“Which means she’ll get worse,” Arty said.
The doctor looked at the floor for a moment before looking back up and saying, “Yes. But the point I am trying to get across is that because of the early onset—”
“It’ll come on faster and be more severe,” Arty said.
“Well, I wouldn’t have necessarily put it so succinctly, however—”
“It’s true though, right?” Arty asked. “I mean we’re all men here, doc. You don’t need to baby us.” Arty’s expression was ice.
The doctor’s face reddened. He nodded quickly. “Of course…I…it’s just that some people prefer more subtle ways of delivering this kind of information. You obviously prefer a more straightforward approach. ”
“Yes.”
The doctor nodded quickly again.
Jim and Arty exchanged looks. Jim looked on the verge of angry tears. Arty was still ice.
“I am assuming your father is no longer in the picture?” The doctor asked. His tone was like a feather.
“He passed away,” Arty said.
The doctor tried on a look of professional sympathy. “I see.”
“So what happens now?” Arty asked.
“Well, as I mentioned earlier, we should definitely try medication; but I would also consider looking into some sort of long-term-care community.”
“A rest home?” Jim blurted.
“In a manner of speaking,” the doctor replied. “A home where she can be watched and assisted as needed. At the moment she seems perfectly capable of performing most tasks, but there is a good chance her recollection of time and place will become distorted. She may also begin to struggle with remembering certain rudimentary domestic skills.
“Now keep in mind, this may happen soon, or it may not. It could be years from now before her symptoms progress to that point. But of course if they begin to develop sooner rather than later—which, as we just discussed, may be likely—it’s nice to have peace of mind to know she’s being looked after.”
“We’re going to look after her,” Arty said.
Arty’s tone made the doctor take a step back. “Great.” He swallowed and cleared his throat. “That’s even better. It’s obvious you care very deeply for your mother. Having family look after a loved one is always—”
“We’ll look after her until the day she dies.”
The doctor took another step back, turned and hurried towards a stack of papers on the white counter-top. Without turning back around he said, “How about I write that prescription for you now?”
* * *
Maria Fannelli wanted to know what the doctor had said. The boys lied to her.
“That doctor is full of shit, Ma,” Arty said. “He was going on and on about this and that, and none of it was making much sense. Right, Jim?”
Jim sat in the back seat of the car looking out the window, his mind somewhere else entirely.
“James?” Maria said.
Jim turned away from the window and looked at his mother. She stared at him from the passenger seat.
“Are you alright? Is Arthur telling me the truth?”
“Everything’s fine, Mom.” Jim spoke with no affect.
“There, you see?” Arty said, reaching out and rubbing his mother’s knee. “Now, the doctor gave us a prescription for some medicine he wants you to try.”
“Medicine for what?” Maria asked. “I thought you said he was full of s-h-i-t?”
“It’s no big deal, Ma; it’s just a precautionary thing. Jim and I will drop you at Alberta’s house, and you two can chat for a little bit while we get your prescription filled. Okay? Sound good?”
Maria turned and looked at Jim again, then back towards Arty in the driver’s seat. There was a look of uncertainty in her eyes. “Do you boys promise you’re telling me everything?”
Arty looked in the rear view mirror without moving his head. He caught Jim’s stare and the two shook hands with their eyes.
“Yes, Mom,” Arty said. “We promise.”
* * *
Jim began crying seconds after they’d dropped their mother off at Alberta’s house. Arty reached his right arm over towards the passenger seat and rubbed his brother’s shoulder. Jim punched the dashboard twice.
“Whoa, easy, bro,” Arty said. “We’ll get through this. I meant what I said in that office. We’ll look after her until the day she dies.”
Jim wiped his tears away and fell silent. He stared out the window, his eyes glazed, the passing view the visual equal of white noise.
“Hey,” Arty said. “Hey, you still with me?”
“I’m here,” Jim replied.
“What are you thinking?”
He said nothing.
“Jim?”
Still staring out the window he said, “I’m thinking someone else needs to hurt the way I hurt.”
“Will that make you feel better?”
Jim turned away from the window and looked at his brother. He didn’t have to say anything.
Arty nodded.
“But I want something different,” Jim said. “I don’t want any transients or whores.”
Arty raised a brow. “Careful, Jim,” he said. “Don’t lose me.”
“No one’s losing anybody. Just drive for a bit, okay?”
* * *
Arty had done as his brother had asked and drove for a bit. They headed west on route 30, venturing further away from the city until they began entering the affluent strip of the Philadelphia suburbs.
“Jim, this is the Mainline,” Arty said. “Rich assholes with a neighborhood watch for their neighborhood watch. We should turn around.”
“Get off 30,” Jim said. “Turn down one of these streets or something, I don’t care.”
Arty made a left off 30 at the next stoplight.
“Jim, it’s the middle of the afternoon in fucking suburbia. If someone goes missing around here people will give a shit.” He paused, studying his brother’s profile to see if his words were having an effect. “If you want to do what I think you want to do, then we need to turn around and head back—”
“Stop,” Jim said. He didn’t shout the command, just spoke it aloud as though reading from a book.
Arty thought his brother was trying to shut him up. “Stop?”
“Stop the car.”
Arty silently obeyed and slowed to a stop alongside a long strip of residential curb. Enormous houses with lawns big enough to host professional soccer games stood regally in the distance.
“Jim, what are you thinking?” Arty asked. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Jim looked past his brother and out the driver’s side window. Arty followed his gaze. A young couple was walking ahead of them along the opposite side of the road. The answer was now clear.
Arty said nothing. Jim kicked open his door and ran across the street. The couple couldn’t have been more than seventeen—high school kids walking hand-in hand, treasuring summer love.
Jim punched the boy to the ground before the young man was even aware of what was going on. The girl screamed in horror but was instantly silenced by Arty who snuck up behind her and placed a hand over her mouth and an arm around her throat.
Jim was now mounted on top of the boy and punching into his face, shredding it with each sickening crack of bone on flesh. Arty looked on as he held the writhing girl in his arms, knowing a simple beating would not be enough for his brother—he would need much more.
Jim, as though honing in on his brother’s intuition, exceeded the mere beating and jammed both thumbs deep into the teenager’s eyes. The boy squealed in a pitch that was only matched by the girl being held by Arty.
“Jesus, Jim!” Arty laughed, his previous apprehension now gone as the violent contagion took hold of him, a common occurrence when his younger brother’s hysteria grew to epic proportions.
Jim pushed off the young man’s chest and leapt to his feet. He brought his foot high into the air and stomped down hard onto the blinded boy’s fa
ce, knocking him unconscious. A second and third stomp deformed the boy’s face and took most of his teeth out.
Jim looked up and grinned at Arty, his eyes wild, saliva dripping from his mouth—a pervert watching a porno.
The young girl in Arty’s arms was in absolute hysterics. Jim approached her with wet thumbs and wiped the gore from her boyfriend’s eyes onto her face.
“Time to go,” Jim eventually said with a breathless calm, the porno now finished, his load shot, the ritual nap after calling his name. Arty nodded, spun the girl around, and head-butted her square in the face with the force of a bowling ball down a laundry chute. The girl dropped to the ground as though her legs had been cut from beneath her, and the two brothers ran to their car and drove back to the city to meet their mother.
43
“Of course they’re cookies!” Maria Fannelli said. “I couldn’t very well see my own grandchildren without filling their bellies full of cookies could I?”
Carrie looked up at Arty, a giggle close to breaking loose. Arty looked down and met the child’s gaze. He winked, then out of the side of his mouth whispered, “See what I mean?”
* * *
Jim stared at his cell phone, willing it to beep. He wanted things to start so badly. He could hear Arty, his mother, and the two children above him, moving around and chattering back and forth, his mother’s laughter echoing above all else. He wanted to be a part of it. Waiting and listening down in the dark was agonizing. Yes, it was a vital part of the game, and yes, the next time it would be Arty’s turn to do the laborious bits behind the curtain while he got to work center stage, but those thoughts gave little comfort. Now was all that mattered. And right now he was anxious and annoyed.
Jim walked over to Patrick and kicked him hard in the center of the back. When Patrick grunted and Amy whimpered for her husband, Jim said, “Sorry. I was just seeing if you guys were still awake.”
* * *
Once Arty was fairly confident his fictional brood had settled into the family room, he explained to his mother about the wound on his cheek (a silly accident he told her, nothing more), then took out his cell phone.
“Are you going to call Mommy and Daddy to see when they’re coming back to the party?” Carrie asked.
Maria looked at her son, her confusion evident. Arty smiled and walked towards the sofa. Caleb was at Maria’s feet munching on a cookie, and Arty ruffled his buzzed hair before leaning into the sofa, close enough to kiss his mother’s ear. He whispered, “It’s a little game we play, Ma. She’s just being silly.”
Maria looked over at Carrie, then back at her son. Her face held the same look of innocence and wonder as Carrie’s did, and Arty found it hard to stomach the ironic similarity between the two.
“Yes, honey,” Arty said. “I’m giving them a call now.” He looked at his mother and winked. Maria smiled and laughed. Caleb leaned his head all the way back into Maria’s lap and asked her what was funny. She responded by leaning forward, kissing Caleb’s forehead, and then offering up more cookies from the plate to her right. Caleb happily took another (the combo of more sugar and a four-year-old attention span kicking his query to the curb), and began to hum as he munched away, crumbs sprinkling the front of his shirt after each bite.
* * *
Jim’s cell phone beeped and his heart jumped. He flipped the small device open, casting a tiny green light in the black basement. The message read:
in family room. move now. be quick n quiet
Jim snapped the phone shut and jammed it into his pocket. He squatted down next to Patrick and said, “Okay, big man, you’re first.”
* * *
Carrie looked disappointed when Arty returned to the family room with his cell phone shut in hand.
“Why didn’t you let me talk to them?” she asked.
“They’re going to be here shortly, honey. They said they’ll talk to you then.”
Carrie still looked displeased. Maria patted the spot next to her on the sofa and said, “Carrie, come on over here and sit next to me.”
Carrie looked at Arty first: an uncertain look a child might give their parent before braving a swimming pool for the first time. Arty stood by the doorway of the family room; it gave him a reasonably clear view through the adjoining den and into the foyer that held the stairway. He was stood there for a reason, and Carrie’s look of uncertainty threatened a journey towards him.
“Go on,” he said as he nudged her over with a quick flick of his head. “Don’t be rude.”
Carrie took a big bite of her cookie then headed toward the sofa. Arty let go of the breath he was holding and smiled inside. Carrie flopped up onto the sofa seat causing Maria to bounce.
“Whoop!” Maria laughed. “Such a big girl my granddaughter is!” She wrapped her arm around Carrie, pulled her in and squeezed.
Carrie allowed the hug, but when she withdrew the little girl’s expression made Arty hold his breath again.
“Why do you do that?” Carrie asked.
“Do what?”
Arty’s voice was sharp and firm. “Carrie.”
Carrie ignored him. “Pretend to be my grandmother.”
Maria’s face was like a child’s again. “Pretend?” she said.
Arty, who had no intention of leaving his post by the family room door anytime soon, risked a quick walk over to the sofa and bent forward so he was eye level with Carrie. His eyes held a threat, but hers returned no fear; they were stubborn and unblinking. She simply turned her head back to Maria (if she wasn’t sitting on a sofa, Arty was certain the willful little brat would have turned her entire back to him) and continued.
“Yeah,” she continued. “You like to pretend you’re everyone’s grandmother.”
Maria put a hand to her chest. She then slid the hand upward, squeezing both lapels of her robe together, a habit of hers when she got confused, tightening up her armor to keep the bad out.
“I do?” she eventually asked. She looked at Arty with another expression he was all too familiar with:
Am I forgetting things again, Arthur?
Arty burned with rage. He wanted to break his own rules of the game and whack his palm across the side of Carrie’s defiant little face. He wanted to grab the little girl by her ear and tell her what he and his brother had planned for her and her family later this evening. He wanted to tell her so badly his stomach cramped and his head throbbed.
And then his own voice, like a hand on his shoulder, counseled him—as it always did.
This is a big part of the game, Arty. You need to harness this feeling. Bottle it up for now. Uncork it on the little bitch at the appropriate time. This is one of your many gifts. What makes you and Jim so special. What separates you from the rest of the rabble: the pathetic fools with grandiose delusions of malevolent superiority, who ultimately fall flat because they lack the control to truly excel. And you do excel, Arty. If you could leash your rage with those hillbillies at the bar, you can certainly do it with a six-year-old child. All part of the game, Arty…all part of the game.
The red in Arty’s skin drained away. His breathing steadied and the tight fist at his side slowly unclenched. He laughed hard and loud, and with a smile that was all teeth said, “She’s teasing you, Mom! The little stinker is always doing this kind of thing.”
Both Maria and Carrie stared at Arty, confused, but each for different reasons. Maria ultimately decided to shake off her confusion and return to giddy, albeit anxious, laughter. And to Arty’s delight, Carrie had lost interest in the practice of grilling fake grandma; she was soon crunching on another cookie, her eyes apathetically fluttering all over the room’s décor.
Confident the crisis had been thoroughly averted, Arty returned to his view by the family room door. Upon arrival, he immediately saw his brother Jim, carefully trudging up the stairs with the bound and gagged Patrick hoisted over his shoulder like a giant duffel bag. Arty became so excited he nearly pissed himself.
44
“I think
I might need to use the little boy’s room,” Arty said to the group, patting his belly and making a bloated face. “Too many cookies.”
Carrie said, “That’s gross.”
Maria said, “Arthur.”
And Caleb helped himself to another cookie.
“Well excuse me,” Arty said with a silly face. He walked casually out of the family room, began walking faster through the den, then sprinted up the stairs like a child eager to wake his parents on Christmas morning.
* * *
“Glad you could join us,” Jim said as Arty entered the room. “The three of us have been getting acquainted. I believe you know Patrick and Amy?”
Arty tipped an imaginary hat towards Patrick and spoke with a western drawl. “Sure do. Howdy, sir.” And then towards Amy with a second tip of the imaginary hat. “Ma’am.”
Jim said. “So what do you think? Are we good?”
Amy and Patrick were still gagged and bound, but now sat upright, tied to two wooden chairs pushed flat against the wall furthest from the door. The room was empty (recently emptied) save for a television atop a large metal stand placed directly in front of the captive couple. Behind the television a bundle of cords and wires snaked their way down the length of the stand and off to the side where they disappeared into a small hole through the wooden floor.
“Yeah, I think we’re good for now,” Arty said, then, motioning towards the television, “Can you guys see okay?”
Both Amy and Patrick did nothing. Arty stepped forward and slapped Patrick’s face hard. Patrick’s arms instantly jerked against the binds that held them to the arms of the chair.
“Can you guys see okay?” Arty repeated.
Patrick felt his wife’s stare on him. Her protector was useless now. Could he look at her? What would his eyes say? I’m sorry? He felt bile in his throat and willed it away. The pain was beyond anything physical he had ever experienced or could imagine. But he knew he’d have to look at her eventually; he’d resisted since the moment they were thrust next to one another in the bedroom.
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