Elizabeth sits on her mild sofa, facing the bowls. Two disembodied heads burn behind her. The bowls are on the pine sideboard. Not her own bowls, she wouldn’t let them use hers, but three bowls from the kitchen, a pyrex casserole, a white china mixing bowl, and another mixing bowl, stainless steel.
In two of the bowls are the packages the children wrapped in the afternoon, little bundles in wrinkled orange and black paper napkins, a witch and cat motif. Tied at the top with string. They wanted ribbon but there wasn’t any. In each package are some candy kisses, a miniature box of Smarties, a box of raisins. They wanted her to make gingerbread cookies with jack-o’-lantern faces on them, the way she usually did, but she said she didn’t have time this year. A lame excuse. They know how much time she spends lying in there on her bed.
The third bowl, the steel one, is full of pennies, for the UNICEF boxes the children carry around with them these days. Save the children. Adults, as usual, forcing the children to do the saving, knowing how incapable of it they are themselves.
Soon the doorbell will ring and she’ll open the door. It will be a fairy or a Batman or a devil or an animal, her neighbors’ children, her children’s friends, in the shapes of their own desires or their parents’ fears. She will smile at them and admire them and give them something from the bowls, and they will go away. She will close the door and sit down again and wait for the next ring. Meanwhile her own children are doing the same thing at the houses of her neighbors, up and down the front paths, across the lawns, grass for the newcomers like herself, withered tomato plants and faded cosmos flowers for the Italians and Portuguese whose district has so recently been perceived as quaint.
Her children are walking, running, lured by the orange lights in front windows. Later that night she will go through their loot while they sleep, looking for evidence of razor blades in apples, poisoned candy. Although their joy cannot touch her, fear for them still can. She does not trust the world’s intentions towards them. Nate used to laugh at her concerns, what he called her obsessions: sharp table corners when they were learning to walk, open wall plugs, lamp cords, ponds, streams and puddles (you can drown in two inches of water), moving vehicles, iron swings, porch railings, stairs; and more recently, strange men, cars that slow down, ravines. They had to learn, he’d say. As long as nothing serious happens she looks foolish. But if anything ever does, it will be no consolation to have been right.
It should be Nate sitting on this sofa, waiting for the doorbell to ring. It should be him this time, opening the door not knowing who it will be, handing out the candy. Elizabeth has always done it before but Nate should know she isn’t up to it this year. If he used his head he would know.
But he’s out; and he hasn’t, this time, told her where he is going.
Chris came to the door once, not telling her, rang the bell. Standing on the porch, the overhead light turning his face to moon craters.
What are you doing here? She’d been angry: he shouldn’t have done that, it was an invasion, the children’s room was right overhead. Pulled her outside onto the porch, brought his face down to hers wordlessly, in the spotlight. Go away. I’ll call you later but please go away. You know I can’t do this. A whisper, a kiss, blackmail payment, hoping they wouldn’t hear.
She wants to turn out the lights, extinguish the pumpkins, bolt the door. She can pretend she isn’t home. But how will she explain the full bowls of candy, or, even if she throws the packages away, the questions of their friends? We went to your house but there was no one home. Nothing can be done.
The doorbell rings, rings again. Elizabeth fills her hands, negotiates the door. Easier to have put the bowls at the bottom of the stairs; she’ll do that. It’s a Chinaman, a Frankenstein Monster and a child in a rat suit. She pretends not to recognize them. She hands each a bundle and drops coins into their slotted tins. They twitter happily among themselves, thank her, and patter across the porch, not knowing, really, what night this is or what, with their small decorated bodies, they truly represent. All Souls. Not just friendly souls but all souls. They are souls, come back, crying at the door, hungry, mourning their lost lives. You give them food, money, anything to substitute for your love and blood, hoping it will be enough, waiting for them to go away.