Thunderstruck & Other Stories (17 page)

On her way out she switched off the light.

“Hey!” said Asher Blackbird.

“Whoops,” she said. “Force of habit.” She turned to go. The pajamas were too big for her. You couldn’t see the shape of her body underneath, just the tint of her skin beyond, the rolled nylon seams a shade darker, the way they hung off her. That was what he remembered later.
What color were the pajamas?
the police asked.
What sort of mood was she in?
He didn’t know. Her pajamas were too big. He wished she would buy new ones.

“When I die,” the five-year-old told his little sister, who was three, “I won’t be in the forest.”

“
I’m
not going die,” she answered.

“You will, Jane. Nothing lasts forever.”

“I’m not going
die
,” she clarified.

“When you’re an old woman, you will.”

“I’m not going die!”

“Jane! Listen! Calm down. It will be so, so peaceful.”

But she was already crying.

Their mother called down the hall: “What’s going on in there?”

“Desi says I’m going
die
!”

“Desi!”

“I didn’t say
now
. But she
will
die. Everyone does!”

“I’m not going die! Mama!”

“Desi, tell your sister she’s not going to die. Janie, you’re not—nobody’s dying.”

“But—”

“Nobody’s dying,” their mother said firmly.

But somebody was dying, downstairs in the den that overlooked the woods behind the town house. His name was Peter Elroy, once a well-known name, still known in some circles, though never for the reasons he’d hoped. Years ago he had been the best friend of the children’s father. More recently and for longer they’d been enemies. So why had he come? Because a broken promise will tie two people together more surely than any ceremony.

His wife had arranged the visit, had called the boy’s father to say that Peter Elroy was dying and was trying to put his affairs in order. That wasn’t true. He was dying, yes, but it was his wife who was putting things in order. You needed to think of the last line of your obituary, Myra liked to say—to be fair, she’d advanced this theory before Peter’s diagnosis. You want to give people hope. So she had called and extracted an invitation. She would deliver Peter and go see her sister, who lived nearby, whom Peter Elroy loathed. Evie, the sister, was made of rice pudding, body and soul. One of the things that rice-pudding Evie had once said to him: “You take up all the available oxygen in any room.” Of course he did. That was how you
won
. You took up as much of the available anything as you could.

Ian wants to see you
, Myra had said, and Peter Elroy
had answered,
Ian doesn’t want to see me
. But his wife, who liked to make people hope, had made him hope. They got to the awful place, a duplex in a development called Drake’s Landing (though there was no landing nor body of water to land from nor any interested party named Drake), only to be told that Ian Casey had been called away on business and would be back the next day. Ian’s wife, who broke the news, was decades younger. She had long black hair with the kind of ragged hem that came of never having it cut. “He gives his greatest regrets,” she said. “But please, come in.” The note said in Ian’s dyspeptic scrawl,
Sorry, sit tight and I’ll be back
. The paper was now crumpled in the otherwise empty leather trash can in the corner of the den-slash-guest-room.

What was killing Peter Elroy was pancreatic cancer.

Now he sat, jilted, ditched, first by Ian and then by his own wife. When they had found out that Ian had gone, he had turned to Myra and said, “Let’s go.” She looked helpless, shook her head. “No, love,” she said, and he understood this had never been about seeing Ian: it had been about Myra, her need for the oxygen he was always gobbling up. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

His polarized glasses had turned amethyst against the sun that came through the sliding doors. Outside the house it was winter, sort of, but bright and clear, with thin snow cover that showed the pentimenti of fallen leaves and tree roots beneath it. His glasses were the opposite of the weather: overcast when it was bright, clear when it was cloudy. They suited his mood. The visiting invalid. He had been parked. Really, thought Peter Elroy, he should be in a
wheelchair, with a plaid lap robe. Instead he sat on a white leather sofa whose every part seemed either to recline or slide away for storage. Everything in terrible taste, the sectional sofa (what a word, as though the sofa wished to perform surgery on you), the characterless glass desk, the framed art that looked like smudged Xeroxes of stock photos, the whole cheaply built development. A bronzeish pot the size of a toddler stood in the corner, as though punished, and he knew that even the arrangement of branches therein had been purchased at a store. The living room was filled with fake antiques. The sofa was distressed. So was the table. So (joked Peter Elroy to himself) was Peter Elroy. Truthfully, he was so delighted at the badness of the taste that he could ignore the shame of that delight, and the wisp of sorrow that none of his long-ago lessons had stuck.

Of course there were the film posters in the den, each exactly the same size and framed the same way. Four of them, the newest more than ten years old. No poster for the first one: Peter Elroy’s star vehicle, the reason he and Ian had not spoken in thirty years.

“Why are you wearing a ring on your little finger?” the boy asked. He stood in the doorway of the den, almond-eyed and brunet, like his young mother. Nothing of his father’s swaybacked puffed-chest stance.

“It’s a signet ring.”

“Men don’t wear jewelry,” the boy said.

“Don’t they? Your father has a wedding ring, surely. Not even his first. Third wife, no doubt third wedding ring. Unless he recycles them. Does he?”

The boy said, “You don’t have a wedding ring.”

“Wedding rings are a continental affectation. I have the important piece of equipment.”

“What?”

“A wife. Original model. Myra.”

“What?”

“My wife’s named Myra. Where’s your sister?”

“Asleep.”

“Wake her up, why don’t you. Send her in.”

After thinking about it, the boy said, “I’m supposed to look out for her.”

Peter Elroy laughed. “Fair enough.”

“I know everything about mummies,” said the boy.

“I don’t doubt it. The funerary arts. If I don’t last the week, tell your parents I’d like a few dead cats in my tomb. Don’t bother about mummification.”

“They take the brains out with hooks through the nose.”

“I know. Happened to me once.”

“No it didn’t.”

“No, it didn’t. I’m joking. Where’s your father? Making a movie?”

“What?”

“Don’t say what. Say, I beg your pardon.”

The boy sat in the wheeled chair at the glass desk and opened its drawer. “He’s teaching a master class,” he said at last.

“Of course. Not just a
class
. A
master
class. Do you watch his movies?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t get screen time.”

“What does that mean?”

“No TV or computers or stuff like that.”

“Ah.” Peter Elroy leaned back and the sofa tilted. The movement was a knife in his back. He struggled to get himself upright. “No television! No computers! What century is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what century it is?”

“No,” said the boy.

“Lucky,” said Peter Elroy. He had the sense on the leather sofa of being a dollar bill folded into a wallet. No. Not a dollar bill. A receipt. “What I wouldn’t give. I had rather too much screen time, courtesy of your father. That’s what happened to
me
. Did you know that?”

“No,” said the boy.

“Ask your father. He’s a wolf.”

The boy thought about this. “He’s not.”

“I don’t mean it badly,” Peter Elroy lied. He hadn’t meant to bring up the documentary, or wolves, either. “Wolves are marvelous creatures. Do you know about them? They’re not small. Everyone imagines them as small. They’re this big.” He held his hand up over his head. “You must never say anything bad about a wolf.”

“Why not?”

“Because they will eat you. Like this.” He lunged and barked. “Let’s hear you do a wolf.”

The boy tried.

“That’s a
coyote
,” said Peter Elroy in a disgusted voice. “Wolf. Listen.”

He’d been dreaming of wolves lately; he had wolves on the brain. In his dreams he couldn’t tell whether they’d come to protect him or rip him to shreds, and though he
thought about telling Myra, he was worried she would say,
Well, it’s obvious. Wolf equals death
. She prided herself these days on how easily she could say
death
and
dying
, and Peter Elroy was mostly grateful for that ease.

No, he thought now. The wolf wasn’t death.

“Try again,” he said to the boy, but then the Young Mother poked her head into the den and said, “Could there be less howling, please?”

On her hip she balanced the little girl, who had a look of Victorian disapproval on her face. Even the girl’s dark hair looked annoyed and half-awake.

“Let’s go make lunch,” the Young Mother said to her.

“I don’t vant to. I vant to stay my Desi.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said the boy.

The Young Mother looked at Peter Elroy. “Please,” he said, and meant it. Three-year-olds were worse at conversation than five-year-olds, but on the other hand they were better people. They lacked ambition. He sensed that the boy already believed himself to be the smartest person in any room.

“Down you go,” the Young Mother said to the girl, and set her on the floor. “Can I get you anything, Peter?”

“Glass of cold arsenic.”

“We’re out.”

“A glass of white wine, then.”

She looked at her watch. “Really?”

“Palliative,” he explained. He turned to the girl. “Can
you
do a wolf?”

“All right,” the Young Mother said dubiously, and left the room.

“Rawer!”
said the girl, showing her little pointed incisors.

“Very good,” said Peter Elroy. “Extremely frightening.”

“Jane thinks she’s not going to die,” the boy offered.

Peter Elroy appraised her. “If anyone could buck the system, it’ll be Jane here.”

“But everybody dies!” the boy said, exasperated. “That’s how it
works
.”

“Rawer!”
the girl said again.

“No, Jane. Like this.” The boy howled from his stomach. It was a good performance. “I’m not afraid of wolves,” he said when he was done.

“That’s not interesting,” Peter Elroy said. “Let’s talk about what you
are
afraid of. Mummies?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” said the boy.

“Ghosts, then.”

“I’m not afraid of ghosts. I’m not afraid of pirates. I’m not afraid of lions.”

“I’m not afraid lions,” said the little girl.

“Shh, Jane. I’m not afraid of vampires.”

“I’m afraid vampires,” the girl said sadly.

“Me, too,” said Peter Elroy.

“I’m afraid volves,” said the little girl.

“I’m kind of afraid of bullies,” said the boy.

“I was a bully,” said Peter Elroy. “A man needs to be a bully, if he wants to get anything done. Your father will tell you otherwise, I imagine, but do you know what? Your father is a bully. Bigger bully than me.”

The boy frowned, his eyebrows serious. “My dad is
not
a bully.”

“He bullied me pretty bad. One day you’ll watch that movie and see. There’s nothing like a wolf, you know. A volf. Your father,” he said, and then he stopped. He told himself it was the morphine that was making him talk to small children like this, but he would have any day of his life: he just spent no time with children. “You must look after your parents, you know. Otherwise the wolves will eat you.”

“Will they really?” said the boy.

“Not out of
meanness
. It’s just their nature.”

The boy scratched his chin in a cartoon of thoughtfulness. “How do you get them not to?”

“You talk to them. Wolves are very reasonable. Do you speak wolf?”

The children shook their heads, but the girl said, “I do, a little bit,” and she measured with her index finger and thumb the little bit of wolf she spoke.

“No, you don’t,” said the boy.

“It’s all right,” said Peter Elroy, “I’m fluent.”

Eventually the Young Mother cleared the children out for lunch. She put the glass of wine on the desk, where he couldn’t reach it. “You rest,” she said to Peter Elroy. “That sofa reclines, if you’re interested.”

She had not mentioned his diagnosis, and he knew that she wouldn’t. This was the trouble with a terminal illness: you weren’t allowed to be sick, you were only dying, and nobody wanted the answer to the question
How are you feeling?
to be
Ever closer to death, thanks
.

Once she’d gone, he sat back carefully, so as not to call any of the sofa’s hardware into action. For a moment he
imagined making a break for it while the children ate their lunch. He would step through the sliding glass doors and just—go. He could picture them opening the door to the den, warily at first (so as not to disturb him), then flinging it open, then looking around in shock. The strange gentleman was gone. Perhaps he’d leave his cuff links and ring behind, perhaps nothing but a cutting scent that might be either an expensive cologne or a cheap antiseptic. They’d touch the leather of the sofa where he’d been sitting.
It’s still warm. He can’t have gotten far
.

The truth was he wasn’t sure he could stand up off the sofa. Instead he looked at the woods, not filled with wolves but dotted with chipmunks. The trees were so slender you could see the passing traffic on their far side.

Peter Elroy, disappear? He had no talent for it. That was the problem.

Unlike Ian, whose name was at the bottom of those four posters (where
was
Peter’s?) but who wasn’t in evidence anywhere else in this awful, characterless house—and hadn’t Peter tried to teach Ian that character was everything? Even the children seemed to belong only to the wife, lean and dark, whatever her family background was: she was some ethnic cocktail he couldn’t pinpoint, and that irked him, he wanted to ask her what she was, but you weren’t allowed to do that anymore.