The Cannibal Heart

6

When dinner was over Mark built a fire in the living room grate. He had done considerable talking during the meal, mostly about his work, and he was feeling well pleased with himself, and with Mrs. Wakefield. Her interest seemed genuine, and her comments had been unexpectedly intelligent. He tried to tell himself that these were the reasons why he found her pleasing, though he was increasingly conscious of a feeling of excited curiosity.

But Jessie was bored. The effect of the earrings, which had temporarily imposed on her an adult restraint, was wearing off. When Mrs. Wakefield settled down in a wing chair in front of the fireplace, Jessie crowded in beside her, in spite of a perfectly obvious frown from her father. Her parents had all sorts of ways of communicating their displeasure without words — coughs and raised eyebrows and gestures and frowns and sometimes even little pinches if the situation was desperate — but Jessie had a way of either ignoring these hints with a blank stare, or else bringing them right out into the open arena with a blunt question: What are you frowning at me for? What am I doing? Jessie had a sophisticated subtlety which was all the more effective because it hid behind her age, and no one could prove it was there.

“Can you play any games?” Jessie said. “Like Parchesi or Old Maid or Hearts?”

Mrs. Wakefield smiled. “I used to, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how.”

“Don’t you play games with your little boy?”

“Not anymore.”

“If you could bring him along next time, I could teach him how to play Casino.”

“That’s nice of you, Jessie. But I’m afraid I can’t bring him.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it just about your bedtime, Jess?” Mark interrupted. “Scoot on up now and don’t forget to clean your teeth.”

Jessie looked pained. “Well, what are you making such faces at me for? I didn’t do anything!”

“You heard me. Now for once in your life go to bed without arguing.”

“I want to know why she can’t bring her little boy.”

“Well, you see, Jessie,” Mrs. Wakefield said patiently, “Billy had a bad accident.”

“In a car?”

“No, a boat. He was drowned.”

Jessie asked, frowning, “Couldn’t he swim?”

“No.”

“I can swim. In a pool, not in the ocean, on account of the waves.”

“We’ll have to go swimming in the ocean together. The waves won’t hurt you if you know how to handle them.”

“Can we go tomorrow?”

“If you’ll go to bed right now.”

“I will.”

Mrs. Wakefield unscrewed the gold earrings. Jessie was secretly relieved to be rid of them. Her head felt so delightfully light and airy that, even after she was all undressed and tucked in, it wouldn’t stay down on the pillow properly. It kept wanting to bob up again like the balloons she used to play with in Central Park when she tried to hold them underwater.

She closed her eyes, wondering why Billy hadn’t bobbed up again like that. But she couldn’t go to sleep. There were the sounds of voices from the living room beneath her, tantalizing sounds, almost but not quite loud enough for her to identify words. Outside her window a mockingbird rustled through the oleanders and challenged her with her own name, calling “OO-essie!” Just the way Carmelita called her up from the beach sometimes.

She got up in the dark and went to the window. From the yard below, very faintly, came the sound of James scraping his bill insistently against the screen door. The lights were on in Luisa’s room over the garage, and she could see Luisa quite clearly standing in front of the bureau mirror. Luisa had her hair done up on top of her head and she was wearing nothing but a slip and a necklace.

Jessie leaned away out of the window and called in a soft penetrating whisper, “Luisa! Hey, Luisa!”

“OO-essie, oo-essie,” the mockingbird corrected sharply. “OO-essie, oo-essie!”

“Luisa!”

She had to call several times before Luisa finally heard her. She turned off the light and came to the window, propping her elbows on the sill. “What do you want?”

“Nothing. What are you doing?”

“None of your business,” Luisa said crossly. “You’re supposed to go to sleep, it’s nine o’clock.”

“We could talk.”

“I don’t want to talk, I’m busy.”

“What doing?”

“None of your business.”

“You sound funny,” Jessie said with a little shiver of excitement. Luisa’s voice was ghostly, it seemed to rise mysteriously from the velvet darkness like fog from the sea. “Do I sound funny, too?”

“Sorta.”

“I found the you-know-what in the woods today. The... dead man.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Luisa said. “It’s a secret.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s in hell fire.”

“I don’t believe it,” Jessie said, shaken. “My mother says there’s no such place as hell fire.”

“She doesn’t know. She’s not a Catholic.”

“Why did he go to hell fire?”

“You’re too little to know. He did, that’s all. There are rules about it and he broke one.”

“Do you ever break any?”

“Lots,” Luisa said recklessly. “I’ll probably go to hell, too, only I don’t care. It can’t be much worse than being stuck out here with not even a human being to talk to.”

“You can talk to me.”

“Oh, you. I meant, real people. Boys and men mostly. I hate women.”

“Maybe you could get married.”

“I intend to, don’t worry. I already got a boyfriend.”

“I might get married myself,” Jessie said thoughtfully. “Maybe if Billy hadn’t of drowned I could marry him.”

“Billy?” Luisa let out a noise that sounded like a muffled giggle, and a moment later she slammed the window shut and pulled down the blind.

Moving softly across the room in her bare feet, Jessie turned on the lamp on the bureau. It was here she kept her most important treasures, a clown sachet that smelled of lilacs, odds and ends of shells and colored pebbles, and a family of tiny rubber dolls living in an abalone shell, each of them no bigger than Jessie’s little finger. Holding the place of honor in the center of the bureau was the baby starfish housed in one of Carmelita’s glass casseroles.

It was a most unusual starfish, everyone agreed, because most starfish had just five or six arms, but Jessie’s had eleven and a half. Jessie called it Cinderella and anticipated the day when it would recognize her and come over to the side of the bowl in response to its name. So far the starfish had done nothing but sit in the sand at the bottom of the bowl, ignoring its lavish banquet of bread crumbs and rice krispies and sowbugs and sea lettuce. But Jessie knew this was because it felt strange in front of a strange little girl, just as she had felt on the first day of school. She was fiercely convinced that it would soon get over its shyness and respond to her overwhelming love and tenderness.

“Cinderella,” Jessie whispered, tapping the side of the bowl very gently. “Here, Cinderella. Come on.”

She was almost certain that Cinderella moved an arm languidly in reply, but she couldn’t be sure; the water was so murky with disintegrated food that Cinderella looked like a delicate pink brooch accidentally dropped into the bowl.

It was possible that since it was after nine o’clock Cinderella might be sleeping. Jessie didn’t want to disturb it, but she did want it to move just a little to dispel the vague fear that was pressing against her heart.

“Cinderella, it’s me, it’s Jessie Banner.”

She tapped the glass again with her fingernails, and this time she was sure that there was no movement at all except a tiny ripple of water that danced to the other side of the bowl and back again.

She pulled out the second bottom drawer of the bureau, and using the edge of it as a stool to stand on, she peered anxiously down into the dingy water. The sea smell of the water mingled sickeningly with the lilac sachet and the sharp acrid odor of the abalone shell.

“Cinderella,” Jessie said. “Look where I am now, up here.”

Putting her hand into the water she touched one of Cinderella’s fragile beaded arms, and then slowly she drew the starfish out. It lay, soft and cold, in the palm of her hand. The tiny hairs along its arms didn’t wave and tickle her skin the way they had when she’d first picked it out of the tide pool.

After a moment she put it back into the water. It sank to the bottom and she realized, not only that it was dead, but that all her plans and hopes for it had been futile. It had never been just shy and sleepy; it had never heard her calling, or seen her, or known she was Jessie Banner; it had never eaten the bread crumbs and the sowbugs, or been aware of its snug little home in the casserole; it had never liked her.

With a cry she picked up the casserole and climbed down from the drawer. Some of the water spilled on her nightgown and the wet cloth stuck to her skin, quite cold at first but getting warmer and warmer until she hardly noticed the wetness. Without turning on the hall light she crept down the stairs holding the heavy bowl awkwardly in her arms. The smell of the water nauseated her, it had become the smell of death; and the starfish at the bottom was no longer Cinderella, cunningly and delicately made like a breathing flower. It was a dead thing that Jessie couldn’t bear to see or to touch. The real Cinderella lay close against Jessie’s heart, and she could keep it safe there only by getting rid of this impostor.

The voices from the living room were quite distinct now but she didn’t stop to eavesdrop. Slowly and silently she went through the dark hall and the dining room with her burden, not sure yet what she intended to do with it.

She pressed open the swinging door into the kitchen, squinting her eyes against the sudden dazzle of light.

Carmelita was finishing the dishes, humming to herself. In the platform rocker by the window Mr. Roma sat reading the newspaper. His glasses were perched in the middle of his nose as if they had alighted there by accident and meant to fly away at any minute.

He held the paper at arm’s length, frowning at it over the top of his glasses. These newspaper people were getting very careless lately about the printing. In spite of the spectacles Carmelita had given him for Christmas he found it difficult to make out the furry letters.

“Bless my buttons,” he said in surprise. “It’s Jessie.”

Jessie put the bowl on the floor and wiped her hands very carefully on her nightgown.

“This is a little visit, eh?” Mr. Roma said, taking off his glasses. “The starfish is hungry again?”

Jessie stared at him, mute and suffering.

“I told you, Jessie. I said to you, this little fellow cannot live in a bowl; no, he must have the whole sea, he cannot breathe unless the waves stir up the water.”

“I made waves. I stirred it up.”

“The whole sea,” Mr. Roma said again. “I am sorry.”

“It was only a fish anyway, just a plain old fish.”

But her voice trembled, and Mr. Roma understood that of the billions of fish in the sea this one alone had been raised from anonymity by Jessie’s love. In all the seven seas there was not another one quite like it and never would be.

“Carmelita,” Mr. Roma said, “is there a small piece of cake left from supper?”

“I don’t want any cake, thank you,” Jessie said.

“A very small piece?”

“No.” She couldn’t explain to him that eating a piece of cake would only make her feel worse because ordinarily she would have shared it with Cinderella, floating the crumbs very cautiously so as not to frighten it.

“Not hungry, eh?”

“No.”

“Come, stand on the rug. Your feet will get cold.”

“I could sit on your knee.”

“Yes, I guess you could.”

She sat on his knee but it turned out to be quite bony and uncomfortable, and after a moment she got off again and stood hesitantly on the braided cotton rug.

“I could bury it,” she said finally. “Like the man in the woods, with a stone to show where.”

“It’s too late to do it now.”

“No, it isn’t. I’m not tired, I’m not hungry or cold or sleepy or anything. People always think I am when I’m not. Anyway it won’t take long. It would just take a little hole, Cinderella is so little.”

She blinked away the sudden tears that stung her eyelids. Mr. Roma saw them anyway.

“It won’t take us a minute,” he said.

Carmelita muttered in Spanish that it was not good, such play-acting about death; it would bring more bad luck to a house already loaded down with it.

Mr. Roma rebuked her softly: “Houses don’t have luck. Only people have. And then, who can say, until the very end, what has been good luck and what has been bad luck?”

“The priest can. You talk like an infidel.”

“Ah, now.” He took the flashlight out of the cupboard and handed it to Jessie. Then he picked up the bowl from the floor, wrinkling his nose a little at the smell.

Jessie opened the screen door for him, holding the flashlight, and looking very solemn and pale, like an acolyte in her white nightgown. She looked so different that James didn’t recognize her. He turned and waddled away, squawking, into the shadows.

“Play-acting,” Carmelita repeated with scorn, but she followed them out on the porch, wiping her hands on her apron. To bury this soulless animal in the ground like a man was a sin, and never again would she use the glass casserole, never. She would hide it in the shed and pretend she had mislaid it. Or she would throw it over the steep cliff where the cormorants lived and the next high tide would carry away the pieces or grind them to dust on the rocks below the cliff.

Standing on the dark porch she crossed herself, her flabby face lifted toward the cold bright eyes of heaven.

“Here,” Jessie said. “Under my window.”

“That would be suitable.”

Mr. Roma dug the hole himself, using a little stick to pry loose the hard dry ground beside the oleander.

“Tomorrow,” he said, chipping at the earth, “tomorrow, maybe Mrs. Wakefield will find you a new starfish, a bigger prettier one.”

“No, thank you.”

“Mrs. Wakefield knows all about the things in the sea. She will fix the starfish for you so you can take it home with you and show to your friends. Of course it will not be alive,” he added apologetically, “but it will look so.”

“It won’t move, though.”

“No. But it will be pretty to put on your dresser and use as a pin cushion.”

“I don’t have any pins.”

“Even so,” he said briskly, “it will be pretty to look at and remind you of the sea.”

“How big will it be?”

“Big as your head.”

“Bless my buttons,” Jessie said. “I’d like one like that.”

“Tomorrow. The very first thing tomorrow. You’re a very sensible girl. Already you know something some people never learn — when you lose one thing you must accept a substitute and be cheerful about it.”

Jessie didn’t quite understand what he meant but she was warmed by his approval. She felt impervious to the cold slap of the wind.

Leaning back on his heels, Mr. Roma said, “There now, it is all ready. You bring the little starfish.”

Jessie tipped the water out of the bowl. It oozed out slowly, thick with the soggy bread crumbs and the slimy sea lettuce and the sowbugs that floated like little black boats down a sluggish river. She picked up the starfish, pretending it was only a flower she’d found unexpectedly on the ground.

She put it into the hole Mr. Roma had dug, and he covered it up very quickly and neatly. To mark the grave he pressed into the ground with his heel a white pebble with grey stripes; and beside the pebble he laid an oleander blossom, no longer fresh but still showing signs of pink under its sun seared edges.

“You feel better now,” Mr. Roma stated. “I know how it is. The starfish is buried and already it has become part of the past. Maybe you’re already planning how you will tell your friends about it, eh? ‘Once I had a little starfish,’ you will say. ‘He was a pretty little fellow but he died, and it was nobody’s fault.’ ”

“I’ll tell them he drowned.”

“Oh, no. Now that isn’t right. No, a starfish cannot drown. He died for lack of air.”

“It looked like he was drowned, like Billy.”

Mr. Roma glanced at her quickly. “Who said that Billy was drowned?”

“Mrs. Wakefield.”

“No, no, I’m quite sure you’re mistaken, Jessie. Maybe you didn’t understand her. Maybe she said, Billy is dead.”

“She told me herself that he had a bad accident, he was drowned.”

“Well.” He stood for a moment, scuffing the ground with the toe of his shoe like a hesitant child. Then he turned and picked up the empty bowl. “Come along now. It’s getting late.”

She took his free hand and walked along beside him with her nightgown flapping around her legs and pushing her along like a sail in the wind.

Carmelita was waiting for them at the kitchen door. She had taken the scarf off her head for the night and her hair bristled with bobby pins like a porcupine. Her voice bristled, too, with sharp staccato Spanish:

“Leave the casserole on the steps. I will not have it in the house.”

“Is she mad?” Jessie said anxiously to Mr. Roma.

“No, no. She wants me to leave the bowl outside.”

“Why?”

“It smells a little.” He put the bowl on the steps and opened the screen door.

The kitchen was warm and alive with lights. The lights splashed like acid into Jessie’s eyes and they watered feebly and wouldn’t stay open.

“The little one’s tired,” Carmelita said reprovingly. “All this play-acting, all this night air. What will her mother and father have to say about this?”

“We will be very quiet,” Mr. Roma said. “Eh, Jessie? Can we go upstairs very, very quiet?”

“I can go up by myself. You have squeaky shoes on.”

“You’re a sensible girl.”

“Good night, Mr. Roma.”

“Good night, Jessie.”

She slipped out through the swinging door, through the dining room and into the hall. As she ducked past the doorway of the living room she had a glimpse of Mrs. Wakefield sitting at the piano. Her right arm hung straight down at her side, as if it was broken, and with her left hand she was playing soft, low chords, humming the melody absentmindedly, her eyes half-closed. Her voice brushed softly against the air, like spider webs.

When she reached her room again Jessie closed the door tight. The wet patch on her nightgown had dried, and there was nothing to show that she’d been downstairs at all except the empty spot on the bureau where the casserole had been.

She tried to keep from looking at it as she switched off the lamp, but the gap was there even in the dark. She couldn’t escape from it any more than she could escape from the gap in her mouth when she lost a tooth. A new tooth always grew in its place, but the period of loss, of ugliness, was never quite forgotten.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow.

It was like a present under the tree at Christmas. It couldn’t be actually opened ahead of time, but it could be wondered about, shaken, smelled, touched on the outside, the ribbons loosened a little, the paper pierced with peepholes.

She went to bed hugging the box of tomorrow with its new starfish, not yet found, and the piece of chocolate cake waiting in the cake box, and the swim in the sea with Mrs. Wakefield. She had a transient feeling of contempt for the boy Billy who couldn’t even swim.