Monstrous Affections (10 page)

But the punching didn’t come.

Blaine made a strangling sound, and she heard the sound of his
bare feet moving across the floor — and then she heard the door
open and close.

“You’re dead!” He yelled it from the hall, like he was chasing her,
then repeated it from the bottom of the stairs:

“You’re dead!”

Cautiously, Shelly opened her eyes.

“B-Blaine?” she whispered.

But of course he didn’t answer: she was alone in the bedroom.
Distantly, she heard the sound of a door downstairs opening and
closing again. Shelly wasn’t sure, but it might have been the basement
door in the kitchen. She curled more tightly around herself, and shut
her eyes again.

Shelly didn’t sleep. Part of it was the Coke she’d had with Dad, but
mostly she stayed awake thinking about the tar baby, and what it’d
done to Mom. This, she guessed, was how it was when Mr. Baldwin
got in trouble with the other men in prison back in the early days.
She tried to imagine how it would have been — Mr. Baldwin’s first
night with the tar baby. Maybe the guy who had the top bunk there
was looking for some trouble like Blaine had been, holding it and
stoking it and building his meanness through the evening until it
was something he could use, in the small hours of the night.

Behind her closed eyes, she could almost see the two of them,
skinny little Mr. Baldwin lying still like a rabbit underneath his
blanket, and the other prisoner — probably he was a lot bigger, and
had been in a lot of fights, just like Blaine — him jumping down
like he wants a piece, saying “
Shitty Baldwin, shitty Baldwin, shitty
Baldwin
” over and over again. And because Mr. Baldwin wouldn’t
answer him, and wouldn’t do what he said, and maybe earlier that
day lipped off to him like Shelly had lipped off to Blaine, that other
prisoner reached down to grab onto his shoulder, and give him a
beating.

Only it wasn’t Mr. Baldwin’s shoulder he grabbed. He reached
down to the bucket by his bunk, and that prisoner had his hand
stuck deep in the tar baby’s shoulder. Before he could think, he hit
that tar baby again, and one more time, and that was it — he was
stuck. Just like Bre’r Rabbit in the movie. Just like Mom tonight.

Shelly wondered if Mr. Baldwin laughed that first time, the way
Dad had laughed when Mom had gotten herself tangled up in their
tar baby.

Or
, she thought with a shiver,
maybe Mr. Baldwin just lay in his
bunk, all curled up trying to go to sleep, while his cell mate choked on tar
on the floor beside him
.

Blaine had been downstairs a long time. And Dad was still out
walking, and Mom hadn’t budged from her bedroom.

And hadn’t Dad said something about teamwork?

Shelly got out of bed and pulled on her T-shirt. “Mom!” she
shouted, pushing her feet through the legs of her jeans. “Hey,
Mom!”

She walked barefoot across the floor of the bedroom and opened
the door to the hallway. She took a breath to yell —

— and coughed.

The air in the hallway was sticky with the stink of tar, and she
had a lungful of it. Shelly reeled back, covering her face with her
hand, but of course her fingers were no filter and the damage had
already been done. She coughed again, and gasped, and managed,
finally, to yell — “
Mom!
”

Shelly stumbled forward, holding onto the banister around the
stairwell as she did. The air seemed to get worse the further she
went, and by the time she pushed Mom’s bedroom door open, she
was barely taking half-breaths. The door swung open, and Shelly
ran past the bed — not even looking to see if Mom was there — and
fell against the windowsill. Her lungs had hitched a final time, and
now she couldn’t breathe at all. With the last of her strength, she
grabbed onto the base of the window and hefted it up.

Shelly pressed her face against the screen, coughed one more
time, and sucked deep of the clean summer night air, looked at the
empty driveway, the dark land around the house. In the distance,
over the low treetops, she could see the lights from the highway.

“Mom,” she said, not turning back, “we got to go downstairs and
help out Blaine. I think he got messed up with the tar baby. He — he
was picking on me, and he turned around and went downstairs, and
I think he’s in the basement . . .”

Shelly paused. In the distance, she could hear a car engine
straining up a hill; crickets rubbed their legs together in the long
grass of their front yard, and the thin breeze made the leaves of the
birch-tree around the side rustle like paper. From inside the house,
she heard a sound that must have been the refrigerator, a rattling
whine as the compressors got going.

From Mom, she didn’t hear a thing.

Shelly took another breath, turned around to face the bed and
made her way slowly to the still, dark form laying atop the sheets.
Shelly swallowed hard. The tar smell was pretty awful as she got
closer, but she was expecting it now and she knew better than to
breathe too deep.

Shelly stopped by her bedside, and looked down at her mother,
Mom lay flat on her back, buck-naked, on top of the bedspread still
wet with shower-water. Her feet were apart, and her hands were
spread from her torso so no limb touched another. The tar had tinted
her flesh from head to foot; it matted her hair, and gathered in globs
around her shoulders and across her wide breasts, like tiny birthmarks. Mom’s eyes were open, and they looked at Shelly steadily.
Her chest swelled as she drew a breath to speak.

“Mom’s not — ” she paused, shut her eyes, and continued, her
voice rough and deep, like she had a cold “ — not feeling good now,
honey. You go to bed.”

Shelly shook her head. “No, Mom, I was telling you: Blaine’s gone
to the basement, I think.” She stomped her foot, and heard her voice
go whiny. “You got to
come
!”

“No good,” said Mom. “Knee’s acting up again.”

“I think Blaine’s in trouble, Mom. You got to come help him.”

Mom licked her lips, then made a face like she’d bit a lemon.

“Tar’s everywhere,” she said. “Even on m’ mouth.”

“
Mom —
”

“Hey!” Mom’s voice took some energy. “Don’t you take that tone
with me! This is
my
house, Missy!”

Mom lifted her hand up, as if to cuff Shelly, but she didn’t get
far: whether it took strength or will to pull away from her bed, Mom
didn’t seem to have enough of either.

“Your Daddy,” she said, “is a very
bad
man.”

Shelly opened her mouth to argue some more — to point out that
Dad wasn’t the one who wouldn’t get out of bed to help his son;
that Dad had paid for his crimes, if he’d even
done
them in the first
place; that Mom wasn’t always the nicest lady in town either. But
she remembered why she was here: Blaine, she feared, had gotten
himself into some pretty immediate trouble; and Mom was in some
kind of trouble too. She didn’t like to move around much as a rule
since her knee had gotten hurt, but tonight, it seemed like she was
drained
. It was like when that tar baby had latched onto her breast, it
had sucked something vital out of her.

“Don’t know why I married him,” said Mom, shutting her eyes.

“Maybe,” said Shelly, “Dad would be better if you didn’t keep
being so mean.”

Mom’s brow crinkled.

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Shelly,” she said.

“I know what I see.” Shelly stepped away from the bed. “Dad
trying to fix things, and you lying in that bed.”

Mom’s eyes opened now, and Shelly could see they were wet with
tears. Now she did lift her hand, and brushed the air near Shelly’s
arm. Shelly flinched away — she didn’t want those sticky-black
fingers anywhere near her.

“You don’t know him,” said Mom, her voice nearly a whisper.

“He’s my
Dad
,” said Shelly. “Never mind about Blaine. I’ll just
help him myself.”

Shelly stepped back into the hallway. A taste of salt came into her
mouth as she closed the door on her Mom, but she swallowed it and
made her way downstairs.

Dad had left the light on in the kitchen, and he’d left his empty beer
out and Shelly’s empty Coke-can out too. The smell was better down
here, because he’d also left the kitchen door open, and a breeze
washed through the screen door and through all the rooms on the
first floor.

And of course the door to the basement was shut tight.

Shelly knocked on the door. “Blaine?” she called. “You all right?”

“Shelly!” Blaine sounded like he was muffled by something,
talking through the hood of his snowsuit. “Shelly! I’m sorry I called
you names!”

Shelly stepped back from the door. Now it was her turn to be
speechless; in all her life, Blaine had never once apologized for
anything.

“Shelly? You still there, Shelly?”

“I’m here,” she said, cautiously.

“I’m sorry, Shelly!”

Shelly took a breath. “You’re forgiven.”

“Great,” said Blaine, and his voice returned nearer to normal.

“Give me a hand down here, will you? Bring down a towel, and — ”

“ — some turpentine?” Shelly finished for him.

Blaine laughed nervously.

“Yeah,” he said.

Shelly laughed as well. It was like a weight had been lifted from her. All the way down the stairs, she was sure whatever happened
with Mom had also happened with Blaine; the tar baby would suck
the life out of him like it did from Mom. But he sounded okay, even
improved by the experience.

Shelly went over to the counter, where Dad had put the can of
turpentine, and lifted it down. She grabbed a tea-towel from the
handle to the stove. “I’m — ”

She was about to say
coming
, but she stopped, as a set of
headlights appeared at the end of the driveway, and the sound of a
truck engine broke the quiet. Bright headlights washed across the
kitchen, shuffling shadows from one end of the room to another.

The truck rolled to a stop beside the kitchen — it was a big pickup
truck, painted bright red, and Dad sat in the driver’s seat. In the
passenger seat, Shelly saw, was a long-haired, bearded man she
hadn’t seen in a couple of years: since when she was really small, and
Dad hadn’t been to prison for his second time.

It was Mark Hollins.

The man Dad had robbed the grocery store with — the one who’d
gotten off with hardly any time in jail at all. He was laughing at
something Dad was saying, and then he stopped and looked in
through the window — straight at Shelly. He was still smiling, at
least with his mouth — but his eyes had a different kind of look to
them. If Shelly had been thinking of enlisting Dad’s help in cleaning
up her brother, pulling him out of whatever he’d tangled himself up
in downstairs, the look in Mark Hollins’ eyes dissuaded her.

“Shelly!” Blaine’s voice was plaintive. “Come on!”

Shelly looked away from Hollins, and opened the basement
door.

“I’m coming,” she said. By the time Dad and Mark Hollins were
out of the new truck, Shelly had closed the door behind her and was
making her way down to where Blaine had gotten himself stuck.

The air had been okay on the first floor, but it was bad again in the
basement. Shelly wasn’t caught by surprise by it this time, though;
even before she turned on the light, she expected the tar baby’s stink
would be the worst where it lived.

When she turned on the light, Shelly thought she might never
breathe right again.

The basement was filled with tar.

It looked like two pages of a book, with a wad of black chewing
gum squished between and stretched out as the book came open.
Jump-rope-thick strands of tar stretched from wall to wall, ceiling
to floor, casting shadows as black as itself. The strands twitched
now and then, and before long, Shelly’s eye was drawn to the likely
cause of that twitching — two shapes suspended in the middle.

Her brother Blaine and the tar baby were locked together there,
hanging about five feet off the cement floor, directly over the floor
drain, and the now-empty washbasin the tar baby had come in.

The tar baby had come in the washbasin, but Shelly figured it
would never leave in it. The tar baby had stretched and fattened to
the point where it was almost as big as Blaine; bigger, she realized
with a chill, than she was. Its legs were wrapped around Blaine’s
waist, and its arms, long and spindly, hugged Blaine around the
chest. Its head — once the size of a softball, now about as big as the
Nerf football Blaine kept on his desk upstairs — pressed against
Blaine’s cheek.

Blaine struggled to look up the stairs at her. His face was
blackened with tar, and as he moved, one of the tar baby’s hands
slithered up his neck, to the back of his scalp. His eyes screwed shut
and he sobbed, as the hand fell away again, pulling a small clump of
tarry hair out with it.

“
Oh, Blaine
.”

Shelly whispered it — she was pretty sure Blaine couldn’t hear
her she was talking so quiet, but it seemed as though the tar baby
could. Its head fell back from Blaine, like it had from Mom earlier in
the night, and it cricked back on its skinny neck, so it was looking
straight at Shelly. Last time she’d seen it, the tar baby seemed to
open its mouth. Now, there was no doubt about it: the cut in the tar
of its chin was fully formed, into a jagged grin like a jack-o-lantern.

“I’m sorry, Shelly. I’m sorry, Shelly. I’m sorry, Shelly.” Blaine’s eyes
were still closed, and his voice was strangled with tears now as he
repeated the apology again and again. It was like he was apologizing
for every
shitty Shelly
he’d said upstairs. As Shelly thought about it,
she started to feel the heat of anger come up in her again.

“Do you
mean
it?” she said, her voice low.

“I’m sorry, Shelly.”

One of the tar baby’s arms unfastened itself from Blaine, and the
creature started to dangle. There was a sucking sound, as a strand
of tar snapped away from Blaine’s ankle, and he kicked his foot free
of the other two still there.