That’s our Jessie, isn’t it? The squeaky wheel.
The bedroom had been divided off girls-at-camp-style with a clothesline strung down the middle. She and Maddy had hung some old sheets on this line, and then colored bright designs on them with Will’s crayolas. Coloring the sheets and dividing the room had been great fun at the time, but it seemed stupid and kiddish to her now, and the way her overblown shadow danced on the center sheet was actually scary; it looked like the shadow of a monster. Even the fragrant smell of pine resin, which she usually liked, seemed heavy and cloying to her, like an air-freshener you sprayed around heavily to cover up some unpleasant stink.
That’s our Jessie, never quite satisfied with the arrangements until she gets a chance to put on the finishing touches. Never quite happy with someone else’s plans. Never able to let well enough alone.
She hurried into the bathroom, wanting to outrun that voice, rightly guessing she wouldn’t be able to. She turned on the light and pulled the sundress over her head in one quick jerk. She threw it into the laundry hamper, glad to be rid of it. She looked at her self in the mirror, wide-eyed, and saw a little girl’s face surrounded by a big girl’s hairdo… one which was now coming loose from the pins in strands and puffs and locks. It was a little girl’s body, too-flat-chested and slim-hipped-but it wouldn’t be that way for long. It had already started to change, and it had done something to her father it had no business doing.
I never want boobs and curvy hips, she thought dully. If they make things like this happen, who would?
The thought made her aware of that wet spot on the seat of her underpants again. She slipped out of them-cotton pants from Sears, once green, now so faded they were closer to gray-and held them up curiously, her hands inside the waistband. There was something on the back of them, all right, and it wasn’t sweat. Nor did it look like any kind of toothpaste she had ever seen. What it looked like was pearly-gray dish detergent. Jessie lowered her head and sniffed cautiously. She smelled a faint odor which she associated with the lake after a run of hot, still weather, and with their well-water all the time. She once took her father a glass of water which smelled particularly strong to her and asked if be could smell it.
He had shaken his head. Nope, he’d said cheerfully, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It just means I smoke too damn much. My guess is that it’s the smell of the aquifer, Punkin. Trace minerals, that’s all. A little smelly, and it means your mother has to spend a fortune on fabric softener, but it won’t hurt you. Swear to God.
Trace minerals, she thought now, and sniffed that bland aroma again. She was unable to think why it fascinated her, but it did. The smell of the aquifer, that’s all. The smell of-
Then the more assertive voice spoke up. On the afternoon of the eclipse it sounded a bit like her mother’s voice (it called her tootsie, for one thing, as Sally sometimes did when she was irritated with Jessie for shirking some chore or forgetting some responsibility), but Jessie had an idea it was really the voice of her own adult self If its combative bray was a little distressing, that was only because it was too early for that voice, strictly speaking. It was here just the same, though. It was here, and it was doing the best it could to put her back together again. She found its brassy loudness oddly comforting.
It’s the stuff Cindy Lessard was talking about, that’s what it is it’s his spunk, tootsie. I suppose you ought to be grateful it ended up on your underwear instead of someplace else, but don’t go telling yourself any fairy-tales about how it’s the lake you smell, or trace minerals from deep down in the aquifer, or anything else. Karen Aucoin is a dipshit, there was never a woman in the history of the world who grew a baby in her throat and you know it, but Cindy Lessard is no dipshit. I think she’s seen this stuff, and now you’ve seen it, too. Man’s-stuff. Spunk.
Suddenly revolted-not so much by what it was as from whom it had originated-Jessie threw the underpants into the hamper on top of the sundress. Then she had a vision of her mother, who emptied the hampers and did the wash in the dank basement laundry room, fishing this particular pair of panties out of this particular hamper and finding this particular deposit. And what would she think? Why, that the family’s troublesome squeaky wheel had gotten the grease, of course… what else?
Her revulsion turned to guilty horror, and Jessie quickly fished the underpants back out. All at once the flat odor seemed to fill her nose, thick and bland and sickening. Oysters and copper, she thought, and that was all it took. She fell on her knees in front of the toilet, the underpants wadded up in one clenched hand, and vomited. She flushed quickly, before the smell of partly digested hamburger could get into the air, then turned on the cold sink-tap and rinsed her mouth out. Her fear that she was going to spend the next hour or so in here, kneeling in front of the toilet and puking, began to subside. Her stomach seemed to be settling. If she could just keep from getting another whiff of that bland copper-creamy smell…
Holding her breath, she thrust the panties under the cold tap, rinsed them, wrung them out, and flung them back in the hamper. Then she took a deep breath, pushing her hair away from her temples with the backs of her damp hands at the same time. If her mother asked her what a damp pair of panties was doing in the dirty clothes-
Already you’re thinking like a criminal, the voice that would one day belong to the Goodwife mourned. Do you see what being a bad girl gets you, Jessie? Do you? I certainly hope you d-
Be quiet, you little creep, the other voice snarled back. You can nag all you want later on, but right now we’re trying to take care of a little business here, if you don’t mind. Okay?
No answer. That was good. Jessie brushed nervously at her hair again, although very little of it had fallen back down against her temples. If her mother asked what the damp panties were doing in the dirty-clothes hamper, Jessie would simply say it was so hot she went for a dip without changing out of her shorts. All three of them had done that on several occasions this summer.
Then you better remember to run your shorts and shirt under the tap, too. Right, toots?
Right, she agreed. Good point.
She slipped into the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door and returned to the bedroom to get the shorts and the teeshirt she’d been wearing when her mother, brother, and older sister left that morning… a thousand years ago, it now seemed. She didn’t see them at first, and got down on her knees to look under the bed.
The other woman is on her knees, too, a voice remarked, and she smells that same smell. That smell that’s like copper and cream.
Jessie heard but didn’t hear. Her mind was on her shorts and tee-shirt-on her cover story. As she had suspected, they were under the bed. She reached for them.
It’s coming out of the well, the voice remarked further. The smell from the well.
Yes, yes, Jessie thought, grabbing the clothes and starting back to the bathroom. The smell from the well, very good, you’re a poet and you don’t know it.
She made him fall down the well, the voice said, and that finally got through. Jessie came to a dead stop in the bathroom doorway, her eyes widening. She was suddenly afraid in some new and deadly way. Now that she was actually listening to it, she realized that this voice was not like any of the others; this one was like a voice you might pick up on the radio late at night, when conditions were exactly right-a voice that might come from far, far away.