still lived on her parents' farm, which made it all the
more remarkable that she had kept Carroll and her parents apart for
so long. It suggested a talent for daily organization that filled
Carroll's heart with admiration and lust. She was nineteen, two
years younger than Carroll; she was a student at Jellicoh College
and every weekday she rose at seven and biked four miles into town,
and then back again on her bike, four miles uphill to the farm.

Carroll met Rachel in the Jellicoh College library, where he had
a part-time job. He sat at the checkout desk, stamping books and
reading 
Tristram Shandy
 for a graduate class; he
was almost asleep when someone said, "Excuse me."

He looked up. The girl who stood before the tall desk was
red-headed. Sunlight streaming in through a high window opposite
her lit up the fine hairs on her arm, the embroidered flowers on
the collar of her white shirt. The sunlight turned her hair to fire
and Carroll found it difficult to look directly at her. "Can I help
you?" he said.

She placed a shredded rectangle on the desk, and Carroll picked
it up between his thumb and forefinger. Pages hung in tatters from
the sodden blue spine. Title, binding, and covers had been gnawed
away. "I need to pay for a damaged book," she said.

"What happened? Did your dog eat it?" he said, making a
joke.

"Yes," she said, and smiled.

"What's your name?" Carroll said. Already, he thought he might
be in love.

#

The farmhouse where Rachel lived had a wrap-around porch like an
apron. It had been built on a hill, and looked down a long green
slope of Christmas trees towards the town and Jellicoh College. It
looked old-fashioned and a little forlorn.

On one side of the house was a small barn, and behind the barn
was an oval pond, dark and fringed with pine trees. It winked in
the twilight like a glossy lidless eye. The sun was rolling down
the grassy rim of the hill towards the pond, and the exaggerated
shadows of Christmas trees, long and pointed as witches' hats,
stitched black triangles across the purple-grey lawn. House, barn,
and hill were luminous in the fleet purple light.

Carroll parked the car in front of the barn and went around to
Rachel's side to hand her out. A muffled, ferocious breathing
emanated from the barn, and the doors shuddered as if something
inside was hurling itself repeatedly towards them, through the dark
and airless space. There was a sour animal smell. "What's in
there?" Carroll asked.

"The dogs," Rachel said. "They aren't allowed in the house and
they don't like to be separated from my mother."

"I like dogs," Carroll said.

#

There was a man sitting on the porch. He stood up as they
approached the house and came forward to meet them. He was of
medium build, and had pink-brown hair like his daughter. Rachel
said, "Daddy, this is Carroll Murtaugh. Carroll, this is my
daddy."

Mr. Rook had no nose. He shook hands with Carroll. His hand was
warm and dry, flesh and blood. Carroll tried not to stare at Mr.
Rook's face.

In actual fact, Rachel's father did have a nose, which was
carved out of what appeared to be pine. The nostrils of the nose
were flared slightly, as if Mr. Rook were smelling something
pleasant. Copper wire ran through the bridge of the nose, attaching
it to the frame of a pair of glasses; it nestled, delicate as a
sleeping mouse, between the two lenses.

"Nice to meet you, Carroll," he said. "I understand that you're
a librarian down at the college. You like books, do you?" His voice
was deep and sonorous, as if he were speaking out of a well:
Carroll was later to discover that Mr. Rook's voice changed
slightly, depending on which nose he wore.

"Yes, sir," Carroll said. Just to be sure, he looked back at
Rachel. As he had thought, her nose was unmistakably the genuine
article. He shot her a second accusatory glance. 
Why
didn't you tell me? 
She shrugged.

Mr. Rook said, "I don't have anything against books myself. But
my wife can't stand 'em. Nearly broke her heart when Rachel decided
to go to college." Rachel stuck out her lower lip. "Why don't you
give your mother a hand, Rachel, setting the table, while Carroll
and I get to know each other?"

"All right," Rachel said, and went into the house.

Mr. Rook sat down on the porch steps and Carroll sat down with
him. "She's a beautiful girl," Mr. Rook said. "Just like her
mother."

"Yes sir," Carroll said. "Beautiful." He stared straight ahead
and spoke forcefully, as if he had not noticed that he was talking
to a man with a wooden nose.

"You probably think it's odd, don't you, a girl her age, still
living at home."

Carroll shrugged. "She seems attached to both of you. You grow
Christmas trees, sir?"

"Strawberries too," Mr. Rook said. "It's a funny thing about
strawberries and pine trees. People will pay you to let them dig up
their own. They do all the work and then they pay you for it. They
say the strawberries taste better that way, and they may be right.
Myself, I can't taste much anyway."

Carroll leaned back against the porch rail and listened to Mr.
Rook speak. He sneaked sideways looks at Mr. Rook's profile. From a
few feet away, in the dim cast of the porch light, the nose had a
homely, thoughtful bump to it: it was a philosopher's nose, a
questing nose. White moths large as Carroll's hand pinwheeled
around the porch light. They threw out tiny halos of dark and
stirred up breaths of air with their wings, coming to rest on the
porch screen, folding themselves into stillness like fans. Moths
have no noses either, Carroll thought.

"I can't smell the pine trees either," Mr. Rook said. "I have to
appreciate the irony in that. You'll have to forgive my wife, if
she seems a bit awkward at first. She's not used to strangers."

Rachel danced out onto the porch. "Dinner's almost ready," she
said. "Has Daddy been keeping you entertained?"

"He's been telling me all about your farm," Carroll said.

Rachel and her father looked at each other thoughtfully. "That's
great," Rachel said. "You know what he's really dying to ask,
Daddy. Tell him about your collection of noses."

"Oh no," Carroll protested. "I wasn't wondering at all—"

But Mr. Rook stood up, dusting off the seat of his pants. "I'll
go get them down. I almost wore a fancier one tonight, but it's so
windy tonight, and rather damp. I didn't trust it not to rain." He
hurried off into the house.

Carroll leaned over to Rachel. "Why didn't you tell me?" he
said, looking up at her from the porch rail.

"What?"

"That your father has a wooden nose."

"He has several noses, but you heard him. It might rain. Some of
them," she said, "are liable to rust."

"Why does he have a wooden nose?" Carroll said. He was
whispering.

"A boy named Biederbecke bit it off, in a fight." The
alliteration evidently pleased her, because she said a little
louder, "Biederbecke bit it off, when you were a boy. Isn't that
right, Daddy?"

The porch door swung open again, and Mr. Rook said, "Yes, but I
don't blame him, really I don't. We were little boys and I called
him a stinking Kraut. That was during the war, and afterwards he
was very sorry. You have to look on the bright side of things—your
mother would never have noticed me if it hadn't had been for my
nose. That was a fine nose. I modeled it on Abraham Lincoln's nose,
and carved it out of black walnut." He set a dented black tackle
box down next to Carroll, squatting beside it. "Look here."

The inside of the tackle box was lined with red velvet and the
mild light of the October moon illuminated the noses, glowing as if
a jeweler's lamp had been turned upon them: noses made of wood, and
beaten copper, tin and brass. One seemed to be silver, veined with
beads of turquoise. There were aquiline noses; noses pointed like
gothic spires; noses with nostrils curled up like tiny bird
claws.

"Who made these?" Carroll said.

Mr. Rook coughed modestly. "It's my hobby," he said. "Pick one
up if you like."

"Go ahead," Rachel said to Carroll.

Carroll chose a nose that had been painted over with blue and
pink flowers. It was glassy-smooth and light in his hand, like a
blown eggshell. "It's beautiful," he said. "What's it made out
of?"

"Papier-mache. There's one for every day of the week." Mr. Rook
said.

"What did the … original look like?" Carroll asked.

"Hard to remember, really. It wasn't much of a nose," Mr. Rook
said. "Before."

#

"Back to the question, please. Which do you choose, water or
love?"

"What happens if I choose wrong?"

"You'll find out, won't you."

"Which would you choose?"

"That's my question, Carroll. You already asked
yours."

"You still haven't answered me, either. All right, all
right, let me think for a bit."

#

Rachel had straight reddish-brown hair that fell precisely to
her shoulders and then stopped. Her eyes were fox-colored, and she
had more small, even teeth than seemed absolutely necessary to
Carroll. She smiled at him, and when she bent over the tacklebox
full of noses, Carroll could see the two wings of her
shoulderblades beneath the thin cotton T-shirt, her vertebrae
outlined like a knobby strand of coral. As they went in to dinner
she whispered in his ear, "My mother has a wooden leg."

She led him into the kitchen to meet her mother. The air in the
kitchen was hot and moist and little beads of sweat stood out on
Mrs. Rook's face. Rachel's mother resembled Rachel in the way that
Mr. Rook's wooden nose resembled a real nose, as if someone had
hacked Mrs. Rook out of wood or granite. She had large hands with
long, yellowed fingernails, and all over her black dress were short
black dog hairs. "So you're a librarian," she said to Carroll.

"Part-time," Carroll said. "Yes, ma'am."

"What do you do the rest of the time?" she said.

"I take classes."

Mrs. Rook stared at him without blinking. "Are your parents
still alive?"

"My mother is," Carroll said. "She lives in Florida. She plays
bridge."

Rachel grabbed Carroll's arm. "Come on," she said. "The food's
getting cold."

She pulled him into a dining room with dark wood paneling and a
long table set for four people. The long black hem of Mrs. Rook's
dress hissed along the floor as she pulled her chair into the
table. Carroll sat down next to her. Was it the right or the left?
He tucked his feet under his chair. Both women were silent and
Carroll was silent between them. Mr. Rook talked instead, filling
in the awkward empty pause so that Carroll was glad that it was his
nose and not his tongue that the Biederbecke boy had bitten
off.

How had she lost her leg? Mrs. Rook watched Carroll with a cold
and methodical eye as he ate, and he held Rachel's hand under the
table for comfort. He was convinced that her mother knew this and
disapproved. He ate his pork and peas, balancing the peas on the
blade of his knife. He hated peas. In between mouthfuls, he gulped
down the pink wine in his glass. It was sweet and strong and tasted
of burnt sugar. "Is this apple wine?" he asked. "It's
delicious."

"It's strawberry wine," Mr. Rook said, pleased. "Have more. We
make up a batch every year. I can't taste it myself but it's strong
stuff."

Rachel filled Carroll's empty glass and watched him drain it
instantly. "If you've finished, why don't you let my mother take
you to meet the dogs? You look like you could use some fresh air.
I'll stay here and help Daddy do the dishes. Go on," she said.
"Go."

Mrs. Rook pushed her chair back from the table, pushed herself
out of the chair. "Well, come on," she said. "I don't bite."