Nettie tried to end it with applause after the first minute or so, and the audience took it up dutifully, enthusiastically, and for a moment Mary Virginia’s efforts were drowned out by a tidal wave of applause, but when the clapping subsided, she was still at it. Head bent over the keyboard, elbows flailing, all thumbs and knuckles and flashing wrists, she tortured the instrument with variations no civilized ear had ever conceived of. At the five-minute mark, Nettie tried again, crying “Bravo!” and beating her hands together so forcefully she thought she’d dislocated both her wrists. And again the audience took it up, thankfully, beseechingly, crying “Bravo!” as if sounding a retreat. But Mary Virginia played on, played on till the ballroom was empty and Cyrus Jr. and one of his Princeton classmates had to take her by the wrists and pry her fingers away from the last thunderous chord that reverberated through the room like the end of a barrage.
Yes. And now she was mourning for her father.
Initially — for the first few seconds, anyway — Stanley was all right. No one was paying any attention to him — they were all looking at Mary Virginia, his big sister, the savior rushing in at the last minute to cow them all and rescue her little brother, and he soared, he really soared… but when she went right by him and threw herself on that cold dead thing that used to be their papa, Stanley plummeted from the ceiling like a clay pigeon. This was his big sister, the angel in human form who used to take Harold and him on outings to the park, the furnace of affection who bundled him up on wintry afternoons for skating and hot chocolate on the lake and whispered in his ear till he shivered and pampered him when he caught cold, and she was ignoring him. She hadn’t come for him — she didn’t even see him.
Someone screamed. There was a rush for the coffin, Mama’s face lit with the sudden hellfire of her fury, Harold gaping in bewilderment and Missy and Anita biting down on their knuckles as if they were beef ribs or chicken wings, and Stanley made himself invisible. As soon as his mother let go of his hand, he was gone, vanished in the midst of the confusion, chairs rumbling, people crying out, all those oversized bodies in furious concerted movement. He didn’t stay to see his big brother and his uncles Leander and William wrest Big Sister away from his dead father, didn’t see the look of savagery and puzzlement on her face, didn’t see her toss and bite and kick till the flimsy rag of her shift pulled up over her hips to expose the scored and naked flesh beneath it. No: he ran straight downstairs to the oak wardrobe in the linen closet and burrowed.
Later, much later — it must have been past midnight — he ventured out into the hallway. He’d missed supper and Mama hadn’t come for him, which meant she was suffering with one of her headaches and mewed up like a prisoner in her room. He’d heard Marie calling for him, and then later Missy and Anita, but he’d just burrowed deeper among the towels and bedthings. He didn’t need them — he didn’t need his big sister or his mother or anybody — and even if he did, he couldn’t have done a thing about it. Once he climbed into the big bottom drawer of that wardrobe and inched it closed by applying his right shoulder to the rough unfinished surface of the plank above, he was powerless. There was something inside him gnawing its way out, something he’d swallowed, something alive, and it wouldn’t let him catch his breath or move his arms and legs or even lift his head to see where it was slashing through the skin of his belly with its claws and teeth and filling that hermetic space with a beard that wouldn’t stop growing till there was no room left in the box and no air either. For Stanley, a good boy, a bright boy, a pleasing and normal boy, it was the beginning of terror. From now on, there would be no place to hide.
The evening became the night, and all that while Stanley lay there rigid, listening to the enveloping sounds of the house, all the noise of the comings and goings and the clatter of silverware and crystal and the murmurous voices of the servants in the hall. He fought down his hunger, denying himself, shriving himself, lying there as still as the corpse of his father in the drawing room below. Finally, though, it was a need of the living that drove him out of his box: he had to pee.
By the time he crept from the wardrobe and stuck his head out the door to make sure no one was about, he had to go so badly he was squeezing himself, squeezing his peepee, though Mama wouldn’t let him call it that anymore. It wasn’t a penis either, not in Mama’s vocabulary. No: it was just a dirty thing little boys had attached to them for a dirty purpose and he wasn’t ever to touch it except to make pee, did he understand that? He didn’t understand, but every time she told him he nodded his head, looked down at the floor and let his eyes lead the retreat.
The hallway was deserted. Someone had left a light burning at the far end of it, outside the room they still called the nursery, and there was another light on in the bathroom across the hall. There wasn’t a sound anywhere. The mourners had taken their big blunt shoes and their furs and jewelry and their long condoling faces and gone home, and everyone else had turned in for the night — there was a funeral to attend in the morning, after all. Stanley squeezed himself. Two miniature goads stabbed at him down there, on either side, just above the groin. He held his breath a moment, listening, and then he darted across the hall to the bathroom, swinging the door shut behind him. He was peeing — relieving himself, and yes, it was a relief, the only relief he’d had all day — when he glanced up at the mirror and saw that someone was easing open the door behind him.
“I’m in here,” he sang out, turning away instinctively to shield himself. There was no answer but the faintest metallic grating of the hinges, the door swinging inexorably open, the noise of his urine in the porcelain bowl a sudden embarrassment, a steady boiling pent-up stream he was helpless to stop. He shot a nervous glance over his shoulder, expecting Harold. “Just a minute!” he cried, but it was too late.
It wasn’t Harold standing there in the doorway, but Mary Virginia, in her black shift and bare feet. She looked puzzled, as if she’d never seen a bathroom — or Stanley — before.
As for Stanley, he tried to force his penis back into his pants before he was finished and got hot pee all down the front of himself. Dirty, dirty, dirty, he could hear his mother saying it already. His face flushed. The blood thundered in his ears. He backed away from the toilet.
For a long moment, Mary Virginia stood there rocking to and fro on feet that were so white they seemed to glow against the checkered tiles. “Stanley the elf,” she said finally, and her voice wasn’t right. Her words were slurred and slow, as if she had something in her mouth. “The little hobgoblin,” she said. “The boy who can snap his fingers and disappear. ”
Stanley watched her feet move across the floor, fascinated by the way her toes gripped and released the tiles. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, and she reached out to tousle his hair, “they’ve sedated me, that’s all. For my peace of mind. So I can rest.”
Stanley tried to smile. His pants were wet and uncomfortable, and his underpants too, already binding in the crotch, and he was hungry and tired, exhausted from the strain and terror that had crept up on him as he lay in that drawer all through the day and into the night.