To the great dismay of my brother and myself, Grandmother chose the day of her husband's death in the early summer just after the school year used to end. It was during that curious stage when I was, numerically at least, three years older than Patrick. For him it was a source of consternation that I was older than him at all. That for most of the year the difference between us was two years was justification enough to claim superiority, but the fact of three years - well, perhaps if the eclipse occurred during the winter, in those eerie hours of little sunlight in New York City, Patrick would have met his end by my hand and not his own. Such was the extent of the broiling web of violence from which we failed to extricate ourselves in the years since we first knew mother as her Mother's daughter.
I never met my grandfather, have barely heard him ever mentioned, so that as I sit here now I cannot even recall his name. Mother, though, seemed to have been shocked by the news, had put the receiver down in her lap and mouthed voiceless words to herself with eyes glazed in disbelief. How strange, I remember thinking later on, that she could have felt such sorrow in the death of a man she had claimed she never loved. Of course, I had no knowledge of what truly lay at the center of the abysmal dismay that shaped her face, not then. It certainly wasn't love. There was no love in mother for anyone, I know now, except perhaps a perverse one for her children. Grandmother had sucked all the love out of that family for herself, and I imagine that she even managed to suck the very life from her husband as well. Lavishly suck suck sucking away at the energy and exuberance of her mate, until all that remained before he died was an empty shell that much resembled Dorothy, a shell she could stand over like a talisman licking her thin, spidery limbs and crumple when she chose.
Grandmother had been making him breakfast, so mother told Patrick and me, when he keeled over and landed face down in his cereal, stone cold dead before he even touched the bowl. "Natural causes," mother had sighed eyes averted into the still air fraught with all the implications of what she wasn't telling us, biting on a corner of her bottom lip and fumbling with her leg.
Many years later mother told me all the truths of our family, after she finally realized her deathbed for what it was. It was a special time in her life, perhaps even the most meaningful, and I can remember her coming to tears on my arm, releasing the frustration and self-disgust as well as the resolution, spilled them down her face ghastly in the nearness of death. Yes, mother wept bitter tears, years overdue, for her lost child, mourned what had brought her to allow his destruction before her very eyes, and by the woman whom she had already watched destroy the lives of her two sisters. She cried about other things, too. She promised me that she had always loved me, even though she never showed it, and clutching at my arm she begged me to believe her. I did not believe her, but I didn't have the heart to say it.
I may have judged mother harshly here, and perhaps I have even been unfair. But I have taken on the mantle of judgement willingly and I think it fits me well. No other shoulders alive, perhaps, can wear it as comfortably as my own. Yes, in the end mother cried out against nature, cursed the gods with bitter rage choking her words and fire for tears that scorched her cheeks red. She let out all at once what she had endured alone for most of her life, expunged, the ringing pain and conflict finally released. She wept, she told me, when Grandmother explained in detail what she had done to her husband, wept and wept because she knew that the end had come and that finally something had to be done about Grandmother.
Grandfather, it appears, couldn't stand the smell of liver, a fact which always annoyed Grandmother because she absolutely adored the taste of the organ. Breaded and deep-fried, or panfried, or simply broiled with onions, it was one of her favorite foods. I can remember that mother had to make it for her sometimes when she was staying with us in New York. The stink would fill the house and I'd hover by an open window, so I suppose I understand just how it was that grandfather departed this world.
Grandmother managed to get him drunk, took him to the living room and put on some of that old jazz on the antique phonograph, danced with him cheek to cheek and sipping on a bottle of red wine. Half a bottle was good enough for his weak constitution, it seems, for after she led him enticingly up the stairs she managed to wrestle him to the bed and secure his arms to the cedar posts with two good pairs of handcuffs. What could he have been thinking then, what words, what protests burst from his mouth inebriated with panic and dread and drink and abject terror? I never knew him, so I cannot say, but there is something akin to those frantic moments when you finally realize that the walls already have closed in and there's nothing you can do about it now, if only you could have seen it sooner. I think I can understand what it is like to be helpless at the hands of the torturer whose intentions are plain. The mind is its own worst enemy at times like that. Grandmother was seemingly indifferent, staring past him through space with her no-eyes and lips upturned, as she happily sealed his mouth shut with duct tape.
The rest was easy. Murmuring pretty tunes to herself, almost prancing in her revelling, she fetched the raw beef's liver she had waiting for him in the refrigerator downstairs, happily, with a ghostly smile of lunatic sympathy adorning her face (life's a bitch and then you die!), trying to subdue his struggles enough to perform her work. She smeared the organ over his nose, smiling, smiling, yes, and all the while with the belief that she was an angel, not a devil, come to deliver the needy from their bonds, to liberate. Yes, yes, Grandmother was sick; she always had been. It may have been something gone awry in the chemical makeup of her brain, some imbalance or another in her physiology that could easily have been detected and corrected. But I don't think so.
Grandmother sat herself down in the corner to watch her husband choke to death on his own vomit, eyes bugging from his head and making the most horrible, liquid sounds, smiling sadly now with her head leaning against her legs drawn up, resting gently between her knees.
One may wonder how or why a human could do such a thing when the answer is that it is easily done, that any one of us who yet breathe are capable of such extremity. The capacity for violence is as natural as our sensitivity to music. But Grandmother was different from the other humans in a very important way. She had acquired a dangerous mental disorder of which milder cases are common, a paranoia that is actively encouraged by the pessimism of the times. Some time when she was very young Grandmother's mind was derailed and never found its way back to the track. A healthy human recognizes his impulses for what they are, and acts accordingly. But Grandmother could no longer tell the difference between a vengeful fantasy and the absolute fact of reality. For her, every instinct was to be acted upon. For Grandmother, life was raw. Not evil, no, but the result of a series of chemical equasions and the unhealthy style of raising children that had been so perfected in Grandmother's side of the family.
Who could ever hope to understand what exactly it was that had toppled her reason, what diabolical justifications she had construed, or even if the act required any justification at all. How long had such a storm of violence been in the coming? For some time, I should think, considering what she already had done to Flora and Dorothy, to Mr. Charles O'Connor from Baltimore, and what she was about to repeat with dear Patrick. Sitting there on the couch that afternoon steeped in incoherent shock, the thought never occurred to mother that the worst was yet to come, that the disruption, the conflagration, had not fulfilled its potential. She would come to blame herself, of course, because if she made herself out to be a martyr then at least she could pretend her life had meant something, and afterward until her dying days she was nothing more than a bitter old woman with no friends and no family. Of course, we never spoke to each other about our family except that one time, as if in the hope that the horrible things we did to each other would be forgotten or erased, if only we never spoke the words to capture them.
So mother took my brother and myself to Little Rock for the funeral. It was the first time I had ever flown in an airplane, I remember, but mother wasn't nearly as excited as I. She was fitful that day, and by that time Patrick and I knew well enough to do what she ordered and otherwise let her be. The heaviness in her head - the habitual adjustment to the sudden addition of more mass, to the way the body just didn't seem to respond to her desires the way it used to - slowed her down to quite a shallow pace. Patrick and I ranged ahead of her through the vast passages of the airport, milling through the faceless men and women chattering like toads in one great, astonishing voice that remains tantalizingly on the verge of distinction, but escapes us nonetheless. At times we would swing back to check out mother's dull progression through the swarm of people, grappling with our carry- on luggage in her weary hands and draped over her shoulders, brooding over whatever it was that she must do. Our little diversion was like a game, to wait for her in various hiding places and spy on her as she passed, then dart ahead and find a new vantage point. She was a grim spectre to us then, head down and weighted with all the baggage. For the first time in my life mother seemed old.
Around us in the bars and fast food places Oliver North's lecherous face loomed trecherously, trying to justify treason with words of patriotism. Political jargonistic stinking hogwash of which the only thing that was the least bit believable were all the flies hovering over it, and yet the American people - who since the second world war have only cared about which car they drive and whether or not the local baseball team has a chance to get to the World Series - made clear to the world and to their own leaders, who smiled and shook each other's hands behind closed doors when they heard the news, that they were keenly disinterested in the integrity of those who govern them.
Aunt Flora met us just outside the gate in Little Rock's tiny airport. She was wearing a long, floral dress that did nothing to conceal her crabby legs or the newly acquired layer of fat she was wearing around her midsection. Her face was grim in a childlike way, nervous, edgy, and the first thing I noticed as I emerged into the cool air of the airport was that she was wringing her hands exuberantly in front of her chest. "Oh, Rachel," she muttered when she caught sight of mother among the passengers. "It was just so sudden." Aunt Flora rushed forward to embrace mother in that forceful hold families know during times of exigent loss, threw her arms about mother's shoulders. "She's really lost it this time," I heard her whisper conspiratorily into mother's ear. But mother remained still and cold - alone, too, in this crisis - clutching the carry-on bags and staring brusquely over Flora's shoulder. After an uncomfortable moment, Flora cleared her throat and stood straight, throwing searching glances at mother's face and smiling sheepishly. "Well well," she muttered, over and over, but mother would not break her silence. There was a look of disgust on her face, and I know now that it was because mother was burdened by more than her baggage or her father's death. Flora was still a child in her eyes and knew nothing about the grim circumstances surrounding her father's death. "If only Dorothy were here." The words seemed to have slipped off her tongue.
"Shut up, Flora," mother growled suddenly. The strained movements of her brow and the intensity with which she bit her lip were indicators enough that her temper was running thin. "Help me with this luggage." Metallically, she handed Flora two bags before unceremoniously starting down the gaping hallway for the exit. "Damn kids couldn't even help me carry any of their shit." I could hear her muttering angrily to herself, thunderclouds darkening her stiff brow, and I knew that even if she were exhausted we had not heard the last of it.
Flora threw Patrick and me a sheepish, fleeting glance and shrugged. Her hands were twitching all the more excitedly and her face was wilting beneath the current slew of contradictory emotions. "Hello, boys," she offered. "Let's say," she continued, taking our hands. I wanted to pull mine away, feeling suddenly self-conscious in front of all these strangers, but I did not. I could sense that she needed the contact more than Patrick or I. "Let's say we help your mother with the luggage, okay?"
"But -" Patrick started to object as Flora pulled us forward.
"No buts, little Patrick, darling," Flora interrupted. "We're going to help your mother. Her father's dead, you know. Your grandfather," she added with a firm glance. "He was a good man."
"Here, mother," I offered, reaching for one of the bags, but the woman was warming up to her role as martyr and the steam seeping from her body was intimidating.
"I'll make it, thank you," she snapped at me coldly, simply, without even looking at me. I looked over to Flora as if to say I told you so but she was staring at the ground now, at the rusty colored carpet, biting her lip. So I didn't say anything, just walked in ominous and crowded silence holding one of Aunt Flora's hands behind stormy mother hunched over in determined self-sacrifice and needless courage.
| * | * | * | * | * |
The hour long drive from the airport to Grandmother's house was mostly on half- paved roads and back country, land that was as clear and fresh as early summer is usually painted to be. It felt good taking the air into my lungs, as if I could actually feel it healing me. There was such substance, veering whispers from the earth itself clean in its continual crawl through the immensities of time. How so unlike the stale and decimated fluid the lungs of the inhabitants of New York City endure. The air actually felt invigorating, and I couldn't help but stick my head out the window and trying to touch the gorgeous landscapes of color, of rich beiges and lighter accentuating greens in the fields, giving over then to the overpowering, even richer, living emerald as we wound through the dense, cloaking patches of forest breathing. The earth, deliciously alive and spread out for miles around, too vast and slow to care about those that move so swiftly about its face and then are gone. There were full, rolling swaths of cloud in the sky, so that we'd fall in and out of the sun's shadow like a ghost. The sunlight alternately set the earth ablaze with vibrant color and passion and dimmed it to duller tones that themselves were subtly precious.
Crammed tightly inside the new burgundy Honda Accord Aunt Flora had rented in Little Rock, we slipped through the country easily, urgently. The speedometer at times was pushing seventy, and whenever mother would complain Flora would just shake her head an mumble, "I've done this drive plenty more times than you, Rachel." So mother stopped after awhile and just closed her eyes, kept them shut through all the sharp turns that almost sent us headlong into a ditch. An hour of silence in that car, exchanging bland glances with Patrick, was enough to understand that Grandmother would be worse than ever.
Once, unexpectedly as we were speeding beneathe the broad limbs of those trees pressed so close to the road that they formed a great awning, a cover to shield us from the sun's rabid brilliance, she lifted her hands from the wheel and threw them uselessly into the air. "Rachel," she moaned as we veered off the road, "I've never seen her like this before."
"Flora!" mother gasped, grabbing at the wheel. Patrick started to scream, but my Aunt twisted the thing just in time to avoid skidding off the gravelly road, stopped us from careening absently into one of the hard trunks of the many trees. Dust and pebbles in a flurry struck hollow notes on the bark behind us. There was a fierce glare in her eye as she started accelerating again. Mother closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.
The dirt road through the forest continued for some time. The trees started to thin around us, and there came the brilliant patches of fading sunlight littering the floor of the forest. And then, suddenly, the road turned and Flora slowed the car. Mother opened her eyes and Patrick looked up from his lap where he had spent most of the ride in a daydream. Flora navigated the turn easily, almost absently. I saw that she was biting her lip again. And then we emerged into a vast clearing, a pocket of cerulean in the ocean of forest around us.
Grandmother lived in the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Most of it was a great, blue lake at least a quarter-mile long, the surface of which was throwing into the air the last, sunkist draughts of light from the sun as it sank beneathe the brim of the trees. It was a wonderful moment. The entire sky was streaked orange, and the undersides of the cotton clouds were drenched with the crowning glory of a dying sun. There was the slightest wind, pushing ripples across the water. Just on the far side there were two houses separated by a small expanse of grassy land. Both of them were white and looked quite large, but it was difficult to discern more detail from such a distance. Moored to a small dock in the front of each house there was a small rowboat. On the near side of the lake, where the road ended, there was space enough to park eight cars. Two were present, one of which looked as though it was rarely used. It was a beat-up Chevy station wagon from the seventies, painted an obnoxious color of yellow with brown sideboards. Two paths, one from each side, wound away from the cars through a thin patch of dim grassy land sandwiched between the water and the treeline, around the lake and towards the houses.
The four of us climbed out of the rented car, Flora still biting her lip and mother unusually weary, stumbling with the bags. Patrick stood by the open door of the car looking up at everything wonderously, as if he had never known anything except the everlasting and towering concrete and alabaster of the City. "You kids can carry these," mother snapped irritably, throwing me a sneering glance. The carry-on luggage was piled at her feet. She started off on the rightmost path with Flora following at her heels. My Aunt tried to throw us a bedraggled smile on her way, but in the fading daylight it looked more like a grimace than anything else.
"This sucks," Patrick spat into the open air, stamping a determined foot on the damp ground.
"Well, deal with it," I returned without sympathy, grabbing two of the bags. As I began to lumber after mother and her sister I remember wishing that we had brought less luggage, because the ones we had were so very heavy, as if mother had stuffed them with bricks in the car just to teach us a lesson.
The walk along the lake would have been pleasant if I weren't so apprehensive. I slowed my step so that Flora and mother drifted farther ahead until their voices were dimmed. There were about me the cries of life from the forest and my footsteps clinging to the mud and that was all. The hard shapes of mother trudging around the lip of the lake, her back bent and her fists balled at her side, and Flora dancing beside her, arms wagging, were suddenly perposterous and distinctly comical, absurd and useless. The godly light drifted from the sky, falling away, until the deep resonants of purple like the calm after devastation were finally able to overcome the furious spasms of daylight.
Eventually, Patrick came upon me. For some reason I fell in with him. His company was usually welcomed during those times when it seemed crisis was near. His steps were slow and dreadful that evening, and his eyes were plastered to the grass sliding by his feet. Patrick had always been small, but for eleven years old - almost twelve - he appeared tiny to my eyes that day. "I don't want to be here," he muttered without looking up.
"Shut up, Patrick," I sneered. "Stop being such a baby."
"You don't understand," my brother answered hoarsely, almost whimpering. "This is her house."
A light switched on outside the leftmost house, flooded the dock and rowboat in a haze of artificial incandescence, and then across the distance the muffled echoes of a large dog barking. Now that we were getting closer I could see that both of the houses were identical, down to the front porches with ample space separated from the water by about twenty grassy feet. I heard a screen door snap open and then I saw a great, black beast dart down the white steps and bound across the grassy plain between the houses. Now a woman had appeared on the steps, waving a broom menacingly and shouting after the dog. Flora and mother were at Grandmother's doorstep already, and seemed to be trying to say something to the woman with the dog. It was then that I heard the sound of another dog's voice, this one much deeper and more curt.
The black dog darted across the grass to come to a halt at the bottom of the steps at Grandmother's house, screaming ferociously at the closed screen door. Grandmother's neighbor was starting down her own steps. Her voice was slowly becoming discernible as Patrick and I drew near. " - damned dog! Boxers! Come here before you fetch that nasty woman from her house!"
"Hello there, Edna," I heard Flora say as the woman wobbled across the field.
"What? " Edna croaked, and stopped in her tracks about a third of the way towards them, holding her broomstick as if to defend herself. "Who's that?" She was wearing a long, blue patterned dress, quite boring, and thick, black shoes. Her hair was quite white and arranged in an squat bun at the back of her head, probably held in place by a myriad of bobby pins and maybe even a hair net. Her nose was a bit too large for her face. Patrick and I were almost at the front of the house now, and could see that she was fumbling with something in her pocket. The punctual sounds of the dogs reverberated around us. I could see that the one positioned before Grandmother's house was a giant Schnauzer. The hump it had left for a tail heaved uneasily.
"Is that you, Flora?" the woman squealed. "I thought Boxers might have heard someone drive up." Patrick and I came to a stop beside our Aunt and dropped the bags at her feet.
"Bring them inside, children," mother ordered absently, and started for the steps, her footfalls leaden and strained with anxiety. Something stirred in my stomach, something jittery, and I was brought to wonder what exactly it could be about Grandmother that mother was so upset. My childlike imagination was replete with suggestions.
Neither Patrick nor I moved, but stood by Flora watching Edna struggle with her glasses. From inside Grandmother's house the muffled barking grew suddenly more intense, and Edna's Schnauzer erupted in an even more energetic burst of noise. I thought I heard some distant shouting behind it.
"Children!" mother insisted angrily, slouched wearily at the foot of the steps. She was rubbing her eyes with her fingers. "The bags!"
"Yes, Edna, it's me. And my sister, too. You remember Rachel, don't you?"
By this time, Edna had her spectacles on her face, but when she heard mother's name she took a sudden step backwards and peered warily ahead of her. "Rachel?" she croaked. "The other one?" Her exaggerated eyes blinked somberly behind the lenses at mother. "Goodness!" she exclaimed, and brought a hand to her face. "No snowballs to throw in the summer, eh? The good Lord makes sure of that!"
There came the sound again of the screen door opening at Edna's house. An elderly gentleman had appeared on the steps. "Edna!" he called weakly. One of his legs was shaking and his back was bent unnaturally forward.
"Don't tempt me, Edna," mother growled with her hands over her eyes. "I might have to settle for rocks."
Edna's mouth dropped open, a shocked intake of breath filling her lungs. "Lord help us," she breathed. Then, turning around, she wailed, "Harold, it's her daughter again. Brought the other one, and some younglins, too."
"Edna?" came the stifled reply. Harold was looking lazily about himself, trying to adjust the heavy, black frames that were cocked over the bridge of his nose.
"Now look what you've done!" Edna exclaimed, turning back to us. Flora had been about to say something, but Grandmother's neighbor cut her off. Her eyes were pasted to Boxers, hunched before the house as if contemplating attack. "You know he's easily excitable!" It was not apparent to whom she was speaking. With deliberate steps she advanced towards mother and the dog. Mother had started up the steps, and was reaching for the screen door. "Boxers!" called Edna, waving her broomstick in front of her. "Come here!"
"Edna!" Harold's voice carried forlornly across the way. I looked up and saw his head turning uncertainly beneathe a thin wisp of hair the same color as his wife's.
"Look," she accused as she passed us, Flora with her mouth still parted in that long ago sentence she meant to utter, and Patrick and I trying not to laugh at this old woman going after her dog with a broomstick and her senile husband peering uncertainly in the wrong direction through the dimness.
"Why don't I give you a hand, Edna -" Flora started to say, but at that instant the screen door opened for mother, and just as Edna reached her pet the thing sprang up the steps. Mother let out a scream and dived out of the way. The answering barks from inside the house were suddenly wilder, the snarling and the promise of inescapable drool.
"Rachel, are you alright?" Flora cried out, coming up the steps after her. Patrick, I noticed, was trying to stifle a smile. I glanced at him, saw him looking back, looked quickly away again because I knew if I didn't I'd burst out laughing and we'd both be punished.
"Jesus Mary mother of god!" Edna gasped, her broomstick held in an outstetched arm. "Heavens!"
"Edna!" I looked in time to see her husband start descending, extending his sure leg to the step below and maneuvering the quivering limb after the rest of his body.
"David," Patrick whispered conspiratorily to me while Flora attended to mother.
I didn't want to answer, didn't even want to look over at him, but I did, and when I saw him trying to control his laughter I started to giggle. "Look -" my brother started to say, trying to point discretely toward the other house, but a supressed snatch of laughter tore past his voice and leaped into my throat.
I didn't really want to, knew that I shouldn't, and yet the compulsion was simply too strong. I looked and saw Harold wandering in aimless circles, heading slowly for the water. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt that wasn't buttoned correctly, and his arms were outstretched before him as if trying to use them to see. "Edna!" he cried out again, and if it had sounded as though he were really in need of her it wouldn't have been nearly so funny. But his voice was more cranky and pitiful than anything else, as if Edna were a monster who had trapped him in her house and he were trying to escape blindly into the night.
"Flora, I'm fine!" Patrick and I heard mother snap. My aunt was trying to help her to her feet, but mother was waving a sacrificial hand in the dog's direction, where it had taken up a new position before the front door. The light streaming through from the inside revealed the conflicting shades of a dog and human shuffling about in a great heap of noise. "Go and shut that stupid mutt up!"
"He's not a stupid mutt," Edna explained, not daring to mount the stairs. She didn't seem to know exactly what to do.
"Edna!"
At which point Patrick and I burst out laughing, fell into hard peals of gratified mirth. Mother had climbed to her feet and was staring at us amazed through the screen that insulated the porch as if she had never heard the sound before, or it were forbidden. Flora didn't seem to be paying any attention to us, was trying very hard to get a hold on the Schnauzer's collar and not succeeding.
Then the front door burst open and light spilled onto the porch. Grandmother appeared within, furious, and if Patrick and I hadn't been laughing so hard we might have been scared silent, but seeing the ancient flesh purple with anger only made us laugh harder, double over with pleasurable pain in our guts and tears of quite a different kind spilling down our cheeks. Grandmother's dog, a Great Dane, lunged at the Schnauzer, which barely had time to dodge the attack, and then both dogs had sprung from the steps and began chasing each other across the grassy expanse. But Grandmother's loathsome eyes were for Patrick and myself. Our laughter must have been infuriating, both because she didn't have any and because it must have appeared that she was its object.
"Sarah!" Edna exclaimed. "Now look what you've done!" She scowled into Grandmother's uneasy silence, at mother's gaze boiling with threats, at Flora standing between the both of them not knowing what to do. Turning around, she started to hobble after the dogs, but her eyes were drawn instead to the caricature of her husband sitting confused and dejected among the reeds of the lake, his head cocked in the direction of his glasses, with the dogs running in triumphant circles around him. "Harold?" Edna breathed, her broomstick lowered in surprise. Patrick and I, wheezing, tumbled into a fresh round of uncontrollable laughter.
"Boys," Grandmother's cool, dark voice drifted towards us, like a vampire's. Not so surprisingly, the laughter drained away instantly, because once I realized it was time to enter the house there didn't seem to be anything to laugh about anymore. I remembered then what Patrick said to me, about this being her house, and the laughter was replaced by instantaneous fear. The woman herself was glaring down at us with barely restrained rage and promises of punishment. The heat from her face seemed to be melting what flesh she had left.
"Get inside, you," mother commanded while Flora looked helplessly on.
Dejectedly, swallowing and grim, Patrick and I picked up the luggage and started up the steps towards Grandmother's house.
This site and all its contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one Adam Wasserman.