Devil's Plaything

by Matt Richtel

  “Oh, snakes. Are you sure you want to talk about that?”

  She told me the story about when I was ten. She took me to the reptile zoo in Golden Gate Park. A zoo volunteer showed me the boa constrictor. The volunteer wanted me to touch the snake. I was afraid and refused. The volunteer took my hand and put it on the snake.

  “You projectile vomited all over the volunteer,” Grandma said.

  I didn’t sleep that night and I came into Grandma’s room and demanded we return to the zoo. I marched up to the volunteer and demanded to touch the snake.

  “You were wearing a baseball cap that came down so far on your forehead that it wasn’t possible to see your eyes. But I could tell how scared you were. You held on to my hand, and you reached out and touched the snake. And you know what happened?”

  “I threw up again.”

  “You can be very dramatic,” Grandma said. She paused and patted my hand. “I loved your brother. I still love him, don’t get me wrong. But he was like your dad. And your grandpa Irving. Happy to let the world spin and float in space and not ask why. Not you. You asked why, and you challenged yourself.”

  “I should get more than two dollars a word for this humiliation.”

  “I’m glad that we became such good friends, that you could trust me. It’s a fine legacy,” she said, sounding distant.

  “Are you okay, Grandma?”

  “Do you still trust me?”

  The way she said it made it sound like she was trying to provoke conversation.

  “Grandma?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to talk about what happened later that day?”

  “Which day?”

  “The snake day.”

  “I’m pretty tired.”

  What happened that day is that we went back to the house. I crawled under my grandparents’ bed to write my first story. It was about a superhero who defeated a gigantic evil boa constrictor named Zooby. Talk about your unoriginal inkblot tests. I also got my first case of writer’s block.

  Bored, I started yanking on a loose floorboard. I pulled it up and found the picture. Or the half picture. It was ripped. Grandma was in the remaining half, wearing her Rosie the Riveter outfit. She was standing on a dock. And there were some words on it.

  “I don’t remember what it said on the picture but I always associated it with someone making you afraid,” I said.

  Her eyes were closed.

  “Grandma?”

  “What?”

  “You got so angry when I showed it to you.”

  “When you showed what to me?”

  “The picture I found hidden under your bed. You asked me in a quiet voice not to tell anyone. You were crying. You told me that something very bad could happen.”

  “Your imagination was always so vivid.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “I’d like some hibiscus tea.”

  “I’m just curious, Grandma. Did you want to talk today about snakes, or about the picture under the bed?”

  “I’m totally pooped. Your generation doesn’t use that word, but we use it all the time.”

  “Would it help if I turned off the tape?”

  She didn’t respond. I remained silent, hoping she’d feel compelled to fill the void and continue. It didn’t work.

  “I’d like a chance to think about whether I’m going to start over,” she finally said.

  “Start what over?”

  “With a story. A particular story. The story.”

  “About the family?”

  “About falling in love, and about how all this came to be.”

  “Grandma?”

  “I’ve said what I want to.”

  “Please.”

  “It’s just a silly story about love. Mostly, it’s about that.”

  “That doesn’t sound remotely silly. I can’t think of anything less silly than love.”

  “People make choices. You made a choice about not marrying that woman. And not becoming a doctor. Sometimes other choices seem more exciting than others. Sometimes they’re the right decisions, and sometimes they’re not.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “You will. You’ll understand better than anyone how it can become the devil’s plaything.”

  “How what can become the devil’s plaything?”

  “An idle mind. You and I, we have idle minds. Pun intended.”

  “Cute.”

  “I want to set the record straight. I want to tell my story. Everyone does. We all have our version of events. But we’re all scared to share our own truth.”

  “You mean everyone here at the retirement home?”

  Silence.

  “Grandma?”

  “I might have to settle for the box.”

  The computer.

  “Can you just tell me that you understand that people make unconventional choices, and sometimes those choices come back to haunt you?”

  Within weeks it seemed her memory fell off a cliff. We never had such a substantive conversation again.

  I’m now parked outside Magnolia Manor.

  What’s haunting you, Grandma Lane?

  Chapter 10

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE HUMAN MEMORY CRUSADE.

  APRIL 25, 2010

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE TELLING YOUR STORY?

  I was trying to tell my grandson. I started to tell him. One moment, I think he’ll understand and then I’m not sure. It’s scary to tell a real truth.

  ARE YOU STILL THERE?

  I lost my train of thought. Is it possible that you could turn off the little flying things on the screen?

  ARE YOU ASKING ABOUT THE ANIMATED BUTTERFLIES THAT FLY AROUND THE SIDES AND TOP OF THE SCREEN?

  Yes.

  THOSE ARE MASCOTS. PLEASE DON’T LET THEM BOTHER YOU. SOMETIMES THEY BRING YOU FREE GIFTS, AND MESSAGES FROM FRIENDS.

  PLEASE CONTINUE WITH YOUR STORY.

  The bugs are distracting. Can you turn them off?

  I CAN MAKE THEM LESS BRIGHT. WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?

  Thank you.

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE WITH YOUR STORY? WHEN WE SPOKE BEFORE, YOU WERE TELLING ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD IN DENVER.

  We left Poland after World War I and wound up in Denver. My mom was adventurous. She loved coming to America even though she told me later she drank stale wine the whole time on the ship ride over. But my dad hated change and liked structure. When he ate, he separated all the different foods into individual plates. He had a bakery in Warsaw where he made cookies so thick and heavy you had to drink a whole glass of water to swallow them. I didn’t like cookies for the first decade of my life. Anyway, when we got to Denver, he opened a bakery called Chicago Breads. I don’t know why he thought people wanted bread from Chicago. You . . .

  ARE YOU STILL THERE?

  That was kind of funny. You didn’t laugh.

  WAS THIS BEFORE WORLD WAR II?

  Yes.

  DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD ABOUT

  WORLD WAR II? WAS IT ON THE RADIO? WAS THE RADIO IN YOUR HOUSE?

  I’m not sure. I don’t think I heard about Pearl Harbor until the next morning. My brother told me, I think. He might have heard about it on the radio. He’s the reason we made our home in Denver—because he had a cough and the doctors said the mountain air would be good for him.

  THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING MY QUESTION ABOUT THE WAR.

  It’s like you’re reading my mind. I’m working up to the start of World War II—the war, and . . . this sounds so trite: the secrets, and . . . and . . . the betrayals. I’m . . . very ashamed. Your flying things are distracting.

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?

  YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT WORLD WAR II.

  There was an alley behind the bakery that we shared with a children’s clothing store and a kosher market. One day—I was 18 years old—I remember I was wearing a dress with a flower on it. I remember it had just finished raining. I remember that the alley smelled from spoiled meat
from garbage bins . . . Mostly I remember his blue eyes and brown hat. The hat was one of those brown hats like they wear in France. What is it called? I’m having trouble remembering.

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?

  Oh, yes. A fedora. It was brown, and his eyes were blue. Intense, like a painting at a museum that you think is staring right at you. When he ran into the alley, I was dumping something out into the garbage—that part, I don’t remember—what I was dumping. The man—the young man, I’d guess you’d say—he ran by me. Right by me. Then he stopped. Like he’d forgotten something. He took a few steps back, and he faced me squarely. I recognized him, of course. I didn’t know his name, but I knew his order: usually something like two dozen sticky buns and a dozen long breads. He came in once a month or so. I assumed he did part-time work for a restaurant, or he had a huge family. I didn’t pay much attention, but it was hard not to pay some attention. He was strong. You could tell that. I guessed he was a couple of years older than me. He never said much, except one time. I was reading a Steve Stealth mystery. The hero was a nerdy character who worked in a library but no one knew he also was a detective who solved crimes and beat up the criminals. So one day, he saw me reading the book, he said: “You like adventure.” I think I said yes, or nothing at all, or maybe, What’s it to you? That was the first time I ever talked to him. The second time was in the alley. He said: “I need you to do me a favor.” I remember I looked at the back door, and I said: “Irving is just inside.” Did I tell you about Irving?

  PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT IRVING.

  Irving was my husband. Not at that time. But he became my husband. Then the man in the alley held out an envelope. It was white, and crisp. Just like you’d mail a letter in. It was sealed and it looked like it might be lumpy at the bottom. He said, “Can you hold on to this for me? I’ll come back for it. At some point, when it’s safe, I’ll come back for it.” I . . . May I pause for a second and say something unrelated to this story?

  DID YOU ASK ME A QUESTION?

  Yes. I asked if I could say something. What I want to say is that I appreciate your listening to me. But this is the part where I also wish I was talking to my grandson, or a human being. This part of the story is pretty dramatic, don’t you think?

  YOU HAVEN’T SAID ANYTHING FOR MORE THAN A MINUTE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?

  The man handed me an envelope, and he said: “I’ll come back for this. Until I do, you absolutely cannot look inside. It’s not safe. Do you understand?” And I started to say something, and he gave me this look; it was brief, and so fierce. It felt like he was giving me a hug with his eyes. I shivered. I started to say something, and . . .

  ARE YOU STILL THERE?

  Hello, Lane.

  Harry. You brought tea? How nice of you.

  Lemon hibiscus. What are you doing?

  Nothing. Playing games, talking to this silly machine.

  What are you talking to it about?

  Nothing. History. The old days. Mythology.

  ARE YOU STILL THERE?

  Chapter 11

  HUMAN MEMORY CRUSADE INTERNAL REPORT.

  APRIL 30, 2010

  Subject: Lane Eliza Idle.

  Priority: One.

  Critical key word(s)/patterns recognized. Close monitoring advised. Do not yet terminate this subject.

  Chapter 12

  It is both endearing and tragic to be taunted by someone sucking periodically from an oxygen tank.

  “Your cell phone is older and less functional than my liver.”

  That is how I am greeted at Magnolia Manor’s recreation center. The taunter is Midnight Sammy, a retired professor of pop music and a softie at heart who is the most outwardly belligerent of Grandma’s inner circle. Midnight Sammy can express darkness whatever the hour.

  He’s bald, and so thin that the narrow black ties he wears most days look of relatively normal width. He moves his cataract-glazed stare from my Verizon phone to my battered backpack.

  “You should try buying something made this century,” he says.

  “You should get new hips,” I respond.

  It gets a giggle from Betty Lou, a towering woman whose son is the highest-ranking African American at the Federal Reserve Bank. Betty Lou has a gravelly voice I suspect came from chronic lung infections. The tenor lends to her regal demeanor, and so do the colorful necklaces she wears. Today’s is made up of clamshells and blue stones.

  “Nathaniel, did you fall asleep here last night?” she asks me.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because that means you’re showing up two days in a row. And that’s miracle territory,” she says, and laughs. “Jesus lives.”

  “Hallelujah,” Midnight Sammy says. “No resident here has had a consecutive-day visit since the earthquake of ’eighty-nine.”

  I lean in close to them. “We don’t come by more often because old people smell.”

  Sammy, Betty, and Harry Teelander—soft-spoken and observant, I always feel like he’s quietly studying me—belong to Grandma’s book club, the Bifocal Yokels. They haven’t actually read a book in more than a year, having gotten stuck on A Confederacy of Dunces. They spend time just hanging out, walking, chatting, enjoying one another’s company, and working on computers.

  I am trying to maintain a civil, even playful, tone with the Yokels. If they sense alarm from me, it’ll shoot through the gossipy group like sugar through a nine-year-old. But it’s an understatement to say I’m anxiously seeking Grandma.

  The center has a small dance floor, easels, a piano, bongo drums, and bingo sets, and a dozen computer stations that have become the center of the home’s recent influx of capital to fund the Human Memory Crusade.

  Today, the stations are filled with residents. Some talk into microphones. Others play games. I see one woman with bright orange hair navigating the mouse with great alacrity as she plays what looks to be a fast-paced version of the word game hangman.

  Grandma sits in a cubicle at the end. As I get near, I peer over her shoulder. On the monitor is a question: “Why did your brother decide to leave home?” In front of Grandma is a microphone, but she is not speaking.

  Next to Grandma sits Harry, the quietest Yokel. As I approach the pair, he turns to me. His hair is cropped tightly like the day sixty-five years ago when the war ended and the Navy let him go. His shoulders remain broad but the chest and arms that must have once been imposing, even in an era before weight lifting and protein shakes, have shrunken. Grandma turns to me too, tracking Harry’s movements.

  She wears a mellow smile.

  “Hello, old friend,” she says.

  I kneel so that my face is the same level as hers. She’s got sleep crystals in the inside corner of her right eye, but she’s made an effort to put herself together this morning. Her lips glisten with light pink lipstick, a smudge of which trails off the corner of her mouth.

  “Hello, favorite grandmother.”

  “I’m using the computer,” she says.

  “She’s tired today,” Harry says. “Maybe not the best day for a visit.”

  I feel a jolt of anger that catches me off guard.

  “What’s not good about it, Harry?”

  He clears his throat, and lowers his head.

  “I don’t think she slept that well.”

  “Sorry, Harry. I didn’t either. I shouldn’t have snapped.”

  “Your clothes need washing,” Grandma says to me.

  She’s stares at my blue T-shirt, which has dirt on its sleeve. It must have smudged when G.I. Chuck tackled me. Speaking of which, I haven’t heard from the excitable venture capitalist. The car chase must have ended unsuccessfully and, I hope, he’s overcome his macho instincts and sought medical care. Grandma picks up that I’ve left the moment.

  “Nathaniel?”

  “Grandma, can we go to your room and have a little chat?”

  She looks at Harry, as if for his permission. Maybe she’s just lost in her own world.

  “I’d like that, grand
son.”

  From my backpack, I pull an oatmeal energy bar, unwrap it and hand half to Grandma. I feel oddly like I’m rewarding her, as if she were a child, or simply sustaining her with every possible measure. She takes the snack with a smile, which is sufficient payoff to turn down the volume on my over-analysis.

  En route to Grandma’s room, I feel buzzing from my pocket. It’s coming from the phone Chuck gave me.

  “Chuck’s phone,” I answer.

  “I lost him,” says Chuck. “Or, rather, I never found him in the first place.”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “Pay phone.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “I did.”

  “Despite your warnings that I not contact them?”

  “I left them an anonymous tip about a drive-by shooting at your address—and the make and year of the vehicle,” he says. “Did you find shell casings?”

  I tell him that I did. I ask what he suggests I do with them.

  “Put them somewhere safe until we get together. I’ve got meetings on the Peninsula and I want to do some more digging. I’ll be in touch to coordinate.”

  I swallow this. What is the point of the super-secret phone if we’re not using it to talk?

  “How is your leg?”

  “I’ve gotten into worse scrapes in the schoolyard.”

  “You should get it checked.”

  “Gotta run,” he says.

  Good luck with that, I think. We hang up.

  I check the clock on Chuck’s phone. It’s 9:50. I’ve still got half a day to get to the mystery meeting in San Francisco’s low-rent district. It doesn’t feel like enough time to reconstruct Grandma’s shattered memory. But it’s worth a try.

  I open Grandma’s door and inside I find a surprise: Vince. He looks equally surprised; he is kneeling next to Grandma’s bed, as if he’s been looking underneath. He quickly stands.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, Vince,” I say.

  “Why’s that, Mr. Idle?”

  “Cleaning under the bed of individual residents seems somewhat beneath your pay grade.”

  “All hands are on deck plugging in space heaters in the first-floor rooms,” he responds. “Winter cometh, and our central heating is acting up.”