Spoonwood (24 page)

22

THE FORBIDDEN

I
t's “glorious October,” as Dad used to say, and I've just returned from the dentist, who has referred me to an orthodontist. Seems as if I'm going to have to have my teeth wired from wisdoms to incisors. I'll have so much metal in my mouth I'll probably be electrocuted by the first thunderbolt that comes over from the Vermont hills. Braces—how I dread them!

After I finish my home-schooling lessons I take long walks in the woods in search of creatures to bring me comfort. It's on one such jaunt that I find Dad's latest hideout. He's camping on the trust grounds. I see his stovepipe protruding from a house of poles, plastic, and what have you. The van is parked a couple hundred feet away, hidden in some trees. I think about leaving him a message, but we're not supposed to see each other. Grandma Purse has made it clear that if she finds out I'm with Dad for any reason she will have him arrested again. She has her spies. I back off. I do find it kind of funny that Dad is living on the trust lands. I wonder why. I wonder why he doesn't just head west like he said he would. I concentrate, trying to read his mind the way I used to, but no message comes through.

A couple weeks later, after some personally disturbing news (I learn that the birch mill has closed, and the logs are being sent to Canada), I accidentally sort of bump into Dad, but I don't think he sees me. Periodically, I hike up to the ledges and huddle in the lean-to, just to feel your spirit. I don't do anything. I just sit cross-legged under the cliff overhang and concentrate my mind on the tiny hemlock tree and send you my thoughts.

One afternoon after finishing my visit I hear a noise below me on the trail. I duck behind a rock. It's Dad. He's headed for the ledges. I start to follow him. I even have an idea to call out to him. After all, Grandma Purse couldn't possibly catch us out here. Then I notice that Dad is not walking like Dad; Dad is walking like an ant. At first I don't understand. Has Dad actually become one with the land in that he is now part ant? Well, no. Dad is drunk.

This is the end, I think. Not only will I never see Dad again. I don't believe I will ever want to.

I've been plowing through the hundreds of volumes in the Salmon library since I moved into the mansion when I was eight years old. I thought I'd have them read in two or three years, but it's taken longer. Part of the problem is that I don't like to speed read. I don't “see” words on a page; I “hear” Dad's voice in my ears. It's as if I'm back at Forgot Farm lying in his arms and he's reading to me. And of course there's that ongoing problem of continually declining IQ. However, despite all, I just finished the last book in the Salmon library, a quirky thing called
Mad Dogs
or
Mad Buns,
something like that. Can't remember the author either. I can never remember the names of the people who write books. They're probably best forgotten anyway. Upon completion I thought I'd be proud and thrilled. Instead, I'm empty inside. Will have to acquire more books. Doc Mendy tells me I have an addictive personality. Which brings up another issue—cigarettes.

I would never steal from Grandma Purse, but taking from ashtrays is not stealing. She rarely finishes a cigarette and leaves
her butts all over the place. I “pick up” after her. I do my smoking outside, and the head rush is very good. Smoking calms me down, gives me a feeling of independence. A smoke is like having a friend. I'm not worried about lung cancer. I figure I'll be long dead before the ciggies can do me in.

Roland caught me the other day. “I didn't see that,” he said, and he walked away. I got the point. He isn't going to tell on me, but he doesn't want me to smoke in front of him. That's all right. I like being sneaky. It's being sneaky that leads to my next misadventure. It's a Saturday, one of the rare times when Grandma leaves the house. She's gone shopping with Roland and Soapy.

The only person around is Katharine. She's supposed to be minding me, but she knows I often disappear for hours at a time and anyway she's holed up in her suite poring over her research papers. I'm outside having a smoke and since nobody's around I'm walking in plain sight around my magnificent mansion. It will be mine someday. Not sure what to do with it. Maybe convert it into an orphanage.

My eye follows a drainpipe that goes all the way up beside a window in the room that Grandma won't let me in. I'll open the window from the outside. The burglar alarm only goes on automatically after dark, or Grandma turns it on when no one is going to be in the house, or more likely she forgets to turn it on. I flick the cigarette away and shimmy up the drainpipe.

I'm not sure what I'm going to find in Grandma Purse's special suite. Maybe some Tasmanian stuff. Things come and go from the house, delivered in boxes by UPS or the US Mail. Often I'm told to leave when she's prying open the crates. Obviously she doesn't want me to know what's in them. What does she have to hide? I don't really care, I tell myself. I'm just curious. As I climb the drainpipe I consider the possibilities of I-don't-care. Seems like a foolproof philosophy. Dad's problem was that he believed certain things, and that he cared about them, or maybe tried to pretend he cared. What do I care that everyone I love hates everyone else I love? What's the point? “What's the fucking point?” I shouldn't shout. I tell myself to calm down. Katharine might hear.

What I see makes me slip, but I catch myself. I see a picture of you, Mother. As it turns out the windows are locked. I shimmy down the drainpipe and go into the house to my grandma Purse's room. I open the drawer beside the bed, reminding myself to wipe the fingerprints off. This is my first major burglary. Inside I find a set of keys. One of the keys fits the door to the Forbidden Rooms. In I go.

The curtains are open, and the dyeing (not a misspelling) light of late afternoon sun pukes fall foliage colors into the room and hurts my eyes. Now I understand. Grandma Elenore created a shrine to honor The Blessed Virgin Mary, and Grandma Purse created a shrine to honor The Blessed Not-Virgin Lilith. She moved your things to the room beside hers. She wanted her little girl to be close to her. Your bed is big—even as a child you wanted a big bed, or so I've been told; the room is all too neat, as if nobody lives here, and of course nobody does. Unless you visit for ghostly kicks. The wallpaper is of laurel blossoms in the spring. A life-sized Big Bird doll reclines on the bed. No wonder I like herons and eagles and other large feathered critters. On the dresser is a line of Barbie dolls, no Kens.

I thought I'd read all the books in my mansion. Not so. In your room is a shelf of children's books with pictures of animals misbehaving more or less like children. The books puzzle me. Dad never let me read children's books, and the covers and big writing seem foolish and obvious or foolish and stupid, and I am disappointed in you for reading those books and disappointed in Grandma Purse for keeping them. A lot of the stuff in the room is for girls, and it hardly registers in my mind—funny-shaped bottles, numerous belts, a clothes rack of dresses, a doll house, dresses for the Barbies, but also some sporting goods, such as a tennis racket, a lacrosse stick, and a softball on which someone has written 1–0.

But the main show is a glass case containing more than a dozen trophies for swimming; on the wall are pictures of you in your lifeguard bathing suit with the Red Cross emblem on the hip. One photo shows you standing in the beach sand at the lake alone looking out, your long hair tucked into a cap tight around
your head to make you sleek for the water; one acting dumb with a boy (my word, it's Garvin Prell as a teenager); one acting dumb with some other girls (why does a camera make people act so stupid?); one bashful with Persephone when she was beautiful, you bigger and looming over her; one stiffly posing with your dad, who looks strange at the beach, fully clothed in corduroy trousers and a wool shirt. I'm surprised by how big and muscular your body was, made for swimming (maybe you're a fish today; maybe I already pan-fried and ate you); your faces in the photographs sadden me, especially the ones in the pictures with your parents. The pictures seem full of questions.

I browse around your writing desk and look for something you said, but I don't find any secret diary or even notes. I do find some drawings in pencil, skinny girls like out of fashion magazines. On top of the dresser bureau in front of the mirror is a framed picture of you and your grandparents, I think, taken outside my mansion. Everyone is dressed to the nines, maybe even to the twelves. In the background I see a big car, a Royals Royce, maybe. I don't recognize the wood that the dresser is made out of. Probably it's mahogany. This is the kind of thing that would make Dad crazy with rage: the idea that the wood on the local lands is not good enough for the local occupiers. I open one of the drawers, but at that moment I see something in the mirror that attracts my attention—a flash of color from another room.

I go over to investigate. What I see is quite shocking. The adjoining room is a shrine to me! I find all the papers I've written for our home schooling, carefully filed by date and subject matter. I wrote about ants, spiders, herons, coyotes, beavers, and native fish such as perch. I never realized until now that most of my writing is about the trust lands. Framed in a glass case is a wooden spoon I made when I was with Dad. Grandma Purse must have bought it from Arts and Trifles. I open the case and pick up the spoon. It has the words “yellow submarine” carved on the handle. I remember being in a trance when I made that spoon.

But it's not the spoon or the papers that grab my attention when I first enter the room, it's the flashes of color: paintings on the wall—Bloom's paintings.

Dad coming down from the ledges carrying me as an infant, a ghostly outline of you in the background rising up in the sky, your face obscured, apparently because Bloom didn't know what you looked like.

Me as a baby staring into the fire in the Franklin stove, fear and awe on my face.

Dad standing on the rock island of Grace Pond shaving off his beard, me lying on my back on the rocks looking up at him.

Dad and I in the apple orchard lying on the ground, me nursing from him.

An abstract work that I recognize as the smears of colors and shapes that Dad and Bloom created while they thrashed around on the canvas.

But the painting that moves me the most is so simple and true that I shake uncontrollably. It's Dad's big hand holding my small hand holding one of Dad's spoons.

When I stop shaking I go back into your room and sit on the bed with Big Bird, not thinking, not feeling. Through concentration I try to go back in time. And then a whiff of something faint but perfumey strokes me. I stand, pacing for a minute, then return to the drawer I opened earlier. I find underwear and bras and lingerie. I am in forbidden territory, and I enjoy the feeling in a way that is new for me. I take out each private article of clothing, smell it, rub it against my skin, and carefully return it to its place. And then I stumble across the one-piece, tight-fitting bathing suit I saw in the pictures. The moment my hand touches the fabric I feel demoniacal in my pants. Seconds later I swoon deliciously.

23

FIGURES IN THE WHITEOUT

R
ight into November and December I make forays to the Darby Public Library, the magazine counter at Ancharsky's Store; I root around department circulars in junk mail and magazines in my new orthodontist's office. I search everywhere for pictures that show girls in one-piece bathing suits. I rip the pages out, bring them into the woods with me and do the Demon Swoon.

One day I see the imprint of my deer's cleft hoof and I'm back stalking my doe and her family. It helps—it really helps me get over my loneliness. She doesn't let me see her, but I can always find where she has been.

In the woods I happen upon a deer sex orgy, the does huddled around, watching the action, waiting for winners or deceivers to breed them, the bucks fighting for the right to breed. The ritual disturbs me. I hate the bucks for being so stupid and violent. I hate the does for their passivity. I hate that they are all naive about the fact that the event is a trick by God to carry on their species. I hate God for his tricks. I hate me as a child of God. In other words, I am thinking like Dad, and I am afraid . . . afraid there is no me.

My feelings about God trouble me in another way. I'm afraid to tell the truth because it will hurt my Grandma Elenore. I find
it harder and harder to go to church, to pretend I am not angry at God. Then one Sunday Grandma Elenore brings up the subject of first communion again.

I am unable to say anything. I look at my grandma Elenore's soulful eyes, her quivering lips, her furrowed brow, her skin loose around her neck, her buck teeth, her plump little body—she reminds me of a koala on a bad day. I think about my own teeth, like hers screaming to get out of the mouth, but wired in. Can God love a boy who does to himself what I do in the woods? Something of my despair must cross my face, because Grandma says, “You want a piece of pie?” And I say yes, but there is no pie. There is cake, so I eat cake, not tasting it. The damage has been done. It's clear I've let down someone I love.

Back when I was an infant I theorized that the problem with the world, or at least my world, was Misunderstanding. Nothing has changed. Grandma Purse, Grandma Elenore, Grandpa Howard, Missy, Bez, and even Dad—the bastard!—all have good things to say to me, good ideas about something, strong and admirable feelings, but they cannot get their points across to one another. If I could only bring them all into one room I could make them see that their hatred is only the result of Misunderstanding. But I just don't have the whiz-bang to pull off that kind of caper. I was so much smarter when I was younger.

With no experience in human sexual affairs, and with a limited, academic understanding of human sex, I can't help but focus on deer as my role models. I can never be a buck or a doe. I am no longer a boy, not yet a man, nor am I a deer in fact but only in mime; I am nobody, I am nothing, abandoned by God, doomed never to breed or even to belong to a group. And yet I have some comfort. I have you, Mother. I have become like you, another ghost of the Salmon trust.

The only difference between us is that I have living tissue in my brain to create emotions to torment me. That is what it is like at thirteen when your friends leave: everything is exaggerated, which is what Doc Mendy tells me. We had been meeting once a month when he thought I was getting over my traumas, but now he wants to meet every week. I'm tired of lying to him. My lies
sap my strength. I'm not even sure when I'm lying and when I'm telling the truth.

The tracks tell me that there are actually three separate deer families of does and their young ones, along with a number of bucks that come and go from family to family. In the mating season the families and bucks gather, but only briefly. They will eventually split apart and then come together again in the deer yard.

There is something special about my doe besides her cleft hoof. She is smart, real smart. Despite all I've learned I can never glimpse her. Now, as fall is coming to an end, she develops new habits, rare for a deer. Periodically, she breaks away from the does and fawns that make up her own greater family and goes off by herself. It is as if she's come to know that I am stalking her. Even so, I am able to map her movements, because it has been a wet fall and hoofprints are hard to hide in ground softened by rain.

One morning I'm up before dawn. It's dark, the air still and cold. I dress and slip out. My doe won't expect me this early, and she will be less wary. This might be the day I lay eyes on her. She'll be bedded under some hemlocks and upon rising will walk a short ways to what had once been Dad's orchard to feed on apples. Then she will move downslope to find acorns and beech nuts. I will climb a tree and catch her along her familiar route to the orchard. I'll be back at the mansion in time for my lessons.

Even in the dark I can find my way on the trust lands. It is late November, past the time of the rut, past hunting season. No one will be in the woods except me, or so I believe. Exuberant, full of hope and, dare I say it—love?—I reach the climbing-tree at the spark of dawn. I go up. Wait. She doesn't show. When I come down from the climbing-tree, I hear a noise. I walk toward the noise. See her tracks. She's been stalking me. But the noise? She doesn't have to make a noise. Was she taunting me? Was she that smart? I like to think so.

After that, day after day, I sense her presence all around me. I'll stop and listen—no sound. Just that feeling. I'll be walking and the feeling will come over me and I'll whirl around—no deer
in sight. I'll climb to the tree house and the feeling will climb up with me. I'll even sense a presence above me, as if my doe can take flight. I am at peace.

Well, not really. I am the storm before the calm. I don't sleep well. I'm jumpy. Grandma Purse asks me a couple times if I'm all right, and I say, “I'm all right. Are you all right?” She answers, “I'm all right.” This goes on for a week, so that we refine our responses. Grandma Purse looks at me, the question in her eyes, and I say, “All right.” And she nods, “All right.” I ask her if it's okay to stop seeing Doc Mendy. Answer: Not all right.

It's the middle of December. Missy's coming home for the X-mess holidays. I don't want to see her. Now that she's had her period I expect she's changed into a new being. The girl I loved as a friend will be no more. Meanwhile, I've become grotesque. My voice is changing. The demon in my pants is going crazy. My feet are growing but I'm still short and baby-faced, except for a two-hair beard on my chin, which I pluck out every three days. Missy will look at me and I will look at her and we will see each other as gross teenagers. She will hate me and I will hate her. I can't bear the thought of this encounter. At the same time I realize how stupid my thinking is, and I refuse to discuss us with Doc Mendy or Grandma Purse because they'll lose respect for me. I'm thinking all these things in Doc Mendy's office reception room in his home while I'm waiting for the Doc and Grandma Purse to conclude their conference. I imagine they're determining my fate. Finally, Doc Mendy pokes his head out the door and asks me to come in.

I enter just in time to see Doc Mendy settle down into his rocking chair. I imagine him in an old granny dress, looking like Norman Bates's mom. I hear the Psycho knife-music playing in my ears. My mind is polluted with images from movies and TV. If Dad in his far-off realm can read my mind he must be awful disappointed. Well, I'm disappointed in you too, Dad. Grandma Purse paces and smokes.

“We have to make this quick,” she says. “We have to throw down some lunch and go to Keene before this damn storm hits.”

“Exactly, let's get to work,” Doc Mendy says. “Birch, your grandmother and I are worried about you. You've been very private lately.”

“Private” is Doc Mendy's word for “lying sack of shit.” I hang my head and shrug my shoulders in what must appear to be a pathetic gesture.

“There's something we want to talk to you about,” Grandma Purse says, her voice unusually soft, which fills me with dread because it's so unlike her.

“We feel you've been spending too much time in the woods,” Doc Mendy says.

I'm thinking that they've somehow figured out that I'm a chronic, disgusting, habitual Norman mastur
BAT(ES)
or. They'll probably make me wear some kind of rig so that every time I reach for my demon I'll get an electric shock.

“Let's just lay it on the line, Doc,” Grandma Purse says, normal raspy voice now. “Birch, you're too unstable right now to leave alone. You're coming with me to Tasmania until March first. You'll meet my husband, Hadly Blue. He has plenty of books, and we have nice neighbors in a lovely section of Devonport. It's a town about the size of Keene.”

“Oh, wow,” I say, but it's pure acting. I want to shout, Keene! That's huge! I don't want to live in some crowded metropolis of twenty-five thousand people. So many names to memorize, so much intrusive telepathy to confuse my own thoughts.

“See, he's very good at seeing reason,” Grandma Purse says.

“I'm not so sure,” Doc Mendy says.

“Birch, I feel that you've created a kind of fetish out of the trust lands. You'll benefit from an environment actually somewhat similar in climate to New England.”

“Except it will be summer down under instead of winter,” Grandma Purse says.

“Exactly,” says Doc Mendy. “Birch, you sure you're okay with this?”

“I think it's a good idea,” I lie.

An hour later we're back at the mansion, just finishing lunch. Something rises up deep inside of me. Not a voice exactly, but like a voice, a deep moaning call that I must answer.

We take off in the Bronco, Grandma Purse behind the wheel, Roland in the passenger seat, sleep mask over his eyes, me in the back. Just as we're going out the gate, I tell Grandma Purse I don't want to go to town. I want to study for my botany test. Grandma Purse leans on the brake and Roland slams forward, only the seat belt preventing him from smashing his head in the windshield.

“I thought you wanted to rent a movie?” Grandma Purse says.

“No, I just want to read,” I lie. I'm amazed at how good I've become at lying. When I was with Dad it wouldn't have occurred to me to lie, and once in a while when an untruth accidentally came out of my mouth, I'd feel awful for days. I don't feel awful now. I feel in charge.

Grandma lets me out of the two-decades-old, refurbished, pristine, other-era Bronco. Her last words are “Make sure to stay in the house. This storm is supposed to be a nasty one.”

My last words are “Bye Grandma, I love you,” which is true. I know it's true, because I experience the hurt when I speak the words.

I'm wearing a winter coat, mittens and a hat in my pockets, but only track shoes on my feet. I should go inside and put on some boots, but I'm afraid Soapy won't let me go out again. I take my chances in street shoes.

The clouds came during the morning gradually and without wind. Now, by early afternoon, I can't see clouds, just a continuous envelope of gray. I know it's going to snow. I want it to snow. I am following my doe on a trail with her family when suddenly her tracks vanish. I backtrack and discover she's left the family and gone off on her own again. I don't think too much of this change at first. She's been straying from her normal haunts, but she always circles back to some familiar place.

She goes down by the pond, where the ice is brand new and thin. I see smoke curling from the metal chimneys of the new
houses behind the trees. I see skid marks where my doe's hoofs bit into the new ice. Beneath I see new leaves on the bottom of the pond. I see perch. I see leaves and muck. I want to reach through the ice and scoop up the bottom. I see the reflection of the sky. I walk until the bottom disappears under my feet into blackness. The ice creaks and groans: I'm going to fall through and die that terrible death of cold water that is like burning. I am not afraid, Mother. I am at peace. I will follow my doe to the end, even if that end is the bottom of Grace Pond.

The tracks lead off the ice and for the moment I am safe, though the feeling of danger and doom remain with me. I am not afraid. It is as if I am hypnotized, not thinking on my own but controlled by an outside force.

A few flakes of snow begin to fall. The tracks lead back into the woods. I find a place where my doe stopped to spy on me. I am beginning to understand now: my doe is searching for heaven and she needs my help and I need hers. I must find her before the snow starts to come down hard, when all the tracks will be obscured.

I reach out with my mind or maybe she reaches out with hers. I'm not sure anymore. It doesn't matter because our minds have merged.

I lead her or she leads me toward the ledges. I can't feel any wind but it must be blowing along the tops of the trees, because I hear the aching sound of branches rubbing against one another. With all the leaves of the hardwoods fallen, I see deep into the woods, the tree trunks varying shades of olive and charcoal and silver and by contrast the forest floor bright hazel in color and crispy from freshly fallen leaves. Once the snow comes the leaves will pack down, the color will grow drab. I am witnessing that last vision of fall.

It begins to snow harder now and the wind picks up. In minutes I lose her trail. I should turn back but I go on; I am not afraid, Mother. During the entire ordeal to come, I will not be afraid.

I'm cold now and I can only see a few feet in front of me. We're not just in a snowstorm but a blizzard. I don't know where I am. My doe walked in so many circles and spirals and polygons
and rhombuses that the blizzard and the math combine to leave me disoriented. Isn't it amazing that I who know this land better than anyone (except maybe Dad) do not know this land.

Time goes by. Minutes, hours, days, decades—can't tell the difference. What is that sound? It's not the blizzard anymore. It's what? Oh, it's that calling; it's the sound of mist that Dad told me about. Have I come home?