by Brian Hodge
… and had seen his own adult face up there next to Earl’s… his own tragic future written across the owlish, charred expressions of two hideously disfigured ghosts.
OBITUARY MAMBO
The magic was staring.
In the darkness of his bedroom Timmy Gebhardt saw impossibilities begin to play across the circus motif of his wall paper. Cartoon clowns shed their billowy suits and exposed themselves, pointing great fleshy erections skyward. Elephants mounted tigers. Ring masters made lascivious gesture while merry-go-rounds ran out of control, orbiting the two-dimensional bacchanal with comic book grace.
All because Grammy had died.
Timmy shut his eyes and pulled the blankets to his chin. He knew it wouldn’t make it go away, but at least he’d find temporary refuge beneath the womb of fabric. Thank God for blankets!
A sound burped within his closet. Timmy heard it below the din of screaming calliopes. It boomed and grumbled toward him with the rhythm of nightmare steam whistles, daring him to look. When he finally opened his eyes Timmy saw an empty snowsuit reaching for him with hollow arms.
“Hey… !” he gasped. “MOM!”
The snowsuit began to dance. It twitched and dipped near the foot of his bed like a manic pair of trousers left on the clothesline during a storm. The empty nylon limbs staggered and pin-wheeled and jitterbugged angrily. The show went on for several moments before Timmy realized what was happening.
The snowsuit was dancing Grammy’s dance.
Timmy’s mind raced. Three days ago at Aunt Noreen’s backyard barbecue, late in the evening, through a haze of hardwood smoke and Chinese lantern light… he’d seen the dance. A quivering, trembling, jerking dance. It had made Timmy sick to see Grammy like that — lips smeared red and sweaty, boobies falling out of her dress, eyes fogged up with Rolling Rock beer — doing her filthy dance. Now a JCPenney snowsuit was doing the same dance in Timmy’s bedroom.
The snowsuit tipped a headless collar toward Timmy and displayed its emptiness. Dark blue nylon, twitching in a frenzy of movement. Impossible movement.
Timmy screamed.
Footsteps approached. They seemed to neutralized the terror like a buffing wave of honey. His mother’s footsteps, soft and familiar against the braided rugs outside his door. In the moment before she entered the room, the snowsuit froze and stood at attention. As the door flew open and lights went on, Timmy tasted another victory.
It couldn’t get him now. Nothing could penetrate his mother’s force field.
The snowsuit parachuted to the ground.
“Mom?”
“He’s not right. Emotionally, I mean.”
Sally Gebhardt was ironing. Her right hand was welded to the iron as she spoke.
Across the room, her husband Jack gazed through plate glass windows and nursed a double Johnny Walker. His back was damp with sweat. “Seems normal,” Jack murmured, “under the circumstances.”
“Maybe… maybe not,” Sally muttered, brushing a strand of dishwater blonde from her lips. She was tired of crying, tired of drinking, tired of being awake. Her eyes felt raw. “I had to lay with him for over an hour tonight before he drifted off.”
Jack turned away from the window and sank into a recliner. His face was lined with years of failed ad campaigns, three-martini lunches, and corporate melodrama. He took a long pull on the scotch before speaking. “What do you suggest?”
“I think he needs a psychiatrist.”
“Sounds good to me.” The comment came out of Jack on an exasperated breath, and Sally could feel the patronizing tone like a cool breeze. Each time they broached the subject of Timmy’s problems Jack became so goddamn noncommittal, Sally could just scream.
“I’m serious, Jack,” she said. “Timmy’s not holding up well. He’s only ten years old… and he’s so full of guilt, it’s scary.”
“Why do you think he’s guilty?” Jack asked, swirling ice cubes around the bottom of his glass.
Sally kept ironing. Although she despised housework, there had been something oddly reassuring about it since the funeral. Once the dust had settled and all the stone faced relatives had gone, Sally had gladly immersed herself into the banalities of homemaking. There were bathrooms to be cleaned, hallways to be swept, and funeral food to be covered and crammed into the freezer. It was all deliciously mind-numbing.
But now, in the blink of an eye, all the horror had flooded back.
“You know as well as I do… “ Sally said. “He hated her.” Tears bubbled up within her and tracked down her face. She bit into her lower lip and tried to iron, evenly, back and forth across Timmy’s Michigan State t-shirt. The room went out of focus for a moment and she felt hot chills. It was the realization that sent acid through her veins. “He loathed the woman… “ she wept, “and feels responsible for her death.”
Jack rose and went over to his wife. He tried to lean across the ironing board and touch her, but he found the steam and grief unbearable. Instead, he simply stared at the carpet and mumbled, “Sally… it’ll be all right.”
The words went unheard. Sally was lost in the terrible flash-frames of her past. She could still see Grammy, pale and naked in the moonlight, hunkering over a hedge of the rose bushes… the woman’s arms weeping blood from vertical slashes of a razor blade. Blood… turning black and luminous in the darkness.
The first in a long line of suicide attempts.
At the hospital Sally had seen the change taking place. It had happened as vividly as time lapse photography. Strapped to her bed like a crazy woman, Grammy had changed. Her eyes had darkened with despair and resentment, her personality had curdled, and her anger had crystallized into the shifting gaze of a lunatic. She had become a statistic; a frustrated divorced woman who didn’t even have the skill to take her own life properly.
Sally had tried to help. She had placed Grammy into group therapy at St. Francis, introducing the woman to other divorced men, taking her along to Jack’s business outings and barbecues. After several months, Grammy became a fixture in her daughter and son-in-law’s lives. But the inner wounds had never healed. Grammy had compensated with a vengeance. She refused to eat and started wearing younger women’s hairstyles and clothing. She bought a Giorgio Armani sweater, low cut and sheer, and began flirting with Jack’s account reps. She dated them indiscriminately, coming home drunk and restless in the wee hours of the morning. Her face had begun to age rapidly beneath the garish makeup. It was as if she’d been cheated out of youth and was getting a twisted sort of revenge.
It was hardest on Timmy. He couldn’t understand why his grandmother had stopped being a grandmother… and had started gazing at him with such contempt.
This last memory struck Sally flat in the nose and practically knocked her off-balance.
“You OK?” asked Jack. He was standing next to Sally now, his arm cradling her spine.
“Yeah… I was just… remembering something.”
“Remembering?”
Jack studied Sally’s face. He could see only traces of the debutante he’d once courted, her windblown hair now pulled back in a sensible braid and her milky complexion beginning to wrinkle. Still he loved the hell out of her and couldn’t bear to see her cry. “We’ve done enough remembering for one day,” he said softly, urging his hand down the small of her back.
“Have we?” she asked and looked through him.
He met her gaze and saw new tears welling in her eyes. He touched her neck, running fingertips along her collarbone. An anxious feeling crept into his groin. Something about the way she was crying, something about her helpless look made him want to be inside her. He pulled her to him. “We need to go to bed,” he murmured.
Sally looked away for a moment, swallowed back her grief and slowly surrendered to Jack’s sweaty embrace. He carefully led her across the dining room to the stairs… where darkness awaited them.
Timmy was almost asleep when a toy Frankenstein began to talk. “You half-pint bastard!” it chirped in a monstrous li
ttle voice. “Don’t you understand anything?!!”
Timmy sat up and glanced across the room to his bookshelves. A miniature Boris Karloff was lumbering past a goldfish bowl toward the edge of the shelf. The monster’s tiny fluorescent face glowed angrily in the moonlight. It’s mouth vibrated magically. “You didn’t say goodbye to her!”
Sudden chills.
The toy monster was telling the truth. Three days after Grammy’s death, Timmy had decided to be sick. Not violently ill, but sick enough to avoid Grammy’s funeral. Unfortunately, the plan had backfired. All his moaning histrionics hadn’t fooled Sally for a second. She had promptly ordered him to bathe, and get into his Sunday school suit, and wait in the car.
At church Timmy had been seated between his parents. It was the dead of summer and the heat in St. Vincent’s had been unbearable, thick with the aromas of candle wax and body odor. Five minutes into the service, Timmy had begun to watch other women in the congregation. He saw fat ladies dressed in black, fanning themselves, tracks of perspiration creeping down their enormous breasts. He saw corset seams beneath one woman’s blouse. He saw another lady scratch herself, absently running fingertips along her thighs. It had filled Timmy’s mind with feverish white noise.
Anything to avoid looking toward the front of the sanctuary. Toward the box. The box contained someone pale and withered and cold. Someone who bothered him now more than ever.
Grammy.
As Hail Mary’s flitted through the pungent air, Timmy had begun to lose control. His mind started wandering toward inevitable taboos. He’d begun feeling the sick satisfaction, laying in the pit of his stomach like rotten candy. Feeling glad Grammy was gone.
“We’re next,” his father had whispered.
When Timmy’s head had snapped around, he’d seen his mom and dad shuffling off the edge of their pew. Panic ran through him as sharp and metallic as needles. Next for what?! All around him, mourners were shuffling from their seats and heading down the aisle. He forced himself to glance toward the front, toward the casket. Members of the congregation were lining up next to the coffin, taking communion, moving to the body and touching it. Kissing it. Saying goodbye.
“Honey,” his mother had whispered, “let’s go.” Her eyes were rimmed with red. Had been for three straight days. Timmy couldn’t remember having ever seen her cry so much. But he couldn’t budge.
“You couldn’t budge,” chirped Frankenstein, reading Timmy’s mind.
“No!” Timmy yelped.
“You couldn’t!”
“I loved her,” Timmy lied.
“No you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Liar.”
Sally was trying so hard. She struggled out of her pajama top and pulled Jack on top of her. She could smell the remnants of Johnny Walker on his breath, old Aqua Velva, traces of cigarettes. She opened her mouth and drank him in. She could feel his heat.
“Let’s take it nice and slow,” she whispered, wanting him to carry her away to that dark and feathery place.
Jack was anxious. He stroked himself, quick and hard. His erection was immediate. He opened her legs and searched for an opening, breathing thickly.
She tried desperately to make it last. She guided his face to her breasts and writhed gently under him. When he entered her, she moaned softly and felt insincere. She was performing a ritual now, doing her duty. As Jack pumped mechanically, a wave of anger began to build within her. She needed to forget, to lose herself, but their lovemaking had become a chore. Jack came instantly, his orgasm squirting through her and sending them into convulsions. Sally rode the wave for a moment. Then it was over. She settled back, unsatisfied and cold.
“I’m sorry I came so quickly,” he muttered.
Sally didn’t answer. Her mind was already a million miles away. She found herself thinking about Timmy, about his nightmares. Something suddenly touched off a powder keg within her. At first she didn’t even recognize it, didn’t understand it. Then it exploded.
Jack slid off her and mumbled, “You alright?”
“Timmy.”
It was all she could say.
In a flash she was moving across the bedroom to her robe. Jack sat up and watched, a puzzled look tightening his face. Sally wrapped the robe around herself and stumbled into the darkness of the hallway.
Jack followed.
Moments later, they found themselves standing at Timmy’s doorway, gawking in horror at an empty room. His trundle bed sat in one corner, holding only a gob of tangled blankets. The window was wide open, a gentle wind tossing its gingham curtains.
The road to Lakeside Cemetery came alive with voices.
Down around the corner of Main Street and Howell, where the poplar trees converged on a row of sleepy ranch homes, Timmy first heard them hissing from the darkness. They came from the trees, from the alleys, from the shadows. Voices from last Friday’s patio party.
“Dance with me,” said the leaves.
Timmy kept walking.
“Dance,” moaned the wind.
Timmy tried not to remember, but it was hopeless. An image of Grammy had already appeared on the road before him. She wore a pink chiffon scarf and fuchsia lipstick and smelled of gin and Estee Lauder. Timmy made no effort to alter his course or avoid her. He knew she was only a memory.
“Come over here, sweetie… I won’t bite.” She spoke with the honey clear quality of dreams, like a motion picture slightly out of sync. Her face was as cold and wooden as a puppet.
Timmy remembered. He remembered saying no, turning his face away and burying it in his beach towel. He remembered feeling that drunken, vacant stare upon him. Streaks of mascara running. Fuchsia lips snarling.
“Dance with me, goddamnit!” The image in the road shrieked. “Dance!”
Timmy felt his stomach burn. This was how it always started. In the moments where the fabric of family life is ripped apart and awful things emerge, grown-ups act like animals. Parents hurt each other.
Grandmothers had nervous breakdowns.
“Goddamnit!” the Grammy-image shrieked. “Why won’t you dance with your Grandmother?!” She began to move toward Timmy, but tripped on her own drunken feet and tumbled to the flagstone floor. Her arms flailed against the surface of the patio and her legs pumped convulsively. A look of rage twisted her face.
The shadows of familiar people gathered around her. Timmy saw his mom’s pale face, hovering, fighting back tears. He heard his father’s voice straining above the confusion. He saw Chinese lanterns trembling on their strings, sparks raining against the patio.
“Watch out for the fire!” a distant voice cried.
A lantern struck the ground near Grammy’s legs and ignited her dress. Flames licked her body obscenely, fueled by sterno and booze. In an instant she was engulfed. Her scream came next. Timmy remembered it more vividly than any other detail. It was the pleasure/pain scream he’d heard from naughty girls in naughty movies, a scream he’d just begun to understand.
Timmy covered his ears, and he shook off the memories, and he started running. He began to feel an urgency propelling him forward through the neighborhood, a tunnel vision leading to Lakeside. Empty cars and dark houses rushed meaninglessly past him on either side. The few lights that burned were as fleeting as fireflies on the wind. Everything was becoming focused on the cemetery.
Only a mile away.
Sally slid into the BMW’s passenger seat and waited for Jack to fumble with the keys. She’d taken the time to slip into a pair of jogging shoes and pull back her hair, but the terry cloth robe was still wrapped around her tense figure. The shock of being wrenched from the dampness of lovemaking had left her dizzy. “Start it up… let’s go!” She bit her lip and waited for Jack to start the car.
Jack slipped the key into the ignition, then paused, thinking better of it. “You know— maybe we should take two cars,” he said, “and meet back here in an hour.”
“Fine,” Sally said, quickly, not wanting another argu
ment. Ten minutes earlier she had begged him not to call the police. She didn’t want to scare Timmy, didn’t want the outside world to intrude. “You take the wagon.” she added, “and check out Billy Manucci’s place.”
Jack took his keys and got out.
Sally fished through the bottom of her purse, found her own set, and struggled over the stick shift to the driver’s seat. Through the windshield she saw Jack, striped in moonlight, lifting the garage door and mumbling to himself. The son of a bitch isn’t even concerned, Sally thought sourly as she turned the key and put the gas pedal to the floor. The BMW lurched backward down the driveway and into the street. “I’ll try Detweiller Park,” she called over her shoulder, quickly shifting into first and speeding off into the night.
As she drove away, she saw Jack in the rearview. He was waving absently. The bastard doesn’t give a damn about any of this, she stewed. His own son cracking up and he doesn’t even care.
She turned a corner at the base of their street and raced down Briar Road. The streetlamps on either side strobed through the windows and fueled her nerves like jolts of electric current. Her temples drummed. Something ugly and sharp was emerging in the recesses of her mind. A realization.
“Wait a minute.” Her voice was thin and shrill above the rumble of the motor. “I know where he went.”
She punched the brakes and skidded toward the median. The BMW struck a plateau of concrete and weeds, slamming her against the steering wheel. She caught her breath and maneuvered the car back through a turn-around into the opposing lanes.
And in a matter of seconds, Sally Gebhardt was heading toward the cemetery.
There was a gradual upgrade leading into Lakeside Cemetery. Timmy climbed it cautiously, keeping his eyes peeled for any stray grounds keeper or guard who might be patrolling the place. Fortunately, the whole cemetery was as empty and silent as the granite tombs it held. So empty, in fact, that the crunch of gravel beneath Timmy’s feet seemed to announce his entrance like the thrumming of snare drums.