--YOU
GET A REPUTATION FOR ANSWERING YOUR PHONE AND ALL THEY DO IS RING
…Happy
Wednesday.
…A few
months ago after my dad died, I wrote a bunch of poetry as a means of releasing
some emotional angst. Most of the poems
were autobiographical, or closely so. I
sent them off, but no one wanted them until Eunoia Review took ten of
them.
Here
are two:
…And this is one of the first things I
wrote when I started writing full-time five years ago (I forget who published
it, but you should know it’s a tad creepy, ala The Twilight Zone):
Hell Song
HOW
DO YOU REGARD YOURSELF?
Those
words, written in capital letters on the inside cover of her social studies
textbook caught twelve year old Abby Stevens unaware. What kind of question was that? What type of person would even ask such a
ridiculous question, and for what purpose?
She
studied the handwriting. She pondered
the question once more. She closed her
mouth and permitted herself a muffled, exasperated scream.
She thought it might
have been Douglas messing with her again, so during dinner Abby asked him
outright.
“I don’t have time
for your stupid-ass school books,” her stepbrother said without
hesitation. Douglas had a genius I.Q.
and, at fourteen years of age, was taking college courses.
“Don’t
say ‘stupid’,” Darla, Abby’s stepmother said.
“Would
you rather have me lie?” Douglas asked.
He was as clever as an armed jackal but ugly and as pale as an
earthworm.
“Douglas
has a point,” Abby’s dad said. Abby’s
dad had a psychiatric practice that he ran in tandem with Darla. In addition, Abby’s dad was a hold-over
communist who, in the year of our Lord 1974, believed Fidel Castro had some
ideas worth considering.
“Well,
someone wrote it,” Abby said, smacking the butt of her fork on the table. “The book is new and now it’s ruined.”
“It’s
hardly ruined,” Darla said, jutting her chin and scraping her spoon louder than
necessary against the glass serving bowl.
“You
shouldn’t be such a perfectionist,” Abby’s father said, using his tongue to pry
a sprig of parsley from his molars.
“It’ll be your undoing.”
“It’ll
worsen your acne,” Darla said.
I
hate you, I hate you all, Abby said to herself, then asked aloud, “May I be
excused?”
“Now,
you’re not going to sulk all night, are you?” Darla asked.
Abby retrieved her textbook. She decided not to let it out of her
sight. From her bedroom, she took the
staircase that led into the parlor. Her
father had recently purchased a Steinway piano for the impractical purpose of
filling a decorative niche, since no one played. The instrument stood in the north corner of
the room like the shiny shell of a black rhino halfway submerged in swamp
water.
Abby sat at the bench
and stared at the keys. Their veneer
glinted and shimmered because of the overhead chandelier light. Abby had no idea what she was doing or why,
but her hands had a mind of their own, a stubborn mind at that. When she tried to control them a centrifugal
force emanating from somewhere near her joints disallowed their being
controlled, like two magnets pushing off from one another.
“What the?”
Abby’s fingers took
over from her hands, this set caressing the upraised black keys, this set
fondling the squared-off ends of the white keys with a delicate pressure that
could only be described as sensuous.
Her fingers plucked a
few of the keys, shaping chords.
What was happening?
The textbook flapped
open in her lap: HOW DO YOU REGARD YOURSELF?
This was all very
ludicrous.
A wall mirror hung
behind the piano. (Every room in their
house contained a minimum of three mirrors.)
Abby was too frightened to follow her fingers’ progress, and the
textbook unnerved her as well, so she backed her willpower into a corner,
demanding its support as she studied her reflection. This seemed to work.
Abby realized she
didn’t really know herself very well, at least not her physicality. She saw now that she was pretty in an impish
way, yet her hair had a flat, sun-scorched lawn quality.
“Ouch!” The textbook shifted on Abby’s lap and a
corner jabbed her in the thigh.
HOW DO YOU REGARD
YOURSELF?
At that moment, Abby
decided to regard herself as a redhead, with thick lustrous locks curling up
around her neck and shoulders, same as that lady with the mole from “Gunsmoke,”
Miss What’s-Her-Name? Miss Kitty.
As the image started
to take shape, Abby’s fingers found a rhythm on the key board and a wordless
tune began playing. Abby’s poor heart
could barely keep up with its militant beating or the haunting arc of the tune. She had no idea what to do, not that it
mattered, since she was just coming along for the ride. Her fingers tapped and flailed as if clawing
for rescue, but four minutes later her wrists slammed on the keys, pounding the
songs desperate conclusion.
In the morning Abby
was not altogether shocked to discover her new mane.
At breakfast Douglas
was the first to comment. “Nice dye job,
Strawberry Fields. What’d you do, soak
your head in jam?”
“Great God in Heaven,
Abby, what have you done?” Darla asked, horrified, however the hitch in her
voice, along with the exaggerated way she pressed a palm to her
surgically-altered breasts, told Abby her stepmother was simply jealous as all
get-out.
“I like it,” Abby’s
father said. “It gives you a sort of regal Irish appeal.”
“But we’re
Norwegian,” Darla said.
“Speak for yourself.”
Abby said.
The next day Abby
stepped into the parlor with her knees shaking and her insides gurgling. Like a stalker at last coming face-to-face
with its obsession, Abby was perplexed, with no next step in hand.
So she sat at the
bench. She clucked her tongue and rocked
her feet. She fingered the textbook and
then yipped, snapping her hand in the air, the victim of a searing paper
cut. The slice looked innocent enough
but it burned, soon bubbling up with crimson driblets. The more Abby sucked, the more it bled.
“Come on, Hombre,
toughen up,” she told herself.
Her hands took over
from there. The tune was combustible,
chaotic, a car accident involving band equipment. Her finger stung each time it tamped down,
yet Abby was incapable of withdrawing it, of detaching herself from the bizarre
cacophony taking place. She could hear
cymbals smashing against the sides of a sea cliff and then plunging into water,
a song—if it could even be labeled that—of bedlam and madness.
Breathless and
sweating, as if she’d just given birth, Abby relaxed on the bench. Her hands robotically retracted into her lap
when it was over. She blinked several
times. Every one of the piano keys was
blood-smeared.
The next day Abby
stood at the bus stop for long two hours before calling it quits.
When the phone rang,
she was eating Jif peanut butter straight out of the jar, with a spatula, in
the middle of a “Partridge Family” music marathon, scream/singing the line, “Doesn’t somebody want to be wanted like me,
just like me?”
Douglas asked, “Has
the school called yet?”
“What the hell are
you talking about?”
“Watch your fat lip.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’ve tried to get
in, but it’s you they want.”
“Once Satan sees it’s
you, you’re in all right. Trust me.”
“Listen up, bitch
lips, school’s cancelled.”
“Liar.”
“Dad and Mom have
their hands full with the victims’ parents and they told me to call you.”
“Victims’ parents?”
“If you’d shut your
pie hole for a minute I might be able to explain.”
It seemed
preposterous that Abby could detest her stepbrother more, yet new ways and
degrees presented themselves daily.
“Well? Go ahead,” she said, affecting his tone,
“babble on, Babylon.”
There had been an accident last night with
Abby’s bus, bus 106. After the ‘Battle
of the Bands’ competition, the vehicle got swallowed up in a cloud of fog,
swerved and flew down a cliff, crashing into a lake. Twelve students were dead, the rest in
critical condition, including the driver.
“Is this another one
of your sick jokes?” Abby asked.
“You want a sick
joke, pull out a hand mirror and have yourself a look.”
Abby hung up the
phone, slid back-to-the-wall until her butt hit the floor, and began a frantic
discourse with herself: It didn’t make sense. Was she some kind of monster? Had she caused the accident? Or was it a coincidence? Of course it was a coincidence. But how had her hair turned red? Could she have dyed it without remembering,
and if she had, then didn’t that mean she really was a nut job?
As
a calming technique, Abby took several deep breaths but only got dizzy. She fought off a drunken stagger once she was
on her feet, moving down the hall toward the parlor.
Again, she had the
text book with her. She sat, her posture
erect. She opened the flap. She read the inscription. HOW DO YOU REGARD YOURSELF? Instead of looking into the mirror, Abby
closed her eyes. She squeezed her lids
so hard that her eyes began to burn. Before
she was aware of it, her fingers were on the piano keys, softly composing a
catchy, arm-swinging riff.
When it was finished,
Abby opened her eyes and brushed the tears away.
She knew what she’d
just done, that she’d written a death-march to her brother. If the pattern played itself out, she had
killed him as certainly as if she’d lopped all his limbs off with a machete.
***
“Douglas told us what
happened?”
“He did?”
“Yes, we’re very
proud of you.”
Even Darla was
nodding and smiling, if perhaps somewhat begrudgingly.
They were at the
dinner table, just the three of them.
Meals were the only time the family ever gathered together. Tonight Doug was missing.
“What did he tell you
exactly?” Abby asked.
“He said you exposed
him, called him out, so to speak.”
“Douglas is gay?”
“Funny!” Abby’s
father said, working over a tough chunk of Salisbury steak. “Your use of euphemisms worked, ‘Hell’ being
an especially effective one. The doctor
said your brother’s been living in hell for the last three years.”
“So Doug’s not dead?”
“Doug said you
convinced him to check himself into rehab, that it was your idea.”
“Rehab?”
“Evidentially he can’t receive visitors for
the first six weeks. He’ll be detoxing
during that time. Some people say
kicking heroin is akin to death, perhaps worse.”
“Heroin?”
A surge of
ambivalence snaked through Abby’s innards, up her lungs and into her
throat. She sprang to her feet and was
already sprinting before she could ask to be excused. In the bathroom Abby vomited a
tightly-spooled splatter, rinsed her mouth out several times, and dabbed her
lips with a towel.
Gasping, she stared
at her pale, sweat-soaked complexion in the glass. She remembered Douglas’s comment about how
she should look at herself in a mirror if she wanted a sick joke.
She threw up once
more.
She hadn’t killed her
stepbrother after all, she’d saved him.
Now how could that be?
***
In the days that
followed a bewildering war of confliction raged within Abby. She had no intention of ever visiting the
parlor again, yet the decision became something beyond her, an unsupported and
untouchable choice that was not hers alone to make.
No longer was it just
Abby’s fingers that had become independent articles, but now the rest of Abby’s
body was beginning to follow suit, betraying her in subtle ways. For instance, she’d decide to get herself a
drink of orange juice, but instead of turning toward the kitchen, an invisible
force would bum-rush her, stiff-arm her like a gust of wind out of
nowhere, and then, off-balance, she’d
open her eyes to discover herself repositioned a few feet from the parlor.
Just as a dying
person recognizes when death is at the door, Abby understood that her internal
biology had been invaded by an insurgency that had set up camp for good. Soon her mental state would be attacked as
well.
“Give it to me
straight, Doc,” she said out loud as a joke, “how much time do I have?”
No doctor could help
her, witchdoctor or otherwise, and as such, Abby decided to extricate herself.
***
Abby planned to run
away from home, to get as far from the parlor and the piano as possible. Before that, though, she wanted to shred the
textbook, or at least the disturbing passage which had seemed to set all this
in motion. However, when she tried to
tear the cover from its binding, the book kept snapping free, as if it
contained a coiled spring, as if it was booby-trapped or—worse-- alive.
“I’ll burn the damn
thing,” Abby thought, “that’s what I’ll do.” So she set the text atop the faux
stone logs and flipped the wall switch and waited for the abrupt, convulsive
“Poof!” sound that always followed three seconds after the fireplace was turned
on.
Nothing
happened. The fireplace was
“Poof!-less.”
Abby went through the same ritual with the
upstairs fireplace. When that one failed
as well, she tried the other five fireplaces, all without success.
In the kitchen she
turned the stove dial to HIGH but got no response, not even a propane odor.
“Fine!” she screamed,
flinging the textbook in the air. When
it hit a porcelain pedestal, shattering a bust of some eyeless Grecian, Abby
pounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
She stuffed her
backpack with two changes of clothing, extra underwear, a couple of ladybug
barrettes, as well as essential sundries.
When she picked up the bag the textbook was there on the mattress, so
she picked it up and threw it against the wall, ran out and left her house for
good.
Or so she thought.
At the edge of the
yard, Abby collapsed.
When she came to,
Abby lay in her bedroom, head propped up with several pillows, surrounded by
her father, Darla and another woman Abby didn’t recognize. The final scene in “The Wizard of Oz”
immediately came to mind. Abby didn’t
know if she was hallucinating or dreaming.
It also occurred to her that she could be dead, just moments from having
an out-of-body experience.
“You have a strange
strain of flu.”
“Flu?”
“Yes, unfortunately
your mother and I are on our way to the airport. We’re hosting a conference in Phoenix all
week. In any event, this is Mrs. Hagen.”
“Hello, dear,” Mrs.
Hagen said. She had thin hair the color
of cobwebs, with dark coffee bean eyes and a powered mass of jagged wrinkles
for a face.
“Mrs. Hagen is your
new nanny.”
“But I don’t want a
nanny.”
“Of course you don’t,
but Mrs. Hagen also plays piano.”
“Oh, no.”
“She’s agreed to give
you lessons as an added bonus.”
Abby shook her head side
to side so hard it pinched her neck. “No
way. I don’t ever want to touch that
thing again, it’s cursed.”
“See, her fever
really has taken root,” Darla said, pleased as punch.
“I’m not delusional!”
Abby shouted. “Well, maybe I am, but if
I am, then that means I’m physically healthy.”
“She’s not making
sense,” Darla said.
“I don’t have the stupid fucking flu.”
“See, that type of
language. It’s not like our Abby at
all,” Darla said, and with Mrs. Hagen’s toothless grin looming like a dried out
lake bed, and Abby digesting Darla’s invocation of the couplet, “our Abby”,
Abby passed out.
***
At the breakfast
table Mrs. Hagen didn’t bother hiding the fact that she was gawking at
Abby. “Eat some breakfast. You need to your strength.”
“I want to go to
school,” Abby said. “I feel pretty
good.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs.
Hagen said. Her black bean eyes stared
over the rim of her huge coffee mug.
Abby noticed the woman’s fingernails were charcoal, not painted, but
rather rotting from the inside. “Your
public education days are done. In
addition to being your nanny, your parents have asked that I home-school you.”
“What a crock!”
“Is it? Is it now?
Well I don’t think so. And I
don’t think you will either. My
specialty is music, piano.”
“Goodie for you.”
Mrs. Hagen shifted in
her chair, swiveling her head. She
looked one hundred and twenty years old, powdery and pasty-faced, a mummy with
white chin hair. Abby leaned back in her
chair, almost tipping over, frightened of being bit or attacked.
“Don’t you understand,
Abby, you’re the reason I’m here?”
“I’m young but I’m
independent. I don’t need any—“
Mrs. Hagen wasn’t
listening. “I heard your playing and I
came as quickly as I could.”
“You heard my
playing?”
Nodding, Mrs. Hagen’s
licked her chapped lips and tweaked several stiff chin whiskers between her
forefinger and thumb. “Yesss,” Mrs.
Hagen said.
“You heard me through
the walls, from another state or another country, from wherever you live?”
“Absolutely.”
“Holy shit.”
***
“You have a gift and
you must learn to use it in… the correct manner.”
They were in the
parlor. The textbook sat on the music
stand, the flap open.
HOW DO YOU REGARD
YOURSELF? stared at her.
Abby wanted to puke
but her stomach was empty. She looked at
the inscription, then at Mrs. Hagen and said, “Hey, did you write that?”
Mrs. Hagen smiled a
mildewed jack-o’-lantern smile. “Now
what do you think?”
***
Their lessons weren’t
really lessons at all, rather Mrs. Hagen presented Abby with a list of names
and landmarks, some Abby knew—The Space Needle, Burt Reynolds, Jane Fonda—and
others she didn’t—Helmut Schmidt, Nelson Rockefeller, the Brandenburg Gate.
“One at a time,
dear. Focus on one at a time, a song for
each.”
“You want me to kill
these people, destroy these buildings, these places?”
“That’s a harsh way
of putting it.”
“Well, how would you
put it?”
“Your task is… simply
to play, to exercise your gift.”
“That sounds like a
bunch of bull.”
“You have a gift,
Abby. It’s your destiny. This list is a fulfillment of your
destiny. You’ll see.”
“What if I refuse?”
“That’s
impossible. Haven’t you already tried?”
So the ancient hag
knew about the faulty fireplaces, about the failed runaway attempt. Of course she knew.
Abby closed her
eyes. Her fingers sprang forth, pressing
down on the ivories.
“There, very good,”
Mrs. Hagen said, her inflection now shrill, her fingertips trembling with
excitement. “Now picture—“
Mrs. Hagen’s voice
disappeared. Abby locked out sound. This must be how it is for deaf people, Abby
thought.
Mrs. Hagen’s mouth
was moving and the old hag was flapping her hands as if she were conducting an
orchestra or trying to fly.
Abby closed her eyes
to concentration. She had learned a
thing or two about willpower and what it could do once music—and this
piano--partnered.
HOW DO YOUR REGARD
YOURSELF?
This is how Abby
regarded herself.
She struck the keys
and pictured Mrs. Hagen’s hands clamping around her neck, squeezing hard,
cutting off Abby’s air supply, Abby’s face going beet-colored, then purple, then
bone-white. She pictured squad cars and
Mrs. Hagen in handcuffs. She pictured it
all and set it to music, then began to play.
