by Gloria Dank
“Wait just one minute,” said Bernard. “Where are you going?”
“I have to do the shopping, remember? None of us will eat tonight if I don’t get to Harry’s before it closes.”
Bernard waved him away with a magisterial gesture. “All right. You can go.”
“ ‘You can go,’ ” Snooky repeated incredulously to his sister later on that afternoon, when he had returned with his arms full of groceries. “ ‘You can go.’ Just like that. Like a … a royal command. As if he didn’t know I was there anymore, once I had served his purpose.”
“You have to understand him, Snooks. Bernard can be very imperious when he’s deep in thought.”
“He can’t be deep in thought all the time. And it’s not imperious, My. I call it arrogant. I didn’t like his tone.”
“I apologize for him.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Snooky said, taking the groceries out of the shopping bags and tossing them onto the kitchen counter. “No, you don’t have to do that.”
“Maybe you can manipulate him into apologizing to you again.”
“It’s not worth it. It’s simply not worth it. What’s he doing now?”
Maya went to the kitchen door. “He’s sitting on the sofa and looking out the window.”
“Deep in thought,” said Snooky bitterly. As an outlet for his feelings, he tore a piece out of the brown paper shopping bag. Rapidly and neatly, with his long white fingers, he folded it into a paper airplane. Following that, in rapid succession, he produced a paper bird, then a fish, then a tiny elephant. Maya watched admiringly.
“You’ve always been good at origami.”
“I enjoy it.”
“You haven’t lost any of your talent.”
“I only do it when I’m angry. It’s kind of a release for me.”
“I remember when you were eight or nine years old. There was a time when William said he couldn’t turn around in the house without stumbling over some of that brightly colored Chinese paper.”
“I remember.”
“William was worried for a while that you’d turn out to be an artist.”
Snooky smiled. “William was wrong.”
“He was worried you’d be an artist, and starve, or eat up the family resources. In his worst nightmares he never imagined you’d turn out to do nothing.”
She said it with great affection. Snooky grinned. He held up a delicate paper cat, complete with stubby whiskers. “This is for you, Maya. You look like a cat, you know that?”
“Thank you, Snooks.”
“And this is for you, too, in memory of the old days.”
He took the remaining bag, smoothed it out, worked on it intently for a few minutes, then handed her a huge floppy three-cornered hat. Maya began to laugh.
———
In the living room, Bernard was gazing vacantly out the window. Thoughts were churning round and round in his head. Finally he shook himself and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. At the top he wrote:
BBYS GRLFRND (“Bobby’s girlfriend”)
ANGR (“anger”)
JLSY (“jealousy”)
PSSSSVNSS (“possessiveness”)
and
LS (“lies”)
He looked thoughtfully at this last word for a long time. He never believed anything that anyone ever told him about themselves. It was a long-established policy, and one that he found consistently useful. People’s capacity for self-deception was nearly endless. They would lie or steal—or kill, he mused—to run away from an unpleasant truth about themselves. It was the nature of the human ego, always frightened, always insecure, always ready to defend itself at the smallest slight. The most painful thing for most people was to appear wrong, or humiliated, or foolish.
Now, this woman, Diane Caldwell, had found herself in an extremely foolish position. She was the girlfriend of a man who had left her for a much less attractive, much older woman, simply for the money. Bernard tried to imagine how she must have felt. Humiliated, no doubt. And angry. Very, very angry.
She had told Snooky that she wasn’t the one who had murdered Bobby, but that meant nothing. Still, there were other things she had said that Bernard found very interesting. Slowly, thoughtfully, he typed down two names.
RGR
GRTI
Roger and Gertie. Yes, he found it interesting, that Bobby had singled out these two in particular. These two who were always in the woods … who always had a good reason for being in the woods … these two who were of the older generation and had been waiting for years to inherit Irma’s money. Particularly Gertie … it was her brother’s money, after all. It must have been painful to see it pass out of her hands, years ago.
But which, if either, of them? he wondered.
At the moment that Bernard was slowly and laboriously typing her name down, Gertie was striding through the woods near the cabin, head flung back, nostrils flared, inhaling the chill winter air deeply. Her round flabby cheeks were flushed red with the cold and high blood pressure—she had known about her blood pressure problems for years, but she didn’t let that slow her down, certainly not—and her hair, dyed a peculiar shade of steel blue, bobbed gently around her face. Her eyes were alert with interest, roving here and there, searching the bracken and the trees for possible specimens. A pair of large binoculars hung around her neck. Every so often she knelt to the ground with a whoop of delight and gathered a twig or piece of moss or other decaying vegetation tenderly into her pocket. It had not snowed recently, but it was gray and drizzling and the ground was wet. Gertie was undisturbed. Piglike, she loved mud. Her baggy pants and oversize coat were covered with it, but she did not even notice. She charged on, and the creatures of the woodland cowered, unseen, before her.
As she went, she breathed heavily, snuffling like a warthog. Recently she had noticed that she could not walk as far as she used to. She stopped every now and again to lean against a tree and catch her breath. So stupid, really … she never used to have to stop at all, not if she walked for miles and miles. Well, she was getting old, there was no doubt about it. Hugo had passed on years ago; the members of her family were not long-lived. She was resigned to it. She felt in tune with the cycles of the seasons, of the flowers and plants, and of her own life. When her time came she would accept her death, just as the animals and plants do. No use fighting the inevitable.
But until then, she was going to enjoy herself. She picked herself up off the tree trunk and marched on impatiently, proudly. As she went, when she was not too short of breath, she hummed quietly to herself. She was a happy woman, she thought. A happy woman. Of course, what was there to be unhappy about? Everything was working out just fine.
Just fine, she thought, eagerly crushing a brown leaf to her face to catch the elusive, damp scent.
Roger, on this cold winter’s afternoon, was doing what he had done nearly every afternoon since his retirement. He was sitting in the easy chair in his living room, watching TV. He was watching the television that Irma had bought for him, in the living room that Irma had furnished for him, in the house that Irma had built for him. Roger did not think about these painful facts anymore. He had accepted long ago that his sister was the successful one, with her wealthy marriage. He still saw himself as unfairly wronged by the vagaries of business. It was not his fault, he would reason when forced to think about it; it was not his fault; he had tried hard. Nobody could have worked harder than he did. It was just a fluke; some people succeeded while others failed. He was one of the ones who had not succeeded.
Now he sat, quite happily, sipping a Coke and watching the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah’s guests today were three people who had been raised as the opposite sex: two men who had been raised as women, and one woman who had been raised as a man. Roger made a sympathetic clucking sound. That was awful, wasn’t it? What kind of parents would do that to a child? Nobody seemed to know. The people on the show seemed angry … well, no wonder. Roger tried to imagine raising Dwayne as a girl. He shook his head. Why
would someone do that? He had never wanted a daughter, anyway. To tell the truth, he had never really wanted a son, or children at all; but when he married Dwayne’s mother, the boy had been eight years old, and Roger had had no choice but to accept him. Over the years he had become very fond of him. He was a good boy, even if he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He was a good son. Roger couldn’t imagine him as a daughter.
His attention drifted back to the television set. These were such sad stories. Roger preferred Oprah’s lighter shows, the ones with celebrity interviews and fashion models displaying the latest from Paris. He always watched the fashion shows with an all-absorbing interest, even though the majority of the clothes were for women and he would never dream of dressing the way the male models did, anyway. And the celebrity interviews were wonderful. He remembered one the other day with Arnold Schwarzenegger where Arnold had cracked up the audience by saying …
His mind drifted off into pleasant reveries.
Dwayne was downstairs in the basement, which he had converted years ago to a darkroom. While the weather was bad, so cold and rainy, he didn’t go out much. He preferred to stay safely indoors and work on his photography. Right now he was developing some pictures he had taken over the last few months. With all the excitement going on in the family, with Bobby’s unfortunate death and all, and then Aunt Irma’s illness, he hadn’t been able to escape into his darkroom as much as he wanted to. It was Dwayne’s refuge from the everyday world. Now he worked on, during this long winter afternoon, while outside the rain pattered gently against the bare tree trunks and turned the ground to mud. Dwayne puttered around his basement, happy and absorbed, his face a satanic dull red from the photographic light.
First he developed some prints that he had taken at a farmer’s market in upstate New York on a trip several months ago. The hearty-looking women with their piles of pumpkins and winesap apples, the strangely shaped gourds, the sheaves of corn and bushels of tomatoes. He smiled as he looked at the photos. He worked in black and white because it was so much easier to develop, but for pictures like these, he wished he had been able to photograph in color. Particularly the one of that girl who sold the apples … he had almost gotten up enough courage to speak to her. Maybe next time. Dwayne was shy in general, and particularly shy around women, but he could ask someone out if he wanted to. That farm girl had had nice eyes, bright and sparkling and friendly. He looked at her picture and smiled. Yes, next time he would ask her out.
After that, he worked on some prints he had shot of a family dinner. There they were, all frozen in time. Irma and Bobby at the head of the table, with eyes only for each other. Dwayne smirked. He was not sorry that Bobby was dead. No, he was not sorry at all. Of course, it was horrible to die like that, but still … there was Sarah talking to Roger, her hands moving in an expressive gesture. Gertie was sitting at the foot of the table; she seemed to be concentrating on her food. Dwayne looked at the picture for a long time. This was his family, he thought. He was fond of everyone in it, with the exception of Bobby, who had never really been a member. He was lucky, he realized, hanging the print up to dry. Lots of people hated their families. He thought, considering that he wasn’t related by blood to any of them, that he was really very lucky.
He looked at the images of Irma and Bobby again, their faces turned toward each other. Really very lucky! he thought in a self-satisfied way.
A few days later, Snooky and Sarah were again sitting in the kitchen of Hugo’s Folly, having a companionable cup of tea. They were discussing Dwayne.
“He’s just like Roger,” Sarah was saying. “He gets these wild ideas, these speculations, and he’s always sure he’s right. I can’t tell you how much money Roger’s borrowed from Aunt Irma over the years, and it’s gone—all of it. She supports him totally.”
“Terrible.”
“Yes. And Dwayne’s the same way—a head full of dreams. Right now he’s positive he’s the successor to Ansel Adams, with his black-and-white photography. The only problem is, he doesn’t have any talent.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. He’s not any good. And he won’t take any suggestions or hints, either. He simply tells me I don’t understand photography.”
“There’s nothing you can do about it, Sarah.”
“I know. I feel bad about it, that’s all. He’s going to have a rude awakening one of these days. Right now he’s doing nature photography—scenes and so on. For a while there, he was interested in abstract photos.”
“Abstract?”
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged. “Angles, edges, corners of things. He used to go into the woods and take pictures of tree bark from up close, half a leaf, a corner of a spiderweb. I thought it was ridiculous, but Gertie loved it and encouraged him. He went to Manhattan and took close-up shots of gravel on the sidewalk. And he used to go to Harry’s Market and take black-and-white photos of the produce—you know, piles of apples and grapes and oranges—until Harry told him to get moving, he was blocking the aisle.”
“No sympathy for artists,” said Snooky.
“No. Harry just wants to sell his stuff. He didn’t care for Dwayne taking photos of apple stems or whatever he was doing. God only knows.”
“Poor Dwayne. The misunderstood photographer.”
“Yes.” Sarah dabbled a finger thoughtfully in her milky tea. “The thing is, he’s not very smart, but he’s such a sweet person. I keep thinking there must be something he would be good at.”
“Why? There’s nothing I’m good at.”
“There’s lots of things you can do, Snooky. And you’re smart, too. You made a choice not to work. It’s different for Dwayne. He can’t afford not to.”
“Can’t he?”
Their eyes met. At that moment the back door, in the laundry room next to the kitchen, swung open with a bang. Somebody stomped in, heavy boots thumping against the floor.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Gertie?” she called.
There was no answer from the laundry room, just a lot of huffing and puffing.
“Gertie? Is that you?”
The vast bulk which was Gertie hove abruptly into view. “Of course it’s me,” she snapped. “Who the hell else would it be? Would somebody please help me with these damned boots?”
“You’re back early,” said Sarah with a worried frown as Snooky went to help.
Gertie collapsed on an ancient, rickety lawn chair that had come indoors sometime the previous summer, nobody knew exactly how, and taken up permanent abode next to the washing machine. She extended one enormously fat leg. “Yes. Nothing out there today. Decided to come home and get some rest.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Sarah gazed at her, concerned. Gertie went outside every day, fair weather or foul, and today was sunny and a bit warmer than it had been. “Are you okay?”
“ ’Course I’m all right. Just thought I’d come home and get some of my cataloguing done.” Gertie kept scrapbooks and boxes full of her collection of specimens. She lovingly listed them in an encyclopedic volume of notebooks which stretched back, stuffed full of her woodland observations, over thirty years. “I’m falling behind on it.”
“Oh. I see.”
Snooky pulled, and the left boot came off with a loud squelchy sound. Gertie grunted and extended her other leg. “Thanks. That’s better. Leave them out here to dry. The woods are still all wet from that rain the other day.” She prodded the muddy boots. “Have to clean these someday. Oh, well. Can always put that kind of thing off. I’ll be upstairs if anyone wants me. Not that that’s too likely. Where’s Irma?”
“She’s in her room, taking a nap.” Sarah looked at her closely. Gertie’s face seemed suspiciously flushed. She was still breathing heavily. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“ ’Course I am. Don’t fuss. Can’t bear when people fuss. I’m fine.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go outside and push yourself so hard every single day, Gertie. It’s not good for you, you
know. I worry about you.”
“Don’t be stupid, girl. I’ve been going out to the woods every single day since long before you were born.”
“I know, I know, but you could get hurt, or fall down, and you’d be out there all alone, with nobody to help you.”
“They’d find me. Oh, they’d find me, eventually. They found Bobby, didn’t they?” Gertie gave a nasty chuckle.
“Yes, but … well, that’s different.”
“Yes, it is. I’m not going to end up a cadaver in the woods, like Bobby. Not that there are going to be any more murders out there, anyway,” she added, wheezing slightly. “It’s perfectly safe … now.”
Snooky regarded her curiously. “How can you be so sure about that?”
“Because I keep my eyes open,” was Gertie’s stern rejoinder. “Most people don’t. I’ll be upstairs if anybody asks for me. See you later.”
And she moved off, wheezing and panting as she went.
Sarah had her head cocked, listening to the sounds of Gertie’s breathing as she went down the hall. “I don’t like it,” she whispered. “The way she sounds. She has high blood pressure and a heart condition, too, you know. She and Irma. It killed Uncle Hugo, years ago.”
“Mmmmph.”
“Don’t pay any attention to what she says about Bobby. She’s always hinting around about him. She thinks she’s so observant, but she doesn’t know any more than we do.”
“Mmmm. Well, you’re probably right. More tea, Sarah?”
Out in the foyer, Gertie puffed her laborious way upstairs. She felt terribly short of breath; that was the real reason why she had come home so early. She had been striding through the woods, chasing down a white-breasted nut-hatch with her pair of trusty binoculars, when her heart had suddenly made a funny little skip and a jump, and she had been forced to sit down. Her face had gone all red and hot, and she had felt a little dizzy.
“It’s nothing,” she told herself now. “Didn’t sleep well last night—that’s all. I’ll be better once I sit down to do some cataloging. There’s that goshawk feather I found the other day …”