Mormama

by Kit Reed

CHAPTER 35

  Dell

  Words thud into his head, 1-2-3, setting up a vibration. He snaps awake. What?

  Give it back.

  “What!” Idiot, don’t shout. They’ll hear you. Dell is too messed up to know what this means, or to care right now. He has priorities. Sometime while he was out cold, it started to rain.

  Fuck yes he is vulnerable here.

  First, Theo wakes him up to tell him that some neighborhood punk sneaks into his squat while he sleeps. Only yesterday, he thinks, outraged.

  Turns out some stranger waltzes in and takes Dell’s stuff off him and gets away without his knowing. So much for the obstacle course and makeshift alarm systems he depended on. So much for security. He said OK, Theo, bye, but the kid hung in, all lonely and lurking, until Dell lost it and flipped the knife. Residual shock, he supposes, and he’s sorry.

  It was too close.

  Whatever he thought he had here, it’s done.

  He should collect his gear and clear out before he does anything worse, before … What? Before Theo tells and his feisty mom comes down on him? Before the cops, feds, outraged employer, ruined lover, before whoever or whatever is hounding him crashes into his last safe place and drags him out into the light.

  Security here is shot. It went to hell faster than the rotting lattice underneath this porch. He might as well throw a Marvista block party in here, or torch the place or blow it up and walk out with his head high and his arms wide, open to whatever comes, but he can’t. Not yet.

  Dell whatever-my-last-name-is used to be a normal, ordinary guy— at least he thinks he was, but push just came to shove. Normal, ordinary people confront their problems head-on. Normal people identify their issues and attack them one by one.

  OK. The note that brought him to this address: done. He’s here. Reason? Too soon to tell.

  The flash drive: God knows he tried.

  The matter of the nameless suits out there hunting him: not so much. Is it really that hard to face whatever he did back there? He doesn’t know.

  Listen, this is not avoidance!

  Dakin’s book comes first. He plunged into his ancestor’s notebook and got lost in the revelations— how long ago? He’s in so deep that he can’t find his way out. When Dell no-last-name is done here on his bed at the far end of the undercroft, he will damn well have a name, he thinks, no matter how long it takes. He will read and reread the Dakin Ellis journal, dropping notes on scrap paper to mark the trail.

  He thinks he’s framing questions for poor old Ivy, leading up to the matter of the Dakin Ellis will. That’s worth every hour it takes. No matter what’s going on upstairs right now or in the real world outside, no matter what comes down on his head because he is no longer safe here, he needs to know.

  Dell reads and dozes, wakes up and reads some more, deep in the Ellis family past. Some of our ancestor’s entries are obviously considered, as if the writer drafted them before entering them in the classic copperplate that collectors love, others are scrawled in haste and hard to read. Our ancestor? Really?

  He’s lost track of time. He’s lost track of everything but the need to hang on in this volatile situation in a place that until today, he thought was safe.

  Dell is looking for proof of the existence of, well.

  Himself, starting with his real name. His real name and everything that comes with. It’s about this Randolph, he tells himself, and can’t stop what comes into his head. What if I? You bet he is obsessing.

  He obsessed all yesterday while in the house overhead, life went on. At least he thinks it was yesterday. He’s in so deep now that time blurs. Something big happened up there. Whatever it was, whenever it was, things got weird. There was a crash. One of them screamed and overhead, the others ran back and forth, bringing this, taking that, for at least an hour. Then they all ran out of the house and went off somewhere. Well, all but one, and the kid? He doesn’t know. On any other day, Dell whatever-my-real-name-is would have been right on it, rushing upstairs to help. Earnest, useful, ingratiating Dell Duval. He’s good at that, but while he was buried in their past, yesterday turned into tonight, and he’s not sorry.

  He has fixed on certain entries. e.g.

  If Manette had been interested in more than acquisition, if she had been an iota more in her heart than the dutiful martyr wife resignedly submitting, there would have been no Sylvia and I would not miss my love so terribly …

  And, written years later,

  … Then my beloved lost son would exist in life or in death, not in his uncharted No Man’s Land where I can’t go and nobody can reach him … I still write to him, but like a castaway putting a note in a bottle and hurling it out to sea.

  And,

  If they found a body we could identify.

  If someone I trust came back and told me he was dead.

  If one of my notes reached my lost son and he wrote back. Then the nature of my grief would be quite different.

  This brings Dell to his feet. Did he really tell old Ivy, “Catch you next time,” like a little kid? When was that? Around four in whichever morning, when he bumped into her in the kitchen. Right, he was heading for the attic but found her there; they talked, he moved on, and in the Ellis family’s third-floor land of the lost and the forgotten, he found this.

  He checks his watch. Catch you next time. That would be around now. OK, ablutions. And I know this word, why? English professor, he tells himself, still shopping for past lives. Plausible or not, it makes him feel better.

  Start with her.

  First, clean up for the incursion. He should have gone out and found a free shower before those places shut down last night: YMCA or one of the homeless shelters down town, but it would mean sloshing around out there in the rain. Looking the way he does after all this time inside old Dakin’s head, he’d fit right in, but it’s too late. He’ll clean up under the spigot here, shave in front of his cracked mirror, put on a shirt that looks fresh and walk in on her looking like a real person.

  Like, what was that entity they had in the old days?

  A gentleman caller. Don’t go crazy, Dell, scrub and shave, so she won’t run away screaming. Dude, the old lady can’t walk. Plus, when she remembers that he is not this guy Vincent, Ivy thinks he’s her best friend. Maybe they really are friends, unless she thinks he’s some long-lost love of hers, fresh off the battlefield, here to take her into his arms.

  Not clear.

  Chances are, the old girl will be waiting for him, at least he thinks she will: her face when she agreed, “Our secret.” The bubble that forms over her lips as soon as she recognizes him— that hopeful smile. Like the faithful dog that sits in the same spot because you gave it a bone last time, this lady lives for the next. Use it. Get in there like you really are that dream boyfriend. Old and crippled or not, she still believes. Play the part while you probe what’s left of her mind in hopes that some parts of her brain are still working.

  Washing up at the corroded iron laundry tubs, exposed and shivering in the December night, Dell is strongly reminded of his body. Like an alarm went off: what have you done for me lately. He isn’t really cleaning up for Ivy. The weakest part of his mind is fixed on feisty, troubled Lane Hale who also lives upstairs, that lovely woman just about his age. As though she, and not Ivy, may happen into the kitchen at the right time tonight, and she’ll let him take her hand.

  We wouldn’t need to talk, we’d know.

  Together, they would swarm up to the attic, settle in on the decayed sofa under the eaves and talk their brains out, spilling their guts in the reflected glow of his Maglite. In your dreams.

  The best thing about Lane Hale aside from the obvious is that unlike poor Ivy, she’s tough. In a good way. Her voice is so clear, compared to the old ladies’ phlegmy tones and incessant clucking that at times, he stops under the window and listens. Lane, who was so friendly the day Theo covered for him at Staples; he wonders if he’s the only one who felt the tug. On a better day at a better time,
he’d make a proper date. Ask Lane Hale to meet him somewhere for coffee, plenty of people around, nothing to see here, no threat. He’d ask her to bring the kid along, proof that he’s not a con man or a predator, just an ordinary nice guy who hopes to know her better, not a scene you can play in the dark at 4 A.M.

  He wants to be in love with Lane, but this is not the time.

  If she’s even awake at this hour, she will be working. He’d like to ask her out, but his sense of time is that he doesn’t have much. He should have used his time in this house a hell of a lot better than he has so far. Muddled as he is, sleep deprived and jittering, high on possibilities, Dell is not stupid.

  Brace up, man. Get in there and do what you have to, to get what you need.

  He’ll take his preferred route into the house, up the hatch into the dining room and on in through the back hall to the kitchen, putting next steps in order as he goes. If Ivy’s here, dozing in her scooter, make her some tea before you start the conversation. If she isn’t, the attic waits. Mulling and discarding speeches, he pads along the Persian runner and on into the back hall.

  “I knew you’d come.” It’s so dark in here, her voice is so small that he can’t be sure he heard her, but he knows the tune. Ivy isn’t in the kitchen. She’s parked that scooter in front of the door to the back stairs. Lying in wait? Apparently. She waits a beat. Then in a husky contralto, she reels him in. “Our secret.”

  I was right. “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Miss Ivy.”

  “Yes Ma’am!” No tea needed to start her engines. The lady is bang. Awake. Think fast, dude. Close your fingers on her wrist. “But we can’t talk here. Let’s.”

  No need to finish that speech, either. She’s already released the brake on her scooter and without a hint of fear, she lets him wheel her through the back hall and into the kitchen, her own monument to trust. She sits placidly while he opens the back door and propels her out on the long back porch, where he’ll try to romance her into telling him everything he needs to know while they watch the rain. He sees himself taking mental notes like a good reporter— reporter?

  Another feasible past life for Mr. no-real-name, who will follow up on Ivy’s garbled answers with kindness and more gentle prodding, trying to extract something he can use.

  The exchange will unspool for so long that when they’re done, he won’t have time to do anything but roll her inside to the spot in the back hall where he found her, and what he does after that is an open question.

  He parks her next to the rail and sets down one of the rusted lawn chairs next to hers so they can talk while they watch as rain cross-hatches the receding night. Then he bends close to her ear and whispers, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back inside in plenty of time.”

  “Oooh,” Ivy says. “Plenty of time.” The next noise that comes out of her is a stifled giggle. As though he is a suitor.

  “You must be proud of your family,” he says, to put her on the right page.

  Her tone changes. “Not all of them.”

  Right, he thinks. We’re in this thing together.

  When she’s quiet for too long, he prompts. “A long line of Florida pioneers.”

  She startles him by patting his arm. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “What?”

  “The little slithering you hear.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “That’s just a house lizard, they’re harmless. Nasty little Everett used to sneak after them with fireplace matches, the long ones.” In her head, she’s a little girl again. “I told on him, and Mama slapped my hand.”

  “That’s terrible.” Think fast, she’s, like, ten years old right now. Try that. “Honey, did your mama ever tell you about the diary that your great-grandfather left behind?”

  She lifts her shoulder, flirting. “Who?”

  “You know, the man who built this house?”

  “It’s Mama’s house. Everybody knows that.” Old Ivy’s not ten any more. Inside her head she’s a girl of seventeen, before the accident took her down.

  Chill, Dell. Thoughtful pause. Ask without letting her know it’s a question. “I wonder what else he left behind.”

  “Papa?”

  “More likely your great-great grandfather, Miss Ivy, you’re much too young.”

  “We were all young then.”

  OK, maybe this will bring her back. “The city fathers named Ellis Park after him? Very important man.”

  “Oh, men. Men. Believe me, honey.” Ivy turns his hand over and lays two fingers across his wrist. Seductive or frightened— how old is she now? He doesn’t know. She rasps, “This is no place for men.”

  “This beautiful house?”

  “We were never happy here.”

  “Ma’am?” Then, before he can get her attention or forestall the flood of information, Ivy just starts.

  “Now, my sisters try to keep it secret because they still think they can meet someone and marry out, but.” She launches her story like a log on a flooded river, talking so fast that all he can do is grab hold and hang on. “You might as well know, dear, it’s for your own good, and this is the least of it. Our Papa was never happy here. Nobody is.”

  “But the first Dakin Ellis must…”

  “Hush! Everett was the only one who was ever happy in this house, he was Mama’s precious and she won’t hear a word against him, but my poor, lost brothers…”

  What? “Randolph?”

  “Mama hated all those handsome dead boys, and she hated Papa as we learned when she died, that poor, sweet man! He lost his boys, he lost everything, but he lived on and on … He lived on and things happened to all the other boys who came under this roof, terrible things…”

  They were hurtling into rough waters, but by this time there was no interrupting. All Dell could do was grit his teeth and hang on tight as the words rushed on.

  “That first fire, of course, and worse things happened to them after that, one of them after another, my dear brothers and all the other men … everybody suffered, poor Leah and that sweet Laurence, who tried to elope with her. Mama wanted to put him in jail, and…”

  Rain. Is it always like this?

  “The only one who got away whole was big old Stan Worzecka, but he didn’t belong. He was a day laborer but Iris married him anyway, for a while. Mama didn’t want him and the house didn’t either. After all, he worked with his hands, and gentlemen don’t do that. He lasted a week. Akron, Ohio. My word! Naturally Iris went with him, but it turned out he didn’t want Iris after all. Mama was mortified. Our first divorce! I wonder what happened to Stanley, we never hear from him.”

  How crazy is she anyway. Bring her back to the point. “We were talking about Randolph.”

  “Now, Rosemary’s nice husband was killed at the porte cochère, it was that awful crane, it mashed him against the column, a terrible thing…” And she’s off, rushing him through rough waters, “Then Poor Elena— she was Leah’s orphan child, but we’re not supposed to know— Poor Elena brought her new husband home to live until they found a house. Oh, that sweet boy! It was that awful accident on the stairs. When he fell he broke everything, but it was the rusty nail that killed him, festering inside of the cast. He got blood poisoning, but nobody knew until terrible red streaks came running up his arm and by the time they cut it off it was too late. It was all through his system and it just went on and on, through his heart and up into his brain, and he died the week Leila was born…”

  “Who?”

  Don’t even try. They’re in the rapids now. Rocks ahead, probably the falls. Don’t fight it, just go with, Dell tells himself, surfacing long enough to hear, “Every man who enters this house ends badly,” while Ivy floods him with details.

  Until she stops, coming back into herself with a little cry. “We have to get away! Oh dear, I didn’t mean to frighten you, sweetheart. I just wanted you to know.”

  Then she collapses into sleep with a little sigh, leaving Dell alone with the words that woke him up a lifetime ago.


  Set down like stones inside his head. Give. It. Back.

  He rolls the sleeping Ivy into the kitchen and parks her next to the stove to hide the opening he uses to drop out of this life and into the dubious safety of his quarters below, where, once again, he addresses all that’s left of the first Dakin Ellis: his journal. The box. There are things he needs and things he hasn’t found yet, and now that Ivy’s brains have blown out her ears, at least for the time being, there’s this.

  He thinks he squeezed all the good out of DAKIN ELLIS: HIS BOOK before he quit, but the old man’s handwriting deteriorated about the time Dell crashed, the writer rushing into death, his reader wrecked by hours studying copperplate that became illegible.

  At the end, Dakin gouged thoughts into his cream-laid pages with tremendous force, scratching his heart out with a deteriorating pen. For whatever reasons, the old man never noticed that the point had split. He just dipped that pen back into his inkwell and scratched on. The last entries look like cabalists, illegible to outsiders.

  Like him.

  The journal was the only useful document in the carton. The rest is detritus from the old man’s office, the contents of an orderly mind: meticulously kept ledgers, none on 553; receipts from hundreds of transactions, what seem like thousands of bills rendered and dutifully marked PAID, along with reams of unused letterhead and decades’ worth of neglected pocket calendars, every one of them stamped with the name of a local merchant, nothing that Dell needs, but he plows on until, on overload, he shoves the journal, the carton and all its contents inside the protective garbage bag. He sleeps hard in spite of the rain, and when he wakes up, he will have no idea what day it is, or how long he slept.

  CHAPTER 36

  Mormama

  Wake up, you idiot.

  Wake up, new Teddy. This is your last chance. Or mine. Once, I had the power to move people I love, or I thought I did. I must have, I don’t remember, I’ve been this way too long.

  Wake up!

  Everything pending, and this Teddy sleeps like the dead. Oh dear, don’t say that, don’t scare the child tod— Never mind.