“Why don’t we see Sadie anymore?” Sebastian asks.
Alcott Bliss and his two motherless children are standing in front of a thousand-pound pumpkin. Somewhere, someone is purchasing a rabbit, somewhere a man painted as a clown is falling into a tank of cold water. It’s a Saturday, and the Aldwych Fair is heaving with all of New England: preps in chunky Land’s End sweaters and mud-ready boots, hooded townies out for the day in their best or worst jeans.
He has done okay today, until now. He has dressed the children and convinced them to eat a large hasty omelet and counted to sixty while they brushed their teeth. He has got them into their fleeces and out of the house, away from the glowing red eye of the answering machine.
“Your aunt’s been busy.”
He has started unplugging the phone at night. If he doesn’t, Sadie will just keep ringing and ringing.
“Is she mad at us?”
“Of course not, buddy.”
“Then why does she sound mad?”
The problem is, Sadie won’t stop asking about the tapes. Whether he’d watched them, whether they were helping. When he was going to return them. How could he explain: Al (the husband! the historian!) had destroyed a singular archive.
He could claim he lost his mind. It wouldn’t be wrong; for so long, his mind had reverberated against Susie’s. Now thoughts hang loose, unable to form against anything—anyone. How can they? The world is a steady stream of vacuous conversation, ghoulish euphemisms, small talk, sales calls—all of it maddening and insignificant. But he hadn’tlost his mind. In many ways, it was the sanest thing he has ever done. Because what was it but a deranged fixation on some consecrated pieces of plastic? Those spools of film were not, and never would be, his wife.
Al puts his hand in his son’s curly hair. “Your mother and Sadie grew up in a difficult house,” he says. “Your mother was able to move past it, but Sadie had a harder time. Sometimes her emotions get the better of her.”
“Is she okay?”
“Don’t worry, Sebastian. We’ll see her soon.”
Al never wanted to become a liar, but deception has become a reflex.Mom isn’t sick, she’s just tired. Mom isn’t dying, she’s just sick.Maybe it started even earlier:Mom doesn’t want to be away from you.And always implicit:It’s not my fault.They won’t be seeing Sadie soon. But no one need worry about that.
“It looks like an elephant,” his son says, pointing at the pumpkin’s pachydermic folds.
“Like an orange elephant,” says his daughter. “Did you know, Dad, elephants never forget?”
At seven, Viola is a kind, unusual creature and seems to enjoy his company. As he enjoys hers—though she is becoming a conduit for Susan’s intrusion. Every day, her mother’s features ripen on her face. Her eyebrows, her collarbone. It’s become confused—who belongs to whom, that sort of thing. Sticky-feeling.
He hugs them close as a band of teens pushes behind them. One boy shoves another one hard, upending a table of gourds. So many carefully cultivated specimens reel onto the floor and before Al can stop himself, he is bellowing “Hey!” in a bark that sounds like his father’s, his arm is grabbing the boy’s wrist.
“Pick those up.”
Behind him, his children are trembling. With great composure he arranges his face, releases the wrist. When he turns back he is smiling and undangerous.This is the job, he repeats to himself.To shield them.Even (especially!) from his own ragged rage and anything that might provoke it.
In her last message, Sadie hissed:She was going to leave you.
Hug them close, never let them fear that they are not safe and loved.
Blinking, the Bliss family steps into the bright autumn sunshine. Pop songs battle cacophonous from rickety roller coasters, fried batter barely covering the undertone of manure. As Al turns to consult a large map, his name slices through the wandering bodies. His son is shouting, legs in motion, bolting in the direction of—whom? On his back, the terrible clap of a hand.
“Dan!”
A stampede of robust redheads. Dan’s wife grabs Al’s arm for a quick squeeze, chasing her brood and his strays into the face-painting tent. Al faces his oldest friend, reluctant. In the last few months, neither has found the right way to reach out.
“It’s good to see you, pal.”
“What are the odds?”
“You’re looking really well,” Dan says emphatically, registering (Al surmises) the fact that he is dressed and upright. Al refrains from strangling him. He understands: they both want it to be true. But however well he might be faking it, he is not well. No one says his wife’s name anymore. And Dan, who hardly knew her, who certainly did not love her, will not be the one to bring her back.
Al smiles. Fills his mind with other things: the stock market, an ancient technique for making red dye. Illuminated manuscripts. Space travel. Pasts and futures that reach beyond her. “You too, my friend,” he says.
“Ahoy, mate!” Viola bounds up to them, face smeared with thick black paint, delighted with her eye patch and mustache. She ties her hair into a beard underneath her chin.
