A Brief Lunacy (16 page)

The barrel of the gun rests on Jessie's bare shoulder, the trajectory through her delicate neck, through the thick gray braid that hangs halfway down her back. Even past the notes of the tune, I hear the sucking sounds he makes on her breast. Jessie looks far away, past him through the kitchen window, to the gulls who have come back to the rock and face the lowering sun.

“She did that, didn't she? Didn't she?”

“Yes. Yes, she did.”

“I knew it. I feel her with us. Right here.” The hand holding the gun relaxes a bit and the muzzle points into the back of the couch until my playing slows almost to a halt; then he moves the gun back to her neck. His hand is gentle on her, cupping her breast in his palm, stroking the skin. “This is what I want. To be close to her. To be where she was. God said, ‘Know them. Know her. The mother.'”

He pulls back and grips her ankle, pulls her leg from underneath her, grips the other. Jessie sits up on the couch. I can see she tries not to show her fear by covering herself. Jonah stands in front of her before he fumbles with his pants, with the button of his jeans. With his other hand he points the gun from me to Jess and back and forth. No. He can't do that. She's not young. She can't take it. Not Jess. When I hear the zipper noise, I stop playing.

“So help me God, I'll kill her if you don't play. Don't you believe me?”

“Carl. Play. Please. I'll cope with this.”

“And I want you watching, Carl. W-a-t-c-h-i-n-g. Oh. Wait a minute. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mr. Carl? You want to watch? Well, we'll see about that.”

“Carl. Please,” she says. “Don't watch.”

“I want you looking at the TV. That's right, Carl. Play. Watch the TV.”

“But it's not on.”

“Shut up. Watch the screen, stupid. If you look at us, she's . . . Well, you guess.”

I begin to play and watch the blank screen of the television, try to drown out the quiet fumbling of clothing.

“I don't want to hurt you, mother of Sylvie, only to go there, where she was, where she grew. Now. On the floor. Keep playing, Carl. Open them. Open your legs.”

I imagine I hear her whispering to me,
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Does she love me after all this? I move through the tune, measure by measure, wondering if I will remember the next, but I do. The memory comes from
somewhere I can't go, oozes out into my fingers, and I imagine I watch Dorothy skipping down her yellow brick road on the gray screen.

Jonah grunts. He grunts. There is no sound from Jessie, the whispering vanishes, and all the while I play a little tune, a child's tune. For Jessie. For my mother.

M
OST OF ALL
, I'm afraid of the gun going off into my neck. He wouldn't mean to, but it could go off by mistake if he moved too fast or if I turned my head without warning. He's been inside Sylvie, too. I'm sure of that now. I think of my Sylvie underneath him, wonder if she cried out.

I'm alone in this. I don't think Carl can help me. He is only a shell of a man, slumped in the chair, running the frayed bow across the strings of a violin he hasn't played in many years, watching a TV that is not on.

Carl plays a child's tune. I've heard it before. Perhaps he has sung it. Does it have words? Did his mother sing to him when he was a young Gypsy boy? I hum along in my head to distract myself, to keep myself from thinking about what is inside me, to keep myself from that dark, crazy place.

He finishes. Thank God his clothes are on, that his skin doesn't have to touch mine. He grunts, collapses on me,
turns his head toward me, closes his eyes. I am afraid to move because the gun is still jammed against my neck. But if he shoots, maybe he'll shoot right through himself, too.

We all breathe together, quick shallow breaths. I feel the metal leave my neck, hear Carl's breath stop. Jonah has moved the gun. It's no longer on me. Carl holds his breath, his lips tight together. I hear a low moan from his throat. Jonah doesn't hear. He doesn't move.

I hear the whoosh before anything else. The violin lands just short of us, slides across the wood floor past us. Carl throws himself toward Jonah, still taped to the heavy wooden chair that was my grandfather's. Jonah scrambles out of me, off me, kneels beside me. Carl heaves himself like a seal toward us, his face red, his mouth open, a wail emitting from his lips. My hand gropes for the base of the floor lamp. It is too heavy to move from the bottom? Where is the rock? The chunk of granite? I dropped it on the floor. Where is it? Carl's screams become higher and louder. Jonah's hand touches my hip when he clambers to get up. I see the rock. I turn onto my belly and scoot toward it. I'll throw it. It will kill him. My fingers touch the rough edge, and the shot rings out. All at once. My fingers on the granite and the blast of the pistol. What has he shot? Carl? Me? I don't know. The pain I felt has disappeared. I have no pain anywhere. It must be Carl.

“You stupid shit. I told you not to do that. Would you defy the will of God?”

I look at Carl's head first. There is no blood and his eyes are open, focused on me. He isn't dead. Then I see his arm.
Blood covers the blue fish. Was that on purpose? Or just a bad shot? I crawl toward the blanket. Jonah pays no attention to me while I wrap it around my shoulders. Should I try to run? Jonah kicks at Carl's chair and I hear a groan. We're old. We're too old to win.

“You've shot him. Don't you see?”

Jonah seems disturbed by the blood. He bends toward Carl, places the gun on the floor, dabs at Carl's bloody arm with a tissue he's taken from his pocket. If I hit him with the granite, I'd better kill him, and I'm not sure I can. Kill him, I mean. Not sure I can bash him hard enough to kill. I need my clothes on. I wrap my fingers firmly around the rock, pull it toward me. Jonah lifts Carl's arm from the chair, turns it to look at the underside. Carl rants in foreign languages, paying no attention to his bloodied arm.

“Get up,” Jonah says. “Can't you get up?”

Carl continues to yell. In French. In German. And in another language. Some I understand. Most I don't.

“You can't get up, can you, Carl?”

“May I help him?” I say.

He retrieves the pistol from the floor, tucks it into his pants. “Come on,” he says. “We'll get him up.”

I try to avoid touching him when we work to lift Carl and the chair upright, but twice my hand brushes Jonah's. His zipper is still unzipped. Does he know? We rock Carl in the chair, strain against the weight. Carl ceases to yell and helps us by shifting his body.

“He needs a doctor,” I say.

“He is a doctor,” Jonah says. “Physician, heal thyself.”

“It's superficial,” Carl says. “It went right past. Grazed the skin.”

Carl has not gone to that crazy place, although I thought he might. When we have straightened the chair, I notice that his legs are almost freed from the duct tape, although he keeps them in place. He examines his arm. I can't remember where I left the rock. Then I see it. On the floor by the couch leg, next to our missing set of car keys. Why hadn't I noticed them before? I've searched everywhere for those keys.

“Do you have something?” Jonah says. “For the wound?”

“In the bathroom,” I say. “The cabinet.”

When he turns toward the bathroom, I creep closer to the rock and the keys. What good are the keys? The car is out of gas. Is there some gas in the garage? Sometimes we keep a can out there just in case. The car. That's it. I could lock myself in and push the horn until someone hears. But what about Carl while I'm in the car?

My clothes are where I dropped them. I don't take the time to put on the underwear. I quickly clean myself with it and toss it into the corner. My T-shirt is inside out but I leave it that way, shove my hands into the sweater arms. I slip the keys into the pocket of my jeans before I pull them on. My legs feel raw as the jeans slip over them. Pain is now everywhere my clothing touches. I hear Jonah rummaging through the medicine cabinet.

“Try some of this,” he says when he returns. “Peroxide. And here's a bandage.” He doesn't seem to notice that I'm dressed. How could he not notice?

Carl pours the peroxide over his arm. It fizzes at the wound. Would Jonah kill us if he is helping tend to Carl's wound? It doesn't make sense. I don't know. How can I know? Jonah paces, inhales sharply, takes another of the white pills. He stops, presses his hand against his chest.

“Your heart racing, Jonah?” Carl says. “Something wrong with your heart?”

“No. Nothing. Let's have that dinner. Now you know I'll shoot, so watch what you do.”

Dinner will give me the opportunity to do something. What? I can't seem to think of anything else except for the rock. I'll make baked potatoes. That will give me some time. I turn the oven on and reach underneath the counter into the potato bag. Is six potatoes too many? I rinse them under the cold water until my hands are numb, and I prick them with a fork before I put them in the oven. The chicken is thawed. I did that yesterday. I'll slice a whole package of mushrooms. I bring the cleaver down over the first batch of mushrooms and realize that Jonah isn't even paying attention to me. I watch the blue veins on the backs of my hands pulse underneath my thin skin. It's hard to remember what my hands looked like when I was young. I'm sure the veins didn't protrude so much. And I think the knuckles were more delicate. They've become coarse, knobby. Is it from cracking my knuckles so much? That's what my father used to say.

I could throw the cleaver at him and cut him somewhere. I hear them talking, Jonah and Carl, and strain to hear what they are talking about. Sylvie's name comes up. Jonah asks
Carl if he's hungry. Just like two men chatting before dinner. Perhaps they'd like wine.

“A glass of wine?” I say.

“Please,” Carl says.

Jonah doesn't even look at me when he answers. “If it isn't too much trouble.”

I open a bottle of chardonnay with the corkscrew, which I tuck into my other pocket. I touch the keys just to make sure they're still there. The wine splashes into the two glasses that we used just last night with Hans and Marte, and I wonder if they will come down tonight. A wineglass in one hand and the cleaver in the other, I walk the length of our small kitchen, barefoot because I didn't want to take the time to put on my sneakers. I get to the edge of the slate floor and my heart pounds as if it is the only thing inside me. I'm not sure I can do this. Jonah is sitting quietly in the chair next to Carl, waiting for his supper just like a guest in the house or a child home for the weekend.

The last time Sam came for the weekend was almost a year ago. What will he think of all this? Of his father, a Gypsy? His name no longer Jensen. Will the children's names change? If we die, then they will never know. Last February they were all here: Sam, Charlie and Madeline, Sylvie. Snow covered the ground. Charlie and Carl drove into town and rented cross-country skis for all of us and we spent the weekend following one another through the old woods roads along the shore. Charlie and Madeline skied almost on top of each other. Sylvie followed her dad. Sam skied with me. I'm not as athletic as I once was and I'd skied
only a couple of times before, but Sam was patient. He teaches first grade, where patience is a necessary trait.

“Come on, Mom,” he said. “Just push with one ski and then the other. Glide. Glide. That's it.”

“I'm not very good at this.”

“It doesn't matter. Are you having fun?”

“Well. Yes. In fact I am.”

“Mom? I love my job. I love working with little kids. You taught me that because you love us so much. You love Sylvie, and I don't know how you do it. She's so difficult.”

“You always love your children, no matter what they do. You'll know that someday. You will, won't you?”

“Maybe, Mom. Race you back.”

We had some hot cider from thermoses we'd lugged all day. Sylvie insisted we rest under the tree with our cider. She skied around and around the tree while we all relaxed with our drinks. She was beautiful that day, purple-and-green-striped socks pulled up over her jeans, a violet sweater that she'd found in a thrift shop, a brilliant red tam pulled down over her ears, thick black hair springing from the base of the hat. She didn't scream. She laughed instead. And Sam and Charlie loved her.

I'm glad Sam has a girlfriend. I hope she loves him as much as I love Carl. And now I'm considering throwing a cleaver when I don't know how to throw a cleaver. What if I strike Carl? What would Sam tell me to do?

Jonah's left leg jiggles and I can feel it through the floor where I stand. Carl cradles his wounded arm. But they both look up at me bringing the wine. I can't do it. I'm not ready.
I slip the cleaver from behind my back onto the counter and replace it with the other glass of wine. Jonah thanks me. Carl nods and accepts the glass.

“Is it terribly sore?” I ask.

“No. It will heal. Jessie? My Jess?”

I turn away. I can't touch him. Why? Perhaps because I love him so much that I'll fall apart. Perhaps because he's weak and defeated. Perhaps because I can't find the old Carl.

The cleaver feels cold in my hand when I grasp its handle to finish slicing the mushrooms. I slice slowly to give myself time to think.

Everything has changed since yesterday. My body and mind are tired and hungry. The car key with its plastic gadget attached to it cuts into my hip. How long before the battery in the car dies? And what about gas? There's a spare container in the garage. Can I get to it? And what about the telephone. The cell phone's in the car. We never take it out. It's just there for emergencies on the road. We've never had an emergency on the road. Once, I called Carl to ask him to pick up a package at the post office. Once, he called me to tell me that Sylvie had called about a new job working in a nursing home reading to old folks. The job didn't last very long but I remember that call and how delighted I was that she was doing something.