The Astor Orphan

by Alexandra Aldrich

  I looked hard, half-expecting to see the fat white Lab drinking from the stream by Grandma Claire’s house, a canine ghost amid the dark green foliage.

  Suddenly, a magnificent ball of orange rose over the roofs of the barnyard, as if the sun were rising at the wrong time and in the wrong place, its edges blurring and blending as they expanded outward.

  “Holy smokes!” I exclaimed. “What’s that?” I’d never seen so much fire. Mom and I both started running toward it. “Maybe it’s the yellow house.” It seemed an appropriate end for Sonny Day, with his heliophilic name, to be cremated by the sun itself.

  “It’s too far north to be the creamery.”

  “Maybe it’s the greenhouse.” Once all glass, the original Rokeby greenhouse had been converted into a residence by Dad in the late 1960s, with the help of a Bulgarian named Boris, who was known for his dramatic recitations of Poe’s poem “The Raven” in Bulgarian.

  Mom and I soon found the tenants congregated at the top of the hill.

  The lower barn—a solid three-story gambrel-roofed barn—was on fire. Eaten by flames, it was mesmerizing: melting, dying with more fanfare than it had ever known in its lifetime. The lower barn had always been a dark place, its floors lined with loose straw, smelling of death. It had never been alive with animals in my time, only dead with skeletons of cattle in some of the stalls. Abandoned, it felt to me as if it had already been dead for years.

  “Save it, damn it!” Uncle Harry suddenly torpedoed through the crowd, sweating in his suit and tie. “I’ll catch whoever’s responsible for this!” He ran down the hill toward the barn with one hand in the air, his index finger pointing upward like a torch-bearing messenger rushing between villages with urgent news. Then he suddenly disappeared from view.

  “He’s fallen into Ted’s ditch!”

  The ditch, which Dad had been digging since spring, was like a moat around a fortress, making the lower barn inaccessible to fire trucks. While it saved Uncle Harry, it doomed the barn.

  Good-bye, old barn.

  AFTER THE FIRE, Bianca returned to Grandma’s, looking thinner. One-armed Roy had found her locked in one of the junked cars out in our woods. The cars, thirty in all, were lined up, hoodless and paintless, with tires strewn about, pools of broken glass next to some.

  In the wake of Cricket’s disappearance, only Dad had a motive for locking Bianca in a junked car.

  “Did you know anything about this?” Grandma asked me.

  I was caught in the middle. I had seen revenge in Dad’s face when he asked me about Cricket, and I’d sensed that rage had temporarily transformed him, but did that make me an accomplice?

  “No!” I said defensively. I felt accused by her knowing look: her lips pursed in annoyance, her eyebrows furrowed, her eyes glaring at a slight angle over the rim of her glasses. She could get a false confession out of me if she glared at me this way for long enough.

  But instead, Grandma Claire turned the criticism against herself, because someone had to take the blame. “I must have done something wrong to deserve such a son. . . . Well, I’ll be dead soon, anyway. Then you’ll all be rid of me.”

  Grandma Claire would often say this, hoping it would get us to repent and mend our ways.

  Despite her implied resignation, Grandma retaliated anyway, by disposing of Dad’s goats. For the time being, exactly how and where she disposed of them remained a mystery.

  By mid-August, any semblance of structure and practice—my pillars of sanity—had blown away like napkins at a garden party. Swimming lessons had come to an end. I’d stopped following my to-do list. Mrs. Gunning had gone away on vacation, so my practice record sat dry and empty. Month of August: no progress whatsoever.

  Unprotected by work, I was consumed by the darkness.

  It was therefore a great relief when Giselle’s husband, Jacques, arrived on our doorstep—just days before our annual Rokeby square dance. Finally an authoritative adult had decided to intervene in our chaotic lives.

  He charged into our kitchen, wearing a dress shirt and tie, presumably on his way home from work. “Un mot, monsieur, s’il vous plait,” he said to my dad. He ignored Mom and me, adding only, “En privé.”

  Dad led the way, through the windowless pantry, redolent of tuna and chicken cat dinners; past the giant cupboard that stored the green-and-gold-rimmed Astor china; past the portrait of John Jay Chapman, the tapestry of Pompey, and the engraving of George Washington. Jacques was at his heels, a full head shorter, with a square frame, an inflated chest, and hunched, rounded shoulders. With his multiple chins tucked into his neck, he was a bulldog of a man.

  All I could hear through the door was a fast stream of incomprehensible words, with an emphasis every fifth word or so, like small gunshots. The conversation was clearly one-sided. I felt humiliation for Dad as he got a severe scolding. But did he feel it? I wondered. Later, Mom reported that after Jacques had given Dad an earful in French, he had slapped Dad hard enough to give him a bloody nose. I imagined Jacques challenging Dad to a duel, to defend his French honor, and Dad explaining that it would be impossible just now, as none of his weapons were currently in working order. Aside from the collection of rusted swords in cracked, crumbling leather sheaths in the front library, Dad had only various shotguns that he used for hunting.

  He used one of these to kill a pig for the square dance.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A MANLY ENDEAVOR

  Courtesy of Sarah Stitham

  Dad had started up our tradition of an annual square dance in the early seventies. It included a potluck picnic, but Dad provided the meat. Every year, he would buy a small live pig several days in advance.

  This year, we kids peered in to see the pig lying down on the backseat of a crashed-up, tire-less 1968 Volvo that had been lying around the barnyard for some time. The animal’s grotesquely fat belly heaved as it panted.

  “Here, piggy, piggy, pig! Awww.”

  It stuck its snout toward us and sniffed the air through the crack in the window. The flaps of its snout around the nostrils wiggled visibly. We tapped the glass, laughing.

  Dad and company had unloaded the pig into this junked car, the only one in Dad’s collection that still had all its doors on. At first, the animal had squealed and torn up what was left of the car seats, but eventually, the heat inside the vehicle had subdued it.

  The pig was too lethargic now to get up from its reclining position on its side, with its fat top legs folded politely over its bottom legs, its cloven hooves pointing at a forty-five-degree angle, in a permanent tippy-toe stance.

  The pig could suffocate in the closed-up car under August’s noonday sun, if someone didn’t shoot it soon. But no one seemed to worry about treating the pig humanely, because we all knew it would be killed shortly.

  A bit later in the day, Dad climbed into the Volvo’s driver’s seat with a shotgun. I couldn’t watch, so I hid behind the barn. There followed a slightly muffled explosion inside the vehicle as he shot the pig in the head at close range. Once the worst was over, I returned to the scene.

  As Dad and a few of his buddies dragged the pig out by its hind feet, it hit the dirt with a thud. Then they threw it into the front loading bucket of Dad’s tractor. Dad raised the bucket, now carrying Roy as well, up to a branch of the Chinese chestnut tree that would drop sweet edible chestnuts encased in their prickly shells onto the groundskeeper’s lawn.

  Standing on the edge of the bucket, Roy—who was extraordinarily adroit for a one-armed man—wrapped a rope several times around the sturdy branch, then tied the other end of the rope around the pig’s hind feet.

  “Okay. Lower her down!” he shouted. As the bucket descended slowly, the pig’s body began to slide out of the bucket, until—whap!—it fell into midair with a snap as the rope tensed between the branch and its ankles. The long peach-colored sack of flesh swayed as it hung. The single bullet wound in its head leaked one rivulet of red—a clean shot.

  “Okay. Let’s slice
’er open!” Dad said.

  Roy brought a stepping stool and butcher knife to the pig’s side, climbed up the three steps, and placed his stub on the pig’s flank to steady it. Its beady blue eyes, with white eyelashes, were open. Its meaty ears hung down. Its snout was still.

  Roy then made one silent cut from the throat all the way up, up the gut. The edges started to redden as soon as the blade created them; then the blood burst through the seams, and Roy jumped away. The stepping stool got rained on by the steady red downpour.

  Sonny Day now rushed down the porch steps of the barnyard’s yellow farmhouse. “Keep that blood off my lawn, you sonsofbitches! Goddamnitall! And stay away from my roses!” he shouted. He stood protectively next to his circular rose garden, immured by chicken wire, and rested his weight on his hedge clippers. His hair was thinning and white. Behind him was a dying crab apple tree, gnarled and hollow.

  Dad wore some rubber dishwashing gloves that he’d swiped from Mom. He climbed onto the stool and sank his hand into the pig’s belly, up to the elbow, then pulled out endless lengths of the fat, gray, wormlike intestines. He reached in again and pulled out a pink sac. Everything was coated with blood.

  We kids stood on the periphery, grimacing and hunching over, exclaiming:

  “Yuck!”

  “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “Gross me out! Ewww!”

  The pig was left to drain, with its entrails resting beside it in two large metal pots—also from Mom’s supply. Some of the intestines hung over one pot’s brim, too long to fit neatly inside.

  Aunt Olivia’s horses got a few hours’ respite when the flies abandoned them to visit this new and delectable supply of free blood.

  ON THE MORNING of the square dance, I found Dad and his buddies sitting out on our front lawn on metal folding chairs. Today they were the keepers of the spit, seated around a pig corpse that had been impaled on a pole, with handles for turning it over the fire. Its stomach cavity and mouth were stuffed with apples and wrapped in chicken wire.

  About midmorning, the beer kegs arrived, like oversize silver bullets. They came topped by black hand pumps and rubber hoses with taps on the ends for spraying the foamy, golden ale. At the party, the kids would inevitably sneak a little, because it was fun to squirt the bitter, burning liquid straight into our mouths. The grown-ups were usually too drunk to notice.

  By late afternoon, the women and girls of Rokeby had gotten into our dancing dresses. Some of us had petticoats. My dress was yellow with a patchwork of large red and blue diamonds on the bodice. The hem had red ruffles below the knee.

  A group of professional musicians—replete with a square-dance caller—set up on the front porch overlooking the circular driveway, which had to be hosed down so it wouldn’t be too dusty for the dancers.

  About fifty dancers lined up in two rows, partners facing each other. Everybody was clapping to the beat, hootin’ and hollerin’. The end couple held hands and skipped sideways down the aisle, then back again. When they got to the end, they parted ways, one turning to the left, the other to the right. And the rows followed them, turning themselves inside out as each dancer skipped down the outside of the rows. At the bottom of the new line, the end couple formed a bridge with their hands and each couple passed under it, taking their place in the new line. The couple now at the end skipped sideways down the aisle.

  I flew down the center in my dancing dress, skipping sideways between the rows with one of Dad’s buddies, to hoots and calls. Our feet made scratching sounds as they kicked up the dust.

  By sunset, the pig was fully roasted and ready to feast on. Some guys were carving it on a table made from a sheet of plywood resting on two sawhorses. People picked at the greasy meat with their fingers. The brown skin was crisp and crunchy. I couldn’t imagine it as the same animal that, just yesterday, had squealed and panted in the junked Volvo, then hung upside down from the Chinese chestnut tree in the barnyard.

  The sun went down. Little kids began to pass out on the lawn from exhaustion. Some kids’ faces were smeared with dust and tears as they wandered wide-eyed among the dancing, mingling guests, whimpering for their parents and bed.

  Other stragglers had retired to the sofas in the home parlor.

  It felt very late.

  Mom was in the parlor, laughing and talking loudly to a small group of men, with a glass of beer in her hand. She was dressed in her white jeans, the only pants of hers that I approved of. But the white tuxedo jacket and red bandanna around her neck offset any coolness that the jeans might have bestowed. Her manner was wanton.

  “And then Jacques—hiccup—like little Napoléon, slapped Teddy across the face!” Mom, who was only this lively when she’d had some alcohol, was laughing as she made an approximation of a slap through the air.

  Dad was always the last one to leave any party, especially his own. But while he usually fell asleep midconversation and had to be woken up before taking his leave, tonight he was surprisingly animated. Overhearing Mom, he froze in midsentence. He had that rare wolflike look in his eye. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” He got up and approached Mom. “Ala, it’s time to go to bed now.”

  Mom stumbled a bit as she continued to laugh hysterically, her eyes swollen slits.

  One of the men reached out to help steady her, but Dad cut in, grabbing her elbow forcibly. “Ala, we’re going upstairs now!”

  I felt nervous because I didn’t think I’d ever seen him assert himself with Mom before.

  “No!” She pulled away. “I don’t have to listen to you. You’re a swine!”

  He started to steer her out of the parlor, holding her by the elbow all the while. She tried to pull away from his grip. “No, I won’t go. Why didn’t you handle Jacques like this after he whacked you?”

  I followed on their heels, embarrassed not only in front of the remaining guests, but also in front of George Washington with his white horse and Pompey. At the foot of the stairs, Mom was still trying to slip out of Dad’s grip like a willful toddler, but Dad was too strong. As he stood on the first step, facing backward, he held her hands and just pulled, taking a step up. Mom’s feet had to follow, so she tripped on the first step, landing on her knees. Dad just kept pulling until her body straightened. Then he started to drag her.

  Thump, thump, thump . . . As her body hit each dirty step, it swept it clean.

  Mom was cracking up.

  “Dad, stop it!” I cried.

  Thump, thump, thump . . .

  “Your mother’s been a bad girl. She must go to her room,” he stated, as if in a trance, repeating orders.

  My palms were sweaty, and I felt that familiar sensation: a heavy heart, shortness of breath.

  Past the crumbling faux marble and the certificate for Uncle Lewis from the New York State senate. Past the portraits of John Jay Chapman and William B. Astor.

  Thump, thump, thump . . .

  As she laughed, Dad said, in the chastising voice of a teacher, “It’s not funny, Ala.”

  Thump, thump, thump . . .

  “Oww . . .” I noticed that despite her laughter, Mom’s face was wet.

  Past the once-white banister.

  As soon as Dad reached the top floor, Mom—now sobered up by panic—took off like a deer into the night, through our apartment and into her bathroom. I heard the click of the hook and eye inside.

  “Mom!” I screamed, racing after her and feeling responsible. I could hear her blubbering inside.

  “Idz do dupy!” she shouted between sobs. I knew the word dupa from a silly Polish rhyme Dad used to say all the time: “Pupa, kupa, dupa. Kto zjadl moja zupe?” This translated as “Butt, poop, ass. Who ate my soup?” Mom used to tell me not to repeat the rhyme because it had a bad word in it, but she wouldn’t tell me which one it was. Now I assumed it was dupa.

  I howled and pounded on the paneled bathroom door for Mom to let me in.

  “Go to your room.”

  “I won’t go unless y
ou let me in first.”

  “Go to your room. . . . Don’t worry. . . . I just need to go to the bathroom.”

  “I don’t want to. I just want to come in.” Eventually, though, I grew too tired and gave up. And I never did get to see Mom crying on the toilet seat.

  I felt afraid of this cold, violent man whom I saw only very rarely. This was the same man I had seen after Grandma Claire had had Cricket put to sleep.

  But I knew from that experience that once Dad had satisfied his need for revenge, everything would return to life as usual, without further comment.

  In our family, in the tradition of the Astor orphans, one got away with outrageous behavior. There would be no immediate consequences. Instead each wound would fester for years to come.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LIKE PROPER ARISTOCRATS

  Courtesy of Ralph Gabriner

  I rode around and around the circular driveway in front of the house on my pedal-brake bike. I pretended to be lost in my own child’s world as I stood and pushed down on the pedals with all my ninety-one pounds, pretending that Cricket was not dead, that the goats weren’t missing, that the lower barn was not a pile of ashes, and that I had not lost all desire to ride around the property on Dad’s tractor fender.

  My bike flew forward in thrusts. The Catskills seemed to be crouched in a huddle with their backs to me.

  The other survivors of the past summer had gone. Aunt Liz and family had returned to their urban, Parisian life, with their Ovaltine, fresh baguettes and croissants, Mercedes, school uniforms, and au pairs.

  Giselle, too, had returned to France with her family, allegedly for reasons relating to her husband’s work. As suddenly as the hurricane had come, it was gone. But as in the aftermath of any great storm, nothing would be the way it had been before.

  Mom was now hanging the underside of her long hair out to dry, over her knees, on the warm, wide stone porch steps. Dad was under a car, fiddling with an oil cap that had soaked his hands black. A few of his sidekicks were standing around observing his machinations. One-armed Roy was there, and obsequious Pete, still in his early twenties and searching for himself.