The Fall of Never(110)

He appeared to waver at the foot of the stairs, confused as to his destination, and finally rested his bulk against the wall. Soundlessly, he let his weight slide down the wall until the first few stairs came up to meet him. He hunkered there, his legs bent, his long arms and hands draped over his knees like large fish laid out on rocks. She watched him, hardly breathing, frightened by what she was too young to acknowledge as his vulnerability. And then came the sounds—the soft, miserable hitches in his unsteady breathing. His massive back, like the canvas sail of some great ship, shook and trembled with each sob.

In utter shock, Kelly thought, He’s crying.

Without thinking, she turned around the railing and grabbed the banister with one hand. She took a step down on the stairs; it creaked loudly under her foot. Terrified, she froze.

Her father’s head snapped in her direction. Shadows played heavy across his features, but she had no trouble making out his eyes—they pierced the darkness like those of a frightened forest animal. For a brief moment, the two of them remained silent and unmoving, trapped in a place passed over by time.

Then her father stood quickly from the stairs. “Go to bed,” he said. His voice was flat. “You stay away from me.”

He turned and disappeared down the hall. Motionless, Kelly watched her father’s enormous shadow withdraw from the opposite wall and disappear.



Before the conclusion of that year, Kelly came to understand two things: that her mother was pregnant and that this new child, once born, would come to occupy what little time Kelly spent with her parents. This did not bother her. However, she knew that it had been Glenda who’d taken care of her all these years, and that therefore her time with the old housemaid would also be severed. She thought of Glenda’s singing, thought of the storybooks the woman would read to her on occasion, and it filled Kelly with a premature longing for the woman. She found she missed Glenda before Glenda was even gone. And although her parents said very little to her about the new child, Glenda had sat her down on her bed one evening and asked Kelly if she understood what having a new baby in the house meant.

“I don’t know,” Kelly said, but thought, It means that you’re going to forget about me and I’ll be all alone.

“It means,” explained Glenda, “that you’ll have a little brother or sister, and that I’ll have a new baby to take care of. You see, we’re both going to be very busy, Kelly. Do you know what it’s like to be a big sister?”

Kelly shook her head. Until now, the prospect that she herself might be expected to play a role in this strange child’s life had eluded her. “No,” she said.

“Well,” Glenda said, “it means you will have to take good care of this little fellow, and teach him or her how to do the things that you already know how to do.”

Kelly’s mind returned to the day in her father’s thinking room—the day she had made the animal heads come to life. Was that the sort of thing she was supposed to teach her younger brother or sister? And how in the world does someone even begin teaching such a thing? She thought of the barrage of tutors that marched through the house during the week and tried to understand the difference between teaching arithmetic and teaching…teaching scary things. It occurred to her then that she possessed no word for what she’d done in her father’s private room. And the thought of teaching someone else how to do that frightened her.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want a baby here, I don’t want it.”

“Why, dear?”

“I don’t,” was all she said. “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!”

Regardless, the baby came. After two days at a hospital in the city, her parents returned to the compound with a tiny, squirming thing wrapped tight in a soft pink blanket. Too afraid to approach, Kelly remained on the stairwell and watched as her parents silently ushered their new child into the house, spoke a few incoherent words to each other, then carried the baby upstairs. Her mother passed her on the stairwell and watched her with narrowed eyes. Haggard and distressed, Marlene Kellow paused briefly, her arms full of the little thing.

“Want to see it?” she said flatly.

Kelly nodded and her mother bent and exposed the ruddy, pig-nosed face of her sister Becky. It was impossible, she thought, that anything that looked like that could be alive. She’d never seen a baby before and suddenly her mind filled up with a million questions: how does it eat? What does it wear? When will it speak and what will it say? Mostly, while staring at it, she wondered what its purpose was—what did it do, what purpose did it serve? As Glenda cleaned the house and prepared the meals, as her father and mother earned money, what would this new addition contribute to the household? It made no sense.

She looked up and met her mother’s eyes. There was no compassion there. Yet the woman appeared deep in thought. The corner of her mother’s mouth twitched. Marlene Kellow said, “I felt the same thing with this one. God help me.”

Though she didn’t understand what her mother’s words meant, she understood the contempt in her tone. Backing against the stairwell wall, she watched as her mother rose and continued up the stairs with the baby.

She looked down and saw her father glaring at her from the bottom of the stairs.

Several evenings later, Kelly crept into the large and mostly barren room where Becky slept. The room was empty save for a crib in the center, the dusty shades half-drawn against the setting sun. Kelly moved across the floor, careful not to make the floorboards creak, and edged up to the side of the crib, peered in. The baby was awake and fussing to itself, sputtering tiny sounds that were almost nonexistent. Its face was red and puffy, its eyes almost lidless and squinty. And it was so small. It seemed ridiculous to think that this creature would ever grow to be a genuine human being. How could that be?