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Excerpt Three: "Berwyn Street"
By Allison
Green
From Half-Moon Scar
Gavin’s house was a dark and blue aquarium. His mother – he called her Irene – kept the drapes closed during the day. When it was hot, air conditioners in the windows hummed, wads of plastic tucked around the cracks. When it rained, the drapes muffled the sound.
The first time I saw Irene, she was sitting on the couch in the dark, legs crossed, hand around a sweating glass of ice water, while the blue television light swam through the dimness toward her. Almost every time I visited, I’d find her there. I’d move along the edges of the room, head for the stairs. Television voices would follow me up to Gavin’s room, until I shut the door against them.
Gavin’s bed had blue sheets with astronauts and planets. Gavin’s bookcase had a few books, but when mostly other things. On the top shelf were little rockets, astronaut trading cards, and fake moon rocks. We his sister Bonnie got married she gave him all her animal figurines and they were on the second shelf, shiny brown deer and green turtles, ducks and kittens and swans. The shot glasses were on the third shelf. Gavin’s dad sent him shot glasses from Disneyland and Alcatraz. Gavin also had a plastic piggy bank that came up to my shoulder and a magician kit and lots of board games under his bed.
One Saturday night, Gavin jiggled his foot against the Monopoly board, vibrating the houses and hotels. He’d built up St. James and New York, and I was landing on them every time I went around the board. My stack of money was thin, and I held it in my fist and kept counting it. "Gavin," I said, "Your turn."
He looked around the board for the dice, which were right by his little silver top hat. He threw them. One landed on the carpet. "Roll again," he said. I flipped the edge of my money with my thumb.
The door opened. Irene poked one sling-back-sandaled foot into the room. "Troy has the number if anything comes up." Her fingernails around the door were longer than usual, and her head was taller by several inches, topped with coiled hair. She kissed the air, eased out the door and shut it quietly.
Gavin watched the door, head tilted, scar pinkish on his nose. Soft footsteps went down the carpeted hall. The stairway creaked. After another minutes I could hear a man’s voice and then the door downstairs slammed. The bedroom door wavered in response.
Gavin jumped up. I followed him down the stairs, where he moved the drapes with one finger and looked through them. A car started up, drove away. The house settled around us. Troy was upstairs behind his bedroom door, but he wouldn’t come out – he had his own television in there.
I looked around the living room at the couch, the two recliners, the polished coffee table. An orange ashtray, empty, sat on the television. This furniture was heavier than ours, more permanent. I couldn’t imagine it being boxed up and moved anywhere. If it were moved, it would leave behind flattened squares of pale carpet.
At the end of the room was a stone fireplace. I went to the mantle, to a photograph. It was the family: Irene, Troy, Gavin, and Bonnie, who I’d never met. Irene had her tall hair on. She smiled. She was a good smiler; she looked like she could turn it on whenever the camera flashed.
Before Gavin had told me his parents were divorced, I thought his father had died in the war, the war in the jungle that was just ending, and left Irene a war widow. That’s why Irene sat in the dark and watched soap operas. That’s why she didn’t ever say hello to me or shake my hand. But then Gavin told me that his dad lived in California with his new wife, which gave Irene a different reason for doing what she did. I wondered if my parents knew about the divorce. I didn’t tell them.
Gavin took his finger out of the drapes. "Show you something." He took me into the bathroom and locked the door behind us. I’d been in this bathroom only once before – there was another one upstairs – and my favorite thing about it was the flocked wallpaper. It was gold, with big foil flowers and velvet leaves. I stroked a patch of velvet. Soft.
Gavin was opening the cabinet above the toilet. It had lipsticks, blushes, mascara wands. The same things were in the cabinet in our bathroom, except they were organized into plastic dishes so Laura’s wouldn’t get mixed up with Mom’s. Gavin kneeled on the toilet seat and turned to me. The gold wallpaper was in his eyes. He whispered, "What color do you want?" He touched the lipsticks and blushes and mascara wands, his fingers flat. He picked out one lipstick and took off the cap. The red stick moved in and out. He held it near my face and said, "This would be good for you."
I sucked in my lips and shook my head.
He capped the red, found another one. "Maybe more peach." He put it near my lips again, squinting from my face to the lipstick.
"I don’t want any," I said.
He climbed up to sit on the counter, feet on the toilet lid, and looked in the mirror. He had a silver stick in his hand.
"What’s that?" I asked. I leaned against he wallpaper with my hands behind my back, touching the velvet.
"Eyelash curler." He held his mouth open and moved the eyelash curler toward his eye. I saw myself squinting in the mirror. He put the clamp around his eyelashes and closed it. Counted to three. Opened it. He moved the eyelash curler to his other eye, and I moved along the wall to see. He batted his eyelashes. "What do you think?"
They didn’t look different. "Good," I said.
He put the eyelash curler back in the cupboard and took out a pencil. He drew a black line across his eyelids, the skin bunching up in front of the pencil. He blinked at himself, mouth open.
"Now eye shadow," he said. I wanted to see it. He handed me the plastic box with three ovals of color: seashell pink, purple, sky blue with the silver bottom showing through. Gavin brushed the wand in the purple and put the box on his knee. He bent toward the mirror, stretching up his eyebrow, and painted the color on his eyelid. He painted the other eyelid. He sat back and looked. His dimples deepened. When he turned to me, the gold wallpaper was in his eyes again, and the purple on his eyelids had tiny sparkles.
After eye shadow came mascara and then blush and then lipstick and then a black line around the lipstick and then a brown dot right at the edge of his jaw. I was sitting on the side of the bathtub when he finished. He got down from the sink, looked at the mirror, looked at me, and curtseyed. I smiled. I couldn’t stop smiling. "Wow," I said. He turned his finger in his cheek and pouted. He fluffed his hair.
Gavin looked at the door. What now? He bent his ear to the door. Turned the handle. The click of the lock unlocking. No other sound. He crept out, a robber, head tucked down, knees high. I followed. Blood in my ears. He was going somewhere. He tiptoed down the hall, stopped at the corner to the kitchen. His face turned back at me and my heart jumped. Purple eyelids and red lips and beauty mark. He went around the corner. I listened for Troy upstairs. Nothing. Gavin was moving now, and I had to run to catch up. He went through the kitchen, the living room, back into the hall, past the bathroom, through the kitchen, back into the living room. We raced around the loop, laughing behind our hands, keeping our backs low and sneaky. After four laps he ducked into the bathroom, slammed the door behind us, clicked the lock. We held our stomachs, giggling without sound.
Our eyes met. His were blue with gold around the black centers. With all the makeup he had on, his eyes looked like they were staring out through a mask. But then it was always like that. This time I could see farther in, to some room of darkness behind the irises. Something cold rippled up my back, fear. But I kept my eyes open, let him see, too, that far inside my eyes.
And then we blinked. He looked through the cupboard for a jar of cold cream. I backed up against the wallpaper, touched the flocking. I watched him as, with a fingerful of cold cream and a tissue, he began to take off his face.
Copyright © 2000
Allison Green.
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