by J. C. Sasser
“Psssst.” He heard her hint near the wardrobe. He spun around, came at it quick, and pulled out the bottom drawer. That summer they were nine. That summer he found her quick, went straight to her like a hunting dog goes to doves.
He opened each of the drawers. His hands felt for her, and when he did not feel her, he slung the drawer against the wall. He lifted his nose high and snorted the air. He smelled death, SpaghettiOs in his mustache, and something reminiscent of her.
He followed his nose to the dollhouse, fingered away the spiderwebs, and peered in the windows of all of the rooms. He remembered when he found her here. They were ten by then, had grown too big to fold and curl, and could no longer fit in small and confined spaces. He had found her long before she knew he had, and when she caught him staring at her through the tiny bedroom window he did not try to hide his adoration.
Leonard flinched at the sound of tapping behind his back. He turned and pointed the gun at the gramophone. He remembered the summer they were fourteen. It was the summer he taught Annalee to dance. That summer he didn’t bother seeking for her at all. He simply lured her out by playing the most beautiful music his ears had ever heard. He remembered her rising from behind the gramophone like steam from a rain-soaked road. He took her into his arms and taught her to follow with no instruction other than the strong gaze of his blue-gemmed eyes. They waltzed through the sonata, and long after the needle completed its voyage, long after the music stopped, they kept dancing.
Leonard threw his gun aside, rushed the gramophone, and put on a record. He cranked the handle and stood in the middle of the room while a piano sonata blared out. He waited for her to rise. He lifted his arms and waited for her to walk into them.
“Where are you?” Spit flew from his mouth and the hawk moths scattered. He spun round the room, shaking his fists in the air.
Annalee was dead. He had read her obituary decades ago, one simple sentence stapled to the documents willing him this home. But now he was standing alone in the attic wondering if he was fried in the head or if there could have been some sort of mistake, because inside the music he could feel her.
“Where are you?” he yelled.
The sonata crescendoed, and from the gramophone Annalee rose.
Leonard screamed and reeled against the wall. Her eyes had sunk into their sockets, but her lashes were still like spiders and her irises still like blue burning stars. Her skin had mummified, and yet still it glowed and accentuated her symmetrical bones. She had lost some hair, but the patches still rooted in her skull shimmered like gloss. Moonvine crawled through the holes in her black frock and the blooms floating around her neck gave her a sweet perfume. It was her. He could swear it was her. But she was so damn frightening and beautiful he couldn’t swear if she was real.
“Annalee?” he whispered. He reached out, and after they touched they both jumped back from an electric spark.
Her jaw dropped. By the shock on her face and the rattle of her bones, it appeared as if she couldn’t swear he was real either.
“You’re alive,” Leonard said. He stroked her cheek with his palm.
Her fingers fled to her lips, concealing her exhilarated smile and the unfortunate rot on her chin.
He took her fingers away, hooked his pinkie inside her mouth, and removed the diamond ring from under her cold, shriveled up tongue. He slipped it on her wedding bone, and when he did, he could have sworn a tiny bit of her finger had grown new skin. He raised her wrist up high, wrapped his arm around her back, and led her into a waltz of never-forgotten steps. As they glided around the attic, Annalee rested her cheek on his shoulder. Even though years had passed, and he was an old man, Leonard felt fourteen all over again.
GRADLE OPENED THE truck door as Sonny Joe pulled into the old Spivey house yard and tried to get out before he put the Chevy in park. He flicked his cigarette out of the window and tugged her back by her dress.
“Do I scare you?” he asked, turning Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” down a notch.
“I’ve dealt with scarier.” She tugged her dress back and turned her attention toward the house.
Two of its windows were lit and all the rest were dark, except the ones reflecting the moon rising above the smoke of thunderclouds. The first floor window flashed with television color, and the one way up high in the attic shone the color of fire. Grandpa appeared at the window and passed by it as if he was floating. She pulled her glasses down her nose, and he passed by the attic window again. This time he looked like he was dancing.
Sonny Joe peered through the windshield up at the attic window. “What the fuck is he doing?”
“Dancing.” Gradle smoothed her dress back and got out of the truck.
“You gonna let me walk you to the door?”
“Why?” she asked.
“So the boogeyman don’t get you.”
“I’m not scared of the boogeyman.” She slammed the truck door and walked up the drive with her eyes locked on the attic window.
The moonflowers were in bloom and their smell was almost suffocating as she climbed the porch steps and felt their dead blossoms from the day before squish through her toes. She reached for the doorknob, and Sonny Joe spun her around.
He held her hands down, and her body tensed.
“When do I get to see you again?” he asked, as he released her hands.
“The next time you see me.”
Sonny Joe smiled, ran his finger down the chain of her earring, and kissed its gold cross.
She pushed past him and turned the knob.
“Don’t be scared of me,” he said.
Gradle slammed the door in his face and walked down the hall into the living room where the TV blared a wrestling match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. A wingback chair sat a foot from the TV, and three empty cans of SpaghettiOs and an empty breadsack littered the floor. She sniffed one of the cans, scraped the sides with her finger, and ate what little bit Grandpa had left. She turned down the TV and heard the faint sound of music coming from above.
She followed the music into the hall and stared up the ladder leading to the attic. She climbed the ladder’s rungs and poked her head through the hatchway into a flurry of flowers and moths. Music trickled out of the gramophone and Grandpa, covered in spiderwebs, waltzed with himself like an elegant madman across the attic floor.
Gradle froze. She wondered if he’d finally cracked and gone crazy. But the more she watched, the more she wondered if there was someone else there. As he traveled toward the dollhouse, he stared into the air as if it had eyes just for him, and when he lifted his hand to suggest a twirl, a bit of wind blew back his hair.
She crept up through the hatchway, sat on the floor, and tucked her knees inside her dress. He dipped and turned and stepped in threes. His feet fell so lightly that the pupas and moonflower he danced upon were miraculously left unharmed. He waltzed from one end to the other and back again, and as the music died, his movement slowed, and when the music ended he bowed and kissed an invisible hand.
“Where’d you learn to dance like that?” she asked.
Grandpa lowered the invisible hand, and his body stiffened. He turned around, looked at Gradle, and quickly turned back as if the sight of her seared his eyes. He stared at the wall as the gramophone’s needle skipped and cracked. She wished she had never asked the question.
“Can you see her?” he asked in whisper.
“Who?” Gradle said.
“Annalee.”
Gradle looked over the room. She listened, she smelled, she felt the air, stuck her tongue out and tasted it. But all she could see was Grandpa, all she could hear was him, all she could feel and taste was him.
“They say she committed suicide,” she said.
Grandpa bowed his head, ran his fingers through his silver mane, and clasped them together behind his neck. He looked up toward the ceiling, drew in a deep breath, then stomped across the room and kicked the gramophone off its stand.
“Leave,�
� he said.
“We’re gonna run out of food tomorrow,” she said, climbing down through the hatch.
She went into her moonlit room, lay down on her bed, and removed the photograph of her grandpa and mother from her bra. It was still wet from the holy dunking waters of Ceif’s and Sonny Joe’s church. She placed the photograph on the nightstand and stared at it in the blue moonlight, wondering if Grandpa had ever danced with her mother, and if she would ever be so lucky for him to one day dance with her.
Gradle flinched awake and drew in her breath so fast she choked on it. She had been dreaming of Delvis Miles and his beautiful mongrel dog. She caught her breath and sunk back into the hot, sweaty pillow. In the nightmare, Delvis was hanging from a tree. A rope cinched around his waist and he swung back and forth, trying to swim through the air to reach his dog that struggled on the ground, bloody, writhing, and yelping in pain. Gradle was there watching. Thousands of crows squawked in the trees and firecrackers blew them up. When Gradle tried to run and help the dog, she realized she was buried halfway in the ground. All she could do was claw toward the dog while his black terrified eyes begged her to help.
She got out of bed and went straight to the study where she ransacked the desk, searching for a piece of paper to write Delvis a letter. She found a yellow legal pad bloated with moisture, grabbed an ink pen from her empty SphaghettiOs can, and aimed the pen at the paper.
Dear Mr. D-5 Delvis Miles The Lone Singer,
My name is Gradle Bird. I threw firecrackers at your house yesterday with Sonny Joe and Ceif. I’m not a bit proud about what I did. It was mean and cruel, and I’m honestly sorry. I’m sorry about your dog. I wish I could have done something but I didn’t. I’d like very much to apologize in person if you would allow. Please write back. My address is 263 South Spivey Street, Janesboro GA 30431.
Sincerely, a real true friend,
Gradle Bird
Gradle used her fingernail polish and eyeshadow to paint hearts, birds, and flowers on the letter to make it special. After she finished, she laid the letter on the bed to allow the polish to dry. Her eyes rolled toward the dust-powdered nightstand where the traffic of cockroaches crisscrossed under the damaged photograph, its corners warped and curled from evaporation.
She picked up the photograph, stood in front of the vanity’s cloudy mirror, and smoothed her dress. She stared at her mother and then stared at herself in the mirror. She brushed her hair into a new ponytail, and fingered down her bangs just so. She slid the cat-eye glasses up her nose, practiced her mother’s smile, and shoved the photograph in her bra before her grumbling stomach lured her into the kitchen.
The kitchen gleamed and smelled of Comet and lemon. The counters were wiped, the sink and stove were shined and spotless. The floors were mopped, and the eating table was polished. On the table sat a plate with a peanut butter sandwich made out of the two end pieces of bread, a glass of water, and SpaghettiOs poured into a bowl. Next to the plate was a small stack of one-dollar bills.
She scarfed down the food, folded the money inside her bra, and went on a hunt for an envelope and a stamp to mail Delvis’s letter.
She went through all the drawers in the kitchen, all the drawers in the study’s desk, all the drawers in her vanity, and every drawer in every chest in the house, but she came up short. Out on the front porch she heard Grandpa’s voice, and when she went to the door, she saw a sheriff’s car pulling out of the drive. She opened the door and walked out on the porch where Grandpa was scraping paint from the house.
“Are we in trouble?” Gradle asked.
Grandpa stopped scraping and stared at the clapboards. “Not yet,” he said.
Gradle wrapped her arms around one of the porch columns, rested her cheek against it, and watched the sheriff’s car disappear down the street. “What’d he want?”
“Wanted to know who was living here.” He secured a lock of hair behind his ear and went back to scraping.
“Do you have a stamp?” she asked.
The pace at which Grandpa scraped quickened, and flakes of white paint spewed all around him like snow. His head jerked with every jab, forcing his dirty hair to come unloose from his ear and fall into his eyes.
Gradle studied him as he went beserk with the scraper. His wifebeater was filthy and stained with armpit sweat. He looked haggard and old, like he hadn’t slept in days. Sweat rolled down his temples and got lost in grey stubble that would soon remodel his mustache to beard.
She went to his side and stopped his jabbing hand. He flinched as if she’d stung him and dropped the scraper on the ground, its handle bloody from the blisters on his palm. She pulled his hair from his eyes, tucked his locks behind his ears, and tapped her finger on his forehead.
“Does anybody live here?” she asked, while he stared down at the scraper. “I’m gonna find us some food,” she said. She ran out in the rain away from him so he wouldn’t have to keep slaving so hard at running away from her.
Leonard watched the sweat drip from his nose and dilute the blood on the scraper. Each drip of sweat jabbed like a pick into the storehouses of his mind. He recalled the pace at which the faucet dripped when he saw his wife, Dot, wasted in the tub. It was 1957, in the month of July, on a Saturday morning, the day a wild finch got trapped in the house. He had opened all of the windows and chased the wild bird in and out of the rooms with a broom. He chased the finch into the bathroom, heard the dripping faucet, and saw Dot’s slick and skinny wrist dangling over the lip of the tub.
The water was cold. She must have been too hot, too tired to undress. The emerald satin nightgown she had worn on their honeymoon, the one that lit fire to her rose-red hair, clung to the round of her stomach. She was six months pregnant and passed out drunk.
He propped the broom in the corner and placed his palm over her belly’s shallow button. It was the first time she had let him touch her since their honeymoon.
He pressed against her stomach walls and felt movement and then the pressure of his daughter’s precious and scary little hand. It was a girl. He knew because she had stolen all of Dot’s beauty. He wanted to cradle Veela then, but knew he couldn’t, so he vowed over Dot’s cold poisonous womb that if his baby girl made it out alive he would protect her with all his might.
Dot stirred and shoved his hand away. She leaned over the side of the tub and vomited on his feet. He drained the water, cleaned her mouth with his shirt, and put her to bed wet. He poured what was left in the pint of Maker’s Mark down the kitchen sink as the finch winded his ear and flew out of the window on its own. He shattered the bottle in the backyard where he had shattered many before, so that if he ever failed at protecting Veela at least he could show her how much he had tried.
For the rest of Dot’s life, he poured out her liquor and shattered her bottles until the day he found her cold in the tub with no life-blood left in her limp and dangling wrist. Yet the bottles still remained. He would find them hidden in Veela’s closet, up under her bed, and as the years went by, his pile of glass grew from Veela’s inherited addiction. After Veela was gone, he bought bottles himself, poured the liquor down the drain, and shattered them in the backyard. He had failed at protecting her, but still required continuous proof that at least he had tried.
Leonard wiped the sweat from his nose and picked up the scraper. He didn’t know how much time had passed, and for a moment he didn’t know exactly where he was. He looked around for Gradle, pulled his wallet from his pocket, and plucked out a stamp.
“Gradle?” he whispered, as he walked into her bedroom.
He sat on her bed and placed his palm on her recessed pillow. He hugged the pillow to his chest, closed his eyes, and breathed in. He could feel her warmth and could smell her smell, like feathers. He opened his eyes and saw the letter she needed to mail on the nightstand. He picked it up, smiled at her make-up art, and as he read what she had to say he wondered where on earth she got her good heart from.
He put the pillow back in its spot and place
d a stamp in its middle, hoping she would be certain to find it among the deterioriating beauty of her room. He stared down at the dirty and dulled pennies in his loafers and listened to the rain pelt against the tin roof like flocks of suicidal birds. His ears started to throb, and they became sensitive to other sounds, like the one he’d imagined hearing all morning—a sad, weeping sound from above.
GRADLE RAN DOWN the sidewalk in the rain, past the neighboring house with its sinking roof and faded FOR SALE sign, angry at Grandpa and his cold indifference. She wanted to cry, but she was too mad to cry, so she ran faster instead. She dreamed about running forever, to keep going until she hit the interstate, until she hit the Fireside Motel, until she could hijack a big rig, drive it out west to California and stop at the Petrified Forest along the way, but she was starving and needed to buy a stamp to mail the letter to Delvis.
She ran through the town’s biggest intersection, and stopped to take a breath once she saw the Piggly Wiggly’s bright red letters and the face of its happy little pig. Four cars sat in the Piggly Wiggly’s lot, and a lovely steam left by the partly sunny thunderstorm that just came through rose from the asphalt. The Pig’s automatic doors sucked open and her nipples grew hard when she met the cold conditioned air.
Although there were only four cars in the lot, the store was packed with more people than four cars could hold. She pulled a shopping buggy from the inventory and dodged huddles of people who had no business being there except to escape the heat. They asked the butcher questions that had nothing to do with meat and browsed the aisles with empty buggies while their barefooted children with black-bottomed feet cooled their faces and armpits with the produce sprinklers. When she passed these people they stopped what they were doing and stared. Whispers followed and mothers drew their children into their hips before she passed by. She was a stranger in this town, and by the way they acted she was the strangest stranger they’d ever seen.