Gerald's Game(52)

Several squares of glass-panes cut carefully out of the crumbling putty in an old shed window-were piled up beside him. He was holding one in the smoke rising from the fire, using the barbecue tongs to turn the glass square this way and that like some sort of weird camp delicacy. Jessie burst out laughing-it was mostly the oven-mitt that struck her funny-and he turned around, also grinning. The thought that the angle made it possible for him to look up her dress crossed her mind, but only fleetingly. He was her father, after all, not some cute boy like Duane Corson from down at the marina.

What are you doing? she giggled. I thought we were having hamburgers for lunch, not glass sandwiches!

Eclipse-viewers, not sandwiches, Punkin, he said. If you put two orthree of these together, you can look at the eclipse for the whole period oftotality without damaging your eyes. You have to be really careful. I've read; you can burn your retinas and not even know you've done it untillater.

Ag! Jessie said, shivering a little. The idea of burning yourself without knowing you were doing it struck her as incredibly gross. How long will it be total, Daddy?

Not long. A minute or so.

Well, make some more of those glass whatchamacallums-I don't wantto burn my eyes. One Eclipse Burger or two?

One will be fine. If it's a big one.okay.

She turned to go.

Punkin?

She looked back at him, a small, compact man with fine beads of sweat standing out on his forehead, a man with as little body hair as the man she would later marry, but without either Gerald's thick glasses or his paunch, and for a moment the fact that this man was her father seemed the least important thing about him. She was struck again by how handsome he was, and how young he looked. As she watched, a bead of sweat rolled slowly down his stomach, tracked just east of his navel, and made a small dark spot on the elastic waistband of his Yale shorts. She looked back at his face and was suddenly, exquisitely aware of his eyes on her. Even narrowed against the smoke as they were now, those eyes were absolutely gorgeous, the brilliant gray of daybreak on winter water. Jessie found she had to swallow before she could answer; her throat was dry. Possibly it was the acrid smoke from his sod fire. Or possibly not.

Yes, Daddy?

For a long moment he said nothing, only went on looking up at her with sweat running slowly down his cheeks and forehead and chest and belly, and Jessie was suddenly frightened. Then he smiled again and all was well.

You look very pretty today, Punkin. In fact, if it doesn't sound tooyucky, you look beautiful.

Thank you-it doesn't sound yucky at all.

His comment pleased her so much (especially after her mother's angry editorial comments of the night before, or perhaps because of them) that a lump rose in her throat and she felt like crying for a moment. She smiled instead, and sketched a curtsey in his direction, and then hurried back to the barbecue with her heart pounding a steady drumroll in her chest. One of the things her mother had said, the most awful thing, tried to rise into her mind.

(you behave as if she were your)

and Jessie squashed it as ruthlessly as she would have squashed a bad-tempered wasp. Still, she felt gripped by one of those crazy adult mixes of emotion-ice cream and gravy, roast chicken stuffed with sourballs-and could not seem to entirely escape it. Nor was she sure she even wanted to. In her mind she kept seeing that single drop of sweat tracking lazily down his stomach, being absorbed by the soft cotton of his shorts, leaving that tiny dark place. It was from that image that the emotional turmoil seemed chiefly to arise. She kept seeing it and seeing it and seeing it. It was crazy.

Well, so what? It was a crazy day, that was all. Even the sun was going to do something crazy. Why not leave it at that?

Yes, the voice that would one day masquerade as Ruth Neary agreed. Why not?

The Eclipse Burgers, garnished with sauted mushrooms and mild red onion, were nothing short of fabulous. They certainlyeclipse the last batch your mother made, her father told her, and Jessie giggled wildly. They ate on the deck outside Tom Mahout's den, balancing metal trays on their laps. A round deck-table, littered with condiments, paper plates, and eclipse-watching paraphernalia, stood between them. The observation gear included Polaroid sunglasses, two home-made cardboard reflector-boxes of the sort which the rest of the family had taken with them to Mount Washington, panes of smoked glass and a stack of hotpads from the drawer beside the kitchen stove. The panes of smoked glass weren't hot anymore, Tom told his daughter, but he wasn't terribly competent with the glass-cutter, and he was afraid there still might be nicks and jagged spots along the edges of some of the panes.

The last thing I need, he told her, is for your mother to come homeand find a note saying I've taken you to the Emergency Room at OxfordHills Hospital so they can try to sew a couple of your fingers back on.

Mom really wasn't exactly crazy about this idea, was she? Jessie asked.

Her Daddy gave her a brief hug. No, he said, but I was. I wascrazy enough about it for both of us. And he gave her a smile so bright she just had to smile back.

It was the reflector-boxes they used first as the onset of the eclipse-4:29 p.m... edt-neared. The sun lying in the center of Jessie's reflector-box was no bigger than a bottlecap, but it was so fiercely bright that she groped a pair of the sunglasses from the table and put them on. According to her Timex, the eclipse should have already started-it said 4:30.

I guess my watch is fast, she said nervously. Either that or there'sa bunch of astronomers all over the world with egg on their faces.