by Louise Corum
“Elka, there’s no money in the house,” he told her.
“Liar!” she screeched and waved the pot at him.
He sighed, not really caring to divulge her fantasy, and asked, “Elka, what time did you get up today?”
“Oh, early,” she said and smiled. “Now don’t you worry, dear, the kids will be home soon but I’ll make sure they don’t disturb you.”
He shook his head. “Elka, I’m your brother, not your husband.”
“Oh, John,” she said and giggled. “Please, don’t start that again. I don’t want to argue with you today. It’s not good for the children. No quarrelling!”
He didn’t much feel like it, either. He closed his eyes and imagined himself somewhere else, somewhere far, far away, maybe even Alaska. He’d live in an igloo and eat fish for every meal. He’d wear animal skins. He wanted the fantasy to be real. This time the daydream was so strong he even felt a little cold and felt like he was there, in his igloo, blissfully warming his hands over a little fire. He was there, in the igloo, and all of this was a bad dream. He opened his eyes. No, it was a bad dream. He was still there, in the house, with her. She was staring at him with an expectant look, as if wondering when and how he was going to respond to her statement. He almost laughed when he thought about his fantasy which, to many, wouldn’t seem like very much fun. But anything was better than being there with her.
“I don’t suppose the maid had time to fix supper, did she?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t eat anything that old bitch prepared,” she scoffed. “She was mean, mean, I tell you. And dirty.”
John sighed heavily and wished all of this away.
“I’ll fix supper,” Elka chirped. “Don’t you worry about it.”
He sighed again and went to the refrigerator and opened it. No, nothing was prepared. He’d paid her extra for that, too. He wondered briefly what the maid would tell her friends and family about them. He knew other maids talked about them, about that “poor man” and his “crazy sister” living in that big old house off of Cumberland Avenue. He knew they talked and probably laughed and wondered what went on inside those walls. He’d tell them, if they ever asked. He’d tell them about her fits of rage and her incessant talking and muttering. He’d tell them about the time he awoke to find her standing over his bed with a knife. But they already knew about most of it. Some of the maids just left the house when Elka attacked them, never to return, not even for the rest of their pay. Others had called him at work complaining about her, asking him to please do something about her. But what? What could he do about her? He’d sometimes go home and threaten her in front of the maids and try to control her. But it was hard.
What they didn’t know was why he took care of Elka. He’d tell them, if they ever asked. He’d tell them about how his mother had made him promise to take care of her no matter what.
No matter what. No matter what? What would have to happen so he could get out of it? He wondered about that, then shook his head and pulled out a couple of steaks and took them to the stove, then reached over and grabbed a pan off the counter.
“I told you I’d fix supper,” she said and stood.
“Get back, Elka,” he told her.
“Let me fix supper,” she said and reached for the pan.
He held her off. She screamed and stomped her foot and demanded to do her “wifely duty.” He held her off for as long as he could, then he took her by the shoulders and walked her to the kitchen table, sat her down and pointed his finger in her face. “I mean it,” he said sternly. “Stop.”
Without batting an eye, she slapped him. He felt that old familiar rage stir inside of him and wanted to slap her back, mostly because of the black eyes she’d given him in the past, the black eyes he’d had to explain to others to protect her. And the explanations were always weak, “I walked into a door, thanks for asking.” Maybe he’d just start telling the people the abuse he suffered at her hands, on her whim.
She controlled him, that’s what she did and he’d had just about had enough.
She tried to slap him again but he intercepted her arm and held it tight and told her, “Do it again and you go to bed early without any TV.”
“You fucker!” she screamed and began to shake with rage. “How dare you talk to me like I am a child? I am a grown woman!”
“Stop it!” he yelled and held her tight but she still managed to get out of his grasp, grab a pan from the table and bash it over his back. He let out a cry and fell to the floor. She’d knocked the air right out of him and he couldn’t catch his breath for a moment and had to watch as she marched over to the stove and turned it on, then threw the steaks into the pan.
“Told you I’d do it, damn it,” she hissed. “God, you make me so mad sometimes I could just kill you.”
Sometimes he wished she would, just to put him out of his misery. He sat up and watched her, wondering what he could do to get her back to normal, though normal resembled anything but normal as far as she was concerned. She was still beautiful, even as she aged. She was in her forties now and as lithe and as small as a ballet dancer. She was now dancing around the room, sometimes on tiptoes, her long, dark hair flowing down her back and her steel blue eyes fixated on him.
“I’m a dancer,” she said and waved her arms out, looking for his approval.
“That you are, Elka,” he told her and closed his eyes. “That you are.”
She stopped suddenly and said, “Mother was a beauty queen.”
He opened one eye and stared at her, wondering what she was getting at. Their mother had been a beauty queen and considered to be one of the most beautiful women in town at one time. That’s why their father had pursued her relentlessly, he supposed. Mother had always joked about that, about how persistent Father had been. “He wouldn’t leave me alone!” she’d exclaim and chuckle a little. “I had to give in.”
“I want to be a beauty queen,” Elka said. “My talent is dancing.”
He closed his eyes again, not caring. She hadn’t always been like this. It had only happened to her when she was younger, around age twelve or so. Maybe she’d been older. He couldn’t remember. How old had she been? And him? How old had he been? Had she been older than twelve? If so, she’d been about fourteen. Maybe fifteen. No, that couldn’t be right. He’d only been seven. Or had he been twelve? He couldn’t remember. Even so, something had happened. What had happened was beyond his comprehension at the time and never fully engaged itself into his memory. He only had a vague recollection of her running into the house screaming, a vague impression of blood on her hands and the words coming out of her mouth, “The boys! The boys!”
The boys! The boys! He remembered that, her screaming so loudly it startled him. The boys! The boys!
The boys? What did that mean? Then it was all a blur. His mother had grabbed Elka’s arm and ran with her from the house. He supposed she’d taken her to the doctor; he couldn’t be sure. When they returned, her hands were bandaged. Mother had taken her into the sitting room and laid her on the couch, covering her with an old patchwork quilt his grandmother had made many years ago that was Elka’s favorite. He could remember his father showing up and looking dirty and staring intently at Elka and then nodding to his mother whose eyes widened a little in shock. He could remember the fire in the fireplace crackling and the sound of his parents whispering, the sound of her whimpering in her fretful sleep. He could remember his curiosity but whenever he’d asked what happened, one of them would just say, “Shh, John, don’t disturb your sister.”
That’s the way he’d lived from then on out, intent on not disturbing his sister.
He stared at her now and wondered what had happened. He thought about it almost every day, what had conspired to drive her to the brink of insanity, what had happened to secure his life in the servitude of his sister.
“Please, John, please, please don’t put her in an asylum,” his mother had begged him years later on her deathbed, imploring him with her still beauti
ful blue eyes. “It will kill her. Promise me, promise me that. Do not send her to an asylum, especially not to Lakeview.”
“I promise, Mother.”
It was a promise he had kept, though he struggled with its weight every day. He hated that he had made that promise, hated that his mother had asked it of him. He hated that he’d promised his whole damn life away.
And what good had it done him? He was probably the most miserable man he knew. Everyone at the factory certainly thought so. His misery wasn’t doing the world any good but there wasn’t much he could do about it, either. Here he was, a rich handsome bachelor cleaning up after his sister, taking whatever she threw at him, knowing that it would be like this forever. He felt pathetic, utterly pathetic. And trapped.
“I want to decorate for Christmas,” Elka said out of nowhere and raced out of the kitchen, hollering on her way out, “Christmas is coming!”
Yeah, in about three months, John thought, then groaned and got up and followed her into the massive sitting room. She was on the floor pulling ornaments out of an old wooden milk crate. He knew she’d been in the attic again. She was always doing that, bringing down old junk to sling around the house and then forget about. One day he found her dressed in Mother’s clothes. She was on the couch pretending to talk with Father. It had been so surreal and so weird he’d just backed out of the room until she finished her conversation.
“We can’t do that, you know that,” he told her and began putting the ornaments back inside the crate.
“Why not?” she demanded to know and then twirled her necklace.
John stared over at her, at her necklace, a gift from his father years ago. It was a solid gold mermaid he’d had made because Elka had told him she wanted to be one. She had worn the thing for years and never took it off. He had a sudden urge to grab it and rip it from her neck. He didn’t, of course, and the urge left almost as soon as he had felt it.
“Why not?” she demanded again.
He didn’t answer. He had good reason. She had almost burned the house down one year by putting too many lights on the tree. After he’d scolded her for that, she’d torn the tree apart, throwing it all over the house. It had taken him all afternoon to clean it up. After that, he decided they couldn’t celebrate Christmas anymore; it was just too dangerous. Of course, he still bought her a few nice gifts, and she, of course, threw them to the side and chastised him for giving her such “trash.” Nothing was ever good enough for her. He continued to buy the gifts, though. He just didn’t give them to her. He’d put them in her closet and in her jewelry box and she would think they had been there all along. Sometimes she’d marvel at a necklace or a sweater, telling him she’d forgotten about “this old thing” and was glad she’d rediscovered it.
“You know why,” he told her.
“Argh!” she screamed and beat his back with her small fists. He ignored her and kept putting the ornaments back in the crate they had been stored in. She fought with him as he cleaned up the mess, then got distracted and left him alone. He breathed a sigh of relief, finished picking up the ornaments and then carried the stuff back upstairs to the attic. It was cool and quiet up there, so he sat down on an old trunk and put his head in his hands and wondered how much longer he could live like this.
He looked around. The attic was always a disorganized mess but Elka had really done some damage this time. He noticed the old clothes strewn all over the floor. These were her dress up costumes. He didn’t even know where they came from. They might have been his great-great grandparents’ for all he knew. The clothes varied from era to era, all coming with matching jewelry and accessories. There were old, long dresses made of gauzy cotton with ribbons she’d put in her hair. There were some flapper gowns with little beaded purses she’d carry around the house and put stuff in.
There were even some petticoat dresses and big, ridiculous looking hats that she loved to prance around in and talk like Scarlett O’Hara. There were so many of them, he wondered why his mother had hung onto them. Probably because Elka loved them. Sometimes she dressed up in these ancient looking outfits and would flutter through the house and into the garden, acting like some… Well, acting like someone who was crazy.
When she wasn’t playing dress up though, she usually dressed in the same type of pajamas day in and day out, cotton ones in navy blue with delicate white stripes. She’d wear the same two or three pairs until they wore out and lost their shape, then she’d start on another few pairs, repeating the process.
He had begun to hate the sight of those pajamas, so much so it was a welcome relief when she’d have a dress up day.
John sighed loudly and looked the mess over again, hating the fact that if he didn’t clean it up, it would never get tidied. He noticed lots of old boxes had been opened and emptied of their contents. Old lamps were knocked over and old armoire doors were open displaying even more old junk that should have been thrown away years and years ago. In one of them he noticed his clothes from when he was a small boy. He sighed. What junk. For a second, he again had the urge to do something, to get up and start throwing stuff away. Maybe if he did that, maybe if he got rid of it, some of the chaos would quiet down. But the urge quickly subsided then he was just tired.
Something then caught his eye. There was a wooden box he hadn’t noticed before. He went to it and opened it. Inside he found old notebooks with his mother’s handwriting. Her journals. He felt a flush on his face for finding them, as she’d always been so private. He held them in his hands but the urge to read them left almost as quickly as the urge to not read them settled in. What good would it have done? He didn’t want to know his mother’s private thoughts. He might find out something that he really didn’t want to know. He had enough stuff he didn’t want to think about without adding to the pile.
The only question he would have loved for her to answer was why she had insisted he take care of his sister. Didn’t she know how hard it would be? But he knew those answers were not in her private journals. He felt some resentment for his mother, then let it go. Elka was different when she’d been alive. His mother had taken good care of her. She knew how to quiet her down and keep her calm but then years of doing this had taken its toll. Their mother, once so full of life, had succumbed to the weariness of taking care of Elka. He knew that’s what had killed her in the end. But why, if it had been so hard on her, had she handed him the reins? Why not just put her in a home with trained professionals who knew how to take care of someone like Elka? He didn’t know. And he didn’t like to think about it. He liked to remember his mother before all this had happened, when she was so nice and gave him hugs and kisses on the cheek, when she’d read him his favorite bedtime story over and over until he fell asleep.
He closed the trunk and went back downstairs.
Someone New
Lately, it was really beginning to get to John. His life was being lived for someone else. His life was dedicated to taking care of a woman who didn’t know who she was half the time. It bothered him most days but he ultimately realized that was his life and, in the end, it didn’t really matter. This was it. His life with his sister was all he’d ever known. He didn’t really dream about getting out or getting ahead. Well, sometimes he did but he knew, deep in his heart, that he would never abandoned his promise to keep his sister safe and sound.
In fact, he never visualized or made a plan to change his circumstances. He could have certainly institutionalized his sister and no one would have blamed him. He could have hired a lady to sit with her or a nurse if he paid someone enough money. But he quickly remembered that he had tried that but Elka was mostly uncontrollable and scared whatever hired help he could find away. It was literally like he was the only one who could handle her.
Regardless, the fact of the matter was that he could have done many different things to make his life easier and a little happier. However, he had done none of them. Maybe he didn’t because he didn’t care that much about himself. Maybe he didn’t because it mi
ght have caused too much trouble and the guilt he would have felt would have been unbearable.
Maybe he never did it because he never had a valid reason. However, that was all about to change. He never had a reason to live a life for himself until he met her.
She was his secretary’s replacement. She was standing in front of his desk the next day beside Lois smiling and thanking him for the opportunity to work for “such a nice place.”
“I’m Kathleen Meredith,” she said and thrust her hand at him.
He shook it quickly, then withdrew his hand first. She made him nervous, real nervous. His heart began to beat rapidly in his chest.
She stared at him for a quick second, then Lois said, “I’ll just show her the ropes, Mr. Cashman.”
He picked up a pen and nodded, pretending to become engrossed in a file that was open on his desk.
“Again, thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Cashman,” Kathleen said. “I won’t let you down. Oh, by the way, your pen is upside down.”
He stared at it. It was upside down. He gulped and stared at her, but then she was so pretty he tried to make himself stop looking but he couldn’t resist. She had light brown hair that was pulled back into a cute ponytail that made her look quite youthful. Her skin was sprinkled with freckles. Her body… Well, that was an added bonus. He had to force himself not to stare at her breasts and tiny waist.
She was almost too attractive and John wondered how he’d be able to work with someone like her. He may have been uncomfortable but it was a discomfort he was more than willing to suffer. However it wasn’t all bad. In fact, none of it was bad, even the heart palpitations whenever she came into the room, even the sweating when they had a conversation about invoices or the accounting department. For the first time in his life, he had something to look forward to. He actually began to like going into work, mainly because it allowed him to see Kathleen. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a more beautiful woman.
However, over the next few weeks, he began to appreciate her for more than her good looks. She was a hard worker and learned her job quickly. He never had to ask her to do something twice or repeat instructions. Also, she was perky and bubbly and just a nice person. She treated him with respect, the way a secretary should treat her boss. She also made good coffee and had it waiting for him right when he arrived at the office.