What Big Teeth

by Rose Szabo

  I wished I’d been practicing, suddenly. I wanted Arthur to see me at my best. I sat up straighter on the piano bench, arching my back, bending my head toward the keys. I tried to remember songs I was good at playing that weren’t in Luma’s range. If I was going to be bad, I at least wanted to be better than her.

  There weren’t many songs like that, though—she had a good clear voice that went from alto to soprano. So I settled for a song I liked, a song about love, something Father had played for us when we were younger. It was a translation of a song Grandma Persephone used to sing in Greek, something she’d learned on Crete. I struck up the chords, and Luma nodded her head in time with my playing.

  Luma’s voice sounded high and clear, and then Rhys came in on the low part and I felt something resonate in my chest. We should have played together more often when we were younger, I realized, now that I heard us all together. We were good at it, and although usually at school I didn’t sing, the words rose unbidden and came tumbling out of my mouth:

  “Let me be ground to crumbs or dust

  My shattered bones would still have strength

  To run to you!

  When you’ve made up your mind

  No use lagging behind

  And no relenting

  Let your youth have free rein

  It will not come again

  So no repenting!”

  It was a giggly song, one Grandma Persephone liked to sing to Miklos. I suddenly remembered being little and watching her in the garden, humming the tune while she worked. Grandpa Miklos had come up behind her and uprooted her like a carrot from the ground, and both of them fell over backward laughing like children. No wonder he could barely stand the sight of a new person in the house.

  How could she have had an affair? Grandpa had loved her more than anything, and it still hadn’t been good enough for her. I hated her more than ever. I’d never be loved like that, not if I lived a hundred years, I was sure of it. Who had she been, that woman who had run our lives for so long, pruning us like plants, lying to us, keeping secrets?

  “Tell me with a laugh

  Tell me with a cry

  Tell me you don’t love me—

  What care I?”

  I glanced up and saw that Arthur was watching me. I looked away as I sang “What care I?”

  When I looked back, Grandmere caught my eye. She was watching me, her head tilted to the side, brow furrowed. Something had troubled her, or maybe she was having a hard time following the song in English. But when we stopped, she applauded. “Beautiful!” she said. “Absolutely beautiful.” She stood up to catch me by the hands and beamed.

  “My accomplished granddaughter,” she said softly to me. “So lovely and so talented.”

  Luma scoffed. She was jealous, I told myself. Jealous of how much Grandmere liked me.

  “But I’m sure your Mr. Knox is tired,” Grandmere said. “We should say good night.”

  That didn’t seem right somehow. Everyone in this house stayed up until all hours, working or sleeping or playing when they pleased, and when Arthur visited, he and whoever wanted to would sit in the parlor, sometimes until the sun came up if they felt like it. But Grandmere seemed to know how a household was run. This must be how real people lived; certainly that was how it had been at school. Maybe it was time we tried being normal.

  Luma glared, and her shoulders started to go up. But she looked at Arthur and tried to relax. That was unexpected. She was trying to behave in front of him. She turned, glaring at Rhys on her way through the door. He slunk out after her, keeping his distance.

  Grandmere and I ushered Arthur into the hallway. “Thank you for coming,” Grandmere said. “I do hope you’ll call again.”

  “If it suits you,” he said, stepping out onto the porch. Grandmere closed the door behind him once he had made it down the stairs.

  Luma emerged from the shadows in the hallway. I’d thought she’d left, but she’d just gone into the kitchen. She was eating a duck leg left over from dinner. Fat dribbled down her hand.

  “Luma, go to bed,” Grandmere said. Something in her inflection seemed familiar to me, and then I realized that it was how I talked sometimes. A certain emphasis.

  Luma took a big bite of duck. “No.”

  Grandmere’s brow furrowed, as though she were concentrating on something.

  “I asked you to go,” she said again, a little more insistently.

  “And I said no.”

  Grandmere glared, but only for a moment. Then she composed herself.

  “Very well, then,” she said. “Do what you like.”

  Luma stuck the duck leg between her teeth and stomped off down the hall. Halfway down she dropped to all fours and turned beast, then disappeared around the corner as a blur of white fur. Grandmere watched her go before turning to me.

  “Eleanor,” she said, “may we speak privately?”

  Grandmere led me down the hall to the door to Grandma Persephone’s library and put her hand on the knob. And then there was a chill in the air and a sharp noise, and a shudder ran through her. For a moment her face contorted into something that looked like rage.

  “Perhaps outside,” she said.

  Outside, we walked around the house until we came to the cliff staircase. Grandmere stopped at the top landing and leaned against the railing, looking out at the water that roared against the sand below.

  “Oh, that sea breeze,” she said. “What an absolutely lovely, perfect night.”

  “Now that I’m back here,” I said, “I can’t believe I stayed away for so long.”

  Grandmere raised her eyebrows.

  “Well I do hope you will still consider traveling with me someday,” she said. “I love this place, but there are so many other parts of the world.”

  “Travel?” The idea thrilled me. “Do you think you could take me to France?”

  “Someday I will go back to France, yes,” she said. “And when I do you will come with me, of course. For now, though, I want to see what America has to offer me. It is so big and so full of possibility.”

  “I’d like to go anywhere,” I said.

  “It’s good to hear you say that,” she said. “I want you to say what it is you want, Eleanor. It’s important to me. I do not think anyone has asked you what you want in a long time.”

  It was true. Nobody had really asked me what I wanted, not when they sent me to school, and not since I had been back.

  “So tell me,” she said. “What is it you want?”

  “I can’t have what I want.”

  She laughed.

  “So young to be so cynical!” she said. “You are a lovely young woman, and talented, and hardworking. You could have anything. So just name one thing. And I will make it yours.”

  I thought about all the things I could ask her for. She had money, didn’t she? And had traveled all over the world? I could ask her for clothes, books, lessons, a trip to anywhere I could think of. And then I realized what I wanted was nothing she could give me, because it wasn’t anything that could be given. I thought of Arthur. Of the way I’d felt when we stood together in the crowd at the funeral, when it felt like we were alone together among all these people, and he told me things. There were so many things I still wanted him to tell me.

  “You’re very kind,” I said. “But I don’t think anyone can give me what I want.” And I told her about Arthur and Luma. About what he’d said about it being a phase, although I didn’t mention Rhys. As I told her, she put her hand to her cheek in astonishment.

  “My!” she said. “You are selfless, to give all that up for your sister when they are so clearly a bad match. I thought I saw you watching him. He is a trifle, a nothing. But we can start there and perhaps later you will want more.”

  She wouldn’t say that if she knew him like I did. But all I said was, “But he’s with Luma.”

  “For how long? They aren’t married, are they? They have no children?” She tilted her face into the night breeze and smiled
serenely. “You can have him. All you have to do is be bold.”

  I thought about it. Maybe she was right. But then what about Rhys? Luma was strong enough to fight him, but was I? I tried not to think about how his teeth would feel in my throat. And there was something else, too. I hated the feeling of being cruel to Luma. I thought of us singing in the parlor, how relieved I’d been when I realized I couldn’t ruin her singing, how beautiful our voices had sounded together. I wished we were younger again, when I hadn’t felt like we had to fight to get what we needed, because all we needed was each other.

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t want Luma to be unhappy.”

  “Well, it might be that another man will suit her,” Grandmere said. “We just have to find her someone else. You work on your Arthur, and I will think about who she might like instead.”

  “I don’t want to work on him,” I said. “I mean, not until she doesn’t want him anymore.”

  “That’s very noble of you,” she said. “But I want you to know that you are every bit as important as she is. She’s had her way for far too long. So if you want something…”

  I wanted to be back in the ocean, floating just under the surface, staring up at that great glowing moon. But I didn’t say that. Instead I watched Grandmere’s face, waiting for her to reveal what she wanted from me. She was hoping I’d show her I was powerful enough to take what I wanted. And if I did, she’d be impressed. Was it so bad to want that?

  “Have I upset you?” she asked. “Please tell me what I’ve done, and I’ll make it right.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just … nothing. It just feels like things are so easy for Luma.”

  “You can’t want to be like that,” Grandmere said. “She’s lazy and spoiled. Once her looks fade she will be nothing special.”

  I was stunned. It was crueler than anything I’d dared to think. But at the same time, was it so far from the truth? Luma did spend a lot of time lying around. Playing. What did she know about hard work? Not like me. Grandmere must have seen my incredulity, because she reached out and patted me on the hand.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Your sister will be happy enough. We will find her some man she will like, and she will get married and have a lovely, simple life. Really, she is the lucky one. People like you and me suffer more for our rewards.” She smiled. “But I have seen the way Arthur looks at you. I think you can have everything you desire.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She took my hand then in her small gloved one and led me back toward the house.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It makes me so happy to be here with you, to spend time with you. I’ve always wanted a daughter like you, and now, I feel that I have one.”

  No one had held my hand in so long; it was hard to figure out how to respond, whether I should squeeze her hand back, or simply let her hold onto me. She pulled me along with her, and I let myself be led. I wanted this walk to go on forever—me and my grandmother who loved me, who wanted me. Her daughter, she’d called me. Over my mother, over my sister, over everyone else. Me.

  But I knew the noise I’d heard when she opened the library door. It was the icy sound of a slap. Between that, the face in the mirror, and the strange dreams, I could no longer deny it. Grandma Persephone was haunting the house. She had been here since the night she’d died.

  I had to get back into that library.

  When we got to the house, Grandmere stretched theatrically and yawned.

  “I am quite tired,” she said. “Why don’t we go to bed?”

  “I think I’ll spend some time looking over the finances,” I said, and started for the library door.

  “Eleanor,” Grandmere said, “that can wait until tomorrow.”

  There was that tone again, the one that sounded like me. I found myself stopping short. I looked back at her, trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me.

  “I’ll leave it for now,” I said.

  “That’s a good girl.”

  I said good night to Grandmere at the door to her room. As soon as it had shut behind her, I went up to my floor and into my own room. I waited for a while, reading snatches of a paperback novel. I told myself I just wanted to wait until everyone had gone to bed, but even after the house was still, I stayed in my room. I found myself checking the little alarm clock on my nightstand. Why was it so important to me, I wondered, that I follow Grandmere’s ruling to the letter? It felt so childish. Finally, the little clock said midnight, and downstairs the chimeless grandfather clock clacked, and I stood up. It was tomorrow.

  I took the servant stairs. I’d never used them to sneak around before, and so one of them surprised me when it creaked loudly underfoot. I held very still. No sounds came from anywhere else in the house. I breathed out slowly.

  I wasn’t sure exactly why I felt the need to sneak. It wasn’t like Grandmere would do anything if she saw me climbing around in the dark, not exactly. But I didn’t want to disappoint her. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want me in the library, although she hadn’t made it clear why. Better that she didn’t know, then, if it was only going to upset her. From the laundry, it was easy enough to pick my way along in the dark to the library. Nobody stopped me. I was fairly sure no one else was home and awake.

  At the door, I paused. I had the wild thought that maybe there was no ghost—maybe Grandma Persephone had been hiding in the attic this whole time. She’d controlled everything else so tightly that I could almost believe she could have gotten everyone to go along with it. So when I opened the door to the library, I half-expected to find her sitting in her usual chair, reading a book. “You’ve failed the first test, girl,” she’d say. “I’ll just have to find someone else before I actually die.” It would be a relief.

  Even in the faint light, I could tell the room was empty.

  I shut the door behind me and leaned against it. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want anyone to hear me, to know I was in here. I couldn’t say why just yet, only that it felt like there was no one I could trust. And then I felt a cold rush of air on my face. In the dark room I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck.

  The windows were shut. I crossed to the fireplace and checked the flue; it was closed. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little flicker of movement.

  On top of Grandma Persephone’s glass-fronted cabinet, high over my head, was a box. As I watched, it moved again. In tiny bursts it inched forward, and I stood mesmerized like a rabbit, watching it. It moved with painful slowness, like someone was pushing it with just the tip of a broken finger. At last, it teetered on the edge, and with one more little movement, it fell.

  It hit the floor with a crash. Panic welled up in me, threatening to drown out my other senses. I stepped back and back, toward the door, felt for the knob with my hand, stumbled out into the hall—

  And ran into something cool and solid.

  I spun around. Arthur stood there, in the dark. For a long moment, we both stood in silence. Then I whispered, “What are you doing here?”

  “I never left.”

  Luma must have let him back in after Grandmere showed him to the door. They’d probably been upstairs, doing who knew what. For a moment, I was angry. And then I was just glad to see him.

  “Please don’t think I’m crazy,” I said. “I think there’s a ghost.”

  “I believe you.”

  “So you’ve felt it, too?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  I felt like a coward, needing someone there, but I did feel safer as I stepped back over the threshold. Arthur walked past me into the room. I noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes. His black socks were threadbare; I could see the white of his heel showing through on one side. It made me feel tender toward him.

  “It’s cold,” he said. It was still dark in the room, but he tugged aside the curtain, and in the moonlight, everything came into focus.

&n
bsp; The box lay on the floor, its contents strewn all around it. So it was real. I caught my breath. Arthur stared at it with no expression on his face.

  “Is she trying to tell me something?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t say.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You knew her better than me. Help me.”

  When I said that, I thought I caught him scowling. Then Arthur took a step toward the mess, and I moved quickly to join him. I spotted the tarot cards first: the pack had come open in the fall and some of the cards had escaped. I hadn’t seen them since the night Grandma Persephone died. How had they gotten in here?

  “Those are her work materials,” he said. “Things she used to do magic.”

  Aside from the cards, nothing else in the box looked special. There was a pair of scissors, a pincushion full of needles and different colors of thread, a heavy snow globe, taper candles wrapped in colored strings in various stages of decay, a book of matches, a pair of spectacles without the arms, a few yellow Kodak canisters with lids. The box itself was just a crate of rough wood with a sliding lid. I bent to gather everything up. When I got to the cards, I couldn’t bring myself to put them away.

  “This means she wants me to use them, right?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Do you think she’s here now?”

  “I think she’s close,” he said.

  “Why do you think she doesn’t want Grandmere in here?”

  “I wouldn’t say,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said. “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “Are you going to make me tell you?”

  I thought about telling him he had to tell me, but the idea made me uneasy. I remembered last time he’d done exactly what I’d wanted, and then he had disappeared for a while. And this last time, I’d known what I was doing, a little. Not entirely, but enough to count. I shook my head.

  “Thank you for helping me,” I said. “You scared me at first, but I’m glad you were here.”

  “I’m only doing my job.”

  “You don’t have to stay if you want to go.”