Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  I’d hoped to avoid telling Doreen, at least right away, but when I came in, she looked past me and said, “Where’s Bob?”

  “He couldn’t come in today,” I said.

  Doreen scoffed at that. “The man’s retired. What, he had some sort of pressing engagement?” She looked closely at my face. “What happened, Robert? Is it the house? Did the house burn down?”

  “Oh, no!” I said with false heartiness, wondering why I couldn’t lie about this when I lied about myself so well. “The house is fine, don’t worry.”

  “He left me, didn’t he?”

  I curled my hand around the rings in my pocket. “Yes,” I said, finally. “He left your rings.”

  Doreen didn’t cry. She just nodded once, and said, “I’d like them back. Even if he ran out on me. I’ve worn a wedding ring for thirty-six years. It doesn’t feel right not having it on my hand.” She slipped the rings back on. “Now, this one,” she said, pointing at the one she wore on her right hand. “This one was my great-grandmother’s. My mother told me the ring was looted from Gaul by the Vikings and that’s how it came into the family. But a jeweler told me once there was no way it could really be that old. I was supposed to hand it on to my daughter, but I never had a daughter. I don’t get along well with my nieces. I guess it will go to you, and you can give it to Maggie when you get married.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” I assured her.

  “Psht. If you two would hurry up and get married, I could give her the ring now. I’m not going to live forever, you know.”

  ***

  THE STAFF AT the hospital were sympathetic when they found out about Bob, but not as surprised as I’d expected. They responded to the news with an efficient command of regulations: Doreen needed new paperwork. She’d drawn up papers years ago giving Bob the power to make health care decisions for her. That all needed to be changed, and the nurses thought I should be designated. “Of course,” the doctor said. “You’re her son. The next of kin.”

  But I’m a fraud. How was I supposed to make decisions for her? I barely knew her. I was only beginning to realize how little I knew about these people. I can’t do this.

  “Don’t be silly, Robert,” my mother said. “I don’t have anybody else.”

  “But I don’t know what you’d want.”

  “Use your common sense. If you wouldn’t want it for yourself, you can assume I wouldn’t want it, either.”

  “I’d want it all, Mom. I’d want every minute of life I could possibly have. If they could keep my body breathing, my blood pumping, I’d want it.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” she said. “Only if there were some hope of recovery.”

  “There’s always hope. Where there’s life, there’s hope. I bet I could find you a dozen stories of people who were supposed to be brain dead who went on to walk out of the hospital.”

  “If I’m not in there anymore, Robert, let me go.”

  “How am I even supposed to know that?”

  “You’ll know.”

  There was always the Banshee. I signed the paper. Better me than a stranger.

  ***

  THE INFECTION KEPT Doreen in the hospital for weeks. Even after she seemed to have recovered they wouldn’t discharge her—her blood count was too low, they said. She wasn’t tolerating chemo well. Worse, the treatments didn’t seem to be working. The tumor wasn’t responding to the chemo and radiation the way it was supposed to.

  Maggie and I fell into a routine. I worked Wednesday through Saturday. Saturday nights, we drove together to Brainerd. Maggie stayed with me on Sunday, then drove back down Sunday night, since she had to work on Monday. I stayed until Tuesday evening, then took the bus back to Minneapolis.

  I had a lot of time to think on the bus, which wasn’t good. What I thought about most was my elder brother telling me I would regret following Maggie. I don’t regret following Maggie. I’ll never regret following Maggie. I just wish I’d chosen a healthier mother. Or told Maggie I was an orphan.

  One night the bus was late, and I thought about making a door to Minneapolis. What am I doing riding around on a bus like a mortal? I am Fey. I don’t need to do this.

  And then a darker echo of the thought. I am Fey. I don’t need to do any of this.

  I could go home. It was what we were supposed to do, after all. Woo the mortal maid, then leave her. Or lure her back to our own banquet hall. I would miss her, but I would get over her. Or so my brother would assure me. Time moved differently there. I’d settle back down at the feast, and before I knew it, it would be too late anyway. She would have moved on with her life, married a dentist, had three children...

  It began to rain.

  I didn’t want to leave Maggie. I didn’t want to leave Doreen, either. I don’t have anyone else, she had said.

  She’s not your mother, the dark echo whispered.

  Maybe not, but I’m her son.

  The bus arrived, finally, and I climbed on, feeling my exhaustion like a weight on my shoulders. Maybe next weekend I would go back with Maggie and get some extra rest.

  I didn’t, though. The next Saturday, when we arrived at the hospital, Doreen gave us her smile of gratitude and desperation, and I knew I’d stay until Tuesday, just like always.

  Doreen remained stubbornly optimistic for weeks. She endured the sickness and covered her bald head with soft cotton hats that Maggie crocheted for her. Her favorite was canary yellow with rainbow threads stitched through. She wore it so often, Maggie bought more of the yarn and made her two others.

  One evening, I went out to get sandwiches for us, and came back to hear my mother telling Maggie a funny story about my childhood. I’d colored with my crayons in a book, apparently, and then claimed the dog did it. “I remember blaming my sister for something like that when I was a child, but the poor boy had no brothers or sisters, so he tried to blame the dog. I’ve never met a dog who could hold a crayon, but apparently he thought it would be worth a try...”

  I could see it all, as she described it: the defaced book open in the middle of the kitchen; the spilled crayons; the guilt-stricken child. My mother glanced up when she heard me in the doorway, and gave me a fond smile.

  “What was the book he colored in?” Maggie asked.

  “You know, I can’t remember.”

  “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” I said, settling into the other visitor’s chair and handing Maggie a sandwich. “I think I thought it needed some illustrations.”

  “I took away your crayons for weeks after that,” my mother said, a bit nostalgically. “But you were a good boy, most of the time. Nearly always.” She glanced at Maggie.

  “You taught him well,” Maggie said, saluting her with a sandwich.

  ***

  THE NIGHT AFTER the doctor suggested we call hospice, I sat with Doreen until long past midnight. When I thought she was asleep, I gathered up my coat as quietly as I could and started to leave.

  “I always knew,” she said, as I put my hand on the door.

  I turned back. In the darkness of the hospital room, a mortal wouldn’t have been able to see her face, but I met her eyes squarely, and she met mine. “Knew what?” I asked.

  “I knew. When you knocked on my door that day and greeted me as mother, you were a stranger. Your magic, or whatever it was, it worked on Bob. But I knew.” Her eyes glittered with tears. “We wanted a child. Years, we tried. Once I even got pregnant but I lost the baby a few weeks later... These days you read in the paper about drugs, fancy procedures, but back then we had nothing. My mother told me to relax, take a vacation....nothing worked. It almost killed me.” She let out a harsh sigh. “I would have adopted, but Bob wouldn’t hear of it. And to tell you the truth, I was afraid of adopting. I was afraid I wouldn’t love the baby as my own, and if I couldn’t be sure, maybe better not to. I know Bob wanted a child, but he didn’t feel the loss like I did. Or if he did, he didn’t let on.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Th
en you came. And took us as your parents. Oh, Robert.” Tears trickled down her cheek. “I’m sorry. If I’d known what this would lead to, if I’d known the burden I’d become, I’d have closed the door.”

  I sat back down, my coat in my lap. “You know I could leave, Mom,” I said. “And I choose to stay. With you.” I squeezed her hand.

  “You’re a good son,” she whispered.

  A few minutes later, I thought she’d fallen asleep, but she stirred and spoke again. “I have something I want to give you. I can’t change the will—anyone could challenge it if I changed it now. But I can give you this before the cancer steals what’s left.” She tugged loose the heavy ring from her right hand. “This is for you, my only son. Give it to your Maggie when you’re ready to get married.”

  “I can’t—”

  “You can.” She closed my hand over it, and I felt the power in it burn against my palm. The ring stolen by Vikings. Ah. It came from Ireland, surely. “I always knew,” she said again. “This is for you.”

  ***

  THAT WAS PROBABLY the last of the good days.

  I called Hospice; Doreen wanted to die at home, so we moved her home. I worried it would only depress her with Bob gone, but even without Bob she took comfort from her house. Hospice nurses came for long spells during the day. I tried to stay with her the rest of the time. Sometimes Maggie gave me breaks.

  I wore the ring on a leather cord under my shirt. I couldn’t think about marrying anybody right now; it was too hard to think about anything but Doreen’s next dose of morphine, the next visit from the hospice nurse, Maggie’s next trip to Brainerd.

  One night about two weeks after the night in the hospital, Maggie and I sat in the living room of my mother’s house. Maggie sat by the reading light, knitting a two-headed stuffed bunny with a red fringe around its wrists and ankles, and a little heart on its chest. We could hear the tick of the mantel clock. I had thought Doreen was sleeping, but from her bedroom, I heard her moan. I stood up and looked in on her. She seemed to be sleeping again, so I went back to the living room and sat down.

  In one of those strange tricks of light and shadow, for a moment Maggie looked old. Then she shifted in her seat, and was twenty-three again. She twisted her knitting around to look at it, flicked back over the pattern, and picked out a few stitches. She glanced up at me, gave me a sweet, tired smile, then started knitting again.

  She would be old, someday, like my mother. I would never be old. But Maggie would.

  ***

  THERE IS NO time in the faerie hill. Mortals think they’ve spent a night there, and go home a hundred years later, but to us, it’s like a party that never ends. No cares and no pain. Nothing that matters.

  I wanted you. All of you. I wanted to share your mortality.

  The night Doreen died was when I knew what that meant.

  ***

  I WAS SITTING with Doreen when she died. She had been truly failing for several days: not speaking, not opening her eyes. Her breath had slowed and become more shallow, and for a full twelve hours I didn’t leave her, thinking that every breath would be her last. She didn’t want to be alone when she died. Maggie brought me sandwiches and coffee, and I sat by her bed.

  The room was very quiet when she was gone.

  Mortals tell stories about Death coming with a scythe to take their soul; they tell stories about angels escorting them home, and tunnels of light. When Doreen died, I saw nothing but her cluttered bedroom, and heard nothing but the silence after her breathing stopped.

  I stood up and stretched. It was four in the morning. I stepped out of her bedroom. Maggie was sleeping in a chair in the living room, curled up, her knitting in her lap. I put my hand out to wake her, then thought the better of it. I wanted to take a walk.

  I thought about Doreen, walking along in the cold wind near the river, and felt a dark emptiness, and a faint guilty relief that the bedside vigil was over. And a less-guilty relief that her pain had ended.

  Nothing but grief, my brother had said when he warned me to turn away from Maggie.

  Maggie was young. We had years yet—probably. But someday she’d be old, and I wouldn’t. She would be sick, and I wouldn’t. I would have to go through this again—the hospital, the uncertainty, the suffering, the loss. I would have to go through it with Maggie.

  I pulled out Doreen’s ring and looked at its yellow gleam under the streetlight. If I marry Maggie, if I really do it, I have to stay. I can’t promise her my loyalty and then run away like Bob. If I’m going to do that, better to leave now.

  I thought about Maggie’s death. Would it be cancer for her, too? Or the dark theft of her mind from dementia? Or something quick, like a heart attack, with neither lingering pain nor time for goodbyes? Maybe it would be a car accident at twenty-five. Whatever it was, I’d have to be there for it. I’d have to sit with her, moisten her lips with a swab when she couldn’t swallow, hold her hand. Bury her body. Say goodbye.

  It was the price I would pay for loving a mortal.

  I unknotted the leather cord and slipped the ring into my pocket. Then I turned back towards my mother’s house.

  ***

  I TAKE YOU, Margaret. As Gaidion, my true name, I take you; I vow to you with the vow I cannot break.

  With this ring, I pledge myself.

  If you will have me, I will live with you for the whole of your mortal life. I will love you. I will stay with you. And someday, I will bury you. Because I love you. And I will pay the price without regret.

  FAUST’S SASE

  IF YOU’RE NOT a writer you might not realize that each of the rejection letters in this story is a spoof of a real-life rejection letter used by one of the major markets. (The one writers might not recognize was the rejection used by the now-long-defunct SF Age.)

  ***

  Dear Mr. Faust,

  Many thanks for sending your soul my way, but I’m going to pass on it. I’m afraid your soul didn’t quite grab me, alas. Best of luck to you in pursuing damnation, and thanks very much for thinking of me.

  Yours truly,

  Gorgon Van Welder

  Demon

  Dear Sinner:

  Thank you very much for letting us see your soul. Unfortunately it does not suit our needs at this time.

  Your soul has been reviewed by a demon, but the press of time and souls (approximately 850 per month) does not permit personal replies or criticism. For your general information, though, most souls are rejected because they lack novelty. A great many sins that may seem innovative to a newcomer to damnation are in fact overfamiliar to those more experienced in the field. The odds greatly favor this being the cause of this rejection.

  Another common cause (all too common, we’re afraid) of rejection is the obvious lack of basic understanding of theology on the part of the sinner. By this we mean that the sinner is unclear on the nature of his sins, and/or the gravity of the same. Souls are rejected on this basis because a sinner must be familiar with the tools of his or her trade, just as an electrician or carpenter must.

  Finally, your soul may have been rejected, not because it lacked novelty, or demonstrated a lack of understanding of theology, or because the sins were not “impressive” enough, but simply because it failed to sink far enough below the other 849 seen that month.

  Sincerely,

  Gargoyle Dossier

  Demon

  Dear Potential Soul-Seller:

  In the best of all possible worlds, each soul submitted to us would receive a contract signed in blood and a check by return mail. I certainly wish everyone interested enough in damnation that they are moved to try to become a part of it could be so rewarded.

  In a world just slightly more perfect, you’d be receiving in the place of this form rejection a lengthy letter giving the detailed reasoning behind why your soul did not fit our current needs. I know how hard it is for a sinner to get honestly and knowledgeably critiqued, and I hope that you find a workshop, friend, colleague or priest who can prov
ide that service for you.

  Unfortunately, the world we do live in is one much harder than either of us would like. It’s a world where checks and contracts are rare, because hundreds of other potential damned souls are competing with you for the openings each month. It’s a world where, in order to bring you the temptation and rewards you expect from selling your soul, the time honestly does not exist for me to tell you my specific reactions to your soul, other than to say it did not match our artistic concept.

  But don’t let this discourage you. Remember that a demon never rejects sinners—only their souls. If you know anyone else who might be interested in selling their soul, please encourage them to think of me.

  Sincerely yours,

  Shott Idleman

  Demon

  Dear [Mr. Faust],

  I am stunned almost speechless by the depth, beauty, and uniqueness of your soul, [Mr. Faust]. Our office has unanimously voted to award your soul a Demon’s Choice Award for your achievement.

  We’d like to offer you a one-time opportunity to purchase an anthology containing your soul and other similarly outstanding souls, for only $49.95 plus $7.00 postage. We can print your biography in the anthology as well for only an additional $20.00. In addition, we would like to offer you an artist’s rendition of your soul, done on black velvet, for only $479. We would also like to invite you to join the International Association of Damned Souls; dues are only $125, with a one-time initiation fee of $85. Finally, you can order laminated cards with a reproduction of the artistic representation of your soul, $19.95 for 24 cards.

  I look forward to establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with you, [Mr. Faust].

  Yours truly,