by Mark Foss
Supposing Hoss is right that we choose our parents for the lessons they teach us. Hitchcock knocks off what seems to be the main protagonist early in Psycho to mess with our expectations. But what were we thinking, choosing a mother who dies in the first act of our lives?
This was the scene: our mother lay prostrate on the operating table, the doctor slapping Candy’s bare bottom three times before he got a reaction — a blink of indignation. Was Candy’s muteness the price paid for her birth?
Joseph left Candy in the hospital nursery, collecting her after Mary’s cremation. She was no trouble at all, the nurses said. Not a peep out of her, in fact. Eerily quiet. All the other newborns wailed for their mothers, who no doubt slept off their ordeals down the hall. Candy, who had every reason to cry, lay in rapt silence, fixated by the twinkle of the industrial ceiling lights.
Joseph was slow to sign the release forms. Perhaps he still hoped Candy was really a boy or belonged to someone else. Once on the street, he set off at a brisk pace, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk to honour Mary’s superstitions. On the bumpy third concession, I held onto Candy tightly and she clutched the fingers in my free hand.
Candy and I both blinked, entering the house, adjusting to the dark cloud of mourners waiting to envelop us. Hoss sat on the stairs, refusing to greet our new sister. She didn’t notice his hostility. I was two years younger than Hoss and two years older than Candy, and was already torn between wanting love from them both in equal measure. If I could have brought them together I would have, but the same uncles, aunts, and cousins who just stood circumspect over Mary’s mortal remains swarmed her daughter. They remarked on the intensity of her green eyes, tugged at her fingers and toes, made faces and goofy sounds. Candy stayed silent, shooting innocent looks that each relative read according to their own fears. In my case, I wanted to believe she needed me. I feared she might disappear like our mother. If I could only love Candy enough, she would stay.
Joseph wanted to harness the power of his voice, leaving guests envious at the unique love that passed between him and Mary. But the lumps in his throat made his vowels crash into consonants and turned his rolling cadences choppy. The gap between words grew longer. Guests shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another until Joseph shook his head and pointed his staff to the table, commanding everyone to eat. They left Candy alone at last, and I was convinced she winked at me.
4
JOSEPH INSPECTED CANDY AS ONE observes the antics of a stranger’s child. Her brown hair and Mediterranean complexion were at odds with the fair look of his sons. Our hair is fine and straight, whereas her curls are thick — anyone who caresses them gets his fingers entangled.
Joseph had to set the alarm for feedings as Candy never cried out for food. Offered a bottle, she sucked absently on the artificial nipple, ready to stop when it was taken away. When Candy burped, her mouth hung open quizzically, and no audible air escaped.
The cartoon about the impresario whose miracle frog never sings for anyone but him made a deep impression on me. I put an ear to the closed door and tiptoed into Candy’s room. Her eyes were always closed, but I was sure that as soon as I left she would be happily chattering or singing to herself. I wanted to be part of her pleasure, so I walked to the door, closed it without leaving the room, and then scampered back.
I caught her standing in her crib at last. The corner of her mouth curled up slightly, acknowledging she was caught in the act. I held out my hand and she took it, and I promised to keep her secret safe.
Her silence was impenetrable and, to the rest of my family, intolerable. Not just the lack of tears offended — there were no happy baby noises. A parade of white-bread nannies, each blander than the last, sprinkled talc powder on her feet and bottom, humming softly, trying in vain to solicit a smile. Wasn’t it enough that she submitted without complaint?
They plied her with baby toys and, later, with all manner of talking dolls to coax words from her mouth. She pulled the cords to see what inane phrases manufacturers had come up with. The dolls all wanted love, to be held or to be taken out; their limited vocabulary only heightened their neediness. She stripped them of their clothes and accessories, and was disappointed that none ever displayed anatomically correct parts. They remained freaks of nature, bloodless simulacra. What could they teach her?
I dangled a necklace of costume jewellery over Candy’s face. She rubbed the false pearls against her teeth, testing their provenance. Yes, they belonged to Mary. We passed the jewels back and forth between our mouths. My tongue searched for a hidden crevice, an imperfection that might contain a clue to Mary’s whereabouts, but the surface of the pearls was perfectly smooth. No clues, except the faint traces of Chanel No. 5, Mary’s perfume of choice. The more I tried, the more distant Mary became, as if the very act of grasping pushed her farther away. So I tried harder, falling asleep with the pearls wrapped around the thumb in my mouth. Candy sucked the pearls with less intensity, a certain detachment that convinced me she knew something I didn’t.
HOSS CALLED OUT in his sleep every night for months after our mother’s death. Incomprehensible murmurs gave way to whimpers and then disconnected words, thrown out into the void that divides our beds. I squatted on the carpet near his pillow to decipher the high-pitched warnings, the questions left hanging, the dreamy sighs of acquiescence.
At first I envied him this special communication with our mother. Since he showed no sign of remembering, I decided she must be speaking to me. In the morning, I would listen intently to every slurp of his Alpha-Bits cereal, inspecting the leftover letters at the bottom of the bowl for meaning. I pounced on him the moment he got off the school bus, and trailed him around the house until he shouted at me to leave him alone. In his rising pitch, I wanted to hear traces of my mother’s nighttime visits.
My fawning over Candy did not sit well with Hoss, whose initial hostility over the new arrival developed into full-fledged resentment. Not only had he gained an unwanted sister, he had lost a brother. As the odd one out, Hoss dreamt up ideas to win back my allegiance and distance me from Candy. He drafted me into his new boys-only spy club, which had iron-fisted rules against spending time with girls. I spied on Candy secretly, keeping my clandestine notes hidden lest Captain Hoss hand out more demerit points or boff me in the head. Whereas I devoted an entire page to Candy’s first attempts at walking, Hoss moved the furniture around so that she would topple over. She was too proud to protest or acknowledge emotional and physical hurt.
I wanted to be a good brother to both Hoss and Candy, but my instinctive desire to protect my sister made me damaged goods for him. This was the quality they both shared, Candy and Hoss: all or nothing. He smirked at my pathetic attempts to win Candy’s affections, recognizing, long before I did, that she was a world unto herself. Unknowable, unreachable except on her terms. If she had only written a rule book, I would have learned the code by heart, torn up the paper, and swallowed the evidence.
Television was our one shared experience, the only public setting where Candy’s silence was considered a virtue. In our living room, in front of the Predicta, an unspoken truce prevailed over us. Neither Candy nor I protested that Hoss chose the shows. While he and I snorted, chortled, and guffawed at Batman and Hogan’s Heroes, I would steal glances at our sister’s impenetrable face for a hint of mirth.
Candy drafted me willingly into her make-believe TV games. Without Hoss around, I played both the suitcase that accuses the housewife of leaving stains on her husband’s white shirts and the patronizing narrator. In this reenactment of the Whisk commercial, Candy played the silent housewife. I found great comfort in rendering scenarios as precisely as possible, but Candy was a free spirit, even as a five-year-old. Instead of appearing guilty when I screeched out “Ring around the collar,” she slammed down the lid of the suitcase, and — my narrator trapped inside — I had to muffle my accusation. Instead of pouring liquid detergent on the stain, she squished a strawberry on the pocket and wiped juicy seeds all ove
r it. Once she brought out a pair of scissors and made a snipping motion. I adjusted the narration as best I could. “We are having temporary difficulties. Please do not adjust your set.” This was where it all began — Candy’s silent performances and innate understanding of how to take power from men, and my need to restore normalcy at all costs.
The beginning of Candy’s play-acting spelled the end of our temporary truce. In our remote home on the Wasteland, where friends were a school bus ride away and our auction apprenticeship with Joseph had yet to begin, Hoss lashed out. He told Candy she didn’t belong. She was not a Grant. With her dark and curly looks, she resembled neither Joseph nor Mary nor either of us, her brothers. Her chromosomes were all wrong. Hoss got the facts of life talk in science class. He understood these things. I could only think back to my Sunday school lesson about the immaculate conception. If the first Mary and Joseph could experience such a miracle, small wonder that our parents could produce a black sheep.
Candy reacted to Hoss’s blasphemy, hitting him where it hurts most. She stood in front of the Predicta, forcing us to watch the screen through her. She sometimes stood behind us on the couch. Not saying anything. Hardly breathing. Yet we both felt her presence, as if she was some otherworldly being from Star Trek. It drove Hoss mad, and he flung his arms backwards, towards her last known coordinates.
I liked Candy behind me. I pretended she was our mother, distracted from her kitchen chores by one of our television shows. I heard the squeak of the tea towel she was using to dry a glass. Or I simply sensed her, just out of reach and sight. If I glimpsed the enigmatic look on Mary’s face, I would feel more distant so I didn’t turn my head. It was enough to know she was there. No, not enough.
ON BONANZA NIGHTS, with me, Hoss, and Joseph on the couch, Mary stood a few feet behind us. Apart and a part. Mary waited for the Ponderosa map to curl from the flame in the opening credits before striking her own match. I would catch a whiff of sulfur and the intense aroma of her Tareyton cigarette as small puffs passed overhead, Apache smoke signals. I didn’t know the code to interpret what she was trying to tell us. The Tareyton magazine advertisements showed women with black eyes, defiant in their choice of cigarette, ready to fight before switching to another brand. Mary was more resigned to what fate bestowed. Cigarettes loosened my mother’s tongue. I watched more than listened, fascinated by the white swirls, imagining shapes that others saw in clouds. Mountains and scimitars, deserts and jet streams, fog on low-lying fields in early morning. Did the smoke carry or push her words into the world? They issued forth in short, nicotine-tinged bursts, excess verbiage filtered by the white tip. Yes. No. Supper’s ready. She gave it all up with Candy in her womb, relapsing into a more profound silence. When she did speak, her voice was brittle, naked, and unprotected. If only she had kept smoking, she would have lived.
I wanted Candy to take up Tareytons, Export As, Salems, any brand would do. Just to know she would be behind me, a fine blend of mother and sister. Turning my head to check, only to find she wasn’t there, made me ache inside. Finding her, without any sign of Mary and her tea towel, would be worse. So I simply believed she was there, willing myself into a dreamlike state of nervous anticipation, hovering on the cusp of elation. It was only after Candy disappeared that I felt compelled to turn my head to look, over and over. Candy, my Eurydice.
HOSS DOESN'T BUY any of this. He reminds me, not for the first time, that he is two years older. If he can’t remember our mother in detail, how can I? I tell him his weed-rattled brain might be missing a few receptors, but without confessing my own doubts. Have I made it all up without knowing? No, it doesn’t take much to conjure up someone who was always a ghost.
5
THE SPECIALISTS WERE BAFFLED. CANDY could not or would not talk; we rearranged our lives accordingly.
We were all tired of calling for her from the bottom of the stairs and then waiting, never sure if she heard, was ignoring us, or was out. Joseph was afraid that badgering her to speak would only harden her resolve, so I helped him mount a blackboard on the kitchen wall. He was smart enough not to say anything to Candy. He wrote notes to all of us, and eventually Candy took it over. But if Joseph hoped buying Candy’s favour would encourage her to speak, he was sorely disappointed.
THERE WAS SOMETHING more provocative than her stubborn silence: Candy’s ability to remain detached from the power of our father’s voice.
To me, Joseph was a wizard whose mellifluous chant could sweep me up in the cadence of rising numbers mixed with gentle cajoles, mock astonishment, and dry humour. And this was without him invoking the Tone. The natural warmth of his voice was often sufficient to win over the most reticient bidder.
With bids for a bookcase stalled at five dollars, I watched him throw in a box of Reader’s Digest condensed books with faux leather covers. His voice took on a ring of elegance and grandeur, suggesting literature in a wood-panelled den, a snifter of fine brandy, and a faithful setter at the foot of a dark upholstered chair. And all those dealers of junk, collectibles, and antiques who hadn’t read a book since high school, who were buying items only to resell, whose stores and garages were full to bursting, would nod their heads, tap their noses, and pull their earlobes, raising their bids until Joseph tapped his staff at thirty-five dollars. I felt a pang of loss at the thought someone else would go home with these treasures.
I was mesmerized by his staff, which turned beat-up desks, eight-quart baskets of rusty nails, and miniature animal figurines into a hand-painted Louis XV cupboard, a bone-handled chisel from Asia, and an undiscovered Old Master. A straight thrust held in place for a few seconds was his highest accolade for the winning bidder, a sign of respect for a well-fought battle. A small twirl of the tip was dismissive, used on men whose clothes were too showy and who held their bidding cards up proudly for all to see. Some dealers toyed with him by hiding precious items in the odds-and-ends during the preview or bidding solely to make competitors pay more. For them, he reserved a short, contemptuous stab. I half expected them to turn into toads.
At Candy’s insistence, we crawled underneath the lowest tier of the stage to escape the humid summer evenings and the eyes of the patrons. Through knots in the barn boards we could see the regulars lined up in the front row, necks tilted up, towards the stage. As Joseph passed overhead, the weight of his feet pressed the boards downward, almost touching our heads, and the microphone cord slipped between the cracks and offered itself as a noose before being drawn taut and disappearing.
His voice came to me as a summons. It was my job to write down the numbers of the winners on a sheet of foolscap so Hoss would know who was buying what and for how much. I knew Joseph scanned the crowd as he chanted, looking for me. I brought my clipboard, so I was keeping up. It was growing dark and I wouldn’t be able to write. Hoss would be waiting.
I couldn’t afford to mess up. All I wanted was for Joseph to anoint me with his staff as his true successor, ahead of Hoss. There was no precedent within the annals of Grant family history for a younger son to usurp the first-born. I dreamt of it all the same, willing my timeline on the kitchen wall to jump ahead of my brother’s so that I would reach the age of thirteen first. Hoss was already ten years old. I was still two years behind; time was running out.
Sitting cross-legged in the dark, I swayed faintly with the imagined trajectory of Joseph’s staff and the firm tap that struck the board above my head. He would move to the second and third tier of the stage soon, and the taps of his staff would become fainter.
In our subterranean chamber, my six-year-old sister mimicked the movements of Joseph’s staff, silently reproducing the grandiloquence of his chant. I didn’t know whether I was hearing sounds from the speakers or from Candy’s mouth. Her irreverence invoked in me nervous, guilty laughter.
I heard doubt in Joseph’s voice. Had my apparent absence thrown him off tonight? Or did he sense an interloper below, mocking and draining his power? The crowd turned, became unruly, the bids well below par.
He pitched Monopoly, Masterpiece, and Stock Ticker as a group of board games, but their frayed cardboard covers, missing tokens, and soiled cards held no interest for the bidders.
I heard the telltale pause. Tapping into the Tone so early in the evening? In our Sunday morning catechism, Joseph taught me and Hoss that if we are blessed with the Tone, we must never use it recklessly. In all cases, it must be invoked consciously; allowing it to emerge accidentally and uncontrolled could create dire consequences.
If he was contemplating the Tone, Joseph must have been in a bad way. My body shook from the guilt that I was letting him down; it shook from the fear of what my sudden disappearance would mean for my future. Then, like all the buyers on the back lawn, I turned into a wheeler-dealer, filled with a compulsive need to possess at all costs. I was ready to buy risky stocks, build hotels in run-down neighbourhoods, overpay for Old Masters. My upraised hand crashed against the wooden plank above my head. And when the bids stopped at forty-five dollars, I was filled with unspeakable remorse, and gnawed at the sliver in my finger because it felt better to punish myself for losing than to sit with the emptiness.