"Now."
"O.K." She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin that had 'Dairy Queen' printed across it. "First thing you gotta do – the first test, if you want to call it that – is work out your problem with Annette. A dead person can't be angry. There's a lot they've got to do on the other side, but so long as they're still mad at something in life, it keeps them sidetracked. Know what I mean?"
"Why can't you do something to take her anger away?"
"First of all, I wouldn't know how; remember, I'm only a fraction of the whole, and my powers aren't as great as you think. Second, you two've got to work it out yourselves. If I waved some kind of magic wand over her and did what you said, it wouldn't solve her problems. It'd only be like a stopgap. A kid's got to learn to tie its own shoes sooner or later."
"What should I do to help her?"
"That's part of your test. You have to figure her out and how to start patching things up. I can tell you, though, she's not going to be much help. You've got yourself a hostile witness there, counselor. She hates your guts."
I gathered. Does she know about me? Obviously she knows about you, since you were the one who brought her back."
"Yeah, she knows about me, but not about you. She thinks I brought her here so you could make peace. She doesn't know it's part of your test."
"How do you hush the dead?"
She slapped my shoulder. "That's a good question. You know what one of my tests was?"
"Beenie, these are the ultimate mysteries! They're not recondite – they're impossible to understand. How am I supposed to go about –"
"What does 'recondite' mean?"
"Difficult to understand.'"
"Stop whining man. Of course they're hard to understand! You're the scholar, the thinker. I'm just a stupid little woman from Kansas with kids who don't like me. But I passed my tests. Sure, they were different from yours, but they weren't any easier."
"How can God have trouble with His children?"
"Hey, friend, did you ever read the Bible? A lot of His kids gave him lip. From what I heard, Moses sat up on the mountain and argued forty days! Christ? 'Why have You forsaken me?' Some gratitude, huh? And Job! He wanted personal proof! He wanted us to drop everything, come down and show him, like we were demonstrating a vacuum cleaner!
"I thought you said all thirty-six of you never got together."
"Not anymore. In the old days, but not now. It hasn't been necessary until now. Don't you see, Scott? That's why man keeps wanting to be immortal. Not so he can live a million years, but because, deep in his blood, he knows God must be kept alive for every generation. God, who's a part of every man because He's made up of men. Thirty-six of them. From all cultures, all kinds of personalities and professions, men, women, kids. … The faces of God are always changing, because the separate pieces change. But at the end, there's just Him, and He's immortal so long as man wants to be. The fact that I have trouble with my daughter, or that I'm dying of cancer, doesn't matter. It's important to me, sure, but not to the big picture. Those're some of my tests – making peace with my children, and learning how to die. Christ had to learn how to die, too."
I made fists and shook them at the sky. "It's too earthly! It's supposed to be more majestic!"
Beenie said nothing while I raged, and after, when my futile hands opened and dropped slowly to my lap.
"Finish your lunch, Scott. I recondite it very highly."
The snow had started again as we approached her house. I would much rather have stayed outside and watched it fall than go in and talk to Annette.
"What am I supposed to say?'
"Play it by ear. See how she acts."
Beenie opened the front door and waved me in. It smelled nice inside. An aroma of woodsmoke and soap. Brushing the top of her head vigorously to get the snow off, she called, "Annette?" No answer.
"Annette, come on out here, will you?"
When nothing happened, she scratched her nose and went looking. No Annette.
"Nowhere! That little skunk. Where'd she go?"
"Maybe she doesn't want to see me." I hoped my relief wasn't too obvious.
"I guess not. Well, that isn't your problem. I'll find her and get you two together. You want a hot toddy or something! Another sandwich?"
"No, thank you. I need to go and sit alone awhile. There's too much to think about."
"I'll say!" She opened the door and walked me out to the car. "Say, what's that inside there? Is it Annette?
"I don't know."
There was something propped in the. passenger's seat. At first, I, too, thought it was the girl, because it was so large. Getting closer, I could almost – "Nisco?! Great God in Heaven, it is! It's Nisco."
"What?" Beenie came up next to me and bent over to look through the windshield. 'What's Nisco? It's a stuffed animal. Look how big it is! Must have cost you a fortune. Did you buy it for one of your grandchildren? Hey, what's the matter?"
"It's the Nisco! I can't believe it I haven't thought of that – I couldn't finish the sentence. My jaw worked up and down a couple of times, but didn't have the oomph to do anything else. "Hey, what's up? What is that thing?"
I turned to Beenie and looked at her with, I'm sure, very stunned eyes. "It's the Nisco."
"You keep saying that. Looks like a stuffed animal to me."
"It is. When I was a boy, the only bad dreams I ever had were of that wolf. See the X's where the eyes should be. I once went to the movies and saw a cartoon with him in it. He was the bad guy. The tilted hat, big mouth, fangs. He was chasing the Three Little Pigs. That night and for months afterward, I dreamed he was chasing me. Holding a knife and fork and always drooling, he was going to carve me up. I was so scared. I used to wake up screaming. My parents'd run in, thinking someone was murdering me-"
"Why'd you call him Nisco."
"I don't know. He was always that: Not Big Bad Wolf, just Nisco. The only thing that really frightened me when I was young."
"Annette put it there, didn't she? No one else in the world knew about him."
"Yes, she probably did. That's why she's not around. Left her calling card, but I don't know what she's trying to tell you. What're you going to do with it?"
I thought of that petrified little boy jerking awake in the middle of many nights, heart banging, panting – escaping, but only just. The sound of him behind me running, running so fast, rubbing his knife and fork together, ssslick-ssslick-ssslick, inches away, screaming, "I'm going to EAT you!" Laughing that terrifying, stupid cartoon laugh. No Devil from Hell can scare us more than childhood demons, cartoon wolves or not. Our soft spots are so much larger then. We have no armor.
"Huh! You want to keep it?"
"No! Can I throw it out here?"
"It's not necessary." She put her hand on the windshield over the passenger's side. The Nisco faded and slowly began to disappear. Then, at the last moment, when it was mostly shimmer and dark blur, there was a loud BLAP., and the inside of the windshield splattered with blood.
* * *
I didn't hear from either of them for three days. I tried to go about my life in as normal a fashion as possible, but that was absurd. God and Death and Sanity had all walked into my house and sat down at the table. They wanted to talk; they had plans for me. Was I supposed to pretend it wasn't them, and listen as if theirs were only another business proposition!
How would I handle Annette? What other tests would I have to face if I were able to resolve the conflict with her? What happened to you after you 'passed'? Did angels come down and take you on a tour of the heavens? Were there angels? I had to remember to ask Beenie: Do Angels exist?
Can you imagine having someone in your life who could answer that question conclusively?
I remained nervous and alert. I taught well, really singing out the questions and answers in my classes, keeping the students up on their toes. One girl stopped me in the hall and asked why I was in such a good mood. I laughed like a hyena. Good mood? Oh my dear, if only you
knew.
Norah called one night to say she had broken up with the cartoonist and was going out with an airline pilot now. My daughter's fickleness and vague promiscuity had been a real thorn in my side for years, and we'd had more than one squabble about it and about her whole life-style. But this time, we talked seriously and illuminatingly about why she'd decided to make the change. At the end of the conversation, there was a comfortable silence, then she said, 'Thank you, Dad."
"For what?"
"Taking me seriously."
"Darling I've taken you seriously since you were a girl."
"No, you've often treated me like I was a student you thought was going to be great, but ended up disappointing you."
"Norah!"
"It's true, Dad, but listen to me. Hear what I'm saying. This conversation was special; it was really different. It's the first time in I-can't-remember when that I felt you were listening and were actually interested. You don't have to approve of me, Dad. I'm not asking for that anymore. I want only for you to love me and hear about my life."
When we'd hung up, I went to find Roberta, who had been listening in on another extension. "Was what she said true? Have I been such a lousy father all these years?"
"Not lousy, Scott, but tough and often removed. You were very hard on the girls for years. We've talked about this before: Gerald was born when Norah was twelve, remember. I'm sure that's what she was referring to."
Our three children – Norah, Freya, and Gerald. Norah illustrates medical textbooks and lives in Los Angeles. Freya is married with two children and lives in Chicago. Gerald is severely retarded and is institutionalized. We tried for years to keep him home with us, but if you know about care for the severely retarded, you know it is virtually impossible to live any kind of normal life around someone with this handicap. They are black holes of need for help and love. No matter what you give them, it is never enough or correct. You can ask for nothing in return, because they have nothing. Sure, you pray for them to show some sign of recognition or normal behavior. lust once. Just a flash of what in your greatest hopes might happen some magical day: they smile when you kiss them rather than scream as if they've been wounded. Or pick up a spoon and dip it in the soup instead of hitting themselves in the face with it or gouging at their eyes. Unknowingly, they take everything you have. When you are exhausted and resentful, guilt taps you on the shoulder and knocks you down another way. It is a terrible lesson and burden. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
When Gerald was seven, Freya walked out of the kitchen one morning to answer the telephone, and her brother put his hand down on a lit kitchen burner. At the hospital, even Roberta, who had fought hardest to keep him home, agreed we could no longer care for him properly. After he recovered, we found a perfect school, and he has lived there since. He is both our sword of Damocles and our permanent reminder of how wonderful life can be if you are lucky.
"We all adjusted to him differently, Scott. I tried too hard to see him normal and gave him too much of the love I should have given the girls. You did what you could, but it was a terrible disappointment, and it ate you up. When it got too much, you retreated from all of us into your work. It makes sense. It's both of our personalities perfectly. I wanted everyone to be happy; you wanted everyone to be exceptional. Neither of us had a chance of succeeding so we both made big mistakes. But you know, we couldn't have been so bad, because the girls still love us. It's clear in whatever they do."
Yes, we'd had this discussion before, but having it again right after Norah's comment hit me a K.O. punch to the heart. Had I really been so bad and negligent? Worse, had I known that all along, but spent years hiding it from myself? I knew life was a progressively more sophisticated game of hide-and-seek with ourselves, but could we really be unaware of something this momentous?
Further, if it were true, why would I rate to replace Beenie Rushforth as one of the thirty-six? A man who treated his family with such arrogance and disrespect? In her inimitable way, she'd told me that 'it took all kinds,' but could such an appalling egoist be one of them?
So much at once. My life jumped, bounced, and floated like one of those astronauts walking in space. It had suddenly become almost weightless, because its own personal gravity had ceased to be. I tried repeatedly to call Beenie, but there was never an answer. Finally I realized she wanted me to think things over, and would answer my questions only when she came again to clean our house. How ridiculous yet correct that profession was for her. The ultimate cleaner. The ultimate bringer of order.
Needless to say, I galloped back and forth over the emotional gamut, waiting for her next visit. I canceled my class for that day, and bribed Roberta out of the house with a gift of lunch and an afternoon movie with her best friend. Ten minutes after she left, the empty and quiet house made me so nervous that I got out the vacuum cleaner and did the floor in the kitchen before the bell rang.
I opened the door, and there was Annette Tangwalder.
"Beenie couldn't come, so she sent me. I'm supposed to clean your house." She brushed by me into the hall, throwing this last line over her shoulder. "Wow, I never thought I would be in this house. Vacuum cleaner's all ready for me, eh? O.K."
I closed the door and looked at her. "Why didn't she come?"
"Because she told me to. I'm a good Putzfrau . Don't you remember the chapter in my book where the girl cleans houses in the summer for extra money? Don't worry, Professor, your place will look nice when I'm done." With that, she took off her coat, threw it on a chair, turned on the vacuum cleaner, and went right to work. I stood there feeling like a fool. She didn't look at me again.
What was going on? There was nothing to do but retreat to my study and try again to call Beenie at home. The phone there rang and rang. She had to have done this for some reason, but what? She must have known I'd have a million questions. Why wasn't she here to answer them? How could she drop this girl in my lap and walk away? Where the hell was she?
Luckily, there was a small television in my room. I switched it on to fill up some mental airspace. What was Annette doing out there? The idea of a dead woman cleaning the house was monstrous and monstrously funny. I couldn't help smiling. A peculiar thought crossed my mind: she was the second dead person to be in this house. Our poor son, for all intents and purposes dead, had spent years here.
The person on television was talking about Gorgonzola cheese. I had once lived in the same universe as Gorgonzola cheese. Now I lived in one where dead students vacuumed my house and God wouldn't answer Her phone.
I sat at my desk and pretended to work by pushing pencils and papers around, looking for nothing in an address book, reading a bank statement twice because even the numbers had no meaning.
I tiptoed to my door and put an ear to it. Only the 'hoooosh' of the machine. Was she really here only to clean? Both the expression on her face and the tone of her voice had been so haughty and dismissive. She knew she held all the best cards, and I could do nothing till she made a first play. All because of a badly written, sophomoric, heavy-breathing and pale copy of – There was a knock at the door. I forced myself not to run and open it. Count to five, rise slowly, turn the doorknob slowly. "Yes?"
"Sorry to interrupt, but I didn't know if you wanted this or not?' It was the same relic finding that Beenie had done each time she cleaned. Had she instructed Annette to do this, too? The girl held out a beat-up green spiral notebook with the word "Chargers" printed in thick black letters across the top. That was the nickname of the local high school. I assumed the book belonged to one of our girls.
"I'll take it. Thank you."
"You're welcome." She handed it to me and started to leave. "Annette? Why did you come today?"
Her face was only innocence. "To clean your house. Beenie asked me to take her place. I told you."
"Cleaning's not important. Wouldn't you rather talk about your –"
"No. She just told me to bring you things to see if you want them." She left.
&nbs
p; I didn't know what to do. Follow her, grab her arm, sit her down and say, "Listen, dead person, you and I have to have it out. We have to talk about your bad novel." No, that wouldn't do.
I went back to my desk with the school notebook and, for want of anything better to do, opened it. "Hey, Turd Bird!"
I whipped my head aside to see who had said it, but a hand went over my mouth. Scared, I looked at whose hand. I didn't know the boy. I realized only then that we were face-to-face, very close. And I felt him. I felt him inside me down there.
"Quiet, ssh; he'll go away."
I looked at this boy. Who was he? There were three small pimples on his chin. What was he talking about? What was I doing here? We were inside a toilet stall. I was sitting on his lap. He was on the toilet seat. His pants lay below his knees.
"Hey man, come on, hurry up with her, willya?"
My lover started grinning at what his pal outside the stall had said. He pumped and pumped away inside me, that awkward position, trying to finish, trying to bring himself off, get it over with so he could go back to the class we were both missing.
I was my daughter Freya. Quiet, dull Freya, who covered her bedroom walls with pictures of kittens and read seven-hundred-page books with titles like Love's Flame and Fury. She received average grades in school and let her sister do most of the talking and arguing. She liked to take care of Gerald. She baked him cakes and fed them to him in slow forkfuls.
She was having sex on a high school toilet with a boy who was hurrying to finish so he could sneak back to class with his friend who waited on the other side of the stall door.
I was her. I could feel the boy, smell his heat and ugly cologne. The zipper on his pants cut into me.
"O.K., O.K., O.K!" Coming, he flung his head back too hard and banged it against the wall. "Damn! Oh, yeah, 'nice. Damn that hurt! Thanks, Freebie; that was good." Rubbing his head with one hand, he pushed me off gently with the other. I hovered above him on bended, quivering knees. I wanted him to say something else. Hadn't I come out here with him in the middle of my favorite class? Something nice I could hold to me when he was gone. But he was too busy pulling himself together.
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