The Crepuscular Life of Elizabeth Beck

Introduction

There were no words. Only sound.

Squeaks. Scratches. Scuffles.

A cover of dark infused each and every nook, cranny, and corner with an inky fog.

She’d only felt this level of pitch—both in frequency and progressing, suffuse blackness—once before. Only once before, when someone had died. She knew this, intimately; but everything else about the memory was obscured.

Maybe it was because there was so much noise. You couldn’t think with this level of clamor.

Or could you? Perhaps if you focused.

Focus.

Clearer, clearer, clearer now. Coming through, coming through, coming through.

I: Elizabeth

Elizabeth Arlene Beck was born on October 28th under a brilliant harvest moon. Indeed, Neil Young’s “Harvest” was playing on the stereo the very moment of her birth, a wild and frenetic home delivery, when labor came on too fast for Elizabeth’s mother.

Wrapped in a curly halo of downy black tendrils, Elizabeth was snuggled into a dish towel swaddle that night, loved immensely.

Elizabeth grew, like all babies do, into a child. Like most children, she loved to play, and be free and happy doing whatever she liked. Dad left after The Fight, and so Mom encouraged Elizabeth to play, please play, I have things to do.

Elizabeth flew all over the house, flapping pasted wings noiselessly up and down, as she stealthily passed over the brown couch, through the tunneled hall, only to perch atop the kitchen table. Mom never noticed.

When Elizabeth had to go to school, she felt the wind knocked out of her for some time. Years, in fact.

First, second, and third grades all came and went in a flutter of peanut butters and jellies, scraped knees, and some rather concerned letters sent home that perhaps Elizabeth could stop hosting small animals and their assorted appendages in her desk? Until slowly, slowly, like an exhale drawn out over eons, she thought that maybe there was actually something wrong with her.

It felt difficult to even breathe—through the hallways, tying the shoes, sharpening the pencils (with the SHARPENER, NOT YOUR TEETH)—difficult to really feel, or see, or hear anything like she’d used to.

But then, she met Michael.

II: Michael

Michael was just walking. Not schlepping, or sidestepping, or shuffling. Just plain walking.

Michael liked plain things. He liked his pleated chino pants. He liked their tawny color and their name, he’d seen on the tag at the store: “Plain Pellet.”

He liked his plain name. Michael. Not “Mike.” Never, ever “Mikey.”

He enjoyed the plain vanilla yogurt his mom packed in his Waltons lunchbox. Why would anyone want a glob of fruit at the bottom of the container?

He was relieved when they’d moved that his mom had chosen a plain, tan brick bi-level house. On a cul-de-sac, but he could forgive that bit, because the house already felt like home.

They were going to paint his room an even softer shade of white soon. Bob told him he could choose any color he wanted—even have a friend from work come in and do a mural! He’d even buy him a waterbed to take the sting out of the move! (This is what was so great about Mom. He could already see her horrified face as Bob was talking—it would just take some time for Bob to really “get” Michael, she said, but please keep giving him chances.)

And so, when he was at school, he walked. Plain walked.

Didn’t do any of that skipping or useless twirling about. Walking was safe. Walking was the prescribed way to walk down a hallway without any threat of detention.

But one Tuesday, another kid spilled their tray of spaghetti all down his chinos. So as he was walking—dejectedly, quietly contemplating how much borax they had at home—he was looking not, in the customary upright position, but at his feet.

He walked directly into Elizabeth Beck.

III: Elizabeth

Dear Michael,

I am very sorry for adding stains to your pants. I don’t usually run in puddles anymore, but they were too tempting. Mom said we will have to buy you new ones.

PS - I really liked the color of your pants. The original color, I mean. They’re not like the normal pants you can get at Zayre’s.

IV: Michael

Elizabeth,

It’s all right. They were already stained, anyway.

Your mom doesn’t have to buy me new pants. My mom said it was “refreshing” to see dirt on them.

PS - We don’t shop at Zayre’s.

V: Elizabeth

There was something about Michael.

She couldn’t put her finger on why he intrigued her so much. School had been so uninteresting and confining. But now that Michael was here, it wasn’t.

Maybe it was because he was uninteresting himself. All these interesting people came in and the school made them uninteresting. He came in that way. He already seemed confined.

But she liked that the school hadn’t done it to him. He’d done it himself, apparently.

After Mom forced her to send the letter, she decided not to stop at one. She put notes—on plain, clean, lined paper, because she thought he’d like that best—unfolded into his locker. He replied to every fifth note. And after the first reply, they were all the same: Thanks for writing. I have to do homework, now.

She thought that maybe he thought she was intriguing, too.

VI: Michael

Elizabeth wouldn’t leave him alone.

An apology was polite. He instinctively knew this; after all, hadn’t he always sent a thank you note to each person after receiving a birthday present? That’s why he was allowed to buy the cream-colored stationery set with his very own monogram. You had to write a thank you note even if your present was garbage.

The second letter seemed a little too much.

By the third, he was beside himself. Is this how people made friends?

After the fifth, he knew he had to reply. Thanks for writing. I have to do homework, now.

Bob started teasing him when he came in the door from school, holding a new letter. He’d get a soft punch on the arm and a look that made him think maybe Bob wouldn’t ever get him, after all.

But the letters didn’t stop. He started making up his replies all at once, just for efficiency’s sake.

Her letters weren’t ever the same. Sometimes they were poetic. He didn’t know much about poetry, but she would send little rhymes and verses about all sorts of random things.

She asked him a lot of questions. What was a southerly wind? What does a spool of yarn feel like? Why are rats’ skulls shaped that way? Did he know?

He didn’t know; the answers or why she persisted in asking such useless questions.

Holding the 37th letter in his hand one evening, he realized, with a twist in the stomach, that he’d come to look forward to the letters. He didn’t know why she kept writing to him. But he liked the knowingness of routine, that there it would be, in his locker, every day—on a clean sheet of lined paper, no less.

He hadn’t been enjoying his weekends lately; or rather, he’d actually been anticipating Mondays with a burst of excitement.

After the 40th, he wrote something new:

Would you like to come over this weekend? We have a new house.

PS - It’s on a cul-de-sac.

VII: Dead End

Everyone knows that “cul-de-sac” is really just a fancy way to say “dead end street.” It has been for hundreds of years.

Michael certainly knew this.

Elizabeth said she knew what “cul” meant in French.

VIII: The Incident

Elizabeth had never been so happy in her life.

Being home, and free, of course, made her happy, but she really felt like now she had a friend.

She’d put on her favorite “outing” clothes: the orange and brown sweater she thought Michael should like, with the ruffle hem in the back, fanned over her stirrup pants like the brilliant plumage she thought a first play date warranted.

She laced her sneakers, waved to Mom, and was off on her bike at exactly 9:15 a.m. that Saturday.

She spread her arms wide as she flew down the hill into town, up the side streets, past the post office, and eventually, pumping her legs like mad, made it to Michael’s new bi-level brick house.

His mom was really a very understanding person; she could tell just from looking at her. She loved that. And Bob was all right—he made Michael turn a shade of red she’d never seen on a face before, and she loved that, too.

She loved the sounds of his house. The soft whirring of laundry; the rustling squish as socked feet moved across the plush beige carpet. She thought this must be what true cleanliness sounded like. It sounded nothing like her house.

Elizabeth liked seeing the real stationery box on the crisp white desk that had supported their writing. She liked seeing the drawer where Michael had kept all her letters—in a file folder, no less.

Out the window, though, she saw kids playing outside. Did Michael have a bike?

He didn’t, but he had rollerblades that a distant relative mailed him for his last birthday. Miraculously, they still fit—of course he’d never taken them out of the box.

If anyone could get him to try them out, it was Elizabeth.

Michael’s mom flushed with pride as he scooted out of his room, hunched halfway over, rollerblades tightly secured, desperately trying to make it look like this was something he may do any given Saturday.

And down the street they went. Elizabeth on her bike; Michael on the rollerblades.

He’d never known the feeling of near-disaster at every moment could be so thrilling. On his own, it wasn’t, of course—it was a certain disaster. But with Elizabeth, it felt like those dreams where you’re flying… but not the ones where you crash and wake up with a jolt in bed. Just plain flying. He decided he’d risk it and look away from his feet, to Elizabeth.

It was then he noticed the Ford Escort driving at more than 20 miles an hour into the cul-de-sac.

And suddenly, Elizabeth pushed him out of the road and into the grass.

Metallic screeching. Tires squealing. A neighbor’s scream.

Blackness.

IX: The Barn Owl

Michael hated the new house. His mom was probably right; it was better to have a fresh start, again. A new fresh start.

But now they were out in the country—everything was just so muddy, all the time. The house was big, with hardwood floors and drafty windows. Bob said it was a “fixer upper.” There were whitewashed out buildings everywhere; maybe Michael would like to get a dog or some animals?

He didn’t want a dog. He didn’t want a fresh start. He didn’t want a new school.

He’d thrown the rollerblades into the fireplace the first night they got there. And then found their metal carcasses the next morning and cried.

One evening, Bob decided to take him on a tour of “the new homestead.” Really see all the barns and sheds and lean-to’s and get the lay of the land.

There was nothing better to do in his horribly yellow papered room, and so he acquiesced.

Coming into the fifth building, that certainly looked like a barn, even if Bob said it was a crib, he heard a rustling sound above him.

A chilling screech alerted him to duck. Michael felt feathers brush his skin as the creature swooped—an owl.

Looking up, he saw two black eyes looking at him from the rafters, like he was the most interesting person in the world.