In some of the houses on Hemlock Street, good girls slept with their fingers crossed. They believed it was wrong for boys to want to touch their breasts, and luckily for them they never dreamed. They never thought about how babies were made; they wouldn’t even tell their best friends if they did. And yet on summer evenings they felt weak in the knees. They sat in the bleachers at the high school and watched the boys play baseball; they chewed Juicy Fruit gum and combed their hair, and suddenly they felt as if they were made of glass, as if they were on the edge of something they knew in their hearts was bad.
And when the sky grew darker, the late blue dusk of summer, boys of sixteen and seventeen stumbled along the bases in the approaching dark. Boys who had never had a thought in their heads found themselves feeling defeated. They thought about their fathers, how they set out the trash cans on the curb, how they could always be found at the kitchen table on Saturday nights, their checkbooks in front of them, stacking up the bills. Water, electricity, mortgage. They had no idea why thinking about their fathers should make them stumble, why suddenly they couldn’t stop wondering what a girl’s mouth was like, what her fingers would feel like against their skin, how pale a girl’s eyelids might seem when she closed her eyes.
These boys’ fathers had once felt what their sons felt now, that terrible freedom of a summer night. But lately odd things pleased them; they found themselves grinning when they paid the bills, they found themselves thinking, This is mine, and they didn’t mind so much being home on a Saturday night. They had poker games to think about and promotions at work, they had candy-colored cars with long fins in their driveways. So why was it that they were so moved when they saw their oldest sons button their white shirts and comb their hair back with water? Why did the youngest of their sons, the fearless ones who climbed to the top of the monkey bars and begged to stay up past their bedtimes, make their throats grow tight with longing?
On August nights these men’s wives no longer looked at themselves as they tissued the cold cream off their faces. Many of them still could not believe they had children; put into a twilight sleep, then handed a baby they hardly recognized as their own, they were suddenly much older than they ever thought they’d be. Just before winter each year they took down the red boots from the top shelf of the hall closet. Just before spring they carried up light jackets and Easter coats from the basement, shook out the mothballs, and hung the coats on lines in their backyards. They had recipes for coconut cake; they had chicken soup with rice for the littlest children, home with sore throats; they had orders in for new dinette sets with laminated tabletops that looked like real wood yet were easily sponged off after a meal.
But this year the women saw that the fireflies had returned. They saw a flash of light at their windows just as they were about to get into bed. The green light formed a net of stars within the grid of silver fences along the backyards. When the women went into their bathrooms they could hear their children’s even, sleepy breathing through the thin plaster walls. They sneaked cigarettes while sitting on the rims of the tubs, which they had scrubbed with Bon Ami earlier that day. Then they faced the mirror and took the bobby pins out of their hair and combed out their pincurls, but by the time they went back to their bedrooms their husbands were already asleep, and the fireflies were hidden between the blades of grass on their own front lawns.
IT WAS SO HOT YOU HAD TO KEEP YOUR EYE ON the road because all along the Southern State the asphalt had buckled and snapped apart. Lately the heat had been fueled by a wind from the west that tore up the last of the brown, matted grass on either side of the parkway. Nora Silk was trying to keep up with the moving van, but every time she stepped down hard on the gas and hit sixty-five miles an hour the Volkswagen shimmied for no reason at all. Nora had to hold tight to the steering wheel whenever the tires edged into the fast lane. She looked past the heat waves and concentrated on driving until she heard the pop of the cigarette lighter.
“Put that down this minute,” she told Billy.
He was eight and he couldn’t keep his hands off the lighter. Eventually, Nora knew, he’d drop it and the carpet would catch fire and then they’d have to pull off the road. As soon as they did the baby would fall off the backseat and wake up, and Nora would have to climb over, comfort him, and start to search for a clean diaper and his favorite teddy bear.
“This instant,” Nora said. “And hand me a Salem.”
Billy took the new pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment and pulled off the cellophane. “Just let me light it,” he said.
“Not on your life,” Nora said.
“Just this one time,” Billy pleaded.
He was a real bulldog about some things. You had to shake him off or, if you didn’t have the energy, if the weather was broiling and your mascara was melting and the asphalt was cracking into bits, give in to him.
“This one time,” Nora said darkly.
Billy quickly pushed the lighter in and dangled the cigarette between his lips. Nora looked in the rearview mirror to make sure James hadn’t fallen off the backseat. He was covered with a cotton baby blanket and he looked as cozy as bread. Nora fluffed up her bangs, then noticed that Billy was inhaling.
“Hand it over,” she said.
Billy held the cigarette high in the air. He was a thin child, blond with satiny blond skin, but when he wore his awful taunting look, complete strangers had to fight off the urge to smack him.
“Now,” Nora said.
She took the cigarette away from Billy and inhaled. Her hands always shook when she yelled at him, and the charms on her gold bracelet jangled. “And close your window,” she added. “Do you want Mr. Popper to jump out and get caught under someone’s tires?”
The black cat, who was so lazy he rarely bothered to blink, was curled up on the floor, his head resting on one of Billy’s sneakers. The cat wasn’t about to make an escape, but Billy felt sick to his stomach, so for once he did as he was told. Nora stole a look at him when she realized he had actually minded her, then she turned back to the road, inhaled, and let out a stream of smoke. She knew that Billy felt like crying—well, maybe she did, too. She had a boy who liked to play with fire, a baby who hadn’t the slightest notion of what a father was, and a cat who liked to run his claws up her leg as soon as she put on a new pair of nylons. She didn’t have to look at Billy to know what he was doing.
“And stop pulling on your hair,” Nora said.
Ever since Roger had moved out, Billy had taken up the habit of twirling his hair so hard he’d pulled out patches and you could see his scalp showing through all along the right side of his head.
“You’re going to love the house,” Nora said. “You’ll have your own room.”
“I’ll hate it,” Billy said in a singsong voice that made Nora want to throttle him.
Nora stepped down harder on the gas; the car vibrated and a high-pitched whine came from the engine. She’d known they had to get out of their apartment when she found the baby at the window, calmly eating paint chips off the sill. She started looking just after Roger had left and the heat had gone off and she’d begun to take Billy and the baby into bed with her, to keep them warm. All night she had felt their small feet, like pieces of ice against her spine, and whenever she managed to fall asleep she dreamed about houses. They began to spend every Sunday looking out on Long Island, and every Sunday Billy stuck wads of gum under the cabinets in the kitchens of model houses, he peed into the bathtubs of newly tiled bathrooms, knowing as he did that Nora couldn’t grab him and smack him in front of the realtor. All she could do was grind her teeth and hoist the baby up on her shoulder as they were led through dens with knotty pine paneling and living rooms with shiny oak floors. When the tours were over, Nora would stand on the front lawns of houses she couldn’t afford, unwilling to leave until the smell of freshly cut grass sent the baby into a fit of sneezing.
She was about to give up hope when she found the ad for the house on Hemlock Street. She phoned the n
umber listed right away, even though it was a quarter past nine. Once she made sure the price hadn’t been misprinted, she carried her sleeping children over to Mrs. Schneck, who had the apartment next door and who made good noodle soup and babysat for fifty cents an hour. Then Nora drove out to Long Island. The exit off the Southern State was easy enough to find, but she’d gotten lost in the development for close to an hour, circling Hemlock Street but never quite finding it. She put on her brights, and still she couldn’t tell one identical house from another. Desperate and running out of gas, she made a right-hand turn and suddenly there she was, right in front of the house. The next-door neighbor she’d spoken to on the phone was waiting for her in the driveway. He’d worried that she’d had an accident and had planned to give her five more minutes before he called the highway patrol. As he let Nora in through the side door, he apologized for the state of the house. It may have been foolishness, it may have been because the electricity had been cut off and Nora couldn’t really see—she had to keep one hand pressed against the wall to feel her way through the dark—but Nora fell instantly in love with the place. At this asking price, she could afford to.
She contacted Roger the next day. He was working in Las Vegas and bothering her for a divorce, and finally Nora was calling to give in, on one condition: Roger had to cosign for a mortgage to make the bank think she still had a husband. Of course Roger agreed. He had so many outstanding loans—including one for the Volkswagen, which, in Nora’s opinion, no sane man would have ever bought, on time or otherwise—one more didn’t make a bit of difference. As soon as the mortgage came through, Nora signed the divorce papers Roger had sent her. The documents accused her of alienation of affection, and since that could mean whatever you wanted, it was probably true. Frankly, Roger didn’t even seem like a real live person to her anymore. Two weeks later he sent back the divorce certificate along with a photograph of himself and his rabbit posed in front of a motel in the desert. He was so thrilled about being single again you could see the red aura of delight all around him, even though the photograph was a black-and-white. The rabbit, whose name was Happy, was a part of Roger’s act, but Billy had always thought of him as a pet. After Roger left, Nora couldn’t get Billy away from the spot where the rabbit’s cage had been kept.
“It was never fair to keep a rabbit here with Mr. Popper,” she had told Billy. “You know Happy drove him crazy.”
And it was true. Whenever Happy wasn’t working, Mr. Popper sat on top of his cage and the rabbit would wriggle his nose excessively as if to dare the cat to try to get his claws through the wire. But God, did Nora feel alienated then. She could have shot Roger with a real .45, not the one he used in his act, which only spat out confetti and streamers. Every time she caught Billy sitting in the corner and twirling his hair, Nora wondered what had possessed her to marry Roger in the first place. She had been eighteen when they met, and he’d been so handsome just looking at him made Nora feel faint. But even back then, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, Nora had sensed something false about Roger. She wanted to believe in him, but there seemed to be less and less of him to believe in every day. He wasn’t even a good magician. His heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t, for instance, the sort of magician you’d hire for a children’s party, because children could see right through him. They weren’t the least bit surprised when he pulled silk scarves out of his sleeve or found quarters behind their ears. They yawned and asked for M&Ms and could tell with just one look that his magic wand was made of wood. Adults, on the other hand, found Roger charming. He may have been sloppy when he pulled the rabbit out of his hat, but he had a particular knack for killing his audience with cynical one-liners. He was a putdown artist, with definite stage presence, and yet whenever Billy tried to conjure up his father he got nothing more than an image of Roger during his blackout trick, an illusion in which Roger was a man in top hat and tails with no body, no face, and no hands.
Billy was trying to imagine his father, and failing, when they arrived at the house. The moving van was blocking the driveway, so Nora had to park on the street. When she took the silver key John McCarthy had mailed her out of her purse, the key felt hot; Nora had to hold it up and blow on it. She got out of the Volkswagen and flipped the front seat forward to scoop out the baby.
“We’re home,” she cooed to James.
Up in the passenger seat, Billy was stiff; he stared straight ahead, his hair a mass of honey-colored knots.
“Come on, killjoy,” Nora said to him. “Out.”
Billy dragged himself out and came around the car to stand beside his mother. He was slight, with thin shoulders, and in that way he resembled Roger; the perfect body for folding itself up into boxes and trunks. Nora held the baby sideways, under one crooked arm. The lawn had been unevenly mowed, and all along the driveway there were dandelion puffs.
“These weeds are nothing,” Nora told Billy.
They walked up to the front door, with Billy following so close he stepped on the backs of Nora’s high heels. The key didn’t work, so they went through the backyard to the side door. Nora signaled to the three moving men, who were gathered around a rotting wooden picnic table, drinking coffee from their Thermoses.
“This is it,” Nora said to her children, as the moving men went to lift their belongings out of the van.
The sound of traffic on the Southern State was loud enough to give you a headache if you weren’t used to it, and a low plane rumbled overhead. This was clearly a house that made a better impression in the dark.
“Never mind the way it is now,” Nora said. “Think about the way it’s going to look.”
James clapped his hands and pointed at the screen door, which swung back and forth on its hinges. But Billy just stared at his mother. Nora caught Billy studying her; she hoisted James up on her shoulder and patted his back. She bit her lip when she noticed that the painted trim on the house was peeling, and she looked so worried that Billy almost said something nice. Instead he wrinkled his nose.
“This place stinks,” he said.
“Thank you very much,” Nora said, even though it was true. “I knew I could depend on you to say something cheerful.”
Nora unlocked the side door and stepped inside. As soon as the moving men brought in James’s playpen, Nora set it up in the kitchen and popped the baby safely inside. She walked through the house to unlock the front door, then made her way past the couch and the bed frames out in the driveway and went to the car for the bag of groceries she’d brought with them. She ignored the horrible smell in the kitchen and opened a large brown box with a knife, finding her baking trays on the first try. The oven was smoky when she turned it on and there was a pot of thick, purple stuff forgotten on the rear burner, but Nora just grabbed a mixing bowl and started to tear open packages of baking soda and vanilla.
“Yum,” Nora said to the baby, who was standing up, holding on to the bars of his playpen. Before she began to bake, Nora unlatched her bracelet and laid it on the counter. Roger had given it to her; she should probably get rid of it, except it seemed her whole life hung from the chain: the heart Roger had first given her, one of Billy’s baby teeth, a gold-plated teddy bear Roger brought to the hospital when James was born, a tiny guitar Nora had bought for herself the day Elvis was drafted.
Nora never measured ingredients, and she wasn’t much of a cook; she might even have been considered awful. But she was always lucky with her baking. Roger, the conceited bastard, was always too concerned with his looks to eat cookies or cakes. He liked the way women gravitated toward him; he always ran his fingers through his hair and pretended not to notice, but Nora was certain he noticed plenty whenever she wasn’t around.
“Who’s a conceited bastard?” Billy asked her.
He hadn’t moved since they’d entered the house. He was still standing with his back against the screen door, twirling his hair.
“No one,” Nora said. She turned to him and rattled the baking sheet in his direction. “
Never say bastard.”
It was a quirk of Billy’s to look right through people as if they were nothing more than panes of glass. Fortunately, he never picked up a complete thought, just the frayed edges of things, and still Nora was never quite certain if she had said something out loud or if Billy’s antennae had picked up what she’d been thinking in spite of any silence.
“Find something to do,” Nora said. She held her nose and grabbed the pot of purple goop off the stove, then spilled the mixture into the sink.
“There’s nothing to do,” Billy said.
Nora could see that he had his eye on a box of matches Mrs. Olivera had left behind.
“Don’t even think about it,” Nora said. “Clean your room,” she suggested.
Billy groaned, but he went into the dining room. He could hear his mother quizzing one of the moving men who had gone into the kitchen about whether or not anyone had come across her Elvis collection, which, aside from the battered velvet couch, was probably the most substantial thing they owned. The living room and dining room were really one L-shaped space. There were cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and a thin layer of white dust along the window ledges and on top of the air conditioner that had been jammed into one window.