The Uninnocent (17 page)

So, having mentioned my grandfather, I guess this would be the best moment to describe how, after poor Christy met her death and the trial of my brother-in-law was going on, he took me and Jocelyn in for several months. My mother's father, his heart went out to Irene during those dark times, and he wanted to do whatever he could to help her through a tough stretch. Since his wife, the loathed Nancy, had died some years earlier, leaving the surgeon in his large pile of brick and slate with only an elderly housekeeper under the same roof, he even seemed to welcome the company. And we welcomed the unbridled days of complete freedom, which took us out into a neighborhood of wealth, luxury, splendor that neither of us had ever seen. We trespassed like crazy, skinny-dipped in people's private pools, trampled their fancy flower beds, rummaged around in their garages, never stealing anything really but maybe soaping a windshield now and then if the car seemed antique and valuable. We discovered the joy of television and watched junk with the sound off all night long, while our grandfather went to bed early, his work taking him back to the hospital before dawn every morning. We made friends with only one kid in the neighborhood, and here comes the confession. His name was Brewster, or something idiotic. This was before I started the menagerie, by the way. Brewster had the most beautiful little dog, whose penance it was to suffer her master's putting out cigarettes on her belly. Josie and I started smoking that summer, and this snot Brewster conceived the idea after trying and failing to smoke a fag with us. We laughed ourselves silly when his face flushed red and he half coughed his lungs out, and I imagine it was our scorn that prompted his sadism. One day, having noticed the bitch lying near us in the grass on her side was covered with tiny, round welts that weren't her tits, I asked fat Brewster what he thought the problem was with his dog. Proudly smirking, he told me what he'd been doing. It was like a dream, as if his screams and those of my sister were televised with the volume low, when without the least thought I climbed on top of him and, holding him as still as I could, burned his cheek and forehead and chin and even one eyelid with my cigarette. He lived, the bastard, of course.

And so did I, though for my compassionate crime I was introduced for the first time to The System. A bad thing, I guess, all of it. My grandfather was unhappy, to say the least, about the outcome of his largesse and my mother was made only more despondent, though both saw my violent response to this prick's sickness as the natural outgrowth of the tragedy that had visited the margins of my life. For what it's worth, Brewster landed himself in therapy and the pup was removed to a shelter. Without a moment's hesitation I would do what I did to him again, even though I admit, once more, that it's one of the things wrong with me.

Maybe I should allow myself a lesser fault, a breather, as it were. My toenails are thick, brittle, apricot-colored, and split. They are extremely ugly perched on the ends of my toes, which are as long as most people's fingers. Let me show you. See how each nail is deeply ridged and as amber as any petrified resin out of your basic Jurassic Park. My father, who instructed me in all the mysteries of personal grooming, taught me to trim them in the shape of a V, like so, and they have served over the years, when needed, as weapons. Even dear Josie has a scar on her left cheek, the result of a friendly wrestling match under the front porch when we were five and six years of age, respectively. My toenails themselves and the injuries they have brought to others constitute a fault that should be considered more serious than the smiles on your faces suggest. Which brings me to a more unpleasant entry in my catalog.

As you know, my love of people—Jocelyn excepted—borders on nil, while my love for animals is almost without limit. So after they released me from juvie hall into my mother's custody, I scored that paper route, as mentioned, and one by one started taking in a slew of stray calicos and tabbies, half-breed mutts that mixed all kinds of things from dachshund to mastiff, not to mention pigeons, robins, sparrows, the occasional escaped parakeet, gerbils, rabbits, mice, possums, snakes, lizards, even a blind raccoon. Of course, the place did begin to stink a little. Hamp complained the most. Irene, having no sense of smell, and Josie being Josie, they didn't seem to notice. But Hamp wasn't wrong. Nobody, even I, could have kept up with the activities in our basement and backyard. All I did was care for my precious darlings, which is how I came to think of them, nor am I ashamed to admit it, even though I see some of you find it humorous. The rest of the time I tried to cop enough dough to cover the expenses. Josie tried to help me out, but her dashing beau, Michael, didn't like my asylum any more than he liked me.

As you must have figured out on your own, some years had come and gone between my release from juvie and Jocelyn's accepting this Michael's offer of marriage. It would be about ten of them, during which time I was only busted once on a minor infraction, thanks to some do-gooder from the Department of Health, who showed up at our door with a warrant and a bad attitude. Irene and Hamp happened to be out, so Josie and I virgiled this dude on an inspection of the cellar and backyard. Needless to say, he didn't like what he saw, even though, coincidentally, I'd tidied the litter boxes and various cages just the day before. When Mr. Clean wrote out his summons, he advised me that I would have to erect a fence around the backyard in order to avoid future visits. The neighbors, who never spoke to our family at any rate, were planning on bringing an action against us, he kindly informed me, and even treated me to the cliché about good fences making good neighbors. By this time I had a job over at the mall working at the mega pet store, so paying the couple hundred bucks fine was doable. Less so was his smiling directive to reduce the number of
domiciled animals
, as he called my beloved buddies, in the next thirty days, by about half. Smiling even more broadly, he
offered governmental assistance with the necessary removal
, after laying out for me the law regarding domestic pets housed in suburban environs, and other shit like that, but seeing I had a choice in the matter, I told him I'd take care of it myself. I would later find out that he didn't have the authority to dismantle my dream right on the spot because, living as we did at the edge of the edge of town, our domicile could be considered rural, and different restrictions apply to rural precincts, et cetera, et cetera. Still, the son of a gun didn't depart without confiscating Mindy, my African gray parrot, since of course I couldn't produce the necessary papers to prove I owned her legally, which you can bet your own damn rural domicile I did not.

If you're thinking this story is all fine and dandy, but where is John's fault in it, why does he relate it as something wrong with him, I share your concern. As you will see, one man's good is the next man's evil. The fence I erected was twice as tall and I hope a hundred times uglier than my neighbors had bargained for, but since no zoning restrictions prevented its construction—ours was no gated community with fancy covenants—up she went pronto. The dogs, the woodchuck, and the fox got to work right away digging tunnels, bless their hearts. The menagerie knew, just as its Noah did, that the wall was only for show, and not meant to keep anyone from the usual appointed rounds, mostly done under the light of the moon. In the meantime, I persuaded Honey, which is to say I paid her, to let me keep some animals in her detached garage for a week, guaranteeing her I'd take care of everything, she wouldn't even know they were there and neither would anyone else. Amazingly, everything went off without a hitch. The DOH lunkhead was satisfied, Honey made a couple dollars, the neighbors were stifled, Irene and Hamp turned a blind eye on the whole business, and all my kids were back home just days after we were reluctantly given a clean bill of health. As our therapist Bruce told me last year, it was probably my success with this scheme that pumped up my confidence and led to the mess that followed it just as naturally as piss follows beer.

It all developed so slowly that none of us noticed, certainly not me. Hamp croaked somewhere in here, and Irene moved in with Honey long about the same time Josie met her beau and moved in with him. Christy's husband was sent up to the big house for good. I, pretty much left to my own devices, painted the windows black and kept adding members to the family. Like any connoisseur, my tastes developed and became more refined. Not content with alley cats and mongrels, garden snakes and hamsters—though I loved these with the same love I showed all my chums—I began confiscating from hither and thither more exotic creatures. Where's hither and thither? Since it's all public knowledge now, there's no point being coy, so I'll fess up to some nocturnal wanderings of my own back then, to the homes of pet-store patrons who had purchased the more intriguing animals, the store itself naturally, and to a small, understaffed zoo one state over. I brought home some pretty snazzy friends. A lynx I named Lucy. A mink named Ned. Some peacocks. The mutts were joined by a sweaty old shar-pei named Chairman Mao and a Rhodesian ridgeback—Buster, I called him. A huge Maine coon and a sleek Russian blue joined my cattery. My mynah bird could recite the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address, a feat his tutor who stands before you is proud of to this day. Listen, can any of you asshats recite the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address? If not, stow the mirth. Finally, I outdid myself by spiriting away a baby mountain lion from the zoo one night, nearly getting killed in the effort. Were I an addict, this would have marked my bottom. Who knows, maybe I had become an addict, another thing wrong with me I hadn't even counted on confessing today. I named her Kitty.

This mountain lion, though I kept her in the biggest chain-link cage in the backyard and fed her an endless stream of food, broke out more than once and made a banquet from the menagerie. Gone were the peacocks, gone my Maine coon. Let me admit it: I was in over my head. She was growing faster than I'd ever seen a feline—or any other animal, for that matter—grow, and I came to the conclusion that I had to release her but quick, before things got completely out of hand. She would do fine in the mountains of northern Jersey, I told Josie, who spent less time with me than ever because she couldn't stand the stench, she said, and the blackened windows depressed her. She had agreed to help me with the transfer and even nabbed some sedatives from the pharmacy where she worked in order to calm the cat so it could sleep in the trunk during the drive. All my plans, all my hopes of rebalancing the upset menagerie were dashed when, the day before we were to make the run, Kitty got loose again but instead of going after her terrified mates in the habitat, she scaled the fence to maraud our neighborhood in search of something more interesting to eat. It wasn't her fault she ran into some kid a few blocks away and removed him from his swing-set even as she wrenched off the better part of his plump little arm in the process. Kitty was only following nature's mandates, just as the cops, who took me into custody and charged me with an impressive list of offenses including reckless endangerment, were merely following the mandates set out by lawmakers who know more about these matters than I seem to. The kid lived, but poor Kitty was destroyed for no good reason. Just because my grandfather came to my rescue again, not with bail this time but a crackhead lawyer and some wiggy psychiatrist who steered me here so I could hang out with all you bozos, doesn't mean that my menagerie was a crazy idea. Far from it—I think I was well on my way to creating a small piece of heaven there. That I couldn't pull it off is just one more of the things that are wrong with me.

N
ONE OF YOU HAS APPRECIATED
my confession, I can tell, including Bruce over there, our good therapist. My words have not inspired you, nor have you benefited from listening to my sad stories. Now while I won't
vent animosity toward others in the group
, I am going to ask your indulgence when I confess that our therapist's assignment to
identify the genesis of these vices
may be beyond my capability. Can the mirror look at itself? I have tried like crazy to figure out why I've done the things people say I have done wrong, but in every instance I come up with the same answers, ones that seem pure and simple to me, but which over the years haven't convinced one solitary soul of my true innocent nature. I love animals and refuse to eat them, therefore I'm a lunatic? My brilliant father couldn't eat their butchered carcasses fast enough, but when old mincemeat gets his just desserts it's my fault he croaked? Fat snot Brewster burns holes in his puppy and needs quick punishment, which I implement, and who is labeled the criminal? Having no family to speak of, I invent one with my little sister, and therefore I'm a pervert. My neighbors want a wall, I build a wall and devote myself to taking care of God's helpless creatures, and for my troubles I am laughed at, then investigated, fined, ostracized, and abandoned by everyone. And the business about that mountain lion mangling the little boy? I already confessed to being out of my depth with Kitty. The tragedy was in the timing—I was, after all, about to correct the situation. Bottom line is, analyzing everything as best I can using common sense, all the things that are supposedly wrong with me are not, at the end of the day, my fault. I realize I've said right along that they are my fault, but—as Bruce hoped—I have glimpsed the good that lurks in my rotten heart. I doubt I even belong here with all you fricking spazmos.