Mormama

by Kit Reed

  So after that terrible cold dinner we had to eat afterward and subsequent bitching and Mom holding her ground, i.e., no apologies, she gave me The Look and said, “T., you don’t need to hear this,” translated, go to your room, so I did. That block of stone-cold air showed up the second I turned out the light and it hung there at the end of my bed, like, waiting for me to notice and be glad.

  Not me. I was over family. I went, “You can leave now,” but she didn’t. Mormama was all up in my face that night, all puffed up and ranting until I threw my Chuckie at her to make it stop. She didn’t even duck.

  Shit, it went right through her, and I was like, OK, Mormama, fuck you. Never mind the dense and cold, there’s no real to this thing, so what the hell can she do to me anyway? Plus, I thought she was boring. Yeah, right.

  She came back the next night anyway, like a kid trying to make up after a fight, and the stories. I mean! She’s definitely this dense, cold thing that you don’t exactly see and can’t quite name, but, scary? Not so much. In fact, I’m kind of getting used to her.

  Not counting looming, once you know that Mormama can’t, like, open holes in the floor that you could fall down into? Or start throwing books or rocks or broken jars or heavy shit that could kill you like in Poltergeist, it’s OK. She’s more like a transparent person, as in, not scary at all.

  Now that she’s faced the fact that I’m not scared of her either, she comes around a lot. She starts.

  Did you see my portrait in the hall?

  How am I supposed to know?

  Tiny watercolor. In my maroon dress.

  Truth is, I didn’t, but in case she reads thoughts I think, loud: Um, you look great.

  You’ll find it in the back hall. Disgusted snort. Behind the kitchen door.

  That makes me sit up straight in the bed.

  False piety, that woman hanging it at all!

  Who?

  My selfish daughter. The high-and-mighty lady of the house.

  Are we really having a conversation? No way!

  She says, You’re not supposed to hate a child but I despised Everett on sight.

  Who?

  Her favorite. That prissy little whiner with his flimsy bones and those runny eyes clung to Manette like a little incubus and I blame that child for bringing down great grief on all our lives.

  Only crazy people talk to ghosts but Mormama answers questions I don’t ask, like she knows that me talking out loud to something that isn’t really there would be too weird. So I’m like, thinking at her. Incubus?

  Incubus is the devil that attaches itself to a woman and sucks the mortal soul out of her breast and that was Everett to a T. Not that Little Manette had a soul that I know of. She was always narrow and mean. When the midwife cleaned her up and thrust her on me, evil came alive. For a second, she stared up at me with those black eyes, and in that second, I saw straight into her heart and I knew that it was just as black.

  Then she screamed.

  So forgive me, I glared into those slate-black eyes and I thought, I wish you were a boy.

  And?

  Then Billy came. How I loved that child! When he came, Little Manette wanted him gone. Gone! That sweet little baby, and he was only the first.

  To my daughter, Dakin was a necessity, but the others?

  There were issues with men. I never knew why or how, but Manette’s sons and her daughters’ husbands didn’t last long. Unfortunate things and terrible things happened to them, every single one.

  All but her precious weakling, but eventually, even weaklings die.

  Now it’s only women in this house.

  What about me?

  She groaned. I told you I was here to help.

  And.

  Child, I’m warning you!

  Before I can think anything back at her, she starts. Teddy was the first. Everett was the only one she cared about; she took him into the bed with her— dear Lord, he was four years old! And Teddy? He was a cipher to her. She didn’t care where he went or what he did, as long as he stayed out of her way.

  The big boys took care of themselves and Ivy played outdoors, but, the littles? Tillie took Leah away— Manette couldn’t stand the sight of her. Usually, Vincent walked Tillie and the little girls over to the park, or he did until they bought the pony cart.

  It’s like she’s a singer, and the song grabbed her up and it won’t let go.

  On those days the nursery was ours, and Teddy and I sat on the little nursery chairs and played, he was happy, like my darling Billy boy. We talked and laughed and had the best time! So handsome, with angel curls like my Billy’s and a beautiful smile, I loved him so much!

  But Little Manette was all wrapped up in puny Everett, and Dakin was in the office every day but Saturday, so nobody had time for that dear boy. And as you know, nobody else in the house had time for me. I loved him so much!

  One day he fell down outside his mother’s bedroom, he banged his head on the floor and didn’t we hear him bawl? I ran out and saw to him and the whole time we sat on the hall rug with me rocking him, outside Little Manette’s open door, we heard her crooning to Everett as though there was no Teddy, and it broke his heart. We hugged while he sobbed into my neck and when he could breathe, I said, Don’t worry, Teddy, Mormama loves you.

  I love you and I will always take care of you.

  And then, and then …

  Cold air came out of her; I guess it was a sepulchral sob.

  She changes the subject, like she knows I’m creeped out. Little Manette had no time for her boys. Dakin Junior was too much like his father to have any time for me at all. Poor boy, he died in the war. And, Randolph? A handsome, reckless one, our Randolph, he ran wild. I loved him, although I wonder what Little Manette’s stillborn son Bruce would have been like …

  Who?

  Where would Randolph be now, if Brucie had been born alive?

  Like, dead, OK?

  Ran infuriated his father by taking off on his bicycle every whipstitch, he didn’t ask, he never explained, but he was always sweet with me. Then the fool stayed out all night, into the next day. Dakin sent Vincent out to bring him back. Dakin took off his belt right there in the front hall that day, and he whaled the tar out of Randolph up on the first-floor landing, where everyone could see. I think he felt bad, not about whipping the boy, but about losing control of himself in the stairwell with the whole family looking on.

  Randolph would be gone for hours, but after that he always came home before dark, until the house went dark and he slipped out again. He brought us little presents. Trinkets, really, sneaked to the people who cared. Fancy cigarette lighters for Dakin Junior, baubles for the little girls, a cameo for me …

  Did she just giggle?

  Another secret for you and me to keep. You could do worse than rummage in the attic.

  Me? Go up there?

  It holds all the secrets, child.

  Like I care.

  And other things. Dakin kept a journal, you know. It explains a lot.

  Lady, there are rats and cockroaches and monsters up there.

  Don’t be frightened, chickabiddy. This is important.

  Then you go.

  Big sigh comes out of Mormama. Hurt feelings, I guess. I’m trying to help you!

  Well, don’t!

  Another sigh, like: OK then. She changes the subject, all Southern and polite. Randolph was a lovely man, but his father never knew. The bad feeling between the two built up, and I do believe it was Manette’s fault. It grew until one night Ran got tipsy on brandy from Dakin’s carafe, the brilliant cut-crystal one with the ugly nick in the lip.

  It was a terrible scene; he ran out, and we didn’t see him for a calendar week. That boy bicycled five miles down the St. Johns River to the HMS Manette. Dakin’s precious houseboat was his pride and joy, and Randolph knew it. He sneaked home in the middle of the night and stole food from the pantry and bottles from Dakin’s wine rack, and he and three friends set up housekeeping on the boat. Vincen
t found them— upholstery ruined, campfires on the deck. Next morning Dakin took Randolph back to the scene in the Studebaker to regard what he had done.

  Something ugly went on between them then. When they came in afterward, we knew not to ask. Randolph wouldn’t look at us, but his face was stained by grief. Dakin? Turned to stone. They never exchanged words. He was done with punishing that boy. In fact, he was done with Randolph in every respect. He took back poor Ran’s tuition for his last year at Jacksonville Country Day, and then he …

  Dear God, I think Dakin invited what happened next. Too bad the final misadventure ended so badly. It’s his fault that Randolph vanished for the last time; he was only seventeen, but in a way?

  Don’t just hang in the air like that, old lady— you know, portending.

  Oh dear, I just lost my place in time.

  Say it!

  Given what happened to the other men and boys in this house, I think it saved his life.

  CHAPTER 22

  Iris

  They’re on our front porch. Teetering on the landing, Iris adjusts her bifocals. Two men!

  It doesn’t happen that often.

  This is not the season for visitors and besides. Nobody the Ellis girls used to know comes to visit now; there are no calling cards in the tarnished card receiver downstairs, no pretty boys waiting in the first sitting room. When they were girls, she and Rosemary were popular. Now they might as well be dead.

  Strange men at the door. Who? She goes downstairs numbering the possibilities, one on each step.

  The old people going door to door for all those charities have already been and gone. She remembers writing checks to the United Fund and the heart people and the cancer people, ten dollars for each, because the Ellis family has always been generous, and their reputation is hers to protect. Realtors stopped coming around last month, and good riddance. Insulting, those visits. Let’s us get you out of this old firetrap, ladies, once we’ve unloaded your white elephant, we’ll put you in a nice new condo near the waterfront, at no extra cost. Well! Didn’t Iris burn their ears! They ran like scorched rabbits, and they won’t be back until September, when the new realtors hatch.

  They can’t be politicians. That season is over too, and the years in which sons of their friends were candidates are past. She and Rosemary voted last month just like they always do, ever the good citizens. They filled in their absentee ballots and Ivy’s too, dutifully checking off all the right names, just like they always do. Then they sealed and stamped the envelopes and left them in the brass mailbox for the mailman to take. It’s what ladies do so they won’t have to go out and stand in line like just anybody.

  The Girl Scouts’ fathers won’t be around again until next year, either. Rosemary ate all her Tagalongs before Iris found out they were in the house; she should have ordered two boxes, the selfish bitch.

  No visitors here at 553, really, and none expected, unless Little Elena had the nerve to invite intruders into our home without her permission. Well, Iris will send them away before they get the first word out— she’s a master at chilly good manners, but if that girl expects to stay with us in this magnificent setting, she’d better watch herself.

  Coming down the last steps to the Persian runner, Iris pauses in front of the mirror above the regency hall table before she and pats her hair goes to the door.

  Knowing two strangers have come calling doesn’t scare her, it worries her.

  Iris Ellis Worzecka is not the kind of person who lets just anybody into her house. She hates that name, Worzecka sounds so foreign, but Stan forced his surname down your throat the day you walked down the aisle, and Mama held her nose and ordered calling cards with my new name engraved on cream laid stock: Mrs. Stanislaus Worzecka, although there was no occasion to use them.

  —I still have them.

  Poised behind Mama’s lacy glass curtain that Rosemary keeps so nice, Iris broods, rummaging for first causes. Ivy would never, although we know she thinks about boys all the time. Fortunately, Ivy can’t, and given her condition, not even these strangers would.

  Who are they, and what do they want from us? All I have to do is wait, and they’ll give up and stop bothering me. Squinting through the glass curtain, she grinds her teeth: Go away!

  Behind this, she tells herself, I’m as good as invisible. After a time she moves the ruffles with the long nail on her pinkie and peeks.

  They’re still here.

  Nicely dressed, both of them, she can see that much. White shirts and black ties on them, black suit jackets, maybe they’re this year’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, but didn’t the Watchtower people just come? She told them a few things; she always does, she’s honed that speech down to a fine point. No thank you. Our beliefs are our business, and we do not want to talk about it. We are High Church Episcopalians, go away.

  No briefcases in these men’s hands, no tote bags, no religious tracts that she can see. Just two nice-looking boys, spreading their palms as if to say, nothing to see here, nothing to harm you, nothing hidden.

  She drops the curtain. My God! They know I’m here!

  Two strange men. They’re settling in to wait! After a time, they exchange nods. The tall one lifts the big brass door knocker and bangs it down hard enough to raise the dead.

  Unless she opens the front door right now, greedy Rosemary will hear and beat her to it. Now, in her long life as a twin, from the dawn of their lives in Mama’s big bed right here on May Street to this moment, Iris has always come first.

  She may have been brought up to be a lady, but in the course of her unfortunate marriage to Stan Worzecka, who carried her away over Mama’s dead body, well, so to speak, Iris Ware Ellis learned a few things, like how to deal with strangers, first rule being, don’t speak until you’ve been introduced, except in extreme circumstances, and this is one.

  Of course the wedding had to wait until Mama was in the ground and Stan turned out to be a rat, but Iris doesn’t dwell. She’s a mover. Clearing her throat to settle the phlegm, she takes off her glasses.

  She opens the door and confronts them. Stern. Chilly. “Yes?”

  The tall one gives her a showroom-perfect smile. “Good morning, Ma’am.”

  Attractive pair, but Iris is not the gracious hostess. Not today. One does not smile for just anybody. “And?”

  Young, so young! Handsome, in a sort of Dick Tracy way, the both of them. The shorter one says, “Good morning, Ms.…”

  Cheer up, Iris. They look nice. We may have friends in common. She lifts her chin. “Miss.”

  “Good morning, Miss…”

  “Ellis.” So much for you, Stan Worzecka.

  “Sorry to trouble you, Ms. Ellis. We’re from.” The tall one opens his wallet to flash a badge— at least she thinks it’s a badge, so hard to tell without your glasses. It looks official.

  Such a nice smile! The tension flows right out of her. “I see.” Her voice gets lighter. As though it’s floating.

  “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

  She releases the chain and steps into the doorway— framed, she thinks, by everything she is. What is it they say on TV? “How can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for a…” He rephrases. “Have you had any visitors in the last few days?”

  “Well, my daughter’s here.” Iris! “I mean, my niece. My niece and her son are visiting.”

  “Her son?” His ears snap forward, like a starving puppy’s. “How old is he?”

  “Ten, I think.”

  “Not twenty or so?” He sets the words down so carefully that it’s insulting. “Or…”

  “Maybe twelve.”

  He goes on as though she hasn’t spoken, “… even thirty.”

  “I’m old, but I’m not blind!”

  “And no other men on the premises?”

  “Just Vincent, our yard man.” She adds reflexively, “He’s colored.”

  The two men exchange looks. The shorter one says, “Then we need to ask you whether you�
�ve had any other visitors, Ma’am. Not family, just someone else in the house.”

  She draws herself up. “Certainly not!”

  “We don’t mean to alarm you, but we’re looking for a…”

  The tall one shows her a flash of light and color. “This man.”

  He has a picture on his telephone! Everybody on TV has one of these gadgets, but Iris has never seen this kind of telephone up close, although she suspects Little Elena has sneaked one in. She squints. “Who’s this?”

  His partner says, “The. Uh. Person we’re looking for. Have you seen him? He’s…”

  The tall man cuts him off, saying smoothly, “Wait, I can make this photo bigger, so you can be sure.”

  Iris leans closer, narrowing her eyes, but to tell the truth her glasses are in there on the hall table and she’s not about to go back inside and get them. For the first time, she smiles. Charm. Mama taught her girls the uses of charm in certain situations. Blink blink with your pretty eyelashes, faux naïve. “Why, I’m not sure.”

  “Then you have seen him.”

  This is too interesting to let it go by, Iris. Temporize. “I may have seen him.”

  “Do you recognize him?”

  She would do anything to please them. “Why, yes. Yes I do.”

  “Is he still on the premises?”

  “Here? In our house? Good heavens, no. I wouldn’t let him back in the house!” Never mind that she is making this up. Well, making it up on the basis of certain suspicions. It plays well.

  But this little party is ending too fast. You’ll have a lot to tell Rose and Ivy, but think of something, girl, or they’ll go. Make it last, or it will be over before you have a chance to ask them in. She volunteers, “But I know his name!”

  Both heads click in her direction. The tall one says flatly, reminding her, “His name.”

  “Yes,” Iris says brightly. “He was here, but we told him to go away or we’d make the police come and get him out of the house.” She sees the tall one messing with his telephone. She won’t know that he is recording.