A Nest of Nightmares

A car drove past, an old green Ford that still looked shiny and new. She glanced at it, had a glimpse of a short-haired woman in sunglasses driving with two small girls bouncing in the back seat. The familiarity tugged at her mind.

The farther she walked without seeing either Bill or the car the lonelier she felt. It began to seem clear to her that they had quarrelled (their arguments had become too frequent lately), and she had demanded—— But, alone? Would he have left her alone?

Eventually she returned to the house on Devon. The green Ford was parked in the garage.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Bill pounded his horn; a woman glared. ‘The worst drivers in the world, around here. The number of people in this city who are allowed to drive cars . . .’

‘You ignored a yield sign,’ she said. Not asking for an argument.

‘The hell I did. If you’re so good, Little Miss Silence, why don’t you . . .’

‘Just drive,’ she said wearily.

‘You’re really suffering, aren’t you? I mean, I really give you a pain. Well, listen, lady . . .’

When she saw the Ford in the garage she remembered being nine years old. The car had been new, then.

She heard the kitchen door open and slam, and two little girls came running from around the magnolia tree. She saw them mount bicycles in the garage and moments later they sailed past her as she stood, feet curling on the hot street. One girl was dark-haired and thin, pedalling fiercely. The other was a plump, blonde, happy-looking child.

Sharon knew the blonde child. It was her sister Ellen, fifteen years ago. But the skinny kid——

‘That can’t be me,’ Sharon said aloud. Then she began to laugh.

‘So which street is it?’

‘That one. No, you passed it now.’

‘Well, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You can circle the block.’

‘I know I can circle the block, goddammit; that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you never telling me anything.’

‘You’ll miss it again if you’re not careful.’

‘Listen to me, you bitch,’ he said, turning to glare at her.

‘Watch out . . . !’

When the two little girls came riding back, Sharon was resting beneath a tree in the yard next door. She stared at them, knowing where they had gone, who they had seen, and what games they had played. They pretended not to see her; either that, or they did not notice her. Sharon knew that, from shyness and parental warnings against strangers, they would feel themselves bound to ignore her. She watched the dark-haired child who pedalled with such single-minded intensity and felt no bond, no sympathy, no feeling of kinship. That little girl was not herself any more than she, Sharon, was again physically nine years old.

Not physically nine, no, but somehow she had come back to the happiest time of her life. She remembered the years between six and eleven as a sort of paradise where parents never quarrelled and little girls were never lonely or unhappy. She remembered fears, but they had been fears banished by daylight or the presence of a comforting grown-up.

Sharon waited under the tree until the sun had almost set, shedding worries like used skin. Bill was gone, her former husband did not exist, and her father had never left. When she saw the two little girls, released from the dinner table, ride past her again, she stood up – wanting with a sudden intensity to be on her bicycle again – and walked to the house.

The sun was out of sight, but had not completely set. She stood before the front door, gazing at the dark varnished wood, and touched the doorknob. It was still slightly warm where the last rays of the sun had rested. She opened the door and stepped inside.

The foyer and living room were empty. She could hear sounds from the kitchen where her mother was washing dishes. She rejoiced in the smell of the house; partly her father’s pipe from the den (she heard the crackle and rustle of newspaper), partly the lamb-chop-and-lima-bean smell left from dinner, partly indefinable but familiar.