Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

What Jessie saw through her sunglasses and her home-made filter was so strange and so awesome that at first her mind refused to grasp it. There seemed to be a vast round beauty mark, like the one below the corner of Anne Francis’s mouth, hanging there in the afternoon sky.

“If I talk in my sleep… “cause I haven’t seen my baby all week…”

It was at this point that she first felt her father’s hand on the nub of her right breast. It squeezed gently for a moment, drifted across to the left one, then returned to the right again, as if he were making a size comparison. He was breathing very fast now, the respiration in her ear was like a steam engine, and she was again aware of that hard thing pressing against her bottom.

“Can I get a witness?” Marvin Gaye, that auctioneer of soul, was shouting. “Witness, witness?”

Daddy? Are you all right?

She felt a delicate tingle in her breasts again-pleasure and pain, roast turkey with a Nehi glaze and chocolate gravy-but this time she also felt alarm and a kind of startled confusion.

Yes, he said, but his voice sounded almost like the voice of a stranger. Yes, fine, but don’t look around. He shifted. The hand which had been on her breasts went somewhere else; the one on her thigh moved up farther, pushing the hem of the sundress ahead of it.

Daddy, what are you doing?

Her question was not exactly fearful; mostly it was curious. Still, there was an undertone of fear there, something like a length of fine red thread. Above her, a furnace of strange light glowed fiercely around the dark circle hanging in the indigo sky.

Do you love me, Punkin?

Yes, sure-

Then don’t worry about anything. I’d never hurt you. I want to hesweet to you. Just watch the eclipse and let me he sweet to you.

I’m not sure I want to, Daddy, That sense of confusion was growing deeper, the red thread was fattening. I’m afraid of burning

MY eye. Burning my watchamacallums.

“But I believe,” Marvin sang, “a woman’s a man’s best friend…and I’m gonna stick by her…to the very end.”

Don’t worry. He was panting now. You have another twenty seconds.At least that. So don’t worry. And don’t look around.

She heard the snap of elastic, but it was his, not hers; her underpants were where they were supposed to be, although she realized that if she looked down she would be able to see them that was how far up he had pushed her dress.

Do you love me? he asked again, and although she was gripped by a terrible premonition that the right answer to this question had become the wrong one, she was ten years old and it was still the only answer she had to give. She told him that she did.

“Witness, witness,” Marvin pleaded, fading out now.

Her father shifted, pressing the hard thing more firmly against her bottom. Jessie suddenly realized what it was-not the handle of a screwdriver or the tackhammer from the toolbox in the pantry, that was for sure-and the alarm she felt was matched by a momentary spiteful pleasure which had more to do with her mother than with her father.

This is what you get for not sticking up for me, she thought, looking at the dark circle in the sky through the layers of smoked glass, and then: I guess this is what we both get. Her-vision suddenly blurred, and the pleasure was gone. Only the mounting sense of alarm was left. Oh jeez, she thought. It’s my retinas…it must bemyretinas starting to burn.

The hand on her thigh now moved between her legs, slid up until it was stopped by her crotch, and cupped her firmly there. He shouldn’t be doing that, she thought. It was the wrong place for his hand. Unless-

He’s goosing you, a voice inside suddenly spoke up.

In later years that voice, which she eventually came to think of as that of the Goodwife, frequently filled her with exasperation; it was sometimes the voice of caution, often the voice of blame, and almost always the voice of denial. Unpleasant things, demeaning things, painful things… they would all go away eventually if you ignored them enthusiastically enough, that was the Goodwife’s view. It was a voice apt to stubbornly insist that even the most obvious wrongs were actually rights, parts of a benign plan too large and complex for mere mortals to grasp. There would be times (mostly during her eleventh and twelfth years, when she called that voice Miss Petrie, after her secondgrade teacher) when she would actually raise her hands to her ears to try and blot out that quacking, reasonable voice-useless, of course, since it originated on the side of her ears she couldn’t get to-but in that moment of dawning dismay while the eclipse darkened the skies over western Maine and reflected stars burned in the depths of Dark Score Lake, that moment when she realized (sort of) what the hand between her legs was up to, she heard only kindness and practicality, and she seized upon what the voice was saying with panicky relief.

It’s just a goose, that’s all it is, Jessie.

Are you sure? she cried back.

Yes, the voice replied firmly-as the years went by, Jessie would discover that this voice was almost always sure, wrong or right. He means it as a joke, that’s all. He doesn’t know he’s scaring you,so don’t open your mouth and spoil a lovely afternoon. This is no bigdeal.

Don’t you believe it, toots! the other voice-the tough voice responded. Sometimes he behaves as if you’re his goddamned girlfriend instead of his daughter, and that’s what he’s doing right now! He’s not goosing you. Jessie! He’s fucking you!

She was almost positive that was a lie, almost positive that strange and forbidden schoolyard word referred to an act that could not be accomplished with just a hand, but doubts remained. With sudden dismay she remembered Karen Aucoin telling her not to ever let a boy put his tongue in her mouth, because it could start a baby in her throat. Karen said it sometimes happened that way, but that a woman who had to vomit her baby to get it out almost always died, and usually the baby died, too. I ain’t ever going to leta boy French-kiss me, Karen said. I might let one feel me on top, if Ireally loved him, but I don’t ever want a baby in my throat. How wouldyou EAT?

At the time, Jessie had found this concept of pregnancy so crazy it was almost charming-and who but Karen Aucoin, who worried about whether or not the light stayed on when you shut the refrigerator door, could have come up with such a thing? Now, however, the idea shimmered with its own weird logic. Suppose-just suppose-it was true? If you could get a baby from a boy’s tongue, if that could happen, then-

And there was that hard thing pressing into her bottom. That thing that wasn’t the handle of a screwdriver or her mother’s tackhammer.

Jessie tried to squeeze her legs together, a gesture that was ambivalent to her but apparently not to him. He gasped-a painful, scary sound-and pressed his fingers harder against the sensitive mound just beneath the crotch of her underpants. It hurt a little. She stiffened against him and moaned.

It occurred to her much later that her father very likely misinterpreted that sound as passion, and it was probably just as well that he did. Whatever his interpretation, it signalled the climax of this strange interlude. He arched suddenly beneath her, sending her smoothly upward. The movement was both terrifying and strangely pleasurable that he should be so strong, that she should be so moved. For one moment she almost understood the nature of the chemicals at work here, dangerous yet compelling, and that control of them might lie within her grasp-if she wanted to control them, that was.

I don’t, she thought. I don’t want anything to do with it. Whateverit is, it’s nasty and horrible and scary.

Then the hard thing pressed against her buttock, the thing that wasn’t the handle of a screwdriver or her mother’s tackhammer, was spasming, and some liquid was spreading there, soaking a hot spot through her pants.

It’s sweat, the voice which would one day belong to the Goodwife said promptly. That’swhat it is. He sensed you were afraid ofhim, afraid to be on his lap,and that made him nervous. You ought tobe sorry.

Sweat, my eye! the other voice, the one which would one day belong to Ruth, returned. It spoke quietly, forcefully, fearfully. You know what it is, Jessie-it’s the stuff you heard Maddy and thoseother girls talking about the night Maddy had her slumber party, afterthey thought you were finally asleep. Cindy Lessard called it spunk. She said it was white and that it squirts out of a guy’s thing like toothpaste. That’s the stuff that makes babies, not French kissing.

For a moment she balanced up there on the stiff lift of his wave, confused and afraid and somehow excited, listening to him snatch one harsh breath after another out of the humid air. Then his hips and thighs slowly relaxed and he lowered her back down.

Don t look at it any longer, Punkin, he said, and although he was still panting, his voice was almost normal again. That scary excitement had gone out of it, and there was no ambivalence about what she felt now: deep simple relief. Whatever had happened if anything really had-it was over.

Daddy-

Nope, don’t argue. Your time is up.

He took the stack of smoked glass panes gently from her hand. At the same time he kissed her neck, even more gently. Jessie stared out at the weird darkness cloaking the lake as he did it. She was faintly aware that the owl was still calling, and that the crickets had been fooled into beginning their evensongs two or three hours early. An afterimage floated in front of her eyes like a round black tattoo surrounded by an irregular halo of green fire and she thought: If I looked at it too long, if I burned my retinas, I’ll probably have to look at that for the rest of my life, like what you see after someone shoots off a flashbulb in your eyes.

Why don’t you go inside and change into jeans, Punkin? I guess maybe the sundress wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

He spoke in a dull, emotionless voice that seemed to suggest that wearing the sundress had been all her idea (Even if it wasn’t, you should have known better, the Miss Petrie voice said instantly), and a new idea suddenly occurred to her. What if he decided he had to tell Mom about what had happened? The possibility was so horrifying that Jessie burst into tears.

I’m sorry, Daddy, she wept, throwing her arms around him and pressing her face into the hollow of his neck, smelling the vague and ghostly aroma of his aftershave or cologne or whatever it was. If I did something wrong, I’m really, really, really sorry.

God, no, he said, but he still spoke in that dull, preoccupied voice, as if trying to decide if he should tell Sally what Jessie had done, or if it could perhaps be swept under the rug. You didn’t do anything wrong, Punkin.

Do you still love me? she persisted. It occurred to her that she was mad to ask, mad to risk an answer which might devastate her, but she had to ask. Had to.

Of course, he replied at once. A little more animation came into his voice as he said it, enough to make her understand that he was telling the truth (and oh what a relief that was), but she still suspected things had changed, and all because of something she barely understood. She knew the

(goose it was a goose Just a kind of goose)

had had something to do with sex, but she had no idea just how much or how serious it might have been. It probably wasn’t what the girls at the slumber party had called “going all the way” (except for the strangely knowledgeable Cindy Lessard; she had called it “deep-sea diving with the long white pole,” a term which had struck Jessie as both horrible and hilarious), but the fact that he hadn’t put his thing in her thing still might not mean she was safe from being what some of the girls, even at her school, called “pee-gee.” What Karen Aucoin had told her last year when they were walking home from school recurred to her, and Jessie tried to shut it out. It almost certainly wasn’t true, and he hadn’t stuck his tongue in her mouth even if it was.

In her mind she heard her mother’s voice, loud and angry: Don’t they say it’s the squeaky wheel that always gets the grease?

She felt the hot wet spot against her buttocks. It was still spreading. Yes, she thought, I guess that’s right. I guess the squeaky wheel does get the grease.

Daddy-

He raised his hand, a gesture he often made at the dinner table when her mother or Maddy (usually her mother) started getting hot under the collar about something. Jessie couldn’t remember Daddy ever making this gesture to her, and it reinforced her feeling that something had gone horribly awry here, and that there were apt to be fundamental, unappealable changes as the result of some terrible error (probably agreeing to wear the sundress) she had made. This idea caused a feeling of sorrow so deep that it felt like invisible fingers working ruthlessly inside her, sifting and winnowing her guts.

In the corner of her eye, she noticed that her father’s gym shorts were askew. Something was poking out, something pink, and it sure as hell wasn’t the handle of a screwdriver.

Before she could look away, Tom Mahout caught the direction of her glance and quickly adjusted his shorts, causing the pink thing to disappear. His face contracted in a momentary moue of disgust, and Jessie cringed inside again. He had caught her looking, and had mistaken her random glance for unseemly curiosity.

What just happened, he began, then cleared his throat. We need to talk about what just happened, Punkin, but not right this minute. Dash inside and change your clothes, maybe take a quick shower while you’re at it. Hurry up so you don’t miss the end of the eclipse.

She had lost all interest in the eclipse, although she would never tell him that in a million years. She nodded instead, then turned back. Daddy, am I all right?

He looked surprised, unsure, wary-a combination which increased the feeling that angry hands were at work inside her, kneading her guts… and she suddenly understood that he felt as bad as she did. Perhaps worse. And in an instant of clarity untouched by any voice save her own, she thought: You ought to! Jeepers, you started it!

Yes, he said… but his tone did not entirely convince her. Right as rain, Jess. Now go on inside and fix yourself up.

All right.

She tried to smile-tried hard-and actually succeeded a little. Her father looked startled for a moment, and then he returned her smile. That relieved her somewhat, and the hands which had been working inside her temporarily loosened their grip. By the time she had reached the big upstairs bedroom she shared with Maddy, however, the feelings had begun to return. The worst by far was the fear that he would feel he had to tell her mother about what had happened. And what would her mother think?

That’s our Jessie, isn’t it? The squeaky wheel.

The bedroom had been divided off girls-at-camp-style with a clothesline strung down the middle. She and Maddy had hung some old sheets on this line, and then colored bright designs on them with Will’s crayolas. Coloring the sheets and dividing the room had been great fun at the time, but it seemed stupid and kiddish to her now, and the way her overblown shadow danced on the center sheet was actually scary; it looked like the shadow of a monster. Even the fragrant smell of pine resin, which she usually liked, seemed heavy and cloying to her, like an air-freshener you sprayed around heavily to cover up some unpleasant stink.

That’s our Jessie, never quite satisfied with the arrangements until she gets a chance to put on the finishing touches. Never quite happy with someone else’s plans. Never able to let well enough alone.

She hurried into the bathroom, wanting to outrun that voice, rightly guessing she wouldn’t be able to. She turned on the light and pulled the sundress over her head in one quick jerk. She threw it into the laundry hamper, glad to be rid of it. She looked at her self in the mirror, wide-eyed, and saw a little girl’s face surrounded by a big girl’s hairdo… one which was now coming loose from the pins in strands and puffs and locks. It was a little girl’s body, too-flat-chested and slim-hipped-but it wouldn’t be that way for long. It had already started to change, and it had done something to her father it had no business doing.

I never want boobs and curvy hips, she thought dully. If they make things like this happen, who would?

The thought made her aware of that wet spot on the seat of her underpants again. She slipped out of them-cotton pants from Sears, once green, now so faded they were closer to gray-and held them up curiously, her hands inside the waistband. There was something on the back of them, all right, and it wasn’t sweat. Nor did it look like any kind of toothpaste she had ever seen. What it looked like was pearly-gray dish detergent. Jessie lowered her head and sniffed cautiously. She smelled a faint odor which she associated with the lake after a run of hot, still weather, and with their well-water all the time. She once took her father a glass of water which smelled particularly strong to her and asked if be could smell it.

He had shaken his head. Nope, he’d said cheerfully, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It just means I smoke too damn much. My guess is that it’s the smell of the aquifer, Punkin. Trace minerals, that’s all. A little smelly, and it means your mother has to spend a fortune on fabric softener, but it won’t hurt you. Swear to God.

Trace minerals, she thought now, and sniffed that bland aroma again. She was unable to think why it fascinated her, but it did. The smell of the aquifer, that’s all. The smell of-

Then the more assertive voice spoke up. On the afternoon of the eclipse it sounded a bit like her mother’s voice (it called her tootsie, for one thing, as Sally sometimes did when she was irritated with Jessie for shirking some chore or forgetting some responsibility), but Jessie had an idea it was really the voice of her own adult self If its combative bray was a little distressing, that was only because it was too early for that voice, strictly speaking. It was here just the same, though. It was here, and it was doing the best it could to put her back together again. She found its brassy loudness oddly comforting.

It’s the stuff Cindy Lessard was talking about, that’s what it is it’s his spunk, tootsie. I suppose you ought to be grateful it ended up on your underwear instead of someplace else, but don’t go telling yourself any fairy-tales about how it’s the lake you smell, or trace minerals from deep down in the aquifer, or anything else. Karen Aucoin is a dipshit, there was never a woman in the history of the world who grew a baby in her throat and you know it, but Cindy Lessard is no dipshit. I think she’s seen this stuff, and now you’ve seen it, too. Man’s-stuff. Spunk.

Suddenly revolted-not so much by what it was as from whom it had originated-Jessie threw the underpants into the hamper on top of the sundress. Then she had a vision of her mother, who emptied the hampers and did the wash in the dank basement laundry room, fishing this particular pair of panties out of this particular hamper and finding this particular deposit. And what would she think? Why, that the family’s troublesome squeaky wheel had gotten the grease, of course… what else?

Her revulsion turned to guilty horror, and Jessie quickly fished the underpants back out. All at once the flat odor seemed to fill her nose, thick and bland and sickening. Oysters and copper, she thought, and that was all it took. She fell on her knees in front of the toilet, the underpants wadded up in one clenched hand, and vomited. She flushed quickly, before the smell of partly digested hamburger could get into the air, then turned on the cold sink-tap and rinsed her mouth out. Her fear that she was going to spend the next hour or so in here, kneeling in front of the toilet and puking, began to subside. Her stomach seemed to be settling. If she could just keep from getting another whiff of that bland copper-creamy smell…

Holding her breath, she thrust the panties under the cold tap, rinsed them, wrung them out, and flung them back in the hamper. Then she took a deep breath, pushing her hair away from her temples with the backs of her damp hands at the same time. If her mother asked her what a damp pair of panties was doing in the dirty clothes-

Already you’re thinking like a criminal, the voice that would one day belong to the Goodwife mourned. Do you see what being a bad girl gets you, Jessie? Do you? I certainly hope you d-

Be quiet, you little creep, the other voice snarled back. You can nag all you want later on, but right now we’re trying to take care of a little business here, if you don’t mind. Okay?

No answer. That was good. Jessie brushed nervously at her hair again, although very little of it had fallen back down against her temples. If her mother asked what the damp panties were doing in the dirty-clothes hamper, Jessie would simply say it was so hot she went for a dip without changing out of her shorts. All three of them had done that on several occasions this summer.

Then you better remember to run your shorts and shirt under the tap, too. Right, toots?

Right, she agreed. Good point.

She slipped into the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door and returned to the bedroom to get the shorts and the teeshirt she’d been wearing when her mother, brother, and older sister left that morning… a thousand years ago, it now seemed. She didn’t see them at first, and got down on her knees to look under the bed.

The other woman is on her knees, too, a voice remarked, and she smells that same smell. That smell that’s like copper and cream.

Jessie heard but didn’t hear. Her mind was on her shorts and tee-shirt-on her cover story. As she had suspected, they were under the bed. She reached for them.

It’s coming out of the well, the voice remarked further. The smell from the well.

Yes, yes, Jessie thought, grabbing the clothes and starting back to the bathroom. The smell from the well, very good, you’re a poet and you don’t know it.

She made him fall down the well, the voice said, and that finally got through. Jessie came to a dead stop in the bathroom doorway, her eyes widening. She was suddenly afraid in some new and deadly way. Now that she was actually listening to it, she realized that this voice was not like any of the others; this one was like a voice you might pick up on the radio late at night, when conditions were exactly right-a voice that might come from far, far away.

Not that far, Jessie; she is in the path of the eclipse, too.

For one moment, the upper hallway of the house of Dark Score Lake seemed to be gone. What replaced it was a tangle of blackberry bushes, shadowless under the eclipse-darkened sky, and a clear smell of sea-salt. Jessie saw a skinny woman in a housedress with her dark hair put up in a bun. She was kneeling by a splintered square of boards. There was a puddle of white fabric beside her. Jessie was quite sure it was the skinny woman’s slip. Who are you? Jessie asked the woman, but she was already gone “if she had ever been there in the first place, that was.

Jessie actually glanced over her shoulder to see if perhaps that spooky skinny woman had gotten behind her. But the upstairs hallway was deserted; she was alone.

She looked down at her arms and saw they were rippled with gooseflesh.

You’re losing your mind, the voice that would one day be Goodwife Burlingame mourned. Oh Jessie, you’ve been bad, you’ve been very bad, and now you’re going to have to pay by losing your mind.

She waited for a moment in a kind of horrified suspension to see if any of the voices-or the image of the woman kneeling by the splintered boards with her slip puddled on the ground beside her-would come back, but she neither heard nor saw anything. That creepy other who had told Jessie some she had pushed some he down some well was apparently gone.

Strain, toots, the voice that would one day be Ruth advised, and Jessie had a clear idea that while the voice didn’t exactly believe that, it had decided Jessie had better get moving again, and right away. You thought about a woman with a slip beside her because you’ve got underwear on the brain this afternoon, that’s all. I’d forget the whole thing, if I were you.

That was great advice. Jessie quickly dampened her shorts and shirt under the tap, wrung them out, and then stepped into the shower. She soaped, rinsed, dried, hurried back to the bedroom. She ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered with the robe again for the quick dash across the hall, but this time she did, only holding it shut instead of taking time to belt it closed.

She paused in the bedroom again, biting her lip, praying that the weird other voice wouldn’t come back, praying that she wouldn’t have another of those crazy hallucinations or illusions or whatever they were. Nothing came. She dropped the robe on her bed, hurried across to her bureau, pulled on fresh underwear and shorts.

She smells that same smell, she thought. Whoever that woman is, she smells the same smell coming out of the well she made the man fall into, and it’s happening now, during the eclipse. I’m sure-

She turned, a fresh blouse in one hand, and then froze. Her father was standing in the doorway, watching her.