The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories Read online

  He touches the nail where the belt used to hang and the ghost family rises up like the missing limb miraculously restored. Growling, he quits the house.

  Can you ever walk out of your old skin and back into the woods where you were so happy, running with the wolves? There are no woods outside this house, just streets and cement sidewalks and metal fences around house after house after identical house; there are few trees and no hillside which means no caves, no undergrowth and no place to dig, where he can pull in brush to cover himself; it is worrisome and sad. The urban sky is like a cup with Happy trapped under it. He relieves himself and goes back inside. The old room is safe, now that he knows he can lock it.

  His days don’t change.

  At night he goes out to eat what she leaves and to relieve himself. One night it was a meat pie, another, a whole ham.

  People come. Sometimes they call outside his room, but Happy will not answer. The wolf doesn’t howl unless there is another like him out there, howling or yipping the reply. Brent comes, but not Susan. In the long periods he spends curled under the crib, Happy thinks about this. Her body, expanding with every breath as they rode along in the car. The way it felt, and how he misses it.

  If he can’t do what wolves do, he understands, he wants to do what he can do with Brent’s woman. How the parts go together remains a mystery; he only knows what he needs. Brent comes with a doctor, a talking-doctor, he says through the locked door. The doctor talks for a long time, but wolves have no need for words. The doctor goes away. Brent comes with a man who promises money. When you have nothing, you need nothing. Brent comes with another man, who makes threats. Wolves will not be threatened. When you are threatened, you go to ground and stay there. They go away. Brent comes back. He shouts through the locked door. “Just tell us what you want and I’ll bring it! Anything, I promise, if you’ll just come out so we can get started.”

  There is one thing, but Happy will not say it.

  The brother hits a whine that Happy remembers from the time he refuses to remember. Oh. That Brent. This one. Same as he ever was, just older.

  Brent snarls, “Dammit to hell, are you in there?”

  No words needed here, either. None spoken.

  Brent comes back with a woman. The scent brings Happy’s head up. It is a woman. “He’s in there? Why is he in there when he knows I’m out here?” She goes on in a loud, harsh voice. “Do you know who I am?”

  It’s the wrong woman.

  “Listen, baby brother. This is your new agent standing out here in the cold. If you know what’s good for you, come out and say hello to Marla Parterre. She can make or break you.”

  Time passes.

  “She’s from C.A.A.!”

  The agent goes away.

  The mother comes. Mhmhmmm.

  Brent shouts. “How can we sell this story if he won’t come out? Dammit, Mom …”

  She says in the old tone that makes Happy tremble, “Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that.” He knows her voice, but he always did. He just doesn’t know what she used to say to him.

  “I’m calling Dad,” Brent says. “Dad will get him out.”

  Then his mother says, “Your father is not coming back here, Brent.”

  “But Mom, he got us front money in six figures, and we have to …” Figures. Happy is troubled by the figures. Skaters, he thinks, short skirts, girls gliding in circles, and wonders how he knows. Women, he thinks, trembling. With their pretty figures.

  “No.” Her voice is huge. “Not after what he did. No!”

  Brent brings a locksmith. There is talk of breaking in. She says, No. She says, over her dead body. Will Brent kill her? Happy shivers. They argue. She uses that huge voice on Brent and they go away. She bakes. Sometimes now, she leaves the food outside his door, hoping he’ll come out to see. Happy lies low until she sighs and takes the untouched tray back to the kitchen.

  At night she lingers in the hallway outside the room. She does not speak. He won’t, or can’t. Sometimes he hears her crying.

  Happy waits. Sooner or later she always goes away. She leaves things on the kitchen table. Meat, which Happy devours. Fruit, which he ignores. Something she baked. She leaves the door to that old, bad bathroom open so he won’t have to go outside to relieve himself. What’s the matter with her, did she forget? The sight of the toilet, the naked hook where the belt hung, makes Happy tremble.

  Outside is worse than inside. Nights like these make Happy want to throw back his head and howl. Alone in these parts, he could howl to the skies and never hear their voices. The other wolves are deep in the old woods, and he is far, far away. He wants to cry out for Sonia, for the past, when everything was simple, but one sound will bring police down on him with their bats and rifles, visors on bug helmets covering their faces.

  Happy knows what wolves know. You never, ever break cover.

  Wolves know what Happy is only now learning. He can’t go back! Happy’s feet are soft and his muscles are slack from days under the crib. He’d never make it and if he did, Timbo would outrun him in seconds. Timbo would kill him in one lunge, and even if he could kill Timbo? His parts and the bitch wolves’ parts don’t match. They have forgotten he was ever one of them.

  He sits on his haunches and tries to think. He is distracted by the buzz of blue lights on poles overhead, where he is used to looking up and seeing trees; by a sky so milky with reflected glare that stars don’t show; by the play of strident human voices in the houses all around, the mechanical sounds of a hundred household objects and the rush of cars on the great road that brought them here. Looking up at the house, he groans.

  He doesn’t belong in there.

  He doesn’t belong out here, either.

  He gets up. Sighs. Stands back. Upstairs in the house, there is a single light. She is awake. Now he knows, and knowing hurts somehow. She doesn’t go into her lair and sleep after she leaves Happy’s door the way he thought she did. She sits up all night waiting. He steals back inside and goes upstairs to his room. Inside, he closes the door. Tonight, he will not turn the lock.

  After not very long—did she hear or does she just know?—the bedroom door opens. She says his name.

  “Happy?”

  He always knew Happy was his name. This is just the first time he’s heard it spoken since he joined the wolves and made Sonia his mother. Does Brent not know? The name Brent calls him is different. Is this big, leaden woman who smells like despair the only one who knows who he really is? In the hospital where the police took him, Brent shouted at the doctor like a pet owner claiming a dog that had strayed. “Olmstead. It’s right here on his tag! Olmstead. Frederick.”

  Her voice is soft as the darkness. “Oh, Happy. I’m so glad you came back.”

  There is another of those terrible long silences in which he hears her shifting from foot to foot in the dark, pretending she’s not crying.

  She says, “You don’t have to come out from under there if you don’t want to.”

  She says, “Are you OK?”

  It’s been a long time since words came out of Happy; he only had a few when they lost him. He isn’t ready. Will he ever be?

  She says, “Is it OK if I sit down on the bed? I mean, since you’re not using it?”

  Words. He is thinking about words. He knows plenty now, all that talk going on outside his locked door. He has heard dozens. He could spit out a word for her if he wanted, but which one? He waits until she gets tired of him waiting.

  She says softly, “I’m sorry about everything.”

  Then she says, all in a rush, “Oh, Happy. Can you ever forgive me?”

  This is not a question Happy can answer.

  There is a lot of nothing in the silence that follows. She is breathing the way Sonia did before she died. It’s a rasp of pain, but the mother smells all right to Happy. Wolves know nothing of the pain of waiting, nor do they know anything about the pain of guilt.

  Her voice shakes in a way he is not used to. “Son?”<
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  Son. It does not parse. Happy rummages through all his words, but there is no right one.

  The first morning light is showing in the window; Happy sees it touch the fake fur of the ruggy bear; he sees it outlining the hands she keeps folded on her plump knees and he watches as it picks out every vein in her sad, swelling ankles. She says, “It’s all my fault, you know.”

  What should he do now, bare all his teeth the way they do, to show her he’s friendly? Beg her to go on? Howl until she stops? He doesn’t know.

  She says, “I never should have had you.” Slumped on the edge of the bed she leans sideways and tilts her head, trying to see under the crib where Happy’s green eyes glint. He makes no expression a human could recognize, although Sonia would know it without question. She says, “Poor little thing.”

  A sound stirs the air, a kind of shudder. He wonders but does not ask, Mother, did you sob?

  Her head comes up. “Happy?”

  Startled, Happy looks inside himself.—Did I? There is nothing he has to say to her.

  Then she just begins. “You don’t know what it’s like living with a man who beats you. I was pregnant with Brent and our parents forced the marriage, crazy thing to happen in this day and time, like it ruined his life to marry me, we had too many babies, and who—who got me pregnant every time? Do you see what I mean?”

  Happy won’t speak. The words come so fast that he chooses not to understand them. Ow, it hurts!

  Never mind, nothing he says or does not say will stop her. “Hal hated his life so he drank, and the more he drank the more he hated it so he drank some more and the more he drank, the madder he got and nothing I could do or say would make him happy. Every little thing I did used to make him mad at me. The madder he got the more he hit me, but he never hit me when I was pregnant. Oh, Happy, do you understand?”

  For another long time, they are both silent.

  A long sigh comes ripping out of her. “You do what you have to, just to keep it from happening again. When anger takes hold like that, it has to come out somewhere. Look.” She holds up a crooked wrist; even from here it looks wrong. She touches a spot on the temple; she doesn’t have to tell Happy about the long white scar under the hair.

  He tried so hard not to remember, but he remembers. On his belly under the crib, Happy watches her over ridged knuckles.

  Again. She says it again. “He never hit me when I was pregnant.” Her breath shudders. “So I had you. I’m so sorry!”

  Happy strains to make out what she’s trying to tell him but there is no way of translating it.

  “I tried. I even named you after him!”

  Frederick, he supposes. He supposes it was on the dogtag, but Brent says his name was on the dogtag, and Happy? Frederick is not his name.

  In the still air of the bedroom, her voice is sad and thin. “My four big boys fought back when he hit them, so I had you. Anything to stop him. But this time.” That sigh. “He didn’t. Forgive me, Happy. I did what you do to make it through. I couldn’t take it!”

  The story she is telling is sad, but it’s only a story. Wolves know that fathers aren’t the only ones that hurt you.

  “You cried. You cried so much. He got so mad. He came at me. He kept coming at me and oh God, oh, Happy. I put you in front of me.”

  Happy flinches.

  “I couldn’t watch. I left him to it.” Relieved, she says in a light voice, “And that was it.” As if it’s all she needs to do.

  Fine. If she is done, then, she’ll leave. As soon as she leaves he’ll get up and lock the door.

  Then, just when he thinks it’s over and he can forget this, she groans. “I’m so sorry, Son.”

  There is another of the long, painful pauses that wolves prefer to using words. Silence is clear, where words are ambiguous.

  She says, “I never knew what he was doing. I didn’t want to know.”

  She says, “I know, I know, I should have left him, but where can a woman go with four little boys and a baby? I should have kicked him out, but how would I feed my children then?”

  The silence.

  “So you do forgive me, right?”

  Forgive is not a word wolves know.

  “Right?”

  He won’t move or speak. Why should he?”

  “These things happen, son. Things happen when people are stretched too far and their love is stretched too thin. Oh, please try to understand.”

  There is a long silence while she thinks and Happy thinks.

  Just when he’s beginning to hope she’s run out of words forever, she says in a voice so light that it floats far over his head, “Then you got lost. And everything changed. He got himself a nice new wife and moved to Hollywood. After everything I did to make him happy. The others grew up and moved away. Until you came, I didn’t have anything.”

  Happy doesn’t expect to speak, but he does. The words that have been stacked in his head for years pop out like quarters out of a coin return.

  “You didn’t look for me, did you.” It is not a question.

  She sobs. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  He does.

  After a while she goes away.

  Happy slinks to the door and locks it even before he hears her stumbling downstairs, sobbing.

  “Can I come in?” Her voice is sweet. Just the way he remembers her. Even through the door, Susan is soft and he will always remember that body. He almost forgets himself and answers. Happy is stopped by the fact that except for the slip with the mother, he hasn’t spoken. There are too many words backed up in him. He can’t get them in order, much less let them out. He just doesn’t have the equipment.

  Instead he hitches across the floor the way he did when he was two and sits with his back against the door, putting his head to the wood. Feeling her. He feels her outline pressed to the other side of the panel, her heart beating. Susan, breathing.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I understand. I just want you to come out so we can be together and be happy.”

  His fingers creep along the door.

  “Happy,” she says, and he will not know whether she is talking about their future or using his name, which is his secret. “You know, you’re really a very lovely man. It’s a shame for you to be shut up in there when you could come out and enjoy the world!”

  Swaying slightly in time with that musical voice, he toys with the lock. He can’t, he could, he wants to open that door and do something about the way he is feeling. With Susan, he won’t have to wonder how the parts fit together.

  Like a gifted animal trainer she goes on, about his bright hair, about how lucky she felt when she first saw him; she is lilting now. “It’s sunny today, perfect weather, and oh, sweetie, there’s going to be a party in the garden!”

  Then he hears a little stir in the hall. Someone else out there with her, breathing.

  “A party in your honor. Cake, sweetie, and champagne, have you ever had champagne? You’re going to love it …” He does indeed hear music. Someone tapping a microphone. Voices in the garden. Behind Susan, someone is muttering. She breaks off. “Brent, I am not going to tell him about the people from Miramax! Not until we get him out of there!”

  The brother. Happy shuts down. What else would he do after what Brent did to him? Things in this room, he realizes; Brent was that much older. Brent giving him a mean, sly look on his last night in this world he outgrew, letting their father hit the gas on the minivan and drive away without him.

  After a long time, when it becomes clear that there’s no change in the situation, Susan gets up off her knees—he can feel every move she makes—and leans the whole of that soft body against the wood. He stands too, so that in a way, they are together. She says in a tone that makes clear that they will indeed lie down together too, “Champagne, and when it’s over, you and I …”

  There is the sound of a little struggle. Brent barks a warning. “Ten minutes, Frederick Olmstead. Ten minutes more and we break down the door and dra
g you out.”

  He does not have to go to the window to hear the speech Brent makes to the people assembled. He can hear them muttering. He smells them all. He hears their secret body parts moving. They are drinking champagne in the garden. Then it changes. There is a new voice. Ugly. Different from the buddabuddabudda of ordinary people talking.

  “Thank you for coming and thank you for your patience. OK, Brent. Where is he?”

  It’s him.

  Brett whines, “I told you, Dad, I couldn’t …”

  “Then I will.”

  Another voice. The mother. “No, Fred. Not this time.”

  There is a smack. A thud. Under the window, the father raises his head and howls, “Two minutes, son. I’m warning you.”

  Happy’s hackles rise. His lips curl back from bared fangs as in the garden under the window the mother cries, “I told you never to come here!”

  There is a stir; something happens and the mother is silenced.

  Him.

  He commands the crowd. “Give me a minute and I’ll bring the wolf boy down for his very first interview.”

  His father comes.

  He will find that Happy has unlocked the door for him.

  Big man, but not as big as Happy remembers him. Big smile on his face, which has been surgically enhanced, although Happy will not know it. Smooth, beautifully tanned under the expensively cropped hair, it is nothing like the angry face Happy remembers. The big, square teeth are white, whiter than Timbo’s fangs. Even the eyes are a fresh, technically augmented color. Blue shirt, open at the collar. Throat exposed, as wolves will do when they want you to know that they do not intend to harm you. Nice suit, although Happy has no way of knowing.

  “Son,” he says in a smooth, glad tone that has sealed deals and gotten meetings with major players all over Greater Los Angeles. “You know your father loves you.”