When We Were Animals(66)

The vise of his legs, crushing with absolute control my wild little body.

He unpinches my fingers. He tells me the splinter is out. It does not hurt.

His legs release me, and I feel suddenly light—too light, as though I might spin off into the sky like a rogue balloon lost to the thinness of ether.

*



My husband is a good father. When our son gets hurt, Jack is the person he runs to by instinct. I watch the two of them—the way Jack puts his two big hands on the boy’s shoulders, creating pacts among males.

When Marcus’s teacher calls home to talk about his biting problem, Jack takes the call. He expresses grave concern. He is apologetic and thankful for the opportunity for social correction. When he gets off the phone, he turns to me, reproaching.

“She says she’s spoken with you about Marcus’s problems in school?”

“I guess she did,” I say. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? Ann…”

He shakes his head and walks out. He has a talk with Marcus later, sitting the boy next to him on the couch. They discuss acceptable modes of expression, ways for Marcus to communicate what’s inside of him without hurting others. After it’s over, Jack lifts the boy and hugs him tight. I watch from the dining room.

I am concerned that Jack is making our boy too soft. So later that night, after everyone is asleep, I creep into the boy’s bedroom and speak rhymes from my own childhood over his slumbering form.

Mary’s gone a-breaching,

ho-la-lay, ho-la-la.

Mary’s gone a-breaching,

ho-la-lay, ho-la-la.

Mary’s gone, and she lost her head.

What might she do with her body instead?

They scored her flesh, and they broke her bones.

Now who will she be if she makes it back home?

Mary’s gone a-breaching,

ho-la-lay, ho-la-la.



My husband would not like it if he heard, so I have no choice but to sing my songs to my boy in his sleep. I see his eyes shifting wildly under his lids, and I wonder what animal dreams he’s having.

When I go back to bed, Jack wakes briefly.

“Everything all right?” he asks, half asleep.

“You’re a good father,” I say.

He throws an arm over me and gives me a squeeze. Soon he is asleep again, and I gaze at the stars through the bedroom window.

*



I dreamed of the restless dead. Everyone I knew, walking down the street as if in a trance. I ran among them, trying to get their attention, but their eyes were lost to some unknown distance. I tried to speak to them, but they did not respond. I screamed in their ears—my voice was hoarse. Everything was so quiet. I was even deaf to the shuffle of their feet. The only sound was the trickle of water over stone. I looked around to find the source of the sound, but there was nothing to be seen. I closed my eyes and listened harder, trying to recognize it because it sounded so familiar. And then I knew. It was the rivulet that led into the abandoned mine, miles away in the woods. Standing there among the silent zombies of everyone I knew, I could hear it. I could hear the sound of that tiny waterfall, the baby stream of melted ice. What does it mean for something to be inside your skull and miles distant at the same time? I didn’t like it. I swallowed, and there was dread in my throat.

When I woke, light was flickering against the wall of my bedroom. I rose and went to the window and saw that the street lamp outside was dying. It stuttered on and off, strobing the street with black and shadowed light.

Parked beneath the street lamp was the faded Camaro, and inside it I could see Blackhat Roy staring right at me, as though he had expected me to come to the window at that very moment.

I froze in place.

While I watched, he brought a hand up in front of his face, opened his mouth, and sank his teeth into the meaty heel of his palm. His head lashed back and forth as though he were a coyote trying to tear away a piece of flesh from its fallen prey—and I could see his face go red from the effort. Finally he stopped and held his hand before his tearing eyes. Then he extended his arm out the car window and held it up for me to see. He had bitten through the skin, and blood ran from the wounds down his wrist and dripped onto the street. In the flickering light, the blood looked black as crude leaked from the earth.

There we were, insomniacs on a moonless night, a pestilent little Rapunzel in her cotton nightdress and her barbarous prince, calling to her with his blood.

*



We were in the living room watching a Glenn Ford movie, Blackboard Jungle, when Margot Simons inadvertently revealed to me a great secret.

She was huddled against my father, and even though there was room for me on the couch with them, I sat cross-legged in the easy chair. The movie is about a rough urban high school, and Margot Simons kept making sly, joking comments to me through the whole thing—about how this school wasn’t nearly as wild as our own. I smiled politely in response.

Then, at the end of the film, when the credits rolled, she said, “Huh, that’s funny.”

“What?” asked my father.

She pointed at the name of the writer whose book the movie was based upon: Evan Hunter.

“Mr. Hunter from school,” she said. “His first name is Evan, too.”

I thought about all the possible meanings of this connection. I didn’t much believe in coincidence. In my experience, harmonies existed everywhere if you were willing to hear them.