Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The day of the eclipse dawned hot and muggy but relatively clear-the weather forecasters” warnings that low-hanging clouds might obscure the phenomenon were going to prove groundless, it seemed, at least in western Maine.

Sally, Maddy, and Will left to catch The Dark Score Sun Worshippers” bus at around ten o'clock (Sally gave Jessie a stiff, silent peck on the cheek before leaving, and Jessie responded in kind), leaving Tom Mahout with the girl his wife had called “the squeaky wheel” the night before.

Jessie changed out of her shorts and Camp Ossippee tee-shirt and into her new sundress, the one which was pretty (if you weren’t offended by red and yellow stripes almost bright enough to shout, that was) but too tight. She put on a dab of Maddy’s My Sin perfume, a little of her mother’s Yodora deodorant, and a fresh application of Peppermint Yum-Yum lipstick. And although she had never been one to linger before the mirror, fussing with herself (that was her mother’s term, as in “Maddy 5 stop fussing with yourself and come out of there!”), she took time to put her hair up that day because her father had once complimented her on that particular style.

When she had put the last pin into place, she reached for the bathroom light-switch, then paused. The girl looking back at her from the mirror didn’t seem like a girl at all, but a teenager. It wasn’t the way the sundress accentuated the tiny swellings that wouldn’t really be breasts for another year or two, and it wasn’t the lipstick, and it wasn’t her hair, held up in a clumsy but oddly fetching chignon; it was all of these things together, a sum greater than its parts because of… what? She didn’t know. Something in the way the upsweep of her hair accented the shape of her cheekbones, perhaps. Or the bare curve of her neck, so much sexier than either the mosquito-bumps on her chest or her hipless tomboy’s body. Or maybe it was just the look in her eyes-some sparkle that either had been hidden before today or had never been there at all.

Whatever it was, it made her linger a moment longer, looking at her reflection, and suddenly she heard her mother saying: Iswear to God, sometimes you behave as if she were your girlfriend insteadof your daughter!

She bit her pink lower lip, brow Burrowing a little, remembering the night before-the shiver that had gone through her at his touch, the feel of his hands on her breasts. She could feel that shiver trying to happen again, and she refused to let it. There was no sense shivering over stupid stuff you couldn’t understand. Or even thinking about it.

Good advice, she thought, and turned off the bathroom light.

She found herself growing more and more excited as noon passed and the afternoon drew along toward the actual time of the eclipse. She turned the portable radio to VNCH, the rock-and-roll station in North Conway. Her mother abhorred “NCH, and after thirty minutes of Del Shannon and Dee Dee Sharp and Gary “US” Bonds, would make whoever had tuned it in (usually Jessie or Maddy, but sometimes Will) change to the classical music station which broadcast from the top of Mount Washington, but her father actually seemed to enjoy the music today, snapping his fingers and humming along. Once, during The Duprees” version of “You Belong to Me,” he swept Jessie briefly into his arms and danced her along the deck. Jessie got the barbecue going around three-thirty, with the onset of the eclipse still an hour away, and went to ask her father if he wanted two burgers or just one.

She found him on the south side of the house, below the deck on which she stood. He was wearing only a pair of cotton shorts (yale phys ed Was printed on one leg) and a quilted oven-mitt. He had tied a bandanna around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. He was crouched over a small, smoky sod fire. The combination of the shorts and the bandanna gave him an odd but pleasant look of youth; Jessie could for the first time in her life see the man with whom her mother had fallen in love during her senior summer.

Several squares of glass-panes cut carefully out of the crumbling putty in an old shed window-were piled up beside him. He was holding one in the smoke rising from the fire, using the barbecue tongs to turn the glass square this way and that like some sort of weird camp delicacy. Jessie burst out laughing-it was mostly the oven-mitt that struck her funny-and he turned around, also grinning. The thought that the angle made it possible for him to look up her dress crossed her mind, but only fleetingly. He was her father, after all, not some cute boy like Duane Corson from down at the marina.

What are you doing? she giggled. I thought we were having hamburgers for lunch, not glass sandwiches!

Eclipse-viewers, not sandwiches, Punkin, he said. If you put two orthree of these together, you can look at the eclipse for the whole period oftotality without damaging your eyes. You have to be really careful. I’ve read; you can burn your retinas and not even know you’ve done it untillater.

Ag! Jessie said, shivering a little. The idea of burning yourself without knowing you were doing it struck her as incredibly gross. How long will it be total, Daddy?

Not long. A minute or so.

Well, make some more of those glass whatchamacallums-I don’t wantto burn my eyes. One Eclipse Burger or two?

One will be fine. If it’s a big one.okay.

She turned to go.

Punkin?

She looked back at him, a small, compact man with fine beads of sweat standing out on his forehead, a man with as little body hair as the man she would later marry, but without either Gerald’s thick glasses or his paunch, and for a moment the fact that this man was her father seemed the least important thing about him. She was struck again by how handsome he was, and how young he looked. As she watched, a bead of sweat rolled slowly down his stomach, tracked just east of his navel, and made a small dark spot on the elastic waistband of his Yale shorts. She looked back at his face and was suddenly, exquisitely aware of his eyes on her. Even narrowed against the smoke as they were now, those eyes were absolutely gorgeous, the brilliant gray of daybreak on winter water. Jessie found she had to swallow before she could answer; her throat was dry. Possibly it was the acrid smoke from his sod fire. Or possibly not.

Yes, Daddy?

For a long moment he said nothing, only went on looking up at her with sweat running slowly down his cheeks and forehead and chest and belly, and Jessie was suddenly frightened. Then he smiled again and all was well.

You look very pretty today, Punkin. In fact, if it doesn’t sound tooyucky, you look beautiful.

Thank you-it doesn’t sound yucky at all.

His comment pleased her so much (especially after her mother’s angry editorial comments of the night before, or perhaps because of them) that a lump rose in her throat and she felt like crying for a moment. She smiled instead, and sketched a curtsey in his direction, and then hurried back to the barbecue with her heart pounding a steady drumroll in her chest. One of the things her mother had said, the most awful thing, tried to rise into her mind.

(you behave as if she were your)

and Jessie squashed it as ruthlessly as she would have squashed a bad-tempered wasp. Still, she felt gripped by one of those crazy adult mixes of emotion-ice cream and gravy, roast chicken stuffed with sourballs-and could not seem to entirely escape it. Nor was she sure she even wanted to. In her mind she kept seeing that single drop of sweat tracking lazily down his stomach, being absorbed by the soft cotton of his shorts, leaving that tiny dark place. It was from that image that the emotional turmoil seemed chiefly to arise. She kept seeing it and seeing it and seeing it. It was crazy.

Well, so what? It was a crazy day, that was all. Even the sun was going to do something crazy. Why not leave it at that?

Yes, the voice that would one day masquerade as Ruth Neary agreed. Why not?

The Eclipse Burgers, garnished with sauted mushrooms and mild red onion, were nothing short of fabulous. They certainlyeclipse the last batch your mother made, her father told her, and Jessie giggled wildly. They ate on the deck outside Tom Mahout’s den, balancing metal trays on their laps. A round deck-table, littered with condiments, paper plates, and eclipse-watching paraphernalia, stood between them. The observation gear included Polaroid sunglasses, two home-made cardboard reflector-boxes of the sort which the rest of the family had taken with them to Mount Washington, panes of smoked glass and a stack of hotpads from the drawer beside the kitchen stove. The panes of smoked glass weren’t hot anymore, Tom told his daughter, but he wasn’t terribly competent with the glass-cutter, and he was afraid there still might be nicks and jagged spots along the edges of some of the panes.

The last thing I need, he told her, is for your mother to come homeand find a note saying I’ve taken you to the Emergency Room at OxfordHills Hospital so they can try to sew a couple of your fingers back on.

Mom really wasn’t exactly crazy about this idea, was she? Jessie asked.

Her Daddy gave her a brief hug. No, he said, but I was. I wascrazy enough about it for both of us. And he gave her a smile so bright she just had to smile back.

It was the reflector-boxes they used first as the onset of the eclipse-4:29 p.m… edt-neared. The sun lying in the center of Jessie’s reflector-box was no bigger than a bottlecap, but it was so fiercely bright that she groped a pair of the sunglasses from the table and put them on. According to her Timex, the eclipse should have already started-it said 4:30.

I guess my watch is fast, she said nervously. Either that or there’sa bunch of astronomers all over the world with egg on their faces.

Check again, Tom said, smiling.

When she looked back into the reflector-box, she saw that the brilliant circle was no longer a perfect circle; a crescent of darkness now dented the right-hand side. A shiver slipped down her neck. Tom, who had been watching her instead of the image inside his own reflector-box, saw it.

Punkin? All right?

Yes, hut…it’s a little scary, isn’t it?

Yes, he said. She glanced at him and was deeply relieved to see he meant it. He looked almost as scared as she felt, and this only added to his winning boyishness. The idea that they might be afraid of different things never entered her mind. Want to sit on my lap, Jess?

Can I?

You bet.

She slipped onto his lap, still holding her own reflector-box in her hands. She wiggled around to get comfortable against him, liking the smell of his faintly sweaty, sunwarmed skin and a faint trace of some aftershave-Redwood, she thought it was called. The sundress rode up on her thighs (it could hardly do anything else, as short as it was), and she barely noticed when he put his hand on one of her legs. This was her father, after all-Daddy-not Duane Corson from down at the marina, or Richie Ashlocke, the boy she and her friends moaned and giggled over at school.

The minutes passed slowly. Every now and then she squirmed around, trying to get comfortable-his lap seemed strangely full of angles this afternoon-and at one point she must have dozed off for three or four minutes. It might have been even longer, because the puff of breeze that came strolling down the deck and woke her up was surprisingly cold against her sweaty arms, and the afternoon had changed somehow; colors which had seemed bright before she leaned back against his shoulder and closed her eyes were now pale pastels, and the light itself had weakened somehow. It was as if, she thought, the day had been strained through cheesecloth. She looked into her reflector-box and was surprised-almost stunned, actually-to see that only half the sun was there now. She looked at her watch and saw it was nine minutes past five.

It’s happening, Daddy! The sun’s going out!

Yes, he agreed. His voice was odd, somehow-deliberate and thoughtful on top, somehow blurry down below. Right onschedule.

She noticed in a vague sort of way that his hand had slipped higher-quite a bit higher, actually-on her leg while she had been dozing.

Can I look through the smoked glass yet, Dad?

Not yet, he said, and his hand slid higher still along her thigh. It was warm and sweaty but not unpleasant. She put her own hand over it, turned to him, and grinned.

It’s exciting, isn’t it?

Yes, he said in that same odd blurry tone. Yes it is, Punkin.Quite a bit more than I thought it would be, actually.

More time passed. In the reflector-box, the moon continued to nibble away at the sun as five-twenty-five passed, and then five-thirty. Almost all of her attention was now focused on the diminishing image in the reflector-box, but some faint part of her became aware once again of how oddly hard his lap was this afternoon. Something was pressing against her bottom. It wasn’t painful, but it was insistent. To Jessie, it felt like the handle of some tool-a screwdriver, or maybe her mother’s trackhammer.

Jessie wriggled again, wanting to find a more comfortable spot on his lap, and Tom drew in a quick hissing mouthful of air over his bottom lip.

Daddy? Am I too heavy? Did I hurt you?

No. You’re fine,

She glanced at her watch. Five-thirty-seven now; four minutes to totality, maybe a little more if her watch was running fast.

Can I look at it through the glass yet

Not yet, Punkin, But very soon.

She could hear Debbie Reynolds singing something from the Dark Ages, courtesy of WNCH: “The old hooty-owl…hooty-hoosto the dove…Tammy…Tammy…Tammy’s in love.” It finally drowned in a sticky swirl of violins and was replaced by the disc jockey, who told them it was getting dark in Ski Town, USA (this was the way the “NCH deejays almost always referred to North Conway), but that the skies were too cloudy over on the New Hampshire side of the border to actually see the eclipse. The deejay told them there were a lot of disappointed folks wearing sunglasses across the street on the town common.

We’re not disappointed folks, are we, Daddy?

Not a bit, he agreed, and shifted beneath her again. We’re aboutthe most happy folks in the universe, I guess.

Jessie peered into the reflector-box again, forgetting everything except the tiny image which she could now look at without narrowing her eyes down to protective slits behind the heavily tinted Polaroid sunglasses. The dark crescent on the right which had signalled the onset of the eclipse had now become a blazing crescent of sunlight on the left. It was so bright it almost seemed to float over the surface of the reflector-box.

Look out on the lake, Jessie!

She did, and behind the sunglasses her eyes widened. In her rapt examination of the shrinking image in the reflector-box, she had missed what was going on all around her. Pastels had now faded to ancient watercolors. A premature twilight, both entrancing and horrifying to the ten-year-old girl, was slipping across Dark Score Lake. Somewhere in the woods, an old hooty-owl cried out softly, and Jessie felt a sudden hard shudder bend its way through her body. On the radio, an Aamco Transmission had ended and Marvin Gaye began to sing: “Oww,listen everybody,especially you girls, is it right to be left alone when the one you love isnever home?”

The owl hooted again in the woods to the north of them. It was a scary sound, Jessie suddenly realized-a very scary sound. This time when she shivered, Tom slipped an arm around her. Jessie leaned gratefully back against his chest.

It’s creepy, Dad.

It won’t last long, honey, and you’ll probably never see another one.Try not to he too scared to enjoy it.

She looked into her reflector-box. There was nothing there.

“I love too hard, my friends sometimes say…”

Dad? Daddy? It’s gone. Can I-

Yes. Now it’s okay. But when I say you have to stop, you have tostop. No arguments, understand?

She understood, all right. She found the idea of retinal burns-burns you apparently didn’t even know you were getting until it was too late to do anything about them-a lot scarier than the hooty-owl off in the woods. But there was no way she wasn’t going to at least have a peek, now that it was actually here, actually happening. No way.

“But I believe,” Marvin sang with the fervor of the converted, “Yes I believe…that a woman should be loved that way…”

Tom Mahout gave her one of the oven potholders, then three panes of smoked glass in a stack. He was breathing fast, and Jessie suddenly felt sorry for him. The eclipse had probably given him the creeps, too, but of course he was an adult and wasn’t supposed to let on. In a lot of ways adults were sad creatures. She thought about turning around to comfort him, then decided that would probably make him feel even worse. Make him feel stupid. Jessie could sympathize. She hated to feel stupid worse than anything. Instead, she held the smoked panes of glass up in front of her, then slowly raised her head from her reflector-box to look through them.

“Now you chicks should all agree,” Marvin sang, “this ain’t the wayit’s s'posed to be, So lemme hear ya! Lemme hearya say YEAH YEAH!”

What Jessie saw when she looked through the makeshift viewer-