Gerald’s Game

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-

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

At this point the Jessie handcuffed to the bed in the summer house on the north shore of Kashwakamak Lake, the Jessie who was not ten but thirty-nine and a widow of almost twelve hours, suddenly realized two things; that she was asleep, and that she was not so much dreaming about the day of the eclipse as reliving it. She had gone on awhile thinking it was a dream, only a dream, like her dream of Will’s birthday party, where most of the guests had either been dead or people she wouldn’t actually meet for years. This new mindmovie had the surreal-but-sensible quality of the earlier one, but that was an untrustworthy yardstick because that whole day had been surreal and dreamlike. First the eclipse, and then her father-

No more, Jessie decided. No more, I’m getting out of this.

She made a convulsive effort to rise out of the dream or retollection or whatever it was. Her mental effort translated into a wholebody twitch, and the handcuff chains jingled mutedly as she twisted violently from side to side. She almost made it; for a moment she was almost out. And she could have made it, would have made it, if she hadn’t thought better of it at the last moment. What stopped her was an inarticulate but overwhelming terror of a shape-some waiting shape that might make what had happened that day on the deck seem insignificant by comparison… if she had to face it, that was.

But maybe I don’t have to. Not yet.

And perhaps the urge to hide in sleep wasn’t all-there might have been something else, as well. Some part of her that intended to have this out in the open once and for all, no matter what the cost.

She sank back down on the pillow, eyes closed, arms held up and sacrificially spread, her face pale and tight with strain.

“Especially you girls,” she whispered into the darkness. “Especially all you girls.”

She sank back on the pillow, and the day of the eclipse claimed her again.

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.