The Grey
Life, Chapter XIX
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.
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