Gravedigger's Cottage

by Chris Lynch

  “Hey, that was fun last night, huh?”

  “‘Huh?’ is right,” I said. “What fun? You mean the part where those girls scared the wits out of us with spooky stories about our house? In the middle of the night? Fun for whom?”

  “I wasn’t scared,” Walter said.

  I threw him a look but did not bother speaking. We continued walking along to the store, hauling Carmine like a barnacle stuck onto our hull.

  “I guess you’re coming shopping,” I said as we stood in the beam of the automatic door sensor. The door opened, tried to close, opened again, tried to close. It seemed to be getting angry at us.

  “Well, sure, if you want me to,” Carmine said.

  “Cool,” Walter said.

  “Cool,” Carmine said.

  “Cool,” I said, entering third and lonely with my wasted sarcasm.

  “Now listen,” Carmine said, trying with all his heart to be some kind of leader for us, “I’ll show you around. I know this place very well. I know everybody who works at Beachcomber, and they all know me.”

  “Look,” said the tanned and tall girl working the one register, “look who it is.”

  It was hard to tell who she was talking to since we couldn’t see anybody else here but ourselves. And we knew who we were, pretty much.

  She grabbed the snake-neck microphone, “Shirley,” she announced to somebody out there, “the kids from The Diggers are here.”

  We were known. We were known and we had a title, The Kids from the Diggers, and it was announced over a snake-neck microphone, which basically makes a thing official. The phrase Eee Gads actually came into my head for the first time in my life. It was an Eee Gads moment.

  Shirley, who looked like she was the other girl’s mother, came out of the back room from behind the deli counter. She was eating a sandwich but managed a big friendly wave and called, “Hi, kids. How you getting along, okay? That pest Carmine bothering you?”

  “See,” Carmine said with no small pride. “I told you I know everybody.”

  “Everybody knows everybody,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re right, it’s great.”

  “I didn’t say that, I didn’t say that at all. It makes me nervous, to tell you the truth.”

  Walter grabbed the list out of my hand and started pushing a cart down the first of four aisles.

  “First thing,” whispered Carmine, “you have to be careful with the fruit here. The fruit can taste like meat, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know what you mean—I never know what you mean,” I said. I walked ahead and grabbed the first bag of oranges I could reach and threw it into the cart, to show him I would be just as reckless with the fruit selection as I wanted to be.

  “There are no oranges on the list, Sylvia,” Walter said.

  “What? Why not? What?”

  They were only oranges, right? But we always got oranges. We liked doing things the way we always did them, me and Walter, and we always got oranges. We liked things consistent.

  “We always get oranges. Why are they not on the list?”

  “They just aren’t. There are—oh wait, there are oranges. But he wants canned mandarin slices.”

  “Canned?” I stared at Walter. Then I stared at Carmine, who was poised to give the inside story on canned mandarins. “Don’t say anything.”

  “Yup. And canned peaches. As a matter of fact, there are lots of canned things. Vegetables, fish, Spam—”

  “Spam? Spam?” I snagged the list. “Deviled ham, chicken spread, corned beef hash, Kool-Aid, Coffee-mate, powdered milk, instant mashed potatoes…Pop-Tarts…”

  “Don’t you guys have a refrigerator?” Carmine asked. “’Cause if you don’t have a fridge, I know a guy in the village—”

  “It’s like he’s planning for a snowstorm,” Walter noted. “I love it when we get all packed in and prepared for getting snowed in.”

  I was forced to burst his sad little bubble. “Walter, August. It’s August. It’s not going to snow. It’s not going to snow for a very, very long time. Why is Dad preparing for some emergency we don’t know about? Powdered milk. I don’t want to drink powdered milk. Neither does Dad.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad. Especially if you mix it with strawberry Nestlé’s Quik. We have to hang together through these things, Sylvia. As long as we all pitch in together—”

  “Through what things? There are no things. And I don’t feel like pitching together—”

  “I’ll pitch together,” Carmine said. “Can I pitch together with you? Sounds like fun.”

  “It is fun,” Walter said.

  “No,” I snapped, and started zipping up and down the aisles, filling Dad’s request for every nasty disgusting army surplus food item they had, but grabbing as well several items that actually had expiration dates that I might live to see.

  The bags were, as you might imagine, very heavy. Half of the weight must have come from the packaging alone, and Walter no longer thought Dad’s disaster menu was so amusing. I was glad enough to have Carmine for help at that point, but by the time we reached our back gate, I was ready to dismiss him.

  “Well, thanks,” I said in a heavy-hint kind of way.

  Carmine smiled broadly and said I was quite welcome as he brushed right past me and on up to the house.

  “Why do we have all this survival food, Dad?” I asked as I plunked my bundles on the kitchen table. Walter followed, dumping his bags, then Carmine did likewise.

  “Hi, Mr. McLuckie,” Carmine said.

  Dad looked for a moment like he didn’t know who Carmine was. For a moment I wasn’t sure I knew who this dad was either, covered in some kind of white plaster dust head to foot.

  “Hi,” he said to Carmine. Then, more friendly, more familiar, “Oh, right, hi. How’s it going?”

  “It’s going great,” Carmine said. “Can I help you with some of this work? You look all…dusty. Like you could use some help. I can help. I like helping. I like this house.”

  He was definitely freaking Dad out now. Dad took tiny little steps backward from Carmine, like he was looking to bolt.

  Good. It was about time somebody else got the creeps over the kid.

  “Yah, Dad, he can help,” Walter said. “Let us help.”

  Dad started looking around, still looking like he was searching for an oversized mouse hole to shoot through. But then I realized he was looking at his handiwork. At his do-it-himselfing, trying to see what he could share with two ten-year-olds.

  Any of it, from what I could tell. Because it looked like it was already being done by ten-year-olds.

  He had left the wallpaper stripping in midstrip. As if following the line of his eye and driven by a very short span of attention, he followed the dead paper down off the wall, onto the floor, where he encountered a floorboard that somehow did not meet his approval. The board, pried up apparently with that same single trusty putty knife, lay at Dad’s feet. The boys ran to it and stared down.

  “Cool,” Walter said.

  “You get to see right down into the cellar,” Carmine said. “You are so lucky.”

  “Dad?” I said as the three of them stared down into the hole like it was all the mysteries of the universe explained and not a hole in our floor.

  Dad looked up at me. He smiled. He shrugged. He turned and led the boys through the far door into the hallway.

  “Why did you have to pull up that floorboard, Dad?” I said as I joined the team at the front door.

  “The smell,” Dad said absently. “I caught the odor, that odor. And you know, if I could smell it, it had to be serious. I had to trace it.”

  “Did—”

  “Didn’t, I’m afraid. It wafted away. Now. Three windows anyway, the three on this side of the house, front room, kitchen, and bathroom, all are going to need to be replaced. And probably this door…” He walked through the lovely glass-paned door into the little foyer that led to the outside front door. It was an okay door. Not a great door, not a bad d
oor. A door that wouldn’t offend anybody. A door that you probably wouldn’t replace. A door you certainly wouldn’t skip work over.

  “Very drafty. Rotting. Woodworm, I suspect,” Dad said with great authority that came from god knows where. “It’s chaos,” he said again.

  “Right,” Walter chimed, tapping that same well of male phantom knowledge, “woodworm…chaos…”

  “I like that door just fine,” I said, feeling already weird about defending a door.

  “The house is not tight,” Dad said, leading the way up the stairs toward what all he had found wrong with the upper level of our world. “It’s not secure, it’s not impenetrable to the elements, the way a house should be.”

  I stopped at the foot of the stairs, watched as he led the boys along, listened as he addressed the gaps and spaces and weaknesses of all that surrounded us. “Wait till you see all the chaos up here,” Dad said.

  I did not go along. I went back to the kitchen and started unloading all the indestructible provisions we had brought home to see us through whatever chaos was coming.

  Ever Anymore

  I REMEMBERED THAT MY mom was afraid of germs. I remembered that she was afraid for herself but mostly for me. She was always protecting me from germs, keeping me out of drafts and away from people who coughed. I remembered that me and my mom spent all our time together, as if there were two people in the world for much of the time, and that those two people, me and her, were always warm and safe and together, bundled up and cozy and safe. I remembered that she didn’t even like me to touch the mail, because somewhere out there somebody dirty may have licked it.

  I did not remember my mom’s funeral, because I did not go. I remembered one part of her wake because I was allowed to go. I remembered being brought in and the unusual smell, not good, not bad, but unusual—bakey, warm, and fruity—of the funeral parlor. I remembered the smell and how it made me feel upset and scared, but that I was with my dad’s cousin Diane and she was leading me in by the hand, and so I could do it okay. I remembered that I was on my way up there, toward the casket where they were keeping my mom, where it was open and everyone could look at her and I knew she would not like that at all, but that everyone for the moment seemed to be looking at me anyway, while Diane led me by the hand. I could at least do that for my mom. I remembered it being long, like a mile from the front door to the casket, and it took forever.

  I remembered hoping that people who were coming to see my mom were taking care not to breathe on her because she wouldn’t like that.

  I remembered hearing kind whispers of people all the way up that mile aisle as I made it almost all the way to making it all the way to my mom when I saw my dad.

  I remembered stopping, planting myself right there in the middle of that aisle like I was vines growing up out of the floor, when I saw my dad. When I saw my dad crying out his heart, crying out his guts, crying out of his mind up there next to that casket. My dad. I remembered he did not even know I was there.

  Ten cousin Dianes would not have been strong enough to get me any closer to that casket, to that mom, to that dad.

  I pulled with all I had, and if I had to put Diane over my shoulder to get out of there I would have. But I didn’t need to. She took me out, took me home, stayed with me, tried to stay with me. She tried to hold me, tried to comfort me, tried to touch me, and in the end just about managed to follow me around room to room, chair to bed to yard, following, watching, talking, hovering, until finally I was finished, it was all out, I had nothing left, and I curled up on my parents’ bedroom floor and fell asleep.

  I remembered not to use the word parents anymore. Ever anymore.

  Leakage

  I STARTED TO WORRY.

  “Vee, play soccer with me,” Walter yelled from the backyard.

  I was on my bed, reading, with my bed dragged right over to the open window to catch the sweet summer sea breeze just letting itself in. I was relaxed, lost in my book that was also about the quietness of summer and the sadness of it ending. I loved reading about sadnesses.

  “Come on,” he said again, his manly, iron little voice coming through the window and interfering with my mood and the breeze and everything. “Please, Vee.”

  This was not good. Not right and not good. This was not my job. Soccer was not my job. Dad was supposed to play soccer in the yard, he always did that, and if I wished to interrupt my book or my music or my just doing nothing because what they were doing wound up sounding pretty good, then I would do that; and usually, they made it sound good enough that I didn’t want to be left out and so there I was. But I was not the first option.

  I went to the window.

  He was right down below, his brilliant white soccer ball—he washed it more often than he washed himself—squeezed tight in his hands. He looked tiny down there, all washed out and shrunk in the brilliant sunlight and the sandy ground.

  “Play with me,” Walter said.

  “That’s not my job,” I said.

  He just stared up at me.

  “Dad is supposed to do this stuff, Walter, not me.”

  “He’s doing other stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  He paused, bit his lips, as if what he had to say was unspeakably distasteful. “Inside stuff,” he said.

  I sighed.

  It had been a week now since Dad had decided that the house was too porous and drafty, too insubstantial and insecure, too suspect, too open. In that time, he had started projects everywhere. Anyway, he started what he called projects, what you or I might call messes. Putting insulation in the attic. Weather stripping around any doors and windows he decided didn’t need replacing and taking a fat red felt-tipped marker and drawing a giant X on the ones that did. He worked for hours one day inside the fireplace, making sure the chimney flue was completely capable of opening and, especially, closing. Though we had no idea how much he achieved, he came back out of there at the end of the day looking like a coal miner. Had to throw away his white cutoff bib overalls, so at least we achieved that.

  He was always doing something, really always doing something, rarely finishing anything, before a new and more important crisis caught his eye and he attacked it. All of his concerns seemed pointless to me and totally unnecessary until I finally saw the thread of what he was pursuing and that he was truly striving to make the house 100 percent airtight, secure, hermetically sealable inside from outside.

  Moving away from old life and death was not enough. He had to lock it out in case it tried to follow us.

  “Ah, Dad,” I said when I found him checking my own window sashes for rattles, spaces, breathability, “isn’t some air supposed to get in?”

  “You’ll thank me, soon enough, when that ocean wind is banging on your window at night.”

  “That’ll be me, banging on the window, because I am smothering to death.”

  He left my window alone. But I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.

  Walter was still not as concerned about all this as I was, not as concerned as he should have been. Then one night the three of us unwound in front of a National Geographic special about the spread of urban and suburban wildlife. We all watched with what I thought was the usual fascination, until I noticed on passing the popcorn that Dad’s expression was more what you would call horror. He skipped the popcorn, got himself up out of his old favorite chair, and went straight to the kitchen. He removed the famous cat flap with a hammer and his trusty putty knife in a frenzy of banging and pulling and grim speech making about how many different varieties of intruder could fit through that flap, if they hadn’t already done so and were now taking up residence in the walls and basement.

  He didn’t even have a proper alternative to the cat flap worked out, and he gasped in terror at the new and improved giant gateway between the outside world and ours before quickly hammering Walter’s regulation dartboard up as a stopgap.

  I looked Walter. He looked at me. Right.

  It took cat-flap fever to do it,
but Walter appeared ready to help with the worrying.

  “Come on down, Sylvia.”

  He looked so sad and helpless there, I had to go.

  “Yah, you know what, Walter?” I said, taking the ball out of his hands. “You only react to things when it costs you something.”

  “Not true.” He grabbed the ball back and headed for the goal we had in the corner of the yard.

  “It is so. You only started worrying about Dad going nuts when he nailed your dartboard to the kitchen door.”

  “It’s still there,” he said, incredulous at the unavailability of his toy more than at any of the possibly more substantial issues of our father’s behavior. “He could have replaced it by now with something permanent.”

  “Right,” I said. He rolled the ball toward me, and I stopped it by putting my foot on top of it. “There’s that, and now you’re only coming to me because you don’t have him to play soccer with you.”

  “Not true,” he said.

  I kicked the ball at him ferociously.

  He didn’t even move. He waited for the ball to come rolling in and bump into him.

  “He isn’t finishing these things because he doesn’t do these things, Walter. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know Dad? He isn’t one of those hardware-store guys. He doesn’t do things. He isn’t a doer. He doesn’t even like doers. He likes to sit in his chair. He likes to go to flea markets and maybe walk on the beach with us once in a while and go to stupid movies and play Parcheesi and backgammon. He likes soft socks, and he does not like overalls.”

  Walter kicked the ball back to me. I kicked it back to him. Then we did it again, never gaining any speed or force. It was like we were playing under water.

  “Maybe he’s just spreading out a little. Maybe he’s trying out new hobbies.”

  “Spreading out? He spreads out from his bedroom to the kitchen to the basement, and that’s about it. Hobbies? His fingernails are dirty, Walter. Have you seen those fingernails? When did he ever have dirty nails before? He doesn’t like dirt. He likes baths, remember? He likes showers and baths, lots of them, and he likes his bathrobe. He doesn’t like dirt and overalls and hammers. He doesn’t like hobbies.”