The Cannibal Heart

9

“Billy?”

Her own voice came up through the years, trailing moments that had been, not lost, but waiting in ambush for her return.

“Be a good boy now and answer me, Billy. You’re not hiding again, are you?”

Sometimes when he was hidden he gave himself away by answering or by giggling with delight at having fooled her.

She went through the house calling him, very softly, so that she wouldn’t disturb Miss Lewis. It was Miss Lewis’s day off and she was still asleep in the room above Billy’s. Miss Lewis could awaken at the drop of a pin, and she went to sleep just as readily, anywhere and any time, as if her whole body had been trained to respond to the closing and opening of her eyelids. I close my eyes, I sleep. I open my eyes and I am instantly alert, ready for activity, competition, disaster, death, or just a sunny day.

“Billy...” The word crept through the house like smoke, and Miss Lewis sat up in bed, scratching the thinning hair above her left temple. Nine o’clock, a sunny day. Too fine to be wasted.

She began to dress, knowing that it would be only a matter of time before Mrs. Wakefield appeared, in need of help. Whenever Billy disappeared for a few minutes Mrs. Wakefield became very perturbed. She didn’t show it by wringing her hands and getting all excited, but she got what Miss Lewis described to herself as a “gone” look on her face. Mrs. Wakefield never seemed to realize that Billy always turned up, in the toy chest in his room, behind the davenport, or in the broom closet. Hiding was Billy’s favorite game, and when Miss Lewis found him he always looked so comically pleased that she couldn’t help laughing.

Miss Lewis had known other children like Billy and she had never been repelled by their appearance the way many people were. She considered Billy rather appealing, with his expression of vivacious curiosity and his button nose slightly pink at the tip, like a clown’s.

A sunny day.

Miss Lewis pulled aside the drapes, squinting under the sudden splash of sun. When she picked up the brush and began to do her hair, her glance into the mirror on the dressing table was impersonal and uncritical, as if she was meeting a new patient for the first time and was reserving judgment.

“Billy... Now answer me, be a good boy, Billy. Are you hiding?”

Of course he’s hiding, Miss Lewis answered silently through the closed door. Under the flying brush her hair sparkled with electricity; it stood way out from her head, a nimbus of fine grey wire.

Of course Billy was hiding. She should know by this time. Always getting in a tizzy. A very quiet tizzy, worse, in a way, than the screaming-meemy kind. Emotional, oh my, yes, in spite of that firm controlled manner of hers. Emotions were necessary, Miss Lewis conceded that, but she kept her own, as she kept her best gloves and handkerchiefs, in an old chocolate box covered with a sachet of rose petals.

“Coming,” she said briskly, like a general with fresh troops and supplies coming in to replace a battered and defeated division.

She opened the door and Mrs. Wakefield said, looking quite “gone”: “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“I’m not much of a one for lying in bed,” Miss Lewis said, rebuking the defeated troops who might easily have lost the battle by lying too long abed, or having unboxed emotions. “I heard you calling. Now you know, you know, he likes to be called. Remember the time he was in the broom closet? Hours, it was. Simply because everyone made such a fuss calling him.”

“He... he never used to hide like this.”

“It’s only a new game he has. I’m rather pleased with it myself. It shows a development, a step forward. He’s getting more independent. Look at it that way.”

“I’m afraid he might hurt himself.”

“He hasn’t yet,” said Miss Lewis. Afraid. Yes, that was the word for Mrs. Wakefield’s expression, not “gone.” A constant fear that fitted as tight as her skin.

Miss Lewis felt a sharp little pain in her chest, invisible under the starched chambray house dress — a twitch of revelation. Was Mrs. Wakefield’s fear merely that Billy would hurt himself, or was it much deeper, uglier: I am afraid because in the very bottom of my mind, in the depths where I live naked and absolutely alone with myself, Billy is dead, drowned, never existed.

If such a fear existed, Miss Lewis knew that no one could ever find out — except in terms of results — least of all, Mrs. Wakefield herself. She could never recognize it because it was already broken up into little digestible chunks. It was natural, even commendable, for a mother to be afraid that her son might hurt himself. A cut, a scratch, a fall, these were legitimate worries, viewed separately. But when Miss Lewis thought of them as pieces off the big fear, she got a crawly sensation along her spine.

Miss Lewis said, gently, as if in apology for her thoughts, “Have you looked under the beds?”

“Yes. Everywhere I could think of.”

“He might be with Mr. Roma and Carmelita.”

“No, they’re working in the garden.”

“Where did you see him last?”

“He was playing with his blocks on the patio,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “He was very quiet. I thought I’d run upstairs and change into a lighter dress.”

“That’s probably just the chance he was waiting for, blocks or no blocks.” There was no rebuke in Miss Lewis’s voice; she seemed secretly amused that Billy had had wits enough to slip away from his mother and hide. Billy had been showing a great improvement lately, and while Miss Lewis gave most of the credit to the thyroid extract, she took some for herself. The odd part of it was that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wakefield noticed or commented on his improvement. It was as if they dared not look, or hope, for fear he would slide back again.

“He’s getting sharp as a fox,” Miss Lewis said.

They went through the whole house again, systematically, so that Billy wouldn’t have an opportunity to slip from one room to another to elude them. Miss Lewis found a button that had been missing from her best crepe dress, but no Billy.

“He might be with his father,” she said. “Why didn’t we think of that before, my goodness.”

“John’s on the beach. He knows I don’t allow Billy down there without me. It’s too dangerous.”

“We’ll have a look anyway.”

They crossed the lawn, fringed satin embroidered with clumps of marguerites. It had rained during the week. The trellis beyond the patio was a wall of white and scarlet and mauve sweet peas. The ribbed leaves of the loquat almost hid the golden eggs of fruit. The oleanders were choked with blossoms, and the camellia tree stood like a duchess, pink and perfect after its bath.

“It’s a pity they don’t smell,” Miss Lewis said. “The camellias.” But she sniffed them anyway as she passed, just to make sure.

The sun was steaming off the moisture from the roof of the house and from the boulders at the top of the cliff. In the windless air the steam rose straight and purposeful, as if to complete the cycle of change without delay: the cloud, the rain, the steam, the cloud.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, Miss Lewis knelt at the cliff’s edge and peered over at the stretch of sand below.

“Of course. Just as I thought. He’s with his father, you see?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Wakefield knelt, too, looking a little humble, as if she were kneeling not only to see over the cliff more easily, but out of gratitude to a nameless and unpredictable god.

“There now,” Miss Lewis said crisply. “He’s perfectly all right. Better not lean on that boulder. It’s a little unsteady, I noticed the other day.”

“It’s time,” Mrs. Wakefield said, “time for Billy’s orange juice.”

“It won’t hurt to wait a bit. But I’ll bring him up if you want me to.”

“It’s dangerous down there,” Mrs. Wakefield said vaguely. “The tide, rocks — really dangerous.”

“I’ll fetch him.”

“Yes.”

Miss Lewis’s retreating footsteps beat in her ears like the pulse of the earth.

Below the cliff, the father and the son. Their voices rose straight as the steam, but already dissolved before they reached her, already turned into something else in the cycle of change.

“See, Billy? It’s fine, isn’t it? Dip your feet in, feel it. Isn’t it nice? Take my hand. There, now. You must try, Billy, try very hard. You’re getting to be a big boy.”

He was a big boy, but he hung back, burying his face against his father’s ribs.

“We’ll surprise your mother, won’t we? She’ll be flabbergasted when she finds out you can paddle and float around and perhaps even swim eventually. Wouldn’t you like to surprise her, Billy?”

Yes, yes, but there must be other ways besides the cold and terrifying water. To hide and be found, to have a bowel movement at the right time, to clean his plate, to build a tower of blocks — other ways, soft as hair, warm as cocoa.

“You must try, Billy.”

Yes, yes. He moved his head up and down against his father’s ribs, willing to try, willing to surprise, yes. But the waves were animals with cold wet mouths.

John and Billy, turned to gold in the sun, advancing into a molten blue mirror that absorbed their golden skin inch by inch.

Wait, Mrs. Wakefield thought, wait for me. We will all take a walk in the sea, my garden. We must stay together, the three of us. Wait for me.

Into the garden, the mirror, the cold wet mouth.

“That’s my big boy. Now isn’t it fun? It’s like having a bath.”

Yes, but the tub was enormous as eternity, the water icy as death, and Miss Lewis was not there with her steamy hair and soft, soapy hands. Miss Lewis, Miss Lewis!

“You can splash all you want to. See? You splash me first, Billy. Go ahead, splash me, Billy.”

I cannot.

He pushed away, butting his father with his head, goatlike. He tried to run but the water was heavy, it dragged at his legs and pulled them down, it tossed him into a ball and chased the ball shoreward.

In the safe sand he uncurled like a giant worm, slow and silent, while Mrs. Wakefield’s scream ricocheted against the cliff wall.

Miss Lewis picked him up, pressing his dripping head against her starched chambray bosom, soothing him not with words but with low crooning sounds that she had learned a thousand years ago and had never quite forgotten.

Staggering under his weight she carried him up to the drier sand already hot with sun. He liked to be carried, to swing in time to Miss Lewis’ body and feel her warm quick breathing against his neck. He cried when she put him down, and lifted his arms to her like a baby. But in a moment he forgot what he was crying about. The tears dried on his cheeks leaving freckles of salt.

With Miss Lewis beside him he felt safe again, and pleasantly excited at her funny noises and at the sight of his mother scrambling down the face of the cliff calling his name. It was better than hiding and being found.

He felt quite safe again, yes, but he wasn’t ready yet to look at his father coming out of the jaws of the sea.

“He’s all right,” Miss Lewis said. “He’s a big brave boy. And he fooled us, didn’t you, Billy? We didn’t have any idea you were down here, swimming. My goodness!”

He had surprised them, after all. Miss Lewis trembled with surprise, and his mother was paper-white; and even his father, who had arranged the surprise, seemed quite taken in by it.

Everything dripped; his own hair, his father’s swimming trunks, his mother’s eyes. So much dripping, he urinated in the soft sand.

“Let’s go put on some dry clothes,” Miss Lewis said. “Come along.”

He lifted his arms to be carried, but she said, half-laughing: “You’re too heavy, Billy-my-boy. You weigh a ton.”

“I’ll carry him up,” Mr. Wakefield said.

Billy shook his head, grabbing at Miss Lewis’ skirt so that she almost fell. She helped him to his feet and they went off together, hand in hand, with Miss Lewis talking a blue streak.

Mr. Wakefield looked after them, defeated, shivering, feeling on his back and shoulders not the heat of the sun but the cold eyes of conscience.

“He let go so suddenly,” he said at last. “He made a push and knocked my breath out before I had any idea what he was going to do.”

“You shouldn’t have brought him down here at all.”

“He isn’t hurt.”

“He might have been. I’m not blaming you, I’m not. I was watching. I know how it happened. John...” Billy and Miss Lewis were at the stone steps now, and she was showing him how to hold on to the guard rail. From a distance they both looked very tiny and vulnerable, breakable dolls. “John, don’t ever bring him down here again, promise.”

“I thought he’d enjoy it. I thought... well, he seemed so much better, almost — almost normal. I thought you’d be — pleasantly surprised if I...” His voice dissolved at the base of his throat, and crystallized further down, thin and brittle as glass. “Miss Lewis said he showed a definite improvement. I wanted to... well, to enlarge his experience. I... expected too much of him, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“You must promise.”

“Yes. Yes, I promise.”

He felt sometimes that he lived within walls of promises and couldn’t breathe; a prison of promises. Promise me that you will never send him away to a school or anything. Promise that we will keep him with us always, away from other people, just with us so he’ll never know he’s different. Promise to make it up to him that he was ever born. Promise patience, faith, restraint, love, charity, strength, pity. Promise promises.

He turned to look at her and he saw that she was suffering more than he was. It was out of her womb that Billy had come, her son, her freak. Freak freak. He stabbed the word viciously into his heart, and pulled it out, and stabbed it in again until it was softened by his own blood.

It was no one’s fault, not his or hers or some obscure great-great-grandfather’s. It was an act of God. No blame could be apportioned, no justice expected.

“John.” Her hand was warm on his arm. “John, sometimes you look as if you hate me.”

“Hate you? I could never hate you, darling.”

It was true. He would always love her, it was the only promise in the wall that couldn’t be pried loose, or fall out from decay.

A gull cried, childlike, the sun was sharp as a devil’s eye. From its ledge the black flash of a cormorant swooped out to sea.