The Uninnocent (16 page)

At this juncture the husband's wife screamed again, this time unremittingly until the peace officers (having placed the husband under arrest, quite incensed and not a little chagrined that, while focusing on raiding the house through the kitchen door in back, they had failed to notice the husband, who had walked home after the officers removed him from the
staging area
, and there had a
nice stiff one
while he loaded his own handgun, no Browning BDA-380 but sufficient to the task, and marched back, keeping himself more or less hidden in neighborhood shrubbery, and aimed at the living-room window, not caring one way or another whether he happened to hit the
fucking psycho
or his
fucking wife
, just hoping he succeeded in murdering one of the
fucking goddamn fucks
) entered the house (firearms unnecessarily drawn) to discover the (dead) man on the hardwood floor (still clutching one of his dozen or so guns, the others having been neatly laid out on the plaid sofa and matching wingback chair) and the woman by the radiator (who stopped screaming once they uncuffed her and removed the duct tape), and (after searching the rest of the modest house) radioed the negotiator and commanding officer (both smoking unfiltered cigarettes in the
staging area
) that the crime scene was secured. The woman's husband gave himself up without a struggle and was led off (himself now in handcuffs) to be driven downtown for booking (where he called his startled lawyer, whose practice was mostly in estate tax). That he expressed (in front of several witnesses at the precinct house before his aforementioned attorney arrived) delight (not to mention astonishment) upon hearing he had somehow managed (sheer luck) to slay the
fucking psycho
would not help his case in the months (and years) to come (found guilty of first degree murder by a thoughtful
jury of his peers
). The man's corpse was (after being photographed from many angles) removed (body bag), and the media vans (pros aboard) thereafter left (this particular crisis being
a wrap
), as did the SWAT contingent and many officers (two detectives and a forensic expert remained behind
collecting evidence
such as it was), and soon the neighborhood settled back to (some semblance of) normalcy before a harsh early frost (this would be toward the end of the month) hastened the (magnificent) autumn foliage even as it killed chrysanthemums in flower beds up and down the street, while geese flew in (loud and traditional) formation across the (cobalt) sky overhead. As for the ex-wife of the (imprisoned) husband (and girlfriend of the deceased), she sold both (the dove-gray and very pale blue) Capes (having inherited the former from her ex-boyfriend, who had attentively included their offspring in his will, and the latter in her divorce settlement) and moved (with all four of her children) into a larger house (different neighborhood, as might be presumed). During her (understandably somewhat lengthy) period of mourning and recovery (from the trauma she was forced to endure) she relied on the (combined) comforts afforded her by her doctor (who determined which pharmaceuticals would help her through her difficult days, and nights) and priest (whose dulcet voice, not unlike that of the doctor, was so soothing to her in the shadowy solace of the confessional), each of whom (generous to a fault) took her (as it were) under their mortal (and immortal) wings.

ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH ME

A
S YOU KNOW,
we were each told to write an honest essay about the things that are wrong with us, and this one is mine. Having read over my charming masterpiece, I wouldn't wish the life it sketches on my worst enemy, of which I have more than my share. We were instructed by our therapist, Bruce—I doubt that's his real name—to explore what each of us considers our worst personal failings, and if possible
identify the genesis
, as Bruce put it,
of these vices
, taking care not to allow ourselves to
vent animosity toward others in the group
or toward those who had been the bane of our lives over the years. I can't have been alone in considering this a damn tough assignment, but I have done my best. Looking back, the hardest part of fulfilling the task at hand was to limit the essay to only seven things wrong with me. My original list, probably like yours, ran into the hundreds. Narrowing it down was a frustrating job, but I suspect this was the idea.
Reverse psychology
, they used to call it,
the counterintuitive approach
. By processing just seven of our faults, one each day of the week, we'd recognize that these were merely the tip of the iceberg in the overall scheme of faults, and also discover, by thinking about it so thoroughly, some glimpses of the possible good that lurked in each of our rotten hearts. I'm sure this has been a learning experience for the rest of you, too.

By way of introduction, my father was Bill. My mother is Irene. My sister was Christy and my other sister is Jocelyn. My one grandmother is Honey and my two grandfathers are Wilfred and Paul. My dead grandmother I never met, her name was Nancy, though my family rarely spoke about her because they say she wasn't nice and made a calculated marriage with my grandfather Paul, who is a heart specialist and the one success story in our otherwise pathetic gang. There is an uncle named Hamp, which is short for Hampton, and he is a crabby old drummer in a dated lounge act heard every Monday and Thursday down in Staten Island somewhere. I had an Aunt Janice and Uncle Arnie at one point, but they disavowed me, as have my cousin Bill and another cousin I never met, whose name is Claudia to the best of my knowledge. To clarify, Christy is dead and her widower is serving three consecutive life sentences for the murder of her half-wit boyfriend, Bill—yes, a ton of Bills in my life—Bill's stepmother, Addie, and my older sister herself. Hanged them in the garage. For the record, if you're taking notes, my name is John.

My father, first. We never got along and the fault must lie with me, because he was such a stellar human being, just ask him yourself. He tried hard to be the perfect dad, but I couldn't get with the program. There are so many examples of my ingratitude in the face of his flawless parenting that I could write the whole essay on this alone. An early recollection involves a Boy Scout jamboree where I learned to make cornstalk fiddles, tie a double knot known as the Flemish Loop, and sharpen my hatchet with a whetstone. It was during this summer weekend in the Poconos when some of us scouts and our fathers signed up for a taxidermy seminar. A deceased dude named Captain Thomas Brown wrote in some manual that
boys ought to be instructed in the art of stuffing birds and mammals at an early age
, and so on his high authority we were urged to start then and there. First we were told how to kill specimens in the best ways—pithing or poisoning instead of buckshot pellets, which turned the corpse into a mess. We then learned about skinning, defeathering, defurring, unfleshing, dismembering, and denuding the carcasses of chipmunks, skunks, moles, and other helpless wilderness beasts. As it happened, the taxidermist scoutmaster gave me and my approving father a great horned owl to stuff together. Seems a local farmer had been plagued by the bird's hungry junkets to the chicken coop—it had been cleanly shot and donated to the scouts for the purpose of stuffing. Urged on by my manly father, while gorge rose like lava in my throat, I mopped blood from the pretty plumage, then separated its skin from the body with my quivering fingers. Dad didn't help much other than to egg me on whenever I balked. As instructed, I dusted his guts—the owl's—with cornmeal to soak up the other fluids besides blood, and scooped the eyes, then painted their sockets with toxic soap and used the other junk they gave us—the camphor, salt of tartar, powdered lime, wooden dowels and heavy wire. With penknife and threaded needle and lots of glue I created a monstrosity that long weekend, a parody of an owl, as you might have guessed. My father blamed me and I blamed both him and the Boy Scouts, and not only did I never go to any camp again, but I shredded my scouting manual and used it to line my hamster cage. We never discussed the matter afterward, and though my deep hatred of the man began before this incident and matured in its wake, the failure of our father–son outing was like arsenic in an already poisonous relationship. I still have the poor owl, most of whose dusty feathers have fallen out. His beak is black and I put marbles in the eye holes, which gives him a bit of a crazed look on top of the refrigerator where he's perched. After this jamboree scene I became, to the old man's horror, a vegetarian. Only legumes and grains have touched my lips, the latter, as with many of you here today, most often in liquid form. As for my dear father, he ate pork, fish, fowl, venison, veal, lamb, and beef right up to the afternoon he died of a massive coronary when we were alone in the house. If only he'd made it more clear to me what ailed him as he lay there thrashing on the kitchen floor, I might have been able to help him. His death, you could say, and don't think some haven't, was my fault—a natural extension of my guilty inadequacy as a son—if you were to ignore his repulsive dietary habits and lifelong bad temper, which gave him the high blood pressure in the first place. We buried him in his old Explorers uniform.

I don't hate my mother the way I hated my father, but I can't claim I ever brought the slightest ray of happiness into her life, either. She nearly died in childbirth, as she liked telling me over and over again, especially on birthdays, both mine and hers. Good old Irene with her blue hair and eyes, a head taller than her husband, back when he was among the standing, didn't like any of her brats, as far as I could tell. When they found Christy and the others in the garage, I swear her torrents of tears had less to do with having lost her eldest daughter than with the fact that another source of income had just got hung out to dry, old Bill having dropped dead on us just the year before. But maybe I'm being too hard on her, another fault of mine. She has always shown a mother's leniency toward me when it came to my menagerie of stray cats and mongrel dogs and birds with broken wings, and for that I owe her a debt of gratitude. Given how directionless my hours after school had become, once the Scouts and I parted company, and knowing from experience how poorly I got along with other goons my own age, my mother saw the interest I took in feeding, grooming, and playing with the homeless pets found in alleys, back lots, and in the fields beyond the way-crummy town where we lived, and thought it might be a good thing for me. Might keep me, as she put it,
out of the detention house
. The fact that it landed me
in
the detention house is a cruel irony I choose not to address right now, but, as I say, I was grateful for her forbearance, which I used at every possible turn to my own advantage. To a fault, I confess. What I mean to say is, the more strays and hurt animals I brought home with me—most lived in our basement, freely coming and going by way of a broken window—the more I wanted.

Some of you undoubtedly are the type of delinquents who got your start by hanging the neighbors' kittens on a clothesline. Well, that wasn't my game. Instead, when I couldn't help abandoned animals, I took in pets from houses on the other end of town, usually during the day when their so-called owners were away working, or going to school like I was supposed to do. Irene must have known what I was up to but kept her mouth shut, figuring she hadn't many other options left since the idea was, as I mentioned before, encouraged by her, and since I was on probation. She must also have suspected that all the dog chow and kitty litter, the birdcages and rabbit pellets, not to mention catnip toys and rawhide bones and so forth, cost more money than I earned on my paper route, which I did less for the dough and more to scout new mates for the menagerie. So when cranky Hamp, who was living with us, complained that cash was missing from his wallet, as did Grandmother Honey several blocks away, my mother's indulgence was put to the test. Despite all the tenderness I showed my animals, the way I went about maintaining my personal free-range kennel must have agonized the old gal, and so another strike against me.

My little sister, Jocelyn, and I were thrown together almost from infancy, as Christy was a decade my senior, while I was only a year older than Josie. We were virtual Siamese twins until the big guy, who found us putting on an imaginary tea party in her room, both of us dressed in her Sunday clothes and made up with lipstick borrowed from Irene's drawer in the master bath, lowered the boom on me. That was when he decided the Little League and Cub Scouts and crap like that were the necessary antidote. I don't like nor do I excel at sports any more than I liked or excelled at anything the scouting organization had to offer. Our virile father, worried that his only son showed signs of orienting down a sexual avenue that would have been disgraceful in his macho eyes, missed altogether my more deviant direction, navigated for many years by my uncurbed little sister and me. If I'm sounding glib it's because, as any of you rubes who has walked the same path knows, I'm embarrassed by how good and natural our prepubescent marriage was. We said wedding vows one summer day in the downstairs den, and sometimes even now, all these years later, I think it's a pity Jocelyn met her fiancé, Michael, a TV-handsome young lawyer, but my love for her, which is also my failing, remains strong. I should add, it continues to give me profound, even grim, pleasure that the big bad wolf never found out. He perished on the kitchen floor sure in his soul that his only begotten son was a eunuch or worse. But, as you now know, he was mistaken. Old Irene never knew about us, either, and while Christy had her suspicions, she is no longer among us and in any case might have approved, since how much more out there could you get than Christy?

I would like to take a moment here to protest that all these confessions are beginning to make me sound like some kind of wicked, even pukey, human being, which I know I'm not. But don't take my word for it. Just ask any of the dozens of animals whose lives I saved over the years. Ask my grandfather, Paul, who posted bail whenever such a kindness was needed, to keep me out of places he felt I didn't belong. He should know, if anyone does, where I do and do not belong, since he's a medical man of considerable stature. He commutes to Columbia Presbyterian from a Tudor in Riverdale and, as I say, ought to know the score. But all right. I know this is against the rules, so I'll get back to my list, as our therapist Bruce stipulated. Just that it seemed to me the picture was getting too skewed, but I suppose, as a couple of you have just said, that's the point.