2007/06/15に発売された米エスクァイア・マガジン7月号に掲載されているスティーヴン・キングの新作"The Gingerbread Girl"の一部がWEB上で公開されていました。
The Gingerbread Girl: An Excerpt
After the baby died, Emily took up running. At first it was just
down to the end of the driveway, where she would stand bent over with
her hands clutching her legs just above the knees, then to the end of
the block, then all the way to Kozy's Qwik-Pik at the bottom of the
hill. There she would pick up bread or margarine, maybe a Ho Ho or a
Ring Ding if she could think of nothing else. At first she only walked
back, but later she ran that way, too. Eventually she gave up the snack
foods. It was surprisingly hard to do. She hadn't realized that sugar
eased grief. Or maybe the snacks had become a fetish. Either way, in
the end the Ho Hos had to go go. And did. Running was enough. Henry
called the running a fetish, and she supposed he was right.
"What does Dr. Steiner say about it?" he asked.
"Dr. Steiner says run your ass off, get those endorphins going." She
hadn't mentioned the running to Susan Steiner, hadn't even seen her
since Amy's funeral. "She says she'll put it on a prescription pad, if
you want."
Emily had always been able to bluff Henry. Even after Amy died. We can have another one,
she had said, sitting beside him on the bed as he lay there with his
ankles crossed and tears streaming down the sides of his face.
It eased him and that was good, but there was never going to be
another baby, with the attendant risk of finding said infant gray and
still in its crib. Never again the fruitless CPR, or the screaming 911
call with the operator saying Lower your voice, ma'am, I can't understand you.
But Henry didn't need to know that, and she was willing to comfort him,
at least at the start. She believed that comfort, not bread, was the
staff of life. Maybe eventually she would be able to find some for
herself. In the meantime, she had produced a defective baby. That was
the point. She would not risk another.
Then she started getting headaches. Real blinders. So she did
go to a doctor, but it was Dr. Mendez, their general practitioner, not
Susan Steiner. Mendez gave her a prescription for some stuff called
Zomig. She took the bus to the family practice where Mendez hung out,
then ran to the drugstore to get the scrip filled. After that she
jogged home -- it was two miles -- and by the time she got there, she
had what felt like a steel fork planted high up in her side, between
the top of her ribs and her armpit. She didn't let it concern her. That
was pain that would go away. Besides, she was exhausted and felt as if
she could sleep for a while.
She did -- all afternoon. On the same bed where Amy had been made
and Henry had cried. When she woke up, she could see ghostly circles
floating in the air, a sure sign that she was getting one of what she
liked to call Em's Famous Headaches. She took one of her new pills, and
to her surprise -- almost shock -- the headache turned tail and slunk
away. First to the back of her head, then gone. She thought there ought
to be a pill like that for the death of a child.
She thought she needed to explore the limits of her endurance, and
she suspected the exploration would be a long one. There was a JuCo
with a cinder track not too far from the house. She began to drive over
there in the early mornings just after Henry left for work. Henry
didn't understand the running. Jogging, sure -- lots of women jogged.
Keep those extra four pounds off the old fanny, keep those extra two
inches off the old waistline. But Em didn't have an extra four pounds
on her backside, and besides, jogging was no longer enough. She had to
run, and fast. Only fast running would do.
She parked at the track and ran until she could run no more, until
her sleeveless FSU sweatshirt was dark with sweat down the front and
back and she was shambling and sometimes puking with exhaustion.
Henry found out. Someone saw her there, running all by herself at
eight in the morning, and told him. They had a discussion about it. The
discussion escalated into a marriage-ending argument.
"It's a hobby," she said.
"Jodi Anderson said you ran until you fell down. She was afraid
you'd had a heart attack. That's not a hobby, Em. Not even a fetish.
It's an obsession."
And he looked at her reproachfully. It would be a little while yet
before she picked up the book and threw it at him, but that was what
really tore it. That reproachful look. She could no longer stand it.
Given his rather long face, it was like having a sheep in the house. I married a Dorset gray, she thought, and now it's just baa-baa-baa, all day long.
But she tried one more time to be reasonable about something she
knew in her heart had no reasonable core. There was magical thinking;
there was also magical doing. Running, for instance.
"Marathoners run until they fall down," she said.
"Are you planning to run in a marathon?"
"Maybe." But she looked away. Out the window, at the driveway. The
driveway called her. The driveway led to the sidewalk, and the sidewalk
led to the world.
"No," he said. "You're not going to run in a marathon. You have no plans to run in a marathon."
It occurred to her -- with that sense of brilliant revelation the
obvious can bring -- that this was the essence of Henry, the fucking apotheosis
of Henry. During the six years of their marriage he had always been
perfectly aware of what she was thinking, feeling, planning.
I comforted you, she thought -- not furious yet but beginning to be furious. You lay there on the bed, leaking, and I comforted you.
"The running is a classic psychological response to the pain you
feel," he was saying in that same earnest way. "It's called avoidance.
But, honey, if you don't feel your pain, you'll never be able to -- "
That's when she grabbed the object nearest at hand, which happened to be a paperback copy of The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
This was a book she had tried and rejected, but Henry had picked it up
and was now about three quarters of the way through, judging from the
bookmark. He even has the reading tastes of a Dorset gray, she
thought, and hucked it at him. It struck him on the shoulder. He stared
at her with wide, shocked eyes, then grabbed at her. Probably just to
hug her, but who knew? Who really knew anything?
If he had grabbed a moment earlier, he might have caught her by the
arm or the wrist or maybe just the back of her T-shirt. But that moment
of shock undid him. He missed, and she was running, slowing only to
snatch her fanny pack off the table by the front door. Down the
driveway, to the sidewalk. Then down the hill, where she had briefly
pushed a pram with other mothers who now shunned her. This time she had
no intention of stopping or even slowing. Dressed only in shorts,
sneakers, and a T-shirt reading SAVE THE CHEERLEADER, Emily ran out
into the world. She put her fanny pack around her waist and snapped the
catch as she pelted down the hill. And the feeling?
Exhilaration. Pure pow.
She ran downtown (two miles, twenty-two minutes), not even stopping
when the light was against her; when that happened, she jogged in
place. A couple of boys in a top-down Mustang -- it was just getting to
be top-down weather -- passed her at the corner of Main and Eastern.
One whistled. Em gave him the finger. He laughed and applauded as the
Mustang accelerated down Main.
She didn't have much cash, but she had a pair of credit cards. The
American Express was the prize, because with it she could get
traveler's checks.
She realized she wasn't going home, not for a while. And when the
realization caused a feeling of relief -- maybe even fugitive
excitement -- instead of sorrow, she suspected this was not a temporary
thing.
She went into the Morris Hotel to use the phone, then decided on the
spur of the moment to take a room. Did they have anything for just the
one night? They did. She gave the desk clerk her AmEx card.
"It doesn't look like you'll need a bellman," the clerk said, taking in her shorts and T-shirt.
"I left in a hurry."
"I see." Spoken in the tone of voice that said he didn't see at all.
She took the key he slid to her and hurried across the wide lobby to
the elevators, restraining the urge to run.
You sound like you might be crying.
She wanted to buy some clothes -- a couple of skirts, a couple of
shirts, two pairs of jeans, another pair of shorts -- but before
shopping she had calls to make: one to Henry and one to her father. Her
father was in Tallahassee. She decided she had better call him first.
She couldn't recall the number of his office phone in the motor pool
but had his cell-phone number memorized. He answered on the first ring.
She could hear engines revving in the background.
"Em! How are you?"
That should have been a complex question, but wasn't. "I'm fine, Dad. But I'm in the Morris Hotel. I guess I've left Henry."
"Permanently or just a kind of trial balloon?" He didn't sound
surprised -- he took things in stride; she loved that about him -- but
the sound of the revving motors first faded, then disappeared. She
imagined him going into his office, closing the door, perhaps picking
up the picture of her that stood on his cluttered desk.
"Can't say yet. Right now it doesn't look too good."
"What was it about?"
"Running."
"Running?"
She sighed. "Not really. You know how sometimes a thing is about something else? Or a whole bunch of something elses?"
"The baby." Her father had not called her Amy since the crib death. Now it was always just the baby.
"And the way I'm handling it. Which is not the way Henry wants me
to. It occurred to me that I'd like to handle things in my own way."
"Henry's a good man," her father said, "but he has a way of seeing things. No doubt."
She waited.
"What can I do?"
She told him. He agreed. She knew he would, but not until he heard
her all the way out. The hearing out was the most important part, and
Rusty Jackson was good at it. He hadn't risen from one of three
mechanics in the motor pool to maybe one of the four most important
people at the Tallahassee campus (and she hadn't heard that from him;
he'd never say something like that to her or anyone else) by not
listening.
"I'll send Mariette in to clean the house," he said.
"Dad, you don't need to do that. I can clean."
"I want to," he said. "A total top-to-bottom is overdue. Damn place
has been closed up for almost a year. I don't get down to Vermillion
much since your mother died. Seems like I can always find some more to
do up here."
Em's mother was no longer Debra to him, either. Since the funeral (ovarian cancer), she was just your mother.
Em almost said, Are you sure you don't mind this? but that was the kind of thing you said when a stranger offered to do you a favor. Or a different kind of father.
"You going there to run?" he asked. She could hear a smile in his
voice. "There's plenty of beach to run on, and a good long stretch of
road, too. As you well know. And you won't have to elbow people out of
your way. Between now and October, Vermillion is as quiet as it ever
gets."
"I'm going there to think. And -- I guess -- to finish mourning."
"That's all right, then," he said. "Want me to book your flight?"
"I can do that."
"Sure you can. Emmy, are you okay?"
"Yes," she said.
"You sound like you might be crying."
"A little bit," she said, and wiped her face. "It all happened very fast." Like Amy's death,Leave quietly, don't slam the door, Em's own mother often said when Em was a teenager. she could have added. She had done it like a little lady; never a peep from the baby monitor.
"Henry won't come there to the hotel and bother you, will he?"
She heard a faint, delicate hesitation before he chose bother,
and smiled in spite of her tears, which had pretty well run their
course, anyway. "If you're asking if he's going to come and beat me
up...that's not his style."
"A man sometimes finds a different style when his wife up and leaves him -- just takes off running."
"Not Henry," she said. "He's not a man to cause trouble."
"You sure you don't want to come to Tallahassee first?"
She hesitated. Part of her did, but --
"I need a little time on my own. Before anything else." And she
repeated, "All this happened very fast." Although she suspected it had
been building for quite some time. It might even have been in the DNA
of the marriage.
"All right. Love you, Emmy."
"Love you, too, Dad. Thank you." She swallowed. "So much."
HENRY DIDN'T CAUSE TROUBLE. Henry didn't even ask where she was
calling from. Henry said, "Maybe you're not the only one who needs a
little time apart. Maybe this is for the best."
She resisted an urge -- it struck her as both normal and absurd --
to thank him. Silence seemed like the best option. What he said next
made her glad she'd chosen it.
"Who'd you call for help? The Motor-Pool King?"
This time the urge she resisted was to ask if he'd called his mother yet. Tit for tat never solved anything.
She said -- evenly, she hoped: "I'm going to Vermillion Key. My dad's place there."
"The conch shack." She could almost hear him sniff. Like Ho Hos and
Twinkies, houses with only three rooms and no garage were not a part of
Henry's belief system.
Em said, "I'll call you when I get there."
A long silence. She imagined him in the kitchen, head leaning
against the wall, hand gripping the handset of the phone tight enough
to turn his knuckles white, fighting to reject anger. Because of the
six mostly good years they'd had together. She hoped he would make it.
If that was indeed what was going on.
When he spoke next, he sounded calm but tired out. "Got your credit cards?"
"Yes. And I won't overuse them. But I want my half of -- " She broke
off, biting her lip. She had almost called their dead child the baby, and that wasn't right. Maybe it was for her father, but not for her. She started again.
"My half of Amy's college money," she said. "I don't suppose there's much, but -- "
"There's more than you think," he said. He was starting to sound
upset again. They had begun the fund not when Amy was born, or even
when Em got pregnant, but when they first started trying. Trying had
been a four-year process, and by the time Emily finally kindled, they
were talking about fertility treatments. Or adoption. "Those
investments weren't just good, they were blessed by heaven --
especially the software stocks. Mort got us in at the right time and
out at the absolute golden moment. Emmy, you don't want to take the
eggs out of that nest."
There he was again, telling her what she wanted to do.
"I'll give you an address as soon as I have one," she said. "Do
whatever you want with your half, but make mine a cashier's check."
"Still running," he said, and although that professorial,
observational tone made her wish he was here so she could throw another
book at him -- a hardcover this time -- she held her silence.
At last he sighed. "Listen, Em, I'm going to clear out of here for a
few hours. Come on in and get your clothes or your whatever. And I'll
leave some cash for you on the dresser."
For a moment she was tempted; then it occurred to her that leaving
money on the dresser was what men did when they went to whores.
"No," she said. "I want to start fresh."
"Em." There was a long pause. She guessed he was struggling with his
emotions, and the thought of it caused her own eyes to blur over again.
"Is this the end of us, kiddo?"
"I don't know," she said, working to keep her own voice straight. "Too soon to tell."
"If I had to guess," he said, "I'd guess yes. Today proves two things. One is that a healthy woman can run a long way."
"I'll call you," she said.
"The other is that living babies are glue when it comes to marriage. Dead ones are acid."
That hurt more than anything else he might have said, because it
reduced Amy to an ugly metaphor. Em couldn't do that. She didn't think
she'd ever be able to do that. "I'll call you," she said, and hung up.
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