A Brief Lunacy (19 page)

Jessie was my first real love after the camp. Camba and I were to be married when we came of age. But that was before Birkenau. She was shot because she stole a potato. Therese, a Sinti Gypsy from Lithuania, begged me to make love to her just before I escaped. I bribed my bunkmates with a piece of moldy sausage to squeeze into some other bunk just for one night and Therese and I slept with our arms around each other. Our bodies covered with thin, parchmentlike skin pressed close. She was afraid the bone rubbing on bone would cause lesions in our skin and we would be selected. When I lay on her, went inside, her hips poked sharp against my belly. She was dry. Like sandpaper. I was dry, too. We were starving. But we loved each other all
night. She went to the gas with the others. She must have. I never saw her again.

In college I had a few lovers but no one I really loved until Jessie. After that day in the library when she dropped her books, I saw her walking along the river on a Sunday morning and stopped to chat. I asked her to movies. “Not until I defend my thesis.” To dinner, to the coffeehouse. “Not until my thesis is accepted.”

One day I got a call. She'd just come home after finishing her orals and wanted to take me to dinner. We went to a Chinese restaurant in Boston, then strolled through alleys and gardens and cemeteries back toward Cambridge. She asked me about my studies, about why I wanted to fix broken joints and where I was going to do my residency. I asked her why she wanted to teach. She said she had a talent for it. We walked through an old cemetery where the lights of the city dimmed and bushes sprang out at us from all directions. Beside the large tomb of some famous old man, she pulled me down by her on the grass and kissed me.

“You're a good man, Carl,” she said. She straddled my chest, bent to kiss my mouth, her braid brushing the side of my face. We heard someone walking close by. She held her finger against my lips, stifled a laugh, began to unbutton my shirt. She had no underpants on at all. When my shirt was unbuttoned, she opened it, pressed her dampness against my chest. “You're so good,” she said, over and over. What did I say to her? Did I say she was good?

She slid down toward my thighs, unsnapped my chinos, tucked her hand down inside my boxers. I think I unbuttoned
her blouse. It was purple. Crinkly cotton, something light. I expected an underthing, but it was just Jessie, her bare skin against the thin fabric. I opened the blouse, like a birthday present, and she leaned forward so that her breast lowered into my mouth. She smelled of nettles and spring earth and soy sauce.

She lowered my zipper so slowly that I felt my whole life go by like a movie. She kept stopping to press her face against the hollow at my rib, breathe in the scent from inside my clothes. When she had pulled the zipper as far as it would go, she squatted over me and tugged my clothes down to my knees. I knew what she was going to do. No one had ever done that before, but I knew. I said silent words to some great, powerful being to let me hold back, keep me from spilling too soon.

“Jessie, my Jess,” I said. “
Je t'adore.
” What a silly thing to say. But she didn't think it silly.

When she ran her tongue up and encircled me with her lips, took me in her mouth, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't have her do that. God, I wanted it. But I couldn't. Not in her mouth. She understood. She lay with her blouse open on my bare skin until we fell asleep. When I awoke, I rolled her underneath me and entered her quietly.

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.

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 crazy? 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.