Still Life with Monkey

by Katharine Weber

  Who was the guy in the photo? (Laura now kept her mother’s wallet in her desk drawer.) Was he a one-night stand? A date rape, or worse? Laura’s college roommate Ann had suggested, imaginatively, that if her mother had worked not at a dry cleaner’s but at a VA hospital, on the night shift, where she met Laura’s Vietnam war hero father, who was in reality a fatally wounded and hideously disfigured patient there, then perhaps her conception had been like Garp’s. They had both laughed hysterically at the image, feeling wildly intellectual and sophisticated while yelping Garp! Garp! Garp!

  Indulging this fantasy, Laura once looked up VA hospitals in Ohio, but the nearest one to Westerville was more than sixty miles away, an unlikely commute, and in any case it had not occurred to her before then to doubt the part of her mother’s story about her job at the dry cleaner’s, though in later years, during the slide into dementia, her mother more than once claimed to have worked at a travel agency while living over a dry cleaning shop. The last time Laura tried to pin her down about these details her mother had barked at her Fine! Maybe it wasn’t Ohio at all, how about that, sister, maybe it was Iowa or Idaho, who can say? Want to put that in your pipe and smoke it? Since when is my life your fucking business?

  Laura envied Duncan his compact and complete dead father story, over and done in a sentence or two: John Wheeler was a very successful life insurance executive who died of a massive heart attack at the age of forty-two (a terrible irony, given his profession), leaving a young wife and twin eleven-year-old sons. Duncan knew exactly who his father had been and he knew precisely where his father was now.

  Laura had just a single memory of visiting her grandfather on his farm, because she had only met him the one time, when she was six, that same summer they moved to Connecticut. Her mother said they were going to the farm so Laura could meet her grandfather and also say goodbye to him before they left, a hello goodbye, which sounded to Laura like some kind of game, and she waited for her mother to explain the rules.

  The goats and their crazy eyes disturbed her, and their rank smell made Laura spend that afternoon breathing through her mouth, which caused her mother to ask her repeatedly if she needed to blow her nose. There were kittens among the hay bales in the barn. These were Laura’s first kittens and she loved them. She tried to contain three of them in her lap while they squirmed away, over and over, until her nose really did stuff up with her first allergic reaction to cats.

  When it was time to go in the house for a snack before they went home, Laura tried to be on her best behavior, as her mother had requested. Her grandfather moved slowly around his kitchen, as if it pained him. He was tall and thin, and a little bent over, and he looked down at the floor all the time, as if he was always expecting something underfoot. Laura’s mother knew where things were kept in the pale blue kitchen cupboards. She shut them with a bang.

  Instead of saying her name he called Laura “Sister,” which was strange, because she was an only child, and he didn’t say it in a particularly friendly way. She sat with her feet swinging under his white enamel-top kitchen table, nibbling tiny mouse bites from the stale end piece of pound cake he had tipped onto her plate from its Sara Lee foil loaf pan. Her mother never gave her bread heels and always put them on her own plate, turning them to the inside of her tuna sandwiches to fool herself into not noticing.

  “You fussy like your mama, Sister?” he asked Laura suddenly.

  “She’s entitled to her likes and dislikes, Pops,” her mother answered for her.

  “I don’t expect a fig from a thistle. You weren’t any kind of fig either, that’s for damned sure, not from your mama. Anyways, those kittens might could have fleas. Probably do. And ringworm. Real easy to catch that.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Pops.”

  “You had the ringworm more than once. You were always a dirty little girl.”

  “Here we go. Come on Laura, finish up your cake. Or leave it.”

  “I meant to drown them before now. One thing I don’t need is a barn full of damn kittens turning into cats.”

  “Nice. Really nice, Pops. Wonderful having this visit with you.”

  “You hear on the news about that carnival ride, what happened there on the weekend? That’s what people get when their brats run wild all over the damned place.”

  “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea,” Laura’s mother said, though it was still afternoon.

  Laura chewed the dry cake into a paste in her mouth and swung her feet faster under the table. Her nose was completely stuffed. Her grandfather hadn’t given her a napkin and she didn’t know what to call him and she didn’t dare say anything. She couldn’t wipe her nose on her sleeve because she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and her mother was standing by the window lifting the limp curtain and looking out, with the car keys jingling in her hand, so Laura snuffled in, which made her mother turn around and pull out a crumpled tissue from her pocket and reach across the table and wipe it across Laura’s nose as if she were a little baby. How could she?

  “Now you can’t say you never met your grandfather,” her mother said over her shoulder on the drive home. When, in the years that followed, Laura would from time to time ask her mother about why they moved east that summer, her mother would always say something about it having been time for a change, or she would remind her about how much she hated the smell of those goats.

  On just one occasion, when Laura was ten, when she was up in the middle of the night with a fever and a miserable, croupy cough, and her mother had lain down beside her on her narrow bed to soothe her back to sleep, Laura dared to bring up her memory of a day at some fair or amusement park.

  As the steamer hissed and tendrils of cold steam drifted and unfurled across the room, the dim light from the hallway illuminated the mirror on her closet door misting into a cloud until her reflected room faded and then disappeared. Laura asked her mother, did she witness an accident on a carnival ride when she was really little? That summer before they moved out east? Was she on a ride when someone fell out? Laura was sure she remembered people screaming. Was everyone running from a fire?

  Nobody died, her mother told her. Now hush. It had nothing to do with you. It was a long time ago. You’re probably remembering hearing your grandfather talk about it that time we visited. Remember those stinky goats?

  Her mother held her close. It was nice. Laura fell into a fever sleep.

  The red button so appealing, like a clown’s nose waiting to be honked. The wooden steps so inviting, like a ladder waiting to be climbed. The exciting music, frantic and falsely cheerful, but with that hysterical pitch which on television always signifies something about to go wrong.

  The red button so intriguing.

  Laura hated the man in the dirty green T-shirt who ran the Twister. He got to push the red button each time the ride stopped and started. That was his whole job, and it should be fun, but he was so bored and indifferent, like the unsmiling school bus driver whose bus passed her house every morning, the one who never, ever waved back.

  The red button was so big and smooth-looking under the fingers of the bad green T-shirt man. His cigarette dangled between his lips and a curl of greasy smoke hung in the air in front of his scowly face. He smelled.

  She knew he smelled because this was the second time she had ridden the Twister, all alone because she was a big girl of six and her mother didn’t like rides much anyway, but after all, she said to Laura, it’s the Ohio State Fair, so let’s go, so she let her go on the rides while she waited and watched the crowds. The first time he had bent over Laura to adjust the safety bar she had accidentally breathed in a nasty whiff of armpit. Now, after some obligatory rides on the boring junior roller coaster and the babyish merry-go-round, she was back on the Twister, an experienced adventurer adjusting the safety bar all by herself to pre-empt further assistance from bad smelly green T-shirt man.

  As she had earlier, Laura’s mother waited under a tree where it was shady and she could
hold her daughter’s blue balloon and watch her going around and around and around. It was beginning. Slowly at first, a teasing lazy few turns around. A mild little ride, nothing at all to be afraid of. But then more and more speed, more and more spinning as the Twister uncoiled and recoiled its armloads of frenzied, screaming passengers. Around and around, each time they passed the big tree Laura turned her head against the force to look for her waving mother, until the Twister whirled too fast and her mother became an indistinguishable element of the motion-striped blur.

  Each time she spun past the control platform, green T-shirt man was there leaning on the railing staring at nothing. As the coiled arm of the Twister flung each car out and then gathered it back in, Laura was suspended for a motionless moment directly over him. She could see the red button next to his bored hand.

  Green T-shirt man was dirty, but his red button was clean and smooth and she really wanted to touch it.

  The ride slowed disappointingly and then came to a stop, the way it always did, some cars continuing to swing around. She tried to predict where her car would stop and was almost right. The music insisted that everything was thrilling and wonderful but just wait. Green T-shirt man walked around popping open safety bars. In his wake, kids erupted out of the seats and scampered towards the exit steps, sneakered feet squeaking and thundering on the painted plywood platform. Grownups didn’t usually need his help, but a fat lady over on the other side seemed unable to raise her safety bar and he ambled over to help her.

  The red button was all alone and Laura was standing on the top step for the exit, right next to it, only a thin drooping plastic chain between them. Just a touch. Just to feel for a moment if it was as smooth as it looked.

  Ducking under the chain, she found herself standing directly in front of the red button. It glowed beautifully, like a sucked cough lozenge.

  Green T-shirt man was now standing beside her but he had his back to her as he lifted open the gate on the entrance ramp. Kids stampeded onto the platform, racing to claim seats.

  Sweetheart! Her mother’s voice was far away, all the way on the other side of the Twister. Green T-shirt man would turn around any moment.

  She reached up and touched the red button. With just her fingertips. It was warm from the sun. It felt smooth and nice, the way her mother’s pearls felt, neck-warmed, when she was allowed to play with them for a few minutes at bedtime.

  Hey! Kid! Don’t touch that!

  Green T-shirt man’s unexpected crawly touch on the back of her neck made her jump.

  Her hand splayed on the red button, pressing down for just an instant.

  The Twister came to life, turning, twisting, grinding.

  Screams and screams and screams.

  Green T-shirt man smashed his fist down on the red button just as her mother grabbed her under both arms and dragged her roughly down the wooden steps, away from the platform.

  Slung over one of her mother’s shoulders, Laura was bouncing too hard to focus. Everyone was yelling, and there were people running in all directions. She shut her eyes, feeling all through her the jolt of the pounding feet, the pounding heart, the relentless sour music from the rides.

  Her lower lip was cut by her own front teeth as her mother ran. She felt the blood pooling under her tongue and she opened her mouth to let it escape. Like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, they left a trail behind them. Would the green T-shirt man follow the blood drops and catch them? She was afraid. She began to cry.

  At the car, her mother deposited Laura in the back seat. Was she crying too? Her breath sobbed in and out of her as she bent over to lower Laura onto the seat, with extra gentleness. Her mother’s blouse was wet with sweat. Laura didn’t like it that her mother smelled different than she ever had before. It seemed bad, like a rule that should never be broken.

  The music, grinning and mean, seemed to follow them down the road. As they turned onto the highway towards home, an ambulance going at top speed in the opposite direction passed them blaring Dir-ty! Dir-ty! Dir-ty!

  Hungry, sweetheart? Laura’s mother was looking at her in the rearview mirror as she drove. There had been a plan to have hot dogs at the amusement park.

  Laura shook her head no. Her tears had dried on her face with the blood from her bottom lip, and there was a bad metal taste in her mouth. She was suddenly very tired. Her balloon was gone.

  Me neither, her mother said softly. They drove in silence and after a while Laura fell asleep. When they got home, Laura was hungry after all, and Laura’s mother made breakfast for dinner, as a treat to make up for missing the hot dogs—pancakes with sorghum syrup. When Laura got into bed, she waited for her mother to tuck her in, but she didn’t come for a long time, and Laura fell asleep.

  She woke up in the middle of the night, uncertain where she was, afraid of the green T-shirt man, but she was safe in her own bed, in her dark room, and her mother was sitting up beside her on the bed, her familiar form barely visible in the dim misted light from the hallway.

  Is it now, or are we still in Ohio? Laura whispered.

  Of course it’s now, her mother said, placing a cool palm on her forehead and then smoothing Laura’s damp hair back from her face. It’s always now. You’re still burning up. The steamer mist had left a silvery web of tiny droplets on Laura’s quilt, like dew. I just told you, nothing bad happened to anyone. Forget about it. Have a sip of water now and try to go back to sleep. She lay back down on top of the covers beside Laura and nestled up against her again in a reassuring spoon.

  Laura burrowed back into her fever sleep and there was the green T-shirt man. He was tall and thin, and he looked down at her with crazy sideways eyes. The red button was on his belt buckle, and he held her wrist tightly and forced her to touch it, over and over, while it glowed hotter and hotter until her fingers were burning, but she couldn’t pull her hand away. He laughed at her and called her Sister, and said she was dirty just like her mama, and she ought to be drowned along with the kittens that were running all around. Her nose was stuffed up from the kittens and she couldn’t breathe and her throat was tight and then a barking barking barking dog came running in and frightened the kittens away and woke her up and she was cough cough coughing her croup croup croup cough and her mother was still lying right beside her, one arm over Laura’s waist holding her close, and it was still now.

  SEVEN

  Every day at the hospital Laura had updated Duncan

  EVERY DAY AT THE HOSPITAL LAURA HAD UPDATED Duncan with all the details of the necessary changes in the house, starting with the construction of a wooden ramp that zig-zagged up the entire left side of their front lawn to the front porch. The builders had been sent over by Dave Halloran with materials and a sketch in hand, and the firm had paid for everything. But, sedated and drifting, Duncan had not taken anything in.

  “Isn’t that Ipe? What was the materials cost?” he asked, as he was rolled up the ramp for the first time on that September day when he came home from the hospital. “Cedar would have been adequate. This ramp’s going to last fifty years. Nobody’s going to need this ramp in fifty years. Or in five years.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Dunc! You’re home! I have no idea. The office just made it all happen. They never sent a bill. The builder called it something else.” Laura was walking backwards up the ramp in front of him so she could see his face. The two medical transport techs would settle him, and the first PCA was already a few minutes into his shift. Laura had longed for this moment.

  “Ipe as in tripe, maybe?” Duncan eyed the smooth planks as best he could while barely moving his head, and then they bumped over the threshold and were in the front door, and then they were rolling through the foyer, home, home, home, and then came the shock of seeing his former office, now set up for him with his beloved red and blue dhurrie rolled up and stored under his desk, which had been pushed against the floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the far wall.

  An ugly hospital bed dominated the center of the room, made up and ready,
as if on display, the side rails down, awaiting the patient. The hideous commode was positioned in the corner. The rolling Hoyer lift dangled at the ready like some mechanism you would expect to see used on an automobile assembly line.

  Now Duncan saw with startling realization all the dismantling and disorder that had been imposed on his beautiful room, the room where he had made everything exactly the way he wanted it, the room where he loved to work in solitary reverie, a quiet sanctuary that was the antidote to the collaborative hive of activity that surrounded him at Corrigan & Wheeler. Duncan had a private aversion to open-plan offices but had never felt entitled to contravene Billy Corrigan’s original layout design that dated from the occasion six years ago when Corrigan & Associates moved from their Chapel Street office overlooking the New Haven Green to the old brick ladder factory building in Fair Haven, once the heart of nineteenth-century New Haven industry. That was when the firm became Corrigan & Wheeler. Duncan conducted all of his business at the office, but when he was drawing new projects or brainstorming challenging design problems, he went home to his sanctuary to concentrate, if only for an hour, away from the lively and endlessly distracting atmosphere of Corrigan & Wheeler’s resonant expanse.

  On that September afternoon, after he had done all the healing he was going to do in the hospital, Duncan was rolled up the ramp and into his house, and he understood in a grim new way just how much his life had changed. He had longed to leave the hospital and had counted the days until he could go home. Home. He thought he wanted to go home, but what was home? He hadn’t simply wanted to go home, he had wanted to go back in time. How could he live here, or anywhere? Not only was he transformed, but now his beautiful room was filled with mis-proportioned metal and plastic necessities in egregious colors and finishes that were already horribly familiar aspects of his life after two months in the hospital.