🎧 851: “I’m hungry,” . . .

33

“I’M HUNGRY,” said Martha one night. She sat up in bed suddenly, interrupting what I was doing to her.
     Margot also sat up suddenly, interrupting what I was doing to her, and said, “Me, too.”
     In an instant they were out of the bed. The edges of the mattress rose on either side of me when they left it. Their bodies flashed white in the darkness while they hunted for something to wear and disputed the ownership of the shirts they found, a couple of Andy’s castoffs.
     One of the girls dashed to the door—her shirt, unbuttoned, fluttering like wings—and paused there with her ear to the heavy wood, listening. In that light, I couldn’t tell which one she was. She put her finger to her lips and stood there, listening. Andy and Rosetta were out somewhere, and the girls and I had the place to ourselves, but whichever girl it was who stood at the door was cautious all the same. Satisfied at last that the house was silent, and therefore empty, she levered the iron handle and pushed the door open an inch or so. A slat of light fell into the room, grazing her flank, her kneecap, her foot. Her sister fluttered to her side. My memory of this is monochromatic, chiaroscuro: parts of each girl are overexposed by the light rushing in from the hallway, and other parts are black, just silhouettes against the light. The line between light and dark is sharp, as if the girls were made of cut paper in a collage.
     “You’re all in pieces,” I said.
     “What?” said the one nearer the door, and from her voice I knew she was Margot.
     “You look like—pieces of girls,” I said.
     “Explain yourself, Peter,” said Martha.
     I tried. “You look like a bunch of pieces of girls in the dark, but the pieces aren’t together the way they ought to be. Everything’s scrambled. It’s as if I could gather the pieces and make two new girls, one all light, the other all shadow.”
     “That’s interesting,” said Margot, in a tone that suggested that she really did find it interesting.
     “Very interesting,” said Martha.
     In light and shadow they turned toward me four half faces, a dark right on the left, a dark left on the right, a light left on the left, a light right on the right, all of the pieces wearing pieces of looks of amusement and surprise.
     “Should we show him?” Martha asked Margot.
     They pouted identical pouts and furrowed identical brows, and then Margot said, “I think so.”
     I had an inspiration. I crossed my eyes. (This was a stunt that I had spent a good week learning to do when I was eight, to the concern of my mother and the annoyance of my father. My mother worried that I might do some permanent damage to my eyes or to the muscles that controlled their movement, and my father suspected that when I sat at the dinner table and allowed my eyes to cross, I was challenging his position as head of all three branches of the family government, the source of the law, the arbiter of its interpretation, and its enforcer. I thought it was fun and considered it an accomplishment. It was something that not everyone could do, and I was proud of having added it to what was at eight a meager repertoire of tricks and stunts. My parents found it a nuisance and hoped that it was a phase that would pass. Not even I thought that someday it would be useful, but once upon a time I had felt the same way about rolling peas.) The halves of faces drifted slowly across the slat of light, left to right, right to left, until from the four pieces I had made a single illuminated girl.
     “When I cross my eyes,” I began, but before I could describe for them what I’d achieved, Margot slipped out the door, taking her face with her. Martha held her hand out to me, and I took it, and she led me through the opening, and into the light, and down the stairs.
     “Come on,” she said. “We want to show you something.”
     Since the stairs were stone, they didn’t creak.
     “Your stairs—” I said.
     “Shh,” said Margot.
     “Your stairs don’t creak,” I finished.
     “Quiet,” said Martha.
     “Yes,” I said. “Quiet.” It was the quiet that impressed me, since the stairs at home creaked as soon as I set foot on them, and the creaking interfered with my nighttime prowling. How very quiet this house was: much quieter than any house I was accustomed to being in. I saw the wisdom of building in stone, and said, “When I have a house of my own, I’d like to build it of stone.”
     “Peter!” said Martha. “What is this, ‘The Three Little Pigs’?”
     “Yeah, what’s the matter with you?” asked Margot.
     “What do you mean?” I asked.
     “We’re sneaking around,” she said.
     “You’re not supposed to talk,” said Martha.
     “Oh,” I said. Without the prompt of a movie, I hadn’t recognized that we were playing parts, or that we were playing a game. “Sorry. I guess—I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t get the idea that we had to sneak around, I guess. I felt—you know—at home.”
     “Well, try to remember that you’re not,” said Margot.
     “You can whisper,” whispered Martha, her lips against my ear.
     “Okay,” I whispered, and I nodded, and I winked.
     We went to the kitchen and made peanut butter sandwiches on crackers, but that was just a diversion. When we had our crackers, the girls took me directly to Andy’s studio. Margot went to a window, looked out, and said, “Nobody’s coming. Make it quick.”
     “Okay, Peter,” said Martha. “Look at Our Father’s painting.”
     She flipped the light switch, and for a moment the studio was illuminated, but only for a moment. She flipped the switch off again almost at once.
     “Did you see it?” she asked.
     “I think so,” I said. “Could you give me one more look?”
     “No,” said Margot. “We’re sure to get caught.”
     “Okay,” I said. “Just let me close my eyes for a minute and see if I’ve got it.”

[to be continued]

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