The Wild Things (3 page)

The horn honked. Now the second boy shrugged, left Max, and ran to it. Claire lingered on the driveway for a second, glancing Max’s way. For that brief moment Max held out hope that she would come to him, that she would take him inside, draw him a bath, stay with him and curse the boys and never see them again. That she would be his sister again.

“Your brother’s kind of sensitive, huh?” a face said from the car’s open window. It was Finn, the wild-haired kid.

“You have no idea,” Claire said. She turned away from Max, ducked into the back seat, and closed the door. The car backed out and drove off.

Max no longer had a sister.

He walked back to the house, and before he knew exactly what he was doing, he found himself in the kitchen, where he looked under the sink and retrieved a large pail. He turned the pail over, emptying it of its cleaners and sprays and brushes. He brought the pail upstairs, to the bathroom he shared with Claire.

He turned on the bathtub’s faucet and placed the bucket below. As it filled with water, he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror. He was soaked, every part of his body was wet, and his face was red, feral. He liked how he looked.

The bucket was full and he reached down to lift it. Too heavy, so he emptied the top third. He took the bucket, sloshing to and fro, and brought it to Claire’s room.

It was a room in transition. She had always had a frilly bed of pink and powder blue, a canopy above, but now over the bed was an ugly crocheted blanket, something she had bought in the parking lot of some concert in the city.

Before he thought one way or the other about it, he dumped his bucket on her bed, where the water made a loud splash and instantly spread over the surface of the mattress.

He went back to the bathroom, where the faucet was still running. He filled the bucket again and returned to Claire’s room, this time dumping the contents on the floor, where the carpet soaked up the water immediately. It was satisfying, but only whetted his appetite. He filled the bucket again and again and dumped its contents again and again, drenching her dresser, her closet -- every part of her room. He emptied seven buckets this way, pouring water on the chair where she threw her clothes, on her closeted collection of dolls and animals and field hockey equipment, on the bulletin board where she had collaged pictures of herself and her worthless friends.

It was a very workmanlike process, getting the water and pouring it all over Claire’s room, but Max felt that it had to be done. It was his job, at that moment, to pay Claire back for allowing him to be crushed under a hundred pounds of snow, and for ignoring him, for allowing her friends to nearly kill him. He was sure that this step, soaking her room, was the first of many on the way to the two of them no longer being siblings. She would probably want to move out so she could live with Meika or get married to one of the stoners and live on a farm in Vermont, which is what she was always talking about doing some day. She wanted her own farm, she said, where she could make ice cream and sell handmade dolls and the kind of bookmarks she’d recently learned to crochet.

That would be fine, Max thought. As long as she left, Max didn’t care where she went. He just wanted her out of the house so he wouldn’t have to have someone betray him like this ever again. He would live happily with his mom, especially after he got rid of her boyfriend Gary, who Max didn’t want to think about at that particular moment.

He stood for a moment on the soggy carpet, now dotted with small lakes. Calming down and surveying the damage, he began to have conflicting thoughts about what he had done.

The coming night had colored his room an airless, cottony blue. From his lower bunk, he switched on both of his globes -- antiques his father had bought him, from another time, each aglow from a light within. The bulbs resided deep inside, where the earth’s liquid core would be, and gave the globes’ oceans and continents a buttery tint.

Max lay in his bed and thought awhile.

His thoughts, he knew, sometimes behaved like the scattering birds of his neighborhood. Everywhere on Max’s block were quail -- strange, flop-topped birds reluctant to fly. One moment the quail would be assembled, in a straight row, a family, eating the seed from the ground, with one standing guard atop a low fencepost, watching for intruders. Then, with the slightest sound, they all would scatter in a dozen directions, swerving and disappearing into the thicket.

Every so often Max felt his thoughts could be straightened out, that they could be put in a row and counted; they could be made to behave. There were days when he could read and write for hours on end, when he understood everything said to him in every class, when he could eat dinner calmly and help clean up, and then play quietly alone in the living room.

But there were other times, other days, most days really, when the thoughts did not line up. Days when he chased the various memories and impulses as they veered and scattered away from him, hiding in the thicket of his mind.

And it seemed that when this happened, when he couldn’t make sense of something, when the thoughts did not flow from one to the other, that on the heels of the scattering quail he did things and said things that he wished he had not said or done.

Max wondered why he was the way he was. He didn’t want to hate Claire and he didn’t want to have destroyed her room. He didn’t want to have broken the window over the kitchen sink when he thought he was locked out of the house -- which he’d done a few months ago. He didn’t want to have screamed and pounded the walls of his room last year, when in the middle of the night he couldn’t find the door. There were so many things he’d done, so many things he’d broken or torn or said, and always he knew he’d done them, but could only half-understand why.

And it occurred to him that he might be in real trouble. Until then it had seemed simple enough. He had almost died in the fort, so he soaked his sister’s room and tore up any evidence of any affection he had ever had for her.

But now that simple plan, inevitable and logical, seemed less wise than it had only moments ago. His mom might not appreciate Max having thrown seven buckets of water into Claire’s room. It was so strange to think about: how was it that just minutes ago, doing all that had seemed like the only thing to do? He hadn’t even questioned it. It was the only idea in his head, and he carried it out with great speed and determination. Now he was listening to his mother’s footsteps on the stairs, coming up to see him, and he felt like erasing the past, everything he had ever done. He wanted to say,
I know I’ve always been bad, and now I will be good. Just let me live
.

“Anyone home?” Max’s mother asked. “Max?”

He could escape. He could slip downstairs and run out the front door. Could he? He could live in another town, he could hop trains, become a hobo. He could leave, try to explain himself in a note, wait it out while everyone calmed down. He was sure that there would be anger, and yelling and stomping, maybe that violent sort of silence his mother had perfected. He didn’t want to be around for all that.

So he got ready to leave home for good.

He retrieved his backpack, the one his father had bought him before they hiked through Maine. But just as he was getting up to put on dry clothes and pack the bag, his mom was there, door open, already in his room, standing over him.

“What’s happening in here? Anything good?” she asked.

She was wearing her work clothes, a wool skirt and white cotton blouse. She smelled of cold air and sweat and something else. God, he loved her so much. She sat down on his bed and kissed his head. He briefly fell apart, disintegrated by her gentle touch. But then he placed the smell: it was Gary’s deodorant, which she had begun sharing. It was a wet, chemical smell.

He sat back in his bed and his eyes welled. How could so many tears come so quickly? Stupid crying. So stupid. He threw the covers over his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Max didn’t answer. He couldn’t look at her.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked.

Max was surprised by this question, though it wasn’t a new one. For a second, it gave him strength. It reminded him there were other problems, other people to blame.

“No,” he said.

She pulled the covers down from his face.

“What is it then?” she asked. “Were you crying?”

“Claire’s stupid friends smashed my igloo,” he said. It came out far sooner than he’d planned.

“Oh,” his mom said, running her hand through his matted hair. She didn’t seem very impressed with the crime. He knew he had to make his mom furious at what Claire had done. If he made her angry enough, she might understand what Max had done in response. She might want to pour water on Claire’s room, too, or worse.

“I worked really hard on it,” Max added.

“I’m sure you did,” she said, bringing his head up and to her chest. He heard her heart, smelled her skin.

“I almost died. I was buried in the snow,” he said, his words muffled in her shirt.

She held Max tighter now, and for a moment Max felt hopeful. He was no longer cold, and his face no longer burned. For a moment Max again forgot that he might be in trouble, and that trouble would come as soon as his mom walked into his sister’s room.

“I’m sorry you had a bad day, Maxie,” she said.

It sounded like she was actually sorry, but was she sorry enough to understand what Max had done in return? He avoided her eyes, though he could feel the heavy weight of their compassion.

“Where’s Claire?” she asked.

“Who cares?” Max said.

“Who
cares
?” she laughed. “
I
do. And
you
should. She’s supposed to be here. You can’t be here alone after school. You both know that. Did she leave? I want to ask her about this igloo situation.”

This conversation was becoming very satisfying. It hadn’t occurred to Max until then that Claire was in trouble herself. She shouldn’t have left! She was supposed to watch him but she had gone off in the ugly station wagon to chew tobacco. If Max was careful with this situation, he could divert all the attention to Claire’s misdeeds.

But then came the sound of dripping.

“What’s that?” his mom asked.

Max put on an unknowing face and shrugged.

His mom stood quickly. “Sounds like something’s dripping. Did you take a bath?”

Max shook his head. He hadn’t bathed; that was true.

She left the room. He could hear her in the bathroom, tightening the knobs on the tub. The drip persisted. “Where is that coming from?” she asked aloud.

Then she was in Claire’s room.

She screamed.

Max never thought she would scream.

“What is this?” she shrieked.

This will be be hard
, Max thought.
So hard
. He considered his options. He could make up a story about where the water came from. A hole in the roof? Maybe a window had been left open. He wished he’d thought of that sooner. Animals might have come in, tracking snow …

But he had never lied to his mom before and could not do it now. Instead, almost without thinking, he threw off the covers and got out of bed. He walked into Claire’s room and heard the squish of the carpet under his feet. Standing in the doorway, her eyes wild, she saw the bucket and Max’s snow clothes. She bent down to feel the floor and took in a quick breath.

“Did you do this?” she asked.

Max nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“Max, what were you
thinking
?”

He couldn’t remember. His thoughts had scattered again, into a dozen tiny holes.

She ranted for a few minutes, using her most colorful language, before returning again to the question: “
What were you thinking
?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know
?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

She was on her knees now. “This is not good, Max. All this water … It could soak into the beams. It could cause permanent damage to the house.”

This news brought Max to the verge of tears. He wanted this to be temporary. He wanted it all over by dinner. Now the prospect that he’d ruined the house brought an endlessness to the day that crushed the light inside him.

She left the room. Max could hear the opening and slamming of cupboards as she cursed quietly to herself. She was gone a few long minutes. She returned with a pile of towels. “Come on. I’ll help you clean it up.”

They spread towels on the floor, trying to soak up the water. While they were on their knees, she noticed the water on the dolls, the pictures torn from the wall.

“Oh my god,” she said. “The walls? The
walls
? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Max was wondering the same thing about himself.

She left the room and walked down the stairs. Max heard nothing for many minutes but he dared not move. He heard the car start, roar for a minute. Was she leaving? Then she turned off the engine. Finally he heard her walking up the stairs again and soon she was by his side again, on her knees, helping with the towels on the floor.

“What happened to you two?” she asked. “You used to be so close.”

This made Max more sorry than before.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

She let out a sigh that filled the room. “I really need you to help keep this house together, Max,” she said. “I need you to be a force of stability, not chaos.”

Max nodded gravely.
Keep the house together. Force of stability
. On their hands and knees, Max and his mom continued to place towels on the carpet, trying to soak up the mess beneath them.

Max ate his dinner in his room, a plan of action that seemed the best for all concerned. He could hear Claire and his mom and Gary below, ticking and clicking their way through a quiet meal. He hadn’t apologized yet and Claire hadn’t either, and he was of the opinion that allowing the near-death of a brother was worse than soaking the room of a sister. After dinner he heard her leave, off to a babysitting job across the river.