Page 116 of Pick-Up
I feel bad. I want to help her. I want to solve what’s ailing her. But I am truly toast.
She and my dad kiss me on the cheek, pat me on the head and send me off to bed. I realize I’m happy to be home, even with the plastic game pieces scattered on the floor and the recycling that needs to go out. And I am about to put on my own pajamas and pass out when Bart calls my name from behind his closed door. I pad back into his room.
“What’s up, Bonk?” I say, the door cracked.
He pokes his head up from behind his headboard, illuminated in a slice of light. “I forgot to ask,” he says. “Did you get what you deserved?”
It takes me a minute to remember what he means. What Nettie said. That I deserved the trip.
“I think unfortunately maybe I did.” I sigh.
I am a blob of uncertainty.
I kiss him good night again on his smoosh of a cheek and then put myself to bed. And I am surely fast asleep before my parents’ taxi makes it home.
The next afternoon, on Halloween, Celeste and I meet at the corner of Sherman and Tenth Avenue. Only I’m not me. I’m a zombie in my regular clothing (a.k.a. I drew a few drops of blood dripping near my mouth). And she is not her, she is full-fledged Princess Leia. Henry is Luke Skywalker, naturally. I have never had the energy for family costumes, or sometimes costumes at all, but they always do.
“Luke,” I say in my best Darth Vader timbre, which is truly horrible. “Where is your father?”
“In the woods,” Henry says, as he corrals my kids and begins leading us all down the street toward the first brownstone stoop.
Nettie, as a gothic sorceress (really just an excuse for purple eyeshadow and black lipstick) follows close behind, clutching Bart’sfluffy pumpkin paw. It is crowded, so I’ve instructed them to stick together.
There’s something heavy about the day. Something damp and incisive in the air. I notice Redhead Mom standing a few feet to my left in mouse ears and a blackened nose, waiting for her kids. She and her dog both look cold and haunted. She barely nods to me.
Our neighborhood does not mess around on Halloween, which is part of why my kids are so obsessed. When I was growing up, we lived in a prewar apartment building in Manhattan. So we traveled from door to door and up back staircases inside, ringing bells and hoping doors might open. Too often, in those crunchy Upper Left Side days, we were rewarded with apples and raisins or just a cranky “Go away!” shouted through the deadbolted door. We weren’t allowed to eat anything unwrapped, so not only were these “treats” disappointing, they were forbidden. Any candy bars we received had to be cut in half too for fear of poisoned needles and razor blades stuffed inside. (Not a thing. Like literally ever.)
Once I hit high school and went out with my friends on Halloween, the situation didn’t improve. What had been lackluster became dangerous—and not in a fun and spooky way. Not that I have ever been one for horror movies and Ouija boards anyway. Things to avoid on All Hallows’ Eve: Gangs of teens with eggs. Gangs of teens without eggs. Drunken cabdrivers. Drunken lunatics. The park at night. The subway at all costs. Drugs laced with worse drugs. Intact candy bars and apples. (That didn’t stop just because we got older!)
Basically, as a result, I hate Halloween. I resist dressing up. But in this idyllic Brooklyn enclave, one step removed from the suburbs, I am the only one—except maybe for a few other New York City natives of my generation. Here, my kids anticipate the same decorations, resurrected outside the same row houses and brownstones every year, with unbridled excitement. Giant stuffed spiders creep down three-story webs. Candy is shot from the roof to the sidewalk down giant tubes. Images of cackling pumpkins and adorable flying ghosts are projected on building exteriors.
We have moved ten feet, and the kids have already run into school friends. So they’re distracted enough for me to turn to Celeste and say, “In thewoods?”
She sighs. “I’m afraid so.”
“That’s accurate? I was hoping it was aStar Warsreference I didn’t get. Since I don’t getStar Warsreferences. OrStar Wars, full stop.”
“No. No.” Celeste shakes her head, a bun on each side. “That was literal.”
“Celeste, what’s going on?” I ask with deep foreboding.
As we turn the corner, bedlam envelops us. The street is crowded like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Minus the drunk Jersey bros.
“Hey, guys!” she says to the kids. “Stay together and, if you lose us, meet us at the bottom of this block, on the corner. Do not cross a street under any circumstances.”
They seem to have heard us. At least, they nodded at the right intervals. But we both keep an eye on them anyway as we talk, weaving past people as we inch our way downhill.
“So I only understand so much,” Celeste begins. And as she unburdens herself, her true level of exhaustion registers on her face. Her eyes are puffy. Her cheeks are drawn. She looks weathered. Celeste never looks weathered. The day she’s lost her glow is the day it’s over for us all. “Basically, Jamie started acting strange. I don’t even know how long it’s been—maybe six weeks ago? It was slow. Started small.”
“Okay? Is he sick?”
“No, nothing like that. Well”—she toggles her head, smiling faintly—“not physically, anyway.”
A tiny witch runs up and grabs my leg. Calls me “Mommy.” I am not her mommy. She looks up, realizes this, says “Oops!” and runs over to her actual mom.
She is embarrassed. We are unfazed.
“You were saying?”
