Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [183]
All the trouble had been manageable at first. In Maine, there had been midnight phone calls from a girlfriend Squirrel had acquired somewhere, and a day later they were treated to her sudden arrival on the doorstep of their rented duplex. She’d been coarsely attractive, this girlfriend, furiously chewing bubble gum, and her waitress name tag was still pinned to her blouse over (Estelle could not help noticing) her plump right breast. Cheryl. She was pregnant, this waitress, this Cheryl, said. She wanted satisfaction. Satisfaction! What a word. Or else. Or else what? She would be back, she said, with a court order. Estelle and Squirrel packed the car that night and were gone the next morning, the kids still asleep in the backseat by the time the sun came up. Estelle didn’t speak to Squirrel, except about necessities, for a month after that.
In Montana, Squirrel’s partner-in-business threatened them all—another midnight call!—with a court suit and, if that didn’t work out, personal revenge Western style with a semiautomatic. By the time they had relocated in northern Minnesota, as temporary managers of the Trout Inn on Ninemile Lake, Estelle thought they were finally free of adventures. They’d come to the calm expository part of the movie, the part after the big opening attention-getting mayhem. Squirrel’s mischief-making had been all used up, she thought, just flushed right out of him, and she was relieved.
And then one night Estelle had awakened to find that Squirrel had entered her while she’d been sleeping and was thrusting into her with a wild look on his face, with his hands around her neck as if he planned to strangle her, and she screamed at him and shook him off. She loaded the still-sleeping kids into the Buick, against Squirrel’s pleading, and took off for Minneapolis. She remembered to take what money there was, and the credit cards, Squirrel pleading with her but not stopping her, and the children crying.
That was Part One of her life. Now she was in Part Two. There would never be a Part Three. Of that she was sure.
Midafternoon, Estelle pulled her car into the turning circle for Community day camp. Of course, Freddie was already there out in front, staring up into the sky as if he were waiting for helicopter rescue. He lumbered toward the car, opened the front passenger-side door, and poured himself in. He aimed the air-conditioning vents toward his face.
“How was it today?” Estelle asked, too brightly.
Freddie sat silently as if the question were much too complicated to be answered. Finally, he said, “We’re going to put on a play.”
“Yes, I think you told me that,” Estelle said. “What is it? What’s the play?”
“We’re all writing it. Or they are. The kids and the counselors.” He gave her his best sour look. “It’s called Wonderful World.”
“And who do you play?” Estelle asked.
“Me? I play Mr. Scary.”
“Mr. Scary? Who’s that? And what do you do?”
“I stand up at the beginning of the play and I recite my fear monologue and scare everybody.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Estelle said, trying to put the best face on things. “Do you have it? The monologue? Could you read it to me?”
“Yeah,” Freddie said. “I got it right here with me.” He heaved himself upward, trying to get his hand into his trouser pocket. After much poking, he pulled out a grimy sheet of paper. Her grandson unfolded the paper and began to read. His delivery sounded like a voice-over in a horror movie. “Fear,” Freddie intoned. “What is fear? You and I live with, interact with, fear. We know fear, but we shun it. But what if one were to embrace fear? Not to live with it, but to be it, to become fear. In our everyday lives we divorce ourselves from fear. We tell ourselves it is distant, it is unreal, it is abstract. But this is not so. Fear is tangible, more tangible than you or I. What if a man became fear? Where would fear live? He would dwell among us, hidden but not unseen. Who would fear be? For what would