Raveling (13 page)

“I helped, too,” Fiona put in.

Dismissively, she said, “I know you did.”

“All right then,” I bargained. “I’ll take four.”

Our mother turned to face me, one eye made up, the other bare. “What happened to your allowance?”

“Two dollars?” I said. “Two dollars is a joke. Lenny Haverston gets five.” Lenny Haverston lived up the street. He had everything.

“Well, aren’t the Haverstons extravagant!” Our mother sprayed her hair, teased into a million specific and individual curls,
and the little dressing room became that much more toxic.

“Wow,” I said, “you look great.”

Fiona said, “You’re beautiful, Mommy.”

“Where’d you two learn that?” our mother asked. “From your father?”

“Learn what?”

“Flattery.”

I tried again. “Three dollars?”

Our mother sighed. “You can take two dollars out of my purse—
if
I have it.”

“Can I?” Fiona said. “Can I, too?”

“Fiona,” she said, and then she reneged. “All right.”

“I’m nine and I get two and she’s seven and she gets two?”

“That’s the way life is.” Our mother applied eye shadow to the forgotten eye, silvery green, fading to fox brown. She closed
her lid and brushed the color on, and then dusted more powder onto the brush. All she wore was a slip and a bra, shimmery
yellow. I could see her feet touching each other nervously beneath the vanity.

“How many people are coming?” I asked.

“We invited absolutely everybody,” our mother said. “Everyone on the planet, it seems.”

“Everybody?” Fiona laughed.

“Everybody.”

“Even the pope?”

“Even the pope.”

“The president?” Fiona was giggling, her face contorted.

“They did not invite the president,” I said. “God, Fiona, you’re so stupid.”

“She knows that,” our mother said. “She’s just being silly.”

“What about Donny Osmond?” Fiona asked. “Did you invite Donny Osmond, too?”

“She invited your butt,” I said.

“Pilot.”

“She invited
your
butt,” Fiona shot back.

I laughed derisively.

“
Mom,
” Fiona pleaded.

Our mother unscrewed a tube of lipstick. “Kiss me, you two.” She put her arms out, reaching for us. “Because once the lipstick
goes on, there’s no more kissing.”

At the party were the Tischmans from next door. There were the Johnsons and the Brookses and the Daniers. There were the
Joneses and the Browns and the Classens and the Haverstons. There were more. There were people who came to the party and left
early. There were people from the neighborhood, from our father’s airline, from our mother’s hospital. There were four bachelors,
including Paul Davidson, Karl Fuchs, Arnold Desmond, and Howard Rice. Equally, according to my mother’s plans, there were
four single women—Celia Oblena, Sherry Meyerson, Tricia Caulder, and Lacy Klugman, our mother’s best friend, a divorcée. There
were people who came uninvited, like Bryce Telliman, the man with the blond hair. There were people at the party whom our
parents hardly knew. There were introductions. There were chance meetings, new acquaintances, old arguments. There were romantic
trysts, stolen kisses, secret encounters. There was grab-ass.

That night I wandered through the party stealing sips, the different flavors weird on my tongue, from people’s drinks. The
women leaned down to speak to me in silly, high-pitched tones, and I took the opportunity to look down their shirts. The men
collared me and spoke in gruff, overly friendly voices, slapping me on the shoulders. I smiled back at these grown-ups, wondering
who the hell some of them were, recognizing others as the parents of children I knew from school.

Many of these people wanted to know who I was.

“Pilot,” I’d say.

“Are you the proprietor of this establishment?” one especially tall woman asked me.

“What are you talking about?”

“Hey, little guy,” one man said to me. “Would you happen to know where I might go to the bathroom?”

“In the pool,” I said.

“A real wiseguy,” I overheard someone say about me.

“Just like his father.”

“Pilot,” some man said. I didn’t recognize him. “Pilot.” He was rotund, with a gray-and-black beard. “Why don’t you run and
grab me another ice-cold can of beer?” He smiled. “Would you do that for an old friend?”

I studied this man. He wore a blue, gold-buttoned jacket, even though it was very warm out. “No.”

“Don’t you remember me?” he said. “I met you about—well, about five years ago. How old are you now, Pilot?”

“Nine,” I said.

“That would make you about four in those days. And that would make me about forty-four back then.” He laughed drunkenly. “So
how about it, Pilot? An ice-cold one?”

I said I would, but by the time I reached the kitchen, I had experienced so much additional confusion I couldn’t bear the
idea of making my way back out.

Plus, I didn’t like the way he kept repeating my name.

And our father was standing in the kitchen doorway. “How’re ya holdin’ up there, my boy?” he said.

I nodded, saying, “I’m fine.” He only said
my boy
when he’d been drinking.

Our father put a hand directly on top of my head. He cupped his ear to someone at the party. “Ice?”

“Ice!” someone shouted back. “Yes! More ice!”

He turned to look at me. “Shit,” he said. “I’m not sure if we have any more ice.”

“There’s ice,” I said. I saw it in the sink behind him. “There’s plenty of ice.”

He was drunk. And probably for the first time in my life, I understood what that meant. I didn’t know where it would lead.
I only knew that he wasn’t himself right now, that my real father wouldn’t return until the morning.

He had placed torches all around the pool, and now, the night having completely taken over the yard, they illuminated the
faces of our party guests like actors in stage lights. Their smiles lit up strangely, surrealistically, and there was so much
talking I could no longer distinguish one individual voice from the next, except that every now and then I thought I heard
my name being mentioned somewhere in the vast conversation. I began to feel they were talking about me secretly, knowing they
could speak freely about me because I couldn’t hear them above the din. I stood at the kitchen doorway like that for a long
time, my father looming above me, just listening to the number of times my name was mentioned. Were they pointing, too? Were
they laughing? People moved in and out of the kitchen door, moving past me like I wasn’t even there. I caught glimpses of
Fiona every now and then, flirting with the blond man with the mustache. Sometimes he would pick her up, and she would put
her arms around him, and whisper into his ear. Was it about me? She still wore her red bathing suit and red sneakers. What
was she saying?

The view from the woods was of the yellow torches flashing gold light off the surface of the water in the pool. It was of
the faces of the people at this party rising up in flashes of light, too, frozen as if in a strobe. It was of glittering drinks
with shining ice cubes rattling inside the shimmering glasses. The view from the woods was of women in stylish, shining dresses,
men in dark shorts and Hawaiian shirts. It was of blue jeans on the younger people and summer suits on the older ones. It
was of a crowd of people surrounding a small backyard pool, a party on flagstones, a surfeit of lawn chairs. It was of two
children, one nine, one seven, squirming
through this crowd of adults, the adults leaning toward them from time to time, hands on their knees, pretending, with great
hilarity and laughter, that these children—this little boy and girl—were the hosts.

I moved closer, imperceptible to the people in the backyard, creeping fern by fern, millimeter by millimeter, toward the house.
I was the earth rolling beneath the lawn, unfurling like a blanket.

The party continued, and I advanced silently, one-billionth of an inch at a time, closer and closer.

Someone had put “Light My Fire” on the stereo.

“—so anyway, Hannah,” I heard someone saying to my mother, “I was just coming off Sky Highway, turning my steering wheel when
I felt this terrible pain, this shooting pain in my hand, and I was wondering, wondering just what—”

“It could be arthritis.”

“She certainly isn’t old enough for—”

“—ain’t seen nothing yet, Dave. Let me tell you—”

“—been trapping animals out there, and he caught the family cat by accident, can you believe—”

“Can I help you with something, some drinks, perhaps?”

“—along came the train, and when I got on, all I could think about was Marcia and how I just wanted to get back to her.”

“Really?”

“Well, that was a long, long time ago.”

“Eric did, or was it Pilot?”

“—cute, aren’t you, just fantastically adorable, little—”

“—about your other son, Jim, don’t you have—”

“—was, flying on fumes, practically, no fucking idea in the world if I was even in the right vicinity, the Vietcong shooting
at me, snipers everywhere, and when I saw that clearing, I—”

“—get me another one—”

“—all my favorite songs—”

“—just went straight for it, I mean, you don’t see that kind of thing in the jungle over there, not very often, and not where
I was flying—”

“—tells this story every time he drinks, it’s embarrassing—”

“—love her—”

“—are you disagreeing?”

“—no, sir—”

“I swear to God I thought you said
disappearing
.”

“What?”

“—in that part of the world it’s all vegetation, all jungle, climbing vines, mangroves, weird swamps, and those people live
like it’s a thousand years ago, ten thousand—”

“Do they really eat bugs?”

“—had too much, I think—”

“It’s the same story every time he drinks.”

“Well, I’m sorry, all right? I happen to think it’s an entertaining story, and I happen to be drinking sometimes when other
people are around, so if you don’t mind—”

“—think it’s a wonderful story, really, I—”

“—hell is he, anyway?”

“Excuse me, you said, but are you
disappearing
with me?”

“Oh my God, that is
so
hilarious.”

“—like you’ve got a girlfriend. She’s not bothering you, is—”

In the woods was a stillness derived from this view of the party. In the woods out here behind our parents’ house was a quiet
that only a short but infinite distance enables. There was a darkness in these woods in contrast to the brightness of the
faces lighting up in the torchlight. There was a rustling in the treetops. As always, there was wind in the leaves. There
was unrest. There was an almost imperceptible chill arriving
through the trunks and black bark of the trees that came up from somewhere deep in the ground, some great source of coldness
that rose inexorably this time of year. From the woods a voice would rise off the top of the party and take on a life of its
own. A flicker of light would bank off a bough. A shriek of laughter would pierce through the branches, a strain of music
wafting in like perfume, and in here it would sound exactly like someone was screaming, but at such a low volume that it was
almost impossible to hear. I saw a man step into the woods, a man with long blond hair, a man who was thin and young, silhouetted
against the dark trees. He put his hand on a trunk, and let his head drop. I could see his chest heaving as if he were crying
or, I thought, as if he were about to be sick.