by Rose Szabo
We rumbled down the main street of the town, and Aunt Margaret brought us to a halt outside the general store. She turned the car off, leaving the keys in the ignition. I waved my hand and pointed to them. She shrugged, then stomped off with the shopping list, leaving me alone.
The first invitation was made out to Father Thomas. Mother had told me to give them all to Mrs. Hannafin at the post office, but I decided I’d give that one to him directly. I dropped the rest off with her first.
“Oh, old Mrs. Zarrin’s passed?” she said. “Set my leg one winter, the roads were out.”
“She was a good woman,” I said.
“Ayuh,” she said, although she looked uncertain. “An ill wind that blows no good.”
My face flushed. “That’s a strange thing to say about a woman who just died.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be the granddaughter. I’ll be sad to see her go, though.”
“Just … please see that people show up,” I said.
“I heard that grandson was standing to inherit,” she said. “Hope Mr. Zarrin’s keeping well.”
“You must have heard wrong,” I said. “Actually, I’m the heir.”
She squinted.
“No,” she said. “Doesn’t sound like what I heard.”
The church was only a few houses down from the post office. It had lost some of its shingles in the storm last night, and outside Father Thomas was bent over a wheelbarrow, picking them up and tossing them in. He glanced up and started to raise his hand in benediction, and when he realized who it was, let it fall.
“Father Thomas,” I said. “I’m confirmed; you can bless me.”
“Your grandmother did say she sent you to the nuns,” he said. “I doubt she thought you’d convert. Does she know you’re here?”
I took a step forward and held out the envelope. “My mother asked me to bring this to you. Unfortunately, my grandmother has passed on.”
The old priest doubled over as though he’d been shot.
“Oh God,” he said. And he began to weep. He shook and sobbed, almost silently, his whole body shuddering.
“It’s alright.” I reached out, more to steady his shoulder against the shaking than to comfort him. “She was at home with her family.”
He nodded, sobbing. I’d never seen a man cry this much. He shook his head, tears pouring down his withered face, following the lines of the wrinkles. He gently moved my hand away from his shoulder and kept crying, turning from me to keep picking up the shingles that had fallen onto the lawn. I could see his hands shaking, so badly that when he caught hold of one he dropped it almost immediately. He picked it up again.
“Father,” I said. I reached out to grab the shingle. “Please, let me help.”
He shook his head. The tears were falling hard now. He looked up at me. I could see he wanted something. To do something, maybe, to make him feel better. Keep the town happy.
“It would mean a lot if you’d say a few words at her funeral,” I said.
“I don’t think I could,” he sighed. “You see, I don’t expect she was Catholic.”
“She was…” I paused, thinking. “She was very devoted.”
He half laughed at that, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“You are so much like her,” he said, still crying.
I didn’t feel like her, as I let him take the shingle from me. He turned away from me, looking down at it as though he could read something in it, as though I weren’t there at all. I watched him and wondered if I was ever going to feel like I knew what I was doing.
When I turned to leave, I noticed some boys hanging around the yard of the next house down. They looked like the boys from a few days before, the ones who had watched me so intently at the train station. They were snot-streaked and wind-chapped, dressed in torn sweaters and wool hats, their fingers lost in their oversized sleeves. The legs of their blue jeans were pressed, ironed into pleats in the front by some proud mother. I wondered what they saw in front of them. They looked too young to be boys I would have chased through the woods, but maybe their older brothers had told them about me.
As I headed back toward the post office, leaving Father Thomas behind, they started to follow me at a distance. I turned around once to glare and they broke into a run, tearing past me up the street. I thought everything would be alright, until I saw Margaret come out of the hardware store, carrying a stack of lumber over one shoulder.
As the boys saw her, their heads swiveled to follow her almost in unison. One of them pointed and said something I couldn’t hear. The other boys shook their heads, but he bent down. I watched in horror as he picked up a rock and hurled it.
Everything slowed down for me. I felt calm, I realized as I pushed away from the ground and sprinted at the boy full tilt. About halfway there the rock touched down—fell short, skittering across the cobbled street. I registered that, coolly, but didn’t care. It wasn’t going to stop me as I plunged toward the boy, arms raised. I realized my mouth was open, that I was showing my teeth. Some small part of me was frightened, but most of me was ready to taste blood—
And then Margaret was there, between me and the boy. She grabbed me around the waist with one arm as I barreled past and my feet left the ground and kicked the air. Behind Margaret’s back, the bad boy was picking up another rock when one of his friends punched him hard enough that he dropped it. “Idiot,” his friend said. “She’s gonna kill you!” And they took off running down the street.
I felt suddenly weak. They were just kids. I sagged, and Margaret lowered me to my feet. I glanced up. She hadn’t even let go of the wooden planks; they were still balanced across her shoulder. I marveled at how strong she was, and wondered that she hadn’t taught those boys a lesson herself, years ago. I had thought I was afraid of her. Now I realized I probably wasn’t afraid enough. I tried meeting her eyes, to see if she was pleased, or angry, or frightened. But she grunted and turned back toward the car, walking so fast that I had to run a few steps to catch up with her.
As we jostled uphill in the old truck, I started to come back to myself, and the horror of what I’d done seeped in. I hadn’t thought twice about it. I’d nearly ripped into that boy. I thought about Luma’s ring of bite marks. Lucy Spencer with one hand clamped over her neck while blood seeped out between her fingers, her eyes wide in terror. The night—
I shook my head and looked down at my trembling hands. I glared at them until they stopped shaking. My panic became determination. No one could find out about this. I would be more careful next time. Have more self-control. The family needed that from me. They needed me to be the normal one.
I glanced over at Margaret, about to ask her if we could keep this between ourselves. Her eyes were locked on the road and she was droning a low tone under her breath. She wouldn’t tell them. Which meant the only one who had to keep their mouth shut here was me.
Back at the house, I tried to explain to everyone how I imagined the funeral would go. The priest would say a few words. The villagers would say they were sorry for our loss, and we’d say thank you. Everyone would wear black.
“I look terrible in black,” Luma said.
“It’s one day,” I said. “And your grandmother is dead.”
“She never cared if I wore black.”
I gave up on convincing her, because I needed her help. I wanted to talk to Grandpa Miklos, who had slipped back into the house after a full day in the woods, but I was afraid to approach him alone. Luma stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders while I knocked on his door. He stuck his head out, his face scratched from running through thorns. I looked at the beads of blood that lined the scratches, but his blood was the right red. Not like mine.
“We’re having a funeral,” I said. “And it’s going to be in four days, and I need you to be there for it. And I need you to promise me that you won’t hurt anyone who comes to the house. Do you understand?”
He nodded hazily.
“I want you to be very
gentle with them,” I said. “They’re not here to see you, they’re here to pay their respects to Grandma.”
He nodded. Tears had already sprung to his eyes when I mentioned Grandma Persephone. He scrubbed at them with the back of his hand.
“I will do this thing you ask of me,” he said. “They should say good-bye without fear.”
“Did you make him agree?” Luma asked when he’d shut the door in our faces.
I was confused by her question. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“You see the worst in everyone,” she said. “Why are you so mad?”
“I’m not mad,” I said.
“You are so! You smell of it all the time. I just don’t know who you’re so angry with.”
“With whom I’m so angry,” I said automatically, and then felt stupid. In the scale of things, grammar wasn’t the worst thing Saint Brigid’s had done to me, but it was infuriating nonetheless.
“Ugh!” Luma’s lip curled up, showing her row of jagged sharp teeth. “Why’d you come home if you can’t stand us? Grandma was right, you really did forget about us.”
My head swam and my vision narrowed in on Luma. Here came that feeling again. Remember Lucy Spencer, I thought, and dug my fingernails into my palms, trying to keep myself conscious.
“Forgot you?” I said. “I wrote to you every day for the first month. I wrote you letters every month after that. Until I got to a hundred. And then I gave up. Because who gets a hundred letters and doesn’t answer any of them?”
Luma scoffed at me. “You’re such a liar,” she said. “You didn’t even send me one.”
I stared at her in disbelief. I wanted to tell her that she was the liar, not me, but she stormed off into her room and slammed the door. I knocked for a while, but she growled at me from behind it.
Luma wasn’t likely to make things up. Which meant she’d never gotten any of my letters. Who could have taken them? I could think of only one person.
Grandma Persephone had always kept her papers in the library, in an enormous glass-fronted cabinet behind her desk. I was sure that if I could get in there I’d find evidence. Or something.
I headed for the stairs but stopped when I heard voices coming from the front hall below.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” my father was saying. “I never understood any of that. It wasn’t men’s business.”
They stood close together, but tensed, as though they were connected by a wire drawn taut. Arthur was still in his coat and hat. My father was shorter than Arthur, but planted firmly with his feet apart. I’d seen too many girls stand this way at school, whisper intensely for minutes, and then erupt suddenly into violence. What did they have to fight over?
“Not men’s business?” Arthur said. “Is that the excuse you want to reach for?”
My father twitched. Arthur relaxed but took a step forward. They were almost touching now.
“It was supposed to end with her,” Arthur said. “That was the arrangement.”
“I—I don’t…,” my father stammered. He’d seemed many things to me before, but never a stammerer, never someone who would babble. “—don’t want you to leave. You’re not allowed to hurt me. Leaving would hurt me.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to stay here,” my father said. And then his voice softened. “I want you to be happy here with us.”
“Well, Miles,” Arthur said, “you can’t have everything, can you?”
The wire broke. My father turned and walked out of the room, double time. I was terrified for a moment that he would come into the parlor and see me, but he changed shape as he disappeared around a corner, and then he was gone. He was gone, leaving a pile of clothes behind.
Arthur stood alone in the empty hall. He took off his hat, held it in his hands, and bowed his head. And then he glanced up, as though someone had come in.
“Why isn’t it over?” His voice sounded small, and for a moment I wondered if I’d heard him correctly. “You promised.”
For a moment I thought he was talking to me, that he’d seen me. What promise? Grandma Persephone had asked me to promise to take care of the family, but surely it couldn’t be that. I hoped he’d say more, but he turned and left the room, in the same direction my father had gone.
I slipped down the stairs and around the corner, to the library door. I managed to get my hand on the doorknob and jiggle it just enough to know that it was locked before I heard footsteps behind me.
Aunt Margaret stood watching me. She had my father’s clothes draped over one arm and was holding a fish-boning knife in one hand. I wondered what terrible thing she’d say to me this time. Would she call me a traitor again? Or let out her unearthly scream? I watched her mouth fall open, as though in one of those dreams where you can’t move your feet, or talk, or do anything but wait for the inevitable.
“Lunch,” she said.
* * *
Lunch was a sullen affair. Grandpa Miklos sat at the head of the table looking stunned and ashen. Even in their grief, with Arthur at the table, my family seemed to jockey for his attention. Rhys stared at him openly, and Luma watched him from under her hair. Father kept passing him things, nudging them toward him, and trying to bring him in on jokes. Arthur ignored it all. Again, he didn’t really eat, just pushed his food around the plate.
Eventually, Rhys stood up.
“Arthur,” he said. “Can I show you something outside?”
“Maybe later,” Arthur said.
Rhys stalked out of the room, and Luma sprang up and chased after him. From the hallway came the sound of clicking toenails skittering around a corner and then a bang as the back door flew open. I looked at Mother, and then at Father, expecting them to do or say something about it, but both of them were intent on their plates.
Eventually, everyone else finished eating and left. I lingered in the room, watching Arthur stir his cup of tarry black coffee and wondering how I could bring up the conversation in the hall. He might not eat our food, but he did drink the coffee; he sipped at it, swallowed, stared at nothing.
“You seem upset,” I said.
“Sorry?”
“You didn’t eat again today.”
He turned to look at me, somewhere between perplexed and amused.
“I am upset,” he said. “But perhaps not for the reasons you’d imagine.”
“So why don’t you tell me?”
He cocked his head and furrowed his brow at me, but it was impossible to see his eyes. His smoked glasses made conversation feel silly and fruitless, like talking to a mirror.
“Arthur,” I said. “I don’t mean to pry, but Grandma told me I had to look after everyone. And I think that means you, too. So I want to know if you’re alright. Because you’re one of us, and I think you’re not alright.”
It was hard to tell if the light in the room had changed, or if his expression had softened.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said. “Do you have things like that? Things you wish you could talk about?”
“I bit Lucy,” I said, without meaning to.
He tilted his head. “You did what, now?”
“When she pushed me down the stairs,” I said, scurrying to explain myself. “I’d been afraid of her for so long, and suddenly I’d just had enough, and I … bit her.” I left out the blood. The screaming. The smell of it, how hard it had been to tear myself away.
I heard a low creaking sound. The sound of his cheeks stretching back into a smile.
“It’s not funny,” I said. “I hurt her really badly.”
“You’re a Zarrin,” he said. “If you didn’t kill her, you were being gentle.”
“It didn’t feel like I was being gentle.”
“What did it feel like?”
I thought for a moment. Trying to think of a way to say it without sounding awful. “Like a relief,” I said. That wasn’t true, though. Or, that was only half of it.
His smile broke into a grin, an
d for a moment the light in the room seemed different, like the sun had slanted through the curtains and struck his teeth. “You devil.”
From the kitchen came a skittering that changed into the pad of footsteps, and a cabinet door opened and slammed shut.
“Luma’s in,” I said. I watched his face, looking for a reaction.
“So I hear.”
Luma burst through the door and into the dining room. She swept around Arthur and draped her arms around his shoulders. She had a large red scratch on her forehead near her hairline.
“I just fought my cousin for you,” she said to Arthur.
“I’m flattered,” he said. The smile, and the light, were both gone.
“Come for a walk with me.”
“If that’s what you desire.” He stood up and offered her his arm. “Eleanor,” he said, “you’ve cheered me up immensely.”
Through the dining room window, I watched them follow the worn dirt track toward the woods. He glanced back toward the house, saw me watching, and gave a little wave over his shoulder.
I sat for a while at the table, not knowing how to feel. Sometimes it seemed like Arthur was treating me differently, specially. Like we were in a conspiracy together. That wave had felt private. But it wasn’t me he was walking the grounds of our estate with. With whom he was walking, said the nun lodged in my brain.
I was all alone again. The house, which often seemed too full when even a few of the family were around, suddenly felt vast and empty. Something about the sudden stillness made me freeze like a rabbit, conscious of the passage of time, but with no sense of what I was supposed to do next. It was almost like panic, but slower, as I tried not to think too hard about Luma and Arthur walking together in the woods.
It wasn’t important how I felt about him. There was too much to be done, I told myself, now that I was the head of the household. I set out to prove it by finding something to do.
I decided to check on the snake lilies in the greenhouse. But when I opened the door, I was surprised to find Father already there. He stood at one of the panels of glass beside the long trays of purple-black drakondia, his back to me. His reflection in the glass looked—worried. And I could see why as I glanced through the shadow of his face. He was looking at Luma and Arthur, standing at the edge of the woods.