Spinning

By,

W. A. Tyson

            Fred had disappeared.

            He left his web, a foot and a half wide, now in tangled disrepair, the embarrassment of the arachnid neighborhood.  Spun against the siding of my house, it reached from the edge of the front door frame to the roof of my front porch.  He had re-spun that web each night.  Sometimes it was lacy and symmetrical, a demonic work of art dotted with tiny struggling creatures; other nights it was lopsided or jagged or formed in the shape of a half-circle, as though he had figured good enough.  At one point, Fred had a lady friend, a smaller spider with the same tiger-striped legs and prehistoric cave drawings on its back.  Fred would sit in the center of the web, wrapping his prey in a finely spun shroud, while the smaller spider crept along the sidelines.  But the lady friend only lasted a few nights - then she, too, disappeared. 

            I wanted Fred to come back.  I wanted to lean up against the cool plaster of my front hall and watch him spin his web, watch him slide back and forth, one strand at a time till it was complete.  It was a ritual.  Two fingers of scotch and a half hour of watching Fred would help me go back to sleep.  I could forget about Mr. Andrews, wash away the aftertaste of a day gone sour.  And if scotch and Fred didn’t work, there were always the pills.  But the pills left me feeling groggy and out of it the next day, unable to think.  No, the scotch was better, kept me alert in the morning. 

            Fred always came back; that’s what I told myself.  Night after night he showed up at our front entrance like a persistent Mormon.  The first night he appeared, I asked Kyle to get rid of him.  He was large even then, the size of a half-dollar with a body like a plump white raisin.  Kyle said, No.  It’ll keep our front porch pest-free.  I didn’t buy that argument.  Then what will keep our front porch spider free?  Kyle shot me a look that said I had asked one stupid question too many and went upstairs, leaving me with a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and the other hand on the doorknob. 

            It was Sierra who named the spider Fred.  Everybody needs a name, Mommy.  Sierra with her snub nose and six-year-old’s answer for everything made it into a he.  And Sierra, with a child’s morbid curiosity, watched that spider each evening before bedtime, her uncomprehending face pressed up against the cool glass, the only thing separating her from the creature in her nightmares.  If only she knew how fragile glass was.

            When two fingers of scotch weren’t enough, I added a third.  What the hell, I thought, I’ll wait for Fred.  I glanced at the hall clock.  2:08.  Maybe he was off spinning another web.  Maybe he had a new lady friend.  I wondered:  Do spiders eat their young?  Maybe Fred was really a she, and the missing lady friend an unfortunate offspring.  Wouldn’t be the first time. 

            With a shudder, I remembered our neighbor’s German Shepherd, a placid dog with a sunny disposition.  I was twelve and the dog was pregnant.  Each morning I would wake up and run into the yard to peek into the neighbor’s kennel.  I would twist my neck to get a glimpse of the dog between the bars, hoping to see puppies nosing their way around her belly.  On a hot, soupy night in July, the dog finally gave birth to four puppies.  The next morning, when I snuck out of bed and ran outside to see them before anyone could tell me to let them be, they were gone, just bits of tail and specks of blood showing everyone how deranged a parent can be.  Some people are like that, too.  They might as well eat their young for all the good they do them.  But you can’t always tell the bad from the good.  In my profession, it’s best not to try.

We’ll get you joint custody, I had told Mr. Andrews.  That was six months ago, before his soon-to-be ex-wife made the tactical mistake of having a nervous breakdown.  Now joint was looking like full for Mr. Andrews, with the right spin.  Mrs. Andrews is emotionally unstable Your Honor.  Her accusations are lies.  She is unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.  How can Mrs. Andrews care for a developmentally disabled ten-yea- old girl if she can’t take care of herself?  I would take advantage of the judge’s silence to press on.  Mr. Andrews is a productive citizen, an educated man.  He is obviously better equipped to care for his daughter.  Mr. Andrews would sit there in his custom-made suit and polished wing-tipped shoes and I’d stress the word obviously.  Any moron could see.  Mr. Andrews liked that approach.  Say that, he’d said, nodding his round head eagerly and licking his lips.  Thin lips, long-skinny red tongue, darting like a snake.

            I’d heard snakes eat spiders.  Maybe that was where Fred was, in the belly of a snake, one predator eating another.  I drained my glass but still couldn’t shake the feeling chasing me around, an unidentifiable something that followed me like a ghost and settled in my belly.  One more finger, maybe two, that should do it.  I carried my glass outside and looked to see if Fred was on the top of the door frame, crumpled like a leaf the way he spent his days.  Not there either.  It was Sierra who figured out where Fred went when the sun appeared.  Up there, that’s him, she pointed, outing him.  Little girl fingers, open and straight.  One nail chewed to the quick.

            Mrs. Andrews had chewed-up nails.  I noticed them across the conference table the morning before Fred disappeared; they were chewed and broken like her demeanor.  Mrs. Andrews kept her eyes on the table as her soon-to-be ex-husband heaved on about false accusations and charges of slander until I quieted him with my own hand, fingers neatly manicured, and whispered don’t give them any ammunition.  Mr. Andrews waved his hands in surrender.  Big hands, broad and soft and flabby.  But able to hold down a ten year old girl, force apart resisting limbs, quiet piercing screams or soft, resigned sobs?  I swallowed a mouthful of scotch.  Desperate conjecture, Your Honor, the imaginings of a mentall- ill woman.  There is absolutely no evidence to support her claims.  Absolutely none. 

            There would be evidence, wouldn’t there? 

            But Mrs. Andrews sat quietly across the granite-topped table, her head slumped, eyes down, the look of a woman who herself was hiding something behind a fraying gray sweater and bandaged wrist.  This is all about Allison, I said, preferring the child’s full name to the shortened Ali Mr. Andrews used.  Where are you planning to take your daughter, Mrs. Andrews?  Just a flash of panic, eyes wide, eyeballs rolled, head bent further towards the granite, but I caught the look even before her lawyer from the other side of the tracks had time to object to the question.  Mrs. Andrews is a flight risk, Your Honor.  My client should get temporary physical custody of his daughter.  At least until the hearing.

            Mrs. Andrews’s scream sounded in my head even as I closed my front door.  A scream reverberating with all the agony and violence of a woman in labor.  I took another sip of scotch, then a gulp to finish it off.  Where was Fred?  His web now glistened with dew.  One large moth was caught in a corner of the trap, helplessly waving its wings.  What a waste.  I put my glass on the counter and wondered whether Fred was gone for good.  What will I tell Sierra?  He’ll be back?  That’s what we told Allison with her red-rimmed eyes, holding Raggedy Ann, thumb in her mouth.  Your mother will be back for you, honey.  It’s just for a little while.  Thanks, said Mr. Andrews, eyes dead, tongue darting, I knew you could pull it off.  Then they were gone, her hand in his, one so large, one so small.

            I flicked off the outside lights and went upstairs to bed.