Goldenland Past Dark
Page 21
Webern tried to think. The circus nights swam in his memory. He thought of the way his boxcar looked through the bottom of bottles, Nepenthe’s veils strewn all over the place. All the irritations and successes seemed too small to tell.
“I’ve got a girl,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear it. Take care she doesn’t break your heart.”
Webern looked into her milky eye and saw a ghost of himself reflected there.
“I will.”
Bo-Bo nodded. She leaned back in her bed. “Go away now and let me sleep. I just might join you for dinner.”
When Webern was a boy, Bo-Bo dined at eleven, shot skeet at midnight, slept four hours and woke with the dawn. Once a week or so, if her traps stayed empty, she skipped the skeet and hunted the raccoons that lived under her house instead. If pickings were slim there, she ventured under the houses of her neighbours. Webern could still remember sneaking into the narrow dark of other people’s crawl spaces, holding a shaky flashlight, and bursting into tears when Bo-Bo perforated a bristling ’coon, whose soft dark ears resembled his favourite teddy bear’s. Later, in a rare show of tenderness, Bo-Bo rewarded him for his help with a freshly stitched Davy Crockett cap.
“It occurs to me that I’ve paid little mind to the interests of boys your age,” she said, lifting the pelt from the newspapers she’d wrapped it in. “Now, I think it’s foolish looking, myself, but the television tells me it’s the latest craze.”
Though Bo-Bo’s neighbours had never pressed charges—Tarantula’s raccoon problem had long since spiralled out of control, and they considered Bo-Bo an inexpensive, if noisy, extermination service—now that she was dying they showed her little regard. Since her illness began, she had received only one card, and it offered condolences rather than get-well wishes. It was on the living room mantelpiece when Webern went back downstairs to get his suitcases. “May God Bless You and Keep You,” it read. Below the elegant script was a coloured pencil drawing of a well-tended grave.
Webern had just turned eight when his mother died. When his father sent him to stay at Bo-Bo’s, she had put him in the room that his father and Uncle Eddy had shared as children. It was scary there at first, amid the dive-bombing balsa wood planes and the shadows of strangely sinister Noah’s ark animals, but after a while it started to feel almost like home. Lying on the narrow twin bed closest to the window, Webern stayed up late carrying on long conversations with his tiny friend Wags, who, being only the size of a thumb, slept in the centre of the other bed’s pillow, tucked inside a little blue sleeping bag made from a wool sock with a hole in it. Webern piled his Space Ace Grin McCase comic books on the nearly empty shelves, and, towards the end of his stay, even started putting his brightly coloured clothes away in the heavy wooden drawers that always stuck, unless he yanked hard enough to pull them free entirely. Now he went into the room again and slung his suitcase onto the bed. The springs gave a familiar groan under its weight.
Webern unbuttoned the shirt he’d taken from the circus’s wardrobe that morning. He suspected it had been worn most recently by Raoul, whose death-defying house cats leapt and clawed the centre ring: Raoul was always dousing those white Persians in talcum powder, and the sickly sweet odour still clung to the shirt’s cuffs and collar. Webern popped open the lid of the suitcase his father had brought for him from Dolphin River. It was loaded with things Webern thought he’d left behind when he ran away to join Schoenberg’s circus. No wonder it was so heavy.
Webern had forgotten how he used to dress in high school. Just looking at the selection of his old favourites embarrassed him. Webern discarded a red cowboy shirt, with ten-gallon hats embroidered on its lapels, a sweater stitched with reindeer, and a pair of bright blue corduroys, before he finally put on a mint green dress shirt that he used to wear to church on Sundays. Until he took to the road, Webern let his mother’s old taste in clothes guide him whenever he bought new ones; although it made him look even more freakish, it had comforted him to think that his colourful get-ups might bring a smile to her face if, by some miracle, she returned. Maybe that was part of the reason why clown costumes still appealed to him.
Beneath a pair of girlish overall shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a Jack-o-lantern orange cardigan sweater, Webern glimpsed something else in the bottom of the suitcase. He moved the clothes aside to look.
Inside a miniature model of a Bavarian chalet, two carved figures—a blond-haired girl and a soldier in a helmet with a little gold spike on top—balanced side by side on a tiny strip of wood. Webern took the device out of his suitcase and set it on his lap. The tiny girl drifted out of the house; the soldier stayed inside. Amazing; it still worked.
The weather house was the only souvenir his father had kept from the time he’d spent in Germany at the end of the war. When Webern was growing up, it sat on his father’s chest of drawers, along with a pile of change and some gold cufflinks he never wore, collecting dust. On the few occasions when Webern had hoisted himself up on the bed to stare at the tiny carved people, his father had told him to keep his hands off it, until one day just a few months before Webern’s accident. It was morning, before Webern’s father left for work, and he was knotting his tie at a mirror that hung on the back of his closet door. Webern had come in to tell his father the pancakes were ready downstairs, but instead of leaving right away, he had climbed up on the bed to peer into the tiny German faces. His father saw him from the mirror, but instead of scolding him, he sat down on the bed beside him, and, carefully lifting the weather house from its place on the chest of drawers, had held it in his lap and shown Webern exactly how it worked.
“See this little stick they’re standing on? It wobbles like that because it’s glued to a strand of catgut. When it’s dry outside, that shrinks up, so she swings out like this. When it’s wet, well, the catgut loosens up and the soldier comes out his door.” The little house had looked so strange in his father’s big, chapped hands; Webern had held his breath, for fear it would get crushed by mistake. But his father had been unimaginably gentle. He set it back in place on the dusty bureau, then tousled Webern’s hair and sent him back downstairs.
Webern carefully set the weather house on the nightstand and looked down at it. It surprised him that the old man had even remembered. He never thought his father was the sentimental type. Staring at the tiny wood-chip shingles, he wondered what other memories of their family his father lingered on and cherished. Maybe, like Webern, he often recollected the way Webern’s mother looked as she stirred cookie batter, the dreamy expression that crossed her face as she tossed in a handful of chocolate chips. Maybe he still saw little Webern sitting at the kitchen table sometimes, his back unbroken, colouring in line drawings of spacemen and explorers.
Webern stepped out into the hall. He shouldn’t have let so much of the car ride pass in silence. He’d probably been missing opportunities to talk to his father left and right since the day they’d put his mother in the ground. He saw his father coming up the stairs and stopped to watch him. He looked like the world’s shortest giant, stooped and clumsy, leaning on the banister.
“Hey, Dad,” he said awkwardly.
“Didn’t see you there, ha ha.” Raymond slipped something into the pocket of his jacket, and Webern caught a glimpse of glass and silver. The flask. Jesus Christ, it was after five o’clock already. It would be better if they could just have a drink together, without all this sneaking around. Maybe in a day or two, Webern would work up the nerve to suggest it.
“I took your old room,” Webern said. “I hope that’s okay. If you’d rather I stayed in the guest room . . .”
His father shrugged, his eyes searching the ceiling. “I figure you can stay wherever you want, long as you keep it spic and span.”
Raymond tried to slip past Webern, but Webern stood in his way. An awful suspicion cut through him.
“Where are your bags?” Webern demanded. “I didn’t see the
m in the trunk.”
“Now, Bernie, don’t get all upset.”
“I’m not upset, just tell me where your bags are.”
“See, it’s like this. Your Bo-Bo asked me to bring you to her, and I did. You’re the one she really wants to see. And I’ve got my job to think of—”
Webern was so mad he couldn’t even speak. He felt his mouth opening and closing in angry hiccups, but no sound came out.
“Now, I’ll be back up for the weekend, but—”
Webern didn’t let him finish. He went back into the child’s bedroom and slammed the door. He heard his father walk down to Bo-Bo’s bedroom and murmur some good-byes. Then the stairs creaked and he was gone.
Webern wished he could call Nepenthe and rant about all this, but he had no way of reaching the circus on the road. So, as his father’s new car gunned its engine and sped off, he was left alone in the roomful of ancient toys, fuming.
He should have seen it coming. The last couple years Webern had lived at home, after his sisters had finally fled for good, the old man was forever abandoning him. Webern would cook dinner—hot dog casserole and a Jell-O mold dotted with marshmallows—and Raymond would fill his plate and shuffle off to his recliner while Webern ate alone at the table. Or Raymond would flip sadly through old Polaroids, but turn on the TV when Webern tried to talk to him. For a long time, Webern thought it was grief that did it. Maybe it was.
What made this particular situation even worse was that Raymond had done almost exactly the same thing the first time he’d left Webern at Bo-Bo’s. After overhearing the two adults’ conversation, Webern had some inkling of what was coming, but he was still surprised and terrified when he woke up to find Marzipan and Bo-Bo standing over him, like executioners pronouncing a death sentence: “Your father and I discussed it. We think this is best for the time being.” They’d presented him with a packet containing raccoon jerky and a new toothbrush; then they’d left him alone. Webern had spent the morning reading books about the moon, wondering if he would be able to live in a plastic-domed bubble there someday. Now he was twenty-one years old, and things had barely changed.
Webern picked up the weather house from the bedside table and balanced it on his knees. Raymond was giving this to him—as an apology? An attempt to erase everything that had happened since? Webern shoved the weather house off his lap. It thunked against the floorboards. Webern stared down at it, then stood up and kicked it under the bed. It served his father right for thinking that Webern was still just some kid whose affection could be bought off with toys. It was too late for that now.
Webern collapsed backwards on the mattress. He needed to forget all this, to make himself smile, if only for Bo-Bo’s sake. Cracks on the ceiling made a woman’s face. It almost looked like it had been drawn there on purpose.
Webern had always felt tiny in Bo-Bo’s dining room. Sitting in a looming throne-like chair, his feet dangled high above the ground, and the mahogany expanse of the clothless table stretched out before him in all directions. Even the silverware was huge: his fork and knife, heavy ironware, dwarfed his puny hands. Webern held the spoon up; its bowl was almost as large as his palm. It figured: unlike most everyone else, he would never experience the sensation of returning to a place from his childhood and finding it small and harmless. For him, the past would remain large and terrifying.
Marzipan banged around in the kitchen, so loudly that Webern idly imagined her crashing two frying pans together like a pair of cymbals. In a minute, she would probably come in, perfectly composed, to ladle soup into his waiting bowl. But if Bo-Bo didn’t feel well enough to come downstairs, it would be silly for Webern to eat here all by himself. He’d rather just grab a sandwich in the kitchen, or talk to her up in her room. He’d wait five minutes, then go up and check.
The minutes ticked by. Just as Webern started to get up, a horrific sound came from the direction of the stairway—a thunka-thunka-thunka that made him leap to his feet.
When Webern ricocheted around the corner into the hallway, though, he didn’t find the old lady in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Instead, an open coffin lay kitty-cornered between the wall and the banister. Someone had attached the soles of several roller skates to the bottom to give it wheels. Bo-Bo lay inside, tranquil, her cloudy eye half shut.
“Don’t just stand there, child,” she said. “Give an old lady your arm.”
“Where did you get this thing?” Webern asked, helping her up. Bo-Bo leaned on him for support as they walked back to the dining room.
“The undertaker. He came calling a few weeks back. A funny little man. Didn’t you see his card on the mantle?”
“But why did you buy a coffin?”
“He was hell-bent on selling it—needed the business I expect. I thought, if I’m about to buy one, I might as well get some use out of it first. Marzipan took the trouble to attach the wheels.”
“It’s . . . nice.”
“It’s a necessity. I can’t get around like I used to.” Bo-Bo stopped for a moment and leaned against the wall. “A stitch in my side.”
Webern helped Bo-Bo into her chair, then walked down to the other end of the long table. From this distance, she looked so faraway, it was like she was gone already.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bo-Bo didn’t like to talk during dinner. But Webern didn’t mind the silence much, especially not tonight. Raymond’s silences were dotted with little throat-clearings and half chuckles, surprised expressions and bemused head-scratchings—as awkward as conversation, and just as exhausting. But Bo-Bo’s silence was full of doing and quickness, a straightforward silence, meticulous and neat.
As she cut her meat into dark little squares that she ate one at a time, it comforted Webern somehow. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the stringy raccoon chops, which left redolent grease pooled in the centre of his enormous plate. He tried to put it out of his mind that this might be the last time he’d ever taste them. Instead, he concentrated on Marzipan. Her table manners were almost perfect; she could have instructed debutantes except for the loud slurping sound her rubbery lips made as she inhaled each new spoonful of soup.
After dinner, Webern followed Bo-Bo and Marzipan out to the sunroom, where Bo-Bo took her Scotch and her pipe in the evenings. The sunroom jutted off the back of the house, facing the garden. Windows covered three of its walls, but the only light they ever let in was from the moon or the buzzing tails of fireflies that filled the backyard each summer. During the day, Bo-Bo kept the curtains drawn.
Webern sat down on the weathered sofa that Bo-Bo always called the davenport, while Bo-Bo took her customary place in the rocking chair. Marzipan disappeared, then returned with a bottle of Scotch and glasses. It was just like old times, only now she brought three glasses instead of two.
“I suppose you’re of age,” Bo-Bo said as Marzipan brought Webern his drink. “It doesn’t make much difference to me, anyhow. This was my medicine as a child.”
“Thanks.” Webern took a glass from the chimp.
“Besides, I have things to tell you. They say that liquor loosens the tongue, and there’s no doubt truth in that. It also makes it easier to set quiet and listen.” Bo-Bo settled an ancient quilt around her shoulders and closed her eye. “I don’t have much time.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m no fool. It’s the truth. So I won’t mince words. Webern, do you know how you came by your name?”
“Dad heard it when he was in Germany, right? And he never wanted to forget about what a great war hero he was, so he pinned the name on me. Like a medal.” Webern shrugged and looked into his glass. His own words surprised him. “I dunno, maybe that’s not fair. But that’s what I always figured, anyway.”
“Your father wasn’t a war hero.” Bo-Bo rocked her chair backwards. Her blue hair caught the light like gas fire. “He was a fry cook in the mess hall.”
“I’m not telling you this to tear down Raymond in your mind. You already think he’s a confounded idiot, and I’m not disagreeing. But I want you to understand him.”
“It’s not the first time he’s lied to me.” Raymond used to say he had to swallow his heart during the war, to hide it from the Krauts. For a long time, Webern thought that was why his father never cried. “I understand him fine.”
“I don’t think you do. You see, over there in Germany, he killed a man.”
The Scotch tasted of smoke and leather, with no ice to dilute it. Webern coughed. “With his cooking?”
“Don’t make light.” Bo-Bo set her glass on an end table and folded her hands in her lap. The veins stood out, thick and green, like the vines on the outside of the house. “Raymond took an assignment with the military police to catch some local toughs, men in the black market. He wanted a story to take home with him, I expect. The war was over then, and I believe your father felt he’d missed his chance. Chance for what, I don’t know. He always was a funny child.”
Webern kicked off his sneakers. Every day in the newspapers, draftees boarded buses without him. “What happened?”
“From what I understand, he was told to wait outside for trouble. That boy never could handle a weapon. When a stranger walked out, he shot without seeing. The man died on the spot. The worst of it was, though, the man was a professor—wrote music—had nothing to do with the black market at all. Raymond was torn up, of course, but what could he do? He came home a sorry sight—pants on backwards, shoes on the wrong feet. Your mother wouldn’t let him in the house. Said she didn’t recognize him. She’d only just recovered from some troubles herself, nervous thing that she was. So I took him in for a week or two. He learned to butter his bread, of course, but he never was the same. When you were born, one year to the day after he’d shot the professor, he took it as a sign.