Seventh Heaven

  The wolf got up on all fours and came out from under the dining-room table. It was huge. Its paws were as big as a man’s fist. It came forward, sniffing the air, and Hennessy had a clear shot, right through the window, but he couldn’t stop staring at the wolf. It had him hypnotized, as though he were a rabbit. The wolf put its head back and howled; the sound was so powerful and so lonely that Hennessy lost his footing on the patch of English ivy where he stood. He would have shot the wolf right through the plate glass, but when the wolf began to howl Nora ran into the living room. He should have shot it, but he didn’t. He stood there while Nora approached the wolf. She was wearing a white nightgown and her feet were bare. She went right over to the wolf and slapped it on the nose. Then she bent down and put her arms around it; she scratched its chest and called it a bad boy. Hennessy held on to the window ledge to steady himself; he was up to his ankles in ivy and his gun was still drawn when he realized the wolf was Ace McCarthy’s dog.

  Hennessy went back across the street. He closed the door behind him and locked it, and then he went down to the basement and got out all the newspapers, the ones he’d kept because he’d circled apartments in the real-estate sections. He carried the whole load upstairs and out to the garage, where he threw it into a trash can. And because he no longer had to wait, he lay down on his bed fully dressed and slept, a long dreamless sleep. In the morning he drove to the bank in Floral Park and withdrew all the savings from his account, and he stood there at the teller’s window as his bankbook was torn in half.

  THE FIRST NIGHT NORA TOOK HIM INTO HER bed they didn’t speak at all, not just because the children might wake, but because what they were about to do was a long way beyond words. She led him into the house and closed the door behind him and that was when she pricked her finger, on the hinge of the storm door. But she hadn’t even known she was bleeding; she didn’t know she’d been cut until the next morning, when the baby grabbed her finger and said, “Booboo.” She had thought she would go to the kitchen and get him a glass of cool tap water, but once he was inside the house she knew she wasn’t going for water. He was trembling in her doorway when she put her arms around him, so she kissed him, thinking the kiss would be gentle. But it wasn’t.

  They went through the dark, into her bedroom, and they let the dog follow to make certain he wouldn’t scratch at the locked door. As they went on kissing each other, they could hear the dog breathing in the corner, where he lay curled up on a nightgown that had slipped from the hook. They didn’t want to stop touching, and in the end there wasn’t time for Nora to finish getting undressed. Ace pulled her underpants down to her knees and Nora pulled them off the rest of the way. Nora and Ace got down on the floor, with pillows beneath them, and held on to the metal bed frame, and when they spoke it was only to ask each other for more. The dog slept in his corner without dreaming, the baby didn’t call for his bottle, Billy didn’t wake to go to the bathroom; they could go on and on, covering each other’s mouths with their hands so they wouldn’t cry out. At five in the morning, when the sky became milky and the stars disappeared and the sheet they had wrapped themselves in was shredded beyond repair, they both knew it was the end of the night, but not the end of them.

  They never spoke about being together again, they didn’t need to. Ever since that night, Ace would get up early for school, he’d have breakfast and sit through homeroom and all his morning classes; but when the lunch bell rang, he knew Nora would make certain to put the baby down for his nap. Then Ace would cut out of school and run down Poplar Street, zigzagging through the Amatos’ backyard and scaling Nora’s fence, and he’d go right to the side door, which she always left open for him. He didn’t stop to consider what was happening to him, but he knew that whatever it was, it was getting worse. He couldn’t wait to get her into the bedroom, and sometimes he didn’t. They made love on the living-room couch and they didn’t stop until the baby woke from his nap and called out. Then Ace would pull on his clothes while Nora fixed a bottle, and he would leave through the side door and run back to school in time for eighth period.

  Weekends were bad, because he couldn’t see her at all. He’d work at the station, pumping gas while Jackie and the Saint rebuilt engines, and if he even thought about her he’d get so hot he was afraid he’d explode. Nights were the worst, nights drove him crazy. Nora would risk some nights, but on other nights Ace would get to the side door and find it locked; then he’d know that Billy was having nightmares or the baby was teething again. Whenever he found the door locked Ace couldn’t sleep at all. He started losing weight because he just couldn’t be bothered with lunch, and he couldn’t eat dinner with his family, not even when Marie made his favorite meals. Whenever Ace found Nora’s door locked he took the dog for long walks, all over the neighborhood, but no matter what direction he started off in, he always found himself in front of the Corrigans’. He’d stop when he got to the edge of the driveway, but he’d tell himself only a coward would turn and run; he’d make himself go closer and closer to the circle of pale grass on the lawn where Cathy’s ghost had appeared. This was one place Rudy would not follow him. The dog refused to go past the driveway; he’d sit and whine as Ace went across the lawn. No matter how hard he tried, Ace couldn’t force himself to go any farther than the edge of that circle of grass. And then one night he actually began to do it; he reached his hand into the circle, but as soon as he felt the warm air within it, a car horn honked. Ace quickly pulled his hand back and when he turned to the street he saw Jackie’s Bel Air. The one Ace had wanted to buy. Jackie rolled down his window and waved frantically, and when Ace went over to the curb Jackie snapped, “Get in the fucking car.”

  Ace opened and closed his fist; his fingers felt unnaturally hot. Jackie reached out and grabbed him by his jacket.

  “Get the fuck in,” Jackie said. “Now.”

  Ace went to the passenger door and got in.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jackie said. He’d been working late and he stank of gasoline and fear. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  The dog had come around to Ace’s door and Ace was about to let him in, but Jackie stopped him.

  “I don’t want that dog in my car.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s been nice talking to you,” Ace said. He opened the door to get out, but Jackie pulled him back. They hadn’t spoken much lately. It hurt just to be together in the same room.

  “Stop coming here,” Jackie said. “You’re just stirring things up.”

  Ace sat back in his seat, interested. “What kind of things?”

  “Just let her rest in peace, understand?”

  “Yeah,” Ace said. “Well, I’ll keep your advice in mind.”

  “Look,” Jackie said, “what’s over is over. I’m changed. I’m different. I don’t have to pay for this for the rest of my life. You want to keep her dog, fine. But let it be.”

  “What’s the matter?” Ace said. “Afraid of ghosts?”

  Jackie took his cigarettes off the dashboard and tapped one out of the pack. “No such thing,” he said. His hands were shaking when he got his lighter out, and that was when Ace knew he wasn’t the only one who had seen her.

  “There is,” Ace said.

  “Not for me,” Jackie told him. He looked scared, though, and he kept glancing at the Corrigans’ lawn. “I’ve got respect for things I never even understood before. Even Pop sees that.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Ace said. He shoved open the door and got out, then leaned back in before he slammed it shut. “I’m real glad you can rest in peace.”

  Ace stood on the sidewalk as Jackie took off for home. The dog came up and nudged Ace’s hand with his nose until Ace petted him, and then they walked home, taking their time, because it was amazing how if you worked it right you could live in a house with your own brother and not say two words to him, whether he was a changed man or not.

  NORA KNEW NOTHING ABOUT HIM, AND THAT’S the way she wanted it. It was enough to know that she wanted him
; all she had to do was think of him and her stomach would tighten down low and her breasts would feel full. Sometimes she’d have to take a wet washcloth and run it over her arms and legs, and if the cloth was cold enough, steam would rise up from her skin. He was a desire she had to fit in between doing the laundry and figuring the bills and setting out an afternoon snack for Billy. She had thought she wanted Roger, but that had less to do with her own desire than with a wish to please him, to shine back his own light, at least until the children came and she no longer had the time or energy to wait up for him and do what he liked in bed, or to take his tuxedo and hang it carefully in the closet, after she’d run a lint brush over it to pick up strands of the rabbit’s long white hair. She had planned for Roger, she had wanted to trap him, and she’d thought through every moment of her part of their courtship carefully. But with Ace she didn’t think at all. If she had she wouldn’t be leaving her side door unlocked and watching for him the minute she put the baby down for a nap. As soon as they were finished making love, she wanted him out of her house, but she was letting him stay longer and longer, until the baby grew so used to him he began to look for Ace when he woke up from his nap. Sometimes she had to rush to pick Billy up after school, and still she’d be late and he’d be the only child left. She’d see him standing behind the double glass doors of the school and she’d feel something turn over inside her, the way she had when she was carrying him and he’d suddenly flip-flop inside her. And now she was letting Ace take a shower in her house, even though it was already two o’clock and she had a Tupperware party in Elmont at four and a meatloaf to fix before she got Billy from school.

  She was following the recipe for meatloaf from the back of a Hunt’s tomato sauce can and she’d set out the chopped meat to marinate in a mixture of tomato sauce, onion salt, and canned button mushrooms. Ace’s dog had his nose right up to the counter.

  “Don’t you dare touch that,” Nora told him.

  The dog took a step backward and looked at the floor, embarrassed, but every once in a while he’d peek at the meat.

  “You’re not fooling me,” Nora said.

  Mr. Popper was trapped next to the toaster, his back arched, ready to spit. If the dog so much as looked at the toaster, Mr. Popper’s hair would stand on end and he’d make a terrible snakelike sound.

  “You’re too big for this house,” Nora told the dog.

  Rudy stared at the floor and panted. Ace finally came out of the shower, a towel over his shoulders, his shirt and boots in his hands.

  “Your dog’s got his eye on my supper,” Nora said when she heard Ace come into the room. She was at the sink, washing chopped meat and bread crumbs off her hands. When she turned from the sink, Ace was bending over Rudy, scratching the dog’s ruff, and Nora felt stricken. It wouldn’t be easy to give him up.

  “Do you want me to fix you something?” Nora said.

  Ace looked up at her; when they weren’t in bed he was completely tongue-tied.

  “Peanut butter and jelly?” Nora said.

  “Jesus,” Ace said.

  “What?” Nora said.

  “I’m not eight years old,” Ace said.

  “I know that,” Nora said. She went to him and put her hands on his chest.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Ace said.

  “Oh, no!” Nora teased him.

  “Sooner or later we’re going to get caught,” Ace said. “Billy’s not stupid. He’ll figure it out.”

  He moved away and put on his shirt and then his boots. Nora tilted her face up and swallowed.

  “We can quit right now,” she said, to see if that’s what he wanted.

  “It’s not me,” Ace said. “You’re the one who cares if we’re caught, and I’m just telling you we will be.”

  What he meant was, Leave your door unlocked tonight no matter what—and Nora knew it. She went over to him and put her arms around him.

  “You sound like an old man,” she whispered. His jeans were tight, but she could get one hand down the front without unzipping them.

  “Well, I’m not,” Ace said.

  “No,” Nora said. “You’re not.”

  Ace whistled for the dog, then slipped out the side door and quickly went around to the backyard. He was good at sneaking out unnoticed, and he scaled the fence so easily he left nothing behind, except for his footprints. The dog took the fence in one leap, not caring or even looking where he was going, knowing only that he was beside Ace. As she watched them disappear, Nora knew she could never have made that leap, not in high heels, not burdened down with bottles and frying pans and record albums and twenty-three shades of nail polish. Besides, it was her choice to stand at her kitchen window, watching him disappear through the leafless lilacs and azaleas. But that didn’t mean she didn’t see that the sky was the color of plums or that the frozen bark of the lilacs was already turning blue or that the boy who was in her backyard only moments ago was now running, fast.

  BILLY NO LONGER WENT TO THE CAFETERIA AT lunchtime. He spent the forty-five minutes in the boys’ room, crouched over the toilet, his feet straddling the seat so that no one would see him. He’d wait until the bell rang and the halls filled with children, then he’d take a pack of matches out of his pants pocket and crumple up blank pages from his looseleaf and light a small fire on the floor of the stall. On days when he was lucky, the smoke would set off the fire alarm overhead and the alarm would act as a diversion so he could slip out of the bathroom and get back to class without anyone noticing him.

  He’d almost succeeded in making himself entirely invisible at school. He’d read everything about Houdini he could get his hands on and, after weeks of practicing, he could slip his feet out of his sneakers without untying the laces, he could squeeze out of his shirt without touching the buttons, he could force his entire body into a space no bigger than a coffee urn. During gym class he would hide next to the basketballs, in a crevice so small he had to wrap his arms around himself like a straitjacket, and when he finally crawled out his limbs would be weak with needles and pins. He could now hold his breath in the bathtub for two minutes and he was working on tightening his stomach muscles. In the mornings he got up early and did a hundred sit-ups, and another hundred before he went to sleep.

  “Go ahead,” he’d whisper to James when they were alone together. “Punch me.”

  But the baby would just lift Billy’s shirt and tickle his stomach, so Billy would have to punch himself, making sure to tighten his stomach muscles first.

  “Booboo,” James would say, and then he’d watch, silently, as Billy hit himself again and again.

  He had no choice but to make himself tougher, because even if most of the children ignored him there was a small group, led by Stevie Hennessy, who would not let him be. He would pick up their thoughts just before they got him from behind. They’d pull on his shirt until the seams split; they’d spit on his shoulders and hair. The band of Billy’s enemies grew braver all the time, stuffing his loose-leaf into the garbage can, ripping his homework in half, writing KICK ME in black ink on the back of his shirt, pouring milk down his collar so that he’d have to sit in a pool of warm milk all afternoon and the teacher would turn up her nose whenever she walked past his chair.

  They knew that his mother picked him up after school; they stayed away after the last bell had rung. And that was why, on the fifteenth of January, Billy was less upset to get his report card and find he was failing every subject but penmanship than he was to find out that school was to be let out at noon. All morning there was a lump in his throat. When he went to the closet for his coat and rubber boots after the noon bell rang, he could hear them thinking about what they were going to do to him. He tucked his report card into the waistband of his corduroy pants and took his time with his gloves and his blanket scarf, making certain he was the last to leave and hoping desperately they would forget him.

  When the school buses pulled away they left clouds of blue exhaust hanging after them, and when you breathed out yo
ur breath made its own clouds in the cold, clean air. The street was deserted when Billy came out and crossed onto Mimosa, except for a group of first-grade girls who held hands three across. As he turned the corner from Mimosa onto Hemlock, Billy picked up the first black snippets. I’ll hold his hands behind his back. He scanned the street but there was no one to see. Not a sparrow, not a cat. Billy stood on the corner, his looseleaf tucked under his arm, his wool hat low on his forehead. He started to walk because he had no choice; it was impossible to become invisible on the empty street with nothing but bare bushes and black, leafless trees.

  They rose up from behind a mailbox when there was no turning back. Stevie Hennessy was out in front, and there were two other boys, Marty Leffert and Richie Mills, both as big as Stevie. They were grinning and they all had rocks in their hands. Billy stood there, mesmerized, and then he did the unthinkable. He turned and ran, letting his looseleaf drop to the cement, and as soon as he did he was fair game and they let their rocks fly.

  The first rock hit him as he turned onto Evergreen. The second rock got him as ran up the driveway to a house he’d never been past before. He went up and pounded on the front door.

  “Let me in!” he heard himself scream.

  He kept pounding on the door, but no one answered and they were getting close to him. The third rock got him on the neck and Billy could feel his blood run down. He raced through the backyard behind the empty house and threw himself over the chain-link fence and into the adjoining yard on Hemlock Street. It was Stevie Hennessy’s backyard, and once Billy realized where he was, he ran faster than he thought possible. He made it across the street and to his side yard and stopped, breathing hard, to examine the damage. He took off his coat and bundled it beneath some limp, leafless bridal wreath that hung low to the ground. He wiped the blood on his neck with his hands, and then he heard them, over at Stevie Hennessy’s, and because his choices were folding himself into the window well, where there was a family of mice, or going inside, he went in through the side door.