The Mothers of Voorhisville (12 page)

Elli watches from her bedroom window. It takes the mothers forever to unload the two babies, their diaper bags, a bouquet of flowers, and what looks like some kind of casserole or pie. Though both Timmy and Matthew are sleeping peacefully in the hot crib together, Elli keeps having a thought she doesn't want to have. She keeps thinking,
Why couldn't it have been Timmy?
, then hates herself for having this thought. She doesn't even want this thought, so she doesn't understand why it keeps popping into her head. She looks at the sleeping Timmy.
I would die if anything happened to you. (Why couldn't it have been you?)
It makes no sense. Elli watches the women walk to the back door. She hears the bell ring.
The mind
, Elli thinks,
is its own battleground
(like there's a war going on up there and she's just a spectator). The bell rings again.
Jesus Christ, would someone just answer it?
But it's too late; the babies wake up, crying.

What's she supposed to do? Pick both of them up? She picks up Timmy; pats him on the back, jiggling him. The next thing she knows, Matthew is flying out of the crib and heading for the open window. There's a screen on it, so naturally she thinks that at the worst he's going to get a little banged up, but when he hits the screen, he hits it
hard
; it falls right off the window, and Matthew flies out.

“Mom!” Elli screams.

Shreve rings the doorbell, waits for a while, and then rings again. Emily carries Gabriel's car seat in one hand and a plate of chocolate croissants in the other, the heavy diaper bag hanging from her shoulder. Shreve, who is similarly burdened, has to ring with the hand carrying the flowers, careful not to squash them. Inside, someone is screaming. “Sounds like they're taking it hard,” she says.

A shadow passes overhead.

The door opens. Theresa stands there, her expression aghast.

“I'm Shreve Mahar,” she begins, but Theresa runs right past her, brushing her shoulder, so that Shreve has to spin a half turn to maintain balance.

“Where? Where?” Theresa cries, staring up at the sky.

Shreve and Emily exchange a look. Elli Ratcher comes running out of the house, holding a screaming baby. “I'm sorry, Mom,” she cries. “I'm sorry!”

“Matthew! Matthew!” Theresa Ratcher hollers.

Jan pulls into the driveway and surveys the scene before her. A barefoot woman stands, shouting, in the yard, her face craned to the sky. Beside her stands the young red-haired girl, carrying a baby. On the porch is the dark-haired yoga teacher with a diaper bag, flowers, and a baby in a carrier. Standing at the foot of the stairs is a short woman who Jan thinks might be named Emma or Emily. Jan cranes her neck and looks up at the sky. She thinks they must have lost a pet bird, though the hysterical woman and the crying girl seem to be overreacting.

Jan is tempted to stay in the car, in the air-conditioning. She doesn't know any of these people. She should have come with Sylvia and Cathy. She realizes that the two women who are not looking at the sky are staring at her. She turns off the ignition. When she opens the door, she is hit by the heat and screams.

“Mom! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” Elli screams, over and over again.

Theresa stands with her hand shielding her eyes, shouting Matthew's name.

Jan thinks she should get back in the car and turn around, but Jack gurgles at her from his car seat. She can't leave until she finds out whatever she can about the wings.

Theresa shouts for Matthew over and over again. She doesn't know what else to do.

Elli cries, holding Timmy against her chest.
Why couldn't it have been you
, she thinks.

Pete Ratcher comes out to the steps. Shreve begins to introduce herself, but Pete runs into the yard, grabs Theresa by the shoulders, and shakes her. Elli lunges to push him away with one hand, and Pete pushes her back. Not hard, they would later agree, but enough to cause Elli to lose her balance. As she tumbles, she opens her arms. All the women scream as Timmy falls, but the screams are abruptly cut short when dark wings sprout through the baby's little white T-shirt and he flies out of Elli's reach, over all of their heads.

“I thought he died,” says Emily.

Shreve shrugs.

“Don't touch the wings,” Jan shouts.

Shreve and Emily look at her and then at each other. “How does she know that?”

Little Timmy, laughing, flies in lazy circles and frightening dives, just out of reach of Elli and Theresa Ratcher, who jump at him as he passes. Pete Ratcher just stands there with his mouth hanging open.
I have been drinking too much
, he thinks.
This can't be happening.

 

T
HE
M
OTHERS

Even now, we the mothers find ourselves saying this can't be happening. This isn't real. Why, in the face of great proof otherwise, do we insist on the
dream
of a life few of us have ever known? The
dream
of happiness? The
dream
of love? Why, we wonder, did we believe in those dreams and not the truth?
We
are monsters. Why did we ever
think
we were anything else? Why do we think, for even a moment, that this is all a horrible mistake, instead of what it is: our lives?

 

T
AMARA

When Sylvia Lansmorth and Cathy Vecker drive up, they see Jan, Shreve, and Emily with their baby carriers, diaper bags, flowers, and foiled plate, Theresa and Elli Ratcher, screaming, and Pete Ratcher, standing there, shaking his head.

“Is that him?” Sylvia asks. “He
looks
like a child molester.”

Cathy points at the flying babies, swooping across the sky. “I
told
you things were getting strange.”

“Matthew! Timmy! You come down here this instant!” Theresa shouts.

Pete turns and walks back to the house.

Emily sets her baby carrier gently on the ground and places the foiled plate beside it, then shrugs out of the diaper bag. She checks the straps on her baby's carrier, making sure they are tight before she walks over to Theresa Ratcher. “Try your breast.” She has to say it a few times before Theresa hears her.

“What?”

“When I have this problem, I just take off my shirt. He always comes down for my breast.”

Theresa hesitates only a second, trying to process the strange revelation of this woman she's never met acting as though losing a winged baby is a common concern. She pulls off her tank top and lets it drop to the ground.

“You have to take off your bra,” Emily says. She turns to Elli. “Watch your mother. Do what she does.”

Sylvia and Cathy sit in the car and watch in amazement as Theresa and Elli Ratcher take off their tops and unfasten their bras.

“Maybe we should come back later,” Sylvia says, but another car pulls in behind them and they are blocked in the driveway.

Lara Bravemeen heard about the winged baby from the mailman, who heard about it from the senior Mrs. Vecker. When Lara drives up and sees the two women disrobing, the babies frolicking in the sky, she thinks she has found nirvana. She shuts off her engine, jumps out of the car, peels off her T-shirt, and unbuckles her bra.

“What the fuck is going on?” Cathy asks.

Theresa and Elli Ratcher stand with their arms spread, tilting their faces and breasts towards the sky. The babies begin a lazy glide towards them.

That's when the shot rings out.

Shreve jumps about a foot at the noise; turns and sees Pete Ratcher, standing there with a gun.

Emily looks from him to her baby, sitting in his carrier on the ground.

Theresa and Elli both turn, their mouths open in horror.

Pete Ratcher shoots again.

Shreve drops the flowers and runs with her baby.

The small body of Timmy Ratcher falls like a stone. Elli tries to catch him, but he crashes to the ground at her feet, and she falls over him, screaming. Matthew Ratcher stops his gentle glide and, wings beating furiously, shoots towards the sun.

Theresa Ratcher makes an inhuman sound. She runs at her husband, her fists raised.

Pete Ratcher watches her coming with his arms at his side, the gun hanging from his hand. Theresa dives at him and they both crash back into the house.

Tamara and Raj turn from their baby's corpse at the noise. They'd heard the screams and the gunshots, but were so absorbed by their grief they hadn't tried to process any of it. Now they see Theresa Ratcher, bare-breasted, straddling her husband, pounding him with her fists.

That's when Emily comes in, picks up the gun, and rests the muzzle against Pete Ratcher's head.

Raj steps towards them. Emily says, “Come any closer and I'll kill him.” She turns to Theresa. “Got any rope?”

“It's in the barn,” Pete says.

“Shut up.” Emily presses the muzzle to his forehead.

Pete glances at Raj, who is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Behind him stands his wife, but she doesn't look like she cares much about what is happening. Over her shoulder, Pete can see the dead baby; his small gray wings folded around his tiny shoulders.

Theresa comes back into the kitchen with a coil of rope. Several women with babies follow her. Cars pull into the driveway, the sound of crunching gravel audible even through Elli's screams.

“Who are all these—”

“Shut up,” Emily says. “You”—she glances at Raj—“tie his wrists and ankles.”

Raj opens his mouth to protest.

“Do it,” says Emily, “or I'll shoot
.
”

Emily is amazed anyone believes her. Pete Ratcher continues to lie there, though he is at least twice her size and actually knows how to use a gun.

“No,” Emily says as Raj begins to wrap the rope around Pete's wrists, “tie them behind his back. Roll over. Slowly.”

Pete makes a sound that might be a chuckle, but he rolls over, slowly.

*   *   *

The mothers heard it from their mothers, friends, even strangers. Lucy, of Lucy's Diner, heard about it from Brian Holandeigler, who'd heard it from Francis Kennedy, who'd heard it from Fred Wheeler, who said it was all over the canning factory. “Did I tell you we had a call there?” Francis said. “I knew something odd was going on in that house.” Maddy Melvern heard about if from Mrs. Baylor, who had come over to talk to Mrs. Melvern about Melinda Baylor in Iraq. “At least my Mindy ain't gotta contend with no asshole like Pete Ratcher, who molested his daughter and gave her a baby with wings,” she said. (Maddy made her repeat it twice.) Roddy Tyler heard it from Mrs. Vecker and Mrs. Vecker Senior, and when he walked to the post office that afternoon (in his duct-taped shoes), he told everyone about it. Maddy found Leanne and Stooker outside the drugstore, and after they oohed and ahhed at JoJo, she told them she needed a ride to the Ratchers'. “I didn't know you were friends with her,” Leanne said. Vin Freedman heard it from Stooker's older brother, Tinny, and he told Mickey, who called up Elli, but nobody answered the phone there.

Everyone
was talking about it. When one of the mothers heard, she could not pretend she hadn't. The Ratcher girl had a baby with
wings.
How could any one of them resist this revelation? The mothers packed diaper bags, left work, left home without explanation or offered a poor one, a scribbled note on the kitchen table, or attached to the refrigerator with a magnet. “Went out. Be back soon.”

What they found was a bloodied, bare-breasted Elli Ratcher, kneeling in the dirt, holding her dead baby with his broken wings (right out there for anyone to see) and screaming, “No! No! I didn't mean it! No!”

The mothers were confused.
How long had she been doing this? When had this
baby died? And what was all that blood about, anyway?

The mothers, holding their own sons, approached Elli with caution. They circled her and said, “There, there,” or “Everything's going to be all right.” Some of them got close enough to pat her hot shoulder and get a good look at the baby. Definitely dead. Definitely wings.