No Book but the World: A Novel (23 page)

After this, for as long as they continued to play in, or play
at
, Midgetropolis, they played this game. (How long had they continued? Had the game ended sometime during seventh grade, or eighth? Surely by high school the girls must have outgrown its appeal and begun leaving the woods to Fred alone, not knowing and little contemplating whether their withdrawal relieved or saddened him.) They never gave it a proper name, the game, never mind that it had its own book, its own narrative with a plot that repeated in an endless loop. Never mind that it had its own protagonist, if not quite heroine: Fredericka was too much a victim for that. The game hinged on Fred’s willingness to assume the role, with Kitty and Ava taking on the parts of minor characters, sometimes Fredericka’s tormentors, sometimes her rescuers. They took on, too, the job of encouraging or badgering, whatever might entice Fred to play. Which he did, readily, allowing himself to become the object of both their fawning adulation and their teasing, the membrane between the two kept crucially thin and unstable.

It was a kind of gentle persecution, what they did to Fred, what he permitted them to do. Fredericka, they persisted in calling him, and he responded as if delighted to be in on the joke. To be the joke. The more he claimed the role for himself the more they showered him with approval, and they wooed him further into the game by promising to make him their sister. One day he let them mousse his hair and make up his face. It fascinated Kitty that here in Midgetropolis, so long as he was being Fredericka, he’d let them touch him unrestrainedly.

Kitty had him tip back his head and hold still while she painted his full, slightly chapped lips. The sun cast spears through the treetops overhead, making him close his eyes, and she could see through his violet-veined lids the quick darting movements of his eyeballs, like the slippery hearts of small creatures. His skin was as smoothly transparent as a fairy-tale maiden’s; he had no visible pores or oily patches, none of the angry little red spots Kitty and Ava had both lately developed. They considered this absence, then painted them on, pimpling him all over with dabs of scarlet lip gloss, and when he protested—“What-ah, you guys ah-doing? Quit-ah, quit that, guys!”—they leapt, shrieking, out of range of his flailing arms, saying:

“Look-ah: look-ah your brother’s-ah face-ah!”

“Gross-ah! Get away-ah from-ah me-ah!”

Only when he began to tear apart the Midgetropolis house—heaving the kettle into a bush, scattering the leaves they’d laid out to make a bed, kicking and stomping the pinecone-and-pebble border that marked the hearth—did they try to pacify him, clucking, “Freddy, Freddy, don’t be mad, we’ll help you wash it off,” and led him down to the swale, which was flowing this day with spring runoff, so that they could scoop handfuls of cold water and scrub the marks off his face. “See, Fredericka? You’re the prettiest sister of all.”

Spring set in more deeply. Flowers nosed through the clutter of the forest floor, trees put forth curly young leaves, and the stone slab of their woods house roasted in wanton scraps of sun. Here on a hot day in May, Kitty and Ava persuaded Fred to let them paint his toenails blue. Another day they dug to the bottom of the old steamer trunk where, below the many decades’ worth of former students’ abandoned hats and gloves, they found a pile of brightly colored squares of silk, which they brought to Midgetropolis, thinking of the children who had played with them long ago. They spread these silks on the stone slab, apple green and yellow, purple and rose and peacock blue, and with these slippery squares they draped Fred, tying a turban on his head, a sarong around his middle, a cape around his neck. When he went to scratch his ear and knocked the turban loose, they scolded him in silken voices, guiding his hand back down to his side. They made the turban secure once more and scrutinized him—“Hold
still
, Fredericka!”—so intently he squirmed.

“He’s a sheik.”

“A sheikess.”

“
She’s
a sheikess.”

“Where’s her harem?”

“That would be us, doll.”

They lifted their T-shirts and, humming “Streets of Cairo,” did belly dances. The sight of their own flat bellies, recently discovered as assets, delighted them. Kitty pushed her pants low to expose her jutting hip bones; Ava copied. These, too, had recently made their presence known, as had the sparse, coarse, curlicues of hair sprouting on both of them just below. This secret they had shared a few weeks earlier in Kitty’s bedroom, standing before her mirror and comparing subtle differences in color and amount. Now, as they bared their midriffs to each other and to Fred on the stone slab, that private knowledge tinged their song with lewd laughter.

“We’re Salome,” said Kitty, circling her pelvis.

“As in lunch meat?”

“Dolt. As in the dance of the seven veils.”

“Whatev.”

They snatched up the extra silks and twirled them around their heads and past Fred’s face. The light shone through the cloth and cast colored shade and Fred closed his eyes and smiled his terrible, open-mouthed, trusting smile as they let the silks billow up and fall against his skin.

“He’s a genie,” said Kitty, grabbing the kettle.

They rubbed it.

“Now you have to grant our wishes,” they informed him.

He laughed in his Fredly way, disorderly and unhinged, and the turban shook loose again from his hair.

Clicking their tongues, they swooped in to fix it once more. “You keep messing it up—no, no, just . . . hold
still
,” they repeated, batting his hands away, until, “You hold him while I fasten it,” said Ava, and this time when his hands floated back toward his head, Kitty stepped in and bound them at the wrists. “There, that’s better.” His hands were held fast behind his back with the red silk. Because he was Fredericka he let her, but as soon as she stepped away he began to strain at the knot.

“You can’t tie him,” said Ava.

But, “You’re our genie,” explained Kitty, very nicely, too, lilting and sincere, with her pale eyebrows lifted and her chicory eyes wide. “That means you have to do everything we say, okay?”

“Kitty . . .”

But Fred stopped straining and nodded. So he was in the game, still in the game, willing to play or willing himself to play, either one, small difference, and either way,
willing
, as anyone could attest.

“I don’t think—”

Kitty spun toward Ava, cutting her off. “What do you want?”

“What?”

“What do you want from the genie? Come on, make a wish.”

“Oh.” Ava’s eyes went vacant. Her gaze slid from Kitty to her brother in his turban and his bound hands, then off toward the trees. She did that irritating thing where she kneaded the fingers of one hand with those of the other. “Uh . . .”

“Oh my God. Is everyone in this family retarded?” Kitty swiveled back to Fred. “Lie down, genie.”

“Don’t we have to untie his hands?” ventured Ava.

“Of course not.”

“But how’s he supposed to—?”

“He’s a genie,” said Kitty, and clapped twice. “Lie down.”

Without use of his hands he accomplished this more awkwardly than he might otherwise, and she could see him thinking it through, how best to do it. He knelt first, then tilted himself sideways, and finally, with little pricks of sweat breaking out along his lip and brow, worked himself into a prostrate position on the warm slab.

“Faceup,” snapped Kitty. “Chop, chop.”

He rolled with some effort onto his other side, arching his back for his hands, which were trapped underneath. Sunlight struck down at his face; he shut his eyes. Ava stepped over him, shielding him with her shadow, while Kitty darted away behind the bushes.

“What are you doing?” Ava asked.

“Nothing.” Kitty was already back. “Okay, genie, now grant my wish: I want a kiss.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Shut up. He wants to play.”

“But he doesn’t . . . He can’t kiss.”

“Of course he can. Can’t you, Fredericka? You like being the genie, right? You like granting our wishes.”

“S’ah-yeah.”

“See?” Kitty knelt beside him. “Now pucker up. That means push your lips together. No, out. No, push them together and
out
. Yeah. But keep your eyes closed. And your lips. Oh my God, can you stop laughing for one second? Pucker.” She was laughing, too, and now so was Ava, laughing in a protesty little way but still, whickering along with them, and the sun flocked them with coins of light and licked the colored silks, and the breeze that flittered through the woods smelled richly of dead pine needles and all the soft dense clumps of new-grown moss. Fred managed to stop laughing long enough to hold his pucker in place and Kitty whipped out what she’d gone to get from the bushes and kept hidden behind her back: the tarry rag, stiff as an old carcass, which she mashed now against his lips for a full second before leaping up and away, shrieking with laughter.

Fred roared. When he saw what he’d been kissing he sat up and began to spit, and then to cry and hack and heave and drool and gag and grunt and retch and groan.

“Kitty!” said Ava with such sharp reproach that Kitty felt unfairly maligned and also uneasy.

“It was a joke.”

Ava knelt by Fred and tried to pick apart the knot that was still binding his wrists together. “I can’t get it,” she said miserably after a minute. Kitty came forward and gently pushed Ava’s hands away. “I have longer nails.” While she worked at the knot, she delivered a kind of patter.
Sorry, Fred. It was just a joke. You know that, don’t you? You’re all right. We were just playing, right?
And he calmed down while she loosened the silk, and nodded to each of her questions. When she saw the knot was undone, she did not announce it but, still holding the silk around his wrists, brought her face close to his.

“It’s time for your reward now.”

Something, fear or interest, flickered across his face.

“It’s something nice, I promise.”

“Ah . . .” He was still flushed from struggling and then from his violent reaction to her trick; his cheeks were stained pink and the bow of his lips was full and red and all at once with his dark and shining eyes he gave her a rare steady look.

Kitty bent, her heart gonging, and laid her mouth on his. Warm, soft, soft as a raspberry. She darted her tongue in and out and sat back quickly. “See?”

“Kitty,”
breathed Ava, horrified, furious.

They watched. Would he spit again, would he hack and gag?

“Fred, Fred, are you okay?”

“No, no-ah, no.” He shook his head from side to side. “Not-ah Fred. S’ah Fred
erick
a.”

FRED

T
HE MAN SAID
Get up
you have a visitor
.

He figured it would be the lawyer again who came yesterday but they went down a different hall and the man brought him to a different room. Instead of one table and two chairs, this one had a bunch of tables and a bunch of chairs, and lots of people sitting at the different tables, not just men in greens but women and some kids, too. Some of the people were wearing regular clothes like skirts and sweatshirts. Some were dressed fancy. One woman was wearing a red dress and sharp red shoes like she was going to a fancy restaurant.

He was standing there just looking at some babies, and there were people talking Spanish and people talking English, and people talking something else he didn’t know what, and one man and woman, they were both crying and neither of them using any tissues, just their sleeves. It was funny seeing all these different kinds of people after days of having everybody be a man and everybody dress the same, either in blue uniforms weighed down with buttons and badges and zippers and snaps, all that sharp shiny metal that made you blink, or else like him in these loose green pants and loose green shirts that hung off you and smelled of cooked peas. And these black rubber sandals that weren’t his either. Where were his shoes? He couldn’t remember.

He was blinking his eyes, looking around the bright fluorescent room, searching for the lawyer. He remembered the lawyer from yesterday, or maybe the day before: a tall sit-up-straight man with little glittering eyes in his big dough face that hung in folds around his neck. The man who brought him in said
Don’t see your visitor?
and he shook his head no but then he saw her.

His throat went
clank
like he was a metal bank and someone had stuck a big coin through the slot.

He had never called Ava because her number was in the little book back at Dave’s house on the Cape, and he didn’t know how she’d figured out where he was or what happened or how to find him or anything. He didn’t know how she’d gotten herself here or how she could’ve known to come. But Ava always knew stuff he didn’t know. Seeing her made him feel happy and scared. He started to rub his hands on the side of his pants. She was wearing a sweater that was brown, and pants that were gray. Some birds were brown and gray, and he wanted to tell her
Hey, you look like one of those birds
, but he saw that she had seen him now, too, and her eyes went all tilty, like a roof that was too steep.

She started to stand up and the man behind him said, just like he was cracking a stick over his knee,
Ma’am!
and she sat back down and the man said
That your visitor?
and he nodded and the man said
You go sit over there. Remember no touching.

Also, in case he forgot, the rules were screwed right into the wall:

NO TOUCHING

NO FOOD

NO GUM

NO PROFANITY

REMAIN SEATED

NO LOUD TALKING/LAUGHING

VIOLATIONS OF VISITING PRIVILEGES MAY RESULT IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION AGAINST THE INMATE AND APPROPRIATE ADMINISTRATIVE OR LEGAL ACTIONS AGAINST THE VISITOR

He sat in the tan plastic chair opposite Ava’s tan plastic chair and he swallowed and he folded his hands on his lap. He folded them with the fingers going this way and that way, every other one.
This is the church, this is the steeple
.

“Hi,” Ava said. Softly. She must have been memorizing the rules before he came in.

He was looking at his hands, trying to remember how June used to do it, the way to fold them so you get the people.

“Fred?”

He could get the steeple. He could get the doors. He opened the doors and it was empty inside, nothing but smooth palms. He couldn’t remember how to get the people.

“Hey, Freddy.” That was her old-fashioned name for him. It got his eyes to jump up. They jumped up and saw Ava looking at him with her eyes tilted so steep it made him feel like he was sliding, so he started looking at who else was in the room. Nine guys in greens like him, and across from every one of them, visitors. In all, thirteen visitors. There was a baby bobbling on its mother’s leg and it had sparkle things tied in its little pigletted hair. There was a woman with lips like a bitten-into chocolate when it’s one of those chocolates that has raspberry filling. There was a man with a T-shirt with words and a picture. The words said
Sparky’s Marina
and the picture was a fish standing up wearing a chef’s hat and holding a spatula. His eyes were swallowing hard at all that color, all that noisy brightness.

“Freddy, please look at me,” said Ava.

He looked at her and her eyes were tilted and sparkling with too much sadness and he felt like he was sliding fast, falling off a roof. He looked over her shoulder and studied the rule sign.

“How are you?”

He nodded his head. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. Bouncy bounce.

“Are you doing okay?”

NO TOUCHING

NO FOOD

NO GUM

“Why don’t you look at me, Freddy?”

He couldn’t.

“Look at me.”

He would fall.

“Please.”

“Ah,” he said. “Ah-fall.”

“Fall? Did someone fall?”

He was nodding his head up and down. The rule sign was bouncing all over the wall. Darting up and jumping sideways, running slantways and scampering down. Breaking all the rules.

Ava was talking.

Our parents left us
, she was saying.
They were poor. The cupboards were bare. They took us into the forest with them to cut wood, and they left us there to fend for ourselves. We made a trail of white stones, and when the moon came up it lit the stones and we found our way home
.

He knew this story.

“Do you remember being in the woods?” she was saying. “Did you talk with the lawyer about it? Bayard Charles? What did you tell Mr. Charles? Freddy, do you remember what happened in the woods?”

“Bread-ah-crumbs,” he said. Nodding a little faster, bouncing his knees and his whole bent spine.

Bread crumbs
, Ava agreed.
The second time they led us deeper into the forest, and again they left us to fend for ourselves. This time we tore off bits of bread to make a trail, but when the moon came up there were no more crumbs. The birds had eaten them up. We were lost.

“Birds,” he said. “Ah-lost-ah.”

“Who is lost?” she asked. “Did you and the boy get lost in the woods? You and James, Jimmy. Were you lost?”

Nodding, bouncing. The rules scuttling and darting all over the wall, broken.

“Freddy, please won’t you tell me what happened? What were you doing when they found you in the woods? Were you looking for the boy, for Jimmy?”

NO PROFANITY

REMAIN SEATED

NO LOUD TALKING/LAUGHING

“Freddy. Fred. Look at me.”

Noddingnodding. His knees were bouncing. And his hands, locked together, bounced on his knees.
Here is the church, here is the steeple
.

“Why can’t you look at me? Freddy, did you do something? Did you do something to make the boy run away?”

Open the doors
.
Where are the people?

“Did you hurt him? The doctor—they said his wrist was broken. And,” she touched her side—

NO TOUCHING

“Two ribs. Do you know about that? Can you tell me? Did it happen by accident? Did he fall?”

He felt himself sliding. He would fall.

“Just tell me, please. Please. Fred. Tell me the story.”

No
, he said. He put his hands over his ears.
No loud talking
.

Hush
, said Ava.
Calm down. Hold still. You want to hear more of the story?

Noddingnoddingnodding.

Take your hands off your ears.

He let them fall.

After three days of wandering, we came upon a cottage made of bread, with a roof made of cake. Windowpanes of clear sugar. Remember? You broke off a bit of roof, and I began to nibble on a window
.

Nibble, nibble.

Yes, I began to nibble and then we heard a voice come from inside the house: Nibble nibble little mouse—

No!

—who’s that nibbling at my house?

“No!” His voice roared out of him. It scared him. “No loud-ah talking!” He banged his hands over his ears. It didn’t help. He banged them again and banged them again and he roared and roared and roared. “No loud-ah talking! No loud-ah talking! No loud-ah talking!”

The man hurt him when he tried to pull his hands off his ears.

Another man had to come and hold his other arm.

They held his arms behind his back again, like in the woods.

It took three men to get him out of the room.