“How did you do that?” I wanted to know.
“Ho-ho,” she said.
Janie said, ‘It’s easy. She’s really twins.”
“Oh,” I said. Then another girl, exactly the same, came from somewhere in the shadows and stood beside the first. They were identical. They stood side by side and stared at me. This time I let them stare.
“That’s Bonnie and Beanie,” said the painter. “This is Baby and that”—she indicated the man—“that’s Lone. And I’m Janie.”
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I said, “Yeah.”
Lone said, “Water, Janie.” He held up a pot. I heard water trickling, but didn’t see anything. “That’s enough,” he said, and hung the pot on a crane. He picked up a cracked china plate and brought it over to me. It was full of stew with great big lumps of meat in it, and thick gravy and dumplings and carrots. “Here, Gerry. Sit down.”
I looked at the stool. “On that?”
“Sure.”
“Not me,” I said. I took the plate and hunkered down against the wall.
“Hey,” he said after a time. “Take it easy. We’ve all had chow. No one’s going to snatch it away from you. Slow down!”
I ate even faster than before. I was almost finished when I threw it all up. Then for some reason my head hit the edge of the stool. I dropped the plate and spoon and slumped there. I felt real bad.
Lone came over and looked at me. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “Clean up, will you, Janie?”
Right in front of my eyes, the mess on the floor disappeared. I didn’t care about that or anything else just then. I felt the man’s hand on the side of my neck. Then he tousled my hair.
“Beanie, get him a blanket. Let’s all go to sleep. He ought to rest a while.”
I felt the blanket go around me, and I think I was asleep before he put me down.
I don’t know how much later it was when I woke up. I didn’t know where I was and that scared me. I raised my head and saw the dull glow of the embers in the fireplace. Lone was stretched out on it in his clothes. Janie’s easel stood in the reddish blackness like some great preying insect. I saw the baby’s head pop up out of the bassinet, but I couldn’t tell whether he was looking straight at me or away. Janie was lying on the floor near the door and the twins were on the old table. Nothing moved except the baby’s head, bobbing a little.
I got to my feet and looked around the room. Just a room, only the one door. I tiptoed toward it. When I passed Janie, she opened her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“None of your business,” I told her. I went to the door as if I didn’t care, but I watched her. She didn’t do anything. The door was as solid tight closed as when I’d tried it before.
I went back to Janie. She just looked up at me. She wasn’t scared. I told her, “I got to go to the john.”
“Oh,” she said. “Why’n’t you say so?”
Suddenly I grunted and grabbed my guts. The feeling I had I can’t begin to talk about. I acted as if it was a pain, but it wasn’t. It was like nothing else that ever happened to me before.
“Okay,” Janie said. “Go on back to bed.”
“But I got to—”
“You got to what?”
“Nothing.” It was true. I didn’t have to go no place.
“Next time tell me right away. I don’t mind.”
I didn’t say anything. I went back to my blanket.
“That’s all?” said Stern. I lay on the couch and looked up at the gray ceiling. He asked, “How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” I said dreamily. He waited until, for me, the gray ceiling acquired walls and a floor, a rug and lamps and a desk and a chair with Stern in it. I sat up and held my head a second, and then I looked at him. He was fooling with his pipe and looking at me. “What did you do to me?”
“I told you. I don’t do anything here. You do it.”
“You hypnotized me.”
“I did not.” His voice was quiet but he really meant it.
“What was all that then? It was…it was like it was happening for real all over again.”
“Feel anything?”
“Everything.” I shuddered. “Every damn thing. What was it?”
“Anyone doing it feels better afterward. You can go over it all again now any time you want to, and every time you do, the hurt in it will be less. You’ll see.”
It was the first thing to amaze me in years. I chewed on it and then asked, “If I did it by myself, how come it never happened before?”
“It needs someone to listen.”
