The Fading (3 page)

Noel squirmed forward and to his delight his feet stopped him from falling. He stumbled back, his butt sliding the chair across
the floor. He ran toward Mommy, thinking,
Look, look what happened! I hiding, I hiding!
but something made his voice stop inside him. He sensed already there were two ways to go with this new thing. He could tell
her, or use this time (it wouldn’t last long, he sensed) to play hide and seek. Mommy was always good at finding him, even
though he knew sometimes she pretended it was hard, but this time would be different.

He couldn’t help teasing her, though, brushing his hands against her legs as he ran by. It was a dare, a clue, but she didn’t
turn around.

‘Where you off to, Noeller Coaster?’ she said.

‘Closet!’ he answered, running into the hall, but he was going to trick her. She would think he was in the closet, but this
time he would hide in Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom, behind the curtains. He could probably hide right in the middle of the room
if he wanted, but somehow that didn’t seem like much of a game. He swirled into the heavy blue drapes, the dry smell of dust
and sun-warmed cloth tickling his nose. A few minutes passed before she called out again.

He couldn’t remember the last time this had
happened, but he knew it
had
happened before. It didn’t feel as strange as it should. It felt like a dream, or like Uncle Charlie visiting. It was something
that you never thought about until it happened again, and then it was a neat surprise that changed everything. He wondered
why he couldn’t do it more often, and he guessed it was just one of those things like learning to walk or remembering to use
the potty. It took some practice and maybe someday, when he was a big boy, he would be able to do it whenever he wanted.

He could hear her searching his bedroom now and he shivered with excitement. When she got close and he yelled
Boo!
she would be so surprised. Time seemed to stretch on and on, his whole world slowed.

In the vague but instinctual way children grab at complex thoughts, Noel wondered how come he never saw Mommy or Daddy this
way, changing, disappearing. They never talked about it and he didn’t think they had a name for it. Maybe the very thing this
was
, whatever it was, also happened to be the reason he never saw Mommy or Daddy doing it – because there was nothing to see.
People were either there or not there, in the room or in the other room. Probably there were lots of times Mommy and Daddy
did it in front of him and he didn’t even know.

She entered the room. He held his breath and forced himself calm. He could see her outline on the other side of the curtains,
her tall curving body as she paused, looking around, looking right at him. He wanted to yell
Boo!
now but he also wanted to make it last as long as
possible, because, once she knew, the game would end. And maybe he resisted showing her because there was something thrillingly
powerful when he was like this. For the first time he could remember, he had an advantage on Mommy, a trick that would help
him win the game.

Mommy was in her closet now, pushing her dresses around. The hangers were sliding and tinkling, and she was huffing and puffing
around the room, right past the curtains and the window light warm on his back, the sun shining through his back, inside him
in a way that made no sense but made him feel light and free.

By the time he decided to follow her and give up because he sensed she didn’t want to play the game any more, she was opening
the front door and there was his trike on the sidewalk and that was a whole new idea. The outside, the open freedom. The screen
door swung back and he turned sideways and skipped out behind her just in time, watching his steps. He didn’t find it strange
that his shoes and the rest of his clothes were hidden like he was. His clothes were just a part of him and, whatever this
was, it was powerful enough to cover everything.

He came to a halt on the sidewalk and blinked in the bright morning light, waiting for her to see, and something about being
outside made it more real than before. The way Mommy was playing along, her face changing as if she were about to scream –
it was almost too much for him to watch.

The trike! He would ride it and she would see it and
then she would know he really was here! Mommy would be amazed at what he could do, and then she would lift him up and laugh,
kissing him, and probably by then he would be back, all normal again. He lifted one leg over the seat and got his feet on
the pedals. But when he looked back, Mommy was inside and the screen door was latching.

Now he was outside. Alone.

Noel knew this was bad, something Mommy and Daddy told him he was
never ever ever
allowed to do. But it wasn’t his fault, really. And he knew better than to play in the street, where the cars were. He wouldn’t
do that. He just wanted to show her the trick using the trike, so he pressed the button under the rubber handles and the yellow
motorbike jerked to life and began to hum, pulling him down the sidewalk.

He turned right, where the sidewalk split both ways, so he could look back at the front window and see Mommy inside. Watching
the ground unspool as the engine tugged him along. Careful not to steer into the grass. And when he looked up from the handlebars
and front wheels, Dimples was waiting for him. Dimples was back, playing outside, too! He was waving at Noel from just a little
ways up ahead, smiling, laughing without making a sound and clapping his hands without making a sound, and Noel knew that
Dimples was proud of him for doing something good, and he forgot all about Mommy right then.

Noel didn’t know if Dimples was really Dimples’s name. But he looked a lot like Dimples on
Dimples’s
Fun Party Club
, with the white face and red mouth and big round red nose and even the neat top hat Dimples always wore when he was in the
Fun Party Club House where he lived on TV. This Dimples was wearing the same kind of suit, but black instead of white like
the one he wore on TV, with his bright yellow suspenders.

Something else was different about this Dimples, though. Maybe he was Dimples’s baby brother or son or something, because
he was a lot smaller than the Dimples on TV. This Dimples was like a miniature Dimples, about as tall as Troy, who lived on
the other side of the park and rode a big kids’ bike with cool wheels. Troy was eight. Eight seemed old enough to do lots
of things Noel couldn’t do yet. Like riding a real bike and running faster and playing by himself in the park.

But even though he was about the same size as Troy, this Dimples seemed older, like Dimples on TV. He sometimes had a real
serious face, like Daddy after a very long day at the store. Noel hadn’t seen Dimples since his Turning Two birthday party,
when Dimples was on TV singing to all the other kids whose birthday was the same day, but also right there in the living
room beside Noel, too. That had been strange, because Noel hadn’t seen Dimples step out of the TV (and the other, really tall
Dimples was
still
in the TV, even after this Dimples was in the living room, standing in the corner watching Noel play dinosaurs on the floor
while Mommy napped on the couch before
the party), so he guessed it couldn’t really be the same Dimples.

Just like today on the street, Dimples hadn’t made any noise on Noel’s birthday, but he put a finger to his lips and made
the shushing sign before pointing to Mommy on the couch, reminding Noel not to say anything or else they would wake Mommy
up and Mommy needed her sleep. Noel remembered all the funny hand signs Dimples had done on his birthday, pointing at Noel
right before he covered his eyes. Playing Peek-A-Boo, the way Noel played it with Mommy, and finally he realized what Dimples
was trying to show him that day on his birthday.

That Noel had done it again, he had disappeared.

He’d looked down and saw Dimples was right. He couldn’t see his legs or his arms or the new green shirt and matching green
pants Mommy had gotten him for his birthday party. His clothes and shoes had vanished, and when he looked up in surprise Dimples
was no longer standing in the corner.

He had moved across the living room faster than a blink and now he was standing right in front of Noel and holding his finger
over his lips. He was still smiling with lots of yellow teeth, but his eyes were scared, wide and shaking and red inside his
white chalky face as he stared down at Noel, warning him not to wake up Mommy. Noel got scared then, afraid
he
was the reason Dimples was sad and scared. Noel wished he could make Dimples happy again, the way he sometimes made Mommy
happy for no reason at all,
because when Mommy or Dimples was sad, Noel was sad, too.

Noel couldn’t remember how long it lasted on his birthday. He only remembered being fascinated by Dimples’s red eyes and his
strange huge smile. He must have fallen asleep on the floor, because, the next thing he knew, Mommy was shaking him awake
and Daddy was home from work early with a gigantic wrapped present with a red bow, which when he opened it after eating cake
turned out to be his trike.

The trike he was riding down the sidewalk now. Dimples was about one house ahead of him, laughing and rubbing his belly and
waving for Noel to follow. The small old clown’s mouth moved and, when Noel concentrated hard enough, he understood every
word, even though his friend wasn’t making a sound.

Hurry, Noel, hurry on this way, my little buddy! You can do it! Let’s show Mommy what a big boy you are!

This seemed to be making Dimples very happy, the way Noel was riding the trike farther and farther down the street, following
Dimples as he tugged at his suspenders and danced a little dance into the middle of the road. Noel steered the trike to the
edge of the sidewalk and the front left wheel rolled over the curb, hanging in thin air for a moment, and Noel’s tummy fluttered
as he realized he was about to crash. He yanked the handlebars the other way just in time, keeping the trike upright. A little
farther along there was a dip at the end of Mrs Fryeberger’s driveway. Noel aimed for it, understanding that if he used that
dip he wouldn’t fall over sideways.

He would gain speed and coast right out to where Dimples was standing in the middle of the road.

Becky was halfway across her lawn when the disgustingly long sedan, its dirty metal grill angled up, its cream vinyl top sloping
back and low, roared in from the left corner of her peripheral view and blurred past her property. She caught the wind made
in its wake and ran three more steps before the shriek of the monstrous thing’s brakes slapped her to a terrified standstill.

Anthony Sobretti II, who was also called Anthony Sobretti Sr or Poppa S or sometimes just The Old Man now that he was a grandfather
of eight, was just about goddamned fed up with the tidy little man who had taken over the Speedway Repair Shop inside the
Mobil station down on Broadway. The tidy little man, who appeared one day without warning and announced he’d bought the place
from Deke Penrose, was of what Poppa S thought of as the Asian Persuasion. He might have been Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or
some mongrel mix of the above whose portions were irrelevant to Poppa S, but whatever he was, he was definitely of the Asian
Persuasion.

Poppa S had just gotten off the phone with the Asian Persuasion and now he was going to pay the sly little prick a surprise
visit. The Oriental had been trying to explain in his soft nervous Asian Persuasion voice why he was justified in charging
Poppa S forty-two-fifty for a new muffler, even though Poppa S had the JC Whitney catalogue right there in his lap and could
see with his own polished glasses that the exact muffler cost just
twenty-eight even. Poppa S pointed this fact out and the Asian Persuasion – who had the nerve to wear a name patch on his
mechanic’s shirt that said Ronald, as if he were born in the US of A and related to the goddamned hamburger pitchman, even
though Poppa S knew a G-BOB (get back on the boat) when he saw one – began to tell a cute little story about how the Caddy’s
pipes were so rotted out with rust and the mounts were so stripped, he had no choice but to ‘salvage them’ (as if Poppa S’s
entire vehicle were a rolling pile of scrap metal) with a weld job that ran nearly two hours. It was Poppa S’s fault he refused
to pay for all-new exhaust pipes, but, now the job was done, you couldn’t unweld welded pipes, and, even if you could, the
muffler couldn’t be returned, so Poppa S owed Ronald The Dirty Jap Oriental Asian Persuasion Bastard forty-two-fifty …

That’s when Poppa S had slammed down the phone and stormed out of the living room, ramming the spare keys into his wife’s
Caddy, and reversed out of the driveway seeing bloody slant red. Far down deep at the back of his mind was a foggy memory
of himself standing in the Speedway’s office, telling Mitch, the Asian Persuasion’s college flunky assistant,
sure, go ahead, do the repair, the goddamn car smokes and makes so much noise I can’t go anywhere without looking like a jerkoff,
so get on it, tiger lily
.

But that memory was nothing but a postcard buried in the sand on a speck of fleashit Pacific island, old old news, not nearly
as important as the World War II movie
Poppa S had starred in on that same island, in 1942, when he’d watched the Dirty Jap Bastards come out of the jungle like
a swarm of yellow ants and drill Anthony Sobretti’s platoon brothers in a haze of red mist and spiders and crotch rot. And
then had come the bayonets, the sluice-gutting banzai screams …

Poppa S felt better the second he shifted the Caddy from R to D, running the wheel under the heel of his palm as he straightened
out onto 7th Street and gave the pedal all kinds of brick-stomp hell. He was not so much seeing slant red now as he was bug-eyed
with happy hot horny fucking glee as he imagined the pleasure that would be, in less than five minutes, his honking and screeching
arrival at the Speedway station on the other side of the park, just three blocks down Alpine, and the look on the Asian Persuasion’s
face when Poppa S put a tire iron through the nip’s brand new fancy-schmancy Bubble-Up machine and maybe just maybe the goddamn
cash register, too.