I
Carrie loved parks and Joel hated them and that was precisely why Carrie knew he must have had bad news. It wasn’t their anniversary or her birthday or any other special day. Simple deductive reasoning made it clear. He was probably breaking up with her; maybe he had been cheating and wanted to confess. No matter what the details, the general story would be the same: boy who feels bad and takes unsuspecting girl to her happy place to soften blow of bad news.
On top of everything, they were walking in not just any park, but Carrie’s favorite. Known for its historic bridges, it was a regular field day for a civil engineering student such as herself. There were rusting metal truss bridges with sleek lines that reminded her of the kinds of things she was asked to dream up for her classes. But there was also a beautiful, old, brick arch bridge. Maybe it was not the most practical style for the kinds of bridges Carrie would end up designing once she graduated and got a job out in the real world, but in the secluded world of the park, it was a piece of art that spoke to something deep inside her.
She sighed and Joel asked if she was tired.
When she shook her head, he still asked, “Why don’t we find a bench?” As if he hadn’t needed her to respond.
A park ranger on a pretty, white horse trotted past them and tipped his hat to Carrie. On the back of his jacket, across the shoulders, were stitched, big, red letters that spelled out ‘RANGER JACK’. Carrie watched the man and his horse disappear over one of the bridges and thought of Mrs. Peterman. Her husband’s name was Jack.
Mrs. Peterman had been the art teacher at Lincoln Elementary School when Carrie was a student there. Once a week, every year, from first grade through fifth, Carrie and her classmates marched single file down the hall to the art room as Mrs. Peterman watched with a cartoony grin from the doorway. The school swore this weekly digression from math, history, and science was guaranteed to instill an appreciation for the arts in the youngsters. But Mrs. Peterman wasn’t there to watch children get acrylic paint all over themselves and sneak bites of Model Magic. She was there to sow the seeds for existential crises that would come to fruition twenty or thirty years down the line.
Or, that was Carrie’s theory, anyway.
When Carrie was in fifth grade, Mrs. Peterman got divorced from Jack and changed her name to Miss Skeltson, explaining that it had been her name before she became Mrs. Peterman. In all her eleven-year-old wisdom, Carrie couldn’t understand why anybody would pick the name Skeltson over the name Peterman. Skeltson felt all wrinkly and awkward in your mouth, but Peterman was easy to say and red lines didn’t pop up under it when you typed it into the computer and you didn’t have to spell it for people.
Every time a boy had broken up with her, Carrie’s mind wandered back to that day in fifth grade; how she rushed home from school and announced breathlessly to her mother that Mrs. Peterman was now Miss Skeltson because Jack Peterman didn’t love her anymore. But it was still okay to call her Mrs. Peterman if you were a fifth grader, so Carrie was going to keep calling her Mrs. Peterman and Mom could, too. Even now, the woman remained Mrs. Peterman in Carrie’s mind.
The memory’s connection to break ups was the fault of Carrie’s mother, a graying woman who had gotten married late in life, only had one child, and therefore had to put all of her hopes and dreams of successful motherhood into teaching Carrie as much as she possibly could. Her response to Carrie’s announcement was to ask Carrie to think about all the ways Mrs. Peterman’s life was about to chance. How she would have to break habits she’d had for twenty years. And, unlike how Carrie and her mother had had each other to deal with the aftermath of Carrie’s father walking out, Mrs. Peterman, having no children, was going to go through all of it alone. Meanwhile, she hadn’t even asked her fifth graders to try and remember her new name.
“That’s pure kindness,” Carrie’s mother said. “Remember that if you ever get your heart broken. Remember how much Mrs. Peterman’s kindness meant to you.”
When they reached a bench and sat down, Joel twiddled his thumbs. Maybe he wasn’t the world’s biggest chatterbox, but this was strange, even for him.
Finally, Carrie said, “Out with it.”
She tried to say it with kindness because after all, Joel probably hadn’t cheated. Carrie regretted even considering it. There wasn’t a malicious bone in his body. And even if he did cheat, it was only once, probably no more than a kiss. Maybe he was scared to tell her; scared of how she would react.
She would dump him, of course. That’s what you do with cheats. Those were the two things Mom had taught her: remember Mrs. Peterman’s kindness, and dump cheats because they’ll always be cheats.
II
Mrs. Peterman didn’t inspire existential crises because she got divorced. No, the seeds were sown long before fifth grade. It started in first grade during the last art class of October, the class closest to Halloween. It was always a special day for the students of Lincoln Elementary because on that day, and on that day only, the whole world of art supplies contained in Mrs. Peterman’s classroom was theirs for the using. At the beginning of class, Mrs. Peterman would walk around the room and lay a single sheet of shiny, white watercolor paper in front of each student. Their task was simple; draw a monster.
After thirty minutes of unbridled artistic creation, Mrs. Peterman would clap her hands three times and say, “Okay class. We have about ten minutes left. I’d like you to flip over your piece of paper, and, in however many words you feel necessary, please tell me why your monster is a monster.”
They repeated this ritual every October for five years. Each year, Mrs. Peterman would collect all the monsters and then at the end of fifth grade she gave each student back their stack bound with twine. Carrie still had her stack of monsters; she had continued adding to it long past fifth grade. There was a kind of therapy in staring into eyes of that which scared you and knowing a version of it existed that was yours to do with as you wished. Sometimes, she dreamed of setting the pages free of their twine binding only to throw them each into the fire one by one.
Presently, Carrie stared into Joel’s eyes trying to ignore his leg bouncing up and down. When he couldn’t take her gaze any longer, he muttered, “I’m sorry. I’m nervous. I don’t know how to say it.”
I don’t know how to say it. That was what Carrie had written in crooked crayon letters on the back of her third-grade monster. The previous two years she had drawn big-headed aliens with red eyes and flaming one-eyed ghosts. But that year, she drew a house. She still gave it scary eyes and she turned the door into a red, toothy mouth that ate anyone who dared to go inside. It had been her vision of the home her father now lived in. He had moved away a few months before with a woman named Josie who smelled like Mommy’s wine glass, had red hair, and was only twenty-three. The house was in Florida, and Mommy said it didn’t ever snow there, which meant Santa Claus didn’t ever come. It was too warm for the reindeer. Mommy said that’s why Daddy hadn’t invited Carrie to come visit for Christmas, even though he had promised before he left. He had found out that if Carrie was in Florida she would miss out on her presents from Santa and he couldn’t allow that to happen on his account.
Carrie didn’t tell her mother that she had stopped believing in Santa Claus and his jolly red coat four months earlier. Three days after Josie took Daddy away, to be exact. Carrie didn’t have the heart to say it. Mommy seemed to really need Santa to be real that year.
Finally, Joel said, “You know how I went to visit my parents last month?”
Carrie nodded.
“Well, I ran into my old girlfriend from high school, Paula. And it was kind of a shock to the system. I mean she really hasn’t changed at all. And it made me realize how much I’ve changed since then. How much I’ve changed even just since meeting you. How much I’ve grown. And it got me thinking.”
Monsters don’t start as people. They begin as places and things, haunted houses with toothy doors and big-headed aliens. But in Carrie’s experience, everyone reaches a point in their life when the monsters become people. The first time Carrie drew a real person as her monster was the October when she was thirteen. She drew the little baby girl in a red onesie from the photography that Josie had sent in the mail. The little girl who someday would say ‘Dada’ for the first time and it would be to Carrie’s father, who Carrie now called Ken.
When she was sixteen, Carrie drew the boy from her geometry class. The boy that called her pretty and never directly called her fat, but then asked borderline-anorexic Stacy Turner to the dance instead of her. That was the winter that Carrie tried out a sugar-free diet.
Carrie looked at Joel, not sure what to say. He had never once insinuated that Carrie was overweight and she was up two dress sizes from the October when she was sixteen. Maybe that was why she had thought she could trust him. Maybe that was why it felt so important right then to get through this with poise. No tears, no shouting, no asking why. Just poise. Dignity. The dignity she had lacked when Stacy Turner showed up to the homecoming dance in a glittery red dress and was crowned homecoming queen.
Joel looked down at his hands. The movement sent a few of his brown curls down like a curtain for his forehead. Instinctively, Carrie reached out to tuck the hair behind his ear. She stopped her hand in midair. She’d never noticed the glints of red the sun pulled out of Joel’s hair before. It knocked the wind out of her. She let her hand drop.
The monster when she was twenty-three had red hair. It also had the tongue of a snake and eyes with skinny diamond pupils like a cartoon villain. Her father had tried to reconnect. Carrie hadn’t even opened the door. He stood there knocking for thirty minutes.
“I know you’re in there, Carrie,” he kept saying. “Can’t fool your old man that easily!”
In her mind, Carrie yelled back, “You’re right!” Because he was her old man. Old as in previous. As in archaic and obsolete. Mommy was now just Mom and Mom had married a guy named Curtis. Now, Curtis was Dad and Ken was just Ken. Previous and archaic and obsolete Ken. So, Carrie just let him knock and knock and knock until he finally went away. Finally accepted he couldn’t come home to her anymore. She imagined him slinking down the hall and back to his replacement family, the one where everyone had red hair like him. Maybe they all had snake tongues and skinny diamond pupils, too. Carrie couldn’t be sure. Josie stopped sending pictures after the baby girl turned ten, but she could hope.
Now, as the silence became unbearable, all Carrie could hope for was a swift end to this conversation.
“Why did you go home, Joel?” she whispered. She wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but she felt certain that this conversation was a sunset; worth stopping to experience but destined to end with Carrie stranded in the dark.
A sunset would make a good monster. Carrie imagined a burning sun sinking into the sea, shooting sparks off into the sky.
Joel uncurled his fingers and Carrie realized he hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs. He’d been hiding the reason he went home. The real reason she was sitting on this park bench. A delicate ring rested in his palm. A round, red ruby perched on the silver band, glistening in the sunlight.
III
Carrie hadn’t meant to be who she was. The fact that all her monsters were bound by the color red instead of Mrs. Peterman’s twine wasn’t intentional. The fact that she didn’t know what to say when Joel revealed the ring wasn’t intentional. She had intended to grow up believing in good, happy things. She didn’t mean to keep seeing monsters beyond fifth grade. She just couldn’t help it.
“It’s my grandmother’s ring,” Joel whispered. “She had always told me to come get it from her when I found the right girl. Running into Paula, it made me realize I had waited far too long to go get this ring.”
It felt like Carrie was suddenly groping around in the dark, trying to find the light switch. But, instead of finding the switch, she just kept bumping into memories. Memories of Ken running off with Josie and leaving Mom crying, trying to believe in Santa Claus, trying to believe there was still good in the world. Memories of Mrs. Peterman becoming Miss Skeltson and having to break all her habits. Memories of Josie writing in her last letter, the first in years, to tell Carrie that Ken had left that family, too. Josie sounded sorry for taking Ken away from Carrie in the first place, but that didn’t change what had happened.
“Does silence mean I shouldn’t bother getting on one knee?” Joel asked with a voice that made cracks in Carrie’s heart.
Should he get on one knee? Carrie wondered. It’s not like all the memories were bad. Mom had found Curtis and he was good enough to call Dad. And Carrie remembered seeing on Facebook that Mrs. Peterman had eventually gone from being Miss Skeltson to being Mrs. Morris. She looked happy in the pictures, but of course, people don’t post pictures where they look sad.
In that moment, Carrie wished she could run back to Lincoln Elementary School, back to that old art room and ask Mrs. Peterman what to do. Ask her if she regretted having ever been Mrs. Peterman. Ask her why she agreed to be Mrs. Morris after going back to Miss Skeltson. Ask her if it would have been better to just stay Miss Skeltson her whole life, without interruptions. Without love affairs that inevitably ended in sunsets.
RANGER JACK trotted by, again. He smiled down at the young couple, unaware of the fire raging in Carrie’s mind.
“Looks like someone has a question to ask,” he stage-whispered to his horse. “Let’s give them some privacy.”
When they were out of earshot, Joel said, “I do have a question to ask.”
Carrie swallowed. “I thought you already asked it.”
“Not really. Not in the right way.”
Carrie studied her shoes. Black flats with padded soles. Very sensible, very dignified. They were pinching her toes.
“Is it worth asking the right way, Carrie?”
“It’s worth drawing monsters,” Carrie remembered Mrs. Peterman saying to Carrie’s fifth grade class, “because it teaches us that what makes a monster isn’t necessarily that it always looks a certain way or fits into a certain box. But as you notice the monsters in the world, remember to notice how the good things always outnumber them. There’s a reason we spend much more time drawing the good and pretty things, and it’s not just because they are good and pretty.”
The good things will always outnumber the bad. Was that why Mom and Mrs. Peterman had chosen to give love another try? Because they believed the monsters they had married first had been the anomalies, not the rule?
Carrie looked at Joel. This conversation was a sunset, yes. But maybe this moment on this bench filled with anxiety and memories of monsters, maybe that was all the dark that was going to follow it. Maybe what came next was a sunrise. After all, look at Joel, sitting there stubbornly waiting for an answer, deciding he’d rather be told no than run away without an answer.
She sat up a little straighter. “Okay. Ask me the right way.”
The corner of Joel’s mouth curled upward. Slowly, never taking his eyes off her face, he got down onto the ground. His knee bumped against hers.
“Caroline Rachel Vaughn,” he began, using Curtis’ last name because he knew she preferred it, even though she’d never made it legal. Because he knew if there was an aisle for Carrie to walk down, Curtis would be the dad giving her away.
Joel cleared his throat and Carrie realized his eyes were glistening like stars blurred by rain.
“Carrie, would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the world by saying you’ll become my wife?”
Once upon a time, before boys became potential monsters, before Ken met Josie, before Mom got sad, before Carrie ever stepped foot in Mrs. Peterman’s classroom— once upon a time, Ken had read stories to Carrie about a little girl with a red hood. Once upon a time, red had been Carrie’s favorite color.
Carrie took a deep breath. The ruby glistened in the sunlight.
Allison Maschhoff is from St. Louis and is currently a senior at Truman State University studying Creative Writing, History, and Spanish. Her fiction has been published in the newspaper, The Index, and her poetry has been published in Better Than Starbucks and Green Blotter literary magazines. Someday, she hopes to be a professor of Creative Writing at a university.
