Mother for Dinner

by Shalom Auslander

  Enjoy it, kid, Seventh thought. Existence will never be this simple again.

  He lay in bed that night with his head on Carol’s belly, trying to listen to their child’s heartbeat.

  Can you imagine? he said. For one brief, wonderful moment, we are not one thing or another. We are everything and we’re nothing.

  Maybe that’s what heaven is, suggested Carol. A place of eternal indifference. And maybe that’s all life is—a constant striving to get back to the indifference we had when we were just forming.

  So the indifferent go to heaven? said Seventh.

  Yup, said Carol. Hell is for the people who think they’re unique.

  Seventh kissed her belly and then they discussed names. They wanted something positive, something hopeful.

  How about Adam? said Seventh. Because he’s our first.

  Too biblical, said Carol. How about August, because that’s when he’s due.

  Too Roman, said Seventh. Phoenix, because he will rise from the ashes.

  Sage, said Carol, because she will be wise.

  Gilligan, said Seventh, because he’s marooned.

  Marooned?

  On earth, said Seventh. Waiting to be rescued.

  Scotch, she said, because he’s going to need it.

  Ice, said Seventh, because it will reduce her swelling.

  Gauze, said Carol, because it will stop her bleeding.

  Target, said Seventh, because let’s be honest . . .

  Rum and Coke, said Carol, if they’re twins.

  Black and Blue, said Seventh.

  Pitchfork and Torch, said Carol.

  Seventh got up and poured himself a glass of wine.

  I got it, he said, holding up the bottle. Riesling.

  Riesling? That’s a name?

  Reese, said Seventh. It’s hopeful.

  That she’ll be sweet? asked Carol.

  Seventh climbed back into bed and she rested her head on his chest.

  That she’ll go with everything, said Seventh.

  Carol laughed. That laugh, that laugh . . .

  * * *

  • • •

  Mudd wept when Seventh married Carol, because Carol wasn’t Cannibal.

  But I’m happy, Mudd, he said.

  Someday you’ll realize there are more important things in this world than your own happiness.

  Like your happiness?

  Like your people, Mudd said.

  Carol, meanwhile, was telling him the opposite.

  Chains, chains, chains, she said. What a lovely ornament you’ll make, Seventh, dangling there at the end of your chains.

  So angry did Seventh become at Mudd that it was one of the few times in his life that he lashed out at her, and the only time he caused her to cry.

  And exactly what will my misery achieve for our people, Mudd? What has your misery done for our people?

  Mudd glared at him.

  I stayed, she said. I put my people over my own selfish happiness.

  Seventh felt the dam of anger within him break.

  You and the mangy dog can argue about who stays better, he said. I’m leaving.

  Her eyes filled with tears, but Seventh steeled himself and walked out, just as he’d watched his brothers do before him.

  He wouldn’t see her again until the day she died.

  * * *

  • • •

  At last Unclish exited the highway, and the others followed. Down one road and then another he turned, the suburban streets soon giving way to more rural, wooded landscapes. The low-canopied roads twisted and turned on themselves, the houses growing more sparse as the woods grew more dense, until finally Unclish slowed and turned onto a narrow, potholed dirt road. A hundred feet farther down the road, Unclish at last pulled to a stop in front of a pair of tall, forbidding iron gates that hung off their rusted hinges, secured together by a long padlocked chain.

  DANGER, read a rusted sign that hung from the chain. KEEP OUT.

  Unclish dug some keys out of his pocket and unlatched the padlock, and the chain fell to the ground. The gates were heavy, cold, and had frozen to the icy ground; even the combined efforts of Tenth and Third could only open them wide enough for them to squeeze through one by one.

  We’ll all leave the cars here, Unclish said. It isn’t far.

  The Seltzers followed Unclish down the overgrown drive, past deep thickets and dense underbrush, ducking beneath the heavy pine tree branches that hung low to the ground. At last they came around a bend in the road, where they discovered, rising up before them, an ancient, abandoned Gothic building. It seemed, with its flying buttresses and elaborate spires, as if some ancient ruin from twelfth-century Europe had somehow made its way across the Atlantic to the woods of New Jersey, where it had been left to rot and decay. What wasn’t covered in ivy and moss was covered in garish graffiti.

  What the hell, asked First, is that?

  Unclish looked up to it as if at the gates of heaven, and held his arms out to his sides. We have arrived, he said.

  We have? asked First.

  Where? asked Seventh.

  Behold, said Unclish, the University.

  This? Second asked. This is the University?

  You have got to be kidding me, said First.

  Eighth stared in disbelief at the Eden he had dreamed of as a child. It bore only the faintest resemblance to the poster in Mudd’s living room.

  What . . . what happened to it? he asked.

  As our people crumbled, Unclish said with a heavy heart, so did the dream of a university. The older generations urged their children to attend, but the melting that began so long ago in Henry Ford’s pot had taken its toll. They chose Yale and Harvard over their own people’s university. They didn’t want to know about our past, about our suffering, about our pain. All they wanted to know was what percentage of our graduates went on to law school. They wanted to know what kind of Greek life we would provide. Greek life, can you imagine? Like the Greeks who enslaved our ancestors? Like the Greeks who raped our women? Greek life? Greek life was dedicated to our death!

  His voice rose and echoed through the cold empty woods.

  Not a single student enrolled, he continued. Not a single class was taught. I thought this would be our beginning; I didn’t know our end had already arrived. But it will serve our purposes today, my children. Your mother’s Consumption will be the University’s first Consumption. And, perhaps, its last.

  They made their way up the crumbling stone steps. Seventh offered Unclish his hand, but Unclish waved him off. He stepped to the tall front doors, carved of a heavy wood, to which a large yellow sticker had been affixed: CONDEMNED—ENTRY PROHIBITED.

  Unclish tore the warning off and threw it to the ground.

  We have been condemned by far greater enemies, he said, than the board of health.

  He pressed the doors open, and the loud creak of the ancient door hinges filled the lobby, a tall cathedral space of such wondrous beauty, even in disrepair, that it made Zero gasp as she stepped inside.

  Oh my, she whispered. Oh my, my, my.

  The light was dim through the shattered stained-glass windows, but even in that spare light, the grandeur of the room was overwhelming. For Seventh, it was agonizing. The ruined beauty of this condemned place seemed to condemn him in turn, its ruin his own fault. Cigarette butts, beer cans, and discarded hypodermic needles lay strewn about the floor, each one another witness in his prosecution.

  Seventh tried the light switches.

  Nothing.

  Unclish stepped carefully across the buckled marble floor, over the deep green moss that had grown along the grout lines and the black puddles of rainwater that had formed between them, to face the tall graffiti-covered wall at the back of the room.

  Kill the fags.

  Ki
ll the Jews.

  Fuck this.

  Fuck that.

  He removed his top hat, as one might upon entering a temple.

  This, he said, was to be a marvelous fresco. Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall. Painted by our people’s most skilled artists. A landscape of the Old Country, with grapes the size of apples, apples the size of grapefruits, and grapefruits the size of a Chevy.

  Grapefruits, huh? said First, kicking aside a discarded condom. Father said the Old Country was a toilet.

  Your father was a toilet, Unclish snapped.

  Maybe I can write this trip off as research, Fourth said to Seventh as he examined the spray-painted messages of hate. Xenophobic Patterns in Pre-Genocidal America.

  And then Fourth disappeared.

  And then Second disappeared.

  And then First disappeared.

  Seventh couldn’t see them. He couldn’t hear them. All he could hear were the excited students pressing past him, laughing, cheering, calling to one another after the long summer break, hurrying to class on the first day of the semester.

  One calls to the other, asks how his break was.

  Good, good! the friend calls back. Catch you later!

  Proud young women laugh as they walk by, tossing their dark Cannibal locks as they go, eyeing him, giggling, hurrying off.

  Two professors rush across the great room, dog-eared copies of the bestselling Out of the Shadows in their hands.

  Did you like it? one asks.

  I loved it, says the other.

  (It’s about time, the Times had raved.)

  * * *

  • • •

  Getting Mudd’s corpse into the University was going to be even more of a struggle than getting her out of her house. They didn’t have stairs and doors to contend with this time, but it was a much farther distance, over rocky terrain, with no way to know when a cop might drive by.

  As the brothers prepared to move her, Tenth approached Seventh and pulled him aside.

  I don’t like this, he said, hands on his hips.

  Like what?

  This, he said. This place, this town.

  You have another university you want to use? asked Seventh.

  I stopped for gas down the road, said Tenth. Got a bad feeling.

  From what?

  From the locals.

  What kind of a feeling?

  A bad feeling.

  Did they say something? Seventh asked.

  They didn’t have to, said Tenth. They were giving me looks.

  What kind of looks?

  Looks, said Tenth.

  Seventh knew the looks; they all knew the looks. It was nothing overt, nothing big. It wasn’t a You’re a Fucking Cannibal Look, the way it wasn’t necessarily a You’re a Dirty Jew Look, or a You’re a Scary Black Guy Look.

  It was the You’re Not Me Look.

  When Seventh returned from school the day Mudd scared off Oscar Kowalski, she sat him down in the kitchen and asked him what he had learned from the experience.

  To fight back? he offered.

  Yes, said Mudd. But also this: that it doesn’t matter how much you want to belong, it doesn’t matter how much you want to be one of them. Because it doesn’t matter how you see yourself—they will see you the way they want to see you.

  But they don’t know what I am, said Seventh.

  It doesn’t matter, said Mudd. They know what you aren’t—you aren’t them. And that’s all that matters.

  A pickup truck slowed as it passed by, its brake lights bloodred in the darkening woods.

  Seventh turned to watch it.

  Could be slowing for a squirrel, he thought.

  It’s probably slowing for a squirrel.

  * * *

  • • •

  They’re not looking at us, Father would say whenever Seventh thought they were being looked at. Malls, streets, restaurants. Everywhere Seventh looked, he saw himself being watched.

  They are, Seventh would say.

  Who? Father would ask.

  Those guys, Seventh would say. Over there.

  Why would they be looking at you?

  It looks like they’re looking at me.

  It only looks like they’re looking at you because you already think they’re looking at you, said Father. If you didn’t think they were looking at you, it wouldn’t look like they were looking at you.

  But Seventh knew a You’re Not Me Look when he saw it.

  It is not enough to withdraw from the mob, wrote Montaigne, not enough to go to another place. We have to withdraw from such attributes of the mob as are within us.

  Sure thing, Monty, thought Seventh. But it’s the mobs outside us that are carrying baseball bats.

  * * *

  • • •

  The pickup slowed to a stop. Seventh’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He didn’t want to get caught—Mudd’s corpse was still waiting in First’s truck—but there was a part of him, small but raging, that wanted a fight. That wanted to defend his people. Against the blood-thirsty haters. Against the crazed mobs of gunmen.

  What was it, thought Seventh, about crazed mobs of gunmen and pickup trucks? Crazed mobs of gunmen love pickup trucks. If you just got rid of pickup trucks, you could get rid of half the violence in the world. Look at photos of war zones around the world and you’ll see pickup trucks loaded with crazed mobs of gunmen. They can’t get enough of them. Buy a pickup truck and leave it alone for ten minutes; when you come back, the bed will be filled with a crazed mob of gunmen, flags waving, guns at the ready. Somali flags, ISIS flags, Confederate flags. Vans are for serial killers. But pickups are for crazed mobs of gunmen.

  Ford. The Choice of Crazed Mobs Since 1914.

  Tenth took a step toward the truck. Seventh did the same.

  The driver gunned the engine and peeled away.

  * * *

  • • •

  Leave him to rot

  in a roadside ditch.

  Jack Nicholson

  is a son of a bitch.

  Rigor mortis was beginning to set in. As even the youngest Cannibal knows, chemical changes in the body cause the muscles to contract four to six hours after death; further chemical changes prevent those muscles from softening. The Victuals must begin before rigor mortis makes the body unworkable.

  Be quick like a rabbit,

  not slow like a tortoise.

  There’s only four hours

  before rigor mortis.

  By the time they extricated Mudd from First’s truck, carried her down the driveway, and laid her down inside the main hall, her face was fixed and frozen, her fingers and toes already stiff.

  Quickly, Unclish called upon seeing her corpse, or it will be too late!

  Seventh, fetch the chain from the front gate! Third, bring the Knife of Redemption from the car! Make haste, children, haste!

  Don’t let her get stiff,

  don’t ignore her lividity.

  Only you can prevent

  postmortem rigidity.

  Like whispers from an ancient grave, the old dicta were returning. As diligently as Unclish had worked to drill them into his head, Seventh had worked since then to forget them. And he had. Now, though, he could hear them, a grim ghostly chorus—himself, his brothers, and Unclish, gathered in Mudd’s living room on Sunday mornings—reciting them aloud in unison.

  Don’t blow a fuse,

  or turn to booze.

  We got the blues

  because of the Jews.

  That one was probably Mudd’s.

  Seventh and Third hurried to the cars as Unclish had commanded, Seventh watching for pickups as they went. Third seemed practically giddy, and Seventh wondered if he understood what they were about to do, or even that their mot
her was dead.

  You okay, big man? he asked.

  Yup! said Third.

  Listen, buddy, you know Mudd’s . . . Mudd’s dead, right?

  Third nodded with excitement. Guess what? he said, a child with a secret he could no longer contain.

  What?

  Soon I’ll be Sixth!

  Soon you’ll be Sixth?

  Soon I’ll be Sixth.

  How will you be Sixth?

  Because Mudd is Sixth.

  Mudd is Sixth?

  Because Mudd ate Sixth.

  Right, said Seventh. So now she’s Sixth. And when you eat Mudd, you’ll be Sixth.

  Yup, he said. And I’ll be Mudd too.

  You will, said Seventh.

  I’ll be everyone and everyone will be me.

  Not a bad deal, said Seventh.

  Third smiled as he pulled the old valise from Second’s car. Not a bad deal, he said.

  They returned to the lobby with the chain and the Knife of Redemption, and everyone got to work. Unclish handed Tenth the chain, directing him up the stairs to the balcony above the colonnade. From there, Tenth was to toss one end of the chain over one of the buttresses high overhead; Fourth, waiting below, would grab the end once it made it over. It took a few tries, Tenth cursing and gathering up the chain between each attempt, but at last the end of the chain arced over a thick buttress near the center of the dome and Fourth caught it. Unclish called Third over and, to test the strength of the buttress, had him grab the ends of the chain and lift his feet off the ground.

  Whee! giggled Third.

  Seventh braced for the building to collapse, but the buttress held. Unclish worked quickly; he was suddenly a young man again, his hands a blur as he secured the chain to Mudd’s lower legs, looping it around her calves and ankles in such a way that when he was done, the more one pulled on it, the tighter it became.

  Now! he directed the brothers. Pull! Pull!

  Tenth and Third took hold of the free end of the chain and began to pull so as to raise Mudd into the air. But even with their combined strength, they were barely able to lift her legs off the floor.