Know Your Beholder: A Novel (29 page)

One day a wolf gets in the house. Francis shoots it with the rifle. He skins and dresses it and they eat it. With its hide he makes the little girl a hat, and she wears it proudly.

After the snow stops, five cows suddenly appear in one of their fields. Three to milk and two to slaughter. Francis corrals them and keeps them in a shelter near the house.

One day the little girl asks Francis why they never leave. He promises her that someday they will. When the time is right they will go beyond the field where they found the bodies. But until then they must continue working on the house, repairing all that is lost and broken.

Toward the end of the story there is a strange jump in time—twenty-some years go by in a single paragraph. They are still living in the house, which has become a safe, reliable home. In a matter of sentences several seasons pass. The fields are flourishing, and Francis and the little girl have become successful farmers. They have many cows.

In the final paragraph Francis is middle-aged and the little girl is now his wife. It is winter again. It ends with them walking into one of their fields, trudging through the snow, holding hands, heading toward a dark forest. Francis places his hand on the now-adult little girl’s stomach, suggesting a child.

It took me hours to read the story.

My mother hadn’t bothered with numbering the pages, so I had no idea how large the manuscript actually was. Time seemed to stop. I was incredibly moved by it, though also disturbed, and I had a hard time fathoming why my mother had not only dedicated it to me, but also given the young man my name.

Was this abduction relationship somehow drawn from her experience with Lyman? Was the little girl her? Had Lyman kidnapped her from her Wicker Park bed-and-breakfast in Chicago? Had she seen him as having rescued her from some terrible life?

But if she was the little girl and I was Francis, what did that mean? Had my mother seen me as a killer? Her protector? Her lover?

The more I thought, the more confused I got. Perhaps there was no relationship to anything in her life. Perhaps she simply liked the sound of the name Francis—the music it makes in the reader’s head—and the dedication had been a totally separate idea. The Francis in the story isn’t physically described in any specific way. He is quieter than I was at that age, and certainly riskier.

I know this much:

I was surprised at how well my mother wrote. Not that I’m some expert. But her prose was clear and purposeful, with very few flourishes. I didn’t catch a single spelling error. I wondered how long she had worked on it. How many drafts she’d pored over. There was a dark innocence at play, even in the simplicity of the language. The whole thing was deceptively complex.

I had no idea she’d had this secret life below the basement. This subbasement persona, if you will. I spent an hour scouring the place for more pages—I looked in cupboards, under sofa cushions, underneath the sink in the bathroom—but I found nothing.

Was this story her life’s work? Perhaps, while Lyman was away at the office each day, she’d been shaping it for years, polishing each sentence like some hermit jeweler perfecting a diamond. Had Lyman even known that she wrote? You think you know your family—your own mother—and then this incredible secret emerges.

I fell asleep on the bunk and dreamed I was running through a field of heliotropes, running like a man whose legs were broken. I was barefoot and there were thorns hidden beneath the rich purple petals. The puncture wounds shot through my femurs. I had the horrible sensation that I was being chased by birds. They screeched above me, thousands of them, blackening the sky like pepper. I was running as fast as I could, stumbling across the thorny field, but it was no use.

When I woke, Bob Blubaugh was kneeling beside me. There I was again, reflected in the lenses of his tinted glasses.

I had no idea where I was. “Bob,” I said.

“I heard noises,” he said. “Someone was crying out. I thought something terrible was happening.”

I asked him the time. He said it was nine thirty. I had been down in the bomb shelter for over seven hours.

“You were crying out,” he said again.

I asked him what I was saying, and he replied that he couldn’t tell; for a moment, he had thought it was an animal.

“This is some shelter,” Bob marveled.

I took the stationery box with me. After I closed and locked the door, I added the key to my retractable maintenance-man leash and made my way upstairs.

When I emerged onto the front porch, a woman was sitting on the wicker furniture. She was reading a book, using her cell phone for light. She wore a winter coat and a Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I’m just waiting for my dad,” she said. “He told me to wait for him here.”

“You’re Baylor’s daughter.”

“Emily,” she replied, nodding.

I crossed to her and offered my hand. “Francis,” I said. “I own the house.”

We shook. Her hand was small and delicate and cold.

“It’s not exactly warm out here,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve been cooped up in the car all day.”

I told her there was a pair of space heaters that I could easily get for her.

“I’m really okay,” she insisted.

Though it was dark and she was wearing the baseball cap, I could make out her soft, open face, her round eyes. She was prettier than her photo strip. I invited her in for a cup of coffee but she politely declined.

“He said he would be here after his rehearsal. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

She added that she’d driven down from Milwaukee and was planning on staying through the upcoming week.

“You came down for the opening?”

“Next Friday’s the big night,” she replied. “You going?”

I told her that I’d love to but I probably couldn’t, citing my bad back.

She made a sweet face.

“Doctor’s orders,” I added. “Rest, rest, rest.” I told her that I lived in the attic apartment and to feel free to buzz me if she needed anything and she said she would.

Up in the attic I reread my mother’s story. Twice. I stayed up all night. I couldn’t put it down.

Saturday morning I drafted a memo to my tenants, informing them of the shelter. I was careful to refer to it as a “shelter,” not a “bomb shelter.” I wrote that I felt it was my duty to share with them a part of the house that had until now not been known to me, that indeed didn’t even exist in the blueprints. I wrote that the shelter had been built in 1971, described its humble furnishings, explained that it was equipped with plumbing and electricity, and offered an estimate of its square footage. I mentioned that though I hoped it would never come to pass, in the event of a storm or an actual bombing, all tenants would be welcome to use it. I also mentioned that I would be more than happy to give anyone a tour of the newfound sub-sub-story, and that its existence or necessary utilization wouldn’t cause an increase in rent or any fees.

It was a dry, impersonal memo, and I found upon rereading it that I had taken on the style of my mother’s unadorned, matter-of-fact prose.

I assumed that my night in the snowy field among the Radio Trees had cured me of my condition and I decided to take a walk. I wore normal clothes, along with old basketball sneakers and a pair of
Terminator
sunglasses that used to belong to Kent. It was a bright, sunny day. As I headed out, the neighborhood felt warm and welcoming. I chose the same path I had the night I followed Sheila Anne’s car, walking past the Schefflers’ house, heading toward the Lindholms’ and the old widow’s, turning left on Geneseo Street and another left on Waverly Lane.

But when I got to the threshold of the long field, now thawed, revealing long-dead grass, a thickening spread through my chest and an icy film coated the back of my neck. I tried to breathe through it and press on, but I simply couldn’t. Before my legs locked, I was able to turn and head back. I felt my body willing itself to crawl into some random front lawn and assume the fetal position. It took everything in my power to not go down to my hands and knees.

The mailwoman passed me. She nodded hello, pushing her delivery cart. She had no idea of the terror I was experiencing, which made the few blocks back to the house all the more dreadful.

When I arrived at the front porch, I was relieved not to see anyone from the house.

I was cottonmouthed, my face felt heavy and hot. My hands were clammy and the back of my neck still freezing.

And now Easter Sunday has come and gone.

Earlier today the Coynes hosted an Easter egg hunt in their front yard. Neighborhood children attended in their Sunday best. Girls in peach and yellow dresses. Boys in short sleeves and clip-on ties. I kept scanning the little girls for Bethany Bunch, as if she might have been reassigned seamlessly to a cul-de-sac home three stop signs away.

There was an adult dressed up in a giant blue-and-white bunny suit, whiskers and buck teeth, big plastic saucers for eyes. He/she was hopping around the Coynes’ front yard, terrifying all the children. There were maybe twelve kids, from three to perhaps nine years old. One was black. She seemed like the oldest, tall and thin with long coltish legs. She wore a white dress with little blue flowers.

The kids pinwheeled around the front yard, picking through the shrubbery and the little strip of ungrown garden along the side of the house, half-searching for colored eggs and half-avoiding the terrifying giant bunny that had stopped hopping and was now lurching around the yard, either fatigued or drunk or on the verge of a heart attack.

Eventually the giant bunny threw his/her arms in the air and left the children to their egg hunt.

I spent the afternoon in bed. I’d taken a Percocet for no good reason and wound up passing out with my mother’s copy of
Crime and Punishment
on my chest. I’d fallen asleep just after Raskolnikov murders the pawnbroker and her half-sister. My mother had underlined several passages throughout this section, and I found myself dreaming that Mary and Todd Bunch had broken into my apartment and were coming at me with a hammer. Todd was brandishing it above his head like Thor. Whenever he swiped it at me and whiffed—vicious flailing attempts—the hammer detonated in the Sheetrock, riddling my walls with craters. The sound was deafening. Mary had yellow wolf fangs and stood by laughing maniacally.

I find that the Percocet triggers terrible nightmares. Then again, it could be the Percocet-penis-enlargement-pills cocktail.

An aside:

Charting the daily development of your penis is like trying to watch grass grow. Or some sleeping lizard stir at the zoo. The Komodo dragon will remain static for so long that it starts to become part of the rock it sleeps on. The smallest movement becomes a terrible, electrifying possibility. I hope my penis transforms into a Komodo dragon, a thing to behold, a creature to spellbind and inspire awe and shame. As for now, it’s still an unexceptional gecko.

Today, the Monday following Easter, I called Lyman down in Jupiter. He was in the clubhouse of some fancy golf resort, playing gin.

“I’m killing this clown from Coral Springs,” he said. “He keeps insisting on playing for a buck a point. I took three large off him yesterday. Sissy’s at the bar with ancient Harley Dukes and his twenty-something child bride, Shoni, who looks like she walked out of a convention for airline stewardesses. Harley told me he just got his dick done in Boca. Apparently there’s a little button he presses.”

I gathered that “getting your dick done” meant getting some sort of surgically installed hydraulic implant. “Technology,” I said.

“The things we pay for,” Lyman added, always the accountant.

I told him that I’d gone down to the shelter.

“Please tell me the godforsaken toilet still flushes,” he said. “You have no idea how much money I parted with just to have the plumbing rerouted.”

“It works,” I said. I told him I was impressed with the shelter.

“Your uncle Corbit did a nice job,” he said.

In the dead air I could hear the murmuring of the clubhouse. I imagined wealthy seniors with cicatrix faces babbling on about the sexual conquests of the on-site golf pro and their Facebook grandchildren and the glories of pain relief. Blazingly white teeth and thousand-dollar podiatry sandals. Titanium hips and the cocktail-hour collusion of plastic-surgery converts. I imagined alligators hiding in all the water traps along the back nine. Puff adders coiled in the finely raked sand.

“Well,” Lyman said, “is there anything else? I better get back to my game before my gin buddy comes to his senses.”

“Did you know she wrote?”

“Did I know
who
wrote?”

“Mom.”

“Your mother
wrote
?” he said.

I told him about the manuscript I’d found. “Sort of a novella,” I explained. “It was in a box under one of the bunks.”

“You sure it’s hers?”

“Her name’s on the title page,” I said. I asked Lyman if he’d ever witnessed her in the act of writing.

He said that she liked to write letters, and that when they were first married she kept a journal. “But I never saw her do any
serious
writing,” he added.

“She never mentioned that she was writing a story?”

“Your mother liked to
read
,” he said. “Everyone knew that. She devoured all those books.”

There was another pause. It was hard to believe that Cornelia could have been that furtive. I could almost hear my father’s brain working. Had she had a lover too?

“So did you read it?” he finally asked.

I told him that I had and then he asked me if it was “any good,” as if he were inquiring about a new brand of light beer. I said that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

When he asked what it was about I explained that it concerns a college student who commits a senseless violent crime and then abducts a little girl, after which they find an abandoned farmhouse and fix it up and spend the rest of their lives together.