3
The Claw

 

 

THROUGH THE WINDOW at Kress’s Old-Fashioned Cleaning I could see that the place was empty. There was just the long bare counter across the back half of the room, and the winding rack of clothes hanging in their plastic sleeves, and the old-fashioned cash register with the curlicues on it in polished brass, and an open copy of Vogue.

Probably Mr. Kress was in back. He prided himself on doing all his cleaning and pressing on the premises. There were prints of old New York on the walls. He kept the lighting low and mellow, which meant you had to squint to see that the Vogue was five months out of date, or that he hadn’t gotten the stain out of your skirt, or exactly what he was charging for not having gotten the stain out of your skirt. These days when I spilled something in my lap, it was a major economic crisis.

Mom was of the opinion that Mr. Kress kept a crew of illegal immigrants working in the back room under sweat-shop conditions. This, she liked to point out (to me, not to Mr. Kress), would be the one really honestly old-fashioned aspect of his operation, the rest being pure, trendy hype. She said Kress’s was an example of the galloping gentrification that was eating our neighborhood.

I felt grouchy and tired. I wished I was back in the noisy, plastic, fluorescent Eco-Wash Dry Cleaning Available on West 74th Street, where they farmed out your dry cleaning to some enormous central cleaning outfit and you took your chances on whether you’d ever see your clothes again. They had closed and opened up again as The Olde Salte Seller, a gourmet kitchen shop decked out like a ship-supply warehouse. So Kress’s it was.

I opened the door and went inside.

“Mr. Kress?” I said.

No answer. The radio was playing very softly. And out of it came a voice that rooted me to the spot, as they say.

Dr. Brightner’s ripe, rich tones said, “But you have to realize, Mrs. Marsh, that she’s never really made her peace with her father’s abandonment of you both.”

GOD. I was hearing Dr. Brightner talking to my mom. About me.

I could not move. Air slipped in and out of my open mouth in skinny little sips.

“My concern is that without a male figure to anchor her at this crucial time in her life she’s liable to cut and run. Not all runaways are abused children, you know. Some of them are sensitive kids reacting to rather ordinary situations they don’t feel they can cope with.”

Could they be having their meeting in the back room of the cleaners, for cripes’ sake? And piping their conversation out front through Mr. Kress’s stereo system? Was I just plain going crazy?

“Mr. Kress!” I screamed.

“There are all kinds of ways a kid can yell for help, you know,” the radio continued. “I think Tina’s sullenness and total lack of cooperation with me today was that kind of signal. I don’t mean to scare you, but I think it’s realistic to think of her as a potential runaway, given her history and her problems.”

My problems! What problems? What kind of crap was he dishing out to my mom, anyway? He’d only seen me for ten minutes, for cripes’ sake, and he’d done all the talking!

I had to get out of there.

I almost dislocated my arm, trying to yank the door open. It wouldn’t budge. It was as solid as if it had been nailed shut.

And the big plate-glass window had changed. I couldn’t see through it to the outside anymore. The glass had become a mirror, and in it, behind me, I saw something moving.

The mechanized clothes rack was turning all by itself. Not only turning. Advancing, coming closer to me.

No, I realized, that wasn’t what was happening at all, of course not, it couldn’t happen. The rack was trapped behind the long counter. What was happening was that I was walking backward, backing away from the mirror-window, toward the counter.

And the flap of the counter had silently raised itself, and as soon as I moved through that gap the chain of moving clothes was going to grab me up. I was going to get sandwiched in among the plastic-shrouded garments like just another empty dress on a hanger, and the rack would trundle me back into the darkness to someplace that didn’t really exist, someplace I couldn’t ever get home from.

That was why Dr. Brightner was talking about runaway kids to my mom. Because he knew I was about to disappear, just like Gran! Except, I reminded myself feverishly, he didn’t have Gran, not if he’d been so hot to get me to bring her to him.

Why didn’t I hear my mother’s voice? There was only Brightner’s, and in answer, a faint crackle of static. He wanted me to be scared. He wouldn’t let me have the comfort of hearing Mom.

My legs walked backward another step. I couldn’t look away from the mirror image of the moving rack behind me.

“Tell me something about you, Laura,” the voice from the radio went on. “May I call you Laura? Kids aren’t the whole world, even though it may seem that way sometimes. It’s no crime to give ourselves a little attention now and again, you know. To tell the truth, in my line of work I get lonely for some grown-up company myself.”

He was calling my mother by her first name, for Pete’s sake—coming on to her, when he was supposed to be having a professional conference! On top of that, he wasn’t even bothering about me anymore, he figured he had me nailed down already. I was outraged.

I opened my mouth and I croaked, “Gran! Help!”

The image of myself in the glass continued to wobble toward the counter at my back, which I could feel looming very close behind me. The metal hangers rattled softly, like teeth being gnashed in a hungry mouth.

But way inside my mind words formed themselves, faintly, as if from far away.

The words were, “Put on the silver glove.”

Granny Gran’s glove, still in my jeans pocket! I fumbled it out with clumsy hands: soft silvery leather, wrinkled and worn. How could this discarded old thing that I had once been babyish enough to give as a gift help me now?

I yanked it onto my left hand as my legs carried me into the gap in the counter. I felt the first brush of the circling clothes against my back.

Warmth from the glove flooded my whole body. My fingers unclenched.

In the mirror a glittering claw of silver wire reached out from the rack, rattling toward me, ready to snag me and yank me in among the hanging clothes.

Brightner’s voice oiled along, ignoring all this completely, though I was sure he knew exactly what was happening here in Kress’s Old-Fashioned Cleaning. “I wanted kids of my own, of course, I come from a large family myself. But my ex-wife—”

I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the mirror image that had me hypnotized. Risking the moment of blindness, I clapped both hands over my eyes, and that did it. I whirled around and with my gloved hand I grabbed the glittering, reaching claw, set my heels, and gave the hardest pull I could.

The radio let out a shriek that went through my head like a needle of ice.

The claw in the clothes rack was so hot—or so cold—that I could feel its wiry pincers burning my skin through the leather of the glove. I gritted my teeth and hung on, straining against what seemed like the weight of the whole rack, the whole back of the cleaners place, the whole world.

It all came loose so suddenly that I staggered.

Out from among the clothes flew something like a silver skeleton, but of some buglike creature that never lived on this earth. It was all bundled wire, with a lot of whirling, glittering, skinny limbs that ended in catching claws.

I slung it away from me as hard as I could, yelling with disgust and horror. It shot through the air, all huddled into a defensive, angular knot, and it hit the mirror with a shrieking jangle.

Suddenly I could see outside again: the street, the restaurant opposite, a guy walking by with an attaché case.

“What’s the rush?” came this crabby voice behind me. I spun around.

Mr. Kress shuffled out of the back room looking very annoyed. “I’m coming,” he said. “I heard you. All of New York heard you. You might try to have a little patience, young lady. I do all my own work, you know, the old-fashioned way, here on the premises.”

He held out his hand for my cleaning ticket.

The radio played the theme from The Sting, and The Claw was nothing but a bunch of hangers lying all tangled up in a heap under the plate-glass window.