A Brief Lunacy

by Cynthia Thayer

  “Sylvie, I had to,” I say. “Don’t you see?”

  “Jessie. Push him off and come here. I’ll help you.”

  “Oh, Carl. I . . .”

  “Just push. You can do it. Just get out from under him.”

  “I can’t. He’s too heavy.”

  “Jess, Hans is out there. Come here. Now.”

  Carl never yells. Why does he yell at me now? Hans? Oh. Hans. Yes. He’s in the driveway. Oh, God, he’s in the driveway. When I push Jonah away from me, the dampness of the blood cools my skin. He’s heavy. His hand slides off onto the couch cushion.

  I am drenched in his blood. When I stand, I can see stains on the couch and seeping across Jonah’s chest, as if the heart continued to push all the blood from his body after it was hit.

  “Come on, my darling,” Carl says. “Walk over here. Bring the scissors.”

  I walk across the room toward the scissors. They lift off the hook easily. What did I expect? I don’t know. They are sharp. Points. Blades. They’re expensive scissors. Stainless steel. Fine honed. Perhaps they’re ruined from cutting the duct tape, adhesive covering the blades.

  “The scissors,” he says. “Bring the scissors.”

  I pluck the loose end of my braid by the ribbon. “Look, Carl. It’s all gray now. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, my pet.”

  I look over at the boy on the couch. He hasn’t moved. I am surprised. But how silly. Of course he hasn’t moved. I killed him. Red covers the hunter’s orange on his chest. An explosion. His heart. Is the day over? I expect to hear police sirens coming down the drive, but why would they? I detour toward the telephone cord, see that it is intact, plug it into the jack. When I lift the receiver, a dial tone throbs into my ear. I lower it back onto its cradle.

  “Jessie?”

  “I’m coming, Carl.”

  And Carl. Where has he been? Has he been here all this time, still taped to the chair?

  I place my palm over the blue fish and slide the sharp points of the scissors between the tape and the chair, close the blades over the thick wad. I have to cut again and again, like a child with plastic scissors. The other arm’s tape cuts easier. When I free his hands, Carl reaches up to my face, very slowly as if the pain is almost too much, touches the corner of my mouth, runs his finger down my chin, touches my collarbone.

  I bend my head. He holds his mouth at the nape of my neck and speaks but I don’t understand the words. He speaks softly onto my skin. What does he say? I bend farther, away from his lips, toward his feet. The tape is loose and the scissor blade slips in easily, cuts through the layers. I cut slowly. What after this? What do we do after this?

  23

  CARL

  JESSIE LOWERS HER HAND onto my arm. Her fingers, flecked with his blood, steady my wrist while she slides the scissor blade underneath the tape. She frees my hands. I raise them to her sad lips. She doesn’t open them for me, keeps her mouth tight, closed. I feel the corner of her mouth quiver as she lowers her head so that I can touch the back of her neck.

  “I love you so, my pet.”

  “Do you, Carl? Do you really?”

  “He would have killed us, n’est-ce pas?”

  She moves away from me to cut the tape from my ankles, slowly, deliberately, not Jessie’s usually quick way.

  Blood seeps from the boy, continues to bleed onto his clothes, the couch, pools on the wood floor by the discarded gun. Such things that mothers do to save their children.

  The last night in the Gypsy camp, my mother held me while I told her of my planned escape. I leaned my head on her breast and whispered about the brown truck, about Marcel, whose girlfriend danced to the gas to the sounds of my violin, and about how he had rigged up the underneath of the truck so a boy could hide. I pretended she wore her red blouse with the silver threads and bracelets around her wrists and smelled like rosemary and olive oil. She pretended that my hair was clean and that my face was freshly shaven and that I wore shoes on my feet.

  “When you see the brown truck just outside the camp, I will be underneath,” I whispered to her. “Watch the truck leave the camp. Then you’ll know I’ve escaped.”

  “You will do it. Run as fast as you can away from this place. Don’t eat the green nuts. Wait until they dry. Keep your violin close to you. It will be your salvation. Don’t drink creek water. Make nettle soup.”

  “I will, Mama.”

  “And Veshi. Don’t look back. You’ll trip on a root.”

  “The brown truck, Mama.”

  “The brown truck. Yes. I’ll watch for it.” She pulled a chunk of dark bread, spotted here and there with bits of mold but still soft, from her bosom. “Tuck it into your pocket. Don’t eat it all tomorrow.”

  “The man, Marcel. The guard. Don’t tell anyone. Not Daddy. No one. He’d be killed.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said. “How do I know where my boy is? Perhaps killed. Perhaps gone into your ‘bakery.’” She laughed, then, about the bakery. That’s what we called the ovens. I laughed, too. How could I laugh?

  And I knew she wouldn’t tell. And I knew while I was hanging under that brown truck and she took the revolver in her mouth that she wouldn’t tell anyone where I was.

  “Carl, I shot him.”

  “Yes, my pet. You did.”

  “What will we tell Sylvie?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “Stand up, my darling. Can you stand up?”

  I struggle to my feet, using my hands on the arms of the chair for leverage. My hips ache. My first step is tentative, unsteady. Jessie takes my arm as we walk away from the chair toward the window. When I raise the window, the cold night air surrounds us, chills the room, softens the smells of blood, of urine, of unwashed dishes.

  Jessie turns toward me. It is then that I see the streak of blood on her cheek. I moisten my finger and scrub it away, wipe until her skin is red from the rubbing. I have to spit twice to remove it. My arms encircle her. She’s small. I sing to her a song from my mother in the Romany language, a song about a little bluebird. The words come from a long-forgotten place, verses and verses. When I finish, Jessie leans still against me.

  “Sing again. About the bird.”

  “How do you. . .”

  “What, Carl?”

  “Nothing, my pet.”

  While I sing, her body presses hard against mine as if she wants to become part of me. She opens the collar of my shirt, presses her face against my bare chest. When I finish the song, she continues to hum the tune. I run my hand down her hair, linger at the end of her braid.

  “Should we get another dog? A retriever?”

  “Oh, Jess. Sure. We can.”

  “I miss Reba. I miss the wet-dog smell. Remember when she used to run on the mudflats and then jump on the couch? And now. Look what’s on the couch. Look, Carl. Look.”

  “I know, my pet. I see him.”

  “We’ll have to do something.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Hans.”

  Jessie gets her jacket from the hook on the wall, puts it on, zips it, pulls her braid to the outside. She tries the flashlights on the windowsill, one after the other, until she finds a strong beam. But she does not look at the boy on the couch again.

  Noises from the shore filter through the open window. Rustlings. Dry leaves. Splashes in water. The night creatures. Jessie’s gulls have left the boulder, but they will come back.

  I reach for my sweatshirt on the hook by the door before I realize where it is. Jessie opens the back door and steps out into the night, and I follow. Each step is painful. My stiff legs feel weak. Jessie shines the flashlight ahead of us, sweeping the beam around the front of the garage, at the edge of the driveway, underneath the rosebushes. Has she changed? She’s still small. But her actions are now slow, deliberate, old. When did that happen? Today? No. I think a long time ago. I have only just noticed.

  An owl screeches in the distance. I reach for her hand, but in the dark I mis
s it, grasp at air. For a moment I panic. Where is she? But of course she is there, just ahead of me, kicking at sticks, looking for Hans.

  I see him first, mutter to Jess. She directs the beam toward the dark heap by the edge of the rosebushes. It doesn’t move.

  “Hans?” Her voice is shrill, loud. Too loud. “Hans.”

  He’s curled up like a sleeping baby. Across his shoulders is Jonah’s jacket with the wool stripes, warm, tucked tight at the neck. His head rests on his sleeve. One of his arms is flung to the side as if searching for something to hang on to. It’s not his fault, all the killing and the hatred. What if he hadn’t run? What if I hadn’t called out? Did he think I was a Nazi? And was he? Was his father?

  Jessie bends down to him, pulls the jacket away to look. She brushes his hair back, closes his eyes. Why do we close the eyes of the dead? Before she stands, she pulls Jonah’s jacket up loosely over his face, straightens his arm. And what of Marte?

  I follow Jessie into the house in the near dark. The flashlight beam is almost gone and the light from the garage doesn’t shine very far. We don’t speak. What is there to say? This time she holds her hand back for me to take. It’s warm. I don’t squeeze hard, just hold her fingers loosely until we are through the door.

  Jonah’s head leans on his own shoulder and he would seem to be asleep if not for the blood. Jessie picks up the blanket she dropped when she dressed and covers him completely with it. Sticking out from underneath the blanket, his feet rest, one on the other, as if he is napping or reading a book.

  I glance around the room. Evidence is everywhere yet nowhere. Jessie’s underwear is balled up in the corner by the bathroom. Discarded drawings litter the floor around my chair. A ghastly nude of Jessie dangles from a tack beside the clock. A stoneware plate speckled with potato and bits of chicken lies on a placemat at the end of our yellow pine table, a splintered bullet hole as a centerpiece. Jessie’s wadded-up tissue balances against her glasses on the side table. My tooth is in there. But the hum of the refrigerator and the sounds of a sudden evening shower pinging on the tin roof are familiar. Is it all right to leave Hans out in the rain?

  “What are you doing?” I ask. Jessie tugs at the back of Jonah’s pants. The body moves. She is too close to it. Too close.

  “His wallet. Here. I have it.”

  She reaches for her glasses and puts them on, turns away from the body. The brown leather wallet is almost empty. Just a driver’s license belonging to Ralph Johnston, and an old photo. It’s a woman, young, beautiful, holding the hand of a small child.

  “There’s no article.”

  “There was no boy in the well,” I say.

  “Yes. There must have been,” she says.

  She pulls out the photo and hands it to me. Behind it, folded and refolded, is a yellowed newspaper article. Before she opens it up, she places the wallet on the side table. One edge of the paper rips. Inside is that same picture, a mother and child holding hands. The article is short. She reads it aloud.

  “Local boy and mother survive fall into well. Ralph Johnston, five years old, receives minor lacerations. Marion Johnston sustains compound leg fracture. Both have been released from the hospital and are in good condition despite the ordeal. The two spent nearly twenty-four hours before they were found by a local schoolboy.”

  “You see? He did fall in the well.”

  “You were right, my pet.”

  “His mother. She was lovely. And look. How she adores him. Do you see?” She tucks the article back, places the photo over it, lays the wallet on the arm of the couch. “Carl?”

  “I know. Don’t look at him.”

  “Carl, eagles don’t mate in the air. Did you know that?”

  She moves toward the telephone, raises the receiver to her ear, presses buttons, and waits.

  “This is Jessie Jensen. Something has happened. I need the police.”

  She gives our address but doesn’t wait for a response. With the corner of her sweater, she wipes a speck of blood from the back of the receiver before she drops it into the cradle of the telephone. She slumps to the kitchen window, peers out to see if her gulls have returned. It is dark. No moon or stars tonight. She sits in her chair at the end of the table, pushes Jonah’s plate over the bullet hole, spreads her book filled with pale green paper in front of her, slides her old hand over the smooth leaves.

  There are things to do. I count them on my fingers, just to make sure I don’t miss something. We’ll have to find Sylvie. And Marte. I’ll have to tell them. And the mess. The mess. I walk unsteadily toward the kitchen sink, pour myself a glass of water from the faucet, sit down in the rocking chair. When I close my eyes, I see Sylvie and Jessie dancing, skipping, holding their hands together, back and forth in front of the old pine tree, its branch strong, intact. Jessie’s braid is flying behind her, and Sylvie, her Gypsy hair, black as this night, dances like Nonni on the floor of the truck. Dances with everything she has.

  “Jessie,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “What’s that, Carl?”

  “Nothing, my pet. Would you like a glass of water?”

  “No. Tea. Some black tea.”

  “We’ll have to—”

  “Black tea. Please, Carl. Not now. Some tea.”

  I fill the kettle and place it on the burner. Water sloshes onto the top of the stove. I mop it up with a sponge before I light the gas. Jessie writes on the paper with black pen and waits for her tea. She looks up from her book and smiles at me. She’s scared. I can see it in her face. But she smiles anyway. I lean on the counter and watch the flame of the gas lick the bottom of the kettle.

  “I think I’d like to turn the heel. Could you pass me the sock?”

  “It’s a splendid sock. Do you want the red yarn?”

  “For the toe. Yes. For the toe.”

  I close my eyes briefly and hear my mother singing the song about the bluebird. Fly, my pretty bird, fly from the cage, fly to the woods and the sea and the mountains. Then, Veshi, run, run like the wind away from this place. Don’t lose your violin. Don’t turn around. Don’t look back.

  After I bring Jessie her tea, after I touch the blue vein on the back of her hand, I look out into the darkness, wonder if there are any gulls back on the rock. The rain drums steadily on the windowsill and I think I will cover Hans with a tarp. On the way out, my foot touches the violin poking out from under a chair. I pick it up and hold it under my chin. One of the pegs is cracked but the body is intact. I bring its neck close to my mouth and run my lips over the tailpiece, place my too-large fingers over the sound holes. She touched these places before she died. My mother’s hands held the neck, the fingerboard. It doesn’t matter about the writing on the back. And yes, I could sand the paint off. After all, it was stolen from me. The bow lies close to my foot. I bend to the floor and take it in my hand. I pluck one of the strings. Then I place the instrument in the closet and go out the front door to find a tarp.

  24

  JESSIE

  I HAVE AN HOUR or so to write before the others return from their predawn Thanksgiving hike up Schoodic Head. My hands smooth the pale green leaves of my notebook, which stands out strong against the blue of our pine table. When the table was yellow, the book seemed a complementary part of it. Now it appears alien, foreign to the shiny blue, but not everything has to be part of everything else.

  The young gulls outside the window fight over some scavenged fish while the others wait for the sun to rise. I cling to my thoughts these days. I write with a new fountain pen filled with black ink that Carl bought me. It was a surprise.

  A pair of eagles ascend together from the mist and fly toward our boulder. One settles in the dead spruce near the shore while the other veers off. Why didn’t I challenge him about eagles mating in the air? I knew then who he was, didn’t I?

  I write the date at the top of the page. The teakettle sings on the stove and I pour the steaming water over Earl Grey tea bags. There is just enough to fill the pot. While I wait for
the tea to steep, a few large flakes of snow drift past the window. Snow sticks on the boulder, litters the picnic table. It’s early for snow, n’est-ce pas?

  The first word I write is “Sylvie,” because that’s what I think about these days. I also think about what has changed: We have lost a friend—Hans. We have gained a friend—Marte. We have no dog. We have no liquor in our cabinet.

  I write my thoughts about love and life and the human condition. Sometimes I feel as if I know everything there is to know about how and why we behave as we do. Then I wonder if I have a clue why I can’t seem to forget that I no longer smoke or that our dog has died or that there is nothing more I can do for my daughter.

  I have managed to wash the blood from my fingers. I have thrown away the soiled clothes and the exploded couch. We replaced the kitchen window and filled in the hole in the center of our dining table and painted it blue. We rented a floor sander but now have a depression in the maple floor because we held the sander there too long. We do what we can.

  When I turn the page again, the card from Sylvie covers the next page. Not everything is negative. The card is black with primitive white letters: “Barn’s burnt down . . . now I can see the moon.”

  “Sylvie,” I write again.

  After it was over, after the police found her wandering early the next morning along the road to our house, we walked through the woods to the pine tree, our steps together, our stride identical. I looped my arm through hers and we both wept in our own quiet ways. The broken limb had fallen to the forest floor, spilling Sylvie’s hidden village. Scattered around the limb were remnants of her precious family: bits of shell and bark glued together, felt clothing rotted in places, twigs wired to stones, all carefully stored in the crotch of the old pine tree for years.

  I know it would be her undoing. “Mom? My family. You killed my family. You bitch.”

  When she threw the decaying bits of moss and sticks and bones that had been her “beloved family,” I held her as tight as I dared.