And now that he’s learned of your condition, Galen doesn’t know what to do. Nothing in his pathetic lifetime has prepared him for this. He can’t even run properly now, much less march upstairs like a man and admit to his brother that he was wrong.
“Gave it to you, you said,” he reminds you. Like you could’ve forgotten. “I don’t see how. It’s not a baby. It’s not anything I’ve ever had. A thing like that, you can’t blame it on me.”
“Did I have it when you first put me down here? Did I have it a month later? Or a month after that? Jump in anytime, Galen — just when is it that my life before you grabbed me doesn’t matter anymore and you start taking responsibility for what happens to me under your roof?”
It’s the strongest you’ve spoken to him in ages. A part of you, quite conscious, isn’t so sure that’s a good idea. Because it means you’re interested in what he has to say. You’ve got an actual stake in the conversation for a change. You’ve found it in you to despise him all over again, an honest emotion — yet what if this kills the thing coiled in your hands or, at the very least, stunts its growth?
“But I don’t even know what it is,” he whines. A whiner who could easily kill you, just to shut you up. Well, that would be a form of deliverance too.
“Do you want to know what I think it is?”
He’s not even sure of that much. Any move, any answer, damns him to something, doesn’t it? Knowing too much, or not enough.
“It’s cancer. I think.”
Galen looks stricken all of a sudden. Maybe you’ve hit a raw nerve. Maybe it’s what their mother died of — you don’t know. But you sure can hope, can’t you? Can wish it on the old bitch who bore these two, and no harm done, because she’s already dead.
“It doesn’t look like cancer,” he says.
“Don’t think so? What’s the last kind of cancer you looked at?”
It’s never that hard to stump him. Just the same, he’s probably right. Masses — that’s the way you’ve usually heard cancer described. Formless, really, just mad growth in random directions. This, though … it’s almost pretty, like a sturdy vine, with its suggestion of leaves, its more delicate tendrils. They didn’t even allow you so much as a plant down here but, why, look — you provided anyway. Something not dependent on the sun you never see.
“Say it is,” Galen tells you. “Or say it isn’t. Whatever it is, how am I supposed to have given it to you? Are you saying it’s like the clap or something?”
How can you put this into terms that he’ll accept, or even understand? It’s nothing you can prove, either, just something you know intuitively, the same way you would if you were pregnant, needing a doctor’s confirmation only to make it official.
“Do you know anything about the life I used to have? Except for bringing you packages? Of course you don’t. You never asked. I don’t think I ever would’ve felt like telling you, but still. You never asked.” Already it’s some other woman you’re talking about. A dead woman, here’s her eulogy: Remember how she used to like to…? “The night you two grabbed me, I was just getting home from a sculpting class. That weekend, I would’ve been in a five-K run, for charity. I wasn’t up to handling ten-K yet, but I was working on it. I was about eighty pages away from finishing a book about tigers that I was reading, because the month before I’d lost a cat to feline leukemia and I wanted to read about tigers before I got another one. At last count, I had twenty-six plants in my apartment, and I’m sure they’ve all been dead a long time now, because there was nobody there to water them until it was too late. I’d met a new guy, the first guy I’d met in over a year that I really felt like I clicked with. We were supposed to go to a movie that same night after the five-K run. It was quiet, I know. But it was my life, and I liked it.
“And then you and Nelson came along. You’d decided you were going to take me away from all that — big plans, huh? So you stuck me down here, without the tiniest little piece of that life left anymore. And sure, I was scared the first few weeks, and that must’ve kept me occupied in a way, but after a while I just got used to it. And then there was nothing. You’d put me down here with nothing to do. I mean, not a thing. Except be bored. And sad, still, because of everything you’d taken away. But mostly just bored.”
He stands mute, watching you fondle the two handfuls of tissue-colored vine emerging from the center of your sunken belly.
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
Of course he doesn’t. He’s a man whose mother took care of him for too many years and now his brother burns his eggs and they indulge terrible suspicions about a world that probably doesn’t even know they’re alive, as long as they pay their taxes on time.
“A person’s body does whatever it has to do to get what it craves,” you tell him, then glance down. With a grin. “Interesting … isn’t it?”
Galen looks at you, so queasy that you can’t resist lifting your hands a little, as if offering.
“Do you want to touch her?” you say. “She is half yours.”
Galen wants nothing of the kind, just backs toward the stairway while you recognize the familiar expression overtaking him, the way he’s regarding you. It’s more than honest disgust; you would expect that. You felt it yourself at first. What really gets you laughing is the disappointment — you’re not the woman he thought you were, and even though he’s known that for a long time, he’s only this moment discovered how much. It’s written all over his face and you’ve seen it all before. For different reasons, less extreme, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen in a man’s face already, when he’s finally forced to give up his little-boy illusions.
The door slams shut again at the top of the stairs and you hear the sound of the locks engaging back into place. It’s entirely possible that they won’t open again for a long time. Maybe ever. Will Galen and Nelson let you starve? Or will they retain just enough humanity to at least keep the food coming but otherwise forget you exist, letting you diminish to the same status as a stray cat for whom someone might leave out kibble on a porch.
Hours later you’re weary again, ready to sleep, but this time you drag the pallet and the mattress across the cool cement of the basement floor, drag them right up against the nearest wall. From now on, this is where you’ll sleep. This is your place. This is its place. It’s been straining to get here and you just haven’t recognized that until now.
Lullaby, and good night…
As you welcome the hope of yet another dream of vines and ivy-covered walls, and of the way old stone will flake and crumble before the delicate pressure of their probing tendrils. And just before you slip beneath, into a place where the full moon still shines silver, you sense that first tentative but purposeful stirring deep in the very center of you, from that sun they’ve never been able to extinguish.
END
Burls
by Norman Prentiss
Norman Prentiss recently won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for “In the Porches of My Ears,” in POSTSCRIPTS 18. His first book, INVISIBLE FENCES, was published in May 2010 by Cemetery Dance. His fiction has also appeared in Black Static, Commutability, Tales from the Gorezone, Damned Nation, Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and in three editions of the Shivers anthology series. His poetry has appeared in Writer Online, Southern Poetry Review, and Baltimore's City Paper, and is forthcoming in A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock. His essays on gothic and sensation literature have appeared in Victorian Poetry, Colby Quarterly, and The Thomas Hardy Review
Kenneth argued against the Alcatraz tour—not forcefully, perhaps, but he stated his case clearly enough that Patricia should have respected his wishes. His private counseling practice was still small, and he supplemented his business with two part-time positions: Tuesdays at the Towson Juvenile Detention Center, and Friday afternoons at the East Baltimore Correctional Facility. Kenneth saw enough of prison environments during the year, and hoped their family’s San
Francisco vacation would steer clear of cement floors, iron bars, or high walls topped with curls of barbed wire.
Patricia remained neutral, which allowed their daughter’s surprisingly passionate arguments to gain momentum. They were kid arguments: the tour would be “cool,” an experience worth repeating to her friends back home, like visiting a movie set or an authentic haunted house. And how—Amy’s clincher—could she possibly wear an “I Escaped from Alcatraz Island” T-shirt, if she didn’t actually go there?
They’d stepped inside the corner tourist office after a pleasant morning stroll along Fisherman’s Wharf. With giant hot pretzels for their walking breakfast, the family had alternately window-shopped and joined the tight crowds that encircled each street performance: a man who juggled knives and torches; an energetic group of breakdancers who encouraged spectators to clap in time with their booming music; a woman dressed as a mime who balanced herself atop a 12-foot unicycle. Even though Amy, at eleven, was nearly too big to be lifted, Kenneth held her up for a better perspective on the juggler’s fiery finale. And when they later walked along the wharf, Kenneth had put quarters in one of the bulky tourist viewfinders to give his daughter a closer look at Alcatraz Island.
That view should have been sufficient. The island was romantic on the waves, lovely from a distance, the prison itself like an exotic, ruined castle. Why spoil the beauty by stepping inside, passing into the harsh monotony of a prisoner’s awful routine?
Now, posters of that prison on the tourist office walls completely captured Amy’s stubborn imagination. She ignored the other tour packages—a bus trip through a park with California redwood trees, a ferry to the affluent shopping district of Sausalito, a scenic train through Napa Valley wine districts—and latched onto the one place she’d already seen.
“It’s really not that impressive inside,” Kenneth told her. He took the tri-fold brochure from the countertop and opened it. The largest pictures were from a distance, relying on frothy waves, island rocks, clear sky and seagulls. The prison hallways and cells were represented by small photos, grainy and underlit—probably stills from the old Clint Eastwood movie. “See?” he said, pointing to the darkest image.
A slender gray-haired man stepped closer and waved his finger in a circle above the open brochure. “It’s quite fascinating, actually.” His British accent gave an extra authority to his pronouncement. “We did that tour yesterday.” We referred to his wife and himself, apparently. A woman smiled and nodded next to him, their shoulders almost touching. The two were slightly overdressed, as elderly tourists sometimes are: the man’s dark blue sports coat and his wife’s lamb’s wool sweater would grow uncomfortable in the afternoon sun, especially if they journeyed away from the waterfront’s cooling breeze.
“The boat ride to the island is lovely,” the man continued. Kenneth started to feel claustrophobic. The customer area of the storefront office was about twenty feet square. A dozen or so people filled the small space, most of them already in line to purchase tour tickets. His family was a captive audience as the British gentleman continued to sell the Alcatraz tour.
“As your boat gets closer and closer to the island, imagine you’re a hardened criminal being taken there. Such a beautiful view—and it’s your last taste of freedom.”
Amy, wide-eyed, let out a small gasp. Clearly, Kenneth would never be able to talk her out of Alcatraz now.
“You climb a rocky island path, then step through the prison gates, which clang behind you with a somber echo—no one ever escaped, don’t you know. The long, shadowy corridors of the prison are quite impressive. And if you ask, the guide might lock you up in a cell for a few minutes. Oh, and the stories: some of the worst imaginable criminals, and often their crimes continued even while they were under guard.”
Yes, Kenneth thought, he could tell similar stories from his own experience. Inmates he counseled at the Baltimore prison provided lists of horrors—sometimes so extreme he’d think they couldn’t be true, yet in his next thought he’d worry the prisoner actually held back the worst of his deeds. Kenneth never repeated these confessions to his wife, not out of respect for patient confidentiality—even at his most professional, he’d always held his wife exempt from that stricture; talking to her was like talking to himself, after all—but because he wanted to spare her feelings. Some nights after Tricia had drifted peacefully to sleep, he lay awake troubled by some awful image of ground glass or filed plastic pressed against sensitive flesh. Such acts of revenge were bad enough, but the common blur of expressionless faces was even worse. At the juvenile detention center, one 16-year-old boy admitted he didn’t have a conscience: “I’m not sorry for anything. Sometimes I’m forced to apologize. But I’ve never said I’m sorry and meant it.” That horrible, and honest, statement tormented him for weeks. The young boy’s words predicted the bleak future of adult inmates Kenneth counseled each Friday afternoon. Then he noticed this lack of conscience in other teenagers, beneath the surface, unspoken. Patients who visited his comfortable suburban office began to display a similar attitude: deliberate and unrepentant sabotage of a coworker or theft from an employer; unapologetic physical abuse of a spouse; emotional trauma inflicted on children, then rationalized. Kenneth couldn’t share this nightmare with his wife. Instead, the family vacation was a clean break, his needed respite from a consciousless world.
He refused to spend one minute of this trip inside a prison.
“Is the Alcatraz tour appropriate for kids?” Patricia directed her question at the British woman, as if she’d be the better judge of the tour’s more sensitive moments. Kenneth felt a surge of hope as the woman pursed her lips in thought. Patricia was on his side, trying to find some way to budge their daughter’s nearly unshakable enthusiasm for the prison tour.
But the husband answered: “Oh, certainly. Kids love it.”
The argument was over, Amy tugging at his arm as if to coax his wallet from his pocket, then guide his credit card to the line of paying customers. The British couple watched him, as did several customers who had circled around his family while the older man described the tour. Patricia shrugged, helpless. Kenneth was an unwilling street performer, his audience waiting for the final trick.
The circle seemed to close in on him, pressing his decision.
“You guys can go,” he said to Patricia and Amy. “I’ll wait here.”
Amy clapped her hands once under her chin, happy to win the argument, but unsure if she should pout and try to coax her father to accompany them. The spectators bristled, appalled that he’d even consider splitting up the family, however briefly. Amy, cute and awkwardly tall, clearly had their sympathy. No tips for this performance, Kenneth thought.
Patricia wavered, as if ready to cancel the tour for everyone. “If you feel that strongly…”
Yes, he did—not that he could explain himself in this public moment. Was there a law that said they needed to spend every minute of the vacation together?
“I’ll be fine,” Kenneth said. The crowd’s disapproval thickened, almost choking him. Amy began to pout.
His rescue came from an unlikely source. “No need to wait behind,” the British man said. “Other tours leave from the same place, and you can meet up afterwards.” He opened up a different brochure, with the departure and return times listed in columns, along with the cost for each tour.
The crowd’s sour mood dissipated, as did their interest. Kenneth took the offered brochure with thanks—realizing now that, all along, the man had only been trying to help—and he studied the times. He didn’t care where he went, as long as it wasn’t to Alcatraz.
Although the start times differed, one tour got back this afternoon very close to when Patricia and Emily’s “deluxe” prison tour would finish. Kenneth chose this combination tour: a bus trip to Muir Woods to see the California redwoods, then lunch and afternoon shopping in Sausalito.
He wasn’t terribly keen about the shopping, but the trees might prove to be interesting.
&n
bsp; * * *
“We’re running a bit late,” the bus driver said.
True, and it was the driver’s fault. Kenneth and twenty-five other passengers had waited outside a locked bus for almost an hour before the uniformed driver showed up, out of breath.
Steep, serpentine roads up to Muir Woods National Park offered scenic views of lush California hillsides, but the turns were sudden and dizzying. The driver couldn’t go faster to make up for missed time; already some of the older passengers had shifted from oohs and ahhhs to nausea.
When they arrived at Muir Woods, the driver parked the bus and told them they had only 40 minutes to explore. “You can go all the way to ‘Bridge 3’ on your map,” he said, speaking through the vehicle’s amplified microphone. “After that you should turn around and head back, so you don’t leave the rest of us waiting.”
None of the paying customers reminded the driver that he’d already kept them waiting for an hour, and he hadn’t offered them a choice to stay longer at the park instead of spending the full afternoon in Sausalito.
See one giant redwood tree, you’ve seen them all, apparently.
Sadly, with all the extra waiting, Kenneth had plenty of time to read and reread the brochure for this tour, and he’d grown excited about these trees that stretched heavenward. His brochure promised that summer days brought fog to the redwood forest, with rich patches of wild azaleas, buckeyes, and other wildflowers. Sonoma chipmunks were common, and if he was lucky, he’d see some black-tailed deer. It sounded peaceful and restorative.
Thanks to the driver, he’d have to rush through everything.
“You see this intercom?” The driver waived the spiral-corded microphone above his head so all the passengers could see. “I’ll make you sing a song for the whole group if you’re late getting back.” Several people laughed, with an especially hearty guffaw from the British woman who’d been so silent during her husband’s tour office spiel. “I say that all the time, and nobody’s ever late.” More laughter.
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 19