Grandmother really had gone insane. Walking up the steps with my brother behind me, magnificently self-aware under the sharp and determined gaze of mother, I could see that Grandmother was shaking. Her loose flesh did not permit her to hide it well. And her eyes, they were blood red and incongruent, melting it seemed. Mother slapped me harshly across the back of the head as I stepped inside, but I was more fearful of passing Grandmother in the doorway to notice much. She left Edna and her husband to deal with the dogs, the sounds of whose romping punctured the stillness of the atmosphere chilly in the early summer evening, withdrew dreamily behind her mother into the interior of the house with Flora close behind. My aunt's face was almost as haggard as mother's, and standing beside each other the two of them looked strikingly similar. There were the same hard lines in the face, the same resigned desperation. Mother sighed once, looking Grandmother in the face as we all stood in a circle in the dry, cardboard living room. Grandmother's eyes were leaping, and her skin appeared even more pale and clammy than I last remembered it. Flora tried to say something, but nobody was listening. After a moment, Grandmother grabbed mother's arm and pulled her into a dark hallway. Mother's weary feet stumbled as she was led fancifully away.
Left on our own, Flora showed Patrick and I where we would sleep. It was a small room with thin walls and a large window. There was only one bed, and when Patrick refused to sleep in it with me Flora only had to remind him that he would have to take up the matter with Grandmother, and that was the end of that. At first glance Grandmother's house seemed perfectly normal, but while Flora tried to entertain my brother and me in the living room and I had a chance to look around, I noticed quite a few things that struck me as odd. Some of the paintings on the wall were hanging upside down, for one thing, and crude sculptures that at times bordered on the distasteful grew out of the woodwork. There were mystical figures writhing in timeless pain, an ebony Atlas beneathe the weight not of our own great planet but rather a pierced and bleeding human heart. Hidden almost from view beneath the couch on which Aunt Flora was sitting was a recent edition of Penthouse, but I could also see that it was mutilated somehow. I caught a glimpse in the kitchen of at least five or six complete sets of cutting knives, rows and rows of them, and on the counter three open tin canisters of anchovie fillets. The sinister reeking of the oil was faint but persistent. By the sink there were her toiletries, a toothbrush and a comb. Later on I discovered that Grandmother had developed an aversion to the bathroom, and for the duration of our stay my brother and I were forced to brush our teeth and bathe in there with dishrags.
Grandmother and mother were in the bedroom for over an hour. Flora tried to amuse us with stories from her childhood, but they all seemed to venture towards the disturbing. She would suddenly cut herself off, shaken. "Well, well," she would mutter, and start with a fresh one. As time went on and Flora's tales became more and more truthful and unpleasant, Patrick and I grew restless, threw each other frequent, uncomfortable glances. All I wanted to do was leave but I knew we were trapped and that there was no place else in the world to go. I saw panic in Patrick's eyes that day and destested him. Occasionally, mother's broken and outraged voice would come to us through the walls, and Flora would only try and speak louder so that we couldn't hear. But her eyes kept flicking toward the hallway and she was fidgeting again.
The two of them must have eventually arrived at some agreement, because when Grandmother finally emerged she was holding herself together and her eyes didn't twitch so much. "Would either of you children like some ice cream?" she gurgled at my brother and me, and all I could think of was how much phlegm clogged her throat. I had no desire to eat, but accepted the offer anyway.
"Where's Rachel?" Aunt Flora asked, standing up and approaching her mother. But she stopped several feet away from Grandmother blocking the hallway, frozen by the crackling glare, and dropped her eyes.
"Sleeping," Grandmother snapped irritably, and suddenly she started to laugh. "Have you ever sat in the bathtub, Flora, and found curiously appealing the notion of drinking all the shampoo?" I wanted to laugh again, but I knew that I might invoke an unwanted reaction from Grandmother. Grandmother was no longer herself, you see. No, she was something entirely worse, and the only way to deal with such thoughts is to laugh them away. Yes, yes, to accept the present, no matter how terrible it is. There is too much truth in the insanely lacksidasical manner of the words of colonel Kurtz in the height of his delirium.
Flora frowned, and her hands jumped to her breasts. "No, why?"
But Grandmother was relentless. "Have you ever considered cutting one of those breasts off with a razor while you were shaving your armpits?" Her eyes were dripping umbrage. I could read the maliciousness in her breath. Grandmother's world was horrible, and she was doing her best to share. She was more dangerous now than ever before. All restraint had been stripped away and she was operating on impulse. Mother should have put her away as soon as we arrived, put her someplace where they would have shut her in a cell deep inside the earth like Hannibal the Cannibal, let her rant and rave where nobody could be harmed and study her hysteria with learned interest.
Flora dropped her eyes, and a sudden fierceness overcame her stance. "I don't know, mother," she answered after a moment, her voice unusually steely and capturing my sudden attention, for I did not know Flora that way. "Have you ever considered running Edna and her husband down with your car?" A flicker of a smile scratched the surface of Grandmother's rotting features, and she started to turn toward the kitchen. "I meant Edna, mother," Flora called sinisterly after her, "not father."
At that, Grandmother whirled around, her eyes livid, was already striding toward Flora before it appeared that she was moving, an unmanagable violence whose power can only come from the world of the demented flooding what remained of a mind that had lost its tenuous capacity to understand anything at all except vengeance and mockery and doom. Flora tried to back away, a short shriek escaping her lips, and right there before Patrick's and my own eyes Grandmother snatched a wooden engraving from a table and struck Flora across the face with it.
I caught my breath as I watched my aunt crumple to the floor and lay still, a small pool of blood forming on the rug by the bridge of her nose. She lay quietly, serenely, and did not move. Almost I cried out in horror, for it occured to me that she might be dead. The blow was not a severe one, fortunately, and had simply opened a gash on the side of her face. She had fainted from fright. Grandmother stood a moment over her daughter breathing heavily, the engraving hovering unsteadily in the air in front of her. She was biting her lip, I could see, staring down at the body with something like wonder, as if she had never seen anything like it before. And then, without even so much as a glance in my or Patrick's direction, she placed the engraving back where it belonged and exited the room. Needless to say, neither Patrick nor I had any ice cream that evening.
| * | * | * | * | * |
And still, mother would not act to prevent the inevitable. Each day Grandmother's condition grew steadily worse, and after the funeral which I had so desperately been awaiting I was horrified to find that we were not yet leaving, this the fucking garden of Eden. The weather became unbearably hot as the days got on, and tempers began to flare not only between Edna and Grandmother but in the house as well. Huge, horrible fights at breakfast taught Patrick and I to keep our mouths shut and flee after the dishes were done. So it was that we spent most of the first week of July out of doors playing in the grass with the dogs. The lake was quite unswimmable, with strange looking creatures that pricked the surface from time to time and the occasional eel, or at least what appeared to be. The water that at first had appeared so blue in the fading light of our arrival was in fact horribly black and murky. But even so, when the weather had at last grown so grotesquely hot and humid and our usual amusements had grown either boring or unbearable, the lake at times appeared inviting enough.
The little piece of land that had been carved out of the forest where Grandmother lived was peaceful and beautiful. It makes perfect sense to me now that Grandmother's twisted fancy would have taken a liking to such a place, serene in the sleeping passion of the earth. There was nothing ominous in the air, not even in Grandmother's well kept if odd household. She seemed to be quite obsessed with cleanliness, a habit which Flora had adopted with religious fervor. The need to purge, to cleanse, was vivid in the polished woodwork and the keenly white kitchen paneling. During that first week in Arkansas, as Patrick and I came to the slow realization that we were not to return to the City for some time, I learned a great deal about Grandmother's ordered world of insanity. The morning after we arrived Patrick and I were spanked with a great, wooden spoon for not having made our beds. The welts didn't go away until the beginning of the trial.
Grandmother awoke every morning before six o'clock and cooked breakfast for her daughters and grandchildren, then made rounds to wake us up before seven. Patrick was usually awake before Grandmother arrived to fetch us, and once he even put my finger in a cup of lukewarm water while I was sleeping. The next morning Grandmother beat me for wetting the bed, at the age of fourteen no less. He hid from me the rest of the day, but that night I tormented him relentlessly until Flora crept into our room to gravely advise silence.
What amused Patrick and I the most during those hot, sticky summer days was to get Grandmother talking about her neighbors. As I said, the five of us ate our breakfast together, and Grandmother's eyes were almost always bothering her, which meant she was in a bad disposition from the very first moments of the day. It was never difficult to nudge her into a vicious tirade against the Baptists next door. The two couples simply abhored each other. Edna and her husband were devout Christians who believed that all Jews were Christ-killers. I gather, though, that grandfather didn't concern himself too much with them, and Harold was too senile to care much about anything anyway. The real beef was between Grandmother and Edna.
Grandmother's great-grandfather used to fish at the lake as a child with his long-time companion Ernest Goldby. It was their secret spot. After they had grown a bit older and married they cleared out some of the land at the north end of the lake and built two splendid homes for their families. The Goldby's and the Silversmith's had lived side by side for many generations, until one day in 1921 around the time Grandmother was born the Goldby's moved away. I never discovered what exactly were the circumstances, but from what I have read there was some sharp disagreement about how Grandmother's father had disciplined one of the Goldby children. The story is that he burned the child with the end of his cigar, but whether or not it is true I will never know.
The Goldby's sold their home to a relative eager to make some money in real estate, and the house remained vacant for some time. Of course, the expected development never occured, and the prize investment stagnated. Then the Great Depression descended over the country and everything was worthless. The mysterious owner lost everything he had. In 1932 he showed up with his wife and daughter and a rusty old car loaded with the remainder of their possessions.
I've heard some odd stories from Grandmother about them. They were Catholics, I think, and in those days Grandmother still had her wits about her. If I remember correctly, her husband and the new neighbor actually got into a fistfight. Grandmother, it seems, was under the impression that all Catholic priests liked little boys. One fine afternoon a chance remark set the two husbands rolling in the grass with Grandmother gleefully watching over them. "What are you doing?" the neighbor's wife shrieked hysterically at Grandmother as she ran out of her house and across the grass. "Are you just going to stand there and watch?" But Grandmother only smiled, picked up a rock, and launched it in the woman's direction. She missed, though, and soon the two couples were wrestling between their homes side by side with the silence of the forest looking on and no one to stop them. Needless to say, the whole affair was cut short when grandfather injured his back, after which ensued a lawsuit, and their neighbors were forced to sell the house. That was in 1940. That was when Edna and her husband Harold bought the place. Grandmother quickly discovered that Baptists were much worse than Catholics, because the neighbors were in the habit during their youth of hosting local religious revivals. The racket was enough to set Grandmother's nerves on edge, and maybe it was all that chanting about God that ensured her descent into madness. Probably not. Nevertheless, peace had not touched the shores of that lake for more than half a century by the time my brother and I arrived.
Grandmother rarely left the house unless it was to drive to town for meat and basic supplies, but mother and Flora quickly assumed those responsibilities. Anyway, there was a considerable garden out back where she grew most of what she ate during the late summer and fall. During the day she spent a great deal of time caring for the fruits and vegetables. Edna liked to do some gardening herself, probably because Grandmother was so good at it, and from time to time when Patrick and I would run into the kitchen for a drink of water we would hear the two fervently arguing about whose tomatoes were healthier and more meaty, the dogs running in circles in the distance behind them.
As it grew hotter, though, the terse peace that existed between the estranged neighbors began to crumble, and the squabbles became more and more pronounced. Patrick and I tried to ignore the rising tension. Neither of us had any grasp of the trends that can be indentified in human behavior, that unstable situations don't simply resolve themselves.
I can remember the day to the exact detail, even now. Patrick and I were sitting on the dock by Grandmother's rowboat. I can recall how heavy and steamy the air lay upon our stinking bodies, how sluggish it seemed, pushing itself down our throats. It was almost as if Patrick and I had to squeeze through it to move. I can remember the sun like a banner, like a god, high above us, and the hard brilliance that smothered our backs and drew sweat from our bodies like rain. It was mid-afternoon, while Flora and mother were helping Grandmother with the garden out back, when Patrick and I heard it.
Around that time we had developed a keen interest in standing on the dock throwing our weight back and forth, so that soon we had the thing swaying in the water beneathe us. I imagined it was like a ride at the amusement park, because we could get it rocking fairly steeply. The dock itself was poorly made, and not secured to the sodden earth too well. Once I almost succeeded in launching Patrick into the raunchy water. He skidding across the wooden surface, tearing his skin and crying out, and came to a rest with his head over the side. I had been expecting him to burst out crying, and threaten like he always did to tell Grandmother, but he surprised me with a gasp of amazement instead. "Come here, David," he whispered, remaining as he was while the dock continued swaying. I crossed carefully over to him, curious, and knelt beside him. "Look," my brother said, and I could see that he was studying an evil looking spider with a body the size of a pebble and long, black, thin legs. I recoiled suddenly, alerting the animal, and it raced toward one of the cracks between the boards that made up the dock, silently and cleanly slipped within.
They were curious creatures, these spiders. My brother was exuberant and full of questions, and was not long in discovering that they lived underneathe the dock in the water. There were some down there as large as an adult's hand. Patrick, for whatever odd reason, loved to play with insects. He had never known any fear of them, no matter how many legs they had or how big and pulpy the bodies were. As he grew older, he came to love torturing them.
"Did you see that?" he coughed at me that fine morning, racing toward the dock.
"What?" I called after him, running after him. "See what?"
"The spider!" he cried, and I stopped, shuddering. I detest spiders, always have. Such disgusting and vile creatures, such small bodies and inordinately large legs, legs that waved at you and seemed far longer than was actually necessary. Patrick was already on the dock, peering between the boards as if waiting for the thing to emerge. After a moment he looked back at me. "What?" he sneered, "are you afraid?"
But of course I could admit no fear that my brother did not share. We were two years apart, but despite the fact that I could pummel him Patrick never ceased to tease me. I guess he had numbed himself to the abuse he received from mother and me, so the occasional beating was hardly of concern. He was a willful young boy, and although at the time he merely annoyed me over the years I have grown jealous of just how willful he was. "Say that again, you little prick," I growled, already lunging for him. But he wasn't looking. His eyes had strayed back toward the dock, and he would never have known what was coming until I had already launched him on his brief journey into the brackish waters. But that day he was fortunate.
When I set foot onto the dock two spiders this time spurted from an inky crack. Patrick was instantly delighted. "David!" he cried out suddenly, grabbing at one of the speedy creatures with a celerity that surprised me. "I've got one!" Dragging myself to a sudden halt, I opened my mouth as if to say something, but the only word that emerged was a dejected curse. "Ha!" Patrick said, standing up. He held the thing firmly by two of its legs, but the others were curled around his finger, too, waving madly and struggling.
"What are you going to do with it?" I asked him. I couldn't help but stare at the ugly body and its wispy legs. In the background I could hear the sudden nearness of Boxer's voice. Glancing briefly behind me I saw that Grandmother's Great Dane, Crusty, was chasing him around the withering field separating the opposing homes. The grass, I noticed, didn't seem nearly as green as when we first arrived. The incessant heat and lack of rain was taking its toll.
"I'm going to pull its legs off," Patrick answered me, and I turned back around to face him.
"You're going to do what?" I demanded in disbelief. But the idea sounded appealing, and the dock spider, struggling uselessly in Patrick's grip, was looking far less manacing than it had a few moments before. I took a meager step towards them.
Patrick smiled at me. "Not so afraid anymore, huh?"
"I was never afraid!" I snapped, feigning annoyance. At the time, though, I felt somehow exhilirated, to be facing the object of a fear that for so long had been plaguing me.
"Good," Patrick responded, still smiling, and with that he reached out with his other hand and neatly picked off one of the spider's flailing limbs.
It was at that moment that we distinctly heard a pained yelp from behind one of the houses, and then a great deal of shouting. I turned in time to see Edna rushing across the grass, wielding this time not a broom but a hoe, shouting furiously. Her voice was low and grisly like a specter's, frothy with anger. Patrick laughed as if delighted and dropped the spider to the dock, already forgotten. The thing limped unsteadily toward the darkness and then slipped safely away. Without a word, the two of us headed for the back of Grandmother's house.
Neither of us had got a good look yet of Grandmother's prized garden. She had forbidden that area to our play when we first arrived. Our curiosity was hardly satiated by the sly glimpses we stole through the back windows, or even when we hid in the grass and spied on Grandmother while she worked. But as it turned out there was nothing much to see anyway except rows of tomatoes and radishes and carrots and potatoes and whatever else could be grown in that climate.
Mother and Flora, half-dressed in the early morning, were already there, standing dissolutely on each side of Grandmother, who was glaring at a ruined patch of tomato plants. In her hands there was also a hoe. Edna was staring steamily in Grandmother's direction, her bottom lip trembling and too angry to utter any words. But Grandmother was regarding the mess that had been made in her garden as if she had unearthed a corpse. Shaking fearfully behind Edna's frail body was Boxers, peering uncertainly between his mistress' legs. There was something odd about him, and after a brief moment I realized that it was a small bit of blood that was draining from a tiny wound above his left eye.
"Children," mother snarled, frustrated, "why don't you go play on the docks?" She did not relieve Grandmother of her gaze, as if it were her will alone that was holding the woman still.
"We just were," Patrick responded, "playing with those funny spiders with long legs that live -"
"How could you?" Edna suddenly screamed, and Patrick stopped talking. Her face was a mask of rage, fuming. It seemed as though the only thing holding her back was her fear of Grandmother.
"It wasn't very difficult," Grandmother answered calmly. A chill shook my spine at the tone of her voice, so similar to the one she had used when she struck me in my bedroom in New York. "That mutt chewed up my tomato plants. Damned thing deserves to be put to sleep, that's what!" Her voice had risen slightly, dangerously.
"Rachel, Flora, tell her -" But she could see there was no sympathy for her there. So she stood straight and declared firmly into Grandmother's face, "Well, I'm calling the police. And I'm calling Melville General Hospital, too, and finally have them come drag you away, you jaundiced old hag!"
"Ladies," Flora attempted to intervene, but Grandmother cut her off.
"And while they're at it they can take away that Harold of yours, too. He's been urinating in my garden again and killing the lettuce!"
Edna drew in a sharp breath. "You're making that up!"
"Children," mother whispered forcefully, throwing us a mean glance. But we pretended not to hear.
"Edna," Grandmother said darkly, and I could almost see the rabid foam of her disease lingering behind her eyes, "you had better get that stupid mutt away from me before I kill it."
"You wouldn't dare!"
Grandmother smiled eerily. "Wouldn't I now?"
"If you touch another hair on his body Crusty will suffer -"
"Don't you even -!" Grandmother suddenly screamed, brandishing her hoe and taking a mean step forward. Edna turned on her heels and ran as best she could, Boxers following warily behind her and barking meekly at Grandmother. Crusty came running from the other side of the house then, came bounding to a stop next to Grandmother and wagging his tail. Still looking after her neighbor's retreat she reached down and pet him, did not notice as mother angrily pulled Patrick and I by our ears toward the front of the house, shouting at us for our disobedience and sprikling her admonition with intermittent slaps.
| * | * | * | * | * |
When Patrick and I heard Grandmother's brazen shrieks we fled into the house. I had never heard a human make a sound like that before. It reverberated throughout the confines of my head so that it seemed it would never stop, echoing shrilly as it expanded deeper and deeper into the Infinity. We shut ourselves in our bedroom closet and held the door, our limbs quaking uncontrollably. Neither of us whispered a word when we heard her throw open the screen door and stumble into the house, howling our names. I believed then that if she found us she might actually have killed us, because all the restraint appeared to have been stripped away. All that remained to her was incessant panic and hideous schemes of diabolical dimensions. I had never been afraid for my life before. The whole situation appeared unreal. "David!" her voice thundered, as from the thick throat of a demon. "Patrick!" Things were falling and breaking. I couldn't still my body's trembling. As she neared the door to our room, as her shrill hollering grew billowing louder, I suddenly realized how incredibly alone we were, that the nearest town was a twenty minute drive away and not a human soul resided any closer. We might as well have been the only people on the face of the planet, just Patrick and I and that frothing demon we were somehow related to.
Grandmother burst into our room and flipped on the light. The flaring, pugnacious beats of her breathing came fast and were loud in our ears. She seemed to be taking into her lungs half of the air in the room at once, expelling it again poisoned and rancid and putrid. The thought made me gag, and Patrick pinched me to keep me quiet. "Where are you little brats?" she roared, and there followed only the sounds of her sucking at the air again. The two of us remained perfectly still, taut, not entirely sure what to do if she suddenly threw open the closet door. I knew what Patrick was thinking, could see it etched on the contours of his face as if his intentions were a fiat. He was looking at me seriously, forcibly calm in the crisis with Grandmother gone raving mad hulking outside the closet door smelling us out. I suddenly remembered him on the subway tracks, years before, with the same, clear look on his face. Let's kill her, he had said then. Shuddering I looked away, my eyes wide with weakness and the desire for strength.
What saved us was the sound of barking. Good old Boxers, and it still amazes me that mangy old beast was fated to save my life. "Boxers!" Grandmother suddenly shrieked, and then she was running from the room. I let my head fall against the closet door, stood there leaning against it with my hands functionlessly at my sides, breathing and listening and thankful that I was alive. My heartbeat continued to race. I could hear it thudding inside me, because even though Grandmother had departed momentarily we knew she would be back. Listening in expectation, I heard Grandmother fumbling with something in the living room, a solid object striking the hard floor, and then she was outside and the screen door was clanging behind her. "Patrick," I whispered to him, grabbing his small arm in a firm grasp, "we've got to get into the woods and wait for mother to get back." The sharp shouting from the two dogs came to us as through a great distance, circling, and then the great and booming monstrosity of Grandmother engaged in a passion not altogether unlike that of the Prophet I knew many years later.
Patrick did not respond immediately, his brown eyes lost and gazing at far away things. After a moment, softly but forced, he answered me. "Yes," he sighed, "we should run away." But he didn't make any pretense at moving, so I pulled on his arm and pushed through the doors of the closet. The sudden and frank glow of the flourescent lights dimmed my vision. Patrick stumbled to a halt beside me, brought a small hand to his tiny face.
The window that looked over the front yard was a wall of blackness unpierced by our flimsy sight. As the two of us stood there blinking, unaware of our visibility, I heard the dog's barking turn to a high-pitched yelping, and then cease entirely. The awkward sounds of Grandmother uttering profanities came to us then, and I noticed that my sight was clearing.
"Come on," I urged Patrick, pulling him gently. He seemed to reactivate and pulled his arm free. I led him outside the door, saw the dents and marks in the wooden paneling in the hallway outside that had once been so smooth and polished, saw the debris of items shattered or mangled lying dejectedly dispersed across the floor. We could not afford to hesitate, though, so we headed through the living room towards the kitchen. One of the couches was overturned in the living room, I noticed, and many of the pictures had been tossed from the walls, the frames lying in a twisted pile in one corner and shards of glass everywhere. But I wasn't really paying attention to the awful devastation around me. We crept to the back door and then we were outside in the almost-night. The sky was glazed with the deepest purple over the trees behind the house, fading quickly into the sludge over the lake in which were fixed the stars. It was silent back there, with only the fierce song of the crickets and Crusty's occasional howling. The lights next door were all extinguished, enveloped by the sublime night. The trees themselves were not far away. It would have been an easy dash to safety, but the sight of Grandmother's entire garden uprooted arrested all action for a brief moment. There were half-formed potatoes and ill-appearing carrots, green and slashed, and dirt interspersed with roots and the green of stalks and stems and leaves.
The sudden sound of a rowboat slipping into the lake caught our ears, and Patrick glanced at me sharply. Without a word I crept towards one side of the house, keeping carefully against the wall. Patrick followed quietly. When at last I came to the corner and peered around, I could see the landscape in front of the house illuminated by the bright, halogen lamps hung above the porch. It was then that I realized every light in Grandmother's house was burning. All the windows were open and seemed to be blazing, on fire, shouting a cacophony of brilliance into the night like a beacon, like the voice or light of God. The light illuminated everything, but we felt safe in the shadows behind the house.
Grandmother was in the rowboat, I could see, dipping the paddles into the water, laughing. There was something in the boat with her, something rather large, but what it was we could not determine. The old woman seemed to be reveling in her madness, threw heinous cackles into the night air that stabbed at my eardrums. Crusty was at the edge of the dock, running in short circles and emitting periodically curt reminders of his presence.
"Edna!" Grandmother shrieked. She was holding the paddles still over the water and staring intensely toward the darkened house squatting next to her own. "Edna!" she shrieked again, and started hitting the water with her paddles, splashing, screeching horribly and halting only for the occasional breath. Crusty's ears picked up at the sound of it, and a few moments joined his voice with that of his mistress, howling. The two were making quite a commotion, and I might have thought the whole situation detestably hilarious if I hadn't understood the circumstances.
A light switched on in Edna's house, and after a moment the outside lights were illuminated as well. Grandmother started laughing louder, struck the water with the paddles as she drifted aimlessly toward the center of the lake. She was receding into the darkness of the night. Edna's screen door burst open and then Edna herself stepped defiantly into the artificial light. Her face was set in firm lines and her hands were at her hips. There was only the slightest twitching of her fingers to betray any hear. There was someone standing behind her - Harold, I assume - but it was difficult to see.
Grandmother only started laughing harder. Her face was knotted, convulsing with the chords of that hyena laughter. I couldn't help but shiver. The air snorted through her nostrils and it sounded as though she were choking on it. "Hello, Edna," she called. "Do any gardening today?" She seemed to think she was funny, and although I hardly thought it possible started to laugh even harder and more uncontrolably.
Edna opened her mouth as if to answer, but her words fell away into uncertainty. Her eyes narrowed. She could sense that something was not right. O, she knew it had never been quite right with Grandmother, but suddenly it was much worse.
"Edna!" Grandmother shouted, and launched one of the oars into the lake. The thing fell uselessly into the water not far from shore. She seemed to think that was funny, too, and sent the other one after it. "Yes, Edna!" she repeated, a bit softer this time. "I've been busy, too."
Edna's eyes wandered toward Crusty, perhaps trying to assess the situation. She took a brief step down and permitted Harold into the doorway, his leg quivering and looking about himself warily. Grandmother seemed to take great delight in his appearance and clapped her hands approvingly. "Boxers?" Edna whispered, as if afraid to let Grandmother hear. She looked around the yard and cocked her head to listen, but no other sound reached her hears but those of Crusty running about near the docks howling, and Grandmother's heinous laughter. Edna looked at Grandmother harshly, as if she had come to a sudden realization. The fear was gone, replaced by a slow anger. "What have you done with my Boxers?" Edna demanded challengingly, descending the steps. Her hands were still on her hips as she waddled toward her own little dock, stopped just before it and peered into the far reaches of the light where Grandmother was passing. She seemed to be fading, she and her boat, always receding, so that parts of her were completely obscured by shadow, misty.
Smiling still, Grandmother reached down with both hands and, with a great effort, managed to lift Boxer's flaccid corpse into the light, a piece of wire strung tightly around the dog's throat. The fur was sticky and matted with something that was certainly blood, and his tongue hung limply from his open jaws gaping like a ribbon.
"Boxers!" Edna cried, falling to her knees. Her hands flew to her cheeks, shielding them.
"Edna?" I heard Harold intone meekly from his place in the doorway, but he made no attempt to move.
Laughing brightly, Grandmother pushed Boxer's corpse into the dark, rough water. The splash was dull, uncaring. Edna wailed miserably, unbelieving, rocking back and forth. I think she was saying something, but I wasn't able to make out what it was. Just then came the faint hum of a car approaching, and at the far end of the lake a set of headlights appeared and cast a brief arc of illumination across everything. Then the car was parked and the lights were off, and this time Grandmother was swallowed by the darkness so that it was barely possible to see her at all. But I could hear her plainly. "Alright, Edna," she managed to say when the laughter had calmed considerably, "it's time to say goodnight." I caught a glimpse of something metallic in her hand, and there was the harsh rebuke of a sudden gunshot. Edna grunted distinctly and her body crumpled to the ground. The recoil had pushed Grandmother so far back into the muddy night that it was impossible to see her, but I knew she was there. Somehow, I took Patrick with me down into the grass where she couldn't see us, or at least where we would have made difficult targets. From far away across the lake I thought I could hear someone shouting.
There was a moment of eerie silence, broken by Harold's quivering voice. "Edna?" he squeaked, and there was another gunshot, loud and punctual and echoing off the sky, and he was no more.
Patrick and I lay still in the grass for what seemed a long time, listening to Grandmother's voice, cracking, carrying the melody of some ridiculous childhood tune. "Row row row your boat," she croaked, and I heard her hands splashing distantly in the water. There was more laughter. "You can come out now, boys," Grandmother belched into the night.
"Mother! O my god mother what have you done?" I could hear the running footsteps padded by the sodden earth, was waiting for the telltale thunderclap and then the sound of another body hitting the ground. I was paralyzed with fear, certain that after terminating her children Grandmother would come searching for us.
"Don't worry, darling," Grandmother answered, "everything's going to be alright. I put a ham in the oven this afternoon and it should be almost ready."
The footsteps were approaching the house, and then Aunt Flora was screaming. "Where are my children?" I heard mother shout suddenly and menacingly from the stairs. "O my god! Where are my children? Where are my fucking children?" But Grandmother was singing more nursery rhymes and splashing in the water. She couldn't be bothered to answer. The steps receded towards the lake. Flora started screaming again, this time probably standing quite close to Edna's body. "Where are my fucking children -?!" Mother was raging over Flora's piercing voice.
"It's alright, Rachel," Grandmother responded quite clearly, as if by way of explanation. "They were next, but I don't have any more bullets."
I stood up suddenly. The first things I saw were Edna's corpse lying in soil sodden with her own coagulating blood and Harold's feet protruding rudely from the open doorway of his home. Flora was standing between them, looking stunned from one to the other. Crusty was hiding behind her, peering between her legs. The smell of fresh blood was strong in his nostrils. I saw him carefully approach Edna's body, sniff at it for a moment, and then sadly lick her wound. Grandmother was invisible in the calm darkness, but Boxer's mangled body and the two oars could be seen floating not far from shore. And there was mother, standing not far away and looking around urgently. She caught sight of me, cried out and ran towards me, grabbed me and lifted me in a hug and put her face in my chest. Then she reached for Patrick who had come up behind me, embraced us both and started to cry, to shake and sob. But neither Patrick nor I were looking at her. It was the first time I had seen a dead body before. Of course, ever since the corpses seemed to keep piling up around me, until now, here in these dreadful days in which I must die, they block all the doorways and clog all our drains and there's just so much blood, so much blood.
| * | * | * | * | * |
I will not go into detail about the trial. It was a long, hurtful and rather unnecessary ordeal, especially because the twin murders attracted the morbid curiosity of a dying nation. Why, the governor of the state, a future President himself, not about to miss an opportunity to identify himself with the ignorance of his constituents, commented at a press conference how necessary it was to "align the course of the nation toward quite a different one than it is currently taking." I still don't know what he meant, but it sounded artful enough to lift him a point or two in the polls.
Once they discovered the appeal she commanded among the public the press couldn't get enough of Grandmother. The reporters would cluster like flies outside the court each day of the trial, and the few that were allowed inside were rarely focused on anyone else. Of course, after mother tossed one of their cameras to the gound and pulled out all the film they didn't come by the house so often, but what should have been my freshman year in high school was instead a vague rush of images mostly involving cold reporters like barbarians and their hordes of electronic equipment and the judge. The reporters had a great deal of questions for Patrick and me, very few of them reasonable, the strange pecularity being that he and I were the only ones alive who had witnessed her final lapse toward insanity.
Not a day passed that Grandmother's face wasn't raving on the six o'clock news, and the ratings were only going up. Ours is a violent and perverse society, twisted by the hypocracies and lies of monotheism. The vast majority of people love to watch and criticize others for the faults they see in themselves, or for the strength to break free of their Christian chains and do what is forbidden. Needless to say, Grandmother quickly came to adore the attention she received, and the American public came to adore just as quickly what she had to say. And the reporters, they tried to hide their nefarious bias behind the same cold and robotic timbre as they informed us about the weather, or how a group of first graders sang songs for the elderly. Or how the treasurer of the state of Pennsylvania had blown himself away at a news conference. But they couldn't fool me. Their opinions were plain. They were the slaves of the station owners because they were easily replaced. The owners wanted ratings, and they knew deliciously well how the average American loves to stick his nose in someone else's private life, because he suspects everyone else of being as devious and sick-minded as he is. And he's right.
Each night the story was repeated, the gory details embellished a bit more, and each night it was brought to us by Coca-Cola, or Aetna, or AT&T. It all quite sickened me, actually, to see the life that I had known so cheapened across the airwaves. And there were Americans everywhere, snickering, making sure their blinds were drawn a little tighter so no one could see that we were not the only ones. Grandmother and her lawyer got into a nasty fight once about those spurious comments she fed the reporters, but she simply couldn't get over the fact that they would write down every word she said. It was plain to me that Grandmother was enjoying herself immensely.
I attended court only when I had to, but on that final day of the trial when the verdict came down it was pretty much assumed by all that Grandmother would spend the rest of her life in a mental institution. That last day, although no more testimony was required of me, I attended with mother, father, Patrick, and Aunt Flora. We were all dressed quite formally so the photos would look respectable. I remember that day well, remember being so angry that our society was going to permit Grandmother to live. I admit, in those days before I learned better I was as thirsty for punishment as the next American.
Patrick sat next to me with his eyes in his lap, awkwardly still. Something had snapped in him that last day with Grandmother, too, and he was never the same again. He only spoke when spoken to, and then only begrudgingly and quietly, in a ghastly whisper that could only have come from the cold lips of a large, grey statue. And it should have been obvious now that I look back on it that he was fading quickly, and yet mother didn't seem to care. Her eyes visited him often, but there were no words, no actions, and in the end the fact that she had not moved in time to prevent the hand of her baby boy unmade her on my arm.
So perhaps now you can understand, after all of this, how I came to take the mantle of Joseph, how I learned not to act but to remain, to be. Like Buddha, perhaps, but a great deal colder, and I realize that now. There is no regret here, none whatsoever, except that I once turned my back where I should have remained strong, and my life ever after was never the same. But I have not yet come to that part of this story, almost the last in this dull manuscript. It is almost over, yes, and even now as I am sitting once again in the courtroom with Grandmother, her hands secured tightly behind her back, and Patrick, cold and calm and almost dead, I am also here at this desk thinking about Drusus and that he was right. I did have to do this. I had to find hope.
When at last the judge read the verdict and Grandmother had been sentenced to the institution that would have been her home, something in me wrenched, something I have never wholly understood, because I have not seen the likes of it since. The peculiarities of the human mind are wonderous things, and the emotions that lie beneathe our consciousness can surprise us. As the last words were still ringing through the packed room I was brought to my feet. There was Grandmother, not five feet away behind that ornate wooden fence that partitioned the watchers of justice from the doers. I could have reached out, leaned over, and almost touched the back of her grey head. There were the first utterings of completion from the various corners of the crowd, but I ceased them utterly in an instant.
"No!" I cried out, and my eyes found the judge high above me on her great throne. She looked down upon me gravely, bitterly, her gavel poised as if to strike, but she did nothing, perhaps as taken aback as the rest of the courtroom. I could hear the steely snapping of the camera shutters, could sense the electronic eyes zooming in so suddenly on my back. In that brief but everlasting moment of silence, the eyes of the world were invested in me. Even mother and Flora, who had been through too much to be surprised by anything more, were looking up at me vaguely, as if through a film.
"Fry her!" I clamored, stamping an insistent foot on the ground. My small voice was carried everywhere, and I thought I detected a muffled gasp or two. Grandmother lurched around, her eyes blazing, but she did not frighten me anymore. "Fry the fucking bitch!" I screamed in her face, and out of the corner of my eyes I saw Patrick look up at me.
I underestimated my safety. The nearest bailiff was at least ten feet away, and her flimsy little lawyer was far too preoccupied with his nine-week appointment with some good bud in Jamaica to stop her. As spry as a cat she lunged with her body over the fence, snarling. I recoiled, tried to step back, but there was a chair in my way. Suddenly there was a great deal of commotion, and I do not remember the next few moments very well at all. I fell. I know that from watching the tape so many times. And then there comes a blur of images and impressions. I felt something hard strike me in the thigh, and then my head banged against the corner of the chair. There was fog, and by the time it had cleared there were rough hands on my arms pulling me up and a great deal of noise. "Are you alright?" someone was shouting in my ear, but I heard more distinctly the cry that originated not very far in front of me. "She's dead!" it declared, and my eyes opened up again. The first thing I noticed were all the people running about. I could hear the judge calling for order above the din and uselessly banging her gavel. Then I saw Grandmother, dangling limply over the fence, and I knew that, at long last, she was dead.
| * | * | * | * | * |
When I returned to New York I discovered that I was a national figure of sorts, mostly because of the scene I had caused in the courtroom. Fortunately, my bout of fame was brief. By the time I returned to school the novelty had faded and I had returned to obscurity. Over the years the random comments I would receive in the streets from those who could still recognize me grew more sparse, until it has been forgotten completely. That single trauma is my only claim to fame, as brief and horrible as it was. I became known as a martyr despite the breath that still rattles in my lungs. A martyr? Not for that. No, just a witness, a passer-by who happened to be in the wrong places at the right times.
There is no need to tell about my brother's suicide. It's hardly necessary. As I've already said he died a long time before. At least he had the courtesy not to bring me with him to the subway tracks on Jerome Avenue the day he threw himself before the approaching cars. I looked upon his body coldly, and bitterly protested attending his funeral, but it meant a lot to mother. After that she tightened her grip on me, and much of the freedom I had once known was lost. It caused a great deal of friction between us as I've already explained, and when finally I left her house there was no remorse, no sense of nostalgia.
I have been to New York only one other time, and that was when Aunt Flora died, just after the turn of the millenium. She went quietly, peacefully in her sleep. I flew into the City and then drove up with mother to Rhode Island for the funeral. "After all," she told me over the phone, "I'm much too old to drive that far myself." When we returned to New York I bid her goodbye, but something nagged at me and before I could leave the City I felt drawn toward the subway tracks. The knowledge that I would never see the bowels of that great city again was plain, and despite the fact that I had sworn after Patrick's death never to return to the tracks that's exactly where I was heading. It was not, of course, to pay tribute to Patrick's manner of death, for such compulsions had long since left me, but rather I was seeking an old childhood friend.
Of course, Hank was still there, like an ornament. I great deal older, yes, and blinder, but he was as much a fixture for me in New York City as the limestone, and it would not have felt proper if he had already passed away. He did not recognize me. We spoke for some time, and when I left he still could not recall my name, but he remembered Patrick and the day he screamed so shortly. His anomia had worsened, and conversation was quite difficult, so after a time we remained steeped in silence. I know he was thankful for my coming, for I could see that he had no friends left in the world.
At one point, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a nicely rolled joint. "Hank," I said, nudging him, and presented it to him in the manner I had learned from Antonius.
"Whit?" he responded, shaking himself as if from a daydream. He peered at the thing in my hand cautiously, then took it and brought it to his nose. A moment later he smiled. "Kind bud," he said easily, and we smiled at each other, smoked the joint in the somber silence a man comes to know well when he says goodbye to an age old friend.
This site and all its contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one Adam Wasserman.