Zanesville: A Novel

by Kris Saknussemm

  “Don’t you still see his face?” Clearfather asked.

  “Yeah, but . . . uh . . . it’s distorted . . . like people whose identity remains secret.”

  Warhol made another Baskervillean grumble.

  “Can Warhol come?” Clearfather asked.

  “Why not?” Wilton laughed. “More fuel for the fire!”

  To get to Ernst’s side of the estate they had to cross the remains of the lumpy croquet ground and the marsh of the bowling green—then weave through a barren orchard and across the soggy polo field to where the observatory had burned down—then over a wobbly bridge spanning a septic-smelling pond to the former caretaker’s house, which was enclosed by a fumigation tent.

  “Aha,” said Wilton. “They’ll be in the Pleasure Prism.”

  At first glance Ernst Brand appeared to be a bearded, useless gentleman in his late fifties, although Clearfather realized it was possible that with the right medications and surgical procedures he could be much older. Seventy-five, perhaps—but a hundred? They found him wearing a cashmere sweater and L.L. Bean loafers with a Patek Philippe attached to his wrist, attempting to mix a martini from a portable mini bar in the foyer of a glass building that looked like a giant chandelier designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

  “This is Mr. Clearfather,” Wilton said. “He saved my life.”

  “I’m celebrating tonight,” Ernst replied. “I’m boycotting the dinner party. Thorndike is preparing predinner punch and then fresh mudcrab with an unoaked Chardonnay, and crème du chocolat silvered with ice-cold Polish vodka and glazed with Cointreau.”

  Clearfather could feel a twinge of pain in his head. Here was a man whose younger brother, full or half, had just returned home in the company of a stranger he said had saved his life—and the discussion focused on mudcrab?

  Ernst led them deeper inside. They found huge primeval ferns and several glass structures, which were models of the larger building. The first case was an aquarium filled with amphibious salamanders of various colors.

  “Axolotls,” Brand said. “The Aztecs associated them with resurrection, monstrosities, and twins. I like them because they’re neotenic, which means they can live their whole life in an adolescent state. They also have the handy ability of regenerating limbs.”

  “What’s in this case?” Clearfather asked icily.

  “Look closer.” Brand waved. “Nature loves to hide.”

  “They’re alive!”

  “Stick insects . . . acquired outside Puerto Maldonado, a fever-ridden village on a sluggish brown tributary of the Amazon River.

  “And this,” he continued, tapping at a terrarium. “Doesn’t it look like it came from another planet?”

  “Mr. Brand,” Clearfather began. “Are you aware that your little brother has a serious drug problem that will kill him if he doesn’t get help?”

  “It’s a lungfish! Dates back to Carboniferous times. The earth was a very different planet then. Come along now—to poolside.”

  Warhol became interested in the lungfish.

  “Starting to understand?” Wilton queried.

  “What’s the matter with him? Clearfather whispered.

  “He has what’s been diagnosed as PAID—Personal Attention Interruption Disorder. Goes back to the accident that crippled Ainsley. Dad became so fixated on Ainsley that Ernst’s sense of himself became fragmented and discontinuous. It’s affected how he sees and hears things. Now he has delusions that a TWIN broadcast crew comes to do profiles of his life. He’s leading a tour now. His shrink says it helps make him feel like he’s earned all this.”

  “Hasn’t he?”

  “Shit, no! All this is Dad’s. Except for Mom, no one’s earned any real money in decades. Not yet anyway. Mom was a Playpen star. Then she did that show—And Justine for All. Played the wisecracking judge with the huge knockers. Now she’s the Fidget Woman, star of Twitch ’n’ Shout. Got her own clothing label and a line of accessories. But you have to be careful. She’s on a strict vodka-and-Ritalin diet and will fuck anything that walks.”

  Brand led them through a revolving door into a tiled area, where they found an exotically landscaped swimming pool. The air was heavy and moist. Great damp fiddlehead ferns rose from behind sandstone boulders and chunks of porous black volcanic rock. Clearfather glanced up and saw several peacocks roosting on top of the glass roof outside. Every once in a while one would let loose with a lonely cat-like cry.

  They continued into a section of saunas and spas. Here, a woman Brand referred to as Jocelyn emerged from a flotation coffin in a one-piece floral bathing suit and began hosing herself off with a detachable shower nozzle, moaning.

  “This thing of darkness. A wife—by a previous marriage,” Brand explained, imagining a three-quarter camera angle. “A tragedy occurred that has affected her mind. But I’ve opened my heart, providing her with sanctuary. After all, they say altruism is a side effect of a large brain.” He went in for a close-up.

  “We were living on Cape Cod. Long ago. A bold foray into the world. She met a hotshot young surgeon with eyes like Paul Newman and a washboard stomach. Jocelyn got the good doctor to marry her the day our divorce became final. Then one day the bottom fell out. Seems the good doctor had never graduated from med school! He was a gifted amateur who looked the part—and for all intents and purposes was the part—until he botched an operation and the patient died. The family hired a private eye. He dug up the dirt and they blew the whistle. Unfortunately Jocelyn had become obsessed with having the doctor’s baby. Odd-looking child. Reminded me of the potto, the ghost monkey of West Africa. Anyway, all was well until the doctor got sprung. Then the trauma of exposure, the anxiety about the impending civil and criminal actions, not to mention the loss of his high-powered lifestyle, drove him to despair and he strapped the child to his chest in one of those Snug-A-Bug baby carriers and jumped off the top of Boston General.”

  They were about to continue the tour when Jocelyn removed her bathing suit and began to finger herself.

  “Where’s your baby, dear?” Brand asked. “Ah, here it is.” He sighed and with a flourish whipped from the tank a naked plastic doll with a vague, colorless face, as if the features had dissolved in the saline water. “Yet another one of these politically correct surrogate babies. Any features that suggest ethnicity have been detoxified—and of course it’s ungendered.”

  Jocelyn accepted the dripping doll with a clucking sound, and they passed through another revolving door into the butterfly enclosure, a room of netting that draped down from the ceiling so that the glass appeared to be melting into a slowly collapsing spiderweb. In the middle stood a young woman. Perched on her shoulder was a blue Zalmoxis butterfly.

  “Rachel, my love,” Brand said, beaming. Rachel looked to be about twenty-four and wore Italian trousers with suspenders and a white oxford cloth shirt, strategically unbuttoned to reveal her impressive cleavage. She gave Wilton a wanton smile and Clearfather a frank appraisal of his groin as the butterfly flitted away.

  Thorndike, the chef, rang a bell, and they adjourned to the dining area to find an enormous silver punch bowl filled with a fruity concoction that reeked of rum.

  “And now a toast!” called Ernst Brand.

  Clearfather reached for one of the punch cups and said, “Yes, a toast! To Wilton, who has come back from the dead. May you all support him in his rehabilitation!”

  Ernst Brand’s face went from smiling for the cameras to an expression of bewilderment. The TWIN broadcast team vanished. There were no celebrity interviewers. He was looking straight at a bald man he didn’t recognize, holding forth in his conservatory.

  “We were toasting me!” he thundered—his face going scarlet. “Me! Who in the fuck are you?”

  “I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m the Pheasant Plucker’s son, but I’ll keep on plucking pheasants till the Pheasant Plucker comes,” Clearfather replied, and it occurred to him that perhaps Uncle Waldo and Aunt Vivian had taught him this, too.

 
Ernst peered into the punch bowl as Clearfather spoke. He couldn’t take his eyes off his reflection. His beard was gone. In fact, any signs of aging were gone. His face was like that of Jocelyn’s baby doll, sanitized of all features and character—deformed to the point of blankness. Ernst raised his head and uttered a strangled yelp that shook every window. The peacocks scratched across the roof. One lifted off in a blur and came crashing through a pane, smashing into one of the kerosene heaters, which exploded into the butterfly enclosure. The collision jarred one of the giant aquariums, creating a domino effect of broken glass, gushing water, and flopping fins.

  Just then Jocelyn appeared, stark naked, waving the politically correct doll by its leg and sputtering, “This isn’t my baby!” She pitched the doll into the punch bowl, splashing fruit rinds everywhere, and went over and found the peacock, its feathers slick with blood. She picked up the limp body and laid the long broken neck over her shoulder. “My baby’s dead,” she said.

  CHAPTER 10

  One Blessing

  Wilton and Clearfather made a hasty exit following the peculiar disruption, which forced Ernst and his little clan to take refuge in the house surrounded by the fumigation tent. Warhol refused to leave the Pleasure Prism before devouring the lungfish—which he enjoyed without appreciating the creature’s Carboniferous ancestry. As a consequence, Wilton convinced Clearfather that the dog would be better off in the car barn for the night, where they provided him with water and a modest snack. Clearfather, who was growing fond of his exuberant friend, bid a reluctant farewell, staring out over the Man of Steel’s estate to the windows of his neighbor Julian Dingler. It was a large place, from what he could see, and seemingly empty at the moment.

  The boy broke his reverie with a tap on the arm and led him to the Brands’ main residence, but Clearfather took such pains wiping his feet in the mud room he missed seeing which way Wilton went and found himself suddenly alone amid brass spittoons and hollow elephant legs to hold umbrellas.

  At the end of the hall he came to the Pacific Room. With the exception of a well-preserved paddlefish and Patagonian skins of guanacos and seals, the highlight was an embalmed Gilbert Islander in full battle regalia, which consisted of coconut fiber armor with a shark’s teeth spear and a porcupine-like helmet made of blowfish skin.

  Security cams hummed from the cornices. Then he heard another sound. Someone breathing hard—or crying?—in the next room. He checked the door, which swung open. The room was stocked with barbells and exercise machines spread out over polished Baltic pine floorboards. A woman in a unitard turned and her reflection swept across the mirrored walls, seeming to age with each panel.

  “I’m sorry—” Clearfather blurted and realized that this might be the current lady of the house. Wilton’s words of warning came back to haunt him . . .

  “Don’t be sorry,” the woman commanded. “Just pass me that drink bottle.”

  She took a swig from a Goa water bottle, which made her scowl and spit the liquid out. “Who put pineapple juice in my Pineapple Juice?”

  “I’m s-sorry?”

  “I told you—don’t be sorry!”

  She peeled off her damp Lycra, prodigious breasts jutting forward.

  “Feel these boobs. Feels like they got concrete in ’em, doesn’t it? I’m gonna sue the ball off the prick who did this to me. I used to be beautiful. Now look at me!”

  Clearfather wasn’t sure what to say, which was just as well because she took another swig and her mood changed.

  “Ya wanna fluff my muff?” she asked in a baby-doll voice. “Huh? Jes a little roll in the hay right here on the floor? C’mon. I can’t take these drugs anymore. Jes a little drink mean shit. He drinks ’cause he’s dyin’, but me, I gotta say sober—say thin—give older women a role model. I ain’t no older woman! I’m a goddamn beautiful woman! Is the plastic surgeons that screwed up!”

  She picked up one of the barbells. Then she proceeded to smash the mirrored panels. When all of them were shattered, she collapsed on a rowing machine to catch her breath, and that was when Clearfather made the mistake of taking his eyes off her. She was able to lunge for his pants before he could react.

  “I gotta have some!” she snargled, wrenching at his underwear. Out sprang Clearfather’s penis—the sight of which seemed to stun her.

  “Shit!” she screamed and fell to the floor, where she went into a spasm of pelvic bucking. He’d never seen a topless older woman with gigantic breasts squirming out of a sweaty unitard on a polished pine floor covered with pieces of broken mirror.

  At the peak of the fit, she rose, sprang, and bit into Clearfather’s left hand, which triggered a shiver of pain that sent his right fist flying forward. There was a snap-crack sound like a jaw breaking and she keeled over with a thud—as a Voice filled the room—like the ones he’d been hearing in his head.

  “What’s the difference between a nun and a woman sitting in a bath?” The Voice chuckled. “Hm? One’s got a soul full of hope. The other’s got a hole full of soap.”

  “What?”

  “I’m like Mr. Whoopee.”

  “Who?” Clearfather asked, trying to locate the speaker and adjust his clothes—when he remembered. Ainsley . . .

  “Ever heard of a pre-Millennium cartoon called Tennessee Tuxedo?” the Voice answered. “Smart-ass penguin. Had a sidekick named Chumly, a dumb but lovable walrus. They’d get into trouble and have to turn to Phineas J. Whoopee, the Man with All the Answers. Every episode Mr. Whoopee would pull out his Amazing Three-Dimensional Blackboard and explain a point of science that would help Tennessee and Chumly. You see—”

  Hooper burst through the door and proceeded to drag the woman across the floor by her ankles.

  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the Voice commanded.

  “What curtain?” Clearfather asked.

  “It’s a joke,” the Voice said. “You aren’t very good with jokes, are you? Where do you find a turtle with its legs cut off?”

  “I don’t know,” Clearfather said.

  “Wherever you left him.”

  “Where are you anyway?”

  “The dervish says, ‘Wherever you turn you see God’s face.’”

  “Why can’t I see yours?”

  “Miss Piggy smashed in the monitor. Here’s another one. There are ten birds sitting on a branch of a tree, and a man with a gun shoots one. How many are left?”

  “Was it a shotgun . . . or a rifle?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the Voice said. “How many birds are left?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Clearfather said. “N-nine?”

  “Ten birds on a branch and a man shoots one. There are no birds left. They all fly away. Hooper’s coming back. Go out the door and turn left. Right?”

  “Turn left,” Clearfather mumbled, crunching broken glass underfoot. All he could think of was, yes, of course . . . they all fly away.

  Ainsley’s blurred face followed him through the rooms of the mansion, appearing inside tiny monitors that began protruding from hidden panels inside the walls. Clearfather had to find Wilton to explain why he’d knocked his mother out. Then he heard the telltale hiss and clunk of Hooper’s robotic frame and smelled the unmistakable odor of dogshit. He hid behind a sideboard.

  The clunk moved on. Up ahead the hallway forked, leaving him with a choice of three doors. He chose the middle one and stepped into what looked like a children’s playroom that had turned into a cocktail lounge. Nearest to him, a six-foot-tall bottled blonde in a pink chiffon suit stood beside a pool table. She had a bit of five o’clock shadow and a masculine demeanor—an impression that was reinforced by a brimming snifter the size of a goldfish bowl. The second figure in the room was dressed in a pastel barracuda-skin jacket with crushed-linen pants and boots made from the scales of a Gila monster. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he was seated in a Barcalounger with a bottle of Chivas between his legs.

  By this point, Clearfather was considering tha
t—Pink Chiffon notwithstanding—these people were Wilton’s stepbrothers, a notion supported by the third occupant, who had dreadlocks and was extremely fat, dressed in jeans and a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt, puffing away at a bubbling hookah.

  “Well?” said Pink Chiffon. “What claim do you have?”

  “Claim?”

  “Don’t play dumb with us! Claim on the Will—the Will!”

  “Oh, I don’t care about that,” Clearfather said.

  “You see! He knows about the Will!”

  “What is it about this ‘Will’ anyway?” Clearfather asked. “Can’t you see this place is falling down around you?”

  This appeared to be a new idea, for the three declared in unison, “It’s winner take all! One Will, one way. One blessing, he’ll pay!”

  “You the Old Man’s new bodyguard?”

  “He looks like an organ seller!”

  “If the Old Man gets a new liver I’m going to need a new heart!” Lizard Boots complained.

  “Fuck off,” gasped the hookah head. “I’ve ponied up a kidney.”

  “I see what this is,” said Pink Chiffon. “Did our mother hire you?”

  “Are you fucking our mother?”

  “No,” Clearfather stated. “I wouldn’t fuck your mother.”

  “So you’ve seen our mother!”

  “I came here with Wilton.”

  “You’re fucking Wilton?”

  “I’m not fucking Wilton. I’m just helping him out.”

  “Well, that’s not very smart. It’s winner take all! One Will, one way!”

  “I don’t care about the Will! I’m trying to help Wilton off that drug.”

  “Off the drug?” Lizard Boots squinted. “We just got him on the drug.”

  “Shut up!” Pink Chiffon snapped.

  “What did you say?” Clearfather asked.

  “Noth-iinngg!”

  “I hope I didn’t hear that right.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I hope that . . . for your sakes . . . you haven’t done anything to that boy.”

  Pink Chiffon looked in the Roy Rogers mirror and saw that his/her skin tone was becoming hairier. “No!”