A Beautiful Truth (6 page)

He disappeared and played with Murphy, and when he came back he saw Carole laughing and talking and no one else looking at her. He bit her toes under the dinner table, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to be sent to the garage.

Time passed and friends came and went, often hastened by their distaste or discomfort at the thought of a chimp being raised as a child.

When Looee was older, Susan came over and Looee was very excited. He didn’t go to shake her hand, he crawled right up her and Susan said oh.

He liked her big stiff boobs.

Judy told him to get down and pour them all some tea.

I was telling him stories she said. I tell him stories about a boy with a hairy face. He loves it.

Looee was walking and showing that he loves it.

Pour some tea for mummy’s friend Susan, okay Looee. It’s so good to see you, Susan, I’ve been craving some grown-up company.

It’s mummy’s friend Susan. Looee. Remember. See how happy he is.

He’s getting big said Susan.

Looee made his food grunts as he carried the tea to the table.

He’s getting bigger all right. He’s hard to keep a handle on.

Looee poured tea for himself and blew on it to cool it off but he wasn’t good at blowing.

He drank it.

Pour some tea for Susan, Looee.

No that’s all right.

You don’t want tea.

No, I.

Looee poured tea.

He really likes you. It’s easy to tell when he really likes someone.

Well.

I was telling him stories I make up. Give Susan milk, please Looee.

Susan watched Looee pour milk into her cup and it overflowed extravagantly.

Good boy. Now come here. Mummy tell story. There, see.

Looee was sitting on mummy’s lap.

The boy with the hairy face was running through the summer flowers and sneezing and laughing, and sneezing and laughing and laughing.

Looee laughed.

That’s his laugh.

Looee looked at Susan and Susan wasn’t laughing. Looee wanted to make Susan laugh.

And he was laughing and laughing until he met his friend Murphy. Why so sad, Murphy. Don’t cry, friend.

Looee walked to Susan and got up on her lap.

Oh oh oh said Susan.

It’s okay.

He won’t be comfortable on me.

Sure he will.

Boobs.

He’s happy. You don’t mind. He loves you. Do you mind. Sit still, Looee. That’s mummy’s friend. There.

Looee put his arm around Susan’s waist.

Nice boy. That’s my nice boy with Susan.

Looee looked at Susan’s boobs.

Is that a new blouse, Susan.

I got it in Boston.

Wow.

I was visiting James at Harvard. His graduation.

Oh my god, already.

Yes. It’s gone by so fast.

Susan, you must be so proud.

Mummy was excited.

I’m relieved. I am very proud. But I am relieved. It was so expensive. And I feel like I can move on. To a new phase of my own. A different time of life.

Judy looked sad but she was smiling.

You must be so proud.

Looee dug his overalls into Susan to try to feel her warmth.

Susan went stiffer.

I’m very proud, yes. He is a hard-working man. I can’t believe he’s a man. But we all move on.

Looee looked at Susan’s pretty face.

She wouldn’t look at him.

Looee looked at Susan’s cheek. There was toffeecream-pancake-sauce smeared all over her pretty face, and lipstick.

Susan looked at him for a second, his face so close to hers.

What does he. What else do you do these days, Judy.

Looee touched her face and looked at his finger.

Gentle, Looee.

My leg is cramping a little, actually.

Okay, get down now, Looee. Come on down. Some people aren’t comfortable, remember.

Oh no, it’s not that.

No, no, I know.

Susan looked sick.

Looee squeezed her boob and she jumped.

Looee.

Mummy was shouting.

Looee!

No!

Looee hugged himself.

I’m sorry, Susan. He’s sorry.

It’s nothing.

You remember what it was like. It’s just his age.

Well, yes, but he’s not.

Go play upstairs Looee. Go on.

Looee walked to the stairs.

It’s a relief these days when he plays on his own. He’s clinging to me less, you know.

Looee walked up the stairs.

Tell me about James, now. What’s next.

Looee walked up the stairs thinking this one’s mine, and this one, I know this one makes noise.

He looked for a surprise in his room.

The following year, summer settled early. Cottonwood seeds had blown from the banks of the stream at the end of the Ribkes’ land. Maple, beech, white oak and elm, everything was rooting deep and surging beyond this world of English and taxonomy.

Walt sat on the porch, late afternoon, Looee sat way up high in the oak just there. The feeling of warmth and promise on Looee’s face, kind needles on lips and cheeks, was identical to that on Walt’s. And while Walt was saying nothing, Looee was saying it
all in a medley of heart-deep hoots and ultramontane trumpets, sounds never heard in the forests of Vermont. Millennia ago they had never seen a naked ape nor centuries ago a Frenchman.

Looee’s shouts of victory made Walt think of summer, peaches in the mouth and almost-kisses, howling with his friends in the forest. He felt his arm outside the window of the car, pleasure in the moments when he knew he was stronger and smarter than some. He and Looee felt all of it the same, and none of it by name. Judy came out on the porch with a Coke for Walt and said sounds like someone’s enjoying the weather.

Mm.

I should water those fuchsias she said.

I should kiss your lips.

If I sit on your lap do you promise to be good.

No.

Good.

Smack smack.

I’m getting heavy she said.

The more you push on me the closer you are to my heart.

Walt said all the right things.

Judy looked down at her thickening ankles and silently blamed the heat. Did you read about the mayor in Burlington she said.

No.

Had an affair with a young woman.

Did he.

It was in the paper she said.

Well Walt said.

Looee saw Judy from up in his distant tree and hooted.

Judy said I guess just because he wears a sash and necklace doesn’t mean he’s not a man.

Walt was in the middle of summer. He reached up and took
her by the chin and turned her face so she could watch him say I don’t know how you keep surprising me, but I’ll tell you this: you keep surprising me.

It was Looee’s first summer that he could take to the next summer—his first real season of memory. He could look down at Judy from his tree and choose not to run to her, knowing now that he could do so later. And later he could sit on the porch and clean Walt, suck the salt out of his jean cuffs and think back to being in the tree. Memories were blue and yellow sheets hanging from the line (don’t pull those down please Looee): fixed but restless colours blowing soft across his face. Memories made him pound on the porch, wanting to make more. He wanted to roll through all those flowers.

Looee found Walt’s spare key to the front door one night that summer and ran away.

He was afraid of the stream so he ran through the woods to the Wileys’, the neighbours on that side. It was dark in the woods and he wanted to see another house. He ran through the woods in his pyjamas.

No lights were on in the house, and the front door was open because the only people who locked their doors in that valley were the ones who housed chimpanzees. The hall smelled like bread and Looee was scared and excited. He found their kitchen in the dark.

There were no locks on the fridge like at home.

Looee’s food grunts alone would have been enough to waken the Wileys upstairs but they had been stupefied by chicken and brandy and were lost in nonsense dreams of things less likely than a chimpanzee at their fridge.

Looee sniffed the leftover chicken, licked it and put it back. He dropped a jar of Mrs. Wiley’s pickles and liked the way they spilled.
He put one in his mouth and it tasted like the bitter insides of Walt and Judy’s ears. He screamed and spat it out.

He ate carrots, a jar of jam, half a bottle of cream, some raw eggs that he mopped off the floor with Mrs. Wiley’s raisin loaf. He opened a can of beer with his teeth and almost liked it, opened another and liked it more.

He heard a noise upstairs and remembered he wasn’t at home. He had seen the Wileys a few times and they were very tall and grey and he had never been close enough to touch them. He thought about going upstairs to see if they wanted to play.

He heard the howling of a dog outside and got frightened. He wanted to go to bed and thought maybe the Wileys have a bed for Looee.

He knew exactly how to get home.

He held a can of beer and an egg in his lips, held another can of beer in his hand, and walked on threes through the front door, closing it gently, Looee, gently.

He wanted to walk farther that night but his cargo of eggs and beer prevented him. Murphy barked once when he saw Looee come through the door at home and Looee dropped the egg from his lips and it broke on the floor by the stairs. Murphy lapped it up and Looee was sad, angry and jealous. He made noises he wasn’t aware of, but Walt and Judy heard nothing. He forgot to lock the door behind him.

In his room he hid the beers under the bed so Judy couldn’t have them.

The next morning, Judy was perplexed by the eggshells at the foot of the stairs. Murphy held his head low when she was sweeping them up, so he must have been somehow responsible. Looee was sleeping in, which was nice. She noticed they had forgotten to lock the door last night, but she knew that Looee was in his room.

When she checked on him later there were food stains on his pyjamas. Where’d you get those from she said. Looee gave her lots of kisses on her neck, which he didn’t always do first thing in the morning. She loved it.

That night Judy made sure she locked the door, and Looee used Walt’s key again and went out into the warm darkness.

Tonight he knew clearly that he was going to the Wileys’ fridge, and the now known goal made the journey more fraught and rich. He noticed sounds he hadn’t heard the night before.

In the woods at night he could see no farther than a boy could. Two white-tailed deer had seen his blue pyjamas coming long before he might have seen them run. Looee’s nose wasn’t sensitive enough to smell their timid spoor, his hands and feet were dull and dumb compared to those of the raccoons that mapped those woods with constant touching and probes. He heard sounds in the dark, and throughout the state and country was a generation of people either supporting or reviling the superstitions of others. The sounds in the dark made Looee think of the drain in the upstairs bathroom, the drain that made him scream for reasons Walt and Judy could never understand. Looee feared that if he didn’t move quickly he would be swallowed by a drain.

There are leopards in the memory of every ape, leopards we’ve never seen. Some look like dragons and some look like drains.

Mr. Wiley was sitting on his porch in the dark with his shotgun across his lap. Last night his kitchen was taken apart by a bear or some hippie desperate for beer.

Looee came to the outer edge of the woods with the mind of a four-year-old boy, the coordination and strength of an eighteen-year-old, a throat, tongue and teeth that could never form consonants, and even if he was able to speak he could never tell those deer how deep those woods can look in daylight. And the
deer could never tell Judy that the soft blue pyjamas she bought her boy were actually fierce and electric and the world was a long horizon of threats.

Mr. Wiley will kill that bear or hippie.

He’s not too old to get angry.

He was staring at the distant road thinking if it’s a man he’ll come from there. He figured if it had been a bear that came into the kitchen, why would it have taken the beer and not the chicken. And what kind of a bear opens and closes the front door without leaving a scratchmark or two. What kind of a man would come into the home he bought for his retirement and not respect the fact that he would offer food to anyone in need.

He didn’t want to kill someone, but he’ll shoot. He will stand tall and fire.

Looee came out of the woods unfrightened, thinking there are no locks on that fridge. He walked across the lawn.

Mr. Wiley saw a bear coming out of the woods wearing a grey garment. He had enough time to think that he might be getting cataracts again and of course the bear isn’t clothed; enough time to think that’s a smallish bear and mother won’t be far behind.

A bear, he could shoot without regret.

He stood taller and Looee saw him.

Jesus Christ what is that.

Mr. Wiley thought he was looking at a nightmare, a perverted little outcast, half-bear, half-man, and he was hot with pity and terror.

He aimed squarely at Looee.

Peace is a result of curiosity, when one ape wonders about another.

Mr. Wiley got down on his knees and said Christ it’s the neighbour’s little gorilla.

He wished his wife were awake.

Looee kissed his hand and put his arm around his waist and tried to get him moving towards the fridge. And Mr. Wiley had no idea what to do.

So how do I … You’re wearing some pyjamas on yourself.

Looee was making his I like you I’m excited noises and stayed still for a moment while he pissed in his pyjamas, calmed by what we would call the kind and curious shyness about the eyes of Mr. Wiley.

And now he would get what he wanted.

He urged Mr. Wiley towards the door with his hand on his lower back.

Okay okay.

Mr. Wiley felt as though an excited friend was saying I want to show you something. He opened the door and Looee took his hand and pulled him towards the fridge. Mr. Wiley couldn’t help but smile and think that really is a hand.

Looee was grunting and making excited noises.