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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Stella’s Choice: Fictive Reality In Tennessee Williams’ "A Streetcar Named Desire"

"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really."–Tennessee Williams

            We all accept the fact that there is a separation between what is real and what is unreal. Fact or fiction? Truth or lies? These dichotomies, like most, are worn to the point, but they still direct a reader to important questions—particularly the question of where the line between the two sides is blurred. For instance, one character in a work of fiction could be a compulsive liar, and another could be honest. The liar would be a “bad guy” and the honest a “good guy.” The story becomes more complicated and exciting, however, when the text encourages the reader to sympathize with the liar, and to scorn the honest man. In literary fiction, the untruths often point to otherwise hidden truths about the world outside the text. Fiction asks us to think about reality in a new light; literary theorists, then, examine fictional texts with this expectation. In this way—in literature at least—that simple little line between fiction and reality is blurred.
            Dramatic literature, in particular, upsets the balance between what we understand as truth, and what truly is true. A play brings a plot to life as a physical manifestation of reality by placing actual people on a stage to enact a fictional story. With drama, a writer can directly express a character’s drives, goals and ambitions, without ever explaining in the text what those drives, goals, and ambitions are. In Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the psychology of Williams’ characters affects the world that they create, thus blurring a reader’s understanding of reality. Elia Kazan, the director of the premiere production of Williams’ most famous play, suggests in his “Notebook for A Streetcar Named Desire” that “directing finally consists of turning Psychology into Behavior” (21).
            The play itself revolves around a complicated understanding of reality and fiction. By the final act of Williams’ play, Stella—one of the main characters—is the one who must make a choice: will she stand by her sister, Blanche—the woman she was raised with, with whom she shares blood and genetic coding, even though this woman has been lying to her—or will she stand by her husband, Stanley—the man she chose to marry, whose child she bears, even though this man raped her sister? By understanding how these characters live in constructed fictional realities, we can understand why Stella finally chooses her husband over her sister in the end. Williams’ play takes the proverb “blood is thicker than water” and turns it on its head, arguing that—though the decision itself may be a hard one to make—the value of a constructed relationship is more valuable to Stella than those relationships over which she has no control—particularly the relationship to her sister, Blanche.
When looking at how Stella makes her decision, the reader must understand how the characters in Streetcar construct their realities. If we take a step back from fiction, and look at human nature, we can recognize how strong the draw of fiction is. We love creating stories, going to plays, watching movies; we create fantasies and dreams. Sometimes we create fiction as a way of coping with reality: hardships, stress, even boredom are all issues that are resolved by creating fiction. Many of these creations—like some lies—are minor and are not harmful to anyone. For some individuals, however—in both fiction and in real life—those fictions become more complex, and eventually govern the person’s life.
Most people will recognize these complex lies as delusions. When someone is designated as “deluded,” that individual is often viewed as pitiable and flawed; the term “delusion” carries negative connotations. According to Jaime Leeser (Department of Philosophy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) and William  O’Donohue (Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno), the generally accepted definition of “delusion” in psychology was developed by K. Jaspers in 1968. Jaspers identified a delusion as a “false belief…that is held with extraordinary conviction or subjective certainty and is impervious to other experiences and compelling counterargument” (Leeser 687). This definition is applicable to people in real life, but literary analysis deals with fictional characters, so a literary term and definition should be developed for characters who experience false beliefs. When referring to the delusions or false beliefs of fictional characters, then, I will use the term “fictive realities.” I use the term “reality” because a character who suffers from delusions probably does not recognize that he or she does; for the sufferer, the delusions are real, and for this reason we must treat those delusions as though they are realities. A therapist treating a patient in this manner would probably seem immoral, but with literary analysis, since the character cannot be affected by a reader, this treatment seems to work. To the reader, however, the character appears deluded, and therefore that character’s reality is imagined, or fictive. All in all, the audience can recognize that the fictive reality for a character is different from the “actual reality” experienced by the non-deluded characters in the work.
            Fictional characters forge fictive realities, like real individuals create delusions as coping mechanisms. When dealing with stressful or uncomfortable situations, people often pretend that everything is okay so they can keep smiling and move on. According to Dr. Bertram P. Karon, “the psychological life of all individuals consists of a set of fantasies, conscious and unconscious, which are formed on the basis of actual experience, as given meaning by the preexisting conscious and unconscious fantasies” (171). Karon’s description can be applied to each of the characters in A Streetcar Named Desire; each character has a subconscious fantasy through which he or she sees the world: Stanley believes in his notion of “truth;” Stella is attached to her relationship with her husband; and Blanche has developed a fantastic vision of her past and current circumstances. These fantasies, however, should not be classified as “delusions.” Though delusions and fictive realities both are basically excessive lies, delusions and fictive realities are not completely the same. Blanche forges a fictive reality in Streetcar, but she is not “deluded.” Leeser explains that there are four criteria that go into the creation of a “delusion”: “(a) delusions are false, (b) they are based on incorrect inference, (c) They are believed in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and (d) they are not believed by others in the relevant subculture” (687). In Blanche’s fantasies, criterion (a) is fulfilled, but the others do not apply to her situation. If we accept that criterion (b) is true, then it would imply that Blanche would be applying a certain amount of logic—albeit, fallacious—in the way that Blanche lies; we see, instead, that the things that Blanche says all relate to what she refers to as her “dream” and do not follow a logical pattern—they exist only as an element in her “ideal reality.” If there is no logic in what Blanche creates, then there is no inference present that can be correct or incorrect.  Blanche doesn’t actually believe that many of her lies are fact, but says herself, that she “don’t want realism. I want—magic” (Streetcar 84). If Blanche herself doesn’t believe her own lies, then criterion (c) does not apply here either. Finally, criterion (d) is not applicable because the people around her (primarily the other faded Southern Belle, Stella) believe her lies.
            The term “delusion” does not fit Blanche in an aesthetic sense, either. Streetcar concludes with Blanche having been raped and carted away to a mental institution, Stella has a breakdown, Mitch blames Stanley for everything, and Stanley—the rapist, himself—is in a powerful position, cradling his weeping wife as the play closes. This ending, holds Blanche up as a tragic heroine, whereas Stanley seems to be a villain. Stella’s decision to stand by the villain, then, concerns the audience. The play portrays Blanche as pitiable, and the audience leaves, feeling sympathetic toward the poor broken woman, but if we say that Blanche is “deluded,” the compassion the audience might feel for her would be undermined. Then, if the audience does not sympathize with Blanche and her plight, the reader would either be left without any character to support—which would effectively make the play useless—or the reader would be forced to side with Stanley. If the audience sides with Stanley, then Streetcar becomes a morally bankrupt drama about how Blanche “was asking for it.” We can see then that, not only is Blanche designed by the playwright to be sympathetic, she must be sympathetic, and if she is called “delusional,” we lose that sympathy for her.
Sympathy for Blanche is paramount because in Streetcar, it is not only the development of relationships that is important, but it is also important to understand each of the characters individually. Blanche is a very central character, and sympathy for her is as important as an understanding of her constructed ideas of gender. Blanche constructs her identity to fit the model of the “Southern Belle,” whereas Stanley exhibits aspects of a sexually dominating construct of immigrant masculinity. Blanche’s quest to “play the part” of the Southern Belle compels her to worry about image: a Southern Belle must appear to be proper, organized, well-off, and most importantly, physically attractive. Stanley’s drive to “keep things his way,” as Elia Kazan puts it, comes from a subconscious urge to prove that he is American, not a Polish male (26). His macho personality and his position as a “Master Sergeant in the Engineer’s Corps” (Streetcar 14) are both products of his defensive desire to protect his position as an American male citizen. Gender as a construct should simply be an extension of who a person is; labels such as “masculine” and “feminine” can be attributed to aspects of a character’s personality simply based on how they act. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire, however, take the opposite approach and allow their lives and identities to be constructed by their notions of gender; in this way, gender plays a crucial part in the character’s construction of fictive realities. Blanche’s gimmicks and lies show that the performance of her femininity ultimately derives from her insecurity about herself. Gender, as it is understood by many critics, is a constructed ideal of what makes a person “masculine” or “feminine.” There are multiple versions of femininity, as are there many different forms of masculinity. These can be derived from different social strata, different nations, ethnicities, or levels of education. These multiple versions of gender identity are just as constructed as Blanche’s fictive reality, however. Blanche subscribes to that image of femininity—the Southern Belle. Blanche’s Southern Belle identity becomes a part of her experience of “reality” throughout the play, and throughout the life of the character.
“Fictive Reality” describes the complicated variety of issues that Blanche experiences; the term provides the reader with a rich understanding of her complex fantasy—an understanding that we can begin to use to understand how character decisions are made. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella’s choice and the way that it is affected by her sister’s fictive reality reveals that—although Stella must make a hard choice (she may even, indeed, make the wrong choice)—the power of a constructed relationship like marriage is considerably stronger than that of a familial bond, one over which a person has no control.

Blanche—An Attempt at Re-Creating the Beautiful Dream
            Blanche DuBois is the eldest daughter of a wealthy French aristocratic family. She has lived a troubled life only to end up at her sister’s apartment, where the story in Williams’ play is set. Williams has ironically named this character Blanche, a name derived from the feminine form of the French word meaning “white,” but Blanche is far from the pure and chaste Southern Belle that her name suggests. Her character is complex, though, because from the moment she steps onto the stage, we see her personal understanding of the world being questioned. Throughout the rest of the play, she develops a series of lies, deceptions, and gimmicks that fool her sister and brother-in-law, a man named Mitch that she seeks a relationship with, and finally these deceits trick Blanche herself out of the beautiful dream for which she so desperately searches.
            Elia Kazan, in his “Notebook,” identifies Blanche’s “Spine”—or drive—as “find[ing] Protection: the tradition of the old South says that it [protection for a woman] must be through another person” (Kazan 22, my brackets). We see this drive evident throughout the play. Blanche’s history is hard to pin down, given that she lies most of the time, but the audience can eventually recreate a believable portrait of her history. She has lost her family’s plantation, Belle Reve, a fact which Blanche admits to in Act I, scene 1. This upset—the loss of the one home she had—has driven her to seek protection in the form of multiple male sex partners in Laurel—the town near Belle Reve. When the men in Laurel will no longer provide her “protection,” she moves to the French Quarter of New Orleans and finds her sister Stella—her last living relative—so that Blanche can find the support that she desires. But before the opening scene of the play, and even before the loss of her family estate, Blanche was married.
            Blanche tells Mitch at the end of Act II that when she was sixteen, she had married a younger boy named Allen Grey. Blanche Grey, formerly DuBois, walked in on her new husband having intimate relations with an older man. When Blanche and her husband were dancing later that night, Blanche told her husband that he disgusted her, and he left, only to kill himself in shame. Blanche’s disgust at the discovery of her husband’s homosexual affair with his older male partner set off her moral and mental descent to the end. Up until her marriage, she had ridden her “streetcar named desire,” but when her husband died, she switched “to one called Cemetery,” (where dreams are dead, and Belle Reve is lost) and finally, Blanche ended her journey at “Elysian Fields,” the place where classical warriors spent their afterlives (Streetcar Act I, scene 1). After the loss of her husband, Blanche starts relying both on her connections to other people and on her own constructed realities to cope with the loss of her Belle Reve—her “beautiful dream.” The music of the Varsouviana—the dance that Allen and Blanche shared before his suicide—continues to haunt Blanche throughout the play, and becomes a device that signals to the audience the points at which Blanche is recollecting her past in an honest fashion.
            Even though Blanche recognizes name changes as a result of marriage—she initially refers to her sister as “DuBois”, but then corrects with “Mrs. Stanley Kowalski” (Streetcar Act I, scene 1)—she does not keep the name “Grey.” Her decision to re-adopt her “white” identity in opposition to what she sees as the tainted “grey” one represents her first step into a fictive reality: Blanche constantly acts as though none of the wrongs of her past—her husband’s suicide, her promiscuity, and losing the plantation—ever happened. Blanche feverishly tries to keep her fictive reality alive; she uses the world that she has created to protect herself, and if the pursuit of protection is her primary drive, then the reader can see that she does everything she can defend that reality (fictive or not). She drinks profusely throughout the play; when she first arrives in New Orleans, she immediately breaks into Stanley’s whisky (9), and then drinks more when her sister arrives (10). In fact, the amount of alcohol consumed by Blanche in the play is probably comparable only to the amount drunk by Stanley.
            The alcohol may help Blanche hold onto her fantasies, but, as Elia Kazan suggeste, her Southern Belle upbringing impels Blanche to seek protection from others (22). She is naturally drawn to her sister, Stella, through her bonds of sisterhood, and so she turns to Stella as one who can provide that protection. Stella represents not only the last of Blanche’s family, but also the last remnants of the world that existed before her “beautiful dream” was lost. Unfortunately for Blanche, the connection between her and her sister was already mostly severed when Stella left Belle Reve after their father’s death.
The nature of the connection between Blanche and Stella may be best explained by Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives, a book which examines Victorian marriages. In the “Prologue” to her book, Rose discusses the concept of “constructing narratives,” or “parallel lives” (6) as a way that people form relationships. She notes that her “own assumption is that certain imaginative patterns—call them mythologies or ideologies—determine the shape of a writer’s life as well as his or her work” (6). I respect Rose’s idea, and would like to draw attention between the way her conception of constructed relationships parallels the idea of a narrative constructed jointly by Blanche and her sister. Throughout their childhood, the two sisters share a single narrative—call it the “Book of the DuBois Sisters”—but this narrative concludes when Stella leaves home. When Stella leaves, the narrative reaches a sort of “divorce,” which Rose suggests “makes marriage meaningless” (18). Rose explains that “when divorce is possible, people no longer need to conform themselves to the discipline of the…relationship” (18).  Although Rose is referring specifically to Victorian marriage, and Stella and Blanche are not married, Rose’s argument still applies—if we look at the sisterhood as a type of “marriage” (A relationship between two people), then when Stella leaves (a “divorce”), the relationship is effectively voided. Stella feels that she is “divorced” from her sister from the moment she leaves their shared narrative, so when Blanche returns with the impression that the narrative can be continued as though it had never ended, Stella is forced back into her sisterly role. Stella wants to do well by her sister, but Stella’s narrative is now a story of marriage to her husband, and not a story of sisterhood.
            Subconsciously, Blanche seems to realize that she and her sister are no longer close. As a result she goes to extremes to weave a fiction that unites her with Stella; if she can make Stella believe her fiction, then the connection between the sisters will be reestablished, and Stella will then defend her against those people—such as Stanley—who threaten her because they can see through the fabric of her deceit. To achieve her fiction, Blanche tells lies on a range of different topics. Blanche lies about her age and occasionally pretends that she is younger (38) than Stella (Blanche is actually five years older). She insists on being seen in low-lit places to prevent people from seeing the signs of age on her face (83). Williams not only draws the reader’s attention to Blanche’s duplicity, but he also reveals the way Blanche’s lies encourage Stella to play along with the fantasy. For instance, Blanche enters the Kowalski home in such a mess that Stella, without any prompting, asks her husband to “admire her dress, and tell her she’s looking wonderful” (21).
            Blanche has faded even in the mask that allows her to depict the Southern belle. She is an older woman, now, one who drinks and has a promiscuous past. Despite those apparent conflicts with the feminine role she imagines she plays, she still believes that she fulfills that role. Ultimately, Blanche’s rigid understanding of class structure, hierarchy, and gender roles is what leads her to have stereotypical notions of the people around her. She still expects Stella to be her “star.” She constantly calls Stanley a “Polack,” an insult that drives her brother-in-law to retort “I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am in one-hundred-per-cent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack” (Streetcar 78). Her position with regard to Stanley emphasizes Blanche’s uncompromising adherence to her own fictive reality; even if people are not the sorts of individuals that Blanche sees them to be (a star, a Polack), her “reality” makes her believe that they are whatever she thinks that they are.
            Blanche doesn’t just live or demonstrate fantasy in her actions, though; she also weaves verbal lies into the tapestry of her reality. Since Blanche operates as an unreliable narrator, it is difficult to tell which parts of Blanche’s story are actually true. We know, for example, that Blanche claims that she does not have a drinking problem. She makes claims such as, “Your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard” (10); “No—I—rarely touch [whiskey]” (18); “I’m not accustomed to having more than one drink” (37), yet she continues to drink throughout the entire play. She tells the Kowalskis that the reason she left the school where she taught was that the superintendent suggested that she take a leave of absence (12), but we learn later from Stanley that “she was kicked out before the Spring term ended” because of her sexual relations with a seventeen-year-old student (72). In an attempt to make herself appealing to Mitch in Act I, scene 3, Blanche tells him that “Stella is my precious little sister. I call her little in spite of the fact that she’s somewhat older than I. […] Just a little. Less than a year” (38), but we know from her initial entrance that “she is about five years older” than her sister (7). When she is later asked by Mitch about her age, she avoids the question by presenting the story of her marriage to Allen. These lies all serve the purpose of making Blanche look more appealing to others. By her own definition, Blanche is a victim “on the verge of—lunacy, almost!” (12), and she claims to have the sensibilities of a Southern Belle to refrain from drinking in large quantities—it simply does not do for a lady of the south to partake in alcohol. This description, though it is a false depiction of Blanche, succeeds in deceiving Stella and Mitch, and also transforms Blanche into a sympathetic character to the audience.
            It is when Blanche has her audience captivated that she begins to create bigger lies—lies that change aspects of her actual past to create a fictive past. In act I, scene 4, Blanche reminisces about Shep Huntleigh, a man that she “went out with […] at college and wore his pin for a while” (46). Blanche pretends that she “ran into him [Shep] last winter” (46, my brackets). In this first description of Shep, Blanche describes him as a married oil tycoon with a block-long Cadillac convertible (47). At the beginning of Act II, while she is writing a letter to Shep, Blanche admits that she is “such a liar,” referring to her own description of her summer “on the wing” (52).  Finally, when Blanche and Stanley are alone while Stella is giving birth (Act II, scene 4), Blanche actually calls for Shep. She is unable to contact Shep, however, because in truth, she has no information about him except for his name; at this point, the audience begins to suspect that Blanche has not been in touch with him after all. If Blanche were keeping contact with Shep, she would certainly have a way to contact him. If Mr. Shep Huntleigh were truly “so well-known he doesn’t require any address” (93), then a telephone operator would have been able to put this desperate woman in contact with him. Shep Huntleigh seems to be no more than a fantastic character that exists solely in Blanche’s fictive reality. After Blanche initially introduces “Shep” into the story, Blanche asks if Stella remembers him; Stella must admit that she does not, even though Blanche insists that her sister really does (46). During her post-traumatic reveries in the final scene, after Stanley has raped her, Blanche finds it strange that she didn’t get a call from Shep (97). It is in this state of post-trauma that Blanche is most deeply entrenched in her fantasy. When all else has been lost—when she no longer has hope for protection in the home of her sister—she seeks her last chance for protection in the fictional character, Shep Huntleigh.
            What purpose does Shep Huntleigh serve for Blanche, though, if her primary drive is protection? For Blanche, Shep is the ideal model of the man that she desires. He is rich and can provide for her. He invites her on Caribbean cruises (89). In an attempt to emulate her sister, Blanche has, in effect, created a character that serves her in the same way that Stanley serves Stella. Mitch, too, serves a similar role to Blanche. In fact, Blanche’s drive to seek protection seems to push her toward men: she turns to Mitch for courtship, she invents Shep as a back-up plan, and earlier, she sought out unnamed men with whom she had sexual relations. Perhaps her quest for protectors led Blanche to marry her late husband, Allen Grey.
Blanche’s tendency to seek out male figures whom she hopes will provide a form of protection comes from her constructed identity as a Southern Belle.  As a Southern Belle, she must attach to a man that will protect her, while she serves him to the best of her ability. In a perverse way, Blanche’s promiscuity can be explained by this fact: what better way can she serve these sexual men, than to engage in intercourse with them? As a faded Belle, however, Blanche has lost definition in her portrayal of her Southern heritage; instead of seeking the masculine protection someone like Stanley provides for Stella, Blanche has moved to seek protection in another woman—her sister. We know from Blanche’s disgust at Allen Grey’s homosexuality—“’You disgust me!’” (68), and from her contempt for homosocial engagements—such as her response to Stanley’s poker night in Act I scene 3—that Blanche has a strongly heteronormative view of society: she believes that men should be with women because that is the natural order of things. By seeking protection from Stella—another female—Blanche breaks the code of the Southern Belle. By the end of the poker night, however, when she meets Mitch, Blanche returns to her grounding in her previous understanding of gender identity.
            In the end, the audience sees that Blanche develops a fantasy world—a fictive reality—to replace the reality of Belle Reve. The loss of her family plantation is a symbol of the actual “beautiful dream” that was lost. In her fictions, the audience sees an attempt to re-create her lost past. She tries to retain her youthful image by keeping lights low and by lying about her actual age. Blanche also drinks to keep the world in a semi-drunk, semi-sober flux. She brings her sister back into her life. Every lie Blanche tells—every action Blanche takes—results from her desperate effort to keep her fantasy world alive. Blanche says, herself, “I don’t want realism. I want—magic!... I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth” (84). If Blanche were capable of sticking to her idea that “a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion” (28), she might have been able to continue to convince her sister of her innocence, and she might have even been able to make her fantastic reality and true reality. If Blanche’s charm is half illusion, though, then the other half needs to be something that is not illusion. Unfortunately for her, though, Blanche pushes her fiction too far with Stanley in act III scene 4. Stanley was already not buying into Blanche’s story, so when she makes the last push and starts to insult her brother-in-law, her dream begins to crash down around her. It is in act III, scene 4 that the scale unbalances and the audiences sees what happens when a woman’s charm becomes consumed by more than “fifty per cent illusion” (28).
Stanley—The Rape of Belle Reve
            If Blanche were able to maintain her dream through the end of the play, then Stella would have no choice to make. The choice Stella is forced to make derives from Stanley’s action—the rape—and the collapse of Blanche’s mental state that results from that rape. The audience recognizes the rape as the climax of the play, but in order to understand the basis for and significance of Stella’s choice, we must examine why and how Blanche deteriorates. “Belle Reve” acts as the symbol for the “beautiful dream”. By saying that Belle Reve was “lost,” (15) Blanche gives a different impression than she would if she said that the plantation was “taken.” I have titled this section “The Rape of Belle Reve,” however, because Blanche is raped, and because the process that tears down Blanche’s fictional “Belle Reve” is as violent and severe as the act of rape.
            While Stanley was “a Master Sergeant in the Engineers’ Corps” (14), he would have done a fair amount of construction, but through his actions in A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience considers Stanley as a man who destroys, rather than creates. Elia Kazan defines Stanley’s motivation as “keep[ing] things his way” (26, my brackets). Kazan suggests that “Blanche would wreck his home. Blanche is dangerous. She is destructive…” (26, author’s italics). Stanley, though he may be seen as a villain by the close of the show, is much more complicated than Kazan’s notes indicate, initially. Kazan goes on to explain that Stanley’s love for Stella is “rough, embarrassed […] but it is there” (26). He is a hedonist, “supremely indifferent to everything except his own pleasure and comfort” (27). Given these qualities, though, he “is most interesting in his ‘contradictions,’ his ‘soft’ moments, his sudden pathetic little-tough-boy tenderness toward Stella” (27).
            Stanley’s full range of qualities—his hedonism, his selfishness, even his embarrassed love for his wife—are not immediately apparent. These qualities are aspects of Stanley’s actual reality in the same way that elements of Blanche’s fantasies developed her fictive reality. Stanley can understand only what is “real,” and throughout the play he seeks “truth” as a way to undermine the ironically theatrical behavior of his sister-in-law. Stanley is not without his own theatrical qualities, however. He changes costume, so to say, from his work clothes to his pajamas in a rather exhibitionist way and he even makes a show out of walking around half-naked in his house—These shows are intended to assert his dominance as the “man” and ruler of the house that can do as he wishes.
            Stanley is also theatrical in his representation of masculinity. Stanley is keenly aware that he comes from Polish immigrant heritage. In The Masculine Self, Christopher T. Kilmartin details several aspects of a Polish-American identity: “Polish-American men have generally been willing to work for others, at low-paying and low-status jobs, to ‘bide their time’ for a better future. These values derived from the peasant identity of their forebearers […] who developed an intricate system for coping with domination and oppression by foreign powers.” (122). This complacent attitude may in fact have been a part of a Polish-American identity, but Stanley is a different kind of Polish-American individual. He is, however, fierce in his defense of his immigrant roots. Given his drive for control and the urge to “keep things his way Stanley erupts in fury at Blanche when she refers to him as a “Polack” (Streetcar 78).
            Stanley rejects the role of the Polish American male (78), and attempts, instead, to form a new masculine model that better fits his selfish nature. Stanley cannot completely reject his cultural heritage, however. In his discussion of the Polish-American masculine persona, Kilmartin notes that “there is also a common disdain for being ‘stuck up’” (122), a disdain which Stanley exhibits quite frequently with reference to Blanche’s frivolity. Though Stanley wishes to be considered a “one-hundred-per-cent American, born and raised” (Streetcar 78), his “deemphasis on ‘fitting in’ with the larger culture” (Kilmartin 123)—which is exemplified according to Kilmartin by a majority of Polish-American immigrants—prevents people from seeing him as anything except Polish-American. Stanley cannot get over his contempt for the “U.S. ‘gentry’ class” (Kilmartin 123) and ultimately fails to construct a non-Polish-American masculinity for himself.
            What happens as a result of his failure to become a “non-Polish male” is interesting, though. In a mix of his disappointment for failing to shuck the Polish-American stereotype into which he falls and his determination to maintain his selfish drive to “keep things his way,” Stanley begins to exhibit childish behavior: at one point he cries like a baby in Stella’s arms (Streetcar 42); at another point, he digs through Blanche’s belongings and tosses them around the room (23); and in act I, scene 3, Stanley’s men-only poker night is reminiscent of a boyish “No Girls Allowed” clubhouse. One of the most noteworthy aspects of Stanley’s childish masculinity, though, is his inability to compromise or understand positions or beliefs that are not his own. Thomas P. Adler, professor of English at Purdue University, Indiana, suggests in his book, A Streetcar Named Desire: The Moth and the Lantern, that “Stanley does not bother to think in moral terms” (52). Adler also suggests that Stanley is “a literalist or anti-illusionist” and that Blanche’s stories are “all lies and deceits” (53). Stanley is “unable to see any aesthetic or potentially redemptive value in the ‘magic’ [Blanche] creates” (53). As Adler suggests, Stanley cannot—will not—accommodate or accede to Blanche’s “lies and deceits.”
            Blanche’s fantasies are dangerous, and since Stanley must—in his childish way—“win” all of the battles in which he fights, he becomes aggressive. Stanley is a childish, adult male who desperately needs to keep all aspects of his life under his own personal control. Stanley realizes that he must stop Blanche from coercing her Stella with fiction; Stanley realizes the need to do battle with Blanche, and recognizes that Blanche’s fictive reality is her most effective option for stealing Stella away from Stanley, thus, from Stanley’s perspective, this weapon—Blanche’s fictive reality—must be eliminated at any cost.
            The “war” begins for Stanley when he learns of the fate of Belle Reve—the plantation. As Stanley recalls, “in the state of Louisiana we have what is known as the Napoleonic Code according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband also and vice versa” (Streetcar 22). Since Blanche has lost the plantation, she has lost something that belonged to Stanley through his marriage to Stella. In this way, Blanche has made the first decisive strike in the fight between husband and sister-in-law. Stanley cannot accept the loss of Belle Reve as an accident (because he cannot compromise with Blanche’s position), and so he begins to work on uncovering the truth. At the end of the second scene, however, Stanley learns that Blanche was actually being honest; Blanche offers the fully documented account of Belle Reve’s previous ownership: “Thousands of papers stretching back over hundreds of years affecting Belle Reve, as piece by piece our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications—to put it plainly” (29).
            Defeated by Blanche’s evidence, Stanley accepts defeat. The next time Stanley and Blanche interact is during the poker game. In this scene, Stanley acts like a sore loser (true to his childlike mentality). Stanley’s bad luck in the poker game (31) and his disappointment at being wrong about Blanche’s loss of Belle Reve both contribute to his bad attitude throughout Act I scene 3; it is in this same scene that the audience sees Stanley jump away from the poker table to childishly throw the radio out of the window (39-40), the same scene that Stanley attacks Stella in drunken aggression (40), and the same scene in which Stanley’s cries of “STELL-AHHHH! STELL—” summon his wife back to his side (42). The aggression seen here in Stanley foreshadows the violent methods that Stanley later uses to “keep things his way.” Stanley’s tears in this scene are also important; as an infant quickly learns that crying for its mother will result in her appearance, Stanley learns, too, in this scene that childish methods will draw his wife to his side, so he will use those methods again later with the expectation that they will succeed.
            During that same scene, as Stanley finds different ways to act out his aggression, Blanche meets Mitch and finds in Mitch a new man who may provide the “protection” she so desperately craves. Mitch is Stanley’s friend, though. Stanley considers Mitch as part of his belongings, so when Blanche attempts to enthrall Mitch and pull him into her fictive world, the war is rekindled. At this point in the play, Stanley learns that a man named Shaw (presumably one of Stanley’s coworkers) once met Blanche at a hotel called The Flamingo, which Blanche knows as a seedy, disreputable establishment (54). When Blanche claims not to have met the man, Stanley reacts to her words as if they were an assault against his beliefs. Again, Stanley takes the time to reassert his dominance by finding proof of Blanche’s lies. In his quest to determine the validity of Blanche’s story, Stanley learns that she has told Mitch that “she had never been more than kissed by a fellow” (70). By lying to Mitch, Blanche is attempting to deceive someone who—in Stanley’s view—“belongs” to Stanley, and therefore Blanche is—in Stanley’s eyes—lying to Stanley himself. Stanley reveals to his wife what he has learned of Blanche: Blanche used the Flamingo frequently enough that the management “requested her to turn in her room-key—for permanently […] a couple of weeks before she showed” up at Elysian Fields, that “she was practically told by the Mayor to get out of town,” and that Blanche’s place “was one of the places called ‘Out-of-Bounds’” by the army-camp near Laurel (71). Additionally, Stanley has learned about her relationship with the seventeen-year-old student that lost her the teaching job she previously held (72).
            Stanley’s revelation of Blanche’s misdeeds was merely an example of his braggadocio, though. Stanley knows after the poker night incident that he can keep his wife now, so Stanley is simply adding insult to injury by disillusioning Stella about her sister. Stanley’s real attack against Blanche is manifest in the fact that he revealed Blanche’s past to Mitch on Blanche’s Birthday. This attack is made still more tragic when Stella reveals that Blanche “thought Mitch was going to—going to marry her” (74). Stanley is still not satisfied, though: he wants his victory to be more complete. Thus, he buys Blanche a bus ticket back to Laurel and presents it to her as a birthday present (79), fully aware that she has nothing left for her there. After he does so, Williams’ stage directions run as follows: “BLANCHE tries to smile. Then tries to laugh. Gives up both, turns accusingly to STELLA at R. Suddenly she runs above STANLEY into bedroom, commencing to sob sharply. Pauses in C. of bedroom, no knowing which way to run, finally, with shaking sobs, darts into bathroom, slamming door shut” (79). The attempt to smile and laugh reveals Blanche’s initial impression that this is all a joke. When she “turns accusingly to Stella,” however, Blanche reveals to the audience that her attempt to seek protection through her sister has failed: Stella could not protect Blanche from her husband, and so she flees to the bathroom so she may find solace in a room with a lock on the door.
            Stella, Blanche’s pregnant sister, who believes that Stanley “needn’t have been so cruel to someone alone as she is” (79), cannot calm Blanche down, though, because Stella begins to go into labor. The next scene (Act III, scene 3) opens with Blanche “drinking to escape the sense of disaster closing in on her (81). Mitch arrives to try to understand what Stanley has told him, but finds only Blanche, who drunkenly dodges his questions. Mitch demands to see Blanche in proper light because he has “never had a real good look” at her (84). When Mitch tears down the paper lantern that covers the bulb in the room, Blanche falls to the ground with a cry, and explains that she does not “want realism. I want—magic!” (84). The paper lantern serves a practical function (dimly lighting the room so that Blanche’s age is not so evident) and a symbolic one (it acts as a filter for Blanche’s illusion—when it is torn down, so is part of Blanche’s fictive reality). When Mitch removes the lantern, though, and turns on the light, he finally sees the truth in Stanley’s story about Blanche. Most critics fail to realize the importance of what happens next: Mitch, fully aware of Blanche’s deceit, declares that he wants “what I been missing all summer” (sex) and begins “fumbling to embrace her” (87). When Blanche says he must marry her, he says “No! You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother” (87). Blanche chases Mitch off, saying she’ll start screaming “fire” (87). Traditionally, when afraid of rape, a victim will scream “fire” instead of “rape” because screams about fire will attract the attention of more people. The fact that Blanche is aware of this defense mechanism indicates that she may have been in this situation before. This scene depicting Mitch’s attempted rape of Blanche foreshadows the impending and very real rape in the next scene. Additionally, it helps to reveal the reason why the actions in the play’s climax actually take place.
            Stanley returns to the apartment at night after he learns that “the baby won’t come before morning” (88). Blanche has been drinking steadily, and “a mood of hysterical exhilaration has possessed her, and she fancies she hears applause and favorable compliments of her old friends at a party at Belle Reve” (88). The room is covered with the contents of Blanche’s truck: Blanche has immaturely littered the apartment (88). In his own euphoria over the imminent birth of his child, Stanley offers a beer to Blanche as a truce (90). Blanche, however, cannot accept a truce with a man who would hold “up [the beer bottle], letting beer cascade over his arms and person” (90). Blanche laments to Stanley about losing Mitch earlier in the night and suggests that she has “been foolish—casting my pearls before [swine]” (91, my brackets). She says that both Stanley and Mitch are swine, and then begins to tell another story about how Mitch returned asking for her forgiveness, but Blanche wouldn’t accept it (91). To make up for her loss of Mitch, though, Blanche tells Stanley that she has “received a telegram from [Shep Huntleigh]” (89, my brackets). Stanley, annoyed at her “swine” comment begins to poke holes in Blanche’s story about Shep. Their fight grows, while Stanley and Blanche both defend their positions—truth versus fiction—until Blanche breaks a bottle to defend herself against what have become Stanley’s sexually aggressive movements (94).
            For Stanley, there cannot be any other outcome for this battle than his raping Blanche. He believes that he has to win against Blanche. He has tried to suppress her—to keep her under—by revealing her duplicity, and again by offering peace, but the only way he is able to keep her beneath him once and for all is to literally put her beneath him.  Thomas P. Adler suggests that “for having threatened Stanley’s little domain, Blanche becomes another object to be used and discarded; Stanley reasserts his vengeful supremacy through brute strength” (53). Stanley recognizes that there was no other choice, for him, when he says that “we’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” (Streetcar 94). Adler makes the claim that Stanley “is to Blanche as she was to Allan, but with a central distinction: whereas Blanche’s cruelty was unthinking and, therefore, forgivable, Stanley’s is malevolent, and therefore not” (53). Stanley’s malevolence in raping Blanche vilifies him, and even though Blanche’s earlier problems were self-inflicted, Stanley’s sexual assault makes the audience feel sympathetic to her problems.
            When doctors arrive at the end of the play to take Blanche away, presumably to a psychiatric ward, Blanche’s fictive reality has been completely shattered. This does not mean, however, that she re-enters the world of fact and reality, however. Instead, the audience sees that Blanche falsely believes that she is leaving on a cruise with Shep Huntleigh; that she believes that this event will take place because she incorrectly believes that she spoke with Huntleigh about it; that she has blocked the rape from her memory along with all evidence that proves her wrong; and finally, that the audience sees that no one—not Stella, nor Eunice, nor Stanley, nor the doctors that come the remove Blanche—believes Blanche’s story about her “vacation” (Streetcar Act III, scene 5). Blanche’s state at the end of the play reflects all of the criteria in Leeser’s list that outlines a true delusion. Blanche’s post-traumatic delusional state, though caused by Stanley’s rape, plays a significant role in Stella’s choice.

Stella—DuBois or Kowalski?
            When Stella returns from the hospital with her newborn son, she is faced with a decision: it is evident in the closing scene that either Stanley, or more likely Blanche has revealed that Stanley raped Blanche. Stanley and Blanche cannot live in the same place together anymore, and therefore Stella is forced to make a decision: reject her husband in favor of her sister, or disbelieve her sister’s story, and abandon her flesh and blood sister in order to stay with the man she married. In Act III, scene 5, Stella makes the only choice that she feasibly can: she decides to stay with Stanley.
            Stanley is the father of Stella’s new born son. Despite Stanley’s brashness and the negative opinion that Blanche has formed of her brother-in-law, Stella loves her husband and the “drive he has” (Streetcar 34). The reader might hope that Stella will turn away from her husband in the end and give all her love to her new son (which is what happens in Elia Kazan’s film version of the play), but Stella’s “complete surrender” (103) to Stanley in the closing moments of the play suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, the audience is left with the impression that Stella has not made the correct choice. Stella screams out for her sister—“Oh, God, what have I done to my sister!” (102)—and “sobs with inhuman abandon” (103) as Blanche is literally carried off the stage by the doctors. Eunice (who lives above the Kowalskis) declares “you done the right thing, the only thing you could do” (102), but this statement holds no sway over the audience, especially since the audience has seen Eunice reentering an abusive relationship earlier in the play (53, 58).
            Stella’s choice is strongly impacted by Blanche’s fictive reality. As Blanche’s reality breaks down, Stella feels the wounds of being lied to for months.  This pain, though, is not what causes Stella to give up on her sister; instead, Stella gives up on her sister because she truly has no other choice. The truth is that the only choice Stella has is the wrong one. Elia Kazan identifies Stella’s “spine” as “hold[ing] onto Stanley” (24, my brackets). This perspective on Stella  initially seems odd. Kazan elaborates, though, as follows:
One reason [that] Stella submits to Stanley’s solution at the end, [and] is perfectly ready to, is that she has an unconscious hostility toward Blanche. Blanche is so patronizing, demanding and superior toward her…[Blanche] makes her so useless, old-fashioned and helpless…everything that Stanley got her out of. Stanley has made a woman out of her [Stella]. Blanche immediately returns her to the subjugation of childhood, younger-sister-ness. […] Stella would have been Blanche except for Stanley. She now knows what, [and] how much Stanley means to her health. So…no matter what Stanley does…she must cling to him, as she does to life itself. To return to Blanche would be to return to the subjugation of the tradition… (24-25, my brackets).
Kazan’s interpretation of Stella is accurate after all. The audience knows that Stella abandoned Belle Reve and her sister many years ago. Stella now does not fit the stereotype of the Southern Belle and she does not try to, either.
At Belle Reve, Stella was subjected to cultural standards that pressured her to become a Southern Belle. She was expected to be a daughter, a sister, a typical Southern Gentlewoman. Her decision to leave the plantation and the “epic fornications” (Streetcar 29) of the men in her family marked her departure from the patriarchal system of her southern heritage. Like Blanche, Stella must have taken a Streetcar named Desire—Stella desired to make a life for herself. Stella must have switched to a streetcar named “Cemeteries” where she would have seen the death of her past self—Stella DuBois. Finally, she would have gotten off at Elysian Fields as a victorious new woman: Stella Kowalski. By usurping the patriarchal power of her heritage, Stella is able to create a new narrative, or in Phyllis Rose’s words, a parallel narrative with Stanley.
The chief motivating factor for all three of the main characters in this play is the effort to control their own lives. Blanche seeks control by defining her own reality; Stanley seeks control by keeping things his way with aggression; at the end of the play Stella takes control of her life. Despite the fact that Stella’s only choice is not a good choice at all, her ability to make that decision defines her ability to control the situation. Control is paramount in A Streetcar Named Desire, and the lack of control drives a character to tears. What does Stella’s choice mean, though, if she picks Stanley only because staying married to him is the only option available? The only other choice Stella could have made was to divorce her husband, a choice which, as Phyllis Rose notes “makes marriage meaningless” (Rose 18). If Stella’s marriage is made meaningless, then her decision, her choice, her power of control is undermined.
Ultimately, Stella chooses to retain “control,” but she also make the peculiar choice of “family” over “family.” The cultural context in which Williams was working helps to explain this situation. The play takes place in the 1940s, when American culture was solidifying the concept of what we now call a “traditional” or “nuclear” family. In The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Stephanie Coontz describes the ways in which the idea of the “traditional American family” has changed over time. She writes that “by 1947, six million American families were sharing housing, and postwar family counselors warned of a widespread marital crisis caused by conflicts between the generations” (Coontz 26). The generational conflict the Stella has lived through—especially that the point where she breaks out of the Belle Reve patriarchy—has a clear effect on the potential marital crisis that she nearly faces, but never reaches. The conflict between Stella’s generation and that of her parents, and the way she resolved that conflict by running away, helps keep Stella in her marriage to Stanley. In her chapter on marriage, sex, and reproduction (Coontz 180-206), Coontz notes that during the 40s and 50s—the period in which Streetcar takes place—there was a surge in sexual engagement that was not linked to reproduction. Many scenes in Streetcar are heavily sexualized, from the line of innuendo at the opening of the play when Stanley asks Stella to “catch” his meat (Streetcar 6), to the flirtatious way in which Steve seeks Eunice after the resolution of their fight (58), to Mitch’s attempted rape (87) and Stanley’s successful rape of Blanche (94).
There is also a drive in this period of American history for a family to stay together “for the kids.” Even if Stella did decide to abandon her husband, and side with her sister, she would still have to face the fact that leaving Stanley would create a broken family in which her son would have to be raised. Stella’s family with Stanley—re-made with a child and love—is the family she chooses, and has chosen, even before the play begins. Stella’s family with Blanche is a family that Stella decided to cut herself off from when she left Belle Reve. Williams’ play reveals that Blanche’s constructed reality, and Stanley’s usurpation of that world both affect Stella’s decision as much as does Stella’s own struggle to find a version of “reality” that works. A Streetcar Named Desire places the value of marriage over the value of a blood-based family, but it also suggests, since Stella’s decision is not the right choice, that, perhaps, the institution of marriage may require revision.
A Streetcar Named Desire is particularly effective as a play in distorting the lines between what is real and what is fiction. Stella herself requires a sort of fictive reality in the end when she rejects the possibility that Stanley did, in fact, rape Blanche. Blanche has required a fictional reality throughout the entire play, and when it is finally destroyed, she collapses into a mentally deteriorated state. Stanley has treasured “truth” throughout, but it is his character and “reality” that is vilified. While Streetcar blurs the lines of reality by presenting a fiction on stage, it also makes the audience question what is more real; Stanley’s truth is vilified, so maybe Streetcar reveals that the need for fiction that Stella and Blanche exhibit is actually more real than reality.



Works Consulted/Cited
Adler, Thomas P. A Streetcar Named Desire: The Moth and the Lantern. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990. Print.
Colin, Philip C. “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Tennessee Williams: A Guide to Research and Performance, ed. Philip C. Kolin. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print. 51-79.
Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Print.
Freeman, Daniel; Garety, Philippa A.; Fowler, David; Kuipers, Elizabeth; Bebbington, Paul E.; Dunn. “Why Do People With Delusions Fail to Choose More Realistic Explanations for Their Experiences? An Empirical Investigation.” Graham Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 72(4), Aug 2004, 671-680. Print.
Griffin, Alice. Understanding Tennessee Williams. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 45-80. Print.
Karon, Bertram P. “On the Formation of Delusions.” Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 6(2), 1989, 169-185. Print.
Kazan, Elia. “Notebook for A Streetcar Named Desire.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Streetcar Named Desire: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Jordan Miller. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. Print. 21-27.
Kilmartin, Christopher T. The Masculine Self. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994. Print.
Leeser, Jaimie; O'Donohue, William. “What is a delusion? Epistemological dimensions.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol 108(4), Nov 1999, 687-694. Print.
Miller, Jordan Y., Ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Streetcar Named Desire: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. Print.
Rose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. 5-19. Print.
Voss, Ralph F., Ed. Magical Muse: Millenial Essays on Tennessee Williams. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2002. Print.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1981. Print.

Stagnation

“‘All you have to do is try to shake off the idea that that’s Gregor. Our real misfortune comes from having believed it for so long. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long since have realized that it’s impossible for people to live side by side with an animal like that, and would have gone away of his own free will.’”
—Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (trans. Stanley Applebaum)


            As Ian Falking stepped off the bus from a long journey home, he found himself confronted with “Welcome Home” banners that were not for him. He was dressed in his fatigues as he had seen veterans wear in films. He dragged his footlocker behind him to an old beat-up station wagon where his grandmother, Denise, silently waited for him. As she drove the young man home, he gazed at the signs that had sprung up in yards and that were taped to signposts. “Welcome Home, Bill!” The signs read.
            What has happened here? Ian had had a nightmare once. All of the kids in Ian’s high school gathered around to make fun of him. At the center of this mob was Bill Newman. Bill and Ian grew up in Still Water—near the river that gave the town its name—and had lived on Walker Street, which was connected to Main by Valencia Drive; it was an alleyway, really, perfect for them to play basketball together. Both their fathers worked at the treatment plant, and both fathers had lost their wives after the births of their daughters. Ian and Bill stood six feet tall. They had dark hair and eyes.
            The similarities stopped there. Since elementary school, Ian and Bill began to take divergent paths. While Ian was busy failing his courses and applying medications to his terrible acne problem, Bill became more involved with his humanitarian projects, his eventual valedictorian status, and his sudden, inexplicable popularity. Ian grew to hate Bill. It wasn’t as though Bill had ever done anything to Ian. Bill had never done anything to Ian, at all—that was why Ian hated him. Why should he get all of the luck? I have it harder than him! Why don’t I get any recognition? Ian’s problems came from his unfortunate appearance and his apathy toward work, but people only noticed—according to Ian—because Bill was so perfect!
            When Denise pulled into the drive, she wordlessly shut off the engine, and walked inside without so much as looking at her grandson. There was another car parked outside of Ian’s house. The car looked expensive and was polished. The back window displayed those little stick-figure stickers of a happy family holding hands: father, son, daughter, and dog. Ian dragged his footlocker past his old bike—still propped against the side of the house—and up to the house where he was met by William Newman—Bill’s father—who hobbled around with a brace on his leg.
            “Welcome home, kiddo! Jenna told us that you were coming back today!” Mr. Newman helped Ian shove the footlocker against the wall, and led him into the dingy Falking-family kitchen. Ian’s sister Jenna was sitting, speaking excitedly with Bill’s mousy little sister Kallie. Kallie looked as though she had not eaten in weeks, and had forgotten how to take care of herself.
Jenna, in contrast, looked lively—she was all made-up as though she was expecting a date soon. She looked up when Ian came in. “Oh. I thought you were dad.” And then, as if it were an after-thought: “You kill anyone before they sent you back?” Jenna walked over and gave her brother an obligatory hug.
“We were going to meet you at the bus stop,” Mr. Newman smiled. “When we got here, though, your grandmother had already left for you.”
Denise was sitting in a rocking chair, staring blankly at the wall, crocheting the same scarf that she had been working on for five years. The kitchen was as stagnant as Ian remembered. It reeked of stale cigarettes. Ian could imagine a cockroach skittering across the floor. The sink was filled with empty beer cans, and the trash can was full. The only notable feature of the room was a frame that held an old golden necklace that had once belonged to Ian’s mother. It was going to be Jenna’s one day, but Ian put it in the frame so that he could remember his mother whenever he saw it. That necklace, and an old photo of his mother dressed in furs were the only things in the house that proved his mother had ever lived there.
 Ian pulled out a chair beside Mr. Newman and asked what he did not want to ask: “Where’s Bill?”
Jenna gasped, and Kallie looked like she might cry. “You haven’t heard?” Jenna jumped up with a look that was somewhere between disgust and infuriation. Mr. Newman gestured for Ian’s sister to sit down, and he began to tell Ian the story of how his son was coming back from the dead.
The Newmans never had a lot of money, so it was infeasible to send Bill to Harvard as the boy had hoped to do. The town tried to pull together money to send the boy to college, but he told them not to trouble themselves. The citizens of Still Water were proud of their small town hero. He was a tutor, a mentor, and one of the first kids to ever aspire to leave for something better. Instead, Bill joined the military, knowing that the military could pay his way into school. Ian knew this—he had joined for the same reason. The people were proud that he was going off to fight, to protect them.
It had been particularly hard for Mr. Newman, though. Before Bill (and Ian) had left for the Middle East, Mr. Newman had been in a drunken driving accident, which did serious damage to the man’s leg. It was Ian’s father at the wheel of the other car. Mr. Newman had not been able to work, and so relied strongly on his monthly disability check and a few debts and owed favors he called-in. Mr. Falking had to work the night shift at the plant and pull extra hours so that he could pay back Mr. Newman for the accident. The community, Mr. Newman told Ian, had really pulled together to support him while Bill was gone. Bill, as it turned out, had been working a full-time job to support the family, and to send his sister to Julliard to play violin.
“About two months ago, a couple of men in suits showed up at the house. They handed me a flag, and told me that my son had been declared ‘killed-in-action,’” Mr. Newman sipped from a mug of coffee. “We all mourned, and the whole town showed up for the funeral. Kallie dropped out of school to keep me holding on.”
“But just last week, Mr. Newman got a call,” Jenna interjected. “Bill! It was from Bill! He said that he’d been captured, but was involved in a prisoner exchange. He’s coming home tonight!” The news spread like wildfire, and Still Water—which was just about ready to accept Bill’s death—suddenly found their spirits renewed. They all cleaned up their yards, and put up welcoming posters.
And so Ian Falking’s return from war was almost completely overshadowed by Bill Newman’s return from the dead. Ian thanked the Newmans for being so kind to come to his house to welcome him home, but as he saw them to the door, he ground his teeth. Some people. Luck! Ian was suspicious, though. He knew that people weren’t declared KIA unless there was some sort of proof of their death. Otherwise, they were just listed as missing.
            Back inside, after the Newmans left, Ian tried to take his footlocker upstairs to his old room. “It’s filled with trash and furniture. Let me know when dad gets home.” Jenna shouted from her room, with the door closed.
            When Allen Falking came home that night, he had already been drinking. He walked right by Ian, sat beside Denise, still crocheting, and turned on the television. “Bring me a beer, boy!” he shouted behind him, as though Ian were actually in a different room. “When’d you get in?” Ian didn’t answer, because he already knew his father wasn’t going to listen.
Jenna ran downstairs and took Allen’s keys. “Do you want to come too? We’re all of us going to meet Bill at the bus!” She was wearing a short skirt, and a top that his father wouldn’t have normally let her leave the house in. Ian shook his head. Jenna yelled over her shoulder, “Suit yourself. Don’t shoot anyone while I’m gone!”
This was the way Ian’s life was for several weeks. Bill’s return had left Ian in total obscurity. He spent days looking around the town for a job, and afternoons he spent trying to talk with Denise. She never asked him a question. Ian told her about the technical support he ran for the army. He told her about how his group that had never seen any action was sent out to repair some vital medical equipment. Ian could swear that he saw a glimmer of concern in Denise’s eyes when he told her about how he got shot—grazed really—in the side by a wounded enemy in the hospital tent, and how they had sent him home because of it. When he thought about it, Ian felt sure that he had seen Bill at that camp. That concern that Ian saw in his grandmother’s eyes was what made Ian keep talking to her, even though the first thing she said to him since he got home was “Did you hear about that Bill Newman boy?”
Bill was received as a hero by the town. Even though Ian had not seen Bill since his return, his sister talked about him daily. Apparently the two had been dating before the accident. They had started when Jenna turned eighteen. “He looked like one of those starving Africans!” she told Ian over dinner one night. “He was so thin. He survived all alone, you know? They tried to torture secrets out of him and everything! But he wouldn’t spill. They kept him though, ‘cause he’d killed so many of theirs!” Ian was sure that Bill was lying. Somehow, somewhere, Bill had made some story up. Who could possibly prove that he was lying, after all? He tried to desert. That’s what happened, I bet. Faked his own death and laid low for a couple months.
Ian got a job around the third week after Bill’s return. Ian’s father finally showed up drunk to work one-too-many times at the treatment plant, and so he was fired. Ian took the position, and found himself riding his bike across town every day to work alongside William Newman in his leg brace. Ian was surprised the man was working there, and asked about Mr. Newman’s disability.
“Having Bill back home just gives me the energy to manage working, you know? I can hobble around and manage, still,” Mr. Newman told him. “You know, Bill was so shocked when he read his first obituary. I can only imagine how strange it would be, to see my face there, and read about my own death. Like Tom Sawyer, I’d imagine, right, Ian?”
Come lunch break, mousy Kallie brought her father a bag with a sandwich and milk. She said hello to Ian, who sat without lunch on his break. Ian nodded to Kallie before she left. “In truth,” Mr. Newman said. “We need the money, so I had to come back to work. We are still working to pay off the deposit from Kallie’s New York place, and the leftover tuition bills from when she left Julliard after the plane accident.” Ian had heard Kallie play violin once in a school concert. She was good. “And I couldn’t possibly ask Bill to get a job. He just died, after all! And he’s already done so much to keep us safe.”
That was the way Ian’s life was for several weeks. Ian would ride his bike in to work. He would come in and work tirelessly, treating the town’s wastewater. I’m keeping you safe now, with this water. Not that I get any respect. Ian took pride in his work. Nights he would come home and listen to the bitter groaning of his father, who would occasionally lash out at him. “Steal my job, you damn bastard! I’ll show you!” Some nights, the plant’s foreman would be there, too, drinking with his father and laughing about how boring Ian was at the plant.
“Just a shame we couldn’t keep you, Allen. Best damn worker we seen in fifty years! All your boy does is work work work! Ain’t any humor in that. Shame we couldn’t get that Newman boy in instead of his daddy, too, that limp-ass sunovabitch! His son told me this joke once—” Ian had tried to complain, once, to the pair. He worked hard, after all, and showed up on-time. He met his deadlines, and was efficient. He tried to complain too about being disrespected. I went to war for you people. Why does no one respect me? All his complaining managed to achieve, though, was to make the town think that Ian was disrespectful. Even fewer people spoke with him after that, and so Ian learned to be quiet.
At the plant, Kallie had started to bring a sandwich and milk for Ian, too. Each day he would smile and thank her, and each day Kallie would smile and leave.
One night Ian heard Jenna speaking with Bill. Ian had been sleeping in the upstairs hallway because there was nowhere to move the collection of debris in his old room. He had nightmares where Bill and the doctors at the camp were making fun of him while he tried to repair equipment. “So you’ve gained some weight? It’s no big deal, baby!” It sounded like she was comforting Bill over the phone. “No one is bothered! You could use a few pounds anyway…We’re just glad you’re alive….Why would you need a job? Your dad likes working at the plant again….yeah, Ian told me so.” Ian said no such thing.
On Bill’s birthday, the whole neighborhood threw a big party.  Several businesses shut down, and even Ian was sent home early from the treatment plant. By now, Ian was used to people making a big deal out of Bill. He was disturbed, though, that no one had noticed that Bill hadn’t actually done anything since he had “come back from the dead.” From what Ian understood from snippets of conversations with Mr. Newman and Jenna, Bill had gotten lazy. It was as though Bill believed the community would continue providing for him indefinitely. Bill no longer went out to clean litter from the highways. He never babysat or tutored anymore. He didn’t play the organ at the church or even go anymore, for that matter. It was as though Bill had just stopped or really died. Ian waited for the day that the people would realize that Bill was really dead. No one was so lucky that he could just continue like that forever, after all.
But that was how Bill lived for the rest of that year, and the next year around, the neighborhood threw another block party for Bill’s birthday. Ian continued working, anonymous to the citizens of Still Water. About a week after the second party, Ian was speaking with Denise. He was telling her about his suspicions about Bill’s war stories. Jenna overheard.
“What? What! How can you even say something like that? How dare you even!” Jenna was livid.  “Ian, you’re an asshole! His whole squad died in that explosion! You’re so insensitive! All of his friends and family were about to move on and forget him! Can you even imagine how that would feel?”
Ian tried to explain to her that Bill’s story didn’t make sense. He tried a different tact, and tried to explain that he had just noticed that Bill didn’t work or anything anymore. She wouldn’t listen, though. “And you—You! You sit there all high-and-mighty! You didn’t even shoot anyone, you lousy coward! You know, I tried to keep Dad from moving all that stuff into your room. I told him that you were coming back. He was ready for you to die, but I was waiting for you! But you’re not even the same person anymore!”
Jenna moved in with Bill the next day. Ian moved into her room, and slept in a real bed for the first time in over a year. He dreamt of bombs falling all around Bill. At the plant, Mr. Newman would not speak to him. Kallie did not bring Ian a sandwich, and did not smile when she left after leaving her father his. Whenever Ian would go out, people would shoot him glares. At the grocery store, he was even refused service from a cashier who had heard that Ian had assaulted his sister; the store manager had had to come out and make him leave. People would swear under their breath about the disrespectful Falking boy. People believed that Ian had done something to his sister to make her move. She would not talk about it, but—they said—if she could stand her father for so long, then her brother must be worse.
That was the way Ian’s life was for the next several weeks. Ian spoke to no one except for Denise, who still sat beside piles of un-knit yarn. Ian was moved to night-shift, and no longer worked with Mr. Newman. It was quiet. He got used to how still the water seemed at night, and how quiet the plant was with no one else on shift. It was quiet for a long time.
One morning, though, he came home to find his father passed out on the kitchen floor. The old man had thrown up on himself. There was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. Allen did not have money for alcohol the day before and had thrown things around the kitchen. Denise, in a moment of clarity, had left the house to avoid Allen’s tantrum. She did not come back until later that day, after Allen had finally settled down.
Ian prodded his dad awake and asked how he had paid for the whiskey. “I sold it,” his father said. “Your mother’s necklace. I sold it.” The old man passed out and Ian looked up at the wall. The necklace was gone. It was one of the last objects left in the house that had been his mother’s. He remembered that after she died, he would occasionally sneak into Denise’s room just to look at the necklace. His father had complained when Ian insisted on framing it, but Allen eventually allowed it. In a fit of anger, Ian threw the nearest thing he could find at his father—a rotten apple. It was soggy in his hand and thumped! against his father’s head. Bits of apple lodged in his hair, and the old man groaned and threw up. There was blood.
The results of Allen Falking’s medical exam revealed that he had developed liver cancer. He stayed in the hospital for a couple of days to have additional blood work done. When he came home, he did not speak. He simply walked into the house, sat beside Denise, and turned on the television, without a word.
And that was the way that Allen Falking’s life was for the next few days. He watched re-runs of talk shows. Ian continued to work and the world outside continued to praise Bill Newman.
By the week after the hospital visit, Ian realized that he was tired. He was tired of the plant. He was tired of Still Water. He was tired of his father. Ian’s bike was vandalized by kids who were taught to hate Ian-the-sister-beater by their parents. Ian had no friends, and his sister would only occasionally speak to him, and only if she needed something from him. He was tired of very many things, but most of all, he was tired of Bill Newman. Bill Newman, in Ian’s eyes, was the source of everything that was wrong in that town. He was the reason people did not like Ian. Were it not for Bill, people would appreciate Ian. People would pay him the respect he deserved. Because Bill was alive, people failed to notice how hard Ian worked. If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t have any clean water to drink. I am important! I protect these people, and they treat me horribly!
It was that very thought that drove Ian to open his footlocker that was still sitting in the upstairs hall. He reached inside and grasped the cold metal before going downstairs to walk up Walker Street. Since his return, Ian had yet to actually see Bill, and he looked forward to seeing what he hoped would be terror in Bill’s eyes.
When Ian got to Bill’s, however, there were police lights flashing outside the Newman house. There was an old beat-up station wagon, crashed into a telephone pole. Mr. Newman was wrapped in a blanket and was sitting on the curb. Ian caught a glimpse of his father being shoved into a squad car before it took off. An unhurried paramedic loaded a stretcher into an ambulance. Jenna was on the steps of the Newman house, screaming and crying. Kallie held her back as she tried to run toward the medics.
Ian was reminded of when his father had hit Mr. Newman with that same station wagon. That had been the same scene as this one, but in fast-forward, with people rushing to save the Mr. Newman. Now, it was as if the world was still. Ian turned and walked back into his house, walked upstairs, and sat on the bed. Still.

The town held another funeral for Bill Newman, and in time, the town truly grieved. Ian was moved back to day shift, and was promoted. People would occasionally ask him about the war, but he would tell them it wasn’t important. Jenna moved back in and helped Ian take care of their father, who, like the town, was recovering again. Denise finished her scarf. Kallie began bringing lunch to Ian at work, and they would eat together. After work, Ian would meet Kallie, and she would play a little song on her violin while they sat by the river. Ian didn’t dream about Bill anymore, but sometimes, when he looked into the swirling water of the stream, he thought about Bill. He thought about how stagnant his own life had been. He thought about recovery and change. And that was how Ian learned to live.

The House

            I grew up playing the Game like the others. The rules were simple: break apart the house next door. But you had to do it without getting caught. Legend says that Danny caught a boy called Grubbs knocking out the glass in the front window of the tired three-story. They say Grubbs’ cries were heard from as far away as Main and the Boulevard. They say that poor Grubbs was never seen again. Of course, if you ever asked one of the long-timers, they’d tell you they never heard of Grubbs, but the front window of the house is still busted.
The House still stands there, miraculously, on the corner of fourteenth. In those early days of my life, it became a game to make the house next door to the shelter look worse (easier said than done). The sickly yellow paint peeled in strips, and most of the windows were blocked by the backs of shelves or desks or something of their nature. The porch’s awning was being held by only one of its four support beams—two of them had fallen before anyone could remember, and we had promptly taken care of the third. On the side of the house that faced the shelter, there were burn marks—remnants of a house fire, perhaps. Wooden flats covered several of the upstairs windows. The short drive was infested with St. John’s Wart. If you looked close enough, you could see the gravel path—now buried in weeds—that led to the front door. The door was nicked from thrown rocks, and the screen door that should have been in place was long ago taken as a prize. It wasn’t altogether uninviting, though. From an outside perspective, you might say it was the appearance of the house that drew us there, like pirate adventurers to Spanish galleons. We could feel that the house was strangely cursed—though you’d only feel it as a kid—and it was just begging to be taken down.
            My gang at the shelter created the Game to destroy the house next door. Before that we had started wrecking the shelter, itself. When Danny started getting on our cases about it, we took to the surrounding residences. This is the only home you got now, so why are you wrecking it? he had said, but back then, we took pride in our delinquency. None of us had family except for a few who had more to gain by pretending they didn’t. We weren’t in the System; we were just on the streets like animals. When Danny found me, I’d been taking trash out of dumpsters. Lord only knows what happened to my parents. The shelter was Danny’s project. He found some money from a private donor and gave a home to us street urchins. We never questioned it; we just sort-of gathered there, under the radar. We were forgotten—leftovers swept under a rug. The shelter, no more than an abandoned building, protected its residents from the slum-stink of vomiting summer sewers. Some who came to the shelter tried desperately to get out. There were a lot of us, though, who were practically born to stay at the shelter. For us, the shelter was home.
            It used to be that I didn’t play with the other kids. I spent most of my time with Jango and his books. Jango was one of the long-timers. Most of the long-timers were just begging to talk to you about their lives before they had landed. Some of them had lost their cash in stocks or from gambling. Some had just fallen on rough luck. Jango never talked about his past, though. He told me once that the past was a relic, and that, like most relics, it has no practical value. He said Forgive the past. Then forget it. I never really learned where he came from, but I guess it never really mattered. What mattered to Jango, though, were his books. Most he had brought into the shelter, and used to set up our own little library. Most of us couldn’t read, so it wasn’t a big deal, but to Jango, literature was worth more than cash. He taught me Poe and Lovecraft—the horror stories I loved most. We didn’t go to school so most of the shelter kids were stupid, and couldn’t read. I’m still pretty stupid, probably.
            Danny encouraged me to start playing with the other kids. He said he didn’t like me hanging out with Jango so much. You should be around other kids, he said. It was with Danny’s encouragement, that I met Rat. Rat was short, even for our age, and wide—like a rat. He had dark hair and was the first of us to find a hair on his chin. I remembered Rat from meals because all the kids had to sit together. He was the first boy to call me Worm. Ey, Bookworm! Why come ya never git your face out them books? That your name, ennit? Worm? Danny said that I would be a good influence on Rat and the other boys, but I couldn’t guess why he would think that.
            I took to the name Worm well enough. We all got our names, and it made us something of a club and a family. I was Worm, Rat was Rat. There was Hawk and Pink and Fresh and Skinny. The gang—that’s the ones I just told you about—made me the plan-guy, since I was “educated.” I figured out the best way to steal fruit from the carts past twenty-third, and when the best time would be to go by the restaurants for free stuff (You would normally think it was the end of the day, but if you could catch them around noon, they started tossing the uneaten breakfast foods). I learned the best way to avoid police, and taught the others the paths they should take if they were ever caught so they wouldn’t lead them back to the shelter.
            The Game made its come-back in the summer after I became Worm. Whenever we walked outside we would sweat. Danny was making repairs to the shelter, so we were forced to stay in the sun to play, anyway. If we went too far from the shelter, though, our shoes would begin to squish with the garbage-bag leakage that was in abundance that summer. Instead, Rat told us the story of the House.
            It’s haunted, guys, totally. Ain’t no one been in there ever! I heard a witch used to live up there in the upstairs. She was the kind that ate kids, you know? That’s why we do what we do and break the house. We have to avenge Grubbs!
            The argument compelled us, so we struck up the nerve to play. We started small: tearing out loose nails in the porch; scratching crude remarks into the side of the house. Anything we took, we would collect in a corner behind the rusty push mower in the shed behind the shelter. Sometimes we would hide things in really obvious places around the shelter, itself, just to see if Danny would ever catch onto our scheme. It was Fresh and Skinny who yanked part of the railing off the porch and slid it under the Danny’s bed. For an entire week, we would systematically sneak into his room to see if he had noticed.
            About a month or so into the Game, Danny caught Hawk throwing chunks of broken asphalt at the upper windows. The rest of us hid, and not a soul came to his aid when we heard him screaming from the beating. Because Hawk got caught, Pink dropped out—she was only in it for Hawk from the start. The two of them ran off one night, and we didn’t see them again that summer.
The next week, Fresh got caught by the police for lifting mangoes near Uptown. Skinny showed up out of breath from having run all the alleyways it took to get back to our haven. Skinny and Fresh had apparently been lifting from the same shop consistently, so the shop-keep set up a trap. Fresh’s arm was gashed, and bled through the torn shirt he’d wrapped around it.
Got fenced by that rust-trap off the Ave. I live though, he said. When his cut started changing color, though, we showed him to Danny. He chewed us out for being reckless and sent Rat and me away. The next morning, Danny and Skinny were gone. Jango told me he’d taken Skinny to the hospital. Gangrene, he’d suggested. Or Tetanus. Whatever it was, Danny came back alone. We didn’t see Skinny again that summer. We never saw Fresh, either.
Rat insisted that we continued, even though it was just the two of us. Rat and Worm, he said. We’s a team, man. We gotta stick it through. Rat decided without me that we needed to step up our game. The witch must be vanished!
“Vanquished,” I corrected. He wanted to break into the house—a task that had not been achieved by any of the shelter kids before us. I knew that there couldn’t be a witch or anything in there—they weren’t real after all—but I still thought it would be a bad idea to try to break-in. Fresh was arrested, Hawk and Pink were probably living it up somewhere, and Skinny—well Skinny could be dead for all we knew. Ever since we lost the gang, I’d been worrying about what we did here. Whether it was right.
Ten year olds shouldn’t be having existential crises, Jango told me. Despite Danny’s request, I still came to chat with him every so often. You steal because you have to. You break things because you’re a volatile ragamuffin, and that’s what you do. Don’t worry so much about it.
I ended up asking Danny, as well. I didn’t mention the house or the Game, but I did ask about the other things. What happened to Skinny was unfortunate, but I’m sure that he’s fine. I was playing around with the helmet he left on the floor by his door. Danny was once in Iraq, but he left and came here. He had always said that there were better things to be done than killing people. We knew what he did was illegal, but even the long-timers kept quiet about it. You have to remember that what we’re doing out here—our home—is technically against the law. We live a rent-free life, and make the best of our condition by scavenging things from around us. We take care of each other the best we can, but when we can’t, we have to enter the System.
“And that’s what happened to Skinny? To Fresh?” I asked. We were in his room. The chunk of the house’s porch was still nestled beneath his bed, collecting dust now.
Yes. They’ll be put into the foster system, for sure. They’ll get lost among the hundreds of other children matched with families just looking for a tax cut. But you’re safe here. Remember that. Remember that we watch out for each other. Now go do some chores.
I told Rat I was in. Danny’s reasoning didn’t sit well with me for some reason, but part of it resonated—the part about looking out for each other. If Rat was going to fight a witch, then I was going to help him. The two of us spent days running surveillance on the house, and to our mutual surprise, we learned something. Every Sunday, early in the morning (Rat and I had started skipping Danny’s morning talks), a tall, skinny man with dark shades would enter the house with a large bag. He was always wearing a suit and tie, like some sort of secret agent. He had a solitary halo of white hair on his head, and he walked with a cane.
Every Sunday he would pull up in a rich black car to the curb beside the house—he never used the driveway—the car door would open, followed by the cane. Next, the man would swing his long spider-like legs out, and push himself out of the vehicle. He used the car like a guide rail while he walked to the truck, and pulled out a fabric bag. He always struggled with the weight of the bag as he dragged it up to the house. Rat and I always watched amazed as he pulled a key—seemingly from nowhere—quickly unlocked the house, and disappeared inside. The second Sunday I grabbed a watch and timed him. He spent exactly ten minutes inside the house. Without fail, the door would open at the ten minute mark, the cane would extend—spider-legs following—and he would magic the key to his hand and lock the door. He took the empty bag to the car, got back in, and slowly drove away. The whole process was no more than fifteen minutes in all.
She’s not a witch, she’s a vampire, man, Rat noted. And that’s her servant! He’s one too, that’s why he wears the shades, and comes so early. No sun! He’s probably bringing he jars of blood he collects every week! Rat spent the next couple days fashioning pointed stakes out of broken pieces of the house—We’ll finish ‘em with their own home. Serve ‘em right! Rat had me go out to scavenge for tossed garlic loaves from an Italian restaurant. The way we figured it, we had to get into the house while the door was unlocked, kill the witch or vampire or whatever was in there, and get back out, all within ten minutes. We were daring, though. We could do it.
Our planning and espionage became a game, itself, and for a while, the House remained undamaged. We kept our findings to ourselves, and formed a plan. The very next Sunday, we would sneak-in after Spider-legs. I would keep watch, and Rat would steal the jars of blood. The witch would die that week without her blood, and we would just sneak out before we got caught. The days dragged by, but when Sunday finally came, we were ready.
We were hiding in the bushes near the porch when Spider-legs pulled up. His legs dragged him up to full height, but instead of dragging himself to the trunk of the car, he just stood there, staring expectantly toward the House. I froze. I could hear Rat trying to hold his breath beside me; it came in little gasps. Had he caught us? We held our ground until Danny approached the man. Without a word, Danny walked to Spider-legs, handed him a bundle of cash, and they split—Spider-legs by car, and Danny, toward the House.
I looked at Rat to measure his reaction. His eyes were wide, and I could tell that he was rethinking his decision to go in today. What was Danny doing? Danny walked right by our bush and climbed up the steps to the house. We waited a minute after he went in before we emerged, breathless, from our cover.
No wonder he’s always getting on our asses about the House! Danny’s been working with the witch this whole time! He’s one of them! Rat was frantic.
“Vampire, remember? Now, come on! Are we going in, or what?” I surprised myself. I knew there wasn’t a witch or vampire inside, but I was still curious about going in.
Rat nodded to me, a signal to go ahead. We went right up to the door, and I checked that our coast was clear while Rat put his ear against the door. He slid the door open slowly and we walked in. It was poorly lit. Like I had imagined, most of the windows were blocked by large shelves. Had I the time, I would’ve liked to see what was buried under all of that dust, but we were on a tight schedule. We could hear floorboards above us creaking. That must have been where Danny was.  As Rat scurried quietly toward the stairs, I was suddenly struck dumb. I didn’t know why it never occurred to me before, but it didn’t matter whether witches or vampires are real or not—there was someone upstairs! There was actually someone living in this old house!
Pssst! Rat caught my attention, flailing his arms, and I was broken from my reverie. He gestured toward the upstairs, and I followed after him. A mirror hanging on the wall of the first landing made me start. We looked older in that mirror, as though it were a fun house. Rat pulled me up the stairs after him, and we stepped out into a wider, more open room. The furnishings of the room were all covered in sheets and shoved to the walls. Heavy purple curtains hung from bronze bars above the windows. Dust clung in splotches on the ceiling, and dangled from cobwebs. There was a clear path across the floor that showed the path Danny must have taken—it lead directly to a closed door across the room.
Rat started first, dead-set on getting to the door, but he wasn’t looking where he was going. I saw the fold in the rug a second before rat tripped on it. He landed with a dull thud on carpet, spraying up dust all around. I knew what would come next, so I ducked behind the curtains. The sudden light from behind the curtain made me strain my eyes, and made me temporarily blind. I heard the door open, though.
Who’s there? Rat? Rat, what in the hell— Danny’s voice came in angry whispers. I heard him lift Rat and shove him toward the stairs.
Wait, Danny, please. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it! Rat squeaked. I waited as I heard them go downstairs. As my eyes adjusted, I could see out the window. It must have been that one that Hawk had smashed, because there was a hole straight through it. I had never been as high as a second floor before. I never noticed how bad the roof was on the shelter. I recognized for the first time how tall the buildings around us were. I looked down and saw Danny throw Rat into the yard. Danny headed back into the House, and Rat looked directly up at the window where I was hiding. He waved his arms over his head and gave me the thumbs up before he ran back to the shelter.
And then I was alone with the dusty curtains. I slid down to the floor and waited for Danny to come back upstairs. Surely he would realize that Rat wouldn’t have gone into the House alone. When Danny came back through, though, he didn’t even look for me. I wiped my brow, and looked around. There was broken glass and a small chunk of asphalt beside my foot—the one that Hawk had thrown through the window, I guessed. I started playing with the shards of glass, carving shapes and letters into the wall beneath the window. It felt like an eternity had passed before Danny left the room, and I heard him run back downstairs. I peeked out the window—wiping away dust—so I could watch him make a beeline for the shelter.
Alone again, I sat there. My nervous excitement had turned into a paranoid fear, and I held my breath as though Danny had somehow managed to deceive me and was not in the shelter, but was actually standing in that room, waiting for me to reveal myself. I plucked up the courage to crawl out from beneath the curtain. Dust clung to me in sheets, giving me the appearance of some sort of ghost. I wiped myself off the best I could, and looked around. With Danny gone, now, I knew that I was free to look around the house as much as I wanted. Until next Sunday, the House was completely empty except for me, and whoever—whatever—was behind that door.
The door itself was without dust. Its paint was cracked and peeling like the outside of the House. There was some gold flaking that swirled in patterns around the edges. The metal doorknob looked cold and heavy. I wanted to see what was on those shelves downstairs. I wanted to peek beneath the sheets in this room, or check out the other side of the House, but the doorknob pulled me to it. Without thinking or worrying, I wrapped my fingers around the knob and turned. The door stuck a little, so I had to lean my weight against it. It yielded, and I stepped into the room. The floorboards creaked as I stepped inside.
The first thing I noticed was the smell of citrus, lemons, I thought. Then it was the floor—spotless. The room was bright, too; the first one with any electric lighting. There were no windows, no furniture hiding beneath sheets. The room was empty of dusty bookshelves and ugly purple curtains. Instead, there was a large bed, tucked in the corner. A four-poster, I think they were called. A large white dresser sat against one wall. It had a large polished mirror above it that made the room seem twice as large as it actually was. Everything in this room was so pristine and clean—it was begging to be destroyed. The white surfaces asked to be marked or scraped; they begged for dust so that they could match the rest of the House.
There was another door that was open beside the dresser; I could hear the sounds of someone moving beyond that door. I took another step into the room, trailing dust and cobweb behind me. A few more steps brought me to the door. Inside, there was a small kitchenette. An old woman was shambling around, putting aluminum cans on shelves. A kettle shook with heat on a burner. She was humming. The melody was one I did not recognize, but it made me sad. I leaned in a bit more so that I could hear it better; as I did so, a floorboard creaked underneath me. Startled, the woman looked back at me. Her face sagged with age, but her eyes were wide with surprise. She looked at me standing there—a juvenile trespasser—and opened her mouth, as if to say something. Some sounds—words maybe, but not fully formed—came from her lips, but I was in a panic. I jumped backwards, running into the dresser, and fell. Something crashed to the floor with a twinkling shatter. A frame of some sort—its glass sliced my hand open.
I pulled myself up, using the dresser, leaving a smear of red on its wooden surface. The woman made another sound as she came around the door, but I was already gone. I bolted through the open door and back into the dirty, dusty House. I stumbled down the stairs, and busted through the front door. For a second, I thought I should turn back to lock it, but it was too late, and I was too far gone.
I ducked in the back door of the shelter and tried to catch my breath. I’d been caught. That was it. Whoever this woman was, she would tell Danny, and then I would get in trouble, and he would send me away. Yes, that’s what he was going to do. In my startled paranoia, I snuck my way back to the bunks where we slept, but bumped into Jango.
Spy games now? He was holding a book as he usually was—this one small and green. I tried to find words, but I was too shaken to think. I was dizzy and feeling nauseous as well. What happened to your hand? he asked.
I looked at my hand, blood still gushing from the wound. “I—I—I don’t—know.” I began to cry. I hadn’t cried in so long. I cried from the pain of the cut, as Jango took me to wash it up. The pain became frustration—at myself for falling, for being caught; for getting scared and running away. It became frustration at Rat for running away, at Danny for being secretive and all the other kids for leaving me here alone. I became angry at my parents, wherever they were, for leaving me lonely and disconnected.
And then the blood was gone, washed away, and my tears stopped. We wrapped up my hand in strips of a torn shirt, and Jango told me to be more careful. When Rat would come in later to ask me about what happened, I didn’t respond. He didn’t say anything about Danny chastising him. Instead, he bullied me to tell him about the room. When he pressured me, I just told him it was books, loads of dusty old books. I don’t know why I lied, but I wanted to keep the woman secret for some reason—maybe to hide my shame. I was a coward, after all. A worm.
The next week, Danny came to talk to me. I had developed a cough, and was sitting in bed, sick. I hadn’t gone out since the incident, and Rat had stopped coming to see me. I drew pictures on weathered sheets of paper and flipped through books that Jango lent me. When Danny came into the room, I knew it was because he knew.
You were with Rat last week, weren’t you?
I nodded.
You broke a picture frame.
I nodded. I was in trouble, of course.
The woman in that house is a dear friend of mine, did you know that? She gives us money to keep the shelter running.
I shook my head.
Is your hand okay?
I raised my eyebrow, confused.
She said you cut your hand. There was blood on her dresser?
“I’ll clean it up, Danny. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.”
It’s fine. It’s cleaned up. But your hand, Danny reached out to take my hand. She asked about your hand. The hand in question had never stopped stinging. Half of the time it felt like it was on fire, other times it was numb and cold. Today, I had forgotten about it and it laid beside me limp and useless, still wrapped in that same torn shirt. Danny lifted my arm. The bandage crunched with dried blood as he unwrapped it.
I was suddenly hit with a sickly sweet smell. I looked over and saw that my hand had turned a blackish-green color. Danny had to rip the shirt away to remove it from the wound, but some of the fibers stayed attached, anyway. Some pus squirted out in spots where it hadn’t yet healed. Danny looked frightened. It felt weird to see him touching my hand, even though I couldn’t feel his fingers against mine. The cut ran deep from the space between my thumb and pointer across to where my palm met my wrist.
Shit, Danny swore. He reached his arm under my legs and lifted me out of the bed. Come on. We gotta get this cleaned up. He tried to get me to my legs, but I fell. I hadn’t realized how dizzy I was until he tried to get me to walk. My vision got really dark and blurry suddenly, and I felt like I needed to throw up.
The next few hours of my life are still foggy to me this day. I remember snatches of consciousness. I remember seeing that white room again, and hot water being poured on my hand. I remember that woman, closer this time. Her old hazel eyes looked into mine. I remember looking for a bit of life in them, and—finding it—passing out again. I remember a different white room, this time colder, more people. It was a hospital. I had never been in one before. There was a tube running into my arm which was cuffed to the bed by a strip of Velcro. Danny had put me in the hospital.

I spent about a week in recovery. During that time, several people came in to talk to me. They talked about foster care, and medicine. They asked about where I came from, and how I got here. They made me pick a real name, Alex, and told me I’d be moving in with a family when I left. The first time they let me walk, I went directly to the window. I looked out at all the people milling about. Sick, cured, visitors, family—just people being people. I looked at my bandaged hand, soon to be better, and thought that I would soon be one of them. Yes—one of them.