“Aw, do we have to?”
Thad’s voice edged into a whine. Ellen’s harsh soprano all but drowned out the boy’s complaints.
“Yes, you do. We all do. It’s the least we can do for Grandpa Abe.” She looked around the gathered family members as if daring anyone to contradict her. She’s in her element, Jay thought with a flood of realization that startled him. She’s the matriarch, now that Mom’s gone. She’s taken full charge, telling everyone what to do and when to do it and where to go. Even Dad.
He glanced over to a patio glider that squawked thinly as Abe’s weight shifted. The old man sat silently in the shadows, his eyes downcast. Jay wondered if his father saw any of them, or whether the old man was really aware of where he was. Since the episode on Thanksgiving, Jay had been watching his father closely, not at all pleased with what he was seeing. At regular intervals, Abe seemed to phase out-almost, Jay thought, as if he were drugged. Jay had toyed with the idea of checking to see if his father’s medications were interacting but decided to wait a bit before mentioning his concerns. After all, no one else seemed to have noticed anything untoward.
That morning had started well enough, with everyone sleeping in until eight or nine. Then, right after breakfast, Ellen had hustled everyone into the back yard-including Abe, bundled in three layers of sweaters and jackets in case the crisp November air should be too much for him.
“He needs the fresh air,” Ellen insisted. “And besides, you know how much he loved to garden.”
Loved. Ellen had that one right. She herded the kids like a general marshalling troops, handing out rakes and hoes and shovels, directing her boys to one part of the overgrown yard, Jay and his girls to another. Linda had opted to stay inside and clean up in the kitchen. Mitch was out front, puttering around with his engine.
Apparently, Jay thought, it’s all right for my wife to work to straighten up her father-in-law’s place, but Mitch is somehow immune to the same obligation. He was surprised at the anger that realization kindled in him.
He turned to the job at hand-hacking down brambles of dead and dying plants that clotted the foundation line of the house. He showed Elizabeth and Anna how to grab the stiff, blackened passion-plant vines and twist them into small bundles and stuff them into thick brown lawn-and-leaf bags. He actually didn’t mind them working in the yard with him; in fact, he enjoyed it more than he would have cared to admit. It reminded him of his own childhood, when his was the small hand struggling to control a recalcitrant branch, and Abe’s the larger reaching over and with a single deft touch putting things to right.
If only Ellen weren’t acting like the Her Untouchable Highness, the Queen of the May.
They broke at noon, and after lunch-superbly cooked and served up by Linda, who had managed to make second-day turkey taste like a rare treat-the kids stayed inside. Ellen’s three began arguing almost immediately about the PlayStation. Anna and Elizabeth settled themselves onto the couch and began leafing through old picture albums Grandma Mattie had accumulated over fifty or sixty years. Jay could remember thumbing through them himself on rainy days when he was a child. The adults returned outside. This time Mitch deigned to join.
“Still a lot to do,” Mitch said judiciously, as he surveyed the line of fifteen or so brown bags, stuffed to the top, secured with metal twist-ties, and set waiting to be hauled out for the garbage on Monday. They had already arranged for a neighbor boy to take care of the bags, since neither Mitch nor Jay could stay beyond Saturday evening.
“Looks like everything he planted died.”
It was a simple statement, but it took Jay by surprise. Thus far, in spite of his initial impressions as he had arrived the other day, he had been working on the assumption that they were essentially cleaning up old growth. But Mitch’s words forced Jay to look again, more closely.
Mitch was an arrogant, self-centered, conceited blowhard most of the time, but this time he was right. Abe’s place was a graveyard of unburied plants. Everything Jay saw was dead or dying. The branches of a two-or three-year dwarf peach standing forlornly in one corner were brittle and shattered when he bent them to test for sap. Roses, wisteria, pyracantha, even two palms set out at the far corners of the patio-everything was dead. Along the foundation, not even the hardiest weeds survived. Jay knelt and pulled up handfuls of dry, flaking Bermuda grass. The roots-usually almost impossible to remove from the soil-ripped up in brown, rotting masses.
Without saying anything more to either Ellen or Mitch, Jay made a circuit of the place, front yard as well as back. He wasn’t a professional gardener or horticulturist or anything-at home, he barely touched his own place, relying on the twice monthly services of a Japanese gardener who worked diligently and competently and could speak no English and write little more than the date and amount due in the appropriate spaces on the bill he slipped once a month into Jay’s screen door. But even with his narrow expertise, Jay knew enough from his childhood to know that something was wrong.
Nothing seemed alive.
He wondered worriedly what the house must have looked like during the spring and summer, when every other house on the street would have been a riot of Southern California colors-the vibrant scarlets and oranges and purples of bougainvillea, the delicate lavenders of wisteria and jacaranda and blue hibiscus, the fluorescent pinks and violets of geraniums. But here, at the house on the top of the hill, there would only have been brown and grey and the dingy black of dead and dying vegetation. Even the elm overhanging the corner of the yard looked diseased and rotted, its trunk seamed and twisted.
“What’s going on here?” Jay asked himself as he crumbled dry leaves between his fingers. It looked like more than just neglect contingent upon failing health. It looked as if Abe had deliberately poisoned every plant in the place.
Jay started for the garage, intending to pull out a shovel and test the hard-pack soil in the front yard when a shriek from inside the house drove any such ideas from his mind.
Elizabeth!
He recognized her voice, recognized her cry as one of pain and fear, not just the petulance of a ten year old. He slammed through the front door. Elizabeth stood in the center of the family room. One hand cupped her chin, from which blood was flowing in a steady stream.
“She’s dying, she’s dying,” Anna whimpered from her corner on the couch. Jay took in the scene at once. Thad was not in the room. Thirteen-year-old Josh stood defiantly with his back to the television screen, on which an electronic Mario whistled and burbled unnoticed. A heavy glass ashtray was clenched in his fist. One edge was starred and stained with deep red.
“Shit!” Jay said, “Now what.” Even as spoke he was lifting Elizabeth and rushing her down the hall to the front bathroom. He heard the back door slam as he disappeared around the corner-that would be Linda and Ellen and Mitch. They could take care of the kids in the family room.
He set Elizabeth on the toilet seat and gently pried her fingers away from her chin. The skin was sliced, shallowly and neatly, for perhaps an inch just to the right of her mouth. Jay dabbed at it with a hand cloth from the rack next to the sink. It was bleeding heavily, but it looked like the blood was more superficial than serious.
A hand touched his shoulder. It was Linda.
“How is she?” Linda did not try to keep the fear from her voice.
“All right, I think,” he answered. He held a clean hand cloth to the cut and pressed. Elizabeth winced but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were still clouded with tears, but she was no longer screaming.
“More frightened than anything.”
“Let me see,” Linda said. Jay gently released the pressure on the cut. He pulled the cloth away. The wound was now a thin red line, oozing lightly but no longer flowing.
“Where are the band-aids?” Linda asked.
“Up there,” Jay said, motioning with his head toward the medicine cabinet. Linda opened the mirrored door and rummaged for a few seconds in the depths. She took out a box of band-aids and small pair of scissors. With the deftness honed by years of motherhood and family crises she snipped at the band-aid until it was butterfly shaped.
“Move a minute.”
Jay shifted away from Elizabeth. Linda carefully positioned the butterfly band-aid on the cut, then lifted Elizabeth and sat down on the toilet seat, her daughter securely on her lap.
“It’s all right, honey,” Linda murmured. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Jay reached out and touched his daughter’s forehead. As he moved, he noticed that Abe was standing in the hallway, watching the proceedings intently.
“She’s fine, Dad,” Jay said in an attempt to reassure the old man. “Just an accident.”
“Huh-uh,” Elizabeth said. “Josh hit me.”
“What!” Jay swung his attention back to the small, pale face pressed against his wife’s shoulder.
“Josh hit me.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to play. With the video game. He didn’t want me to, and he grabbed that glass thing and hit me.”
Jay surged to his feet. Linda grabbed his arm and held him tightly.
“Jay, please, try to stay calm and find out what happened.”
“Calm! Stay calm! That little bastard nearly kills your daughter and you tell me to stay calm.”
Linda blanched at the anger in his voice, then her face flushed red and hot.
Jay was out the door in an instant. He shouldered past his father, not noticing the distanced, glazed expression in the old man’s eyes, not noticing that as he passed his father Jay almost knocked him off balance. The old man slumped against the wall. Already Jay was in the family room yelling. But Mitch was there also, running interference, hunched aggressively between his son and Jay.
Jay accused. Mitch defended. Josh burst into tears and threw the glass ashtray. It spun in the bright winter light, catching sunlight and refracting it in rainbow spirals as it shattered the family room window and disappeared into the dead yard.
The crash of glass startled both Mitch and Jay, enough at any rate for the nearly crazed fathers to catch their breaths. They stared at each other, realizing with a unanimity that was itself breathtaking how close they had come to blows. Mitch’s fists were clenched at his sides. Jay’s breath was ragged and shallow, and his voice shook as he spoke.
“Anna, come here.” She came. Without a word, she slipped across the room and stood behind her father. Jay took her by the hand and led her down the hall. As he passed the bathroom, he looked in at Linda and Elizabeth.
“We’re leaving. Now,” he announced. “Anna, pack your things and Elizabeth’s.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She disappeared into the bedroom the girls had shared.
“You stay here with Elizabeth,” Jay said to his stunned wife. He rushed down the hallway and threw his and Linda’s things into their still-open suitcases, hammered the Samsonites shut, and yanked them up. Without speaking to anyone, he stalked through the hall and out the front door. He thrust the unoffending cases into the trunk of the car, slamming the lid hard enough to jostle his key ring loose. The keys dropped to the pavement with a harsh, raucous clatter. Blood throbbed in his temples as he leaned over to retrieve them.
He re-entered the house, carefully avoiding any words with Ellen, who now fluttered protectively around her boys. Thad was in the family room as well, Jay noted, his long frame slouched in Mattie’s favorite chair, his feet hooked over the arm. The boy’s shoes were filthy.
He helped Anna close her bag and Elizabeth’s, then took them outside as well and, moving like an automaton in spite of his mounting fury, went inside for a final time. By then Linda and Elizabeth were on their feet, standing together in the bathroom doorway.
“Jay,” Linda began. “Don’t you think…”
“Think, nothing. I’m leaving. Now.”
He swept Elizabeth into his arms and carried her outside. Anna followed, her eyes dark with unwept tears. Jay sat Elizabeth on the back seat, then held the door open for Anna and waited until both girls were securely seatbelted in. He looked up. Linda was on the door-step. He could see Abe’s silver hair glistening in the darkness behind his wife.
For a moment, Jay faltered. This is absurd, he heard himself argue. You haven’t even talked to the boy; you don’t know what really happened. Elizabeth is fine; she probably won’t even have a scar in a couple of weeks-shallow cuts like that bleed like hell but don’t really do much damage. Why are you acting like this, like Attila the Hun with raging hemorrhoids, setting out to rape and ravage and slaughter.
For a moment, he almost turned back to the girls and unbuckled their seatbelts and helped them from the car. Part of him wanted to. But that part was weaker than the part that repeated incessantly Get out get out get out. Even that part knew that Elizabeth’s injury had little to do with the need to be away-away from obsessive Ellen and her obnoxious brood, away from Mitch’s unfeeling superciliousness, away from…
Away from this house!
Admit it, Jay old boy, that’s the real thing. Away from this house. He swallowed convulsively and gestured for Linda to get into the car. As she passed him, she reached out for his arm again, as if she were his mother trying to help him realize for himself the enormity of his mistake before things went too far.
He shook his head. “I know what I’m doing, hon.” He waited until she was in the car, then he returned alone to the front door.
Ellen and Mitch were still in the family room. They were not speaking; they were watching him with an intensity that unnerved him. The boys were gone-whether out back or into the bedroom Ellen and Mitch were using, Jay didn’t know. He didn’t care, either. After the way Thad had acted the first day, after Josh injuring Elizabeth today, he didn’t give a damn if he never spoke to his sister again. He focused his attention on his father.
Abraham Morris looked old and frail in the filtered light. His skin hung loosely from his face, his lips trembled even though he was not speaking, and his eyes darted back and forth, as if he were trying to discover who this stranger was standing in front of him.
“Dad,” Jay said as gently as he could. “Dad, Linda and I have to leave. You understand?”
Abe nodded.
Jay wasn’t sure that the movement meant; there was something about it that suggested his father did not understand anything that had happened in the past few minutes.
“Look,” Jay continued, “I’ll call you as soon as we get home. We’ll have you out to our place soon. Maybe later this week. You can come out and stay until New Years if you want. Longer. We’ve got the room. And I don’t like the idea of you staying here in this house…alone.”
Abe’s eyes cleared. His lips stopped their nervous tremors, and when he spoke, Jay heard his father’s voice the way he remembered it from years before.
“I’m fine, Jay. I’ll be fine. You just take care of Lizzy-Bizzy and Anna-banana and Linda, and let me worry about me.”
Jay swallowed. He hadn’t heard his father use those pet names for years.
“Okay, Dad.” He paused, unsure what to say next. “Look, tell Ellen that…tell her I’m…I’m sorry and I’ll call her later, too. When I’ve had a chance to cool down.”
Abe nodded. “That would be wise. I’ll talk to her.”
Jay looked at his father and-on an impulse he would never quite understand but for which he was grateful for the rest of his life-reached out abruptly and threw his arms around his father. He felt the angularity of bone beneath the bulk of Abe’s clothing, and realized anew that his father was old and frail and thin. He hugged Abe with all the strength he could muster, and when the two men finally broke their embrace, both had tears in their eyes.
“Okay, Dad. And…thanks.”
“You drive careful, now. You hear?”
“Sure, Dad.” Jay left. Abe followed a few steps out onto the porch and waved at his daughter-in-law and granddaughters in the car. Then he turned and went inside and shut the door.
“Jay?” Linda’s voice was calm but subdued.
“I’m okay.”
“Should we…?”
“I told him we’d call. We’d have him out soon. For a long visit.” He cranked at the engine, relived that it turned over right away. “For a real long visit.”
The Slab- A Novel of Horror (retail) (epub)
Michael R Collings