The Nix(81)

She decides to be bold, to do what she’d insinuated during that final dance at the prom. With one hand she pulls on the waistband of his slacks, pulls hard enough that there is enough space for her other hand. Henry twitches then, and his body goes tense, and everything about him stops moving for a split second. Then it all happens so fast. She drives her hand down as he leaps back. Her fingers begin to grasp him—she feels him for the smallest moment, and knows that he is warm and solid but also soft and delicately fleshy—and she has just begun to understand this when he jumps back and turns slightly away from her and yells, “What are you doing?”

“I’m, I don’t know—”

“You can’t do that!”

“I’m sorry, Henry, I’m—”

“God, Faye!” And he turns from her then and adjusts his pants, jams his hands in his pockets and walks away. He paces from one side of the swing set to the other. She watches him. It’s hard to believe that his face can go so cold so quickly.

“Henry?” she says. She wants him to look at her, but he doesn’t. “Henry, I’m sorry.”

“Forget it,” he says. He digs his foot into the sand, wiggles his shoe until it’s buried, then does it again, getting his nice black dress loafers all dirty.

She sits again on the merry-go-round. “Come back,” she says.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Faye.”

He is an even-keeled boy, mild and modest; he must have frightened himself, reacting the way he did. And now he is trying to make it go away, to erase what happened. Faye sits on the merry-go-round and says, “It’s okay, Henry.”

“No, it’s not,” he says, his back to her, hands pocketed, shoulders hunched up. He is a closed fist, all tense and curled in on himself. “It’s just…You can’t do that.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not right,” he says, and she considers this. Picks off red flakes of rust and listens to his feet crunching the sand as he paces and she stares at his back and finally says: “Why?”

“You shouldn’t want to. It’s not what a girl like you is supposed to want.”

“A girl like me?”

“Never mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Forget it.”

And then Henry is gone. He sits on the merry-go-round and shuts everything off, becomes a silent, cold lump. He crosses his arms and stares out into the night. He is punishing her. And it makes her furious, makes her begin trembling. She can feel a nausea beginning in her gut, an agitation in her chest—her heart beating, the little hairs on her neck standing up. She can feel something coming, a familiar wave of sweat and dizziness. She is lightheaded suddenly, and hot and tingly and a little outside herself, as if she is floating above the merry-go-round, looking down, watching the buzzing of her own body. Can Henry see it? The wrecking ball is on its way—the sobbing and choking, the shakes. This has happened before.

“Take me home,” she whispers through clenched teeth.

Who knows if he understands what is happening, but Henry looks at her then and seems to soften. “Listen, Faye—”

“Take me home now.”

“I’m sorry Faye, I shouldn’t have—”

“Now, Henry.”

So he takes her home, and for the whole terrible ride they don’t speak. Faye squeezes the leather seats and tries to fight off the feeling she is dying. When he stops in front of her house, she feels like a ghost, flying away from him without making a sound.

Faye’s mother knows right away. “You’re having an attack,” she says, and Faye nods, wide-eyed, panicky. Her mother takes her to her room and undresses her and puts her in bed and gives her something to drink, dabs a cold washcloth on her forehead and says “It’s okay, it’s all okay” in her quiet and sweet and hushed motherly voice. Faye holds her knees to her chest and sobs and gulps for air while her mother runs her fingers through her hair and whispers “You’re not dying, you’re not going to die” as she has all through Faye’s childhood. And they stay that way until finally the episode passes. Faye calms down. She begins breathing again.

“Don’t tell Dad,” she says.

Her mother nods. “What if this happens in Chicago, Faye? What will you do?”

Her mother squeezes her hand and leaves to fetch another washcloth. And Faye thinks about Henry then. She thinks, almost gladly: Now we have a secret.





3


FAYE DID NOT ALWAYS SUFFER SO. She was once a normally social, normally functioning kid. Then one day something happened to change all that.

It was the day she learned about the house spirit.

It was 1958, a late-summer barbecue, light fading purpley in the west, mosquitoes and lightning bugs, kids playing tag or watching the bug zapper do its frightening business, men and women outside smoking and drinking and leaning against fence posts or each other, and Faye’s father grilling food for a few neighbors, a few guys from work.

This was all his wife’s idea.

Because Frank Andresen had a reputation: He was a little intimidating, a little standoffish. There was the matter of his accent, sure, that he was a foreigner. But more than that was his manner—melancholy, stoic, inward. The neighbors would see Frank outside gardening and ask how he was doing and he wouldn’t say a word, just simply wave with this expression on his face like he had a broken rib he wasn’t telling them about. Eventually they stopped asking.