The Wild Things

CHAPTER V

Max ate his dinner in his room, a plan of action that seemed the best for all concerned. He could hear Claire and his mom and Gary below, ticking and clicking their way through a quiet meal. He hadn’t apologized yet and Claire hadn’t either, and he was of the opinion that allowing the near-death of a brother was worse than soaking the room of a sister. After dinner he heard her leave, off to a babysitting job across the river.

When he was sure she was gone, Max stepped quietly into his mom’s office in a corner of the back porch where she’d set up a desk and pair of bookshelves. The porch overlooked the back yard, black in the cold night, nothing out there but grey tree trunks, their bony fingers pinching brittle, shuddering leaves.

His mom was on the phone, typing on her computer, loudly, like someone pretending to type on a computer. Tap-tap, slip-tap, tap-tick-tap. Her long black hair fell forward, covering her cheeks; a strand was stuck to her lips. She seemed to notice Max but did not look directly at him.

He stepped down into the office, keeping close to the wall. He almost knocked a photo from where it hung, but steadied it. In it, a dozen of his mom’s friends had gathered at a New Year’s Eve party she’d had at the house. Max had been allowed to stay up until twelve, “running around like a friggin maniac” one of the friends had said, laughing, drinking his drink. Late in the night they had built a small fire in the backyard, roasting first a pig and later marshmallows, the guests drinking until they passed out all over the yard and living room and the bedrooms upstairs. The picture showed everyone sane and sober, but Max knew that things had changed later. Later he saw so many strange things: someone hiding in the bathroom, a fight between two of the men, adults on the floor everywhere, grabbing at each other and Max. Someone, at some point, went missing in the woods and wasn’t found for hours. “Last time I do that,” his mother said afterward, though it had been fun, everyone agreed, on balance.

With her phone conversation dragging on, it seemed like a good idea to begin crawling, so Max got down onto all fours and crawled along the edge of the wall until he made his way to the back window. He breathed heavily on the cold glass, making a rough oval of condensation. He drew an apple onto it, liking the crisp line his finger made.

On the phone, his mom’s voice was thin and uncertain. “Do you know exactly what Holloway didn’t like about the report?” she said, pulling the hair from her forehead.

Max’s eyes fixed upon something under her desk: there was a red paper clip bent into the shape of a dragon. He did not want to attract attention, so he slithered, as slowly as he could, toward the paper clip and grabbed it. It was covered in a rubbery casing and felt good in his hands. With a similar length of rubber-covered wire, his father had once used a Swiss Army knife to cut the casing back and then twisted the metal into the shape of a swan. His father could do anything with a Swiss Army knife — or any knife, really. He would make things with his hands and then toss them to Max as if to say, It’s just this thing. Take it if it means anything to you. Max had kept everything he’d ever made — swans, yo-yos, pull-toys, a kite made from vellum and sticks from the backyard.

“I just don’t know where to begin,” his mom said. “I feel like I have to start over and even then I don’t know what he wants.” Her voice quavered, and he wanted to do something to make her feel stronger. So often, when she seemed upset, when someone on the phone was making her cry, he didn’t know what to do. But this night he thought he knew the solution.

He got up, and adopted the posture of a robot. He was very good at his robot imitation and had been told as much many times. He entered her peripheral vision, walking and sounding like a robot — a robot, he decided, who had a slight limp. She had laughed at this before, and he thought she might laugh today.

“I feel like that’s what I did,” his mom said into the phone. “Isn’t that what I turned in?”

Finally she saw Max and forced a smile. He continued walking, turning his head to smile at her, pretending that he was not noticing that he was about to walk into the wall. Thunk. He hit the wall. “Ohhh noo,” he said, in a voice half robot, half Eeyore. “Ohhh noo,” he groaned again, trying to walk through the wall, his robot arms rotating futilely.

She laughed, first silently, then out loud. She snorted. She had to cover the receiver to avoid being heard.

“That’s okay,” she said, recovering. “No problem. I guess I just have to get started. I’ll have it in the morning. Thanks Candy. Sorry to call you at home. This’ll be the last time. See you tomorrow.”

She hung up the phone and looked over at Max.

“Come here,” she said.

He stepped over to her, his forehead at the level of hers. Quickly she took Max in her arms and squeezed him. It was so sudden, though, and the hug was so intense — her arms almost vibrating — that Max let out a gasp.

“Oh Max. You make me happy,” she said, kissing him roughly on the crown of his head. “You and Claire are the only things that keep me going.”

Her hug became tighter, too tight to be meant for him only.

There was a long silence. Max wondered if he should say he was sorry, because he was sorry. But he could not find the word Sorry. He could only find words like I want to live under my bed and Please take me back and Help.

“Do you have a story for me?” she asked.

Max did not have a story ready.

“Yeah,” he said, stretching out the word as long as he could, while he thought of something. She liked to hear his stories, and would type them out on her computer as he narrated. Still searching for a tale, he lay down under the desk, the location where he usually did his narrating. He liked to be underneath, her feet resting on his stomach, where he could watch her face — to gauge her reaction to the story as it progressed — and to see her fingers on the keyboard. He needed to watch her type to make sure she was getting it all down.

He began:

“Once there were some buildings. They were these huge buildings and they could walk. So one day they got up and they left the city. Then there were some vampires. The vampires wanted to make the buildings into vampires so they flew in and attacked them. They bit them. One of the vampires bit the tallest building but his fangs broke off. Then the rest of his teeth fell out. And he cried because he would never get new teeth again. And the other vampires said Why are you crying, aren’t those just your baby teeth? And the vampire said No, those are my grown-up teeth. And the vampires knew he couldn’t be a vampire anymore, so they left him. And he couldn’t be friends with the buildings because the vampires had killed them all.”

“Is that the end?” his mom asked.

“Yeah,” Max said.

His mom finished typing and smiled sadly down at Max.

“The end,” he said.

She continued to rub his stomach with her foot. It felt good and terrible and he was so tired, so very tired, so incredibly tired all over.