Allison and her husband, Clark, who is much older than she, spend an evening carving pumpkins until early the next morning.
Allison struggled away from her white Renault, limping with the weight of the last of the pumpkins. She found Clark in the twilight on the twig-and-leaf-littered porch behind the house. He wore a wool shawl and was moving up and back in a padded glider, pushed by the ball of his slippered foot.
Clark was seventy-eight to Allison's thirty-five. They were both tall with similar facial features. Allison wore a natural-hair wig, a thick blonde hood around her face, and bright-dyed denims.
She put a smaller pumpkin on Clark's lap. "Now, nothing surreal," she told him. "Carve just a regular face. These are for the kids."
In the foyer, Allison found the maid's chore list and went through the mail: a garish coupon packet, a liquor bill, a TV guide, and an unkind, already opened letter from Clark's northern relations calling him an "old fool" and claiming he was "being cruelly deceived." A gift check was enclosed but uncashable, signed "Jesus H. Christ."
Late into the night, they gutted and carved the pumpkins together on the back porch. Clark, a former doctor and Sunday watercolorist, created four expressive, artful faces suited to each pumpkin's shape—two ferocious, one surprised, one serene. Allison's four faces were less deftly drawn, with triangular eyes and noses and simple wedge-shaped mouths.
By one in the morning, they were finished. Clark moved back to the glider, looking out sleepily. Allison cleaned up.
"Your jack-o'-lanterns are much, much better than mine," Clark said.
"Like hell," Allison replied.
"Look at me," Clark said. Allison did, holding a bundle of newspapers reeking sweetly of pumpkin guts.
"Yours are far better," he insisted.
"You're wrong. You'll see when they're lit," she said.
She returned with yellow vigil candles, lit each one, and placed the pumpkins on the railing. They sat together, looking at the orange faces.
"We're exhausted. It's good night time," Allison said. "Don't blow out the candles. I'll put new ones in tomorrow."
That night, in their bedroom, a few weeks earlier than predicted, Allison began to die. "Don't look at me if my wig comes off," she told Clark. "Please."
Her pulse fluttered under his fingers. She raised her knees and kicked away the comforter, murmuring something about the garage being locked.
At the telephone, Clark had a clear view of the porch. He wanted to get drunk with his wife once more. He wanted to tell her that having only a little talent was an awful, plaguing thing; that being only a little special meant you expected too much and liked yourself too little. He wanted to assure her she had missed nothing.
He spoke into the phone. He watched the jack-o'-lanterns. The jack-o'-lanterns watched him.