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an excerpt from the novel
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They rest in your lap, they sit, they wait. So well-behaved. Tightly knit, like the closest of families.
Your hands. I still can't stop thinking about your fingers. I rehearse each one before I go to sleep, starting with the left pinkie, ending with the right. Oh, that final pinkie.
They sit, they rest, they clasp. This was one of the joys of having you in my house: you sit, creating a lap on which to clasp your hands together. Each finger laces around its doppelgänger, facing its twin. They clasp like, like nothing but your hands.
If you were here, I'd take out my sewing kit and mend. I'd thread my way through your fingers, twisting and tightening until they squeeze together, blushing scarlet down to the palms, a web of white lines forming where the thread cuts into the flesh. And then I'd sew the rest of you, arms into legs, press your flat stomach down to your thighs, weave you together into a basket. I wouldn't be the first to take you in pieces.
For you were made in pieces, one delicate limb at a time. Or perhaps on an assembly line, Taylorized, a dozen hands at once, a baker's dozen of legs per batch, an extra thrown in in case of defective workmanship. But even so, Simon, teams of craftsmen would still be needed to forge you, weld arm to torso, torso to leg. It could take months of work to design such a specimen.
Or perhaps not. Maybe you were a quickie, done in one long night in a sweatshop, strictly non-union, the machinery working late into the third shift. Those machines get hot. They spew out legs, thighs, hands, even fists, if they're not monitored properly. Just one spark, the foreman, an old guy named Little Eddy, warns the young guys on the line, and the whole fuckin' place blows. So you'd better, whaddayacallit, be careful.
Be careful. The first words you heard. Your ears were still molten when you heard them. Synapses, cilia, circuits: were they imprinted at that exact moment, shaped around the sounds?
Be careful.
I. Hands, Feet
So let's start with before. Feet first. Bare and white, his toes peeked out from beneath the shiny green leaves of my tomato plants. I glanced out at the garden to see if the soil needed watering, so I saw the feet first. I watched them for a few minutes, mesmerized by the carefully clipped toenails, before it occurred to me to look up and see whose feet they were.
It was a man. A naked man stood in my garden. A short naked man, sweating in the hot June sun. He faced my tomato plants like they were a wall, pissing away on them. I squinted, fingers fishing in my apron pocket for the glasses that would reveal who the hell was pissing in my garden. As the lenses sharpened the man into focus, I saw it was a boy.
Just a boy, on the edge of thirteen, maybe younger. Or older; a few straggly blond hairs roughened his chin. He shook his thing free of pee and scratched his chest and stood there, glaring. A kid. His eyes scanned my house, my garden. Something about his stance, the way he straightened his back and tilted his head to one side, gave me the odd sensation that he was listening for orders.
His feet were firmly rooted behind my Big Boy Burpees, the kind the catalogue advertises as featuring a big steak-tomato flavor, robust ruby color, and a bush habit. And indeed, even then, when they were still green, the tomatoes were meat-red inside, like raw steak. The feet were small and narrow, outdoor feet, yellow calluses visible on the sides.
I stood and watched the feet for a full minute or two. They didn't move. The Burpees swayed on the vine, the hot June wind nudging them back and forth. But the feet remained planted.
I didn't investigate. Not that time. I figured it could just be a Colony kid, playing hide-and-seek, waiting to be caught. But that didn't make sense. A regular kid would never stand so still.
I turned away from the window and went to turn the radio on, no rain expected. At the tone, the time will be six forty-five A.M. Beep! I flipped it off, distracted by the foreign body in my soil. Whose kid was it? With only seven families left, I knew all the Colony kids by face if not by name. Let's see: there's that Goldstein girl with the lisp. As I measured out the coffee, I ran down the list: Mady's Joseph with the drool on his sweater; Shep and Gladys' zaftig Lucy, the Feldsteins' brats, whaddya call them?…but they were all grown and gone already.
I looked back at the boy. His face was too pale, too raggedy to be a Colony kid's anyway. Maybe some poor relative from the City is visiting one of the families, I reasoned. The Goldsteins: they've got carloads full of cousins that come in from Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey. Or the Katz's cousins, maybe.
Or maybe not. I watched the boy pick a scab off the side of his leg, and then pick another one on the other leg, so symmetrical. He could just be a runaway, fresh off the train. He wakes and it's no longer the city outside. Trees lean into the road and the dark and the road. He feels not dirty, no, not cheap, either, despite the three fives folded up in his trousers pocket that the man in the gray suit had stuffed there after they left the hotel. He feels like James Dean: mean and clean, striding through a drive-in flick, one of those j.d. specials where everything's scrubbed and shiny, even the beatnik hangouts. Yeah, he's a real-live movie beatnik, daddyo! He laughs, wishing he had someone to share the joke with.
The train stops, pulling up at an unfamiliar crossroads. He sits up in his seat and gets off, not caring where the hell he is, anywhere but Lewisboro. He looks north, towards goddamn Lewisboro. If he were James Dean, he'd light a cigarette and push up the collar on his jacket, but instead he takes out his bandanna and slips it over his neck like a scarf or a noose or a pirate.
Is that how he came? Perhaps. I looked away, flipping the radio to 94.3 WQXR, my station, At the tone it will be seven A.M. Stay tuned for News and Views. Beep!, and when I glanced back, he was gone. I was glad; I didn't want to be worrying about tomato boys with bush habits messing up my garden.
But the next morning, there he was again, feet digging into the soft fertilized earth. He was peeing again, facing me this time, aiming a steady stream straight at my tomato plants. This time, I saw more than feet.
He really could be a spy. Were there more, planted behind each of the, what was it now, seventeen houses in the Colony? Most of the houses were already abandoned, but the planters might not know that. One fake kid per house?
An electronic buzzing noise was audible, even through the glass windows. I cocked my head: yes, it was coming from him. ZZZZZZZSssss. His mouth wasn't moving; his lips were shut tight, but that sound kept buzzing. A spy? A robot spy? I'd heard about the labs where ex-Nazis grew strange men the exact size and shape of boys.
I walked down our driveway, out onto Old Colony Road, and strode up to the Feinsteins' gray saltbox to see if there was a boy in their tomatoes, too. Their garden didn't look so good; the snap peas were overripe, wrinkling on the vine like old green men.
They've fled, I thought angrily. Those Feinsteins, they know about the spies, and they've gone back to their brownstone in Brooklyn. They'll let the bush beans, heirloom tomatoes, even the late-summer broccoli rot until the Feds are gone. Smart cookies, those Feinsteins. But the Feds are smarter. There'll be a small blond boy in their garden one day in Brooklyn, Queens, California, or wherever the hell they end up. They'll get them.
I walked back up the road to my driveway. Our garden was on the side of the house, out of view of the front, so I couldn't see if the boy was still there. I didn't want him to see me watching him. Bide your time, Sylvie, I told myself. Be careful.
So I walked as quietly as possible up the driveway and back into my house, hoping he wouldn't hear my thighs rubbing together as I strode. My fat thighs make funny noises, like two old ladies sighing at a bridge game, and I don't like other people listening to them.
Once I was back inside my house, I made myself a cup of coffee: not the instant drek my Max preferred, but the real McCoy. I tried moving slowly, casually, no big deal, mister, just making my slow-drip coffee, in case he was watching me. Finally, I poured my coffee in a big gray mug, no cream, no sugar, set my chair in front of the kitchen window, and sat down, leaning back and crossing my legs. Only then did I let myself gaze out the window, as if I didn't care if there were a million blond boys pissing around in my tomato plants.
But he was gone. All that was left were four indentations near the tomato plants, where his feet had dug into the ground. High arches: each footprint made two marks, where the heel and toes pressed down, but nothing in the middle. Between the footprints, the earth was dark.
Pee is bad for tomato plants. It's awful for the soil--drains it of nutrients, murders the roots. It's too acidic for tomatoes; only pine trees need all that acid. And we don't have any pines in our yard. I stared out at the footprints, noticing the darkened splotch of earth beside them. Goddamn pisher, ruining my tomatoes.
Pulling out a pack of red licorice from my gardening pants, I ripped into the candy. "Goddamn little pisher!" I yelled between mouthfuls. Ridiculous!
The phone rang. I picked it up and heard a throat clear, a cough, and a click click. Then, only dead air.
I folded up the licorice wrapper carefully and put it in my pocketbook, as though nothing was wrong. Using a pencil from my purse as a toothpick, I cleaned my gums. I put the pencil back.
Now what?
I dialed Gladys, to see if she was having phone buggers, too.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Gladys."
"Sylvia." She said my name like it was a fact answering a question: what is the state capital of New Jersey? Trenton. What is the name of the woman with the reddest hair in Sylvan Lake? Sylvia. Gladys turned single words into pronouncements.
"Gladys. Is there anything funny with Nebraska?"
She laughed. We had our little code words; Sheppie had insisted on it since January. Nebraska for phone bugs, Mickey Rooney for meetings, goldenrod for danger.
"Nebraska. Oh, yesiree, Nebraska sure is acting up again. Full of ears, if you follow."
I followed. "Me too. Nebraska is making all kinds of odd sounds. Coughs, wheezes, and then, nothing. The old girl is just full of it."
"Well, you bring it up at the meeting -- uh, Mickey Rooney. Don't forget: at two tomorrow, we're having a Mickey Rooney."
"Yeah, I'll be there. If Nebraska hasn't gotten me first."
"Sylvie. Darling. Oy, such a card. You take care and don't miss the meet-- Mickey Rooney."
"Of course not, darling. Give my love to Shep."
So Gladys was having the bugs today, too. She was, I was, probably everyone was. It had started three weeks ago: random bugging, no pattern. But now it seemed like every other call a fishy sound filled the receiver. Between the phone bugs and the Mickey Rooneys, I forgot about the tomato pisser.
But the next day, there he was again. I caught him in the act, or finishing the act, at least: he was jiggling his thing, shaking off the last of the pee.
I squinted to get a closer look: uncircumcised. Not one of ours.
He noticed me watching and threw a glare back through the glass doors, but stood his ground. I froze, my cheeks burning. Nothing moved, except that gold trickle wending its way through the tomato plants. There was silence, no buzzing this time. I stared at him, and he stared back as he jiggled off the last drop.
Definitely a spy, I decided. Who else would stare me down in my own garden?
He started to pee again, holding his thing carefully, as though it might escape his grasp. Does this boy do anything but pee? His piss was bright yellow, like a neon gas sign, FILL UP HERE. How did they get it so yellow? Did he drink a special tea? Is his piss loaded with poisons, invisible to the eye? They must know that I eat my tomatoes raw off the vine, unwashed, with just a dash of salt.
My lips tensed into my tight old-lady smile. I watched, holding myself still in that smile, as he peed in my plants.
He peed in a thick stream, steady and even and juicy. I pictured raspberries, raspberries out of season, with that whiskery fuzz that covers them when they're not quite fresh. I'd squeeze the liquid out of them, straight on to my tongue. Watch those hairs!
Then it was later. And he was gone. And I was outside, gardening.
I don't know how I got there. All I remember is that I was in the kitchen and then I was in the garden.
As I came to, my thoughts raced. Did he have some special chemical in his pee that even at a distance, through air, walls, glass, could stun me as he made his escape? How did he get me out here? Did he slip me a, whaddyacallit, a mickey? What the hell was going on?
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. Don't think crazy thoughts now, Sylvie old girl. There was no boy; it was just some ferkakte hot-flash dream. It was afternoon, late June and hot, and I was frozen. Maybe I'd come outside to garden, fallen asleep right in the middle, and now here I was.
My hands were numb inside my gardener's gloves from too much mulching. I'd been outside gardening for longer than I'd realized. Dead man's hands, I thought as I peeled the gloves off each gray finger.
I went inside and washed my hands under hot water in the sink until the life came back.
II. Fans
Louie was making accordion fans by folding up some old blue paper flyers about snow removal. He creased them unevenly, trying to get the job done too quick, handing out one while starting to fold another.
The six other raggedy remainders sat on wooden folding chairs in a circle with their blue fans. The Barn was hot and dank: like a real barn, full of seven sweaty animals. Some didn't even bother to make fanning gestures; they just held the fans still in their laps. Others, thinking this might be an important new document, unfolded their fans, read the notice about the change in our policy on snowplows, wrinkled their sweating brows in confusion, realized the notice was dated "February 1953," just some damn memo from last winter, and crumpled them up. But there was no garbage can, so they, too, had to hold the crushed paper in their laps.
We didn't sing. As I sat down, I wondered when it was exactly that we'd stopped opening meetings with a round of the "Internationale," then a workers' song like "Union Maid" or "Joe Hill," and finally "The Star-Spangled Banner": an odd troika I didn't miss.
"Comrades, Workers!" Shep bellowed. "Let's start. Agenda?" Always an agenda with Sheppie. He was a real commandante, my Shep, straight out of the ranks of ILGWU, the worst sort, the kind who actually enjoys meetings. I always hated that about him, even back when those gray blue eyes turned me wild.
The fanners kept fanning; the crumplers crumpled. I folded.
"Which of you momzers was supposed to make up the agenda?" Shep was neither a fanner, folder, or crumpler. He hadn't bothered to take a fan at all. Instead, Sheppie rubbed his beard. Party leaders always sport these bushy beards; even the ones like Shep, who lack much hair on top, managed the full comrade beard. Nobody spoke. He rubbed his beard again, and glared. I thought of the stray hairs on the boy's chin, like specks of dill scattered in a potato salad.
"Gladys? I think it was you." Shep talked to her like she was his inept secretary, not his wife. "Nu, Gladys?" he repeated. Everyone looked down at their fans, hoping it would be over fast.
Gladys snorted, pushing her glasses up her nose, fanning furiously. "No siree. It most certainly was not my job. For chrissakes, Sheppie, let's just get started already, agenda or no agenda. We all know what we need to discuss here, nu?" She scowled at Shep, and smiled at us.
Talk, talk, and more talk. The thing here is…Nu you alter kockers! Don't you see that…But see here, you're forgetting what Bakunin wrote in…To hell with the lot of you! I say…Well I say…
Talk about talk: should we talk first or just go straight to it and vote? Should the Central Committee decide or should we all vote? Should we, should we not?
Only seven of us left, and still it took hours to talk each item into the grave! I put my fan in my purse, thinking of Rose squirreling away dinner rolls at restaurants, only to forget to remove them when she gets home. We're all squirrelers in my family, but my sister is the worst. Rose and rolls: what a pair. My mother, she would take care to remember whatever she'd hidden in her purse, distributing the stale booty for days after our monthly outing to the diner on Avenue J: "Who wants rolls? Girls? Rolls? It's a shame to let them go to waste." Rose never remembers to distribute; it's the squirreling she prizes. She gives me a crooked grin each time she opens her purse and pops them in, as if she's pleased with herself for remembering to steal. Me, I never bother with rolls. Who needs all the crumbs? It's paper that finds its way into my purse: programs, notices, store receipts, scribbled grocery lists, quotes, notes, the odd newspaper article. Paper always finds me.
I played with my blue fan, half-listening, unfolding it carefully as Louie made a motion. "Everybody but the CCC gotta leave now." Elaine left the room, grinning like it was an honor to be the last follower. And then it was the six of us, the Central Committee of the Sylvan Lake Colony, or Colony Central Committee, CCC, such a big name for six people representing seven. Louie and Shep always insisted on giving fancy-shmancy names to everything. They'd have named each tree if they could: the Lenin Freedom Spruce, the Marx Manpower Maple.
The big talkers--Gladys, Shep, Joe, Mady--talked:
"We need to dissolve ourselves, fast, now. Today." Gladys wanted the quick fix, of course.
"No, no. That's exactly what the bastards want. We need to sit tight, and wait 'til this blows over. Then, the Revolution will sweep over the whole country and we'll be on the front lines of Justice." Mady was a heel-digger, a head-burier: the worse it looked for us, the harder she'd cling to the old Party line. Revolution Now! Revolution Forever! Revolution Today! Or next Wednesday.
"That's all talk." Joe narrowed his baggy eyes and rubbed his chest. "Comrades, there isn't gonna be a revolution; we gotta cover our asses before they fry us up and serve us to McCarthy with a side of potatoes. I ain't kidding, Sheppie." Joe Schwartz never was one to kid.
"What we need is strategy, a solid strategy. We need to get the whole Party leadership in on this, the boys from Brooklyn, the tool-and-dye crowd." Sheppie got the last word, of course.
Fans, coughs, loud dissension. The noise level rose. Joe sneezed, shpritzy and loud. He wiped his nose vigorously on his unfolded fan. Short and stocky, built like a wrestler with a street hood's brilliantined black crew cut, Joe was the youngest and toughest member. The other young guys were long gone, back to the city or off to the suburbs the second they'd smelled trouble, but not Joe. He'd worked the line, he'd fought the bastards in Spain, and he'd been in with the wise guys, the real wise guys down on Delancey. He'd broken a few necks and kicked a few asses along the way, and he wasn't about to let us forget about it. "Joltin' Joe," the boys kidded, though he never had DiMaggio's calm. Joe was always wiping or rubbing something: he rubbed his chest when he talked, in a harsh nervous motion over his heart. Elaine, his dopey wife, grimaced as he rubbed, but I never found it repulsive when Joe did these slightly disgusting things: it just seemed violently energetic, as though a little explosion was coming out of his nose or hand or tap-tapping foot.
"Face facts, folks." Joe was still rubbing as he talked. "They're closing in on us. They've got us but good: phones bugged, secret agents, even undercover spies." He glanced meaningfully at each person in the room. Could one of us be one of them? "We gotta think smart. Let's lay low, duck down until the capitalists eat their own goddamn tails. They're out for Commies, and they're gonna find themselves a Commie or two to fry if we let 'em."
Sheppie started humming the chorus of the "Internationale" defiantly. "Arise ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want." A few others joined in, off-key, half-hearted. Joe glowered at Shep. I fanned myself, not singing.
"Listen, Comrades! I got a plan. Otherwise, it's gonna be a goddamn inquisition here," Joe shouted over the dying "Internationale," rubbing himself with extra vigor. "We go private. Divvy up the property, the crops, the tools; hell, even our houses. On paper, at least, Sylvan Lake will be just another lousy Levittown."
Shouts, harrumphs, a few loud protests. I was getting dizzy from the heat, the smell of sweaty foreheads, all Joe's crazy ideas. We were going to change our papers? Turn capitalist? Through paper? I imagined the blue paper fans turned into crisp dollar bills, five clutched in each person's hand, fanning dollars like mad.
More shouts, arguments, griping. I couldn't pay attention. The boy's nails upon his knees, one leg, then the other, symmetrical, the twin twinge of relief and pain beneath the nail, eyes tearing as he scratches, iris veined gray like a sultan cabbage, left leg, right leg, harder, my legs tingling in sympathy. And then it was over.
"Enough discussion," said Joe. "We've been going back and forth for weeks. It's dopey; we all know what the score is. Comrades, workers: it's over. The Colony is over." He paused, as if someone were going to challenge him. But nobody did; he'd said the one and only thing that could put a lid on this gang. I stopped rubbing my knees. "Okay. So that's settled. Now we need a plan, a real plan. I say we need to turn the Sylvan Lake Collective Colony into private property, and fast. We gotta wipe out every last pinko aroma before the Feds set in."
Before the Feds set in...or are they already in? Here, right here, who knows who has turned, who is taping, who is talking, who will get on the 8:10 Local right after this meeting and head back into the city, stop for a quick beer in Grand Central, then talk fast and cheap to who knows who in god knows which office?
Nobody said this. But eyes weren't met, Shep turned away, and everyone wondered who else was listening.
"So, Sheppie, Joe, what about the Barn?" Gladys piped in, saving us from the Feds. She was always good with the details, that Gladys. She was a big gun back in the Doll and Toy Maker's Union, moving from factory piecework to organizing the whole shop in no time flat. Gladys the Detail Gal. Gladys, Sheppie's Gal. Or so she liked to think.
"The Barn?" Louie didn't get it.
"Yeah, the Barn," I echoed. "Who's gonna own the Barn, if everything's gonna be private property, nu?" My own words surprised me. I'd never really liked the Barn. I hate fakes, and the Barn was Queen of the Phonies.
Now, I knew barns. I'd lived right beside one, on my cousin's New Jersey dairy farm. I'd lived out there for a year when I was eight, when my mother couldn't feed all six of us and figured that, out on a farm, at least there'd be food. And there was: sluggish cows, surly ducks, chickens, chicken shit, hens, cats, and too many cousins clamoring for more. Our barn meant food, work, shit, shelter. We never gave the Jersey barn a second thought: it was the animals who worried us, the sick or pregnant or not-pregnant or dying animals.
But this Barn was no barn. It was a fake, from the wood beams, chemically treated to look dark and weatherworn, to the big barn doors, found at auction in Queens, to the smell of straw, remnants of a failed attempt at making a hayride for the kids one year on May Day. The straw, bought from a local farmer for fifty cents a bale--an outrageous price!--still scented the air with a dry, furry musk that reminded me of all the horses who had never set hoof in our barn.
And now here we were, waxing sentimental about a barn that had never held a single animal, save the occasional field mouse. Yet I hated the thought of somebody owning it. We built it together: Max, me, Shep, and a few of the others in the room. It was ours--vermin, wooden beams, overpriced hay, spies and bugs and all. It seemed strange, embarrassing, even, to discuss the Barn's fate while sitting within its walls. I glared at Joe, hating him for betraying the Barn, filled with passion for the Barn, our drekky Barn, our own true fake. I had never really thought much about the Barn before, but now that I did, I confess: I was in love with the Barn.
"Who's gonna get the Barn?" I repeated.
Nobody answered. Louie furrowed his brows. Before he went bald, he was handsome, in a hairy short-guy sort of way. He knew hardware, he could fix a sink, he could build a road. A real mensch, a fixer, a straight shooter, a loyal comrade who didn't need to debate Lenin versus Trotsky to find the right side of the fence. But now, egg-bald, with such bushy gray eyebrows, he looked like a kook. Looking at him, I thought how the Feds would love to get a guy like this, a literal egghead, with movie-monster mad-scientist eyebrows and a crazy grin to boot. They wouldn't care what a regular guy he was; one look at that mug, and off to the Chair he'd go. His egghead brows furrowed a moment longer, and then finally he spoke. "Well, I guess we could, I don't know, turn it into a town hall or something. Whaddya think?"
The room exploded in dissension: whaddya mean, turn it into a town hall, we should tear it down, we should dig in our heels and stay, we should we should...
Louie just shook his head as the volume got louder. Nobody was listening to him anymore.
Everyone talked at once. Mady Feld shouted at Shep, "In Utah the Trotskyites turned their main building into a revolutionary fortress. A real fortress, I tell you!" While Shep announced to the general public, "A few hundred bricks I need, and I'll build a wall around the whole damn Colony that the Feds can't stick their schmucks through!"
Gladys grabbed my hand and quietly but energetically began whispering to me about her plan for building an in-ground pool behind her house, "where my azaleas are now. Once this fracas is over, and the rest of you leave, I'll be building my pool, and you--"
This was too much. I turned to Louie, cutting her off. "A town hall, eh Louie?" I'd rather hear about Louie's latest pipe dreams than about Gladys' pool plan.
"A town hall, I tell you," Louie boomed.
Of course it was Sheppie who got the floor back. "Town hall? You're talking the crazy talk, Louie. Next thing, you'll be suggesting we join the I-Like-Ike gonifs," Sheppie scoffed.
Everyone laughed. I think it was the phrase "town hall" that did poor Louie in that day. Nobody knew from town halls; we were Brooklyn kids, spawned from stoop ball mated with sweatshops on hot nights down on Avenue J.
I thought of the boy. Naked, outside a white colonial town hall, in stocks like those heavy wood contraptions the Puritans used, pissing on himself. The dark wood glistened like aluminum foil in the sunlight, brighter than metal. Nothing moved but the piss dribbling down his thigh.
The conversation was getting louder, rowdier. Joe and Louie were standing too close, shouting insults in each other's sweaty orange faces. Goddamn Bakuninist! Trotskyite! Turncoat! Class Traitor!
Too loud, too hot. The boy in stocks stayed in my head, drowning out the Barn.
Of course I didn't mention the boy in my garden. Instead, I got up, pushed my folding chair away, clutched my paper fan, and walked straight out of the Barn into my bed.
On top of the unmade covers, lying back in our four-poster, I fanned myself. How lovely it would be to have a room as blue as the blue paper fan. The white walls, green carpet, green covers inherited from Rose: they would all be so much more elegant in an eggshell blue.
The stocks slowly faded as I thought of my room turning blue, the Barn, too: everything repainted. I could see the boy and stocks blue, too, but I concentrated hard on my room, instead: the heavy ceiling fan grumbling as it turned, the covers bunched at my feet, and the walls, too white, ready for blue.
III. Spies, Tomatoes
The next day, I spied him again. I was up early, ready to garden, but it was overcast, the sky clouding up like a gloomy girl on the verge of tears, so I decided to stay inside and paint my bedroom blue.
By noon I was tired, and sick to death of the smell of turpentine. I put the paint cans, tarp, turpentine, and brushes back in the garage, showered the blue spots off my skin, and went into my kitchen to drink some coffee and wait for the paint to dry.
He wasn't peeing this time. No, he was eating a green tomato, biting into the tough skin. I watched him chew, the sour juice dribbling down his chin, his teeth so big and healthy, with a little chip on the front lefty. I could picture his baby teeth, straight white squares, smaller than these. He bit twice and chewed. Were they stored in a gray velvet box somewhere, stashed away in a drawer in his mother's vanity? After gobbling down the tomato, he pulled another off the vine and started in on it, naked and chewing. Bite, bite, chew: a waltz.
Maybe he's just a hungry boy, I thought as I swallowed down my coffee and hunted for some licorice in the pantry. A local kid, one of those Lewisboro boys you see riding on the back of their Pa's trucks. Maybe he'd had too much hooch with his buddies last night, and they'd stripped him naked and dumped him in my garden, yukking it up as they drove off in their beater. Or maybe they've finally come for me.
In a way, it would be a relief. I'd been waiting for them. Waiting for the phone to ring, for an official, too-friendly voice asking if you happen to know anyone--not you yourself, of course, Mrs. Edelman, but perhaps one of your neighbors, the Goldsteins, the Schwartzs, or that crazy old widow Mrs. Mady Feld née Horowitz--who is a member or friend of the Communist Party? We'd all been waiting for that call, preparing a response that we wouldn't mind hearing played back on one of those giant reels of shiny brown tape. Oh no, I don't know anyone or anything at all. I'm not the sort of gal who mixes much with politics. And I don't really know my neighbors. I spend most of my time in my garden, you see.
Or maybe they're smoother than that, adding the personal touch: Mrs. Edelman? Mrs. Sylvia Edelman? Jim Kantrowitz here. We went to P.S. 281 together. Remember me, Skinny Jimmy? Well, I'm not so skinny anymore, heh heh, but I'm still a crack chemistry whiz. How's Mr. E.? Oh. So sorry to hear that. He was one swell guy, your Max was. Well, I don't mean to be a pest, but I thought you might still be in touch with some of the old gang, say, Mady Feld, or Sheppie, uh, Shep and Gladys Goldstein? I'm trying to track them down for some official nonsense--yeah, I'm with the Bureau now--and I thought you might have a clue as to where in hell they all are now. Sheppie, what a gonif he was, huh? Such chutzpah, that one. Those were the good days, right Sylvie?
And without thinking I'd be telling him all about Gladys, Sheppie, Mady, maybe even mention a few he didn't think of. That's how they get you. One minute it's reminiscing about the yearbook, then it's the fellow-travelers list, and before you know it your ass is sizzling away on the Big Chair like a fatty slice of bacon. Better to forget about the good old gang, before the wrong ones remember you. Better to forget about Mady, Sheppie, even Charlie, who's dead what, twenty years by now?
I thought of Sheppie as I brooded about all this and watched the boy. They had similar cheekbones: high and wide, then curving in suddenly toward the chin. Cast from the same mold, as my father would say.
But I wasn't interested in molds, not me. My heart belongs to templates. I learned all about them from Max, back when he had the print shop. Templates remind me of those Greek gods we read about back in Mrs. Cohen's class: marble-limbed, impersonal vessels swooping down from on high to bother the foolish mortals below, shaping their destinies, yet remaining apart even as they grasp and fix whatever comes their way. I still appreciate a good template, a structure that stays still no matter how much garbage it's fed. What template did they use to get such fine cheekbones? What do the others look like, his manufactured "brothers" (or sisters? could there be girls, too? I can't imagine a girl-Simon; no, the facial hair gets in the way of that pretty picture)? This one could be a god, I decided, though certainly he's no Greek. He arched his eyebrows, meeting my gaze. High and blond, the brows gave his plain, even features a touch, just a light touch, of feminine glamour.
The clock in the hall struck twelve. Let him eat your tomatoes 'til he's sick, Max's dead voice piped in as the hammer-and-sickle clock began its routine. Forget about it, and he'll disappear in a few days. Spy or no spy, he'll be gone in a day or two if you just ignore him. I looked away and looked back. Such a face on this one!
The clock finished and Max faded. Time for another meeting at the Barn. Another round of mishegas and gibberish, everyone wanting to be top dog, captain of the ship even as it sinks.
I lingered a moment longer, my gaze dropping from the boy's brow to his lashes. I didn't notice the eyes, that time; just the lashes. They're too long for a boy, I thought as I bustled around the house to get ready. Too long for a girl, for that matter. A china doll's lashes, glued on one at a time. Doll face, you've got the cutest little doll face, I hummed as I left the house, not looking back at the boy.
Jennifer Natalya Fink lives in Brooklyn, New
York. She is the author of the novel, Burn, and has won a variety of other awards for her fiction, including The Dana Award in the Novel, STORY Magazine's
Short Fiction Award, The Georgetown Review's Fiction Award, and the Billy
Heekin Foundation Award. She received her Ph.D. from NYU, and is the
co-editor of Performing Hybridity (Minnesota) and several other anthologies.
She is a professor at Pratt Institute, and also teaches at NYU, Gotham
Writers' Workshops, and Makor. She received artist's residencies from the Saltonstall
Foundation, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts.
Fink is the Founder
and Executive Director of The Gorilla Press, a non-profit organization
dedicated to promoting children's literacy through
bookmaking. She is listed in the 2002-2003 Who's
Who in America, and serves on the boards of many
other organizations. Currently, she is working on a
collection of short stories and essays, 13 Fugues, and a new
novel, Veronica.
back to the Jennifer Natalya Fink page
read an interview with Jennifer Natalya Fink by D. Travers Scott
read more about the novel Burn
email Jennifer Natalya Fink
an excerpt from Burn © 2003 Jennifer Natalya Fink
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