Let's Go Play at the Adams'

Randall and Barbara perceptibly changed as his guard hour wore along, changed between

the girl and him. Before, it had been Barbara tied up by the kids-for so he still thought of

himself-and now suddenly, as delicately as a bubble appearing, there came before him a

girl brought to her proper, humble place by (in part, at least) her master. She was given to

play her role, and he was-divinely given his. It was all a stunning conception. He had the

feeling of being in the presence of profound reality, the kind that smashed away laws,

manners, and all the crap they handed you. He exhaled and only then realized that he had

been holding his breath in order to hold the spell. The most mysterious and wonderful thing

in the world was simply what was going on right there beneath his nose. He was engulfed

in living as he had always wished.

What sort of spoiled it every now and then was that she would try and shift around. The

way her hands twisted and searched behind her back, the way she suddenly breathed

more heavily, the way she looked accusingly at him, brought back the truer shape of

things. She was only Barbara after all: released, she would become her busy, cheerful,

uninteresting self soon enough again. And he was only John who was going to get it good

when all of this was over and finished. The magic was broken.

Only to rise again.

With the sigh of someone who throws himself before a wonderful fate, John Randall flipped

the rowboat's painter off the dock piling and let himself float slowly toward the river. It was

dark now, and he felt more sheltered and private. With exacting mental care, he picked the

needle of memory up-it was all like replaying a good record-and set it back again to the

precise groove when everything seemed to change between him and her. Then he sat back

and let himself and the boat drift, and he lived it all over again.

44

45

Things were harder for Paul. Everything was harder for Paul.

He knew, for example, that he laughed too loud and too soon-brayed in fact-when nobody

else saw anything funny. He knew he let himself become sad or frightened and cry too

easily He knew that-being his size-he dare not fistfight, and yet he couldn't hold his temper

one bit. He always realized afterward that he missed stupid questions at school because

when they were asked, he stopped to think of all the possibilities and ramifications, and

then the questions weren't simple anymore. Things were all more complicated than anyone

seemed to understand. The world constantly reported itself to him as louder, harsher,

funnier, sadder, more menacing and intricate, than it did to others.

All of this had been observable from the beginning.

"See the dog, Paul"; Paul understood at once.

"Say dog," "Spell dog"; Paul did it first. So far, so good. Paul McVeigh was as superior as his

forebears would have expected (and they were very WASP forebears). How bright-eyed,

how interested, how quick. Yet Paul also saw terrible terrors in the most familiar shadows.

And he felt things that were not entirely warranted-more grief than a dead bird demanded,

more beauty and grandeur than a winter night's sky possessed. His sensitivity, in short,

went beyond the useful to the useless and to the harmful itself.

Growing up, Paul had assumed that everyone else felt exactly as he did, saw the exact

same things he did. The difference was that-c-somehow-c-everyone else seemed to control

themselves better. The question of why puzzled him very much. Why shouldn't they twitch

and cry out, too?

Later, of course-now he was thirteen-Paul decided this wasn't true. They didn't understand

and never would. He was a stranger in the world. See simple, act simple, home free-that

was the way of the world after all. To Paul alone fell the struggle of controlling an

uncontrollable self.

Dianne, for example, could come home from a day like today at the Adams' house and

help around the kitchen obediently and unconcernedly. To look at her, an outsider would

conclude that it had been merely another day among many.

Paul, on the other hand, appeared at the dinner table still flushed and trembling with

inexpressible -and they had better be inexpressible-thoughts of the hours just past. The

transgression of the children against adulthood, the possibilities of the Barbara game

yet to come, the inescapable punishment, before which he writhed in anticipation, were

burned more than vividly upon his mind. He dropped his fork in his plate-a splash; he

knocked over his iced tea; he sniffed and twitched and stared into space; he heard no

words when he was spoken to. At length, sent from the table by parents embarrassed

by his bad manners (for themselves), he stomped to his room and sat in furious con-

fusion, half over the events of the day and half over his rage at the world. When Dianne

looked in to say, "Be careful now, don't give anything away," he jumped up and shouted