We climbed up to the tree house the way we always had, stepping in the knothole, then on the nailed board, then on two bent nails, before grasping the frayed rope and pulling ourselves through the trapdoor. We were so much bigger now we could barely squeeze through, and once we were inside, the plywood floor sagged under our weight. The oblong window we’d cut with a handsaw years ago still looked onto the front of the Lisbon house. Next to it were five spotted photographs of the Lisbon girls, pinned with rusty tacks. We didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet. Outside and below, a few people had come out to water lawns or flower beds, tossing silver lassos. The cracker voice of our local baseball announcer rose from a score of radios, describing a slow drama we couldn’t see, and homerun cheers rose, too, converging above the trees and then dispersing. It grew still darker. People went inside. We tried the wick of the ancient kerosene lamp, which lit, burning on invisible residue, but within a minute, fish flies began streaming through the window, and we put the lamp out. We could hear their bodies battering streetlamps, a hail of hair balls, and popping under the tires of passing cars. A few bugs exploded as we leaned back against the tree-house walls. Inert unless detached, they flapped furiously between our fingers, then flew away to cling again, on anything, inert. The scum of their dead or dying bodies darkened street- and headlights, turned house windows into theater scrims poking out light. We settled back, pulling up a warm six-pack on a rope, and drank, and waited.
Each of us had said he was sleeping over at a friend’s house, so we had all night to sit and drink, unmolested by adults. But neither at twilight nor thereafter did we see any lights in the Lisbon house other than the candles. They seemed to burn more dimly, and we suspected that despite their ministrations, the girls were running out of wax. Cecilia’s window had the dank glow of an unclean fish tank. Angling Carl Tagel’s telescope out the tree-house window, we managed to see the pockmarked moon steaming silently across space, then blue Venus, but when we turned the telescope on Lux’s window it brought us so close we couldn’t see a thing. What at first appeared the xylophone of her spine, curled in bed, turned out to be a decorative molding. A stringy peach pit, left on her bedside table from a time of fresh food, gave rise to a number of lurid conjectures. Any time we caught sight of her, or of something moving, the piece was too small to put the puzzle together, and in the end we gave up, retracting the telescope and relying on our eyes.
Midnight passed in silence. The moon set. A bottle of Boone’s Farm strawberry wine materialized, was passed around, and set on a tree limb. Tom Bogus rolled to the tree-house door and dropped from sight. A minute later, we heard him retching in the bushes of the vacant lot. We stayed up late enough to see Uncle Tucker emerge, holding a piece of linoleum from the thirteenth layer he was installing to fill up the hours of his life. After getting a beer from the garage refrigerator, he walked to the front yard and surveyed his nighttime territory. Moving behind a tree, he waited for Bonnie to appear, rosary in hand. From his vantage point he couldn’t see the flashlight come on in the bedroom window, and he had gone back inside before we heard the window open. By that time we were fixed on it. The flashlight waved through the darkness. Then the light went on and off three times in succession.
A breeze arose. In the blackness, the leaves of our tree began to flutter, and the air filled with the crepuscular scent of the Lisbon house. None of us remembers thinking anything, or deciding anything, because at that moment our minds had ceased to work, filling us with the only peace we’ve ever known. We were above the street, aloft, at the same height as the Lisbon girls in their crumbling bedrooms, and they were calling to us. We heard wood scrape. Then, for an instant, we saw them—Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese—framed in a single window. They looked our way, looked across the void at us. Mary blew us a kiss, or wiped her mouth. The flashlight went off. The window closed. And they were gone.
We didn’t even stop to discuss it. In single file, like paratroopers, we dropped from the tree. It was an easy jump, and only on impact did we realize how close the ground was: no more than ten feet down. Jumping from the grass, we could nearly touch the tree-house floor. Our new height astounded us, and later many said this contributed to our resolve, because for the first time ever we felt like men.
We advanced on the house from different directions, hiding in shadows of surviving trees. As we approached, some of us crawling army-style, others still on two feet, the smell grew stronger. The air thickened. Soon we reached an invisible barrier: no one had gotten this close to the Lisbon house in months. We hesitated, and then Paul Baldino held his hand in the air, giving the signal, and we went in closer. We grazed the brick walls, crouching under windows and getting spiderweb in our hair. We came into the damp mess of the backyard. Kevin Head tripped on the bird feeder, which was still lying there. It cracked in half, the remaining seed spilling out onto the ground. We froze, but no lights came on. After a minute, we inched in closer. Mosquitoes dive-bombed past our ears, but we paid no attention. We were too busy gazing up into the darkness for a ladder of knotted bedsheets and a descending nightgown. We saw nothing. The house rose above us, its windows reflecting dark masses of leaves. In a whisper, Chase Buell reminded us that he had just gotten his driver’s license, and held up the keys to his mother’s Cougar. “We can use my car,” he said. Tom Faheem searched the overgrown flower beds for pebbles to ping against the girls’ windows. Any second an upstairs window might open, breaking its seal of fish flies, and a face would look down at us for the rest of our lives.
At the back window, we grew brave enough to look in. Through a scrub of dead windowsill plants, we made out the interior of the house: a seascape of confused objects, advancing and retreating as our eyes adjusted to the light. Mr. Lisbon’s La-Z-Boy rolled forward, its footrest raised like a snow shovel. The brown vinyl sofa slunk back against the wall. As they moved apart, the floor seemed to rise like a hydraulic stage, and in the room’s only light, coming from a small shaded lamp, we saw Lux. She was lying back in a beanbag chair, her knees lifted and spread apart, her upper half sunk into the bag, which closed over her like a straitjacket. She was wearing blue jeans and suede clogs. Her long hair fell over her shoulders. She had a cigarette in her mouth, the long ash about to fall.
We didn’t know what to do next. We had no instructions. We pressed our faces against the windows, using our hands as goggles. The glass panes conducted sound vibrations, and as we leaned forward, we could feel the other girls moving about above us. Something slid, stopped, slid again. Something bumped. We drew our faces away and everything went still. Then we returned to the buzzing glass.
Now Lux was groping for an ashtray. Finding none within reach, she flicked her ash onto her blue jeans, rubbing it in with her hand. As she moved, she rose out of the beanbag, and we saw that she was wearing a halter top. Tied behind her neck in a bow, the halter descended on two thin straps over her pale shoulders and sculpted collarbones, swelling finally into two yellow slings. The halter was slightly askew on the right side, revealing a soft white plumpness as she stretched. “July, two years ago,” said Joe Hill Conley, identifying the last time we’d seen the halter. On a very hot day, Lux had worn it outside for five minutes before her mother had called her back in to change. Now the halter spoke of all the time in between, of everything that had happened. Most of all, it said that the girls were leaving, that from now on they’d wear whatever they liked.
“Maybe we should knock,” Kevin Head whispered, but none of us did. Lux settled back in the beanbag chair. She ground out her cigarette on the floor. Behind her, on the wall, a shadow swelled. She turned abruptly, then smiled as a stray cat we’d never seen before climbed into her lap. She hugged its unresponsive body until the animal struggled free (that’s one more thing we have to include: right up to the end, Lux loved the stray cat. It r
an off then, out of this report). Lux lit another cigarette. In the match’s flare, she looked up at the window. She lifted her chin so that we thought she’d seen us, but then she ran her hand through her hair. She was only examining her reflection. The light inside the house made us invisible outside, and we stood inches from the window but unseen, as though looking in at Lux from another plane of existence. The faint glow of the window flickered against our faces. Our trunks and legs descended into darkness. On the lake a freighter sounded its horn, on a fogless night. Another freighter responded at a deeper pitch. That halter could have come undone with one quick yank.
Tom Faheem went first, disproving his shy reputation. He climbed onto the back porch, quietly opened the door, and let us, at last, back into the Lisbon house.
“We’re here” was all he said.
Lux looked up, but didn’t rise from the chair. Her sleepy eyes showed no surprise that we were there, but at the base of her white neck a lobstery blush spread. “About time,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you guys.” She took another drag.
“We’ve got a car,” Tom Faheem continued. “Full tank. We’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“It’s just a Cougar,” said Chase Buell, “but it’s got a pretty big trunk.”
“Can I sit in front?” Lux asked, screwing her mouth up to exhale to one side, politely away from us.
“Sure can.”
“Which one of you studs is going to sit up front next to me?”
She tilted her head toward the ceiling and blew a series of smoke rings. We watched them rise, and this time Joe Hill Conley didn’t run forward to stick his finger in them. For the first time, we looked around the house. The smell, now that we were inside, was stronger than ever. It was the smell of wet plaster, drains clogged with the endless tangle of the girls’ hair, mildewed cabinets, leaking pipes. Paint cans were still stationed under leaks, each full of a weak solution of other times. The living room had a plundered look. The television sat at an angle, its screen removed, Mr. Lisbon’s toolbox open in front of it. Chairs were missing arms or legs, as though the Lisbons had been using them for firewood.
“Where are your parents?”
“Asleep.”
“What about your sisters?”
“They’re coming.”
Something thudded downstairs. We retreated to the back door. “Come on,” Chase Buell said. “We better get out of here. It’s getting late.” But Lux only exhaled again, shaking her head. She pulled a halter strap away from her skin, where it left a red mark. Everything was quiet again. “Wait,” she said. “Five more minutes. We’re not finished packing. We had to wait until my parents were asleep. They take forever. Especially my mom. She’s an insomniac. She’s probably awake right now.”
She got up then. We saw her rise from the beanbag chair, leaning forward to get enough momentum. The halter, on its flimsy strings, hung completely away from her body so that we saw dark air between material and skin, and then the soft flash of her flour-dusted breasts.
“My feet are all swollen,” she said. “Weirdest thing. That’s why I’m wearing clogs. Do you like them?” She dangled one on the end of her toes.
“Yeah.”
Now she stood at full height, which wasn’t tall. We had to keep telling ourselves that this was happening, that this was really Lux Lisbon, that we were in the same room with her. She looked down at herself, adjusted the halter, tucked with one thumb the exposed plumpness on her right side. Then she looked up again as though into each of our eyes at once, and began walking forward. She shuffled in the clogs, moving into the shadows, and as she approached we could hear her printing the dusty floor. From the darkness she said, “We won’t all fit in a Cougar.” She took one more step and her face reappeared. For a second it didn’t seem alive: it was too white, the cheeks too perfectly carved, the arched eyebrows painted on, the full lips made of wax. But then she came closer and we saw the light in her eyes we have been looking for ever since.
“We better take my mom’s car, don’t you think? It’s bigger. Which one of you can drive?”
Chase Buell raised his hand.
“Think you can drive a station wagon?”
“Sure.” And then: “It’s not a stick, is it?”
“No.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Will you let me steer some?”
“Sure. But we should get out of here. I just heard something. Maybe it’s your mom.”
She came up to Chase Buell. She came so close her breath stirred his hair. And then, in front of us all, Lux unbuckled his belt. She didn’t even need to look down. Her fingers saw their way, and only once did something snag, at which point she shook her head, like a musician missing an easy note. All the while she stared into his eyes, rising up on the balls of her feet, and in the quiet house we heard the pants unsnap. The zipper opened all the way down our spines. None of us moved. Chase Buell didn’t move. Lux’s eyes, burning and velvet, glowed in the dim room. A vein on her neck was softly pulsing, the one you’re supposed to put perfume on for that reason. Even though she was doing it to Chase Buell, we could all feel Lux undoing us, reaching out for us and taking us as she knew we could be taken. Just at the last second, another soft thud came from downstairs. Upstairs, Mr. Lisbon coughed in his sleep. Lux stopped. She looked away, consulting with herself, and then she said, “We can’t do this now.”
She let go of Chase Buell’s belt and crossed to the back door. “I’ve got to get some fresh air. You guys have got me all worked up.” She smiled then, a loose, clumsy smile, genuine, unpretty. “I’ll go wait in the car. You guys wait here for my sisters. We’ve got a lot of stuff.” She fished in a bowl by the back door for the car keys. She made to leave, but stopped again.
“Where will we go?”
“Florida,” Chase Buell said.
“Cool,” said Lux. “Florida.”
A minute later, we heard a car door slam shut in the garage. A few of us recall hearing the faint strains of a popular song drifting through the night, which told us she was playing the radio. We waited. We weren’t sure where the other girls were. We could hear sounds of packing upstairs, a closet door opening, a suitcase jangling bedsprings. Feet moved above and below. Something was being dragged across the basement floor. Though the nature of the sounds eluded us, a precision surrounded them; every movement seemed exact, part of an elaborate escape plan. We understood that we were only pawns in this strategy, useful for a time, but this didn’t lessen our exhilaration. The knowledge welled in us that we would soon be in the car with the girls, driving them out of our green neighborhood and into the pure, free desolation of back roads we didn’t even know yet. We played paper, scissors, rock to see who would go along, who would stay behind. And all the while the sense that the girls would soon join us filled us with a quiet happiness. Who knew how accustomed we might get to those sounds? Of elastic satin suitcase pockets snapping closed? Of jewelry rattling? Of the hunchback foot-dragging sound of the girls carrying suitcases down an anonymous corridor? Unknown roads took shape in our minds. We saw ourselves cutting swaths through cattails, freshwater inlets, old boatyards. At some gas station we would ask for the ladies’ room key because the girls would be too shy. We would play the radio with the windows open.
Sometime during this reverie, the house went silent. We assumed the girls had finished packing. Peter Sissen took out his penlight and made a shallow foray into the dining room, coming back to say, “One of them is still downstairs. There’s a light on in the stairway.”
We stood, we waved the penlight, we waited for the girls, but no one came. Tom Faheem tried the first stair, but it creaked so loudly he came back down again. The silence of the house rang in our ears. A car passed, sending a shadow sweeping across the dining room, momentarily lighting up the painting of the Pilgrims. The dining table was heaped with winter coats wrapped in plastic. Other hulking bundles loomed. The house had the feel of an attic where junk collects, establishing r
evolutionary relationships: the toaster in the birdcage; ballet slippers protruding from a wicker creel. We snaked our way amid the clutter, passing into spaces cleared for games—a backgammon board, Chinese checkers—then moving again into thickets of eggbeaters and rubber boots. We entered the kitchen. It was too dark to see, but we heard a small hiss, like someone sighing. A trapezoid of light projected up from the basement. We went to the stairs and listened. Then we started down to the rec room.
Chase Buell led the way, and as we descended, holding on to one another’s belt loops, we traveled back to the day a year earlier when we had descended those same steps to attend the only party the Lisbon girls were ever allowed to throw. By the time we reached bottom, we felt we’d literally traveled back in time. For despite the inch of floodwater covering the floor, the room was just as we had left it: Cecilia’s party had never been cleaned up. The paper tablecloth, spotted with mice droppings, still covered the card table. A brownish scum of punch lay caked in the cut-glass bowl, sprinkled with flies. The sherbet had melted long ago, but a ladle still protruded from the gummy silt, and cups, gray with dust and cobwebs, remained neatly stacked in front. A profusion of withered balloons hung from the ceiling on thin ribbons. The domino game still called for a three or a seven.
We didn’t know where the girls had gone. Ripples spread across the water’s surface as though something had just swum by or dived down. The gurgling drain sucked intermittently. The water lapped the walls, reflecting our pink faces, and the red and blue streamers overhead. The room’s changes—water bugs adhering to walls, one bobbing dead mouse—only heightened what hadn’t changed. If we half closed our eyes and held our noses, we could trick ourselves into thinking the party was still going on. Buzz Romano waded out to the card table, and as we all watched, began to dance, to box-step, as his mother had taught him in the papal splendor of their living room. He held only air, but we could see her—them—all five, clasped in his arms. “These girls make me crazy. If I could just feel one of them up just once,” he said, as his shoes filled and emptied with silt. His dancing kicked up the sewage smell, and after that, stronger than ever, the smell we could never forget. Because it was then we saw, over Buzz Romano’s head, the only thing that had changed in the room since we left it a year before. Hanging down amid the half-deflated balloons were the two brown-and-white husks of Bonnie’s saddle shoes. She had tied the rope to the same beam as the decorations.