I stumbled in the dark, through the clutter of bikes and boxes until I held the cold knob in my hand. It gave and I ducked inside, safe and terrified. I flattened myself against the wall and listened. There was no pounding on the stairs, no shouts or slamming doors.
I darted through the living room, where the air hung thick with dusk. Any minute I imagined all the lights would blaze and I would stand like a fool, blinking and blind, staring down the barrel of some tough boy’s rifle with no way to explain myself. But I made it to the other side of the house and up the stairs without Zack or Gwen or the swaybacked lady in the bathroom hearing me. Now I stood at Gwen’s door, my hands flat on the smooth wood, knowing I had no right to enter or even knock, knowing she might spit in my face; I was nothing more than an intruder, a burglar with only a girl’s privacy to steal.
I tapped, lightly, thinking she might not hear me and I’d be free to go. Maybe that lady would come galloping after me, her flesh quivering, and run me out of the house. If she stopped to ask Gwen who I was, Gwen would deny she knew me and the woman would boot me down the stairs.
But Gwen did hear my knuckles on her door, and she didn’t ask, “Who is it?” Instead, softly, she said, “Come in,” expecting no strangers, no former friends.
She looked up as I opened the door, and I was the one too stunned to speak. I squeezed my eyes shut; but when I opened them, the girl on the bed still looked the same. The fat lady in the bathroom was Gwen, and here she sat, her belly bulging, her face swollen, her stringy hair unwashed and uncombed.
“Close your mouth before you catch flies,” she said. “It’s me.” I stared at her bare feet; even they were fat. “None of my shoes fit,” she said. “Dr. Ben says that some of the things that make the baby grow make parts of me grow too. Look at my hands.” She spread her fingers under the little lamp near her bed. The lampshade had dancing teddy bears and red rocking horses. I inched closer to study her hands. She said, “Don’t be afraid. You can’t catch it, not from me.”
Then I knelt beside her and took her hands in my hands, lightly, running my fingertips along her palms, feeling the knobby joints of her thick fingers, one by one.
“What took you so long?” she said. I looked at her eyes, or tried to; they were dark slats behind puffy lids. I didn’t understand. “To visit,” she said, “what took you so long to visit?”
I took off my coat and let it drop in a heap on the floor. “I didn’t know where you were.”
“Well, there aren’t too many places for a girl like me to go.”
“You told me once you’d be right on your mother’s tail if she ever split.”
She patted her stomach where the thin cloth of an old flowered housedress pulled at the buttons. “I couldn’t run fast enough to catch her. Besides, she left on account of me. All these years I thought it was just Zack and my dad she couldn’t stand, but you should have seen her when I told her I was pregnant — held her breath so long I thought she’d go blue and faint. Called me a little bitch in heat and said didn’t I know how to control myself? Said I should get married and be a burden on some stupid boy instead of her. I told her no way. I told her I didn’t even like the boy anymore, and he didn’t like me. ‘Who gives a damn?’ she said. ‘Just tell your daddy who he is. He’ll take care of it.’ I told her to forget it. I wasn’t going to do it. I told her I’d give the baby up for adoption, and she said, ‘Oh fine. And I’m supposed to stick around and listen to people talk and hold on to you while you puke every morning? No thanks. I’ve been sick enough mornings of my life without looking after you.’ I guess I gave her that push she needed. Zack wasn’t out of the hospital yet. She didn’t even say good-bye to him.”
She smoothed out the blue comforter next to her. The old spread was splattered with faded dusty roses. “Sit down beside me,” she said. “No one sits beside me. I know I’m not too pretty, but my father treats me like a leper.”
I sat close, our shoulders and thighs touching, and I thought of the girl I’d kissed in the tree house, how her lips frightened me, her mouth as fragile as butterfly wings, and mine dangerous as the clumsy, clutching fingers of a child. I stroked her matted hair and said, “You should take care of yourself, you’d feel better.”
She leaned against me, her head resting on my chest, so there was nothing I could do but put both arms around her and hold her tight. “I knew you’d come,” she said. “I knew you’d be the only one.”
I said, “You shouldn’t stay cooped up in here. You need to walk. You need fresh air.”
“My father won’t let me out of the house. That’s the deal. He says I can stay here but I can’t disgrace him. He feeds me. He pays Dr. Ben. I have to follow the rules, but I wish he didn’t spit every time he sees me. There’s nothing unnatural about it, you know. No reason to be afraid of people seeing me. What could they say? ‘Gwen Holler’s having a baby’? Then they’d be done with it. And what’s so terrible about that? I’m not the first. He doesn’t even let me come downstairs when he’s in the house. Zack brings me breakfast and supper.”
I found this difficult to imagine: Zachary Holler acting as nursemaid, carrying a tray up the stairs to his sister, fetching it later and doing the dishes. Gwen said, “You wouldn’t know him. He’s not so proud, not since the fire. His hands are scarred and the left side of his face got burned too — it’s speckled pink and still peels. He thinks he’s even worse to look at than I am. He’s ashamed. He told me something else too. Remember that night when Myron Evans offered him five bucks?” I nodded. “That night Zack snatched one of Myron’s cats and choked it; broke its neck with his own hands. Just like what Myron did to himself. Zack has this crazy idea that he was the one to put the thought in Myron’s head.”
“That was more than a year ago,” I said.
“Yeah, but something else happened later, just before the fire. Zack took his money. You know what I’m saying? He took his money and he didn’t run with it. He let Myron do what he wanted, right out there in the vacant lot — my brother and Myron Evans.”
I didn’t tell her that I already knew. I remembered standing next to Myron, how he grinned when Zachary was inside the burning bar. I saw him piss on Freda Graves’s window and heard the words: That boy took my money and God didn’t stop him.
“He acts like he killed Myron just like he killed that cat,” Gwen said. “He’s afraid someone will find out; he thinks someone might have seen them together. He never wants to go outside again. I told him that if anyone’s responsible for Myron Evans hanging himself it’s that little fool Miriam Deets, making a big deal out of nothing, like she’d never seen a guy’s dick before. Maybe ol’ Lanfear only did it in the dark.”
I said, “We’re all to blame for Myron, you and me too, chasing him, making his life a misery.”
A door slammed downstairs. “The warden’s home,” Gwen said. “You’ll have to fly out this window or pay Zack to sneak you out of here.” She giggled. “No, better not offer Zack money.”
I held her hand tight. I didn’t feel much like talking. I was thinking about all that had happened to us, to everyone in this town.
I saw a man slip five dollars in a boy’s pocket, and I saw that man’s white-footed cat lying limp in his arms. Now the man huddled over a tiny pad of paper, scratching out his last words.
In a hot room, a bony woman pulled another man’s hands toward the flame of a candle. And the flame exploded and torched all our lives in a single summer night.