by Cesare, Adam
*
“Quaint,” Christine said. She didn’t mean it too, but the word came out sounding sarcastic. This was her blessing and her curse.
The sidewalk leading away from The Brant Hotel was lined with white flowers, the topsoil under them a rich dark brown, speckled with the occasional white Miracle-Gro grain. The town cared about how it looked.
Christine wrapped an arm around Jane’s waist. Bert gave a low growl as she got close, but it was perfunctory, just the sound he made when anyone besides Jane entered his bubble.
“It’s not our honeymoon, you know, that was almost a year ago,” Jane said.
“I know. It’s an early anniversary celebration, then. If you don’t want the nicest room in the hotel, I can still check if they’ve got those double beds available.”
Jane smiled. They were only a year apart but Jane would always look ten years younger. She had a girlish face, even as the lines crept in around her eyes and dimples. This close, Christine would be able to spot a hint of gray in her black hair if Jane did not take such pains to dye it every week or so.
The Brant Hotel may have stacked up the lofty expectations presented by the pictures on the website, but the town of Mission was underwhelming. It had none of the artisan shops and cafes that could be found in similarly sized New England towns, just a few store fronts that wouldn’t be of interest to anyone besides the locals. There was a general store and gas station opposite the hotel. Christine had a hard time distinguishing where the store ended and the gas station began. It was possible that they were the same thing. There was a neon RX sign in the window of the store. The inclusion of a pharmacy made it three destinations if you were willing to be generous.
A block down from the hotel was a post office, the sign outside labeling it Mission’s Historic Post Office with no further elaboration on what made the building historic. It was nice, the white façade and columns recently painted, but Christine wasn’t going to take the extra step to inquire about its historical significance.
Bert made a kind of crying/whining sound, a favorite of his. In some ways taking care of him was the perfect training for a baby. Jane bent and set him on the ground, taking his lead out of her jacket pocket and clipping it to the back of his sweater.
Most dogs walked or scurried, but Bert pranced.
“What? Do you have to do poops?” Jane asked Bert in the voice she reserved only for him.
In answer, Bert yapped and growled.
“I think he wants a snack,” Jane said.
Christine shaded her eyes from the sun, craning her head to see beyond the post office. There was nothing except a small park with a white-and-green gazebo, nice but not going to help fill Bert’s belly.
“The general store looks like the only game in town,” she said. Jane nodded and Christine took her arm as they walked across the street. It wasn’t necessary. There was no traffic at all running through Mission. Main Street was offset from the highway, and the only reason you’d drive it would be if you had business in Mission or the surrounding areas, not if you wanted to get to any of the hundred more exciting small towns in Berkshire County.
Sleigh bells greeted their arrival to the store, the same kind that had been tied to the front door of The Brant. It must have been a town mandate.
The shelves were stocked with rows of groceries, many of which looked like they’d been there for a while. There was no dust, but the sun from the front window had faded some of the packages. Everything looked older in a town like Mission.
“Good afternoon,” the man behind the counter said. He had a pharmacists white coat slung over his plaid button-down, thick glasses over his nose and under that a reddish-gray mustache. They’d stopped at the Norman Rockwell Museum this morning and, upon seeing this guy, Christine was gripped with the sudden terror that they were still there.
“Hello,” Jane said. “Do you by any chance have dog treats?”
“Well, I think we might. Let me go look wit’cha,” he said. The man rubbed his head, the motion feeling affected and genuine at the same time. It seemed to say, “Bear with me because I’m having a folksy senior moment.”
As he talked and gestured, Christine thought of the man in the white coat as an old man, but he was probably right around their own age. The realization saddened her, like looking in a mirror too closely and under the wrong kind of light. Christine was anything but vain, but her mortality was a touchy subject.
The man walked down three aisles before bending to one knee and grabbing a package of Snausages for Jane. It was a cardboard box with a cartoon dog on it. Bert’s Snausages always seemed to come in a colorful plastic baggie.
Christine thought of the yappy little fucker eating tainted, ancient Snausages and had to stifle a laugh.
The man made a theatrical groaning sound as he got to his feet. Jane offered him a hand, but he waved it off.
“Nah, thank you, darling. If I don’t get my exercise I’ll never be able to get up and down when I get old one day.”
He was charming, no doubts there.
“Y’both staying at the hotel?” the man asked.
“Yes. We haven’t even seen our room yet. They’re still making it up,” Jane said, putting the box of Snausages under one arm and trying to pick up Bert with her other. His prancing on the store’s linoleum flooring was getting too loud to still be considered polite. He wiggled away from her and she left him to walk under his own power. Bert got what he wanted, even if he was usually much more apt to obey Jane.
“You’re going to have a great time,” the man said, walking them back to the register. “There’s been articles calling it the best kept secret of Massachusetts, and I think you’re going to see why.”
“We look forward to it,” Christine said and reached for her wallet. “How much for those?”
“Two fifty, but an even two if I can get yer names. I’m Pat Dwyer. You’ll be seeing me around, I bet. Even if you don’t come back to the store. I make deliveries to Ms. Brant, whatever she needs.”
“That’s very sweet of you to knock off the fifty cents. I’m Jane and this is Christine.”
Christine noticed how she kept off the last name. Christine hadn’t been the one to suggest she take it, either; that had been Jane’s idea. And no, they weren’t sisters, Pat.
“Pleasure to meet you lovely ladies.”
Christine held the door open for Jane, but Bert took this as opening the door for him. He stopped sniffing around the checkout counter and quickened his pace to dance out the store. The smug look on his rat face that seemed to tell Christine, “She’s my lady now, what you going to do about it, bitch?”
“One more thing,” Pat called back before either of them had a chance to use the door. “Kind of a tip to get the most out of your stay.”
“Thanks,” Jane said, “and what is the tip?”
“My buddy Roy is the chef over at the hotel. Best cook in town, easy. If you want to have a great stay, the trick is to get in good with him. If you show him that dog of yours, let him play around with him, you’ll eat like royalty the whole time you’re here.”
Christine smiled, not sure what to say to Pat’s pro-tip.
“Roy’s like a big kid, only he’s got a mustache. The guy loves dogs.” Pat laughed to himself, something told Christine that he’d practiced this bit before. She grinned and imagined Roy as a simpleton who liked to fuck dogs.
Bert barked from the sidewalk, letting them know that he would like to proceed on their tour of Mission.
Let him have Bert, Christine thought.
Chapter Sixteen
Daisy knocked twice, the way she always did before entering Father Hayden’s room.
Ms. Brant called Father Hayden their most powerful weapon against the evils of the outside world. Even though he looked like a sick, defeated man and smelled of his own excrement, Daisy had learned not to doubt Ms. Brant.
The Father was sleeping as she entered, but even in the relative rest of sleep, his breaths soun
ded like pained moans. She took his water pitcher from his bedside table and brought it into the bathroom. There she rinsed and refilled it, the pitcher cool against her hands.
When she returned, Father Hayden was awake, dead eyes seeming to stare at her for a moment before sweeping the rest of the room.
“It’s just Daisy, Father,” she said. “No other visitors today.”
She held the pitcher with one hand, using the back of her other to caress the smooth skin behind his ear.
Even though he gave a small gasp at her touch, as she kept her hand there it seemed to calm him. This was their secret signal that it was only his caretaker and no-one else. His only other regular visitor was Ms. Brant, and why a great wizard should fear someone as humble and compassionate as Ms. Brant, Daisy would never understand.
Daisy had requested that they try their best to only move him downstairs at regular intervals as not to upset his routine, but the schedule was dictated by Ms. Brant and the celestial calendar. The result of this was that Father Hayden was always agitated in the days following a ceremony, unsure that he wasn’t going to be picked up by Roy and moved to his throne downstairs every time someone entered the room.
Using the faint condensation watermark as a guide, Daisy placed the pitcher back in its spot. She made sure the handle faced the bed to reduce the risk that Father Hayden would spill.
“Feeding time,” Daisy said, running a finger down Hayden’s throat, over his Adam’s apple. This was their signal for mealtime.
The man made a clicking sound in his throat, the scar tissue around his mouth pulling tighter, a bead of drool dropping from the nearly lipless hole in his face.
Daisy untangled the messenger bag from her around her shoulders, the strap snagging on her small golden pin. The pin was in the shape of a small golden hare. Ms. Brant had given it to her years ago and she’d had to solder a new clasp on twice.
From beside the bed, she drew Hayden’s tray. Rise and Shine! was spelled out in yellow letters along the borders of the tray, a smiling sun in the center of the plastic, its face a grooved to grip a plate. The tray was built to serve breakfast in bed, but Father Hayden took all his meals this way.
Daisy sat down on the edge of the bed, the extra weight once again making the man irritable. He tried to draw his legs up, but couldn’t get his knees past the legs of the tray.
“Don’t do that or I can’t give you your dinner.” She shushed him and spoke to him calmly, even though he couldn’t really hear her.
Drawing his three courses out of the bag, she placed all three canisters on the tray, then guided one of Hayden’s hands over to it.
Three out of his five fingers were missing nails and all of the tips were smooth and lineless. They were like the hands of a wax figure that had been kept too long in the sun, indefinite and formless.
“Carrots,” she said, holding his hand over the first small container. “Berries,” she shouted, moving to the second.
He shook free of her grip and found the third, larger Tupperware container on his own.
“Meat,” she said as she watched him pry off the lid and dip one finger into the food.
“Here, here,” she said, trying to put a plastic spoon into his hand.
It was too late, though. He already had the finger in his mouth. It must have been difficult to suck with no lips because the face he made while eating with his hands collapsed his face in an expression of agony. The melted skin of his non-cheeks drew taut as froth bubbled at the sides of his mouth.
She watched him eat, stopping only occasionally to hack into a napkin, a glob of mucus and food sometimes coming back out through his nostrils instead of his mouth.
After the meat was gone, he calmed down and ate the fruits and vegetables with his spoon.
Before she knew him, Father Hayden used to scare Daisy.
She’d feared not only his grotesque exterior, but also the eternal punishment that could await her because she found him disgusting. She knew, of course, that the Lord knew what was in her heart, which is why she was relieved when she began to enjoy her visits to room thirty-one.
It gave her pleasure to have someone depend on her. There were times when she felt that way while attending to guests, but it was nothing compared to what she got from her relationship with Father Hayden.
Not only was she helping Ms. Brant, but in the process of serving her duty to the hotel she’d gained the companionship of perhaps its most important resident.
“You’re looking out for me, aren’t you?” Daisy asked him.
Father Hayden looked in her direction for a moment before continuing with his carrot purée. It was a good thing he couldn’t see, because the carrots came out of him looking exactly the way they went in. This was a gross observation, but it made her smile, a secret she was in on that Hayden would never get to know.
“No, I forgot. You’re looking out for all of us.”
His cataracts stared back at her, his throat undulating as he pushed down a mouthful of carrot and berry mixture.
“Well, everyone except the ones in the woods. You’ve got an eye on them, but for a different reason, right?”
Father Hayden set down the spoon, letting it clatter to the tray and leave a splotch of berries and seeds in the middle of the cartoon sun’s face.
“A lesbian couple checked into the hotel today. A married lesbian couple. Can you believe it?” She didn’t always talk to Father Hayden about hotel gossip, but it was nice to say the things she was thinking aloud sometimes.
“I think Ms. Brant will mark them. Not only because they are flagrantly living in sin, but because things had gone so wrong with the Chopins. That boy’s body flopping around like that, it made a mockery of the ceremony. Ms. Brant was so mad at Roy I thought she was going to fire him.”
Father Hayden never responded and this time was no different.
“They’ve got a dog, too. You know how Roy gets with dogs. I told him he could have it,” she said, he probably didn’t know how Roy got with dogs, or who Roy was, or anything at all. It was nice to talk to someone, though. “I didn’t check permission with Ms. Brant. Was that a mistake, you think?”
He gave no response.
“Well, if they’re going to end up marked, that means you’re going to be going back downstairs sooner rather than later,” she said.
She couldn’t be sure if he was reacting to this, or had just had enough of sitting up in front of the tray. He screamed the best he could, his half-tongue slapping against the roof of his mouth, then he put both hands under the tray and tried to flip it over.
Daisy caught the edge of it and pressed it back down before he could dump the canisters of puree all over the bedspread.
Sometimes he acted so much like a child that Daisy felt pangs of doubt creep up in the back of her mind. Could he really be their powerful protector? She crushed them, though, as she did all doubts.
There was no room for doubt in any part of her life, least of all her faith.
Chapter Seventeen
Eden was beautiful even though her scar was not.
Not all of her beauty came from her youth, but much of it did and she would do anything to be allowed to keep it. She’d asked this favor of Davey on numerous occasions, but each time she asked he simply looked at her and shook his head.
She hated him and loved him when he made that face, as she hated him and loved him during all of her waking hours.
When Eden asked him to guide her towards eternal youth, his expression told her all she needed to know. His half-sad smile reminded her of what he’d said the first time she asked.
“When you ask the impossible, for Him to grant you eternal youth, you are presenting us with a paradox,” Davey said, stopping to explain. “That’s when something that seems like it can’t be true possesses truth.
“When you ask him that, you are exhibiting the wonder and bottomless faith of someone who will always be young, so in a way the very act of asking is seeing your wish fulfilled.
Do you understand what I’m saying? You will never grow old as long as you believe that he holds the power to stop you from aging.”
She had to think about that for a long while, but after she did the answer made perfect sense. It still did not stop the dark marks under her eyes from growing more pronounced with each passing day, though.
Davey’s words were often poetic, but she wished that they also had the power to keep the skin of her cheeks elastic and to erase the scar on the back of her arm.
Eden wondered how she could feel so young at night and so old in the afternoon. In the full daylight of her father’s fields, miles from the shade of the forest, she could see every imperfection on her body.
It was so bright that she imagined she could see the faults of her face, even without a mirror. Her hair that seemed lustrous and full at night seemed dry and frail in the daytime. She feared that if she touched it in the daylight it would break off her scalp, the way dead grass crumbled underfoot after a freeze.
Her pale eyes that reflected the bonfire so well in Davey’s camp seemed dull and cold at home.
Her father had never mentioned her eyes or hair specifically, but she knew that even he could tell that they had lost their luster.
These days her father was reluctant to talk to her at the breakfast table. He’d grown distant from his daughter now that she was no longer his little girl, twenty-six years being the statute of limitations for holding that title.
Eden’s father was a busy man, anyway. He worked his land hard, paid his tithe to that old bitch in the hotel, and sang her praises when he was able to feed and clothe the three mouths of his family.
It was no kind of life for a modern man. Eden had felt that her father’s existence was meaningless, known it to be true even before she had started talking with Davey.
“I want to kill my father,” she’d once said to Davey.
“And what would your mother do?” Davey had asked.
“She’d have the farm. She could hire a farmhand or find a new husband.”