Every year before Halloween, my Aunt Magda gave us a suitcase of old clothes. It was a smart well-packed suitcase, and my aunt always said it would give me a good selection for costumes. She wanted to take the suitcase home, so we had to go through it in the living room, the suitcase lying open on the coffee table. Bunny would pull out last year’s poodle skirt or an old cocktail gown, exclaiming over everything in her company voice as Aunt Magda watched, leaning against the mantlepiece, her black eyes like caves behind her cigarette smoke.
“Oh, so chic!” Bunny cried. “I’m sure she can use it for something.”
What neither of them said was that the clothes were mainly for my mother. Bunny would spend the next few weeks tailoring them to fit, making sure she had something grand for New Year’s Eve. I was puzzled by the whole process. Bunny never thanked Aunt Magda and wouldn’t wear one of the alterations in front of her. In fact, my mother always seemed annoyed by the process, turning as grim as the Manners family’s cleaning lady as the Halloween phone call approached.
“That will be Magda,” she’d start to say when the telephone rang.
“Parker residence,” she’d answer, as she never did.
I would know it was my aunt when her voice went even higher. “Oh, how are you? What a surprise! It’s been ages.”
A pause. “Yes, yes, of course she would. How very kind of you.” With a grimace. “Aren’t you lovely? Yes, of course we’ll be here.”
Muttering about charity after she hung up. Ray wouldn’t have got anywhere without . . .
“Actually, she wants to be the Lone Ranger,” she said this year. “Hall has an old white shirt gone at the elbows . . . Well, the actor wears blue in some of the colour pictures but it looks white on TV . . .
“Oh, aren’t you kind? I was wondering about trousers. But white gets stained so easily . . . Of course one has to be careful. We do get bored with our old things, don’t we?”
Hanging up, she told me, “Lady Foofaraw will be over on Tuesday. I hope you still want to be the goddamn Ranger.”
I liked Aunt Magda. She stalked through life like a panther, thin and faintly savage, her black hair pulled back in a bun. I’d seen a ballet dancer like her once at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The dancer was playing a stepmother, or maybe a witch, and she was thrilling in the same way Aunt Magda was thrilling. I think the dancer was Russian, so they both had foreign accents, too.
In fact, I never disliked anyone unless they were mean to me, which came down to my grade three teacher, Mrs. Persson. And Aunt Magda wasn’t anything like a witch. She was just sophisticated, as Mrs. Manners had put it. Generous, my father said. She would spray me with perfume as she sat at her dressing table, making me smell like the shadows in her garden. Nor did I believe that Bunny disliked her, given the way her voice quivered if anyone said anything against my aunt. This included the word intimidating, which I learned the week before Aunt Magda brought over her suitcase.
Bunny’s friends were over for coffee. I was home sick, hunkered just inside my bedroom door hoping for a chance at one of the squares she’d baked. Nanaimo bars were the best, brownies a close second and date squares a distant third, given the way they stuck to the roof of your mouth.
I had a slight fever, suffering mildly from a cold I’d caught down the creek when Norman and I had stayed too long. Bunny had told me she’d predicted this and wasn’t happy about keeping me back from school. She’d already invited her friends and wasn’t going to cancel. I would have to stay in bed and be quiet, not even watching TV in the rec room. There was nothing suitable for children on weekday mornings, anyway.
Yes, there was. Being cut off TV was a punishment, which was unfair when you were sick. But in this case, I accepted it, Norman and I having got interested in swearing after we’d sat on the log. Our minister, Mr. Culver, didn’t approve of swearing. When I got sick, it occurred to me that Our Lord probably didn’t care for it much either, which made me wonder about Bunny’s chances of escaping my cold.
“I saw your sister-in-law last week in Eaton’s.”
It started with Mrs. Oliver. She was a redhead like her daughter Lucy, who was in my class. Mrs. Oliver had been a news reporter before she was elected to the PTA—I thought it was the PTA—having written a column called Comings and Goings in the local paper.
“I’m sorry, Buns. But whenever I run into her, she always manages to convey the impression that I’m doing something wrong.”
“Intimidating,” someone said, amid the rattle of coffee spoons. I wasn’t sure who was speaking and hadn’t heard the term before. But if it meant someone who thought you were wrong, that was both interesting and useful.
“She surveils,” Mrs. Oliver said. “And finds the world inadequate.”
“She always makes me conscious of what I’m wearing.” That was Mrs. Armstrong. “Which probably has spit-up all over it.”
“Those legs! Good Heavens. Glen sure notices.” Mrs. Winters. She was married to our dentist Dr. Winters, who was far too old to look at Aunt Magda’s legs.
“Not that she absolutely has to wear French stockings,” the unknown person said.
“Sunglasses,” Mrs. O’Neill added; I had no idea why.
“All of which is terribly superficial of me,” Mrs. Oliver said, as if she’d been the only one speaking. “But I always think the sign of true quality is the ability to put other people at their ease. No matter how glamorous you are, or how damn cultivated, you don’t lord it over the peasants.”
“I don’t think she’s lording it over anyone,” my mother said, her voice doing its quiver.
“Well, I don’t suppose her people were in the position to be lords,” Mrs. Oliver said. “Financiers, I would imagine. I’d say rich as Jews, except . . .”
They all tittered, making Bunny say with even more of a quiver, “You know Hall doesn’t like that, Irene.”
“Oh, Hall doesn’t,” Mrs. Oliver replied.
“After all she’s been through,” Mrs. Armstrong said peaceably. She was a nice, curly-headed lady. I’d never seen a significant amount of spit-up on her clothes, even though she had four children younger than me.
Rattle of plates. From the sounds of it, Bunny was passing squares. “Who hasn’t had enough sugar?”
“Me,” I called, making everybody laugh.
“Well come on in, pet,” Mrs. Oliver said. “Your mother’s a pet and you are, too.”
Nanaimo bars still on the plate. So that had worked, even though Bunny didn’t look pleased to see me.
Aunt Magda had packed an old pair of white pedal pushers on top of the other clothes in her suitcase. That might have been a mistake. Bunny took them out and closed the suitcase, saying in a voice as bright as tinfoil, “Thanks so much, Magda. She already knows she wants to be the Ranger.”
Aunt Magda drew on her cigarette. She never looked surprised, only as if she had to consider what was being said. I was the one who felt surprised. Bunny didn’t have a new dress for New Year’s Eve and wasn’t likely to get one, my father’s boss Mr. German being on another rampage. Among other things, this meant cutting paid overtime. Yet Bunny always said you needed a new dress for New Year’s Eve to bring in your luck.
“Of course, Tinker might change her mind,” Aunt Magda said, the words blown out with the smoke. I was going to say that I wouldn’t when she caught my eye.
“People do,” I agreed, which was truthful.
“Then I wouldn’t have time to sew it, would I?” Bunny asked. “And I’ve already cut down your father’s shirt.” Smiling even more brightly, she asked Aunt Magda, “Coffee?”
Shrugging. “Sure.”
The word didn’t sound like slang when my aunt said it.
“Sure,” I echoed. When Bunny swivelled, I reminded her, “Debbie made me some.” Adding, “Two sugars.”
The sugars sounded very satisfactory, like one of the old movies my parents watched on TV. Yet when my mother left the room, she stalked out in a way that puzzled me.
“What happened?” my aunt asked. She wasn’t like Mrs. Manners, forgetting to treat me as a child. Aunt Magda treated everybody the same. Leaving aside the idiots, of course, who were legion. You didn’t want to be an idiot around Aunt Magda.
“Her friends said things the other day.” But since the things concerned Aunt Magda, I didn’t think I should repeat them, even though she kept staring at me.
“I see,” she said finally and drew on her cigarette. “That bitch Irene Oliver.”
I was astonished. It wasn’t even a question.
“Your mother needs new friends.” Aunt Magda stubbed out her cigarette, even though she’d only smoked half of it. “But of course she’s known them forever. It’s interesting how fond one gets of people after knowing them forever. Even without liking them.”
“Mrs. Armstrong is nice,” I said. “She said, ‘After All Magda’s Been Through.’”
Aunt Magda’s eyelids flickered. The Been Through phrase was always capitalized when people spoke about my aunt, although in this case I knew what it meant. She had a number tattooed on the inside of her arm. I saw it every time we went to swim in her backyard pool. One memory I have from being very small was the way I was fascinated by the number and reached out to touch it.
“Mary Alice!” My mother’s jarring voice.
“It’s all right. She can.”
Tracing it with my fingertip.
When I was older, she told me, “The Nazis did that.” She neither hid the tattoo nor flaunted it. “You must never hate anyone in your life. Except Nazis.”
“My father says I can’t hate anybody.”
“Then just this once ignore him.”
Aunt Magda had been held for most of the war in the camp at Theresienstadt. My father had told me the names and said it was respectful to remember them. Toward the end of the war, my aunt was transported to Auschwitz and liberated from there. Afterward, she was a Displaced Person, there being a lot of capitalizations in Aunt Magda’s past. She came from Prague but didn’t want to go back there, not with all her family gone, and Aunt Magda had seen them go. Instead she came to Canada, where she married Uncle Ray.
My uncle’s eyesight had kept him out of the war. Bunny always said this gave him a leg up, although they never said which leg, so I didn’t know how my uncle got started. He must have done it on his own, since the Parker money was gone. Not long gone, but gone. He became a commercial real estate developer, owning the first of his shopping malls. When Bunny said he couldn’t have made it without my father, she meant that my father had quit school to support the family after his own father died, his and Uncle Ray’s, and that he’d sent my uncle to university when he didn’t go himself. My father often spoke about his lack of a university education, but I never thought he was lacking in anything. Uncle Ray wasn’t either, although in a different way, while Aunt Magda said the Nazis had emptied her out.
“Coffee cake!” My mother came back into the living room with a tray that included two cups of coffee and a glass of milk. I decided not to say anything about the milk, afraid of jeopardizing my piece of cake. Bunny’s cakes were famously light, and her coffee cake was topped with a crumble of cinnamon and sugar that was an excellent way to ruin your teeth.
“Now, Muriel,” Aunt Magda said as Bunny served. “Mary Alice and I have been talking. And even though she will be the Lone Ranger, she can use the other clothes for dress-up, and you’ll oblige me by taking them. You’re afraid she’s becoming too much of a tomboy. Well, here. Let her play with some old rags. And if she doesn’t, do me the favour of throwing them out. I don’t have enough closets.”
My aunt’s entire speech shocked me, starting with the way she called my mother Muriel, which no one did but my father, and extending through the fact—which I knew instantly was true—that Bunny was afraid I was a tomboy. I wasn’t a tomboy. I was Tink, and being called anything else made my fists clench.
“I suppose you’ll want your Louis Vuitton suitcase back,” Bunny said. “Don’t think I don’t know what it is.”
“Oh, I don’t care. Let her have the suitcase, too. Why not?”
I brightened. There were many things you could do with a suitcase. But Bunny was shaking her head, ready to say something else.
Aunt Magda gripped her by the wrist.
“Don’t let them get to you,” she said, holding on tight.
They’d forgotten me. I watched my mother’s posture droop. The way she puddled down to gaze up at Aunt Magda. She looked like a pet, it was true.
“I’m just an ordinary person,” she said.
“You can choose to be.”
Aunt Magda let go of her wrist and gave my mother a handkerchief, a big square white men’s handkerchief like the ones my father used.
She and Uncle Ray had one son, Simon, who was three years older than me and exceptionally polite. He went to private school and wore a blue blazer with a gold crest on the pocket. I decided that I would be as mature as Simon when they noticed me again, remembering not to wolf my coffee cake.
“Oh, thanks for the clothes,” Bunny said, sounding tired. “Really. I can use them, the way Hall’s boss has been acting lately.”
“And the suitcase,” I said, forgetting my resolution.
“It’s Aunt Magda’s suitcase, Mary Alice,” my mother said, blowing her nose.
“Your daughter has good taste. Who cares for silly girls?”
But here’s the mysterious thing. When my aunt left, the suitcase went with her. She must have forgotten what she’d said, or maybe she was used to taking it with her so she just did.
Yet I had my Lone Ranger pedal pushers and Bunny had her New Year’s Eve dress, or at least a taffeta skirt and pretty silk top. They’d make sure she was lucky next year even though she was an ordinary person, which was fine. You wanted your mother to be ordinary, although I didn’t tell her so, and decided on reflection that this was a good call.
After school on Halloween, I checked out my costume in the full-length mirror on the sliding doors of my parents’ bedroom closet, twisting and turning to see it from every angle and feeling very proud. The shirt looked as white as the Lone Ranger’s, especially since my mother was making me wear two undershirts against the cold. I also thought my black rubber rain boots did very well as cowboy boots, despite the red line around the top.
Most important, I had a black mask and a white fedora we’d found in Woolworth’s Five and Dime. I could push the fedora back off my forehead like a gunslinger even though I didn’t have a gun, Bunny having drawn the line while we were at Woolworth’s. When we got home, my father said that I could use my imagination, and it was true that pointed fingers could be guns. I stood with my legs wide apart looking in the mirror. Yanking my fingers out of my pockets, I fired them off until I was satisfied, then I fired them few more times for good measure.
It was still early when I ran along Connington Crescent to Norman’s house, holding my pillowcase balled up in my fist. It was drizzling but not really raining, the sky still light and none of the other kids out yet. Running up the Hortons’ walk, I rejected trick-or-treating, thinking it would be rude. Norman opened the door when I knocked, and as we crowded into the kitchen, I saw he made an impressive Zorro, dressed in black from head to toe.
“You found a hat at Woolworth’s!”
“It’s an old one of my dad’s,” Norman said. “Mum wound an old tie around inside it so it wouldn’t slip down. And I’ve got a big head.”
Auntie Nita would have said, “Filled with brains.” Norman’s mother was there but she didn’t say it. She was too busy drying her hands on a dish towel.
“You got your cape,” I said, walking around him. It was a wonderful cape, swishing and shiny, made with lining from the fabric store. I envied Norman that cape and had to stifle a small whispered feeling that I should have been Zorro instead.
“And Rosa’s old sweater that doesn’t fit her anymore,” Norman said, looking down at his chest. “And they’re my good pants, so I have to be careful. But they’re just my ordinary shoes.”
I held up one of my feet to show off my black rubber boots. Mrs. Horton made a sound as if she had a fly caught up her nose. I turned to see what was the matter, then did a double-take as Rosa came in, dressed for the high school dance. Rosa was being Marilyn Monroe in a blond wig and the famous white dress that blew up to reveal Marilyn’s legs. The costume made it very clear why Rosa’s old black sweater didn’t fit her anymore. She held out her arms and turned a circle to show it off.
“No,” Mr. Horton said.
I hadn’t heard him come in, but he was standing behind me in the kitchen doorway.
“Oh, come . . .”
“No,” her father said.
They had a staring match that ended when Rosa turned back toward her bedroom. She held her arms horizontal and shook her hands in protest as she retreated.
“How’s she going to hold them in when Marilyn Monroe never can?”
“Tink,” Mrs. Horton began. She seemed to be trying not to laugh.
Mr. Horton was still concentrating on Rosa. “Remember I’m working the dance,” he called. He didn’t seem to think anything was funny and was still angry when he left the room. Mrs. Horton looked after him for a while, then told Norman to get his bag.
“Pillowcase,” I said. When she looked confused: “He needs a pillowcase to carry all his loot.”
“No one needs that much candy,” Mrs. Horton said.
“Our parents steal half when we’re at school. Don’t think we don’t notice.” I liked Bunny’s turn of phrase, although the look on Mrs. Horton’s face made me feel apologetic. “I don’t mean that you do.”
“Yes, she does,” Norman said. “He doesn’t, but she does. Before I get up.”
Mrs. Horton blushed up her neck to her powdery cheeks the way Norman did, although she remained close to laughing.
“Tink, you’ve been sent to try us,” she said.
No, I hadn’t. But she went and got an old pillowcase, so I had no real complaint.
The drill, as I explained to Norman, was to get to the O’Neill house at the far end of Connington Crescent before everyone else did. Mrs. O’Neill may not have liked Aunt Magda’s sunglasses, but she handed out homemade candy apples that were even bigger than the ones at the PNE. The problem was, she didn’t make enough for everybody, so you had to get there fast.
There was no point telling Norman to hurry. We were making slow progress down the block, but I could see he was trying, rocking forward as fast as he could between his braced leg and his usual one. We skipped the houses between his place and the O’Neills, even though most of them had lit pumpkins beside the front door. Mrs. O’Reilly had carved a cat face with excellent whiskers, but I told Norman we’d do Connington later.
I had my route: Mrs. O’Neill at the end of the block, then down Moore Road as if we were going to school. But instead of carrying on downhill, we’d turn left at Derriton Crescent, going along Derriton on one side and doubling back on the other. Afterward, we’d go down Moore again to Egerton Crescent, going back and forth across the street, remaining aware that our principal lived in one of the houses. After that we’d go uphill again on Far Creek Road and do Connington down and back until Norman was home, not bothering with Bennington Crescent farther up the mountain, much less Alderton at the top. Our pillowcases would rip if we got too greedy, which had been known to happen.
“They’re alphabetical,” Norman said, trying to hurry. “The streets. Alderton, Bennington, Connington. I never noticed that before.”
I stopped. Alphabetical, and they all end in ton. I hadn’t noticed that either, and I’d lived here all my life. I looked at Norman, and he nodded proudly at having figured it out. It reminded me of one of Mr. Culver’s sermons, how the Bible said all things should be done decently and in order. I got an eerie sense of the hidden order of the world, how things were structured in a way you never noticed, life ticking around you like a clock. My father had opened his watch for me once, all the wheels and gears. There, in the middle of the road, I felt locked inside a giant clock, its gears whirling around me, its hands clicking down the minutes of my life. My mind stuttered to a stop as I realized I was trapped in a world far stranger than I’d known.
An astronaut and a cowboy ran past me down the rainy street. Devils and ghosts grinned from either side of the road while a cat-whiskered pumpkin burned fiendishly. It was all so strange, I felt in danger of floating out of my body right in the middle of Halloween.
“What’s the matter?” Norman asked. He looked at me more closely and must have seen how I was quivering.
“Nothing’s the matter,” he added kindly.
But I couldn’t get free of it, all the gears grinding around me.
“Everyone’s coming outside,” Norman said. “We’d better get going.”
He pointed and I followed his arm, registering the fact that the astronaut and the cowboy were only Harry and Jamie Manners in their store-bought costumes. Children were melting out of the houses on either side, the little ones with their fathers, staggering down their front walks like kittens and puppies learning to walk. Two big girls swished out of one house as a princess and a witch—Jeannie Stevens and Cathy Cole—with Judy Shribman emerging behind them as a butterfly flapping her tissue-paper wings. The girls started off by skipping the Connington houses. Jamie and Harry Manners were skipping them too, and I realized that everyone was heading straight for the candy apples.
“Come on!” I cried, spurting forward as if Norman was the hold-up. When we landed on the O’Neills’ front steps, I wasn’t entirely sure how we’d got there.
“Trick or treat!”
“Well don’t you look grand!”
Mrs. O’Neill bent down and gave each of us a candy apple wrapped in waxed paper and tied around the stick with curly red ribbon. A sigh of pleasure escaped me. I fell back to normal, the weirdness and tension sliding off my shoulders now that everything was the way it always had been and always would be.
Leaving the O’Neills’, we followed the plan, joining waves of kids heading down Moore and along Derriton, trick-or-treating every place they’d put out a pumpkin. We got candy bars and Rockets, black licorice and packets of Twizzlers. There were also little brown folded-over bags, which we opened as soon as we reached the street. Some were penny candy, some filled with cheap Halloween kisses in their orange and black wrappers. I thought the kisses tasted like ear wax, but Norman liked them all right, and I was surprised at how happy he looked when the lady on Egerton Crescent gave us her popcorn balls. He pulled his out of his pillowcase afterward and marvelled over it.
Popcorn balls! Why hadn’t I told him there were popcorn balls?
Because they tasted like puffed-up paper. Because everyone thought they tasted like puffed-up paper, and you had to be careful not to get hit later on when the bigger boys started pegging them like snowballs. Because the lady made so many popcorn balls you didn’t need to worry that she’d run out before you got there. In fact, she’d give you seconds, maybe because she had popcorn brains and didn’t recognize you—didn’t recognize snowball-throwing boys getting seconds—although it was entirely possible she pretended she didn’t recognize them because she’d made so many popcorn balls she needed to get rid of them any way she could.
Or maybe the lady made so many popcorn balls because she thought we liked them. It came to me suddenly that the lady was being nice. It was another example of gears turning in a way you’d never noticed, although figuring it out this time didn’t stop me dead in the street, probably because I was so jittery from eating candy that I couldn’t have stopped dead if it killed me.
“We can go back if you think I’m lying.”
“You and me have different tastes,” Norman said. “You don’t like gummy bears.”
This was true. But we couldn’t go back right away or the lady would be hard-pressed to pretend she didn’t recognize us. There was also the fact our principal, Mr. Eisenstadt, was looking out the doorway of his house across the street, craning his neck up and down Egerton, looking as if he was checking the number of kids against the amount of candy he had left.
By this time, the little ones had all gone home. But kids our age were out in droves, and we’d been joined by bigger kids in last-minute costumes: thirteen-, even fourteen-year-olds wearing scavenged masks who were too old for trick-or-treating but couldn’t stop themselves from wanting free candy.
I usually snuck past the principal’s house. But with Norman slowing down, he and I were walking between two waves of kids. As he craned his neck, Mr. Eisenstadt spotted us. Without even exchanging a glance, Norman and I knew we had to go over, dogging our way toward the principal’s pumpkin. There was a Mrs. Eisenstadt, but I only ever saw her in the medical complex, where Bunny always said she looked pale.
My father called Mr. Eisenstadt a fireplug, he was so short and broad. He wasn’t popular, even though his name sounded like President Eisenhower, who was a war hero and admirable. Mr. Eisenstadt yelled over the P.A. system every day after “God Save the Queen” and the Lord’s Prayer and was known to enjoy strapping. There was also the fact my father had gone up against him over my grade three teacher, Mrs. Persson, and Mr. Eisenstadt hadn’t liked that.
Now he ignored me and grunted at Norman, “Marian Horton’s boy.”
“Yes, sir,” Norman said very clearly and held open his pillowcase. “Trick or treat, sir.”
Mr. Eisenstadt grunted again and threw in a chocolate bar, hesitating for a half second before throwing one in mine.
“Now there’s a little girl who isn’t as smart as she thinks she is,” he said, as if speaking to himself.
I wouldn’t have dreamed of answering. With principals there was an unusually wide gap between what you thought and what you said; even I knew that. But since blurting was always a possibility, I was glad when he shut the door quickly, as if he wanted to keep out the rain.
I headed back down the principal’s walk, my pillowcase hitting against my legs, heavier than usual with candy. I turned to say this to Norman, but found him behind me, his limp having visibly gotten worse.
As soon as he reached the road, Norman said, “‘She isn’t as smart as she thinks she is.’”
We were still a little close to Mr. Eisenstadt’s front door for one of his imitations.
“I’m smarter,” I said, trying to joke him into moving along.
“You can’t talk to a pupil like that,” Norman said, sounding like an irritated adult. Leading him off, I pointed out that principals were like the weather, and my father said it didn’t do any good to complain about the weather. You might not like it, but complaining wasn’t going to change anything.
“People are supposed to change,” he said. “You’re supposed to grow up.”
That struck me as funny. “A principal growing up.”
“You have to.”
I’d never heard Norman sound so irritated.
I’d never seen him drag his leg so badly, either.
“We’re almost at my street,” I said. Norman rolled his eyes exactly like Rosa. He knew where we were. But I still thought it polite to add, “We can go home if you want.”
“You don’t care because you’ve got all the things you like,” Norman said, his voice quavering. “But maybe the other houses have things I like.”
It would just be ordinary candy, but all right. I stole glances at Norman as we trudged uphill, watching the way he dragged along. Luckily, we had several childless neighbours in a row who ignored Halloween. A few other people had blown out their pumpkins after running out of candy. Reaching the house of the Manners family was a relief. We were almost home.
There was also the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Manners gave out excellent treats, different every year. And Mrs. Manners dressed up, which none of the other adults did. I’d forgotten to mention this to Norman, which made it a surprise.
“Trick or treat!” I yelled.
Norman gaped. Mrs. Manners was being Bernadette from The Song of Bernadette, which made Bunny cry every time we saw it on TV. There was a short striped kerchief tied around her neck and a filmy white scarf over her hair. I wondered if she was one of the nuns who were going to take her daughter Andy, which didn’t make sense.
Far too much candy. It was obvious even to me.
“Well, my goodness,” Mrs. Manners said. “Tink and her friend Norman.” Calling: “Jim, come look.”
Mr. Manners appeared behind her, a glass of ice cubes in one hand. He was wearing his business suit without the jacket, his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up. He could be playing Humphrey Bogart in any number of movies, although he only played tennis, at least as far as I knew.
“Black and white,” he said, taking in our costumes. “What have we got here? Let me guess. Martin Luther King and the Ku Klux Klan.”
“The Lone Ranger and Zorro,” I said.
“A Freedom Rider,” he said, jabbing his glass toward Norman. “And a Night Rider.” He stumbled a little as he jabbed, as if he’d fallen off the sides of his shoes.
Mrs. Manners gave a burbling teenage giggle. Despite her white hair, she looked girly as she stood behind his shoulder, one arm around his neck. Norman stared as if they were an alien species.
“You get to give them the candy,” Mrs. Manners told her husband.
“Dr. Martin Luther King,” he said, not seeming to hear her. “Forgive me, Doctor. As you and your boys, by which I mean boys, ride your freedom down to Alabam.”
Mrs. Manners stepped out from behind her husband and picked up the bowl of candy. She was still burbling as she dropped handfuls of chocolate kisses into our pillowcases. Great heaping fistfuls as Mr. Manners started singing.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows . . .
He had a very handsome voice. As he sang, Mrs. Manners urged him back with one hand until he was behind her. Then she gave us a wide smile and shut the door in our faces, leaving me and Norman stunned. We walked back down the steps and the few feet uphill toward my house. When we stopped in my driveway, I was the one to sing the Twilight Zone theme song.
Norman didn’t echo it back, remaining as quiet as he’d been at the front door.
“At least she gave us lots,” I said.
Norman shook his head, looking as tired as anyone I’d ever seen.
“No one needs this much candy.”
As tired as an old person. As an old person wanting their bed who couldn’t get out of their chair. I gestured up our steps, inviting Norman to come in. We could look at our candy, then Bunny would give us some sparklers to take outside before the fireworks began.
“I want to go home,” Norman said.
I could see that. The problem was, too many big kids were out now with their popcorn balls, and it was best to go around in pairs.
I offered to take my pillowcase inside and walk him home.
“Then how are you going to get back in a pair? If I don’t go back with you and you don’t go back with me. And if I don’t go back and you don’t go back. And if I don’t . . .”
He stumbled to a close while I failed to find an answer. Waving one hand, Norman limped off silently toward Connington Crescent, his pillowcase dragging on the damp asphalt behind him. I stood watching until he turned the corner. Then I ran up our front steps, dropping my loot as I ran past Bunny, who was stationed just behind the door. Ran into the living room and jumped up onto the chesterfield where I picked out Norman trudging along his dark and shadowy street—smudged with costumes, barbaric with pumpkins—wanting to make sure he was all right. He’d done a good job so far at Halloween, and I needed to make sure he didn’t bunk it right at the end.
My father was sitting in his chair reading his newspaper. Seeing what I was doing, he rustled down his paper and came over, picking me up around the waist so I could track Norman all the way home. No one threw popcorn balls. His pillowcase didn’t rip open. Norman dragged his leg up his walk, the Hortons’ pumpkin out, their door opening on a brief flare of light as he disappeared inside.
Halloween wasn’t usually like this. I had no idea what had just happened, the world’s gears turning and churning. I fit in there snugly, it was true. But I felt caught up in things I didn’t recognize, and when Bunny gave me some sparklers to take outside, their fizzing and cracking spoke a language I didn’t understand.