A Comedy of Heirs (2 page)

“Just smile and say, ‘Yes Sylvia,'” I said. “That's what I do.”

Helen stood and walked over to get her coat. “What kind of bra do I get to go with those costumes?”

“Ask Sylvia,” I said. “It's one of those weird things that push you up and all that.”

Helen rolled her eyes yet again as she put her coat on. “What if you don't have anything to push up?” she asked and looked down at her rather flat chest.

“Uh, well,…”

“Never mind,” she said. “So, your whole family is coming?”

“On my dad's side.”

“The
whole
family?”

“Not necessarily on the same day, we have it for a whole week, but yeah, there's like seventy of them or so,” I said. “And they just keep coming and coming.”

“Like a swarm of killer bees,” Sylvia said as she walked by the office, once again in perfect timing. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be raised by this secret agent.

Helen stared at me, frozen, as she was putting her scarf on. I looked around the room, trying to seem innocent. “She really isn't all that bad.”

Two

“Mom,” I said. “Where did I put the cake pan of Santa's face?” I was standing on top of my kitchen counter trying desperately to see into the deepest recesses of the top shelf of my kitchen cabinets.

My mother, who was working on her handmade pen and ink Christmas cards never looked up from the snowman that she was sketching. “Downstairs in the seasonal stuff.”

“Are you sure? It's bakeware. Would I put bakeware in the seasonal stuff?” I asked. The deep fryer that we never use came tumbling out of the cabinet and I caught it with my right hand, my left hand keeping my balance by gripping the cabinet door.

She looked up over the rim of her granny glasses, pen poised above the paper. “Well, obviously you would put a Santa bakeware with the seasonal stuff, because you did. That's where it's at.” She went back to drawing the Christmas card. She was quite the gifted artist and I am very happy the polio that claimed the use of her legs and confined her to a wheelchair did not damage her arms.

I stood there for a moment and then decided that she was probably right. I stuffed the fryer back into the cabinet and then slammed the door shut before it had a chance to jump back out at me. I jumped down off the countertop. It would be just my luck that one of my two daughters would come in while I was up there and I'd have to explain how come I was allowed up there and they were not.

“Well, I'll go downstairs and see if I can find it,” I said.

“Okay,” Mom said.

Flipping on the basement light, I cautiously descended the steps. I don't like basements, not even mine. And ours isn't one of those nice finished basements with a family room and a bar. Ours is just the plain old concrete floor with metal suspension posts. The girls' bikes were leaning up against the west wall. Rachel's, which had yellow smily-face stickers all over it, was parked perfectly. Mary's, which was decorated only with dings and scratches, was parked just however it happened to land. My husband Rudy's workshop was in the very back. My brand-new washer-dryer was down here along with an extra refrigerator and a deep freeze. We like food.

We also had a big storage area that I actually spent one whole month buying rubber tubs for and organizing all of our junk. If it's not used enough to be upstairs in the real part of the house, it's junk. I wasn't too upset about having to haul out the seasonal tubs, because we had to put the Christmas tree up within the next few days, and I'd need the lights and ornaments anyway.

I walked over to the storage area and pulled and shoved on tubs until I found the three or four labeled Seasonal.

Then I saw something move. I screamed, my hand flying instinctively to my throat. Well, now I knew where Mary's missing rubber snake was, I tossed the rubber snake over my shoulder and grumbled.

I opened up seasonal tub number one. Red tablecloth, red tablecloth with Christmas geese, matching napkins, ta dah; cake pan in the shape of Santa's head. I put the lid back on the tub and noticed that it felt a lot colder down here in the basement than it did when I first came down.

I looked around the room. The basement door stood wide open. It wasn't wide open when I came down here. It was shut. All the way. Now it wasn't.

“Rudy?” I yelled. I couldn't imagine a single reason why he would leave the Rams game that was on television to come down here in the basement. No answer.

I never know what to do at times like this. I wanted to just walk over and close the door, but then I could be shutting Marilyn Manson in the house with me. I cleared my throat and walked on over to the door, anyway. I shut it, turned around and screamed again.

Uncle Jedidiah Keith stood at the bottom of my basement steps, smiling with a mouth full of … well, of nothing. He didn't have any teeth. He held a filthy and ancient pipe between his gums. The whites of his eyes were as yellow as his tobacco-stained beard, and his pants were pulled up nearly to his armpits.

“Hey, Torie,” he said. “Come give Uncle Jed a hug.” He held his arms out wide and winked. His armpits had a permanent stain on them. This red and blue plaid shirt had to be twenty years old. “I wore my Christmas socks for you.”

He didn't have to raise his pants legs for me to see them. He was expecting the next great flood and I could see bright red and green socks blazing above dingy brown work shoes.

“Uncle Jed, you scared the bejesus out of me.”

“What you want to go gettin' all scared for?” he asked. “Ain't like it's Halloween or nothin'. You gettin' your holidays all mixed up, missy.”

“Can't you knock?” I asked, trying to let my heart get back to some kind of regular rhythm. “Or use the upstairs door?”

He looked at me peculiarly as if I'd just suggested something really far out. “Don't never use the front door. That's for company,” he said. “And I did knock, nobody answered.”

“Probably because we didn't hear you upstairs,” I said.

“Well, I went on up to say hello to your mother and then remembered that I forgot to shut your door,” he said.

“Oh,” I answered. I finally walked over and gave him a hug, but I held my breath the whole time. Sometimes he forgot what soap was for. I remember one time when I was a kid I asked him why he never took a bath and he told me that water was for drinking, not sitting in. I didn't argue with him at the time, because it seemed rather logical to a seven-year-old.

“Ya miss me?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. I started back up the steps and he followed close behind. His wife had died about ten years ago, so he usually came to these things alone. His five children were all grown with families of their own, and would attend at their own leisure.

We reached the kitchen and I flipped off the basement light and shut the door.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” I said to my mother.

“Yes, I know,” she answered.

“Well,” Uncle Jed said, and let out a long sigh. He patted himself on the stomach and smacked his gums together, his pipe bobbing up and down as he did so. “Where's the whiskey?”

“We don't have any,” I said. “We're not big drinkers, Uncle Jed.”

“I ain't talkin' about drinkin',” he said. “I'm a-meanin' for medicinal purposes. Lordy, missy, every house gotta have medicine.”

“And just what do you need medicine for?” I asked. “I've got Nyquil, that's about as close to whiskey as you're gonna get. It's twenty-five percent alcohol.”

He scratched his head and looked around the kitchen. He was probably trying to figure out just how much Nyquil he'd have to drink to get drunk. “Well. I got this pain a-goin' in my foot. And bad eyes. Got real bad eyes—”

“Whiskey isn't going to cure bad eyes,” my mother said.

“Oh, you just go on and stay outta this, Jalena,” Uncle Jedidiah said. “Well, you know, Torie. Hmmm, when's your dad gonna get here?”

He knew my dad would come armed with some sort of alcohol. I wasn't ignorant of the ways my uncle thought in. Uncle Jed was the oldest of the group of seven kids. He'd just turned seventy-eight. And let me just say for the record that having an uncle that is seventy-eight is freaking me out completely. If he's seventy-eight then I must be in my thirties. It's like, you say you're thirty-whatever, but you don't really think you are in your thirties. Having an uncle this old has to mean I'm actually, no way out of it, in my thirties. Jeez. I hate family reunions. All the pregnant cousins always freak me out, too. There's always at least five pregnant women at every reunion. That's been the number for the last ten years.

“Dad should be here tomorrow,” I said.

“So, what? I'm early?” he asked.

“Yup, you are the first one to arrive,” I said.

“Well, that oughta mean that I get a free bottle of whiskey,” he said and smiled.

“Give it up, Uncle Jed,” I said. “You want anything stronger than Nyquil you're going to have to go down to the Corner Bar,” I said.

“You mean I gotta pay for it?” he asked totally offended.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What's the name of the corner bar?” he asked all slump-shouldered.

“The Corner Bar,” I said. “That's the name of it.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“What's this?” Mom asked, pointing to the manila envelope that I had thrown on the table when I came in.

“I'm not sure, I haven't had a chance to look at it, but I think it's some information on Rudy's family tree,” I said.

“There's no return address,” my mother said.

“I know, but the postmark is St. Louis. The only thing in St. Louis that I've sent off for is Rudy's stuff. I'll look at it later.

“Well, Uncle Jed,” I went on, “I think I'm going to head in to town and go to Fräulein Krista's Speisehaus. I can drop you off at the Corner Bar, or you can go to Fräulein's with me.”

“I'm not dressed for no fancy place. You better take me to the Corner Bar,” he said.

My mother gave me her knowing smile. She handed me the manila envelope because she knew that's what I was going to Fräulein's to do. She knew I was wanting to grab a minute to myself and read whatever was in this envelope.

“I should be home before the kids get in from school,” I said.

“Okay,” she answered. “Make sure you bring Uncle Jed home, too.”

“Don't worry,” I said. Uncle Jed hiked his pants up even farther, spit on his hands and plastered his hair down in place. He was going out in public after all.

*   *   *

Fräulein Krista's Speisehaus is about my favorite place to eat in New Kassel. Especially because of its fattening goodies that I'm not supposed to have. I come here so that I can eat all the goodies I want without having to hide them on top of the refrigerator.

Fräulein Krista's is a big building that looks like it was magically picked up out of the Bavarian Alps and set down here in New Kassel. The interior is rugged with exposed beams. The waiters and waitresses look like adult Hansels and Gretels in their cute little knicker outfits, and the big stuffed brown bear that sits at the end of the bar only adds to the atmosphere. The bear, whom we affectionately named Sylvia, is a recent addition in the last six months. It's sort of become the town's mascot.

I sat in a booth eating a pastry that I could not pronounce and drinking a cup of hot tea, relaxing before the influx of my father's side of the family. I knew that I would not get one spare moment to myself once the week's festivities got underway. And they would start arriving today.

As my mother had known, I wanted to read the contents of that mysterious manila envelope. The package had no return address on it and the handwritten letter on the inside was not signed.

The letter was short and to the point.
Were you aware of this?
was all it said.

Inside were copies of newspaper articles. Newspaper articles from a hot August day in 1948 in Partut County.

L
OCAL
M
AN
S
HOT TO
D
EATH ON
F
RONT
P
ORCH

Nathaniel Ulysses Keith, 72, of Pine Branch, was shot to death on his front porch while his family was trapped inside the house. Authorities have no suspects at this time.

What the heck? I looked around the restaurant, uncomfortable. Unless there was more than one Nathaniel Ulysses Keith who was seventy-two years old in 1948 and lived in Pine Branch, this article was about my great-grandfather. Pine Branch was a community with a church, later a gas station and about 102 residents. There was only one Nathaniel Ulysses Keith.

I scanned the next article. If I had any doubt that this article was about my great-grandfather, this article squelched it. There was a photo of my great-grandparents' front porch, with a bloodstain on it that ran down the steps and into the flower bed. I remembered this porch. My grandfather, John Robert Keith, inherited this house from his father when he died. This was the house that my father grew up in. He was eight when his parents moved in there.

When I was a kid there was a big throw rug on the porch right where that bloodstain was. I used to sit on it and try to embroider, much to my grandmother's amusement. I was not a very crafty child.

The article gave my great-grandmother's statement. They called her by her full name, Della Ruth. Not just Della or Mrs. Keith, but Della Ruth. Her statement said that they heard gunfire and that a few hours later somebody came by, knocked on her door and told her that her husband was on the front porch dead. She was unaware that the gunfire had been that close and that anybody was on her front porch.

That totally undid the first article, which said the family was “trapped inside.” Strange, though, that the journalist did not mention that.