Monstrous Affections

by David Nickle

  Of course, no one else would view it that way. Grandmother was the family’s legendary victim. Everyone had heard the story of how Grandfather had seduced her when she was young and beautiful, then cast her off with the birth of Michael’s father and uncle. The years spent raising them had taken that youth and beauty. He had done more, in fact: disowned the family, disappeared from view. But never mind that — the family’s umbrage was entirely directed to Grandfather’s shabby treatment of Grandmother.

  Listening to the family stories, one would think Grandmother had been left in some gutter with nothing but the clothes on her back and a bent walking stick, not in a comfortable Etobicoke bungalow, with the mortgage paid and two grown sons to dote on her every need.

  No, Grandmother had a power to her, a gravity, just as much as Grandfather had the will to defy that gravity. Eventually, the will was not enough — Grandfather would have been ground-bound, as he liked to say, after a few more years with Grandmother.

  He’s understood that intimately, from the first night he decided to leave Suzanne. They had been married for just three years — and as marriages went, he supposed theirs was a good one. But as he lay in bed with her, feeling the Earth impaling him on bedsprings sharp as nails, he knew it could never last. Not, he thought, if he ever meant to fly like Grandfather.

  Flight, Michael was beginning to realize, was essential to his survival. When his Grandfather had refused to take him in the air that afternoon at Uncle Evan’s old place, he had merely been hurt; but as the years accreted on his back — along with more hurts and disappointments, slights and insults and injuries — he began to realize his desire to fly was more than a desire. It was a need, bone-deep and compelling, like nothing else he’d ever felt. Once he’d defeated gravity, Michael was sure, nothing else could weigh him down.

  “Michael!” Grandmother called from upstairs. “I found it!”

  “I’m coming, Grandmother! For Heaven’s sake, don’t strain yourself!” he called, and started up the stairs. He was puffing when he reached the top.

  Grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table, an array of envelopes and letters spread in front of her, cigarette smouldering in a brown-stained glass ashtray, a sky the colour of an old bruise framed in the window behind her. She held a small brown envelope close to her breast. She was wearing thick reading glasses, and her magnified eyes looked almost comically worried, or perhaps surprised.

  Michael pulled out a chair and sat across from Grandmother, smiled at her. He extended a hand across the table, and Grandmother smiled back, her dentures white and perfect in the midst of her age-sagged face. Still holding the envelope close to her, she took his hand in hers and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Gritting his teeth, Michael squeezed back.

  “I haven’t seen or spoken with your grandfather in years, you know,” she said.

  “I know,” said Michael.

  “It was . . .” she squeezed harder, and enormous tears appeared behind the lenses of her glasses. “. . . it was very painful between us. You cannot know, dearest Michael. The things one must do. Your Suzanne is such a lovely girl, and you . . . you are such a good boy. You are both so terribly lucky.”

  “Yes,” he said. Grandmother’s hand was thick and dry, and its grip was formidable. If it had been around his throat, Michael thought crazily, that would have been the end of it . . .

  “Lucky,” he said. “The address, Grandmother?”

  Grandmother’s eyes blinked enormously behind the glass. “Is something wrong, dear? You don’t look well.” She let go of his hand, and it flopped to the tabletop.

  “I’m sorry,” said Michael. He flexed his fingers. Although they appeared normal, they felt swollen, massive. “I’m just a little anxious, I guess.”

  “To see your Grandfather,” said Grandmother. “Of course you are. Well I can certainly help you with that.”

  They sat silent for a moment, regarding each other — warily, waiting for the other to move first. Michael felt himself beginning to squirm.

  “May I — ?” he finally said, and extended his hand again, eyes on the letter.

  Grandmother didn’t move. “There is a condition,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  The envelope crinkled as her hand tightened around it. The flesh of her neck trembled like a rooster’s and her eyes widened to fill the lenses of her glasses. A weight shifted badly in Michael’s belly as she opened her mouth to speak.

  “You must go to visit him immediately,” she said, “and you must bring me with you.”

  Although Grandmother’s tone seemed to preclude argument, Michael attempted it anyway. He told her a meeting now would be painful — after all, the two of them hadn’t parted on the friendliest of terms, had they? He pointed out that he, Michael, hadn’t seen Grandfather for many years — and he was uncertain enough as to how the meeting would go in any event. Couldn’t he visit Grandfather once on his own, and then perhaps broker a meeting between Grandmother and her ex-husband for a second visit? Or perhaps he could convey a message?

  “Michael,” Grandmother said quietly, “I’m afraid I don’t have time to wait for a second visit. Also, I’m afraid I don’t care to risk, if you don’t mind my saying, your good will on this matter. My condition must stand. I would like to make this trip as early as possible. Immediately.”

  Michael almost laughed at that — the world was crushing him, and he had planned on setting out the following morning. Now, with the added weight of Grandmother’s condition on his shoulders, the pull of the Earth was so unbearable, he’d probably leave as soon as he got the address.

  “Are you well enough to travel?” he finally asked.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face.” Grandmother’s eyes narrowed and her mouth became an angry line. Michael felt his face flush — he hadn’t realized he had been smirking. “Of course I’m well enough,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”

  She stood easily, pushed the chair back underneath the kitchen table, and hurried off to the closet.

  Some days, Michael felt the Earth knew of his plans to escape it, and reached up with an extra hand to hold him ever more firmly. It had been bad the day he left Suzanne — ironic, because that was the very act he suspected might liberate him utterly, not yank him closer to the ground he had begun to despise. Now that he was so close — to Grandfather, to his secret — it felt as though the Earth was actually pushing him down, driving him into itself like he was a stake.

  God, he just needed some time alone with the old man! Simplification, isolation, was not enough — there was something else the old man knew, and Michael needed to know it too.

  He remembered the day Uncle Evan shot his movie, the day he saw the miracle of his Grandfather’s flight. His father, genial sadist that he was, had built him up for it, on their way over to Evan’s: Grandfather’s a miracle worker, Mikey — just like Jesus. Maybe if you ask him nicely, he’ll work a miracle for you! He remembered his mother trying to shush his father. That’s not why we’re going; don’t get Mikey’s hopes up, she said, and to Michael: Grandfather’s not like Jesus.

  As it turned out, Grandfather showed up almost four hours late, and Michael was the only child there — so of course the waiting had made him crazy. It had in fact made everyone crazy. Michael’s father drank too much, and wound up spending what seemed like an hour sick in the bathroom, and his mother paced, feigning interest in Uncle Evan’s movie camera, which he loaded film into, in a black cloth bag; or the notebook. It was filled with crabbed handwriting, mathematical equations, and an array of charts and diagrams Evan had assembled, to try and explain the phenomenon of Grandfather’s seemingly miraculous flights. She flipped through the book with Aunt Nancy, then called Michael over and made him go through it too, and finally shut it and put her fingers to her eye-sockets and shooed Michael away.

  We’ll work it out, said Aunt Nancy, resting her hand on his mother’s shoulder. Once we’ve got it on film, we’ll work out what’s happening . . . Make it right.
From the bathroom, Michael heard a retching sound and the toilet flushing, and his father’s drunken cursing that everyone in the living room strove to ignore. Michael had finally asked to be excused, and went outside to watch for Grandfather’s car, from the sweet quiet of his uncle’s garden.

  The car finally arrived, and Michael watched as his parents and aunt and uncle hurried outside to meet him. Uncle Evan opened the driver’s door — which was opposite Michael — and at first Michael thought he was helping Grandfather out. But he wasn’t; an enormous, round arm reached out and grabbed his arm, and that was followed by thick, hunched shoulders topped by a head plastered with black, sweaty hair. There was some fumbling below the roof of the car that Michael couldn’t see, and finally the immense woman started toward the house, borne by two canes and dwarfing even Michael’s father, who Michael thought was the biggest man in the world. The woman, Michael realized, was his Grandmother — whom he had not seen since he was very small.

  Grandfather emerged next. He was wearing a neatly pressed suit, and he straightened it as he stood next to the car. He glanced briefly to the house, where the family were all occupied herding Grandmother through the side door, glanced at the sky, and skipped — actually skipped — over to the garden, where Michael sat. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, and looked again at the sky.

  Michael waved at him. Hello, Grandfather, he said. He waved again. Grandfather, it’s me! Finally, when the old man still didn’t respond, Michael reached out and grabbed the fabric of his pant-leg, and pulled.

  There was a crunch, and Michael jumped back as Grandfather’s feet came back into contact with the ground. It was true! Grandfather could fly — he was flying just then, even if it was only an inch above the ground! Michael looked up at the old man with awe. He was like Jesus!

  At the tug, Grandfather did look down, and his eyes, furious points of black, met with Michael’s. His lips pulled back from his teeth, in a snarl. How dare you! he snapped, and raised his hand, as if to cuff his grandson.

  The hand lowered again, however, as Uncle Evan shouted hello, and strode over, camera in hand, to begin.

  We’re ready to go, said Uncle Evan, and Grandfather straightened, pulled his suit flat. I don’t know why I agreed to this, he grumbled. You’re not going to send this to the television, are you?

  Don’t worry, Dad — this is just for the family, Uncle Evan said.

  Grandfather nodded, grudgingly satisfied. Where shall I stand? he asked, and glared at Michael again.

  Michael trembled, and felt as though he was going to cry.

  Later, Michael did cry. Michael’s mother held him, glaring at Grandfather’s back as he skipped back to the car, his flight finished and his corpulent wife re-installed in the driver’s seat, to bear him home.

  You’re ground-bound, boy, Grandfather had said when he landed, and Michael had asked him if he could fly too.

  Oh yes, Michael had cried that day. Ground-bound, Grandfather had called him, and he had been right — about him, Grandmother, about the whole pathetic family. They were all bound to the Earth; gravity hooked their flesh and winched it, inch by inch, year by year into the ground.

  All of them, that was, but Grandfather.

  Grandfather knew how to remove the hooks, free himself from the tyranny of Earth. He wouldn’t tell Mikey the boy. But he would sure as hell tell Michael the man.

  “We must take the Highway 400,” said Grandmother as Michael started the car. She wouldn’t give him the address — she insisted, rather, on giving directions from the passenger seat, so Michael might better concentrate on the road. Michael backed the car out of the driveway.

  “Will you tell me where we are going?” he asked. “At least generally? It helps me to know.”

  Grandmother put a fresh cigarette in her mouth and fumbled with her lighter.

  “Generally?” She chortled. “Generally, we’re going to see your Grandfather.”

  The car filled with Grandmother’s rancid lung-smoke. Michael tightened his hands on the steering wheel, and thought, not for the first time, about putting them around Grandmother’s throat.

  It seemed as though the drive took a day, the traffic was so heavy and the conversation so sparse. In fact, it was just barely over an hour before they reached the appropriate exit and Grandmother told him to leave the highway here.

  “You know your way,” said Michael as they waited at the stoplight. It was snowing now — vector lines of white crossed the beams of his headlights, and little eddies swirled close to the asphalt. Now that they were stopped, Michael cracked open his window and savoured the fresh, clean air. “You must have been out here before,” he said.

  “I used to drive here quite frequently, as a matter of fact.” Grandmother regarded him, cigarette pinched between two fingers. Her skin was yellow in the dull instrument lights. “You will turn left,” she said. “Then I must concentrate on the landmarks — the next turn is difficult to find.”

  “I don’t know what landmarks there are around here,” said Michael. Ahead of them was nothing but November-bare fields, and town lights making a sickly aurora on a flat horizon.

  “The light’s green,” she said. “Turn left.”

  Michael made a wide left, and tapped the gas pedal, to push the car up the slight rise over the highway.

  “It’s good you left Suzanne,” said Grandmother as they accelerated along the dark stretch of road.

  “What?” Michael felt the blood drain from his face. “What did you say, Grandmother?” he managed.

  Grandmother stared out the front windshield, smoke falling from her lips like water from a cataract. “Watch the road, Michael.”

  Michael turned back to the road. As they drove, the darkness had completed itself — even the lights from the town to the north seemed impeded here, although Michael didn’t see the trees that might have blocked it at the edge of the roadway.

  “What did you say?” he repeated. “About Suzanne?”

  “Only that it is good,” she said, “that you left. I often wish your Grandfather had taken that route himself.”

  Michael was about to argue — Grandfather had taken that route, hadn’t he? He’d left Grandmother, presumably to take to the skies and never look back. He opened his mouth to say so. But he couldn’t force the air out; the jealous Earth pulled it to the base of his lungs.

  “Why are you slowing down?” Grandmother asked. “We aren’t there yet.”

  “S-sorry,” he whispered. He glanced at the speedometer — they were down to 30 kilometres an hour. The road was posted at 80.

  The car’s engine strained as he stomped the gas pedal, and he held the steering wheel as though clinging to a ledge. Grandmother laughed.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “It’s just that I never thought I’d be urging my grandson to speed up. But never mind — go as slow as you like. We’re coming to the turn-off soon.”

  They turned onto a narrow road of cracked pavement and stone and deep wheel-ruts. The sky was dark, but there was nowhere really dark on this land; there were no shadows, no trees to cast them. Nothing grew higher than a few inches here — so the town light reflecting from the clouds painted the landscape a dim, silvery green.

  Michael was breathing better now, and he could speak easily again. But he still felt the Earth pulling at his arms, his feet. A filling in his molar ached mightily, and the pain of it leaked across the inside of his skull like a bloodstain.

  At length, he broached the subject of Suzanne again with Grandmother. Had Suzanne called before he’d arrived? Or had she spoken with someone else in the family, who’d reported the separation to Grandmother? How had Grandmother learned of the situation with Suzanne? Michael was certain he hadn’t told anyone . . .

  “I’ll tell you a story,” said Grandmother instead of answering the questions directly. “I met your Grandfather when he was in university. It was the Depression — 1933, and no one had any money, certainly not my parents. But his family was one
of means, even in those times. So Grandfather was able to go to school. He was lifted by the toil of his father. Do you understand, Michael?”

  “Grandmother.” Michael spoke in a low voice that sounded too much like a threat. He tried again, this time achieving at least a plaintive tone. “Grandmother, I understand. But — Suzanne?”

  Grandmother motioned ahead. “Eye on the road, Michael. It’s difficult along here.”

  Michael massaged the steering wheel, and looked ahead. The glow of his headlights illuminated cones of a complicated and undeniably damaged landscape. Keep his eye on the road? It was hard to tell where the road was in this jumbled plain of rock and asphalt. He let the car slow again while he peered into the dark, trying to make out a roadway.

  “I met your Grandfather along the boardwalk by the lake, near the Sunnyside Amusement Park,” she said. “There was a dancehall there — it was called the Palais Royale, and the price of entry was too dear for any of us, my friends and I. Even should we have scraped together the fifty cents they demanded, none of us owned a dress fine enough for the gentlemen who would frequent such a place. None of us owned a gentleman who would make a suitable escort . . . But we coveted it, all the same — we stood upon the boardwalk, the lake at our backs, listening to the fine songs and the gay laughter. Wanting the thing we could never have.”

  “Imagine that.” Michael muttered it, barely a whisper, but Grandmother heard anyway. She raised her eyebrows and the car ground to a halt. Michael felt his fingers slip from around the steering wheel. His hands pounded down onto his thighs, and he winced in pain. He bit his lip against the urge to cry out, though. The quicker Grandmother finished her story, the quicker they’d find Grandfather — and God, he needed to find Grandfather.