A Brief Lunacy Read online

  She tried to do that again, with her mouth on me, but I said, “No, I’d rather go into you, my Jess.” I “went down on her,” that’s what they called it back then, when we were young, when we first got married, before the children. But I never let her take me in her mouth. No, I couldn’t do that.

  Jessie’s lips are thin, not like my mother’s. Her mouth opens wide when she speaks, but her lips are reedy, firm. She’s an outdoors woman. Her skin is tanned from her walks along the ocean and sessions painting her beloved gulls standing one-legged on the rock. She swims in the ocean in April and October when no one else in the whole county would dare to. She rows all the way out to the seal rock and back on a good tide. She knits socks. I don’t realize that I’m crying until the tears drip from my face onto my arm and mingle with the peroxide.

  I hear them talking outside. They’re walking back toward the door. Is it too late to act? I glance around for something lethal within my grasp. A candlestick on the side table. Brass. Tall, with sharp edges. I reach for it with my teeth. I bend and touch the bottom of the thing, tip it over and off the back of the table. It rolls away, clatters toward the wall. Do they hear it? It’s too light to do damage, anyway. What am I thinking? That I could bash him with a candlestick clenched in my teeth?

  Jessie staggers into the house as if someone pushes her from behind. She looks at me. I mean looks. Looks to see if I have solved the problem. I lower my gaze, stare at my shoeless feet. I tried. I just couldn’t do it.

  Jonah shuts the door behind him. I’m glad because of the draft. He’s cold, too. He’s lost his jacket, and the T-shirt he wears is threadbare. Did he have a jacket? Why can’t I remember? I think it was a wool stripe. Looked like a new one. Didn’t quite fit him. I always remember whether someone is wearing a jacket or glasses or has short hair or long. I search the room for his jacket. This morning it was on the couch. It’s not there now. I think he left it outside.

  I can’t tell from their faces whether Hans is alive or dead. No one speaks. I think my Jess is disgusted, because she turns away toward the kitchen and fusses with dishes and food. I want to ask about Hans but am afraid to hear the answer. Why don’t they say?

  “We’re going to have a lovely little dinner, Mr. Carl.”

  “That’s nice,” I say. I hate myself. Hans is dead because I hated him. Didn’t I know that Jonah would shoot him when he ran? Didn’t I? Why didn’t I just say, Come in, Hans, please join us? Then we’d all be sitting down to a chicken dinner.

  “Your friend is just fine. He’s resting in the driveway. Why’d you tell him to run, Carl? Why’d you do that?”

  “He’s fine? Isn’t he shot?”

  “You hated him, didn’t you?”

  “No. I—”

  “He has a small wound. He’ll be fine until tomorrow.”

  “Is Sylvie pregnant?”

  “Pregnant? With child? What a question, Carl.”

  “She’s my daughter. I deserve to know.”

  “You know what you deserve, don’t you? You don’t want to think about that, do you, Carl? About hell and eternal damnation. We all killed our mothers, didn’t we? I’m doing something about that. I’m listening to God’s voice. What are you doing?”

  “She can’t take care of a baby.”

  “I need to have children,” Jonah says. He pops another pill, lays his palm over his heart, gulps a large breath. “I told you.”

  “But Sylvie can’t be the one.”

  “Sylvie is the one. She is my chosen one. My father says that I’m too crazy to be a father. Well, that’s not true, is it? I am a father. I need to be. My mother. She didn’t have any other children. Did I tell you she was pregnant when she fell in the well? I didn’t know at the time. I heard my father tell someone just last year. He said, ‘That kid destroyed my life. Not just my wife but my son. It was another boy, you know. He destroyed the whole line.’ I am ‘that kid.’”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “But it isn’t destroyed, now, is it? We’ll be married. In a church. Sylvie wants to be married in a church.”

  “With her parents present? With her father to give her away?”

  “Of course, Carl. We’ll all be there.” Jonah slumps into the chair, checks his brandy snifter for cognac, returns it to the floor. “Maybe.”

  Jessie clatters around the kitchen. I hear her setting plates on the table, running water into a pitcher, frying mushrooms in the skillet, adding the chicken, pouring the tomato over it. I hear everything. How can she be cooking with Hans lying out on the driveway and me taped to a chair? How can she cook food for a man who has forced himself on her?

  I hear the cupboard being opened. I hear the bottle being set on the counter. Then she walks toward us with an almost-full bottle of peppermint schnapps. I think Hans and Marte gave it to us for Christmas years ago before we retired, before this house. Greasy dust shrouds the bottle, but Jessie doesn’t care. Some women would care. They’d wipe it off first. That’s what I love about Jessie. She doesn’t care about that sort of thing.

  “How about a bit of schnapps?” she says, holding the bottle close to Jonah. He raises the revolver enough to show her that he’s got it ready, and nods his head yes. She picks up his snifter from the floor and pours until the liquor almost overflows. “Here you go, a little predinner drink.”

  “What about Mr. Man?”

  “No, thank you,” I say, because I don’t think Jessie wants me to have any, and I hate peppermint schnapps.

  I stare down at my socks. For the first time, I notice that they are different colors. Dark green and dark blue. I want to paint with Jess by the tree. Yes. That’s it. I want to be there now. Shifting from green to blue, blue to green. Which is this place? The blue? The green? I decide. The tree is the green. This place with blood and fear is the blue. I look at the blue sock, sweep around the room, focus on the green. I can do this. Concentrate. Concentrate on going from the blue to the green. It’s where the pine tree is. It’s where I can feel Jessie’s shoulder blades when I place my palm on her back, when I slide my hand up underneath her blouse. The tree. The tree.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Mr. Man? Are you crazy? Something wrong with your feet?”

  Drool dribbles onto my pants. I watch dark dots multiply on the material. I am crazy. Yes, perhaps I am. A glass drops on the slate floor in the kitchen. Jessie swears. Jonah jumps up from the chair, knocks over his schnapps. And I sit taped to a chair, unable to keep my own saliva from dropping onto my thigh.

  19

  JESSIE

  I’LL GET HIM DRUNK. In the liquor cupboard there is an almost-empty bottle of tequila with a dead worm sloshing around in it, an unopened bottle of amaretto brought by some dinner guest, and the bottle of peppermint schnapps that Hans and Marte gave us for Christmas aeons ago.

  “How about a bit of schnapps?” I say. I don’t know how anyone can drink the stuff. If he doesn’t like it, I’ll open the amaretto. “Here you go, a little predinner drink.”

  He sips without comment, gives a small nod. He grips the gun while he drinks. I’m surprised he doesn’t make a face, just drinks it as if it were wine or cognac instead of liquor-laced toothpaste. Carl hates peppermint schnapps.

  They talk while I finish preparing dinner. I strain to hear but the refrigerator drowns them out. Is there something wrong with the motor? Why is it so loud?

  “When you finish your drink, we’ll have dinner,” I say from the kitchen.

  There is silence now from the other room. In my mind, which still seems to be working, I command the telephone to ring, then remember that the cord is detached from the wall. I could have grabbed the cell from the car. Well, maybe not. I could have tried. I make work in the kitchen. Move salt and pepper shakers from the table to the counter and back to the table. Fold and refold the cloth napkins. If there is time for him to have another drink, well, then, good.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Mr. Man?” Jonah screams into the still evening. “Are you cr
azy? Something wrong with your feet?”

  What is it? What has happened? Carl seems dazed, gaping from one foot to the other. What’s he doing? Am I losing him? A water glass slips from my fingers onto the hard slate and shatters in all directions. Now Carl doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all. “Shit,” I say, just because that’s what I say when glass breaks. Charlie told me that would happen. I bend and scoop the broken shards carefully into my hand and drop them into the wastebasket.

  I’m going to cry. I squeeze my eyes shut, command the feeling to vanish. No time. No time. Then I see Charlie opening the door, maybe tomorrow or the next day, or next week, opening the door to our house. What does he see? Carl and me on the floor, bullet holes in our heads? Will we be touching? Do they find semen in the autopsy? Does the house smell? Sylvie could find us tomorrow morning. I panic because I can’t see tomorrow. It’s out there in a haze, surrounded by shadows. Christ almighty.

  Jonah calms down. Carl no longer stares at his feet as if he doesn’t know what they are. While they talk about nothing, I glance out to see if Jonah needs a refill. He holds out his glass, empty, as if he were a dinner guest. I pour. I fill his glass to the very top. The air is saturated with the smell of peppermint. The wild urge to do a soft-shoe up and down the hardwood floor singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” pushes at me until my feet actually shuffle and tap in diminutive steps. When I try to remember the words to “Tomorrow” instead, only “candy shop” words come to me. Yoo-hoo, Jessie. I call to myself in my head and barely hear an answer. But the answer is there. Yes. I’m here.

  “There you go, Jonah,” I say. “Good stuff, eh?”

  “Never had this before. It’s different.”

  He’s agitated, pacing again with the drink in one hand and the gun in the other. Once in a while he holds his breath, touches his chest, wipes the spit from the corners of his mouth. He’s cold, too. I can see that. He’s lost his jacket. When did he take it off? If I offer him one of Carl’s sweaters, maybe he’ll calm down. They say warmth makes you mellow, sluggish. I look around the room to see if there’s a sweater draped across the back of a chair or thrown in a corner. Carl’s hunter’s-orange sweatshirt hangs on a hook by the front door.

  “Let me get you something to warm you,” I say.

  “Warm me? I’m warm.”

  “It’s a chilly night. And the door was open. Have you lost your jacket?”

  “No. No. I haven’t.”

  The sweatshirt smells of the woods and of Carl. We always wear orange during hunting season. It’s the law if you’re in the woods. It keeps the hunters from mistaking us for deer and shooting us. A few years ago a woman wearing white mittens was hanging diapers on a clothesline in her yard with twins sleeping inside the house. She was shot because the hunter thought the mittens were a deer’s flagging tail. I think he was fined. Perhaps I should be wearing the orange sweatshirt.

  “What’re you laughing about?” Jonah says.

  I hadn’t noticed my own laughter but there it is, coming out of my mouth. “Nothing,” I say. “Put this on. It’s Carl’s. He won’t mind, will you, Carl?”

  “First you get back over there. I’m not falling for any of your tricks. Back up.”

  When I’m in the kitchen he places the gun down on his chair and his drink on the table, yanks the sweatshirt over his head, shoves his arms in. I don’t have enough time to do anything. He’s fast. The shirt is huge on him but he rolls the sleeves up, all the while watching me and not moving away from the gun. I’ve got to get him away from the gun.

  He doesn’t argue when I top off his glass. He’s had a lot of liquor. Wine, cognac, and now the schnapps.

  “The tape.”

  “What’s that, Carl?”

  “Cut it. The tape.”

  “Sure, Carl. When we’re ready. Hold your water, so to speak. Speaking of water, do you need the pee pitcher again, Carl?”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Tomorrow.” The song won’t leave my thoughts. Such a stupid song. It’s from Annie, I think. That silly little girl singing “Tomorrow” into the face of Daddy What’s-his-name. Tomorrow. Sylvie waddles into the house. We are both dead, spread higgledy-piggledy about on the floor. Or Carl is still in his chair, slumped over his knees. She’s very pregnant. Jonah tells her, I found them like this, how terrible, such a nice couple. I just went out for a few minutes. They needed milk. Isn’t it horrible? Oh, honey, let me hold you. Sylvie falls into his waiting arms, sobs, says, I love you, to the murderer of her own parents. What does Sylvie do without us? And the baby? What about the baby? Is there one? No, she can’t find us like that.

  “The dinner,” Jonah says. “Where’s the fucking dinner?”

  He’s feeling the booze. His words slur, his head bobs back and forth, he swallows a mouthful of the schnapps, but he hangs on to that gun. The chicken and mushrooms have been simmering in tomato sauce for ages. I sprinkle some dried mixed herbs onto the top, add some fresh rosemary from my windowsill plant. When I sniff the mixture, vertigo makes me lean against the counter. It’s the same vertigo that gives me the urge to jump when I’m in the pine tree. I’m hungry. That’s all.

  “Dinner is ready,” I say in as natural a hostesslike way as possible. “You can untape Carl’s arms and legs now. He needs to come to the table to eat.”

  “Oh no, you don’t. You little cock tease. Carl can eat in his lovely chair. He likes his chair. You and I will eat in the kitchen.”

  “What about Hans? He’s hungry.”

  “Hans?”

  “The man in the driveway.”

  “Oh, Hans. The little German man. There isn’t enough for him.” He wobbles toward me with his drink and his gun. “Is this my mother’s recipe?”

  “No. It’s mine. I don’t have your mother’s recipe.”

  “Don’t you know my mother? You look like her.” He reaches out and touches the tip of my braid, strokes the end. I talk to myself. Things like Don’t fall over. Don’t push his hand away. Don’t agitate him. Don’t throw up. His breath reeks of peppermint. He’s too close to me. Back up, I say to my wobbly brain. Back up. Does Sylvie talk to herself about Jonah? About us? Does she tell herself to hug me so I’ll think she’s fine?

  I command him to sit down and he obeys. Carl does not remind Jonah about promises he made to untape his legs. Rather, Carl calmly waits for his supper, like a nursing home patient strapped to a wheelchair. Jonah places the gun on the table to the right of his knife and waits to be served like a guest of honor at a reception, except that he is fairly drunk.

  “Is she dead? Is my mother dead now?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “I think that perhaps she is. Yes. I think she is.” His words are garbled. His glass still has about an inch of liquor but I’m afraid to pour more in, to call attention to it.

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  “Who?”

  “My mommy. Do you think I could have saved the baby? Just cut it out when she died? But I didn’t have a knife. No knife for me. I was too little.”

  “Here you go,” I say. His plate is overflowing with most of the potatoes and one of the chicken breasts and a slice of rye bread. If he eats everything he might sober up. I shouldn’t have given him so much. I pick up a fork to take one potato back, but he grabs the gun and points it at my face. He thinks I was going to stab him with the fork. Could I do that?

  “Stop that,” he says. “Just calm down. Keep your distance.”

  “Are you afraid of me, Jonah?”

  “No. I’m not afraid of anyone. Only God. I’m afraid of God.”

  “I’m bringing Carl his dinner. I’ll move slowly. I know, no funny stuff. I know.”

  Carl sits, ready to eat. I slide a tray with his plate and a glass of water onto the small table next to his chair. I smell his blood. Streaks of it crisscross his arm, smear on his pants, still ooze from the wounds on his forearm. When I pour the peroxide onto his wound, it fizzes as if the wound wer
e fresh, but it has been hours.

  “Carl, I’m going to feed you your dinner,” I say.

  “What are you doing over there?” Jonah says.

  “I’m feeding Carl. Unless you want to cut him free.”

  Jonah doesn’t answer and I think he’s started his dinner, because I hear the clink of a fork against a plate. When I lift a bit of potato onto the fork, Carl opens his mouth like a small boy, oblivious to his own silent weeping, the tears dripping onto his lap.

  “Oh, Carl,” I say. “Oh, Carl.”

  “Jess, my Jess.”

  “At least we know our names, don’t we, my darling.”

  His lips close over the fork. He chews the potato as I move the fork back to the plate for more. He shakes his head at the second forkful.

  “No. I can’t eat any more,” he says. “My teeth.”

  “Please be alert, Carl. I’m trying to get us out of this.”

  “Jess? I’m sorry about the . . . I . . . the shame. It is his.” Carl says. “The shame is his. And mine, too. I should have stopped him.”

  We speak in hushed voices. Back in the kitchen, Jonah eats his meal. I hear him knock something over. The pepper mill? Then I hear him pour the last of the peppermint schnapps, which I left on the table in front of him, into his glass. I try to pick at the tape on Carl’s arms but can’t even find the ends.

  I bend my head to Carl and he kisses the back of my neck, just like he does every day. But today he holds his lips there and I hold my neck for him to reach. His breath warms me.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. The sex. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know what he is doing.” I bring my head back up, cup my palm to his face.

  “Is she pregnant? Sylvie?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Wouldn’t someone have told us?”

  “Maybe not. She’s of age. And they might not even know.”

  “What about tomorrow, Carl? What will happen tomorrow?”

  “Come over here,” Jonah says. “He’s had enough.”

  Because I need my strength and because I have a pain in my stomach, I place a small piece of chicken and remnants of the burst potato onto a plate and sit at the opposite end of the table from Jonah. He rests his left hand over the gun handle, eats with the other hand. His plate is now empty except for one of the potatoes, which he cuts into with his knife. I have a knife, too. Not very sharp.