And then suddenly it all went wrong.
They heard the timer go off and ran to turn it off but they were still wearing shoes on their hands and neither of them wanted to take the shoes off, so they tried to stop the timer by trapping its stem between two shoes and turning it, but the timer stem was old and too smooth to turn like that. So while the timer buzzed on, the younger sister had neighed at her older sister and together they had cantered to the dining-room table and taken a chair, supporting it between them with their hooves, and brought it to the stove. The younger sister stood on it and leaned over the burner, feeling the enamel warm in one spot from the pilot light, and turned the timer off with her teeth, by twisting her head.
That was, the younger sister knew, the sign that the world had come to an end, that it was over, that now they had to go to school. Only it wasn’t the end, for as soon as the timer was turned off, the doorbell rang. It froze both of them and they stood there, bread bags on their feet and shoes on their hands, and kept very still and very quiet. They were not to answer the door, their father had been very clear about that. But they were also supposed to go to school. How could you go to school when someone was at the door, ringing the doorbell, trying to come in?
My older sister, the younger sister thought, will know what to do.
But her older sister was standing there not doing anything. The doorbell rang again, and still they waited, the younger sister nervously rubbing her hooves together.
They waited awhile for the doorbell to ring a third time. When it did not, her older sister leaned close to her and whispered Come on. But they had taken only a few steps when they heard not ringing but a hard, loud knock: four sharp, equally spaced blows right in a row. And that stopped them just as much as if someone had yanked back on their bridles.
It was like that for hours — for what, anyway, seemed like hours. Her hands were getting sweaty in the shoes. Her feet in the bread bags were much, much worse, the napkins at the bottom of each bag grown damp. Her mouth, too, hurt in the corners because of the rubber band. Her older sister took a few steps and the younger sister, not knowing what else to do, followed. Her older sister, she saw, had taken the shoes off her hands without the younger sister noticing and had gotten the rubber band out of her mouth and was now creeping very slowly past the door. The younger sister followed, trying not to look at the curtain-covered window beside the door, trying not to see the shadow of whatever was on the other side, but seeing enough to know that, whatever it was, it was big, and seeing too, when the knocking started once again, the door shiver in its frame.
In their bedroom, her sister helped her get the shoes off. They had been on long enough that they felt like they were still on even once they had come off. The rubber-band bridle got caught in her hair so that her sister had to snip it out with a scissor, which made the bridle snap and raised a red stripe of flesh across her cheekbone and almost made her cry. The rubber bands holding the plastic bags to her legs had left purple grooves on her calves, and her feet were hot and wet and itchy. She dried them off on a hand towel and put her shoes on while her older sister stood on a stool by the bedroom window and tried to see out.
“He’s still there,” she said.
“What is it?” asked the younger sister.
“I don’t know,” said her older sister. “Who, you mean.”
But the younger sister had meant not who, but what. She wanted to climb on the stool beside her sister and look out as well, but was too scared.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“Do?” said her sister. “Let’s play until he’s gone.”
So they had begun again, with the plastic horses again, only this time it was a slow negation of everything that had happened before. Before, it had seemed like anything could happen; now all the younger sister could think about was about how they were trapped in the house, how they couldn’t leave, how they were supposed to leave but couldn’t. The mustangs were just ordinary horses now and could no longer move their plastic legs but simply stayed motionless as they were propelled meaninglessly across the floor. The bear was gone for good and she and her sister weren’t horses anymore, just two trapped girls. Everything was wrong. They were trapped in the house and she knew they would always be trapped. The younger sister kept trying to play, but all she could do was cry.
Her older sister was comforting her, telling her everything was fine, but the way she said it, it was clear nothing was fine. Everything was hell.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“He’s probably not even there anymore,” said her older sister. “I bet we can leave soon.”
And, to be truthful, it probably was soon after that, though it didn’t feel that way to the younger sister, that her older sister went back into the bedroom and climbed up on the stool again and looked out and said that it was safe now and everything was fine and this time seemed to mean it. They gathered their books and their lunches and opened the front door and darted out. The whole street seemed deserted. The older sister, who hated to be late, made them both run to school, and the younger sister reached her class even before Mrs. Clark had finished calling roll. When you looked at it that way, almost no time had actually passed. When you looked at it that way, as her older sister in fact had, really nothing at all had happened.
But for the younger sister there was less of her from there on out. Part of her was still wearing shoes on her hands and a rubber band in her mouth and was somewhere, sides bloody, looking for her pack. And part of her was still there, motionless, trapped in the house, waiting for the door to shiver in its frame.
She was still, years later, trying to figure out how to get back those parts of her. And what was left of her she could hardly manage to do anything with at all.
“So what do you want me to do?” her sister finally one day asked, her voice tinny through the telephone. “Play mustangs with you again?” And then she laughed nervously.
And yes, in fact, that was exactly what the younger sister wanted. Maybe it would do something, it was worth a try, yes. If her sister would only do that, perhaps something — anything — could happen.
But after so many years, so many telephone conversations burning and reburning the same paths through their minds, so many years of playing the same roles, how could she ask this of her older sister? She knew her role enough to know she could never bring herself to ask this of her older sister. Not in what seemed like a million years.
A Pursuit
For some days now, I have felt myself to be pursued by my second ex-wife. At first I believed the pursuer to be my third ex-wife, and perhaps for a time the two of them were working together — for all I know, they may still be. Indeed, though recent evidence has suggested the pursuer is my second ex-wife, evidence just a few days ago pointed to my third ex-wife.
Perhaps the two of them spell each other so as to stay fresh and alert, while I, alone, a solitary ex-husband, have only myself to rely on. Perhaps the second ex-wife drives while the third ex-wife sleeps, and vice versa. But is it always the same car that pursues me? I can no longer say. I try not to think too obsessively about my pursuers, but what else am I to think about?