All the Old Haunts (3 page)

Victor slowly, calmly, heads for the rear entrance, the main entrance, of the church.

Caesar heads for the sacristy.

He is halfway there, when he reaches the high bank of red-cupped devotional candles, picks up the foot-long stick match, and lights a light.

He shakes his head, admiring, and laughing simultaneously.

“Light one for me,” Victor says, from way far away.

He blows out the match. “I already did.”

“You gonna come light one for me?” Caesar asks.

Victor has no trouble responding in the negative.

“Nah. Save the candle for somebody who might
not
be going to hell.”

That makes Caesar laugh, all the way to the sacristy. Where he stops at the door. Stops laughing. He waits, for a sign.

“You comin’, or what?” the great voice calls from the far, far end of the church.
“Boy?”

The old voice. The boomer. The foghorn.

Caesar answers it like a dog, like a little boy. Running running running toward the foghorn.

T
HE INSTANT THE SCENT
hits me, I nearly faint.

He has always used about ten times the normal amount of chlorine. I think he wanted to burn us for daring to swim in his pool, blind us, or simply dissolve us entirely when he was finished with us.

My head swirls with it, with the splashy sounds that go with the smells of the pool. I can see, in my head, the vapors rising off the surface of the water, white squiggly smoke lines of chemical hiss coming out of the water. In the pool house, the light-one-minute, dark-the-next pool house, dense with one white five-gallon bucket of the stuff stacked on top of another. The pool house, the tabletop within the pool house, the rafts deflated, one half inflated, the bug net, the tabletop, the incredible, incredible acrid smell of the chemicals, on top of the pool house table and underneath it. Wet bathing suits have a smell. Wet towels, piled and bunched, and stuffed, have a smell, and a taste.

My parents don’t see me all woozy behind them. They are too zombied, marching to meet The Man.

We find him out by the pool, of course. He’s the pool kind of grandfather. He never seemed to exist far beyond his pool, and now that he only barely exists at all, it makes sense that he only exists poolside.

It took the third stroke to get us all here. Three strokes and you’re out, as the saying goes, but my grandad was never much for the quaint colloquial saying. He should be good and well out by now, and god help me I wish he were.

But he’s not, he lingers, so we have to visit him, and wait on the fourth stroke, or the fifth. That would be sweet. He’d never do it though. The only reason he’s hanging on as it is is that he’s just too aware how much pleasure his death would bring. So he’s surely not going to do us all the favor of lapsing into the next world while we watch.

I’m not greedy, though. As long as he goes, I’ll take it. As long as it brings him blinding pain and me sweet pleasure, then we’ll be exactly even, won’t we? We’ll shut our eyes together, one more time.

“How are you feeling, Father?” Mother wants to know. That is, she asks. She doesn’t really want to know. And he’s not really her father. She’s just always called him that.

He won’t be answering, either. The speech bit is gone.

“He can hear perfectly well, now,” his nurse says. “Don’t let him fool you.”

No, no, musn’t do that. Don’t let him fool you.

There was a horse inflatable. That’s right, I remember. It was a seahorse. Fatty old seahorse. Couldn’t see your own lower half, with that fatty old seahorse on you.

“So by all means, do talk to him all you like. I can tell the difference in him when he hears people talking to him, so he is listening, and that’s very positive.”

Yes it is. It’s a positive thing. Grandad is all listen now, and no talk. And no nothing else.

“How are you feeling, Father?”

She’s at it again. That is Mom’s version of paralysis. If we were all granted advance amnesty, and could do whatever we really felt like for just one blissed-out cosmic moment, she’d beat us all to shoving the old gnarly bonebag into the pool. But she could never do that, because she is good. A very good girl. We are both good girls, bred to be good girls, from a long line of good, good girls. So we wouldn’t shove him into the pool. Grandad likes good girls who can’t shove him into the pool.

So she asks simpleton questions that he can’t answer instead. Go, Mom.

“Pop,” Dad yells at him, like they are finally playing the cops and robbers game he’s been waiting fifty years for. “Pop. Pop. How they treatin’ ya, Pop? They takin’ care of ya all right? Pop?”

Pop. Pop pop pop. You’re dead.

It is almost comical, the collective power of the assembled not-wanting-to-be-here-ness. It is, for a time, kind of fun.

“Pop. Got a beer, Pop?” Dad says robustly. He heads for the screened-in porch, to the convenient little refrigerator that has never been without alcohol. Takes a lot of chemicals to keep a pool going. We like alcohol. “Hey,” he says, surprised.

He does not ask if anyone else would like one. In fact, he does not return.

“Father?” Mother says, like she’s speaking to him through a clairvoyant. “Father, it’s me, Jenny. Father, I just want you to know …”

I switch off then. The last thing she wants him to know is what she wants him to know. It’s way more fun watching Dad watching us. It’s like a game of hide-and-seek, or kick the can. I can see him, but he won’t come out. Grinning like a sea monkey between sips of beer, he acts as if we cannot see him through the mesh of the screen. He pounds the one beer, and gets another.

A tiny, tiny puff of August air, so small it’s got to be meant for me alone, brushes my cheek and my nose and my forehead. He is still controlling it, even if he can’t move, because whoever is caring for this unused pool is chlorinating it to his exact, excessive, evil specifications.

It is like a drug. It is in my nostrils, hanging there, moving, up into my sinuses and my brain. It is as thorough as any of the other drugs, the ones I take because I want to, the ones I take because I have to, the ones I take because I don’t even know how they are getting into my system.

There was a water polo set. Narrow hoops and netting floated on Styrofoam rings. The bug-net pole had an extender so long he could clean his neighbor’s pool with it.

Cheese curls. The orange chemical powder, lodging into the wrinkled cracks of my over-soaked fingertips. The taste of chlorine and processed chemical cheddar mixed.

Here’s a treat. We are in time for the evening meal.

“Would you like to … ?” The nurse asks Mother, showing her the teaspoon and bowl of warm milkshake that is Grandad’s supper.

“Oh,” Mother says as if she has been offered the ceremonial sword. Just plunge in between the fourth and fifth vertebrae … “No, oh, I mean, I’d probably just … I don’t think I could …”

“Ha,” Dad calls, to the accompanying sound of a spritzing beer can. “Ah go on. He’ll love it.”

Mother wisely ignores him, stammering apologies to the nurse. The nurse turns to me.

I turn to the diving board.

Grit. Like sandpaper on the belly. The sun so warm on days when even falling into the water seemed like an effort. Rolling over, seeing the damp cameo of me on the bleached whiteness of the springboard. Trying to count the tiny pebbly indentations in my flesh before falling back, blinded by impossible white sun.

It was the best place, and the only place. The singular spot, off of Earth, above the water, sunning myself on the diving board like I was being suspended out over the ocean, suspended between sun and sea, just like that, just like perfect.

It was the only place for sunning. Nobody could ever sneak up on you there. Without sending a warning tremor through the board.

I was always so much darker than the rest of them by the end of the summer. It was like I didn’t even belong to them.

“Has Carl been to see you yet?” Mother asks Grandad.

I suspect I am smiling, but I have to check anyway. I reach my hand up to touch with two fingers at my mouth. The corner of my lip is curled, up, where it is usually down. Mother is being very funny, asking him to speak, with a mouthful of cummy stuff sitting in his disabled mouth. This is very funny, though sadly Mother is unaware. Pity.

“You are the only people who have been to visit,” the nurse says.

My brother Carl probably hasn’t even seen Grandad since he moved away four years ago. He was eighteen. I was twelve. He could have stayed, if he cared. He didn’t.

Grandad is not opening his mouth. The nurse tries to coax him, offering first words of common sense, telling him he will not get better unless he sticks to his prescribed program. This produces no results, so she switches to baby talk.

“Come on then, who’s the big man now, going to eat all his lovely dinner….”

I like this very much.

“I think maybe we should be going, Father,” Mother says finally.

“Yes we should,” Dad calls enthusiastically from the porch. He comes bustling through the screen door, like he’s got a very important and pleasant engagement. “Pop,” he says, “Pop, really, you’re doing great. We’ll be back again, maybe tomorrow.”

Mother glares at him.

“Maybe the day after,” Dad says. “We’ll play it by ear, huh?”

“Oh,” the nurse says. “Oh, so soon? Such a short visit. He doesn’t receive many—”

“Really,” Mother says, “I know, it’s awful, but we really must be someplace … like we said, we’ll be back. We’ll play it by ear….”

The nurse pinches her lips tightly together, and nods. She goes back to trying to feed the old man who does not wish to be fed, by the pool nobody ever swims in.

“I’ll stay,” I say.

It’s as if Dracula had just hauled up out of the water and started snapping at everybody.

“Oh,” Mother says, always startled at the sound of my voice. “Oh … dear … well …” She turns to Dad.

Dad is wishing he hadn’t strayed from the porch fridge. He looks at Mother, at me, at the nurse, back at the porch where he is projecting himself again, back at me. Never once at his father, though.

“Well, sure, why not. Sure. That’s very kind of you. You can walk home later then. Before it gets dark, don’t forget.”

I won’t forget. I am very good at that.

“I’ll do that,” I say to the nurse after I listen for as long as possible to the high whine of my father’s engine at highest possible rev. He always shifts just a little too late, even at the best of times. This is not the best of times.

“Oh, really? Well, aren’t you good, dear? It is just about time for me to take a break anyway. I must admit, I was rather counting on you all to give me a bit of a breather. I hope you don’t think I’m awful. It’s, just, a very demanding job. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

By taking the spoon out of her hand, I assure her I’m sure I don’t mind.

“I won’t be but a half hour or so. Just a walk to the store, get some exercise, some cigarettes … you are a dear. He does love it when his people come.”

I wave with the spoon as the nurse exits through the chain-link gate. It squeals as she closes it, then clinks shut.

I waste no time. I take a spoonful of glop, bring it close to his face, then hold it there waiting for him to open up.

He doesn’t.

I wait. Time is not as tight as it looks. You would be surprised how much can be accomplished, on the banks of the magic timeless pool, when someone will be back in half an hour.

A half hour can be a life.

He does not open his mouth. Maybe he’s being stubborn. Maybe he doesn’t even know I’m trying to feed him. He shows no sign either way.

I have a closer look, to try and suss out the situation.

I lower the food, and lean closer to him. I stare into his eyes.

I have never. I have never looked directly into his eyes before. Never ever ever. He would look into mine and I’d close up tight. I’d open for a flash and his would be shut, little thready blue veins bulging out at me. Squeezed.

We are intimate with each other’s eyelids.

I blink. Screw my eyes shut so hard, I may need the nurse to help me pry them back open again.

No. Goddammit, no.

I open them. He’s still there. I feel my eyes water, the way they do when you are in a staring contest. But I cannot look away now. I stare into him. I stay here-and-now on him. I’m going in.

There he is. Windows to the soul. Ha.

There’s not a thing in there. The whites of his eyes are not the whites. The pale blue iris, color seeping away as I watch, is whiter than the lemonade-colored outer eyeball. Black pinholes at the center make it seem like looking at someone a thousand miles inside.

Nothing at the center of him. Cold evil nothing. He could do
anything,
if he could
do
anything. Even now.

I wonder if he always looked like that, or if this is what age has done to him. I figure it’s always been him, but if it’s age, then good for you, age. Go get him, age. Take a spoon and gouge out his oozy yellow eyes, age. Burrow into his filthy yellow soul, age.

I back off, and return to my duty. I offer another spoonful of watery mush. He remains a statue.

But I am good. Aren’t I a good girl, Grandad? I am dedicated and reliable and good.

I pry his mouth open and he offers no resistance. I take a spoonful of the food, guide it into his mouth, and tip it over. I watch closely as the goo drips, plops, onto his tongue, then runs out toward the front of his mouth.

I give him another spoonful. It runs the same route, joining the first bit in banking up behind the bottom row of false teeth.

Two more spoonfuls, and the whole mess is making its way. Over the teeth, over the shriveled red lip, down the chin.

We are making a load of progress now. The bowl is emptying quickly. The nurse will be quite pleased when she finds what I have done. You can see nothing but white inside the old man’s hole, as I have painted thoroughly and evenly all around. He’s a bit of a mess down the front of him, but we can’t be crying over a little spilled milk.

He looks like a bad boy. A very bad old boy. What is that stuff all over you, you bad old boy? What have you been doing, you very bad bad old boy? Wipe that stuff off now before somebody asks questions. Do you want anybody asking questions? Will we wipe you up so that nobody asks questions?