THE WRONG SEASON

“Stop! Stop!”

Marcie and Hank both yelled at once. Frank pulled the car to the gravel shoulder of the empty road. Where was everybody, anyway? It was rush hour on a weekday. Admittedly, this was more or less a road to nowhere; it bypassed every place ordinary commuters could possibly work, unless their job was picking up the trash people sometimes threw out their car windows into the untamed brush. We’d never been on this road; we were new in town, still finding our way around. We’d moved during the last week of summer break, just in time for the kids to start school. What had caught their attention was a small clearing, not wider than the length of a normal parking space, but neatly manicured. Atop this patch of short green grass sat a wrought iron bench, and on the bench sat a straw man with a pumpkin head adored with a big, floppy straw hat.

I got out of the car last; I was five months pregnant but looked at least seven, so it would be a while before I could even catch up with everyone, much less get anywhere first. Frank and the kids were staring at the straw man. Hank was boldly filipping the hat. “Don’t touch it,” I warned him.

“Why not?”

I really couldn’t think of a good answer, and I do try hard to go easy on “because I said so” but I couldn’t help it. I really had to pee. “Because I said so!”

“Oh, Mom.” By the ripe old age of eleven, he’d heard it a million times.

Marcie, only seven, peered into the straw man’s face without touching anything. “Ewww! His head is all split open!” We all looked. It was true. There was a big split down the front of his face, from where the hairline would’ve been if he’d had hair, to where his neck would’ve been if he’d had a neck. A bright blue checkered neckerchief gave the impression that he did, but in fact his pumpkin head sat directly on a horizontal broom handle that served as a collar bone and shoulders. A flannel shirt which had obviously been stuffed with straw, but from which the straw had all fallen out, hung off of the broom handle. The rest of him consisted of a ripped pair of jeans, still holding onto most of its straw. They trailed onto the grass.

The split in the straw man’s face was wide and deep enough to show a good deal of pulp and seed. “Hey Mom?” Hank was reaching into the split now. “Can I take some of these? Maybe I could use ’em for the science fair.”

“What did you have in mind?” I was uneasy but I still couldn’t think of a good reason why Hank shouldn’t take a few seeds. “Are you going to grow radioactive pumpkins?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Hank, grabbing a handful and wrapping them in a bit of paper he’d been carrying in his pocket. “I’ll think of something.”

“What’s that paper?” asked Frank, who’d been quiet, looking up and down the road, perhaps wondering where all the traffic was.

“Nothing,” said Hank.

Two days later, Marcie came running to me in the kitchen as I was sitting down with a hot cup of tea I’d just made. Dinner was in the oven and the house was chicken-fragrant. “What’s wrong, pumpkin?”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“Hank put dirt in my room!”

Sighing, I set down my tea and followed my child to her frilly bedroom. She’d wanted pink and she’d gotten pink: Soft pink sheets and pillow cases, a pink floral comforter, a pink chenille bedspread, lacy pink curtains with a contrasting floral design (the comforter pictured big, dark pink roses and the curtains were dancing with vines of purple morning glory with bright green leaves). Even her favorite dolls were dressed in pink. We’d just finished decorating, to help her get over the trauma of the move.

Sitting on her window sill were six little flower pots, none too clean, overflowing with watery soil. My son, muddy himself, was adjusting their positions on the sill.

“Hank! What are you doing?”

He turned to me and I saw a smear of mud on his nose. I had to laugh. “Hi, Mom. I planted those pumpkin seeds we got the other day. I put two in each pot, just in case.”

“Why are you putting them in Marcie’s room?”

“Oh, well, she has a sunny exposure. I looked it up on the web. I need a sunny exposure.”

“But Hank, this is not your room! If you want to put things in Marcie’s room, you have to ask permission!” Hank hung his head. “Marcie is very upset!” Marcie nodded emphatically. “Besides,” I added, coming closer to take a good look, “you’ve got way too much water in there. You’re going to drown those seeds.”

“Oh. What should I do?”

“First of all, let’s get those back to your own room. You’ve got enough light in there. Or better yet, these are very muddy. Let’s put them in the bath tub for now. We need to replant them. I’ll help you.” We each took a pot and began to transport it. Marcie reached for a third, but I stopped her before she could spill mud all over her pretty pink carpet, which already had a few spots. “Where did you get those pots?”

“From the garage.”

“Well, they’re not big enough. You know why?” He shook his head. “Because you can’t plant the seeds in the ground until spring, and it’s only October! This is not a good time to be growing pumpkins. In fact...” We put the pots in the tub and went back for two more. “... when is your science fair?”

“November eighth.”

"Well, if you were planning to show prize pumpkins, you’re out of luck. They won’t be ready by then. It takes four months to grow pumpkins from seeds! Anyway, you should be planting in the springtime, not now. This is totally the wrong time.”

We were carrying the second set of pots now. “How do you know?”

“Because I’ve done it, smarty” I said. “I grew pumpkins and melons one year on your great-granny’s farm in New Hampshire.”

“Well, what should I do?” Hank was genuinely upset. I felt bad for him. He had been so enthusiastic about growing pumpkins! “I guess I’ll have to think of something else for the science fair. But I really want to grow these seeds too!”

I thought for a moment, while we carried the last two pots to the bathroom. “For the fair, you’re on your own. Or ask your Dad. He may have an idea. Science is not my thing. But you can still try to grow the seeds. I have some big plastic storage boxes I’m not using. They haven’t got any drainage but we can make drainage. We’ll put bricks in them, and put the seeds into long planters, and set them on the bricks. There’s still a big problem, though. Pumpkins grow on vines, and the vines wander everywhere. You need a lot of space to grow pumpkins. They really should be outside, taking over the back yard. But winter’s coming, so you can’t do that.”

“I’ll let them grow all over my bedroom,” declared Hank.

“Not mine!” said Marcie.

“Right. Sorry about that.”

A little cold water and elbow grease took out the few spots of mud on Marcie’s carpet. I advised and Hank did the physical labor, and together we got a great big plastic garden set up on a table by the window in his bedroom. The bathroom was grimy when Frank got home from work, but my cleaning lady, Doris, came the very next day and took care of that. Pretty soon, things were back to normal... for a while.

A week later, little green seedlings started unfolding themselves, and they grew rapidly after that, eagerly reaching for the window. Hank stoically lived without drapes, letting the sun wake him too early and being careful to dress and undress on the other side of the room. Every morning he came down to breakfast with reports of how fast his seedlings were growing. Frank murmured nonspecific encouragements; Marcie wouldn’t set foot in Frank’s room or talk about pumpkins. “He’s growing monsters,” was all she would say. The few times I looked, in the following several weeks, the plants looked healthy, and were turning into vines whose tendrils did extend outside the box. I told Hank to restrict the area they could invade. “How?” he asked. I thought, well, I will eventually be buying baby gates for two staircases; why not get them early and use them to contain the pumpkins? We went to the mall and picked out two gates, then set them around the plants, which now took up half of Hank’s room.

“We can’t direct them upwards,” I explained. "The pumpkins will be too heavy. They’ll break the vine. They have to lie on the floor. Let’s build tiers for them.” We went back to the mall and found big, wide strips of light insulation material, not the fluffy stuff but the styrofoam sort. We stacked them high against the wall, one tier less high next to that stack, and so on, until we had what looked like styrofoam bleachers. We arranged the vines on the styrofoam. “That should give them a little room to grow.”

I don’t know when the first pumpkins appeared. Hank wouldn’t let me in the room. To tell the truth, I barely fit into his room. I barely fit anywhere. I was huge. Hallowe’en had come and gone; so had the science fair. Hank had decided not to participate, which surprised me. He had thought it would be a good way to gain some street cred in the new school. But he wasn’t bringing friends home. He wasn’t even socializing with us. Sometimes he had to be called two or three times to come down to breakfast. He looked tired. Even Frank noticed. After school, Hank came straight home and went to his room. He picked at his dinner, excused himself early and retired to his room, whose door he now habitually locked. Christmas was grim; Hank got us all impersonal stuff -- a tie for Frank, a hanky for Marcie (and it wasn’t even pink), and for me, a handbag. I don’t even carry a handbag. This was not the Hank we knew, or who knew us. Something was very wrong.

In January we had a scare; I almost miscarried. I shed little drops of blood, scaring Marcie half to death. The doctor ordered bed rest. I couldn’t even climb the stairs. I slept in the guest room, downstairs. Frank was super attentive but I barely saw Hank. Marcie frequently came in to visit me, even hopping into the bed with me, feeling my tummy, talking through it to the baby. She was my little comfort. She turned eight, and we had the party in the guest room, so I could be there. We had pink cake and pink lemonade. Hank did not attend.

In February I felt a little better and one day I was well enough to go out into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Frank was at work, the kids were at school and if I wanted tea I would just have to get it myself. I felt up to it. I trudged into the kitchen. I set the kettle on the stove. Then I heard it: a faint sound from upstairs. I went to the foot of the staircase. The sound was less faint. Had Hank left his television on? I could swear I heard the cry of a baby.

To hell with the doctor. I made my way up the stairs, clinging to the banister, stopping every third step to catch my breath. When I got to the landing I could clearly hear babies crying: babies, plural. What kind of TV show broadcasts continual baby cries? Hank’s bedroom was at the end of the hall. Marcie’s door was open; I peeked in and saw, to my shock, that her entire room was now yellow. She had replaced her pink sheets, her pillow cases, her comforter, her chenille bedspread, all with new ones, in bright yellow. Her curtains: yellow. Her carpet: gone. The unfinished floor was exposed. I didn’t understand. She spent so much time with me in the guest room; why hadn’t she said anything?

From the hallway, in front of Marcie’s door, I could see unnatural light under Hank’s door. The sounds of several babies, wailing their heads off, assaulted my ears, and worse, my heart. I felt faint. I approached his door, one hand on my stomach, the other on the wall, as I was quite unsteady. The hand that reached for his doorknob was from the wall, not from my stomach; I could not take my hand from there. I opened the door. The babies screamed.

Pumpkin vines blocked my way; I had to use both hands to make a path for myself, and then I saw them. Hank’s television was not on. The babies’ cries came from... babies. Well, not exactly babies. They were too tiny; they were almost completely formed, almost babies, still technically fetuses. Six naked near-term fetuses lay on the styrofoam tiers. Green umbilical cords connected them to the vines that nourished them. They howled. Then one of them opened its eyes and looked right at me.

I screamed. I backed out of the room, thrashing in the grip of the vines now closing around me, trying to keep me there, trying, in fact, to strangle me. I yanked them from my throat, what was left of my waist, my knees, and managed to get back out into the hallway, but the vines followed. I turned and ran, as best I could, and stumbled at the top of the stairs; I tripped down two of them before catching myself, and the impact resounded through my whole body. I felt something shift. I hurried down the stairs, gripping the banister like the lifeline it was. I could hear the rustling of the vines that followed me, even down the stairs, even to the front door. I slammed it on them, cutting off a bit of vine; it yelped.

“Help! Help!” I was heading across the street to a neighbor’s house, not a neighbor I knew well; I didn’t know anyone well. “Help me!” I couldn’t move. I stood in the middle of the street, paralyzed, not only with terror: I felt my water break. I knew that feeling; I’d felt it twice before. This was different. I didn’t want to look but I had to. I bent my head, then bent as best I could at the waist, unable to see, otherwise, around my enormous stomach. There, on the black-paved street, between my slippered feet, was a spreading puddle of mud and straw.

THE EN