1

.After : ■'tg
pAJISfKS ^ titl<a.y ’ ' ; ■ —,t ROOMT^R ^^ !iiAI6t&

se-ATi Mit« I^V'

In the past the endless panes of glass would
have protected a nanny in white, her hand guarding the
child in knickers, riding a hobby horse* a Parson stalking

the Lord in dark books.

The house was large with a brick driveway and the
curved protruding windows of doctor's old-fashioned waiting
rooms. Most of the homes in that section of the city over
looking the bay even now belonged to doctors or lawyers or
ancient ladles who spent the summer days wrapped in rugs
before cold fireplaces, but the Andersons were young and
from the midwest, renting the house because it was cheap
and convenient and because the men in Anderson s office
had recommended it when he told them that they wanted their
own place — a big place, big enough for her paintings and
his books. They had come in May and were still bewildered
by the rotting but insistent sensibilities of the people
and the archaic calm of a neighborhood so close to the city,
though even the city Itself was a bit archaic,as some northern
metropolises are, with its granite statue of Longfellow,
supported by marble and flowers, in the square and its

flatiron-shaped buildings.
 2

After the weeks of unpacking and arranging had

passed, they decided to take In a roomer, although the same
men said that It was highly unlikely that they would find
one, as It was not customary In the region for strangers,
not even the summer students at the small college, to stay
In private homes. There were many rooms however (“If you
closed all the doors upstairs”, Jimmie had said, “It would
be like the sleeping deck of a ship.”) and since they had
enough spare furniture to furnish one nicely, they put an
ad In the paper. It was a late afternoon in June and they
Were eating dinner when she came. Mr. Anderson heard the
screen door being pulled back long seconds before the knocks,
as If the caller were a postman fumbling with a package or
a child who, after the exertion and concentration required
In opening the outer door, can no longer remember what his
purpose was. But then the rapping came -- hollow and thin —
as if the person were hitting the mahogany with a ring, not
80 much shy or hesitant as It was restrained.
“You advertised a room for rent*, she said. The
raw spring air flapped across his face like a cloth and blew
the girl's long red hair across her cheeks in wisps. She
stood on the steps In a chlno skirt and collarless green
blouse, the newspaper In her hand wadded like a fist. A

convertible the color of hardened mustard was parked across

 3

the street. Its top up. She bumped her foot against the
milk-bottle box on the porch and looked vaguely at the trees
or upstairs windows or sky - turning slowly about as she
spoke so that when she had finished the sentence, she almost
had her back to him. She wore no lipstick and her features
seemed to melt away under bis gaze like soft butter, her face
having the appearance of a sketch made with the wrong end

Of a pen. Everything was faint and fluid except the eyes

which were black as buttonhooks - Impenetrable and vacuous

at the same time. He waved her Inside.

“Yes", he Bald. “A nice room. Thirty dollars a
month with a phone and a washing machine downstairs. You're
welcome to use the kitchen too. Here, I'll show you that
first and then we can go to the room. The staircase back
there Is shorter to the upstairs."
She walked behind him, trailing her hand over
shelves and chairs, silently absorbing the room as If her
fingers were porous. His wife turned from the stove where
she had been boiling spagettl when they came In. On the
opposite back mrner was a small crucible with chunks of
lead in It and an Iron ladle and scattered about the chipped
dralnboard of the sink were various plaster molds and a tray
of sand. A slender, pale boy, his hair combed neatly down
over his forehead In bangs sat at the table clutching a Jam
 4

sandwich in one handed ruhhing a mosquito bite on his

chin with the other.

"This is Jimmie", Anderson said, "who wants to
beat out his ma as the artist of the family.“ A bulletin
board hung on the wall, covered with scraps of lined yellow

paper of pencilled drawings. Blue and gold stars were

pasted crookedly over sturdily Inked printings of the name

James.
"Child", the girl said, as if she were practicing
the slur of a foreign sound on her tongue, that small pale
form oontalng within Its childishness every memory of every

soul. "A child."

"He won't disturb you", his mother said quickly,
eager to dispel that sense of chaos that children and dogs
convey to motel owners. -He's a quiet little fellow and
with the nice weather, he's outside most of the time."
The girl shrugged her shoulders. "My name Is

drey", she said. "Sou may show me the room."

ahe moved In the same night and In the weeks that

followed She became as much a part of the house as the

inanimate objects that furnished It. She was quiet and

told them little about herself emcept that she came from
a neighboring state and was attending summer school, taking

credits in French and Latin. Sometimes they would not see

 5

•txer for days and other evenings they would come home to find
tliat she had prepared dinner for them or cleaned the house.
Ker room was always spare and neat, uncluttered hy pictures
many books, the tell bare walls hampered only by a large
Diirror that she had brought herself and a small copy of an
®arly Chirico, They grew accustomed to her — even began
"to be fond of her. She wooed them with silence and the
1‘aot that she was so alone, drifting In a private world

iike the child,

Grey's only effort seemed to be with Jimmie.
Jlverything else she did casually, obliquely — days and peo
ple making no impression upon the empty tranquility of her
face ~ the child's presence, like a single stone thrown
In a sea pool, creating the only ripple in the dumb smooth
head of the early summer. Hla friendly unawareness of her
Vlas complete. She slipped as easily in and out of his mind
as the games or tears of the day before, his rememberance

Of her being as swift and transitory as the white press

print of a thumb on sunburnt skin. This Indifference was
most clear to her the morning she offered to take him swim
ming. He was playing outside, his knees stained green
under the rumpled corduroy of his shorts. He looked up,
interest flickering momentarily in his grey eyes and then

dying away again,

 6

"I don't want to ^ in your, oar." He squatted

on the steps and examined his sneakers. "I want to go in

Daddy's oar." i; tha’

"ItJs not here. He drove it to work."
"Then I don't want to go." He glanced at her
quickly. “I don't like your oar."
"All right", she said softly. She slipped
behind the wheel, the hot plastic of the seat covers burning
her thighs, the anger towards that small crease of paleness
against stone beating at her temples like the white splash
of a dream. She stared at the sky and then at him, the
New England sun, even in summer, unable to blot him out.
His face momentarily became an orange smear but then lurched
back again, as if it would always remain there in bobbing

certainty of his initial failure.

“I’ll bring you back a present."
»Ioe-oreamt« he asked, interested in her once more
"Better than that", she tapped the gear shift
with her painted nails. "Much better than that."
Jimmie wandered off to pat a collie that was wan
dering through the yard, and Grey backed quickly out onto
the street. Perspiration ran down her face like tears, and
her loose hair hung heavy as cloth on her bare shoulders.
The clot of rage over the child's refusal pushed against
 7

her cheat and aa aha drove through the city and towarda the
aea, ahe dangled her arm outaide. preaalng her flngera agaln-
at the oar'a flnlah — ahaorblng every aheet of pain that
the hot cruelty of the paint could give.
Before turning off on the beach road, ahe atopped,
drawing her face oloae to a mirror clipped on the vlaor.
Her eyea looked like running lumpa of chocolate. She had
never been ao hot. She wiped her face and neck with a thick
terryoloth towel and drove on down to the ocean, ualng aa
her guide a Jetty of land, on the tip of which waa a llght-
houae, rlalng Into the aky like a white cruller, when the
llghthouae waa exactly oppoalte, ahe parked the car and
walked acroaa a apllntered boardwalk to the Band, deliber
ately atepplng Into the ouddle of a dropped Ice-cream cone -
feeling the atlcky coldneaa aeep up through her toea.
She had counted on Jimmie to amuae her, planning
ler day with him aa aoon aa ahe had awakened that morning,
imagining the way he would kneel on the aeat bealde her,
sniffing the wind and the ruahlng heat like a puppy while
ahe waa dreaalng alowly before breakfaat, rubbing tanning
^ -1-1 awvran her body, she was confident that he
Lotion carefully over her ay»
a Her ancor now Instead of swelling
would come with her. Her ango
.. 4.U
further simply throbbed as
a if her whole self had been
u.. of her. fearful with the thought
sprained by his denial
 8

that she had scarcely touched that eolemn little mind.

arey had planned that he would be there, and now
without paper or books, she sat and gazed along the crowded
beach. Plastic horses reared and grinned from the water and
further out, a girl on one ski was crookedly ploughing up
foam behind an Inboard. A large red ball with a clown on It
bounced away from a group of children and struck her knee.
She returned It to a blond, plump boy who swaggered over to
her towel, who called her 'M'am' and wore braces on his teeth.
She watched them for a few more moments and went to the
water, scooping It up in handfulls and dabbing her neck and
arms. She walked quickly back to the car then, slipping a
shift over her swimsuit and drove back to town.
She waited outside the photo booth In Woolworth's
for over half an hour, atudjlng the etrlpa of glaes-enoloaed
ploturee that covered the outer walls. The booth was in the
rear of the store bj the pet department and the air was
thick with the smell of birds and sawdust. The teenagers
flnall, left and she stepped behind the curtain, plunging
quarters Into the slot, shifting her stance, her gate at
every click of the light, the strips of prints, wet as birth
from the developer, falling on the floor as she deposited
«rh«re were thirty pictures In all, none being
more money. There were
w 4- on stemming the characteristic fluidity
quite the same but all sxe»w‘ ^

* » , k *■, A -it
 of her features into an awesome rigidity — and one she con
sidered to be perfect. She bought a sheaf of thick paper
and some India ink, and in the public library, opposite an
old man who was carefully copying the script of an Arabic
newspaper into a looseleaf notebook, she drew the picture,
altering the new-found definitions of her face as if she
were carving a woodcut and that night she gave her strange
present to Jimmie,
In the beginning she could hear his breathing —
heavy and young and careless and she would pause by his
room to stare at the motionless form sprawled on the bed as
if it were boneless, watching the moonlight sift through the
screens and light up marbles in a Jar and the chrome bumper
of a dumptruck. But now she no longer had to go to the door.
She merely sat on her own bed in the dark, the blinds pulled
tight to the sill, making the deepness of the night still
deeper, a pillow pressed to her lips to make even that heavy
stillness more quiet. Sitting there, pushing all the sub
stance out of her head as a child would air from a rubber
toy, leaving nothing but a tight conscious emptiness, she
waited for the sound, not of childish sleep now but of the
restless amazed tossing that would mean he had finally left
the window, the white image that could blot out the sky
now lingering only under his closed lids, searing her fea
tures, made solid for the first time by their hugeness.
 10

into hl8 eyes and through them, paining him, becoming as

much a part of him ae the tip of his tongue burnt on hot

chocolate or the «arm tlcKllng of his bowels.

The sky, once holding stars and rockets and rain
1 her, nio-ht
now showed only nignt after
a* night,
& » not even containing
,
her a
but being containea bv
oy her,
* , &giving Jimmie the tortured,
delicious feeling of being consumed, of being swallowed.
He tore at the sheets and the dark, an abyss of thought
n fT-nme his little-boy ‘ a mind being able
emptying his small frajne,
to his fear of falling from a treehouae
only to compare it to nis
onto the twisted roots below.
The present being a gift of agony In the shape of
With her face there Instead of a cow-
a bubble-gum card but wn;n
boy or baseball player, and with the colors all wrong. Like
a negative - the white and the black changing places -
a-,, atrons and demanding — so demanding f
the white milky and strong «
.a 4-« otiRorb it. even against his will,
that he was forced to a
, a fl blank wall or the sky, but especially
and then looking at a
^ u ^ told him to, the face would slip from
the sky as she had told nim ,
, corners of his straining eyes to swim
somewhere beyond the c
in the night until he thought that the
upwards, expanding in
L,. Virgin would burst like a pumpkin hurled on ice,
world or his brain woux
4+.WV thP lov and terror of his yearning,
his body trembling with the joy an
HIS mother, hearing the sdussk cf sprlhgs - the
 11

thick tumhllng of Sleeplaesnecc In that room - «ould come

upetalre and look In, no longer seeing her child's form,
spilling light and profound as mercury across the bed but
a stranger almost vhose hard bod, tensed and colled at her
touch. She came up nov, every night, giving him some mater
or a kiss and malted for him to tell her the dream, the
nightmare — knomlng she could dispel the night thoughts-^
Of bears or knives or mltches mlth lamp-light, but not

knowing how 4.to ■wr.onir

break throueh
tnr s a boy's silence to discover
a man* s demons.
Distantly, Jimmie sat Indlan-style, clutching the

glass in both hands, rolling Its coolness against his fore-

1 -hhsm rvicture hidden under his pillow as he
head and cheeks, the plcT;ui-«
or- fv-nfiTuns to frighten off dragons and wait
once hid acorns or capgu
-.4 -Por-m of his mother to leave him. Later, when
for the alien form or nis
Ar-rr nti the stairs, he would slump under the
he heard her coming up
a 4 and she would only rearrange the
sheets feigning sleep,
blankets or touoh his head and then go, are,, In the next
room, being the malting conscious mltness to all of this —

the nightly sad spiraling rltua

Before the Images In the sky, there mere never
u U oY* the sun for Jimmie, and the daylight, stark
enough hours of tne sw
h uA H po different from the bright rich color-
and still and high, so
4h A-or-r. pummer, was a cup for him-- much
ing of the midwestern su
 12

too amall to contain all the discoveries and delights of

his age. There were few children in the neighborhood —
he played with others only when he went to the beach —-
but wrapped in the sweet coccoon of self, he did not miss
them. He sailed plywood boats in the backwash of the bay
and swinging on a thick rope, suspended between elms in the
yard, he kicked the air and dropped to the ground, rolling
on the lawn, munching on grass, burying marbles and buttons
and making elaborate maps to find them again, and sometimes,
after his parents came home, he would merely lie on the
couch in the dusky living room, listening to the brisk rattle
of his father's typewriter, or pose stiffly for his mother

as she sketched his picture in charcoal.

Now he fled from his mother, fled from the days,
meaningless for him if he could not be with G-rey the
night picture of her still strong but less important now
in the heightened presence of her physical self. She was
thinner now and brown. He noticed that her hair was piled
on top of her head and no longer muffled her face, and he
exulted in these discoveries that seemed to make her more
for him. His parents grew concerned over his moodiness,
noticing the child's deeper and deeper penetration into
his own solitude, and their subsequent attentions caused
Jimmie to play a more intense and conscious game than he
 13

had ever done before with toy planes or truolce — control

ling his anxieties and desires when with them as he would
manipulate the twine of a kite, acting out what once did
not have to be pretended, what never for years should have
been aware of being pretended, as he would the characters
in a picture book, to keep them content.
He sat at the breakfast table in the early morning
with them, the eggs hardening on the plate before him into
rubbery inedibility, and waited for Grey to come down the
stairs. She stood in the kitchen talking to them and peel
ing an orange __ the acrid smell of the torn fruit floating
through the warm air like a tangible part of her ~ while
Jimmie brought her books to the car,
“Your little beau, “ Mrs. Anderson said.; to Grey.
He could not speak to her. He dared not -- his
childish chattering cut off as if by the slam of a door
whenever he was with her — his need, and hers, being only
that he should always be there. She took him to the beach
or matinees, and sometimes at noon. Instead of eating the
icebox lunch that his mother had earlier prepared and wrap
ped in wax paper, he would go with her to the college
cafeteria and eat tomato sandwiches in huge booths. On such
days, they would leave as soon as the boy had swallowed
the last mouthful, talking to no one, not even to each other.
 14

and go to the library or watch students play baseball in

the park. It was a solemn, silent courtship, a bleak con
tinuance in which the child's early bewilderment turned to
acceptance and then into a necessity for proof, Jimmie '
learning from her, most of all, a reserve, a stoicism, a
rarefying and heightening of the emotions which were honed

almost to madness by the acuteness of feeling.

Once, they had been in the kitchen, Jimmie playing

>»lth his mother's moulding wax, heating it in a saucepan

until it became liquid, poking it with the tip of a knife
and making designs on a plate. Grey watched him, unmovlng,
barely breathing, even when the pan tipped over epllllng the
molten blue w«c on his hand-- aeerlng, bubbling, puofcerlng

the skin. Be screamed In anguish, tearing at the hot wax

and gouging the flesh, and turning to Grey, saw only her

Impassive, Imoblle face* Hla own face froze then,

ghtened his swollen lips as If they were wire and stared

back rigidly Into those chunks of black that were her eyes,
the uaelesa hand trembling uncontrollably at hla side. He
Sat beside her and she stroked his bead. The whistle
oil tanker came In from the bay while the wax hardened on

the floor and she told him strange words that clutched and

oontalned his wants and fears like a glove, knowing

that there would only be the waiting and that it too would

end.
 15

She left In the car before his parents came home.

They found only the boy, standing before the stove vhlch had
been on now for most of the afternoon, the gas flames flick
ering up through the burner, touching only air. They found
only the boy who said that he had been playing alone and -
who did not cry even at the hospital where they treated
his shredding flesh.
At home, they made him spend most of the week in
bed. He drank gingerale and ate from a tray, never seeing
Grey. He was afraid that she might have moved away, but on
the third night after the accident, after he had watched
television and taken a bath, the tape on his hand covered^
by a plastic bag, his mother had come Into his room In a
black partydress, smelling sweet and powdery as she bent
to kiss him, telling him that Grey would be there to watch

him and that they would be home early.

For hours he seemed to wait, long after the oaf
had rattled over the loose bricks In the driveway, long after
It became dark. For hours until he thought that It was so
late that they would be coming back again -- the moments
stretching before him like Interminable train tracks, time
loping slowly ahead of him as It did sometimes at school
or on rainy afternoons. He waited, his back leaning against
the bony protuberances of his ribs his legs folded under
 16

the sheets, itching and thick from his very consciousness of

them. His awareness of everything was sharp-- the furni
ture in the room seemingly carved out of the dark, the glass
knobs on the bureau staring at him like eyes. He swallowed
thickly, feeling nauseous, hut it was the aame exhllerating
sweet nausea he had felt last Easter when he had eaten too
much chocolate -- chocolate ducks and rabbits and spun-
sugar eggs with little scenes inside made of mint. He had
descovered the candy that they were going to surprise him
with hidden in a paperbag In a kitchen drawer where they
stored mittens and scarves and he had run to the cellar
with it, hiding under the ping-pong table and eating slowly
at first, then faster and faster, biting off ears and legs
first, then freshening his mouth occasionally with the
candy creature's gumdrop eyes. And he had discovered that
he couldn't stop - nice sometimes after weeks of playing
in earnest and serious calm, he would begin to giggle and
then laugh - the laughter turning into a noiseless shaking
that racked his body like fever. He discovered that he could
not stop eating the sweets. Long after his stomach was round
and hard as a cake pan, long after he was even conscious of
eating anymore, he had gone on until the whole bag was gone,
staggering, then, upstairs, white and sick and happy.
Such now was the feeling of nausea as Jimmie
 17

waited and listened to the dim sound of the radio down the
hall, thinking now that G-rey had forgotten him, that she
had fallen asleep. Then he held his breath, stiffening,
afraid that the sound was Just the old house or his mind,
and he watched the strip of light grow from the opening door
-- watched the light broaden and thicken like the flash of
a sword and then shrink and disappear again. He sensed her
presence now, smelled her, felt her slip quietly beside him,
and he opened his mouth to scream -- the shriek of it bang
ing in his ears so shrill and piercing that he expected the
universe to crack, the house to tumble as if it were made
of glass __ but he didn't make a sound when she touched
him —- no sound at all.

Pav.tfi a cha.lwall v-'.-ise ©n-.. .

It to ring, th.n .tnndir« up on th. uiiair snd olutcWng th.

phnn. in both ’"’uW ««

I * the aouthpleoo ‘■hat
into '^hA*. ^ * nice ooille dog and w^nifc
to gir. It .na vouW tbov P’..« b«ok n...

It oould b. .«.*•*«
. It oouia been tb. plu«vr or th. , but
,, . 4b, 4-h« satte words into the phone and hang
0#».vld woulo. sxirli* tne »»»
A t down the chair s^in. Aftsr each
ip it erupt ly ah*,- uow.*
w trtr- snd rusosd It on a p«.p«r napkin,
sail, he took » saitlne
t hrme he ccjunted the aaltlites at^ , too)'
m&n hie aotner came home,