What Big Teeth

by Rose Szabo

  I felt my heartbeat accelerate wildly. “You’re not planning to leave? Stop working for us?”

  “Not anytime soon,” he said. “But I work for Persephone, and she’s getting on in years. Things will change when she dies. I suspect your grandfather will leave the public affairs to Rhys, and something tells me he won’t have your grandmother’s interest in business.”

  We both looked over at Rhys. He was pointing to something out the window to get Luma to turn her head, and when she did, he lunged forward and grabbed a joint of venison off her plate with his teeth. She looked back and swatted him and they both laughed, juices trickling down their chins. I glanced back at Arthur and saw him looking at me—or at least, I saw my own half smile, half grimace reflected in his mirrored lenses. But he was smiling, just a little.

  “Why would they ever leave it to him?” I asked, feeling bitter. I tried to correct myself: “I mean, why not to my father? He’s older.”

  “Because Rhys is their favorite. Because he reminds them of their long-lost firstborn son. They half believe Rhys is him.” He clicked his tongue. “And because they think your father is missing the patriarchal quality. The Zarrins are a surprisingly traditional people.”

  I looked around at them: covered in blood and sauce, eating with forks, hands, and faces indiscriminately. He must have seen my shock, because he leaned in toward me, not touching me, but close enough that I could feel the electricity of it.

  “You’ve been gone a long time,” he said. “I know you think that’s a bad thing, but you might be able to see things more clearly from your vantage point.”

  They ate until the platters were empty. A silence descended slowly over the table, except for a few sounds of lapping. Arthur leaned forward.

  “That was a fine dinner,” he said. “Persephone, can I trouble you for a cup of coffee?”

  “I’ll get it,” Luma said. Rhys shoved her. She shoved him back. They began growling at each other, shoulders tensing.

  “Eleanor,” Grandma Persephone said, “why don’t you get it? I’m sure Margaret’s got the tray ready.”

  “Wish me luck,” I said to Arthur. He laughed a little, under his breath.

  “Luck with what?” Grandma Persephone was tilting her head at me again, in that way she did when she wanted me to stop being rude. I was going to start hating that soon.

  “Never mind.”

  The coffee tray was already on the counter by the door. Aunt Margaret stood scrubbing dishes with her back turned to me. I picked up the tray as silently as I could, but a rogue spoon leaped off and hit the stone floor with a clatter. She turned and stared at me.

  “Just a spoon,” I muttered, setting the tray down and scooping it back up. I wiped it off on the edge of my skirt. “Sorry.”

  “Mmmmmmmmm…” She was humming to herself, or it seemed that way at first. “Mmm … traitor.” Margaret hadn’t said a clear word to me that I could remember, but now she was making herself understood perfectly.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Hm.” And she turned her back on me, and returned to scrubbing a roasting pan.

  I told myself I wasn’t upset. She was just a madwoman, just a very strange aunt who would rather cook and clean than sit down to dinner with her family. I’d never seen her even speak to her own son; of course she didn’t like me. I was a disruption in her routine.

  But I was rattled. And the rattling spread from my mind down my arms and rattled the tray I carried, the cup of bone china ticking away in the socket of its saucer, the silver coffeepot brimming over, the cream and sugar spoons chiming. When I stepped back over the threshold, Arthur looked at me, and all went silent. I glided across the floor to him. This must be Luma’s job sometimes. I could picture how she would do it: her long hair draped over one shoulder, her steps light as they were when she walked the forest. I did it like that, tilting my head at a soft angle, pointing my toes, turning myself into someone else. I set the tray down in front of him and a stray lock of my hair brushed against his suit jacket. He glanced up at me, his face only inches from my ear.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I nodded and let go of the tray. My wrist brushed the hot coffeepot and I yanked it back, but I didn’t even feel the pain. Not really.

  “You’ve hurt yourself,” he said.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “You’re quite the stoic.”

  I found myself smiling. When I’d first gotten to school, I’d been a crybaby, someone who lost fights. But I’d learned.

  “There’s a salve for that in the kitchen,” Grandma Persephone said. “Get it from Marg—”

  “I’m fine,” I said, a little too sharply.

  She eyed me as I settled back into my chair. The noise in the room soon resumed, talking instead of gnashing, and the tension between us slackened a little.

  But now my father was watching me. He had a perplexed look on his face, and he kept looking back and forth between Arthur and me. I looked at him closely for the first time since I’d gotten here. He looked like a young Grandpa Miklos, or an old Rhys: the thick dark hair, the heavy brows and jaw. But Arthur was right: my father was missing some essential quality that Rhys and Grandpa Miklos both had. He was timid and watery inside that solid body, like he was always embarrassed. I felt like I knew something else, too, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that was yet. When he saw me watching him, he asked, “So, Eleanor. How are you getting settled in?”

  “I feel like I’ve lost so much time,” I said. “I only half remember how it is to be here. I don’t feel like it’s real.”

  “Oh, no,” said Miklos, from the far end of the table. I glanced up at him. He looked genuinely sorrowful. Maybe he was the grandfather I remembered, when he wasn’t eyeing me like I was a wounded deer. Maybe I could help him see me differently.

  “I remember you used to tell the best stories, Grandpa,” I added. “Maybe you can help me understand.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Arthur said.

  My father glanced askance at Arthur again, but Grandpa smiled. The rest of him was human now, but his teeth were still the wolf’s, so his grin was too big for his mouth. I forced myself to regard him, to breathe deeply through the darkness that swam at the edges of my vision. This would only work if I could be strong.

  “What do you want to hear?” he asked.

  “I want to hear how you first became like you are now,” I said. “How you started”—I fumbled for the phrase he’d used at breakfast—“becoming the wolf.”

  Grandma Persephone looked shocked. “Eleanor!”

  “Easy, my love.” Grandpa Miklos put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s a hard story,” he said to me. “Too hard for right after a big meal. Another time, I promise. Let me tell you instead…” He thought. “Another story about our family. The story about my name.”

  Grandpa Miklos leaned forward in his chair and propped his elbows on the table.

  “When I was young,” Miklos said, “I was not Miklos. I was not Zarrin. I was a boy with no name.”

  I glanced around the table. Rhys and Luma had leaned forward, ears pricked, dutifully attentive. Mother had stretched her arm across the table to stroke Father’s hand, Father was watching Arthur, and Arthur was watching me. I wondered what each of them saw, or thought they saw.

  “You were an orphan?” I asked.

  “No,” Miklos said. “I had a family, a mother and a father and two sisters who were older. They had no names. None of us had names. Because none of us had any words.

  “We lived like this.”

  He shifted in his chair, raised both hands, and began to pantomime like a silent movie star. His gestures created invisible objects: A wooden bowl worn smooth by generations of hands. A pitchfork that he used to stab at mounds of hay. A soft hat that his mother sewed for him and placed on his head.

  I watched, transfixed.

  Grandpa Miklos made a gesture that seemed to embody transition, the passage of time. “And so whe
n I walked across the land—”

  “Europe,” said Grandma Persephone.

  “—Europe, to the water, and got in the boat, that was almost the first time I heard people talking. I knew maybe people talked, but only the nobles, royalty. And on the boat, everyone was talking all the time. Such a waste! I loved it.”

  “But why did you leave the old country?” I asked.

  The focus of the table shifted to me. Grandma Persephone raised an eyebrow. I stared her down. What did she want from me? How was I supposed to let my eyes adjust if I wasn’t allowed to see anything at all?

  Grandpa Miklos looked a little proud. “Ah, trying to get me to tell, I see. Clever,” he said. “Not today.”

  “The boat,” Grandma Persephone prompted.

  “But the boat! I loved the boat. The men there, they taught me so many words. The ones who taught me good words, like hello, and share, and blanket, they lived and came to America, and the ones I could find later when I was rich, I made them rich. But the ones who taught me bad words…” He shrugged, and in the candle flicker, he let his face slip shape. One moment he was Grandpa Miklos. The next he was just a snarling mouthful of teeth.

  It was over in an instant. I didn’t have time to faint, so I just clung to the table for dear life while my heart thundered in my chest.

  “Miklos!” Grandma Persephone said. “She’s not ready for those kinds of theatrics.”

  “She used to love it,” Grandpa Miklos said. “Grandpa, Grandpa, show me the wolf—”

  “I’m fine,” I said. He nodded at me approvingly. He could like me. He would like me. I’d make sure of it.

  “And then I came to New York,” he said. “And it was so busy! I didn’t know there was more than one language; they taught me Polish on the boat, I think. And here, Spanish and Greek and Italian and English. I tried to get food, but I had no money. I tried to go in a house to sleep, but they chased me out. I fell asleep in a—a hole between houses.”

  “An alley,” Grandma Persephone supplied.

  “With trash cans and dead birds. And then when I woke up it was dark, and a drunk man was pissing near me!”

  My face flushed hot. This was not a good story.

  “And I was hungry,” Miklos said. “And, well…” He bared his teeth and clacked them together. “And then I saw he had these fine clothes, so I put them on. And then I felt something in the pocket.”

  He reached into the pocket of his own vest and pulled out a cheap gold-plated watch on a chain much finer than the watch itself. He flipped it open and showed me the inside of the lid. It was stamped with the name MIKLOS ZARRIN.

  For a moment I thought, absurdly, This creature has eaten my grandfather.

  “And so that was my name,” the man with the pocket watch in front of me said. “Two whole words that belonged just to me. My first week in America, and I was rich.”

  “Do you ever think about the man whose name you stole?” I asked.

  When I said it, everyone got very quiet. Grandma Persephone’s head swiveled to stare me down. Beside me, I heard Arthur give an amused cough.

  Grandpa, though, looked thoughtful.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes I think about him.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I thank him,” Grandpa said. “He gave me everything.”

  And he did a little flick of his wrist and spreading of the fingers that encompassed the candle-bright dining room with its chinoiserie wallpaper and imported dishes, the cavernous dark of the foyer beyond, the zigzagging staircase. His gesture traveled up a winding path through pipes and ladders to the attic and burst forth from the lightning rod atop the tallest tower, arcing into the sky to rain like fireworks over our house, our land, the fishing village beneath where people whispered when they said the name Zarrin.

  “And everything I have,” he said, “I will someday give to you.”

  And just for a moment, I felt home.

  Until I realized that when he’d said you, his gaze had shifted to Rhys, who sat there grinning like a king but not surprised. He had perfect teeth, Rhys. And Grandpa’s face. And the absolute certainty of someone who has never had a troubled thought in his life. I realized that this must not be the first time Grandpa had promised him the house and everything in it.

  “Well,” Grandma Persephone said, “should we go sit in the parlor?”

  I felt my stomach growl, and when I looked down, I realized I hadn’t touched my dinner. Arthur glanced up at Grandma.

  “She hasn’t finished yet,” he said. “Eleanor, are you still hungry?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Nonsense,” Grandma Persephone said. “Take your time.”

  “I’ll sit with her,” said Arthur.

  Grandma nodded, then left. The rest of the family followed her in a ragged train.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “You were hungry,” he said. “And you weren’t going to say anything.”

  He was still sipping his coffee. I looked into the cup when he set it down. It was blacker than any coffee I’d seen, and an oily sheen hung around its surface. It didn’t look good to me, but it was the only thing he seemed to like.

  “So,” he said, “no one has told me much. What brings you home all of a sudden?”

  I glanced up at him. “I ran away from boarding school.”

  “You must have used the money she sent you.” He smiled at my confusion. “Don’t look so surprised; I do all her books.”

  “Do you know why she’s kept me away?”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. “If you think she tells me anything,” he said, “you don’t know your grandmother very well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked a little surprised. “You ask a lot of questions, for a Zarrin.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He laughed. I found myself laughing, too, a little.

  “I mean that you’re curious,” he said. “I like that. And you should know I’m not exactly your grandmother’s most trusted friend, more an ally of necessity. I protect her assets, and she—well, she makes me coffee.” He took another sip. “But I’m sure that whatever she’s up to, she doesn’t mean to harm you.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes—” I thought about stopping myself, and then I plunged forward. “Sometimes it feels like she hates me.”

  I told him about boarding school, about the girls who had teased me for years, saying my family had given me away because I was too ugly to keep. How I’d written to Grandma Persephone begging to come home at first, and she’d sent me vague news and ignored my question. How I’d run away a few times and been picked up by the police and driven back to the school while they lectured me. How Lucy Spencer had made friends with me when I was twelve, and for a while I’d felt alright, but then she’d spread rumors about me later, told people things about me that made them hate me. How the fact that I used to care about her only made me hate her more. At that last part, Arthur raised his eyebrows.

  “Tell me about her,” he said.

  “I mean,” I said, “we used to be friends. Good friends. And then we just weren’t. And it wasn’t like anything happened.”

  “As though she’d outgrown you.”

  “Exactly!” I said, and I wondered if he’d ever felt that way about someone. I realized I’d said more to him than I had to anyone in years. And he had listened silently while I shared almost as much as I knew about myself. And so I told him about Lucy Spencer pushing me down the stairs.

  We’d been the last people at school, her and her new best friend and me. They were waiting for one of their mothers to come pick them up and take them to New York. At breakfast, they’d caught my eye, hummed some little song, and then crossed their hands across their chests and snapped their fingers and dissolved into giggles. I was used to ignoring them, so I did. But then later that morning, I’d been carrying a box of files for Sister Katherine from a second floor storage room, and I�
�d heard footsteps, and then I’d been shoved hard, from behind. As I stumbled, spilling the box, I saw Lucy standing at the top of the stairs, smiling at a job well done.

  Arthur shook his head. “People are so amused by cruelty. I’ve never been able to understand it.”

  He slipped his hand on top of mine for a moment. It was like the marble thigh of Saint Cecilia I’d touched in the cathedral one day when no one was looking: cool, and heavy, and smooth. I felt a chill run from the arches of my feet to the base of my brain. He had long fingers, hands good for piano, weighted like ivory keys. It felt like a weight that could carry me to the bottom of the sea. I almost felt as though I could tell him what I’d done next. But I didn’t. I was too afraid that if I did, he’d look at me like he looked at the rest of the Zarrins.

  “I’ve been alone for so long that I can’t remember what it feels like to belong,” I said. “And I’m worried that I won’t belong here, and that if it doesn’t end with Grandpa killing me, it will with Grandma telling me I have to leave.”

  He sighed deeply. “It was a cruel thing your grandmother did,” he said. “You might never forgive her for it. But I don’t think she’s going to send you away. Not after you’ve come looking for her.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “She admires it,” he said. “It’s obvious she’s proud of you.”

  “Then why didn’t she want me to be here?”

  His hand slipped off of mine, and he shrugged. “She’s inscrutable,” he said. And then he laughed, as though to himself.

  “I will say this about her,” he said. “Whatever Persephone does, she does for her family.”

  But wasn’t I her family?

  * * *

  We talked in the dining room for a long time before we went across the hall to the parlor. Mother sat in a copper tub by the fire reading a crumbling issue of LIFE, and Grandpa Miklos had sprawled out on the hearth and was dozing—not as the wolf but as a human, the vest of his three-piece suit unbuttoned to let his after-dinner belly expand. My father and Grandma Persephone sat playing chess, but when we came in Father stood up abruptly.