steps out of the tub, reaches for a towel, and dries himself. He reaches for the deodorant in the medicine cabinet. Then he goes into the bedroom and puts on clean chinos and a pink-and-green madras short-sleeved shirt. In the drawer where he keeps his shirts there are several little girls’ T-shirts, and on top, a pink sundress embellished with a cartoonish, sequined cat and words that say, “I’m A Pretty Kitty.” He looks at them and wonders what Lizbett is wearing that day. A dress, he hopes. A dress makes things much easier. Besides, dresses make little girls more appealing. He can imagine their sweet legs all the way up to their panties.
Melvyn Searle’s father, Ralph Searle, was a mid-level banker. He was a surly man and never sober once he got home from the bank at six. Melvyn tried to avoid him by staying in his room, but there was the dinner table where his father always seemed to find a reason to hurl insults at him or cuff him over the head. Once he dislocated Melvyn’s arm when he pulled at it. “Straighten up!” he’d yell. “Or speak up!” “Don’t chew like that!” “Clean your plate!” “You’re a freakish little twerp fuckhead, you know that?” “Get up and help Stacey, you lazy chicken’s asshole!”
Melvyn seems to think his father wasn’t always like this. He imagines that when his mother was with them, his father was nicer. But his mother left them when he was only two. He can picture being on her lap, nestling into her soft chest, but her face is a blank. And there are no photographs.
His father’s mother took over. She was like her son: never sober and always mean. His father brought Stacey home quite quickly and Melvyn’s grandmother left. At first, Stacey seemed nicer than his grandmother. She did everything to gain his trust, especially reading him all the stories she did. He couldn’t get enough of books. He loved the alternate worlds they offered him. Stacey was a wonderful, expressive reader, pulling Melvyn close in beside her, enveloping him with one arm. He felt so cozy and safe.
Being around children was the only time Stacey felt in control. When she was with them the insecurities, the shame, she felt around adults disappeared. And when she read to them, clustered all around her, her voice bringing them the power of the words, she felt assured and capable of love. And she loved to sing with them. Joy burst from her then.
Stacey first caught Ralph’s eye when he was looking at schools for Melvyn. He watched her for some time. He thought she would be good with Melvyn, who was a shy, clingy boy.
She was a very thin, pretty woman with thick blond curls, but she was edgy. Her eyes flitted and she slouched. Stacey was young, at least ten years younger than Ralph’s thirty-six and was slightly in awe of him, but also wary of him, looking up to him, but uncertain of his reactions. He was an overbearing man. She had rotten luck with men, especially the last one whose bullying escalated to hitting. She hoped Ralph would be different. He was handsome and could be affectionate, and he was older with a good, steady job and a young son. Melvyn grew up calling her Mom.
His favourite thing to do with her was make masks. She had a boxful of childish treasures: intriguing buttons, feathers, sequins, rhinestones and pearls, bright ribbon, silver and gold paper, raffia, myriad stickers, and, best of all, vibrant markers in many, many colours. She bought plain white masks, which he decorated lavishly. They cut holes in paper bags. He liked these because he could attach all kinds of hair from the Hallowe’en wigs Stacey found. Sometimes, if Stacey was in a mood to cope with the mess, he moulded a face out of papier mâché.
He loved putting on these masks and staring into a mirror. When he did this, he created an elaborate fantasy for the character he was portraying, a character far removed from himself. Like the red wizard with the ruby eyes and bright, full lips. He entered a world of power and magic whereby he could create new beings and make others vanish. The wizard had a mother, a shining queen in a pink and silver gown who smiled and sang instead of talking and caressed him and brought him gifts. When he put on his queen mask, he was beautiful.
He surrounded himself with other children who would do his bidding.
Ralph wanted Stacey to go back to work when Melvyn was in school, but she refused. She said she would need to upgrade her skills. So she sat in a big armchair reading all day long, smoking cigarettes. At first she only drank when Ralph got home, but then she began to pour something in the afternoon and by the time Melvyn got home from school, she was drunk.
Alice’s birth sobered Stacey up, at least for a couple of years. It was then that Melvyn discovered how the happy loving innocence of a baby, how her little arms about his neck made him feel whole. Stacey taught him essential baby care and he became a big help to her. When he changed Alice, he was fascinated by her bottom, its minute, intricate, perfect folds. He would probe the tiny vagina with a baby-oiled finger.
His favourite thing was dressing Alice in the pretty, lacy pink clothes Stacey bought for her. Sometimes he and his stepmother would take the baby for a walk in her carriage. Melvyn thought this was what a family must feel like. Sometimes he would imagine having a daughter of his own one day.
But by his senior year, Stacey had relapsed and he’d arrive at the house to find Alice asleep or crying in the playpen and he had to take over a lot of her care. He was working toward a scholarship to get into a nearby college and he resented having her on his hands. And Alice was entering the terrible twos. She was no longer a pliable, responsive doll, but a defiant, tantrum-throwing toddler with huge needs he felt incapable of filling. The only way he had any control over her was to read to her, all the books Stacey had read to him.
And bathing her at night, it seemed right that he repeat his stepmother’s acts. Everything about her body, pink from the hot water, seemed receptive. Except Alice wasn’t. She flailed and cried. Why hadn’t he? Maybe he had and he didn’t remember because it became so routine. He took to giving her Double Bubble or cherry lollipops to quiet her. Once Stacey came in and caught him and she punched and pounded and kicked him almost senseless, screaming at him that he was filthy and disgusting and a pervert. He stopped giving Alice baths, after that. But he didn’t stop wanting to do things to her, to her pale, smooth inviting little body. He found ways. Mostly he found he could sneak into Alice’s room after Stacey had passed out in bed, the way she had to him. By the time he was near to finishing college, he was penetrating Alice, calling her “Sweetie,” telling her she was his own “good, good little angel-girl.” And reading to her. And buying her sweet pink dresses.
On this now menacingly hot July morning, Melvyn exits his house, already feeling excited and impatient for what is ahead. He hasn’t questioned his motivation. What compels him is pure attraction, the enticing idea that Lizbett wants him. He is sure she does. Her girlishly scintillating reactions to his overtures have convinced him.
He has some time so he decides to sit in his park for a bit and watch the children, most of whom he knows and who know him. He feels this will calm him. He is always jumpy before one of his encounters. He plans them so carefully, but anything could go wrong. He’d phoned the Warnes yesterday and asked to talk to Lizbett, simply to make sure she’d be coming today, but she hadn’t been in. He didn’t identify himself. This will be Lizbett’s third Monday. Her routine doesn’t usually vary. She walks to the museum alone and then walks home. He feels pretty certain today will be the same.
He wonders if what he feels for Lizbett is love, if he knows what love is. Certainly, what he feels is powerful and he has the sensation she affects his heart. She does not make it beat faster; she makes it swell until it is painful. He wants to pound his chest for the pain. He longs to be with her, to take her in his arms. That’s it, really, he wants to overtake her, to incorporate her existence into his. Not obliterate her, but possess her with every fibre of his being. If that is love, he loves her past comprehension. And he will have her.
Though it is some distance, he decides he will walk to the museum. In fact, he will walk through the university campus. It is
