by Joe Hart
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes squinting through broken blood vessels. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I …” His voice trailed off and he shook his head, whether to clear it from the attack or from his thoughts Lance couldn’t tell.
“Why?” Lance finally managed. He sat up and stared across the dimly lit kitchen, his eyes red and raw from the tears.
John breathed in and out for a while, the air still rattling across the inside of his ravaged throat. “I lost so much. It’s my fault, couldn’t see it then, but I do now,” John said.
Lance pushed himself to his feet. He felt utterly empty as he crossed the space to where John rested, the anger having drained, leaving him a frail husk held together by his skin. He knelt beside the old man and spied the red marks left by his own hands on the drooping skin around John’s neck. They would be black tomorrow, evidence of something terrible barely avoided.
Lance reached out a hand and held it before the caretaker. John’s head rose until he looked Lance in the eye.
“Tell me everything. I need to know.”
They sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of whiskey and two glasses filled with the amber liquid and ice rested between them. They had cleaned the kitchen together, mopping up John’s vomit and dirt. Lance had begun an apology that John stopped short, his hand held out and his head turned to the side. The expression on the old man’s face read no need, and Lance held back the urge to continue regardless of John’s guilt.
I nearly killed him, Lance thought as he watched John sweep up the last vestiges of dirt from beneath the counter. I almost became him tonight. The thought brought a fresh bout of trembling, which he tried to calm by downing the first half of his drink as John settled into a chair at the other corner of the table.
John sipped the whiskey, and then regarded Lance before he finally began to speak. “Like I said before, when May and I moved here, we had a rough go of it. There wasn’t much work and we were thinking of going back south when your grandfather moved here and built that place you’re living in now. It was funny, the way he came to town. For a while there was only the old shipping bay, and then there was a house there, like it’d been plopped down out of the sky. I went up there on a hunch that he’d need some sort of help, and I was right. Your grandmother led me in and introduced me to Erwin—that was your grandfather’s name.”
“I know, found out tonight from Harold in town,” Lance said.
John only nodded before continuing. “They were from Germany. Refugees from the war. There were a lot like them back then, people still in shock and so broken from what they’d seen over there that they pulled up roots and got the hell out. From what I understood, Erwin and Annette had owned a good chunk of land over there when Hitler came to power. They weren’t on the same wavelength with that bastard, just like a lot of common people weren’t, but didn’t dare say a thing lest they would end up in a camp like the Jews. So your grandfather got an idea to harbor as many Jews as he could, to get them to take care of his land and work for him in general. It was almost like that movie awhile back, the one where the German industrialist hires all those people …”
“Schindler’s List,” Lance said as he took another sip of his whiskey.
“That’s it,” John said, pointing at him. “He did something like that. I think it was your grandparents’ way of doing what they could without fully revolting and getting killed. But they weren’t able to keep it up for long. The local SS somehow figured out what was going on. They came and executed all the Jews Erwin had working for him. They cut him too, your grandfather. Cut his face really bad. I only saw him once without the mask he usually wore. They took his nose right off, along with his upper lip too. It was horrible to look at. The way he told it, they wanted to make an example out of him, show every other German what would happen if they helped the Jews. So when the war was over, he and Annette came to America and eventually ended up here. They still had some money after selling their land, and Erwin started a little shipping line of his own with only two small boats to haul ore out of Duluth. After five years, he owned one of the largest lines in the city. That was about when your father was born.”
Lance stiffened and clenched his jaw. Up until this point, he had known nothing of his father’s history, and hadn’t dared to ask when he had still been alive. His mother had avoided questions about anything that resembled the past, so he had grown up oblivious to his lineage.
“I know this is a delicate subject with you, son, but I can’t shy away from it if you want the truth.”
“I do, but I want you to know that no matter what you’re about to tell me or how you remember my father from when he was younger, he became a monster who tortured my mother and me. He was a sadist that fed off our pain and suffering. I think deep down he wanted nothing more than to kill me and it was a freak accident that kept him from eventually doing so.” And you saw him tonight in the restaurant, the voice in his head intoned.
A shiver ran up Lance’s spine as he watched John nod with his eyes closed. “I understand and I think I can shed some light upon why your father was the way he was. Your grandfather was always kind to me. I think he was a good man deep down. He gave me a job when there was none to be had in the area. He paid me above the going rate and spread the word, through his wife, that I did great work caretaking at the place.
“But something was broken inside him. I could see it every time I set foot in the house to collect my pay. He would shamble from room to room like a specter, his shoulders hunched, and he would just stare out the windows at the lake. He didn’t acknowledge your father at all and barely said anything to your grandmother. It was only years later that I started noticing the bruises on both of them.” John licked his lips and raised the nearly empty glass to his lips. He closed his eyes again, lost in years past, as he swallowed the numbing liquid and let it seep through him.
“He was beating them,” Lance said flatly. He watched John’s shoulders slump beneath his light shirt.
John nodded again. “I think the war and the things he saw did something to him and he took it out on your father and your grandmother. I would see Anthony some days, his eye a nasty shade of purple and welts on his neck. Your grandmother’s arms were so bruised sometimes that she had to wear long sleeves, even in the hottest months of the summer. I saw, and I didn’t do anything. I could’ve told someone, anyone, and maybe I could’ve helped your father and grandmother, maybe even Erwin himself. If I hadn’t been so scared. I was terrified of losing my job and favor in the community. It was the only income we had at the time.”
Tears began to well up in the caretaker’s eyes, and Lance felt the urge to comfort him. He reached across the table and touched the thin skin of John’s hand. The old man didn’t acknowledge the contact.
“I thought your wife was a teacher? Didn’t she have a steady job?” Lance asked after a few moments. John pulled his hand away from Lance’s and drained the rest of his whiskey. He sat staring at the table’s surface for a long time before speaking again.
“I didn’t tell you before, but I had a son by that time too. His name was Henry. He was born late in our lives; the doctors told us early in our marriage that May couldn’t carry a child. We had quit hoping about the time she got pregnant. I was nearly forty-two by then, and May was forty. Henry was born with a disability; they never gave us a name for it. He didn’t learn to walk until he was three, and he was slow. He didn’t speak much, and when he did it was jumbled, indiscernible. May quit teaching when we realized that he would need someone home with him all the time, and money was tight, but we made do. We loved him with every ounce of our hearts.” The last word came out a hoarse whisper, and more tears flooded John’s eyes. He swallowed and poured another healthy draft of whiskey into the glass before him. He drank, then set the cup down with a clack that echoed in the quiet house. Lance watched him, a feeling of apprehension building in his stomach.
“He was twelve when he died. I had come home from working fourteen h
ours outside, and I was beat. My body ached and I could barely keep my head up. Henry met me in the driveway. Even though he was twelve, he still liked to be carried. I remember picking him up, and him cuddling against me. ‘Da,’ he used to call me—couldn’t say dad. I can still feel his cheek pressed against my neck. His body was warmer than the sun.
“May needed a few things in town. I told her I’d be fine, and would just take it easy inside while she was gone, let Henry watch some TV.” John paused to finish his drink and dropped his head until Lance could only see the crown of his gray hair.
“I was so sore that day. I got out the aspirin—it was sugarcoated. I thought I put it away in the cabinet, but I must’ve left it on the counter. I sat down in the chair in the living room and turned on the TV for Henry. Found an old cartoon for him to watch. I remember him sitting on the floor near my feet, rocking back and forth to the song the characters were singing. The next thing I heard was May screaming.”
Lance swallowed, his stomach churning the whiskey like water off a paddle wheel. John breathed shallowly, not looking at him. Lance waited. The bottles of booze hid away in John’s bedroom finally making sense.
“She found him in the kitchen, the empty bottle of aspirin nearby. He loved candy. Loved it, and he didn’t know any better.” John raised his head, and Lance saw the rough rivulets of tears finding their way through the wrinkled skin of the man’s face like water running through the desert. “The doctor said he just fell asleep, said he didn’t feel any pain, but I sometimes wonder at night when I can’t sleep or haven’t drank enough if that’s true. I wonder if he was scared as everything faded around him. I wonder if he called for me.”
Lance felt his own tears sliding freely down his cheeks, tickling like the beats of invisible moth wings. John opened his mouth and then closed it, and Lance wondered if he would be sick again, on the table this time instead of the floor.
John’s voice finally found its way out of his chest and into the air. “I wonder if he’ll forgive me when I see him again.” His face folded, grief twisting it. The house’s silence pressed upon them, as if it were holding its breath. Waiting for something.
After a time, John reached out and topped his glass off again, but when he offered it to Lance, the younger man waved it off, feeling too full and too drunk already.
“May wasn’t ever the same after that. She said she’d made her peace, had forgiven me for my unforgivable mistake, said she still loved me, but I could tell. Something broke inside her, and when it did, it gave passage to the disease that claimed her years later.”
“John, you can’t—” Lance began, but John’s words, louder than before, cut his off.
“Can’t what? Say things for what they were? I saw it. I took care of her as she passed from this world to the next, and Henry’s face was the only reflection in her eyes, not mine. And I don’t blame her a bit.” John shuffled his feet below the table and sat back in his chair, his blood-red eyes staring straight at Lance. “You try to get along in life without being noticed too much. Just try to make a living and take care of your family without disturbing something that might come back at you with teeth. Life is a shattered glass that we’re all treadin’ on, tryin’ not to crack it any further lest we all fall through. I know that what happened to Henry was punishment for not setting things right at that house,” he continued. “I saw Erwin was beating them and I did nothing. I’m as much to blame for what happened to you as I am for my Henry. I put my own ambitions and employment before the needs of others. And now I’m reaping it.” He turned the brown-tinted glass in one hand. “And this is all I have left.” He raised it and took a long pull before setting it down in the center of the watery ring it had left on the table.
“You can’t carry it all on your shoulders. The world has too many avenues to pinpoint one as the wrong choice. My father might have been a lunatic even if he had a good family life, you never know,” Lance said, staring across the kitchen at the ticking hand of the clock over the stove.
“Yes, that’s what kills me sometimes, never knowing,” John said.
The oppressive stillness surrounded them, huddled close, until Lance asked the question he had been wondering since he first heard Harold speak his family’s name. “What happened to them, my grandparents?”
John shifted in his chair and seemed to come out of the fog the past had enveloped him in. “Your father moved out the year he turned eighteen, wasn’t a surprise to anyone in the area. Erwin and Annette kept on like they had all along; they were considered recluses by most. They didn’t socialize much on account of how Erwin looked, I imagine. No, they kept to themselves until a man by the name of Aaron Haff came to town. He just showed up one day—no one saw him arrive or how he got here—and he started asking a few questions around town.” John turned his head and looked at Lance, his eyes showing no signs of the whiskey coursing through him. “Asking about your grandfather. He stayed about a week, befriended Harold and Josie’s daughter actually, before he went up to your grandparents’ house one afternoon, walked in the front door, and shot Erwin through the head.”
The clock’s ticking became the loudest sound in the house as Lance leaned forward, sure he hadn’t heard the old man correctly. “Someone murdered him?” he asked.
John nodded again, sipping more genially out of his cup. “From what the police gathered, he came in, pointed a gun at Annette and Erwin, and made Erwin kneel down on the floor of the living room. Blew his brains out with a forty-five.”
The silvery stain on the living-room floor surfaced in Lance’s mind. He could see the speckles radiating out around the main mass—the splatters. Lance felt like he might be sick. All at once he felt too hot, his light clothes clinging to him, suffocating him. He almost told John he needed to use the bathroom when the caretaker continued.
“Annette saw the whole thing. She shut right down, never spoke again as far as I heard. Couldn’t do much for herself after that. Your father came back for the funeral but didn’t stay. Annette ended up at the retirement home just south of town, needed care and medication, I believe. They buried Erwin at the place there, just like he wanted. Said so in his will, as much as I gathered. His grave is off on the north side of the property, just a little trail leading into the woods. You can see the lake from there. Not a bad place to rest.”
Lance sat absorbing everything that had flooded into his life in the past two hours. It became a mountainous pile of intermingling information. As soon as he began to climb, trying to unthread a single strain of reckoning from it, he would fall back to the bottom. As he fumbled within his mind, another aspect began to take flight in the midst of all the confusion. Something whispered to him that everything that had happened since he had moved into the house now had an explanation. He was meant to come here. Something had pulled him to the house and had shown him things. The locked door, the opalescent stain, the night visitations, Andy’s trance, and now the revelation that the estate had been in his family before. He had finally come home. No matter what, you always come home.
Lance’s eyes fluttered and he felt John’s hand on his forearm.
“Thought I lost you there for a minute.”
Lance tried to smile and drank the last of his whiskey. “Just a lot to comprehend.”
“I can’t even imagine, son. I know it’s a shock to you, and that’s why I had such a hard time coming out with it. That, and the guilt I felt every time I looked at you.”
Lance sighed and bowed his head. “It’s not your fault, and thank you for telling me. It wasn’t easy on you, either. When did this happen?”
“Nineteen-eighty,” John replied.
Lance closed his eyes, the number already having formed itself in his mind. The year he had been born. Of course.
“And what happened to this Aaron, the murderer?”
John rubbed his brow. “The police caught him. In fact, he sat right down on the sofa after he killed Erwin, like he was spent. They put him in prison but never got a r
eason out of him, wouldn’t talk to anyone. He died a few years back down in Illinois—that’s where they shipped him after the trial.”
Lance exhaled. Another dead end. He had been hoping that the man could’ve possibly answered some more questions that would inevitably pop up when all this sank in. “So is my grandmother buried next to my grandfather?” Lance asked.
John stared out of the darkened window in the kitchen before swallowing and gazing at Lance. His eyes looked strange, and it had nothing to do with the broken vessels surrounding the pupils. Lance could see a wavering there, like a candle held before a breeze.
“She’s still alive.”
Chapter 9
“There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and places one shouldn’t tread.”
—Unknown
Riverside Serenity Home sat several miles to the south of Stony Bay and was tucked off the road so that all one could see when passing was a corner of the main building and several cars on the edge of the parking lot. Lance vaguely recalled seeing it on his drives to and from the house during the buying process and the move. Several acres of manicured lawns rolled against one another, dotted here and there with strategically placed hardwoods. The building itself hid behind multilayered rows of towering pines that swayed in the early-morning wind.
An overcast sky greeted Lance that morning when he rose, the trip already a surety in his plans for the day. As he stepped from the Land Rover onto the paved parking lot before the nursing home, he appraised the clouds that hung just out of the pines’ reach.