by Brian Hodge
It’s four years now that they’ve been engaged. He doesn’t know why they don’t just set a date and get it over with.
On and on, Edgar’s litany of complaints, like the recitation of constitutional amendments: The food. His other grandchildren who never come to see him. How his blood pressure medication doesn’t work here the way it used to at home, and runs out sooner, too. Can’t find anything on TV here, either. He’s a vaudeville act, is what he is, although Rik notices that he’s canny enough not to say anything bad about her mother, someone that Claire might feel compelled to defend.
“Did you go to church yesterday?” Edgar asks her.
Claire assures him that yes, they did.
“Twice, even,” Rik adds.
“Good, good, that’s important. You keep that up. Now next time you go, you pray to God for Him to forgive me for whatever it was I did that was so awful, so I can go back home. I’ve tried, but I just don’t have the words anymore.”
Behind Edgar’s back, in the mirror over a small vanity and sink, Rik pretends to hang himself with the necktie they all insisted he wear out of respect today. Claire flashes him a dirty look, and then surprises him by trying to talk sense into Edgar on at least this one point.
“Grandpa, that house is sold, remember?”
“Of course I know it’s sold. You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a child.”
“But there are other people living there now. Very nice people taking good care of the place. They’ve been there for almost a year.”
“That don’t matter. When you pray for the other, you pray that they sell it back to me, too. God’s God, Claire. He can throw them out in the street if He likes.”
And that sets the tone for the rest of their visit, which isn’t interminable, it only feels that way, and finally ends when the pleasant electronic chime of a dinner bell goes off via intercom out in the hallway. Edgar’s response is immediate and Pavlovian, grabbing for his walker while Claire helps him out of his chair, and then for the moments they stand there on the verge of saying goodbye, perhaps goodbye forever, it’s more real than it’s been during the entire preceding three hours. This is it and Edgar knows it, the earlier crocodile tears nowhere in sight because this is no place for his act. He reaches for his granddaughter and offers her a smile of such genuine sorrow that for the next few moments he seems like a different old man altogether, and perhaps he is. An earlier version of her grandfather who still had his legs beneath him and some muscle left in his arms, who could see, who’d taken an earlier Claire around and shown her dairy cows and constellations and bought her ice cream in the summer. Whatever it was grandpas did in shabby little towns before they lost themselves inside their bitterness and their porcelain bones.
Claire kisses his cheek and doesn’t have to strain to do it, taller than Edgar is now, and they tell each other “I love you,” and then she and Rik walk with him to the dining room and get him settled in his assigned chair.
“You tell your mother to bring me some deodorant,” is the last thing he says, then bows his head to pray.
Rik holds Claire’s hand as they leave the building to the sound of four dozen clinking forks and smacking mouths. The parking lot is wet and the air smells of an entire afternoon’s worth of drizzle, nothing falling now but the cars are still beaded with blisters of water. Then she stops and throws both arms around him and Rik tries to remember the first thing he loved about her but can’t, because it seems it’s always been this way, waiting for life to really begin.
“Would you drive?” she asks. He takes her keys.
Claire switches the radio off after they’ve gone no more than a hundred feet, and he understands why. Music, chatter, commercials, they all sound annoying right now, and whenever Claire cries she’s generally quiet about it. Abruptly, she busies herself with a napkin and a stubby, tooth-marked pencil from the glove compartment, and he looks to see what she’s written — deodorant — then she crumples it into a pocket.
She says nothing until they’re halfway back to her parents’ house, when they pass another of the town’s churches that he may or may not have seen already. They all look about the same, brick and stone and steeples and hypocrites. This one has a message board out front, ribbed white plastic with removable letters, and Claire points at its thought for today: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
“And then they all beat the hell out of him,” she sighs. “You wonder if things would’ve turned out any different if He’d sent a daughter instead.” Claire waits a moment, and when she laughs her nose sounds clogged. “Even worse, probably.”
Rik thinks back to yesterday, to the Patron Saint of Cranial Deformity. He knows its secret now. It was no mistake. It wasn’t ineptness or dull chisels, nor any ill-advised mixing of whiskey and mallets. It really is supposed to look the way it does. Rik knows now exactly why his forehead bulges: It’s on the verge of exploding from the pressures of family obligations.
Later it’s dinner with Mom and Dad, neither her nor Rik’s idea of the optimal way to spend the night, beef stroganoff when they’d really rather be in a cozy pub somewhere, ensconced until closing time and calculating the likelihood of dying before they get old. How to tip the balance in its favor. A plane crash in the ocean on the way back from Paris — now that would be great. No survivors, everyone dying happy. But even if they could get away with it, without her mother going frosty and silent tomorrow over tonight’s abandonment and swallowing her resentment like a chunk of dry ice, there are no pubs in this town, only bars, and there’s a difference. Claire’s not one bit in the mood for Budweiser signs and wannabe hockey players body-checking stubborn pinball machines.
Her parents dig for details about this afternoon’s visit with Grandpa Edgar, her mother nodding at every timeworn grievance and accusation.
“And he wanted me to be sure and tell you to bring him some deodorant.”
“Oh, he did, did he? What for, I wonder?” Her mother rolls her eyes. “Dried-up old coot, he doesn’t even sweat anymore.”
“Now, hon,” says Claire’s father, like a reflex action.
“Well, you try doing his laundry for a year and see how close you come to doing it to his satisfaction.”
And then Mom apologizes profusely to Rik the way she always does when something slips out and she senses having just cracked the facade. Ha ha, oh you must think we’re awful, Claire could tell you I don’t mean a word of it, I’ve just never liked doing laundry, ha ha, don’t let it scare you away from marrying into the family, and Claire wonders statistically how many stabbings occur at the dinner table. But finds herself nodding to Rik just the same. Mom smoothly detours over to the topic of Claire’s cousins, how she won’t want to miss seeing them before leaving, especially her youngest cousin … eight months pregnant, her third baby already, and getting as big as a Volkswagen.
Later in the night, during a couple hours of watching TV as a family, Claire can’t help but notice that Rik’s getting bored, doodling on scratch paper. But there’s a method to it, she sees, rows and columns of letters and empty spaces, Rik still trying to decipher the name on the faded sign from yesterday. The Church of Saint fill-in-the-blank.
“Any luck?” she asks, and he draws a frowny face in the corner of the paper.
When the post-prime-time newscast begins Mom remembers to send Dad downstairs to the basement to fetch something they’ve been saving for her ever since clearing out Grandpa Edgar’s house. One of the surviving pickings from six decades’ worth of accumulation under the same roof before the auctioneer and the mission volunteers disposed of the rest.
“It’s nothing I particularly would’ve wanted to keep,” her mother says. “But Daddy was dead-set against us letting it out of the family, and finally he insisted on you having it.”
Her father places it in both of Claire’s opened if reluctant hands.
“Since your birthday isn’t for another five months,” he shrugs, “I guess that makes thi
s bon voyage.”
“Kind of a garish old thing, isn’t it, even if it is our lord and savior,” Mom says. “Why he had it all this time I’ll never know. It looks more like something those Catholics would have, instead.”
Swell, another macabre Jesus. All of a sudden there’s no getting away from them. An eighteen-inch tall crucifix, this one, with a base so that it can stand on a tabletop or mantle, made of wood and plaster, then painted and varnished in the lurid, ghastly hues of torture and execution.
“Well, good night, sleep tight,” her mother chirps to them both, as she and Dad head for the stairway, and she might as well add Don’t let the saviors bite.
“Okaaaay,” Rik says after her folks are safely upstairs, out of earshot. “So as a going-away present it’s as morbid as a flight insurance policy. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
She totes it from the living room through the dining room and into the kitchen, where she stands it upon the breakfast table. Claire sits with her hands laced flat on the tabletop and her head lowered, chin onto fingers, staring up at this Golgotha in miniature, the shift in perspective making it tower before her eyes.
“I remember this now,” she murmurs. “It used to scare the pee out of me when I was little. My cousins and me, Grandpa Edgar used to tell us, ‘He did it for you, you know. He went through all that just for you, so you better be grateful.’ And you know how responsible for everything kids can feel. Like when there’s a divorce. Imagine being told you’re responsible for a bloody mess like this.”
“And in the same breath as ‘Jesus loves the little children.’ So do you feel like bringing some wine in here now, as long as we get rid of the bottle by morning?”
Does she ever, so Rik accepts her car keys and verbal directions to the nearest liquor store while she remains behind. Staring at the hateful, perverse thing she’s been gifted with, this talisman of sadism. The irony is that had she run across it in a junk shop in Chicago, she probably would’ve bought it without a second thought for its kitsch value; used it as a photo model, draped twinkly lights on it for the holidays. But here it’s different. Here it radiates its gruesome and undying power, fueled by generations’ worth of family values, her family, and she comes from a long line of sheep. What he’s nailed to looks like a typical cross, any old cross made of rough wood, but she remembers people occasionally referring to it as a tree, too. Jesus hanging on the tree. Jesus dying on the tree. Just like in Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And there must be a hidden design in that, because it’s the same term as is used for family lineages, all those people to whom you’re nailed, like it or not, without being asked.
Pretty soon Rik’s back with the wine, face ruddy with the autumn chill and his eyes surprisingly impish as he holds aloft the bottle with one hand and puts a finger to exaggerated shushing lips. Their ages straddle either side of thirty yet here they are, reduced to sneaking about like teenagers. Not something she would’ve expected him to take to so merrily. This is what she wishes he was like more often, when he forgets about pulling rank on a classful of students a decade younger than he is himself; when he doesn’t have to be the smartest guy in the room whether he is or not. He has perfected a way of saying benign things in such an arch manner most people don’t even realize he’s not suffering them gladly. Sometimes she wonders why he suffers her — but then that goes both ways, doesn’t it?
She gets two glasses down from the cabinet, while Rik looks through the utensil drawers, and then he slaps his forehead and groans.
“What was I thinking?” he asks. “I’m so used to regular human beings whose homes come equipped with corkscrews.”
Which entails a quarter-hour ordeal of digging out the cork with a boning knife from the cutlery rack, trying not to slice open their hands or laugh too loudly because it’s just so ridiculous, and by the time the bottle is uncorked they’re exhausted. They slump at the table with full glasses and the bottle between them.
“I’m sure it’s nothing that’s been lost on artists,” Rik says after a while, now staring intently at the cross, “and maybe it’s only because I’m tired and starting to feel the wine, but have you ever really considered the sexuality of a crucifix?”
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re right, you’re not the first to make that observation.”
“All right, so I’m behind the learning curve on this one. I’ve just never quite noticed it before.”
She sips her wine and watches mesmerized as Rik’s finger traces paths down and around the suffering-wracked body. His fingers are long and tapered, maestro’s fingers, picking out the sinewy details of the pierced plaster Jesus as gently as if he were toying with the tender bud of her nipple, her clit. For a moment his finger rests in the concave hollow of the stomach.
“The body’s almost like a woman’s, in surrender,” he says. Then he strokes along either side, above the hips. “And those ribs, those could be yours. They stick out just the way your ribs do.”
“Except mine don’t have a big gaping spear wound between them.”
If he remarks on the obvious, that her breasts aren’t much bigger either, she’ll kill him, she really will. But he doesn’t. Good boy.
“And the blood,” Rik continues, in lecture mode now but she doesn’t mind because this display is actually a weird sort of turn-on. His fingertip rims the head, circling the thorny crown and the oozing red welling from dozens of pinprick punctures, then he traces the rivulets’ path down from forehead, from hands, from the wounds of spear and scourge, tributaries branching and joining again down the thighs. “Like a woman’s menses, that monthly affirmation of fertility.”
She stifles a laugh, then almost rolls her eyes but stops herself when she realizes the gesture is so like her mother’s. She lifts her glass to Rik instead.
“You’re a much bigger pervert than I ever gave you credit for. How is it that I’ve missed this about you up until tonight?”
“You never asked. And now. Finally. The most twisted part.” Rik taps the small, upturned face, tipped toward the left shoulder with dreamy masochist’s eyes. “He’s enjoying every moment of it.”
Claire tops out her glass, refills Rik’s while she’s at it. “You realize if Mom or Dad came down and heard this they’d be on the phone and have four dozen people over here to wring their hands and pray the devil out of us.”
“Which leads into an interesting paradox. Almost subliminal. But have you ever noticed with these crucifixion portrayals, if the head is tilting up at all, not just hanging down in exhaustion, but tilting up in some sort of expectation, it’s almost always toward the left?”
“Yeah?” All right, now he was starting to get full of himself. “So?”
“So, for centuries, the left was traditionally considered to be the side of the body associated with evil. It’s where the modern usage of the word ‘sinister’ comes from. Originally, Latin roots into Old English, it only meant left-side. ‘Dexter’ was the right side, ‘sinister’ was the left. ‘Ambidextrous,’ both right hands. And ‘sinister’ was tarred by association with all that poor dungeon fodder judged to be on the left-hand path.”
“Oh, this is priceless.” She claps a hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. “Satanic conspiracies coded into centuries of sacred art? Forget the War of the Roses, this is your meal ticket.”
“Only calling it as I see it. I just find it interesting. Especially when you take into account how vital every tiny symbolic element could be to an artist of a few centuries ago, right down to mathematical ratios and geometric angles. And with the head inclined so often toward the left … I don’t know, it just seems significant. Even if it was only an editorial comment started by a few cranky Renaissance painters pissed off because they wanted to paint more explicit nudes than the Church would tolerate.”
Claire suggests that at the very least he write a paper on it — it can’t be any more farcical than some of the topics picked apart in journals by professors with too few ide
as and too much pressure to publish. But Rik declines, saying only under a pseudonym, which of course defeats the purpose of publishing in the first place. The topic, unfortunately, would hit too close to home with his department chairwoman, as devout in her way as Claire’s parents are in theirs.
“Very viral, the way this religion works,” he muses. “Exactly like the common cold. Spreading from one person to another, constantly seeking new hosts. Mutating radically along the way.”
“Well, you’re right on that one,” Claire nods. “It’s a long way from the throne of Saint Peter to Appalachian snake-handlers.”
“And communion, the ritual act of infection.” Rik lifts his glass and swirls the deep red. “The bread, the wine? ‘Eat of my body, drink of my blood’? If that’s not a recipe for the introduction of a foreign organism, I don’t know what is.”
He touches his glass to hers, but since they’re basically jelly jars there’s no pleasing chime, just a clunk. When he drinks she thinks that’s all it is, a sip like any other. But when he takes the boning knife that they used on the cork and turns it on the freestanding crucifix she starts to cringe without quite knowing why. Weekly indoctrinations from twenty years ago, perhaps, fears buried since childhood of divine wrath, whole families, generations of them, forced to pay for the sin of one. She feels a slow roll of nausea as Rik slips the tip of the knife into the lusciously paint-daubed wound in Jesus’ side and digs, gives the knife a twist, and it’s as though she’s expecting it to gush with actual blood. Her eyes are framing him like a picture now, as if there were the buffer zone of a camera between them and he’s no one she actually knows, is linked to, could be held responsible for, no one she wants to know. He’s a picture, a stranger doing inexplicable things, and when he’s finished she’ll take her camera and go home and maybe look at what she’s snapped or maybe not. He pries free a tiny chip of plaster, like jeweled vermillion, and takes another gulp of wine, then puts the chip on his tongue, works it inside his mouth, and when he brings his teeth together she can hear the gritty crunch, like an animal with a bone.