Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel Rich in Love by Josephine Humphreys (©1987 by Josephine Humphreys). In this selection, after finding an old Halloween costume, the narrator is confronted with past memories.

Rummaging in my mother's closet on Halloween, I found what I was looking for, in a plastic clothes bag jam-packed with folded woolens we would never wear again: there was the tell-tale striped fur, sticking out from under a mohair scarf. Memories hit me; I grabbed a corner of the fur and pulled. Mothballs scattered across the floor like beads of poisoned white ice, releasing their sad futile smell. I had carefully packed these things away—cardigans and pullovers of bygone cold seasons, out-of-fashion Scottish kilts held in place by giant safety pins, feebly small gloves—and mothballed them in case the day came when they might be needed. Mother had scoffed at the effort; but now I had been proved right. I needed her old Halloween costume.

I sat there on the floor trying to locate the tail, finally spotting it under Rae's old green crew neck. I bent the kinks out and gave it a smooth arc. The head was a problem. I couldn't find it anywhere, and doubted it had survived. It had been made from a paper bag; it had probably been thrown away. But I recalled its every feature, the large mad eyes, the smile, whiskers, ears; and I knew I could replicate it.

"Look here," I said to Rae. "Can you give me a hand?”

She was on the sofa in the next room, watching television. . . . She didn't answer.

"All the materials have been assembled," I said, standing by the dining table with my hands on my hips, fingertips towards my back in the posture of a kindergarten teacher. "Glue, scissors, paper, Magic Markers. First we have to locate the eye-holes. Can you come here for a sec and draw a spot where I put my finger?"

I put the bag over my head and pointed to where the eyes should be. "Right here, see? Just make two marks, here and here." I waited about a minute. A long time. It was hard to breathe in the bag, but the interior of it was a beautiful golden-red, and it smelled good....

"The grin goes like a crescent moon flopped onto its back, wide, with lots and lots of teeth," I said, drawing the face in. I actually whistled briefly, a made-up tune that she, as a singer, would automatically recognize as a sham. "Gee," I said, shaking my head, "nobody enjoyed Halloween like Mother did. She loved it, didn't she?"

Rae turned her eyes in my direction, but her face was stone-cold, the skin above her cheekbones puffy.

“It's her cat costume," I said, holding up the suit and the tail. “I'm remaking the head. I have a good idea of what it looked like, but Tm a little worried about the ears. You wouldn't happen to remember how they were done, I don't guess."

She looked through me, and I was shamed by my own voice, that teacher's fake conviviality, the ruse of arts-and-crafts. Rae's eyes said, You don’t know anything. She was sick. I knew that, I knew that. I ought to have called her doctor, but at the same time I was thinking everything would be okay soon. A few more weeks. . . . She would get her chemistry back and be her old self again.

For the last week, we had been literally tiptoeing through our rooms, afraid that any little creak or scrape would disturb her. . . . We brought her soft drinks, tea, magazines. I tried to think up activities besides television, anything that might pique her interest.

"This is how the whiskers went, I think. Cut long strips of paper—I'm just using a second paper bag here—and run the flat edge of the scissors down the strip to make it curb Voila. Then glue each whisker, like so, next to the nose, four on a side.” She was watching. I glued quickly so I wouldn't lose her. Maybe I ought to be a kindergarten teacher. They have to be sneaky.

"For ears, let's try a small triangle cut from a double thickness and cupped, earlike. A flap bent at the bottom can be glued down to hold it on, for a perfectly adequate ear. Rabbity, maybe, but fine for a temporary cat, in my opinion."

"Excuse me," she said, getting up with difficulty.

“Oh, don't go, Rae." I dropped the bag onto the table. "I didn't mean to annoy you."

“Nothing annoys me," she said. "I feel bad."

“Do you want me to call Dr. Ellis?"

"What for? It's nothing serious. I must have eaten something that didn't agree with me."

"Well, he might be able to do something to make you feel better."...

"1 don't think so," she Baid. "But thank you." It was the first time she had said anything polite to me in days.