What Big Teeth

by Rose Szabo

  “Are you alright? Maybe someone should look at it.” I reached for it. “I’ve been reading a little about medicine. I could—”

  Her hands flew to the bandage, protective. “No, my dear,” she said. “Please, do not trouble yourself. I am fine. More than fine, because I am with you. In fact, there is something I would like to talk to you about.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “When you saved me from your grandfather the other night,” she said. “Did you know how you did it?”

  I did know. I’d spoken, in a particular way, and Grandpa Miklos had to obey me. I’d been doing it for a while now, pretending that I didn’t really know what I was doing, but sure of it all the same. I thought about the vision I’d seen of myself as a child; I’d used it then, too, hadn’t I? How often had I forced people to do something they didn’t want to? I thought of the shopkeeper in Winterport. I thought of Rhys.

  Grandmere saw the look on my face, and she rushed to press my hands in hers.

  “Don’t be so worried!” she said. “What you have is a gift, a natural talent. You should be proud.”

  “I feel…” I said. “Is it alright to do that? I mean, really?”

  She looked suddenly serious.

  “Anything that helps you to stay alive is permissible,” she said. “It is a dangerous world for us.”

  I was beginning to know when she was putting on an emotion for my benefit and when she was sincere. When she said this, she looked down at her hands, folded and unmoving inside their lavender gloves. She always became very still when she was upset, not wanting anyone to see her in pain. I did the same thing.

  “Please talk to me,” I said.

  She looked up at me with a sad little half smile.

  “I had three other daughters,” she said. “Angelica played the violin. Marietta was always falling in love with boys; she was a flirt, but clever, too. She took up with a German officer at one point and I was so angry with her. I wish I had been kinder. And Ofelia was my youngest, practically still a child. I lost all of them over the course of the War. Ofelia was the last.” She said it with a mournful calm. “I wish I could say more. I don’t even like to think about them. How I wish you could have known them.”

  I wanted to hug her, to pull her close to me and lean her against my shoulder. But I knew if I tried, she would tense up, and then politely excuse herself. So I sat next to her in silence for a long time. I couldn’t believe what she’d been through. I couldn’t believe that after all that, she’d come here, to find me. She was one of us; she was just looking for a home. Why couldn’t Grandpa understand that?

  “Ofelia wasn’t old enough to use her gifts yet,” Grandmere said at last. “And your mother refused to. I cannot help but think that if we had all remained strong together, I might not be the only one who survived.”

  That did explain why Grandmere was so cold to Mother. She’d wanted help, and Mother had refused. I thought of Ofelia, who didn’t know how to use her gifts. I wondered what Grandmere meant when she said Ofelia had been practically a child. Had she been my age?

  “So you want me to control people so that I can be safe,” I said.

  “So that we together can go anywhere,” she said. “Live wherever we please without having to worry.”

  I felt a twinge of doubt. Not everything Grandmere did seemed necessary—it wasn’t all just to survive. But maybe after years and years alone, it had gotten hard for her to tell the difference. She was alone, and she was afraid. Maybe I could teach her not to be afraid anymore.

  “Then I’ll practice,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Can you leave me for a little while, my dear?” she asked. “I want to be alone with my thoughts.”

  I wanted to be there for her, but I got up quietly and closed the door behind me on the way out. Without her, I felt abandoned.

  I didn’t want to practice this gift. The idea that I’d made Grandpa twist like that in midair made me feel sick. But I’d saved Grandmere’s life with it. Maybe if she felt like she could depend on me to protect her, she could relax. Maybe we could all be a family together. After all, wasn’t there room for strangeness in this house? I could make them see that she meant us no harm, that she wouldn’t need to harm anyone if she felt safe. Maybe she’d stop worrying about Rhys.

  And surely, just because Grandpa Miklos was afraid of her didn’t mean that she was the old woman he’d seen all those years ago. She would have been young then. There must be a mistake. There must be an explanation.

  After Grandmere left, I tried to sit up and read, but my chest still hurt from the fall, and I felt strangely tired. I napped through most of the afternoon, and when I woke up, it was dark out, and someone had left a tray of supper. I eased myself up and ate slowly. It was hard to swallow.

  I kept thinking about what Grandmere had said, about practicing my talent. Maybe someone would let me try it on them, if I promised not to make them do anything they’d hate. But who was home? I shut my eyes and listened to the heartbeat of the house. Upstairs: Mother, splashing in her tub. No, she was too upset still. No sounds of Grandpa anywhere; I hoped he was alright, that he’d be back from the woods soon, so that we could talk. Margaret in the kitchen, a scraping sound that told me she was scrubbing down the flagstones. And a faint sound from down the hall, in Grandma Persephone’s old study. Music, I realized. The record player, turned nearly all the way down. I didn’t know who was playing it.

  I limped down the stairs as quietly as I could. The door to the library was closed, so I knelt down and pressed my ear up against the door. The record scratching away on the Victrola. And shoes scuffing on the rug. And my father’s voice.

  “We don’t have to stay here,” he said. “I could leave. You could leave with me.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” Arthur’s voice. What was he doing here? Their footsteps were rhythmic, in time with the music. I realized they were dancing. I imagined the way that Arthur must dance, stiffly, lightly. I imagined resting my hands on his fingertips, the two of us gliding like air, graceful as marionettes. My father’s footsteps were heavier, stumbling. I wondered who led, when they danced. I couldn’t picture what it would look like.

  “I know you say she made you stay,” my father said. “But she’s dead. She can’t be why you’re still here. It must be something else.”

  “Maybe it’s Rhys.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “If you insist.”

  I wondered if Arthur was afraid of my father. I didn’t like that stiffness in his voice, in the movement of his feet. I increasingly had the feeling that he didn’t want to be here, that it was one more thing he was forbidden to say.

  Well, my father couldn’t hate me any more than he already did. I stood up, took a few steps back, and strode toward the door. I opened it lightly and casually, as though I were just coming in to get something.

  I thought I would have to pretend to look startled, but it was easy when I saw my father frozen, one hand on Arthur’s waist, the other on Arthur’s hand. Arthur looked perfect, with impeccable posture; he paused midstep. I was shocked by the ordinary intimacy of it. I thought of girls at school practicing dance steps together and the feeling that had always given me, the same feeling I had now: that I was seeing something I wasn’t quite supposed to see, something that gave me a sharp pain under my sternum.

  “I—Father,” I said. “I wanted to look over the books. I…”

  Father let go of Arthur, almost flinging him away. He pushed his way past me out the door, slamming it behind him. Arthur didn’t look after him, I noticed. He looked at me.

  “You did that on purpose,” he said. I was suddenly embarrassed.

  “You sounded—” I shook my head, not sure how to explain what I’d heard. “You didn’t sound happy.”

  His smile vanished. “I wish you wouldn’t pretend to rescue me. It’s disingenuous.”

  “Why does he make you dance with him?” I asked.
<
br />   “He asks, and I say yes.”

  “Why do you say yes to everything?”

  “Because I”—he paused, working his jaw—“don’t say no.”

  “Why?”

  He came and took me by the arms. His mouth twitched in what was almost a smile.

  “You’ll give up soon,” he said. “Soon you won’t care. Soon you’ll just love that I say yes. And maybe then you can relax, and stop asking so many questions that you don’t want answered.”

  The record was still spinning. My father had fled. The door was closed. Luma wasn’t in the house, or I would have heard her. It was just the two of us.

  “Do you like to dance?” I asked.

  “I dance.”

  “Would you want to dance with me?”

  “I would dance if you asked me.”

  He’d said so little, but I could tell he was saying more. I thought carefully before I answered.

  “I’m not asking you to,” I said. “It was only a question of interest.”

  His mouth was open but he didn’t speak. I felt like we were groping toward something, together, blindly. That we were almost there, wherever ‘there’ was. For a long moment Arthur was silent.

  “Then no,” he said at last. “I would rather not.”

  My face burned red. I felt ashamed; he’d seen through me. He knew now how much I liked him, and he didn’t like me. I felt like a fool. No amount of help from Grandmere would ever make him love me. No pretty dress or anything else. He didn’t like me, or anything about me.

  Maybe I had misunderstood that night in the hall, too, when Rhys had fallen out of the door in the wall. Maybe Rhys meant something to him, something I didn’t. Something I could never mean. Maybe Father had, too, once. Arthur was … I didn’t know what Arthur was. But we didn’t have the secret kinship I kept thinking we did. It was all in my imagination.

  “Don’t look so sad,” Arthur said. He stepped toward me, lightly, his movements still lithe. “I don’t mean to hurt you. I mean to be…” He gritted his teeth as though biting back words. Or having something bite them back for him. “Honest,” he said at last, with much effort.

  There was so much I wanted to ask him—was he in love with Luma, then, or Rhys? Or my father? Was being with Luma a kind of disguise? How long had this been going on? I had so many questions. But the idea of staying and pressing him on any of it made me uneasy—I wasn’t sure if he could tell me, or if I could survive understanding. I looked up at him. He was so close to me again, always getting so close, in a way that made me want to grab him and cling on for dear life.

  “Eleanor,” he said, his teeth grinding with every word. “Do you remember talking to me about your friend from school? You said her name was Lucy?”

  I didn’t want to think about Lucy Spencer. This was about him, not about me. “Maybe you should go,” I said.

  “You didn’t say you want me to go,” he said. “Why did you bite her? If you really want to understand, it’s right in your reach.”

  I didn’t want to think about Lucy. I wanted him to leave me alone, for this whole awful scene to be over. And then I thought about banishing.

  Without thinking, I reached out and thumped the wall. One, two, three. As soon as I’d done it, I knew I’d done something unforgivable.

  Arthur pivoted on his heel and strode from the room. I tried to follow him. “Wait,” I said. “Wait.” I caught the back of his jacket. “Arthur, I’m sorry. What did I do?”

  He shrugged me off and kept going. We passed the front parlor, where Father looked up from the book he was ignoring. Across the parquet of the front hall I followed Arthur, until he flung open the front door. “Arthur, wait!” I said.

  He turned and looked at me.

  “Good-bye, Eleanor,” he said.

  He stepped out into the night. The wind sucked the door shut with a slam. I stood, panting, wild-eyed.

  “Proud of yourself?”

  Father stood up from the darkness of the parlor. He was holding a glass of brandy. It sloshed as he started toward me and stumbled.

  “He’s not going to fall in love with you,” Father said. “It’s not part of his nature. I tried to warn you.”

  “What is he?”

  “Something your grandmother made,” he said. “To look after the children.” He laughed.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. How could you?”

  “Why are you like this with Arthur?” I asked. “You’re married. Don’t you ever think about what this is doing to Mother?”

  Father growled low. “Drop it.”

  That made me angry.

  “Why should I?” I said. “All I want is to understand, and to be a part of things, and all you ever tell me is no. Why? What are you so afraid of?” I took another step toward him, and he backed away, a spill of brandy sloshing to the edge of the glass and onto the floor. “What are you afraid I’ll find out? That you’re in love with him? That you wouldn’t let him leave after Grandma died, even though he wanted to go?”

  He backed up, stumbled, caught himself against the front door.

  “You know, my sister was right about you,” he said. “You’re trouble. You should never have come back.”

  “Papa,” I said, stepping back. My eyes filled with tears. “You don’t mean that.”

  He looked down, and I knew that he didn’t mean it. He was afraid. He was ashamed. He was like me. Suddenly, I understood.

  “You didn’t want anyone to know,” I said. “But you didn’t want to lose him.”

  “I didn’t know how to help him,” Father said. And he started to cry.

  I wanted to run to him, hug him. We could figure this out, I realized. This wasn’t the kind of fight fathers and daughters usually had, but then, we were different. We were Zarrins.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I said. “About why I left school.”

  But my father’s gaze shifted upward, to somewhere behind and above me.

  “Goodness, Miles,” Grandmere said, from the top of the stairs. “Are you drunk?”

  He looked down at the glass in his hand, as though seeing it for the first time.

  “Go to bed,” she said. My father started up the stairs. He cast a look backward at me as he went. A look that said help me. But now it was my turn to wonder how.

  “I am so sorry,” she said to me, when he was gone. “I cannot believe he would speak to you that way. The things he said!”

  “It’s alright,” I said. “He was just upset.”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “It was unacceptable,” she said. “Simply unacceptable.” Something about the way she said it unsettled me, as though she’d arrived at a decision.

  “I’ll talk to him about it in the morning,” I said. “After he sleeps it off, I’ll handle it.”

  “Eleanor, dear,” she said. “If you’re feeling better, could you go fetch me something from the kitchen? Maybe some bread and butter?”

  “You’ll let me talk to him?” I asked.

  “Of course. In the morning.”

  I went into the kitchen. Margaret was standing by the sink. As I came up she started groaning, her tone escalating.

  “Don’t,” I said. She fell silent. I cut a slice of bread from the loaf in the kitchen and buttered it. When I brought it up to Grandmere, she was back in her bed, tucked in under the blankets.

  “Did Father get to bed?” I asked.

  “He went.” Grandmere gestured into her room. “Won’t you come in, my dear?”

  “I’m … very upset,” I said. I realized I was crying. “I think I’m just going to go get some sleep.”

  “My lovely girl. I hope you know I’ll always protect you from people who just don’t understand.”

  “He’s not so bad,” I said, the tears still falling. “I’m sure you convinced him. He won’t do anything like that again. Please don’t be too hard on him.”

  “You’re generous,” she said. “I lik
e that about you. Sleep well, my dear.”

  The next day my father was not at breakfast.

  I checked the woods, and the beach, and finally went to town to ask after him at the post office.

  When I came back, my father was in the parlor, sitting in a low chair behind a newspaper.

  “Father,” I said, coming in. “I’m sorry about last night. We both said things we shouldn’t have, and I—”

  “Nonsense,” he said, from behind the paper. “I just want you to be happy.”

  “But…” I glanced left and right before kneeling on the floor in front of his chair. “I want to know what you were telling me. Please, what is Arthur? You said he was something Grandma made. What did you mean?”

  “It does not matter, as long as you’re happy.”

  “But I’m not happy. I’m…” I realized I was looking over my shoulder with every fifth word. “I’m scared, Papa.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “But—”

  “I just want you to be happy.”

  I grabbed the newspaper and ripped it out of his hands. I stared into my father’s blank face.

  I expected to be able to see what was wrong. His eyes would be different, or his coloring. But he looked exactly like my father.

  “Papa,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please, Papa.”

  “Nonsense,” he said.

  NINE

  For a while, I was afraid. Then, I was angry.

  I went upstairs and banged on Grandmere’s door. She didn’t answer right away. “Eleanor, dear,” she said. “I am so fatigued. Can you come back another time?”

  I rattled the knob. Locked. “I need to speak with you,” I said.

  She sighed and, with a surprisingly loud thump, rolled out of bed. I heard a shuffling and skittering behind the door, and then the lock clicked open. “Alright, come in,” she said.

  When I opened the door, she had gotten back into bed. The room looked more disheveled than usual for her. I spotted something on the floor out of the corner of my eye, something black and shiny against the bright carpet under the edge of the bed. What was it?

  “What did you want to talk to me about, dear?” She reached for a cup on her bedside table and sipped from it. “I am feeling a little sick.”