American Pop

by Snowden Wright

“See? Now your head’s going in the right direction. Think of Lance.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve got him now. Tomorrow you’ll be a part of this family, and everybody will love you like one.”

  “I’ve got him now,” Karen repeated flatly.

  “You’ve got us now.”

  Both of them stood, and Ramsey told Karen that, if she felt like it, maybe she should check in on Lance, superstitions be damned. Karen wiped the tears away with the heel of her palm. “Ramsey?” she said on reaching the door.

  Without needing to hear the request, Ramsey twisted an imaginary key into an imaginary lock on her lips and then tossed the key across the room, where, rattling for a brief moment, it would never be found.

  * * *

  Afterward, as they both lay naked in bed, Lance couldn’t remember the surprise he had felt when Karen snuck into his room, the confusion when she began to kiss him, or even the pleasure when they made love. Instead there was simply a giant blank spot of happiness in his brain. Cotton must have fallen asleep on duty.

  * * *

  A feeling of weightlessness woke Annabelle as Houghton gently lifted her body from the bed. “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” he sang while carrying her across the hall to their old bedroom. “Daddy’s going to buy you a mockingbird.”

  “Oh, you,” she said.

  * * *

  The day of the wedding! The day of the wedding! The day of the wedding!

  Although Harold hadn’t actually heard anybody use those exact words, they seemed to be on everyone’s mind, taking physical form in the baby Louis heels and piled hair on so many women around the house, the tuxedos worn by so many men, the butts of Fatima cigarettes scrunched into ashtrays, the handkerchiefs being wiped across sweaty brows, and the polished wing tips beating a tattoo against the polished floorboards.

  Everyone looked excited. In the back garden, Harold’s mother watered a flower bed she had recently planted in an old Louisiana sugar kettle, an activity Harold knew she used as an easement of nerves. On the front porch, Harold’s father, who that morning had allowed himself the luxury of being shaved with a leather strop and straight razor by a barber he had paid extra to make a house call, waved hello to guests as they were seated by staff in the chairs lined up across the lawn. Lance’s posture was so stiff while he stared out the living room window it appeared as if a shoe last shaped like a person had been wedged inside him. Nicholas sat at the dining room table sharing a coffee mug of tutti-frutti ice cream with Susannah. And in the kitchen, Harold’s grandmother was saying to Miss Urquhart, “Taste this. Is that Gibson’s? God help the bartender if he gave me Gibson’s.”

  “Here, Haddy,” said Ramsey, her arms raised to adjust her brother’s bow tie. “You’ve got a talent for getting these things skewed. Though you are getting better at it, have to say.”

  “How is it outside? There a big crowd?”

  Satisfied with the tie, Ramsey took a step back. “It’s Pandemonium out there. Get it? Pandemonium. Oh, Lord. I just kill me.”

  “What’s Pande . . . that word mean?”

  Before Ramsey could respond to Haddy’s question, an illustration of its answer materialized when two staff members, carrying a five-tiered wedding cake, said, “Excuse us, folks!” before walking the cake between Haddy and Ramsey and then careening out the front door.

  They almost tripped four times while carrying the cake to the reception tent. Branchwater counted. For the past hour, while chewing a piece of orris root, he’d been overseeing the final touches on the event, walking between the tents, giving orders to the staff, detaching beggar’s lice from a waiter’s pant cuff, all despite his boss’s insistence that today he was a guest only. Branchwater couldn’t help himself. “Careful, fellas, easy now,” he said to the two men as they slid the cake onto its table, distracting himself from the potential disaster by wondering whether wedding cakes evolved to look like wedding dresses or wedding dresses evolved to look like wedding cakes.

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Branchwater, but I can handle it from here,” said the person actually in charge, Philomena Kirkland, local wedding coordinator, baker, florist, and seamstress. “If you’ll please take your seat. Ceremony’s about to begin.”

  “But I—”

  “If you’ll please.”

  Aware he could not win an argument with a woman known for being a cottage industry of matrimony unto herself—not to mention her obviously being a complete bitch—Branchwater, who would start dating Miss Kirkland less than a week later, exited the reception tent and took a seat on the groom’s side.

  The fluttering of hand fans throughout the crowd gave everything the blurry, jittery look of television programs when reception is not particularly good. Sweat began to make world atlases of suit backs. On a platform to one side of the altar, a pianist warmed up, his fingers wobbling, tinkling, stretching through notes, as though scoring a child’s first time on a bicycle. Overhead the bright sunshine could not be contained by one sense and seemed to drum against the tom-tom clouds floating within its reach. The occasional fascinator listed woozily in the breeze.

  Once Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” began, the members of the wedding Branchwater had been waiting for arrived, the groom standing near the altar by himself, the best man escorting the maid of honor down the aisle, until the front area was a Forster chess set ready for play, Lance at the center and to either side of him Ramsey and Harold. They were so beautiful all dressed up. Throughout years past, whenever he regarded that generation of the family, Branchwater would have three thoughts in a specific, unvarying order—“Look at those children” followed by “only thing I ever did right in my life” followed by “and they aren’t even mine”—but now, watching one of them about to get married, only the middle thought occurred to him, the first negated by their age, the last by his lack of regret.

  To end the procession Houghton escorted Karen to her place at the altar. He took a seat beside his wife. “Dearly beloved,” Pastor Baumgartner said, “today we gather for a joyous celebration.”

  4.7

  The Malediction Returns—“See Rock City”—An Unexpected Package

  The last few of the Forsters were felled by the Malediction in quick succession. On June 22, 1966, ten years after the death of her husband, Annabelle Forster stood in her garden and wondered why the flowers had no smell. She died of a stroke that night. On March 10, 1972, after extensive questioning by the FBI regarding his recent business ventures, Lance Forster was found hanging by his belt in a suite at the Jacobs-Allen. The Wayne County coroner declared it a suicide in spite of the cigarette burns that were known to be a trademark of a certain South American group. Nicholas Forster lived six years past the death of his mother in a house fire. Susannah Forster lived eight weeks past the death of her mother in a car accident. On January 25, 1958, Fiona Forster was running a seed-pearl comb through her hair when she asked her live-in nursemaid to fetch her husband’s old medical bag because “It seems I’m having a heart attack.” On November 14, 1963, neither Karen Forster nor her child survived the birth. On March 5, 1977, little over a year after her unceremonious return to the company from which she had been ousted, Imogene Forster passed away of an illness few people knew she had. “Cancer may have killed her,” Barry Rojas wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “but she died of a broken will.”

  Decades before those tragedies, Montgomery Forster set the precedent for them with his own death, an event put irrevocably in motion on December 24, 1943.

  He arrived home late that night. In the kitchen, he flipped through the mail, not noticing a package next to the bread box. He poured himself a full glass of whiskey and carried it through the first floor of the house. The family had been living there since they moved to the state capital following the election three years earlier. On his walk through the house—passing tinseled holly draped along the cabinetry, a wooden swan placed at the center of the dining table, wreaths, garlands, a tree heavy with homemade orn
aments and from beneath which presents spilled out, tiny wise men kneeling before a tiny manger, and a single patchwork stocking hung from the mantel—Monty took long gulps of his drink. The glass was empty by the time he reached the second floor.

  “How’s Paul?” asked his wife from where she lay in bed, a magazine facedown on the comforter.

  Monty stood by the dresser, wrenching loose his necktie. “Not good.”

  That evening he had visited the home of his boss, Governor Paul B. Johnson Sr., who’d been in poor health for a while and who, a few weeks ago, had taken a hard turn. His face the color and texture of paper, eyes sunken, cheeks deflated, and arms barely strong enough to lift a spoon, Paul had lain in bed, lecturing Monty on what, despite a recent, hopeful prognosis, he insisted would soon be his lieutenant’s job. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve had a big life,” he said, smiling through obvious pain. “Let’s put it this way. I’ve seen Rock City.” Monty would become acting governor two days later.

  In their bedroom, Monty told Sarah, “I just hope he makes it through Christmas. Be a shame for his family to always have that memory.” He placed his watch, keys, and wallet on the dresser.

  “I’ll telephone Corrine tomorrow.”

  “That’d be kind of you.” Monty sat on the edge of the bed. He asked, “How’s Imogene? She upset the presents have to wait?” referring to their family tradition of opening gifts on Christmas Eve.

  “She’ll survive.”

  “I’ll make it up to her.”

  He stood from the bed. Near the closet door, Monty was unbuttoning his cuffs when Sarah, having returned to reading her magazine, asked, “Did you see the package in the kitchen? Came for you this afternoon.”

  “Who’s it from?”

  “Somebody Harrington, I think,” she said, turning a page. “Hey, where are you going?”

  Back in the kitchen, standing by the bread box with one cuff of his shirt still buttoned, Monty stared at the package’s address label, the sender portion of which read, “Sophie Harrington.”

  Monty held the package like a rare artifact. Wrapped in brown paper, it was roughly the size of a shoe box, weighing a couple of pounds. Methodically he began to remove the paper, starting with each corner and working toward the middle. Did Sophie send him a Christmas gift? Monty had not spoken with her since the one time he’d visited her family home in England. He lifted the cardboard lid.

  The package contained three items: a sealed envelope, a bundle of folded paper wrapped in twine, and a bottle of Scotch. After setting aside the Scotch, which he recognized as being from the distillery owned by William Harrington, Monty took out the envelope. He read the letter it contained with the deliberation of someone learning a new language.

  Dear Mr. Forster,

  Nicholas often referred to you as his little Oliver Twist. That he did so worried me, as my brother had a poor tendency to romanticize the world, not merely its people but also their intentions. I always considered it my duty to protect him from that habit.

  Did he tell you what happened to him near the end of fifth form? My brother was caught with another boy. Although such an occurrence is not uncommon in public schools—hormones, et cetera—this particular one turned pernicious, due in whole part to the other boy, he of Norman blood, whose family filled a sizable number of pages in Debrett’s. The boy accused Nicholas of molestation. With great effort, Father succeeded in resolving the matter, but my brother’s reputation was tarnished.

  Yet worse still, throughout the horrid affair, he continually professed to love the boy. For that reason, I was leery when, in his letters to me during the war, he professed to love you.

  Only halfway through the letter, Monty stopped reading in order to take a glass out of the cupboard, fill it with the Scotch from the package, and belt a third of the drink before starting again.

  When we first met, I had in many ways already met you, having been told, with meticulous, excruciating detail, about your every freckle and fancy. He wrote incessantly of his new American friend. Until Nicholas’s death, I did not think highly of you, I must admit, in part from concern my brother would be hurt again, in part from sheer jealousy.

  You were the love of his life, which upset me, for he was the love of mine.

  Please accept my apologies for my ghastly behavior during your visit to Ashbrook. I was suspicious and resentful of the man for whom my brother cared so much, and only after seeing you overcome while looking at his portrait did I understand how much you cared for him as well.

  With this parcel, I’ve included the letters he wrote me during the war, fewer one or two in which you are not mentioned. I believe you’ll appreciate them more than I ever can.

  Sincerely,

  Sophie Harrington

  PS. The whisky is from Father.

  Although he couldn’t remember drinking more than a sip, Monty’s glass sat empty on the tile countertop. He wiped a trembling hand across his lips. Without daring to look at the stack of letters in the box, he refilled his glass, drank it, refilled the glass again, drank it, and then, waiting for the hinges of his brain to loosen, stared out the window. Two pickets were missing from a fence across the street. Four birds were perched on a power line.

  Monty picked up the letters. They felt strangely light for being the weight of the entire world. Not yet undoing the twine around them, he held the letters in one hand and with the other grabbed his glass and the bottle. The kiln created by the whisky in his stomach reached a pleasant burn as he walked up the stairs. On the second floor, Monty turned down a hallway, headed for the balcony that overlooked the front yard, but he was interrupted by two syllables, both as groggily spoken as they were impossible to ignore.

  “Daddy?” said Imogene.

  In the hallway, Montgomery paused for a moment, not because he was debating whether to answer his daughter, but so he could decide what to do with the bottle, glass, and letters. He placed them gently on a side table draped in damask. “You should be asleep, young lady,” he said to the ten-year-old Imogene as he stepped into her room. “Santa won’t stop by unless you’re asleep.”

  “Ho-Ho no come?” she whispered.

  Monty chuckled. “Ho-Ho no come.”

  Years ago, when she was four, Imogene had stumbled across the closet where her mother had stored the presents that would be from Santa Claus. It was early December. Sarah, arriving home after running some errands, found her daughter sitting in the closet playing with the toys, dress-up dolls and a rocking horse and jacks and a pinwheel and stuffed animals, oblivious to the fact they weren’t supposed to be seen until Christmas. “What’re you doing? Those presents are from Santa! What’s he going to bring you now? He’ll just have to skip our house this year!” she yelled at Imogene, who poked out her bottom lip and, as her eyes welled in tears, whispered, “Ho-Ho no come?”

  The story as well as its punch line had since become a mainstay of family lore. Only on occasion did Monty regret that his daughter learned the truth about Santa at such an early age.

  “I’m sorry about tonight.” He knelt beside her bed.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Uncle Paul’s very sick. I needed to be there.”

  Imogene rolled over to face him. “I said it’s okay.”

  How’d you get so tough? Monty wanted to ask her. Instead, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “We’ll do presents tomorrow.”

  He tugged the covers up to her chin, leaned over, and placed a kiss on her forehead. They both wished each other a good night before he closed the door to her room.

  From the hall side table Monty collected his three items. He tucked the letters in his armpit and resituated the glass and bottle in order to open a glass door and walk onto the front balcony. Outside, the air smelled of cedar-chip potpourri, frost flowers bloomed on car windows along the street, the sky hung dark as blackberry vinegar, and somewhere near the service station a few blocks away, two cats were rutting, their yowls like a soogan quilt keeping out th
e winter cold. Monty sat in a rocking chair. He choked down one more glassful of whisky to brace himself. His eyes watered and his face reddened while he coughed into his fist and breathed through his nose. In the cold nighttime air, Monty began to read the stack of letters, one after the other, which he would do every day over the next few weeks, until the moment he decided, for all and at last, never to read them again.

  Part 5

  5.1

  A Death in the Family—Nyva Adanvdo, Part One—The Lion, the Witch, and the Cotton Gin—Nyva Adanvdo, Part Two—Molly Carmichael’s Will to Narrative

  Branchwater died on a Friday. That was how Harold took the news. At the Panola Cola Historical Museum, after hanging up the phone, he tried without success to stanch his tears by thinking, Today is Friday, today is Friday, today is Friday, today is Friday.

  Up until that day, things had been going so well, what with slowly getting to know his grandson, spending time with the young man, both of them starting to feel like family. The stories were the best part. Robert seemed to love hearing them, and Harold surely did love telling them: the one about when he saw the king of the tree bears, the one about how his mother and father met because his grandfather had the gout, that humongous party one year at the Peabody when he made friends with the ducks, how he was his brother’s best man at his wedding, all those times his mother let him pretend to teach her how to play solitaire.

  How did Branchwater know that a grandson, someone to listen, someone to understand, would be just what Harold needed after he, Branchwater, had passed away? Harold supposed Robert was his parting gift.

  The burial service took place at a garden cemetery a dozen miles outside of Batesville. Under the hot summer sun, a preacher so thin he appeared liable to fall out and with a face like a boiled ham read from a worn Bible, giving the verses a decent amount of flair, despite how poorly he looked to be handling the conditions. Not even Harold knew all of Branchwater’s relatives. There must have been some twenty folks in attendance with the name.