The Genius

by Jesse Kellerman

  I set the box down on the sidewalk and arched my back. It was eleven thirty, and I was tired. I wouldn’t be able to get to the art tonight. I’d get up early the next morning and work until I found something or until Samantha changed her mind.

  In New York you don’t notice other people. They’re there, always, but you don’t see them. Who pays attention to people on the street? My neighborhood is safe at night. That’s why I didn’t turn around to see who was walking a few feet behind me. In fact, I don’t think I was aware of anyone else, not until I got hit on the back of the head with something extremely hard and heavy, and by then I was unconscious.

  Interlude: 1931.

  On Friday nights Mother reads while Father listens to the radio. David does not make noise. He sits on the rug and plays in his head, he has lots of games he plays. Or he tells himself stories. His favorite stories to make up involve a great exploring pilot named Roger Dollar. Roger Dollar always gets into trouble but then he always gets out because he’s clever and he has a suitcase full of tricks. Sometimes David will play with the train but then he forgets to keep still and sooner or later Mother will tell him to be quiet. If you want to make noise you can play in your room.

  David does not like to play in his room. He hates his room; his room scares him. His room is tall and damp and dark. The whole house is tall and damp and dark. When he was born his mother painted the room a bright creamy boy’s blue. But all colors look the same in the dark, and no paint can prevent the bureau from turning into a hulking beast. David will lie with his blanket jammed up under his chin, shivering because the room is so cold. The bureau will gnash its teeth and open its jaws to swallow him. David will scream. The maid will come running. When she sees that he is fine, only having a nightmare, she will scold David for being such a fraidy-cat. Does he expect to grow up and be strong, or does he want to be a fraidy-cat all his life? No, he wants to grow up. Then why does he act like a fraidy-cat? Why isn’t he brave? Why doesn’t he shut his eyes and go to sleep? The maid’s name is Delia and she looks like a monster, too, with blotchy cheeks and bony fingers and a nightcap sitting high on her head, like brains swelling out of a broken skull. She yells at him all the time. She yells at him if he is late and if he is early. She yells at him if he eats too much and if he does not eat. She bakes cakes but won’t give him a slice, she leaves them under crystal domes until they turn stale and crumble. Then she discards them and bakes new ones. David doesn’t understand. Why bake a cake if not to eat it? What else are cakes for? Once he tried to take a piece and she whipped him. He now regards the cake stand as a betrayer, giving it a wide berth when he passes.

  On nights when he screams, she will scold him and perhaps whip him, if she is in a sour enough mood; then she will leave him there, in bed, among the monsters. He will try to be brave, he will try to go to sleep. Roger Dollar would not scream so there’s no reason for him to scream, he ought not to be such a fraidy-cat. But then every time he opens his eyes, he will see more of them: the bureau, yes; also the mirror, the miniature wooden valet, the carved posts at the end of his bed. His hat rack, so cheery in daylight, teems with snakes, hissing and spitting and crawling up the mattress toward the only exposed part of him: his eyes, they are going to bite him, bite his eyes, slither into his face and then he will be unable to scream, they will eat his tongue, he had better scream while he still can…

  Nevertheless he learns not to scream. He learns his lesson. At home you must keep your mouth shut and not say anything. That is the rule.

  On Friday nights (Father calls them Family Nights), David sits on the rug and plays in his head, because although Mother does not often yell her rules are the same as Delia’s, and more swiftly enforced. Sometimes he wonders if they are in fact sisters, Mother and Delia, so similarly do they behave. David has noticed that Delia sometimes talks to Father the way that Mother does: with sass. She is the only employee who may do so, and she does it under Mother’s protection. Certainly David cannot sass. He has been warned. How it is that Delia can sass to Father and Mother can sass to Father and Father can sass at everyone else but David cannot sass to anyone, he does not understand. When he sasses he gets whipped. Does Delia get whipped when she sasses? Does Mother? Does it happen out of his sight? There are many things he does not understand. David turns six soon. Perhaps then he, too, will be allowed to sass. Perhaps that is what it means to grow up.

  The news on the radio is all about the Depression. Like Delia’s untouched cakes and the rules of sass, the Depression is another thing that David wants to understand. Father talks of tightening his belt and Mother in response says that they must live like human beings. David does not understand the connection. If you tightened your belt, why couldn’t you live like a human being, except with tighter pants? Could you live like a human being if your pants were falling down? Of course not. David sides with Father, decisively.

  The Depression has always existed. Yet his parents talk about Before. Before, we used to have more help around the house. Before we made adjustments. Delia talks about Before, too; Before, she had a friend, and now there is nobody for her to talk to. David can see that Delia is lonely. Why? There are plenty of other people around her. There’s Mother and Father and the cook and the driver and the butler and the man who comes to take the pictures and the doctor with the oily leather bag and all sorts of people, all the time. The house is never empty. So why does Delia seem so lonely? And if she’s so lonely, why does she act so nasty? David can easily see that more people would smile at her if she smiled herself. That much he understands. There may be a lot she knows that he doesn’t, but at least he can feel smarter about that.

  The Depression, as far as David can tell, has something to do with the weather. So says Father. We’ll have to weather it. Or horses: we’ll have to ride it out. Perhaps—and here David feels on uncertain ground—it has to do with ships, and leaking. He wishes he understood better, because these storms and horses and leaky vessels exert a strong effect on his parents’ mood, particularly Father’s. Sometimes Father will come home in a terrible state, casting a black spell across the household. Dinners will be silent, no sound but squeaking knives. Father might start to talk about the news but Mother will then say Not at the table or Please, Louis and Father will fall quiet again.

  Friday night, Family Night, Father retreats to the corner with the big radio and switches on the lamp with the pretty green glass shade and sits with his legs crossed, tenting his fingers or chewing at the corners of his nails, a habit Delia calls dirty. Or he pulls gently on his earlobes, as though he’s trying to stretch them like taffy. He seems to disappear into the cushions, and David will sometimes stop playing the game in his head and look at him, with his hairy lip and his sunken cheeks and eyes like marbles that want to shoot across the floor. He fiddles with his necktie but never removes it. His shoes are a lustrous black, and if David creeps close enough he can see his bulging reflection in their shiny, rounded caps.

  Mother reads books. They have names like The Rose of Killearney and The Wife of the Saxon Chieftain. David tried to look inside one of her books once, but could not understand. This is not because he cannot read. He learned to read, the tutor taught him. To practice he reads the picture books. Sometimes, when Delia has thrown away the newspaper—she reads it out loud to the chef, who is from Italy and whose accent makes him sound like he’s singing, all the time, even when he is not—he will fish it out of the trash and sit in the cupboard with it. Like Father, all the newspaper seems to care about was the Depression.

  On Friday nights David stands at the window and looks down at the men and women walking in their hats and their scarves. Cars used to honk until the noise drove Mother loony and she couldn’t stand it a second longer and she had the men come and put on a second set of windows, glass as thick as David’s fingers. Now the picture show in the street makes no sound at all. David doesn’t mind. He can supply the voices and the sounds in his head, where he keeps so much.

  Come away f
rom there, David.

  He goes back to his spot on the rug, lies down, and looks at the ceiling, where there are paintings of angels that Father had put there. They are playing trumpets and flowers are coming out of them. The trumpets, not the angels. It would be funny if flowers came out of the angels. But coming out of the trumpets they just look silly. David never says anything because Father seems quite fond of his angels.

  This Friday night in particular, he is in the middle of extracting Roger Dollar from a very difficult situation. Roger has been kidnapped by lawless bandits who want to take his gold. He is using an oar to fight them off, and as the bandits fire their guns, David hears someone coming down the stairs. He is surprised. Nobody may come into the drawing room on Family Night; anybody who does will probably get whipped, worse than if they sassed.

  He looks at Mother and Father. Neither of them have noticed anything.

  David wonders if he imagined the footsteps. He has a strong imagination, so strong he sometimes gets lost in it. Instead of reviewing his lessons, math or German or music, he will focus on the faint whoop of a cardinal, two slow calls and then a series of sharp ones, or on the way a crack in the plaster traces its way up the wall, like a river flowing upward. He will spin such impressions into elaborate stories, jungle exploration, clashes between savage tribes full of men with pointy teeth and drawings on their bodies, he saw them in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. David knows that distraction takes him easily. When he returns to the world, it is usually through a tunnel of shouts, at the end of which Delia stands, grinding her jaw and cracking her knuckles.

  He did not imagine the footsteps. They are coming closer, in bursts of four or five, as though the person is learning how to walk.

  Should he get up? He could pretend to go to the bathroom, and on the way warn the approaching stranger to turn back. It’s Family Night, don’t go in there!

  But what if the stranger is dangerous: a monster, or worse? What if David needs to protect Mother and Father? What if he can save only one of them? Who would he choose? The answer comes quickly: Father. Father is skinnier, and David likes him more. Mother, with her heaving bosom, her huge raft of skirts, could probably defend herself. If she didn’t manage that would be okay, too.

  Now Mother puts down her book.

  "Louis.”

  Father has passed out, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Louis.”

  Father wakes. “What’s that, Mother?”

  “There’s someone in the hall.”

  “Who’s that.”

  “I heard a noise.”

  Father nods sleepily. “Yes.”

  “Well? Go see what it is.”

  Father takes a deep breath and unfurls himself from deep within his armchair. His legs looks like a spider’s, frail and long and jointed, and though he looks small in his chair, when he rises, it is always to an awesome height.

  “Did you hear something?” he asks David.

  David nods.

  Father tugs at his collar and yawns. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

  Before he can, the door swings open with a shriek. Father jumps back and Mother puts her hand to her chest and David blinks furiously, trying to keep quiet. In comes a girl he has never seen before. She is wearing a white nightgown, so thin that the fabric is see-through; and she is weird-looking, with small bosoms and a rounded stomach and hairy arms. She is short. Her face is squashed, like a frog’s. Her tongue sticks out of her mouth like she has tasted something rotten. Her hair is smooth and tied back with a yellow bow. She has slanty eyes that dart around the room, looking at this chair and that wall and then at Mother and Father. Then she looks at David and she seems to start to smile. He does not smile back; he is frightened and he wants to hide.

  Mother leaps up, dropping her book on the floor.

  Father says, “Bertha—”

  Mother crosses the room in three big steps; she takes the girl by the wrist and pulls her from sight. David hears them going up the stairs.

  Father says, “Are you all right?”

  Why wouldn’t he be all right? Nothing happened to him. David nods.

  Father runs a hand down his shirtfront, smooths down his tie. He touches his moustache, as though the commotion might have ruffled it. He looks for his glasses—they are in his breast pocket, where they always are—but instead of putting them on he repockets them.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Good. Good. Good.” Father smooths his tie again. “Dear God.”

  Dear God what? It sounds to David as though Father wants to write a letter. But he says no more.

  Mr. Lester Schimming’s variety hour is sponsored by Mealtime, Mealtime, the once-a-day nutritional powder that—

  Father shuts the radio off. He curls into the armchair, once again becoming small. He is pale, his breathing is loud, and he pulls on his earlobes. David would like to go to him, to put a hand on his forehead the way Mother does when David is sick. He would like to bring him water, or some of the sharp-smelling purple stuff that Father drinks before going to sleep. But David knows to be quiet. He stays in place. He says nothing.

  Later, Mother comes back. Her mouth is a wire. She does not look either at David or at Father, but picks up her book and returns to the chaise. She lies down and begins turning pages as though never interrupted, and although Father is staring at her with a fearful expression, she clears her throat loudly and he looks away.

  NOW DAVID HAS A MYSTERY.

  More than one. So many mysteries that he can barely contain himself, and when he lies awake that night, it isn’t from fear but from excitement. He can be an explorer, like Roger Dollar. He will make a plan; he will—as the detective on the radio show says—get to the bottom of this.

  He begins by making a list of questions.

  Who is the girl?

  Why does she look weird?

  How did she get in the house?

  How old is she?

  Where is she now?

  Why did Mother react the way she did?

  Why did Father react the way he did?

  Why did Mother grow angry at Father?

  Why did they ignore David for the rest of that evening? (Actually, that

  question needs no answer. They always ignore him.)

  The questions flap around his head like owls whooping who who who, how how how, why why why.

  He knows one thing for sure: he cannot ask Mother or Father. He feels certain that to ask is to earn a whipping. The same applies to Delia. He must seek out the answers on his own. And he must be very careful, because he has the feeling that Mother will not tolerate one ounce of mischief.

  First he gathers information. The next night at dinner David observes his parents, watching for anything unusual. They eat barley soup and roast beef and the tiny pasta ears that the cook makes. Father has his purple drink early. When he motions for another Mother gives him an evil stare, and he changes his request to a half a glass. Otherwise all goes normally.

  At least until the end of the meal. Then—instead of parting, as they usually do, Father to his study and Mother to her sewing room—both of them rise and head out the same door, the one that leads to the east wing of the house. David would like to follow, but Delia arrives to escort him to his bath.

  Afterward he climbs into bed. Delia asks if he wants a story and he says no thank you. He cannot wait for her to leave, and when she does he counts to fifty, then slips quietly from underneath the blanket and stands in his socks, shivering, strategizing.

  The house has four stories. Like his bedroom, Mother’s sewing room is on the third floor. Father’s study is on the fourth. David reckons that they are not likely to meet in either of those places; they have changed their pattern, and will probably choose a third place. But where?

  The first floor has a foyer where guests take cocktails. There are lots of rooms hung with paintings, one of which has the family portraits: his grandfather and great-grandfath
er, as well as great-uncles, great-great-uncles, men stretching back almost a hundred years, an inconceivable amount of time. There is Solomon Muller, smiling kindly. Beside him, his brothers: Adolph with the crooked nose and Simon with the warts and Bernard with the bushy balloons of hair at either side of his head. Papa Walter, looking like he has eaten too much peppery food. Father’s portrait is halfway done, David knows. Father has shown him where it will go once completed. And yours will go here. And your son’s, there. David saw the empty panels as windows into the future.

  The second floor does not seem a likely meeting place: aside from the dining room and the kitchen, it is mostly taken up by the ballroom, which stays shuttered and dark all year, except for the night when Mother throws her Autumn Ball. Then the doors swing open and the featherdusters fly. Chairs are unbelted and unstacked, tables erected, linens spread, silver polished and aligned. The orchestra arrives and the room fills with swishing silk of all colors. Last year David was allowed to attend for the first time. Everybody fawned over him in his coat. He waltzed with Mother. They gave him wine; he fell asleep and woke up the next morning in his bed. He feels confident assuming that his parents will not have their meeting there.

  The third floor is his bedroom, Mother’s sewing room, and lots of guest rooms. That is what his room is: a guest room they have made into a special room for him. You are always a welcome guest, says Father. David’s not sure what that means. Also on the third floor are the library, the music room, the Round Room, the radio room (where they spend Family Night), and many rooms full of breakable objects whose purpose he has yet to discern. All of these seem too small and ordinary to contain an event David expects to be momentous.

  The fourth floor, the top floor, belongs to his parents’ private suites. It is a realm seldom visited and redolent of unanswered questions. He will try there first.

  It’s not an easy operation. He cannot take the elevator; too much noise. He cannot take the east stairs, because servants use them to go up and down, and if they see him, he will be returned to bed. The south stairwell is near Delia’s room—she, too, has a guest room, unlike the rest of the help, whose rooms are in the basement. She leaves her door open at night, so that if David needs something he can call her with the bell. That way, too, she can hear him screaming when he sees monsters. Surely she will hear him if he walks past. He wraps his blanket around his shoulders and thinks.