girl unscrewed

Paul and Deidre Witt bought the house in Anchor Bend in 1968, and conceived Eleanor, their only child, the night they first slept within its walls: on a makeshift mat of blankets and clothing in the master bedroom. They could afford the cheap wine but not the caviar; they made do with a can of Chicken of the Sea. As romantic beginnings go, it was their own private classic.

In the years leading up to the incident -- or, as Deidre Witt ceaselessly referred to it, The Incident -- their pockets got a little deeper, and fortune intervened on their behalf. Paul took night courses and learned to sell homes and property, and by 1973 was the number one realtor at the local Century 21. He won a barbecue grill that year, and in 1974 a mink stole that he gave to Deidre, who with it began her own streak of local notoriety, and in 1975 a Buick Regal, and in 1976, when the buyer's market crapped out, he abandoned the big-city boys, rented three hundred square feet on the second floor of a storefront walkup just across the street, and made his first hundred thousand. By 1982, Paul Witt Realty was stamped in trademark blue and white on virtually every lawn sign in Anchor Bend. If you were driving through the little town on Oregon's southern coast, you might think Paul Witt owned it. His face, friendly but a little pained and self-conscious, all of which was even more obvious at twenty times its usual size, grinned down upon Main Street from fifty feet up, on a billboard that stood above the tiny green sign that announced that you were entering Anchor Bend, population fourteen-five.

And while Paul was bringing home healthier and healthier paychecks, and finding himself a member of things like Rotary and Lions Club and asked at least twice a year if he would consider running for city council, Deidre wore the stole all over town, and co-chaired the ladies auxiliary, and volunteered in every capacity for every charity that she could find. Few would mistake her for a good-natured, good-hearted sort; she was genial enough, but there was something below it that nobody could seem to identify. It wasn't that she was up to no good; it was just that she had a reason for everything, and they were, more likely than not, a little self-serving.

1982 was the year Eleanor would turn fourteen, and two weeks later swan dive into the rocks at the base of the cliffs of Huffnagle Island, and return to land, and her family, on the cusp of what would become an eleven-day period of unconsciousness (without any particular conversation about the subject, it seemed everybody from doctors to family and friends carefully avoided using the term 'coma'). The community rallied around Paul and Deidre in the way communities do: the congregations of Good Faith Baptist and St. Peter's competed to supply the most, and tastiest, food; the Lions and Rotarians collected donations to assist with hospital fees; the hospital, whose executive director was one of Paul's most satisfied clients, waived a number of these fees, creating for Paul and Deidre (though mostly for Deidre) a bit of a moral dilemma regarding the donation money.

And then Eleanor awoke, and a nurse named Joanna stood in the doorway of her private room while Paul and Deidre sobbed and smothered their daughter, who blinked away the skin of inactivity and almost immediately began to tell them about what had happened to her in the dark, about the colors and the tumbling and, of course, the voice. And Joanna, who had embarrassed herself by tearing up at the small reunion occurring before her, stopped crying and slipped away and told a nurse named Barbara, who was dating a fellow named Gary. Over dinner, Barbara told Gary about what Joanna had seen, and the next morning, as he walked to the restaurant with the other line cook, a war vet named Mark, Gary talked about what Barbara had told him that Joanna had seen, and within a week most of the town was, as quietly as possible, discussing little Eleanor, driven bonkers by that bump on the head.

Which of course mortified Deidre, and embarrassed even Paul, who was happy that his daughter was alive, and would be happy even if she were brain-damaged, but the thing was, she wasn't, and even if her story sounded a little crazy, the doctors had assured them that it didn't mean Eleanor was nuts, it just meant that maybe she'd had a little vivid dream while she was out. But try telling fourteen -- almost fifteen, now -- thousand people that. So, without really being aware of their doing so, Paul and Deidre began to preempt Eleanor when the three of them were in public; they spoke for her, said things that were safe or intelligent just in case Eleanor, being fourteen, might say something that was weird but perfectly normal for a teenager to say -- "shebang," for example, or "groovy-oovy" or "cool manchool," all things she had said quite often before the incident, before anybody thought she was crazy -- and convince all the undecideds that she was, decidedly, over the rainbow.

Eleanor noticed what was happening, and on one wonderful day that she would never forget, she was at the city park with her parents, who were there for a ribbon-cutting, the christening of a statue donated by some of Anchor Bend's finest, as noted in a small bronze plaque (upon which were inscribed some fifty names, including, of course, Paul and Deidre Witt). She waited until everybody's attention was on the mayor, who stood in his blue pinstriped suit with an oversized pair of scissors, striking a dramatic pose. And just before he snipped the ribbon, Eleanor, parked in her wheelchair beside her mother, began rather loudly and exuberantly to bark like a chihuahua.