Fiction: Where Will All The Buildings Go?
The day before Halloween, Ellen comes home to find Ursula sitting on her front porch. She’s slumped against the railing, her hair a pale swirl. Her knuckles are chapped with papier mâché.
“Why do you keep coming here?” This is the question Ellen has been wanting to ask for days and it comes out more abruptly than she intends, sharp and accusatory.
Ursula surveys the yard, the white fence and the mangled daisies. “This is the calm before the calm,” she says.
Ellen kneels in front of the girl. She places her hands on her knees. She’s never been a parent or a teacher, but she feels an obligation to attempt something like guidance. She needs to join a club, find friends her own age. She only has so much time to turn things around.
“What makes you think I haven’t tried those things already?” Ursula says.
Ellen sits back on her heels.
“Do you want to go to my sister’s Halloween party?” Plaster bits are clumped in the fine hair of her eyebrows. As it turns out, her sister lives in the next town over, which is poor and in general disrepair; Ellen is surprised to learn the girl has family nearby. She can already see the note she will leave on her husband’s desk: out for evening, scribbled on a white sticky that reminds her of a prescription pad. She can already see the items she will want at the Wal-Mart up the road: a black cape, white face paint, rubber fangs. She can already see herself placing the city in the backseat of the car because she is afraid of what her husband might do to it if left alone.
In the next town over, traffic lights sway on dark wires. Ellen’s car rolls over asphalt humps, the scars of potholes sealed over. She keeps an eye on her city in the rearview. The roads are gray and smooth. The bridge glints over the blue water. Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be, pristine and useless. When they park and get out, Ellen leaves her city in the backseat.
At the party, Ellen counts a dozen zombies in half-assed costumes, a shredded T-shirt, a smear of fake blood. When she moves, she sweeps her cape dramatically and it feels good. There is dance music and liquor bottles on the kitchen counter and clear plastic cups. Not a shred of food, just booze. She picks up a cup and sees a fat black spider in the bottom and screams.
“It’s fake, silly.” Ursula plucks the spider from the cup and nests it in Ellen’s hair. In the driveway, Ellen zipped the girl into the Statue of Liberty costume she’s wearing. At first, she wanted to be a slutty witch, but Ellen talked her into the Statue of Liberty—the tallest iron structure ever built! How could she resist?
The girl vanishes into the party with her fake torch. The song changes. Bodies clump together in the living room. Ellen watches them stomp and thrash. A zombie sucks on a ballerina’s neck.
Ellen slips down the hall and into the bathroom. She turns on the light, locks the door. She sits on the toilet for longer than she needs to. She has to jiggle the handle to flush. Still she is not quite ready to go back out there with the monsters.
She takes out her cell phone and calls her husband. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say if he answers, but she’s prepared to say something. It rings once, then goes to voicemail.
When she’s ready to rejoin the party, she flips the lock. The door doesn’t open. She pushes her shoulder into it. She gives it a little kick, but it’s still jammed. She starts banging.
“Who’s that?” a voice in the hallway says.
“It’s Ellen,” she cries, struggling to be heard over the music.
“I don’t know any Ellen,” the voice says back.
She presses her ear against the door. She hears footsteps. She bangs and shouts.
Finally she retreats. She looks around for a window, but there is no window. In the mirror, she sways and watches the movement of her cape. She bears her fangs at her own reflection.
Ellen is startled when she hears someone shouting through the door.
“Do you think you’re the only one at this party who has to pee?” It’s Ursula’s sister.
“I’m stuck,” Ellen calls out. “The door won’t open.”
She listens to the slow gathering of voices. Someone yells at Ellen to get away from the door. There is a big thump and the door shudders.
A man in white face paint, a bike chain slung over his shoulder, crashes into the bathroom, his elbow thrust out like a weapon. He knocks the door off its hinges; it decapitates the shower curtain and lands in the bathtub. Ellen clings to the towel rack. The people in the hallway start clapping.
Ellen finds that she cannot breathe. Ursula emerges, in her green polyester gown and spiked headdress, and takes her hand.
“Thanks for bringing her,” Ursula’s sister, who is dressed like a mummy, says.
Ursula pulls Ellen down the hallway, toward the backyard. They pass through the kitchen. Ellen leans against her like a drunk girlfriend.
“You just need some air.” The girl pats her shoulder.
It’s cold outside. She looks at the dark sky and remembers the planet she heard about on the news, the swirl of dust and gas.
“They keep telling me that if I stay at the school, I’ll be able to have whatever I want. They say I owe it to them, to take that chance to have whatever I want.” She turns to Ellen, her arms crossed. “Does that sound right to you?”
“I think you need to think about what you want.”
“It’s confusing sometimes,” Ursula says. “Trying to understand what you want.”
Ellen wraps her cape around her body. She slides her fangs inside her mouth.
Here are some of the things she wants. To build something lasting. To remember what it feels like to be close to someone. She wants what is best for this girl, even though she has no real idea what that might be. She wants the RIGHT THING to reveal itself to her, to all of them, for it to become as solid as a pear or a basketball.
In the living room, the monsters have overturned the couch and are climbing all over the arms and back. Krissy is throwing handfuls of candy corn and a zombie is trying to catch them in his mouth. For once, she feels like the sane one.
In her Statue of Liberty costume, the girl has started to cry. She drops her torch and it rolls into the grass. Her headdress slips down her forehead.
“Hey,” Ellen says, touching the sleeve of her costume. This is the best she can think to do.
“Hey,” the girl whispers back. She wipes her nose on her hand.
“That city in the backseat.” She turns to Ellen, sniffs. “Is that yours? Did you make it?”
“Yes,” Ellen says. “What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” she says, nodding. “But you only have people living there. You’re missing all the animals.” She explains that in her art class, she is making papier mâché animals for her final project. So far she has only finished the heads. They are all sitting on a table in the art room. Sometimes she looks through the window and sees them all lined up there, staring back at her.
“Did you know an elephant has as many neurons as a human brain?” she says. “Did you know that they have nerves in their toenails that help them understand sound?”
“I didn’t know,” Ellen says.
The girl keeps going. That saying elephants never forget? It’s true. They remember everything. They can’t jump, but they can swim. They do not actually like peanuts. They are the largest land animal in the world. Even their hearts are enormous. Does she know an elephant heart can weigh over forty pounds? Does she have any idea how much that can hold?
Laura van den Berg is the author of the story collection THE ISLE OF YOUTH. Her first novel is forthcoming from FSG in 2015.