him.
There was no way he'd be able to muster the bravery to even attempt to go upstairs.
He turned around, walked back through the entryway, saw movement in the sitting room. It was afternoon outside, but little daylight penetrated into the house, and, nervously, his hand fumbled for a light switch. He found it, flipped it on.
The butler was standing just inside the doorway.
'Billingham,' Stormy said, not entirely surprised.
The butler smiled at him, bowed. 'Stormy.'
Daniel The summer stretched before them, new, ripe with the possibility of adventure, its inevitable end so far in the future that it was almost inconceivable. The days were long and hot, and he and his friends filled the hours with projects. Making sand candles: melting real candles they'd stolen from Jim's house, letting the wax drip around slices of string into holes they'd dug in the dirt of the backyard.
Selling Kool-Aid: using Paul's dad's folding card table, having Jim's sister draw them a sign, sitting for hours in the burning sun, adding more and more ice to the pitcher until the Kool-Aid was so watered down even they couldn't drink it. Egging mailboxes: stealing two eggs from each of their refrigerators, playing paper-scissors rock to determine who would rush up to their neighbors'
mailboxes and slam the eggs in.
It was a perfect existence. Nothing had to be planned, nothing had to be completed, they did what they wanted when they wanted, following their whims through the free and open days.
But something was wrong at home. Daniel could feel it. His parents didn't say anything, but he sensed a subtle difference in their relationship, perceived the loss of something he hadn't even known existed. At night, at the dinner table, there was anger beneath his father's surface pleasantry, sadness underlying his mother's cheerfulness, and he was glad it was summer and he could stay out late and he didn't have to spend as much time with his family as he ordinarily would.
As the days passed, however, as the memory of school receded and the rhythms of summer became less tentative, more reliable, he came to believe--no, to know--that it was neither his mother's fault nor his father's fault that things were falling apart between them. They were victims.
They were like him, able to see what was happening but unable to do anything about it, forced to watch as it occurred.
It was the fault of their servant, Billingsly .
And his dirty little daughter.
Daniel did not know what made him think that, but he knew it was true, and while he'd never really given it much thought before, he realized that those two scared him. He was not sure why; Billingsly had always been polite and deferential to him--too polite and too deferential –while Doneen had always been shy and elusive and seemed to have a crush on him. But he was afraid of them, he realized, and he began making a concerted effort to stay out of their way, to not come into contact with them, to avoid them whenever possible.
His parents, he noticed, did the same.
What was going on here? Why didn't his father just fire Billingsly?
Because it wasn't only the servant and his daughter. It was the house as well. Something about their home seemed threatening and confining and unnatural, as if. . .
As if it was haunted.
That was it exactly. It was as if the building itself were alive, controlling everything within its borders--who slept where, what time they ate their meals, where they could go and what they could do--and they were merely its pawns. It was a strange thought, he knew, but it was the way he felt, and it explained why his father, who had always been lord of the manor, the king of his castle, walked around these days like a beaten man, a guest in his own home.
No, not a guest.
A prisoner.
If he'd been braver, if he'd been older, he would have talked to his parents about it, would have asked what was wrong and why and whether they could do anything about the situation, but that was not the way the dynamics of their family worked. They did not talk out problems, did not confront them directly, but hinted around about them, trying to get their individual points across with oblique references and small suggestions, hoping the other members of the family would understand what they meant without having to come out and explain.
So he stayed out as much as possible, played with his friends, concentrated on summer and fun and tried not to think about the changes at home. He and Jim and Paul andMadson built a clubhouse in the woods behind Paul's backyard. They made a go-can that they took turns racing down State Street. They panned for gold in the creek.
They watched game shows on Jim's family's color TV
set. They camped out in the park.
Outside the walls of the house, it was a great summer.
But inside . . .
It started one night after he and his friends had spent the day downtown at the movie theater, sitting twice through a double feature of two Disney movies: Snowball Express and $1,000,000 Duck. They'd emerged tired and gorged with candy, and they'd gone home to their respective houses. His parents had been waiting for him--they always ate dinner together, that was a family rule--and he'd eaten and then gone upstairs to take a bath.
He'd been successfully avoiding Billingsly and his daughter for several weeks, had only seen the servant at dinner and had not seen Doneen at all, but he was still taking no chances and he made sure that the servant was still in the kitchen and carefully checked the hallways for his daughter before grabbing pajamas from his bedroom and locking himself in the bathroom.
She walked in while he was washing himself in the tub.
'Hey!' he said.
He had locked the door, he was sure of it, and the fact that the girl had still been able to get in frightened him.
She slipped off her dirty nightgown, got into the water.
He jumped up, splashing water on the floor, frantically calling for his mom, his dad, as he grabbed the towel and scrambled away from the tub, trying not to slip on the tile.
Doneen giggled at him.
'Get out of here!' he screamed at her.
'You don't really want me to leave.' Still giggling, she pointed at his penis, and he quickly covered it with the towel, embarrassed. He couldn't help it; he had an erection.
It was exciting to see a naked girl, but it was even more frightening, and he backed against the door, reaching for the knob and trying to turn it.
It was locked.
He didn't want to turn his back on Doneen , was not sure what she could or would do, but he had no choice and he turned, unlocking the door.
'Your mother can't live,' the girl said behind him.
He whirled around. 'What?'
'She's going to have to die.'
There was something about the matter-of-fact tone in the girl's voice that scared the shit out of him, and he ran out of the bathroom and down the long hallway. He wanted to go into his bedroom, get his clothes, get dressed, but he was afraid to do so, afraid she might be able to sneak in there as easily as she'd entered the bathroom, so he ran downstairs, still covering himself with the towel. His parents had remained at the dinner table, and when his mother looked up in surprise and he saw the mingled expression of concern, worry, and fear cross her face, he burst into tears. He had not cried in a long time--crying was for babies-- but he was crying now, and she stood up and allowed him to hug her, and he kept repeating, 'I don't want you to die!'
'I'm not going to die,' she told him. But her voice was not as reassuring as it should have been, and it only made him cry harder.
