Gravedigger's Cottage (12 page)

“The fish?”

“The fish.”

“Well, the rat did eat the fish. Why would I keep something like that from him?”

“Because maybe you don’t know that the
rat
did eat the fish. Because nobody but you has even seen the
rat.
Maybe Carmine ate the fish.”

“Hey,” Carmine called through the floor again.

“Walter,” I yelled, “would you please take him away from there?” I finally got worked up enough to leave the steps, to march over the cellar floor that hardly even made a sound when I stepped on it, over to where the ceiling was open and Carmine’s face peered down. “Go away, Carmine,” I said.

He had his face pressed tightly into the space between the floorboards. “This is a very great house,” he said through squished fish lips.

Walter hauled Carmine away, and I turned to find myself up close to Dad, in the middle of the bare and empty, somehow damp
and
dusty, space of the cellar.

“Walter did see the rat,” he said.

I sighed. I was starting to feel weighed down by the effort of it, by the unusual amount and intensity of talking between me and Dad, by the weight of the house, which was very much and very noticeably above me now, on top of me now, feeling like I was actually carrying the bulk of it now from here, from my place under the ground, with the dirt under me and all around me.

Dad was hunched over and kind of grimacing. His mask was removed now, hanging around his neck, and the dirt was seeping into the lines around his eyes, along the sides of his nose and mouth, and he looked the way I felt.

“But we won’t dwell on that now, sweetheart,” he said, and placed a clammy hand on my cheek. “We don’t need to dwell on that now, Vee.”

It didn’t used to bother me when he said that, almost no matter what he said it about, and he said it about almost anything. But it never did bother me, back then; and I figured there would be a time, and I hoped it would be soon, when it didn’t bother me again.

But it bothered me a great, great deal now.

It didn’t bother me as much, however, as the awful, oppressive, overwhelming feeling that I had to get out of this horror of a place, this fright of an underground monster of a place, right this minute.

“Dad, I want to go now, upstairs, now. I don’t care to be underground one minute longer.”

“Okay, Vee. Sure. Up you go. I’ll be up—”

“Now. You will be up
now,
Dad. Right now. With me, you will be up. You are going with me, up and out of this awfulness right this minute.”

I did not need to grab his hand then, because there are just moments when I know I am in charge, and Dad knows I’m in charge and this was very much one of those moments.

I grabbed his hand anyway. And I pulled him up out of that awful, awful place with me.

W
ALTER WAS STILL ONLY
little when Dad got him the gray dwarf Russian hamster. He couldn’t even pronounce the name properly when Dad introduced him as Vladimir, repeating it instead as Flatmeer.

I was always afraid for Vladimir. He was so small. I was always wondering what was going to become of him in this place at this time. We were all still kind of getting used to things. Used to it being the three of us, the four of us with counting Vladimir, who was so small he looked like he would make a nice gray fur Russian hat for my Barbie. I even tried it out. Tried balancing him up there on Barbie’s head, but after a few seconds he fell right off.

It wasn’t too nice a thing to do to Vladimir. But then, I was still pretty little myself.

We all were. We were all small and young and still new, even Dad. Even Dad, in this new world we had, was still small and new, and so who knew? Who knew anything?

Who knew you could love something to death? Who knew that was possible?

Who knew Walter should not have been left alone with Vladimir? Who knew? We didn’t. None of us knew. None of us then knew anything. Not then. Not then, we didn’t know anything.

I was the one who found him. I banged on the door of the bathroom and called to him because I needed the bathroom, and he only needed the bathroom about half the time still, and he wasn’t supposed to be in there for a long time with the door closed, and so I was banging and calling him out until finally I just barged in.

And I found him. Vladimir, Vladimir the little hat, was still there, still alive in Walter’s hands, but just, just barely. And Walter.

Walter.

I would rather have cut off my own hands than see another bad thing happen to another animal in our house, especially something forceful and gruesome, and so I would be the least sympathetic person to find this, and so I would have screamed maybe, and attacked, maybe, but, but, I saw Walter.

His little round face. He was holding onto Vladimir with all the might his two pudgy hands could muster. Squeezing and squeezing on the little body until tiny black hamster eyes were actually pushing out of the sockets and blood began to appear. But worse was Walter’s face. As if he wanted to do more. As if there were no connection to the squeezing he was doing and the dying he was seeing. And so, what do you do if you are a little boy, a sad and scared little boy confused to the very top of the confusion scale?

You love it some more, is what you do.

That is what Walter did. He loved harder, and squeezed harder, and cried harder as he killed Vladimir and didn’t save Vladimir at the same time, and he did not know what was wrong.

“Here, Walter,” I said, almost whispering. “Here, here,” I said, as I pried his fingers loose as gently as I could and relieved Vladimir and him of each other. I pretended Vladimir was okay, cupped him and stroked him and talked to him nice.

And I took Walter by the hand and led him out of the bathroom even though that was the wrong direction for my body right then, and I led Walter to the TV, where I was happy to find some cartoons, and I left Walter there, and I told him I would be right back, and I took Vladimir to Dad in his office room.

It was too soon. It was too soon already for this. We could never be ready for this, but we were not at all ready for this.

Dad and I went back to the living room and sat on the floor right next to Walter sitting there in the middle of the rug with his big round eyes wide at the TV. I got to hold Vladimir and Dad got to hold Walter and we all got to watch the Roadrunner and Coyote, which was good because it had no words, and because anybody who got hurt, crushed, or whatever just got back up again. And nobody sweet and innocent ever got hurt at all.

W
E HELD A MEETING.

“There is nothing wrong with me,” Dad said.

The chair was going to be important.

“Sit in the chair, Dad,” I said.

And appearance. Appearances mattered.

“You have to get rid of that beard, Dad, and cut that eyebrow especially,” Walter said grimly, staring Dad close in the face. “You look like a villain.”

“Would you guys stop talking to me like that? You’re making me nervous. And I have things to do.”

“You do not.”

“Yes I do. Things. Loads and loads of things.”

“Get in the chair, Dad.”

Walter was very serious. Menacing, even. He stood like a toy tough guy, feet wide apart, pointing at Dad’s chair. His lovely and loved, comfy, legendary chair. The old, deep-seat, burnt-red leather chair with the rivetlike buttonholes all over, sunk so well you could only see the holes and not the buttons. Nobody ever sat in that chair but Dad, and Dad almost never sat in it these days.

“Sit in the chair, Dad,” Walter said, a little tougher. His voice cracked with the strain of his toughness.

“Mmm…no,” Dad said. “I’d like to, but I have so much to—”

Walter threw himself into the chair.

“Hey,” Dad said, very edgy, then calming himself, “hey, son. Those are old springs. Don’t want to pop them…” He had his hands extended in front of him and was speaking with the exaggerated calm of TV cops dealing with well-armed madmen.

Walter made his move. He pulled a freshly sharpened pencil out of his side pocket.

“Hey,” Dad said, almost a whisper. “What are you doing? That’s a pencil. Walter, you know writing implements are not supposed to be within three feet of my chair. Remember, I described the worn-leather condition of that chair? Remember? How the chair’s strength and weakness come from the same place…like Kryptonite and Superman.”

This always made Walter nervous, even at the best of times. “Don’t compare your chair to Superman, Dad.”

“Let him compare the chair to Superman if he wants,” I snapped.

“Get in the chair, Dad,” Walter said.

“Put down the pencil, Walter,” Dad said.

“You getting in the chair?”

“You putting down the pencil?”

They stared at each other, trembling with the tension of the situation, for like a year. This was what happened when you let the guys handle things.

I grabbed my father’s hand, yanked him along to the chair. I whipped the pencil out of Walter’s hand and threw it against the wall. I hauled the little one up out of the seat, and I slung the big one down into it.

Peace. Instantly, things were different.

The method may have been madness, but the result was quite what we wanted. Once Dad was reunited with his beloved chair, his expression immediately reverted to a version of him we recognized. A version we could talk to. A version we could deal with.

“We love you, Dad,” I said.

He smiled. He sank down lower and ever lower into his chair world. He looked at one lovely blackened red-tufted-leather arm and the other, and rubbed them and squeezed them as if to reassure himself that they were actually still there like before.

“Now go back to work.”

“What?” He almost got out of his chair, but didn’t. He leaned forward, then retreated into the upholstery like a turtle into his shelldom. “You just said you loved me.”

“We do. Don’t we, Walter?”

This kind of talk wasn’t as easy for Walter as for me. He nodded bravely but very honestly.

“That’s part of why we want you back at work. The chair isn’t the only thing that’s in danger of popping its old springs.”

He stared from deep within his turtle hideaway. His eyes, just his eyes, swung from me to Walter and back again.

“Are you saying you think I’m going crazy?” he asked in a voice that couldn’t have sounded more unsettling if he sang all the words backward. Walter released a sigh that had a little squeal of voice in it.

“No, Dad, no,” I said, because I am devoted to my father more than to any hyperliteral notion of truth. “It’s just that I think among the three of us, and with school not started yet, and after the move and all, and now with all the work on the house…I just think we might just start to get in each other’s hair a little bit. That’s all. And that maybe doing things more gradually, with the house, might be the way to go…”

“And going to work…” added Walter.

“Might be the way to go,” I concluded.

He sat there. Started looking a little more relaxed, started emerging in tiny degrees from his shell. Even had a little turtlesque smile growing there straight and flat across his weary features.

“You’re throwing me out of the house.”

“Dad…” I said scoldingly.

“You are. You’re throwing your father out of the house.” He seemed amused, almost. Tentatively amused.

“We still want you to
live
here,” Walter said, apparently trying to allay fears. “We want you to come back, after you go out.”

“Ah, you guys,” Dad said, shaking his head and laughing. Tentatively laughing.

“Ah, us guys,” Walter said, visibly relieved at the lessening tension.

I was reserving judgment just yet on whether the tension was actually leaving or just hiding. Dad wasn’t all the way back with us yet, uh-uh.

“I couldn’t leave you now,” Dad said as his smile started getting too heavy to hold up, “not with the jobs left, and especially not with that rat…”

The options for response flicked through my mind. Top of the list was to scream my guts out in frustration. Even though I was no screamer. But I decided that wouldn’t help things, so I tried quiet, but firm, reason.

“There is no rat, Dad.”

“Of course there’s a rat, sweetheart.” He was actually kind and upbeat about it. “He ate the fish, remember?”

“No, I don’t remember. I can’t remember what I never knew. I never saw any rat. And neither did Walter.”

“I did.”

“You did not.”

“I might have.”

“Dad said you saw it, so you thought that was what you saw, because Dad said so.”

“If Dad said so, then I must have.”

“That’s my boy,” Dad said.

Walter was supposed to be working with me. God love him, he did have such trouble straying from Dad’s path.

“Walter!” I shouted.

“Dad?” Walter said.

“Listen,” Dad said, rising like a judge, “we won’t dwell on this now.”

“Yes, we will,” I said. “We will dwell on this. Now. I am tired of not dwelling. I think we have to dwell on something, Dad. I think we have to dwell.”

He was not ready for that. He stood, staring, his benevolent smile sliding right off his face, down to the floorboards, across the room, and down through the hole into the crummy cellar. He was ready for not dwelling. He was not ready for being told by me that we would not now be not dwelling.

“Maybe we don’t have to dwell on this right now,” Walter said when he saw Dad’s expression.

“Yes, we do,” I said.

“Right, then,” Dad said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as if we had come to some agreement. He manufactured the lamest and most unnatural imitation of his own relaxed manner, very deliberately laid it on me, then Walter.

And then he left the room.

I chased after him, just caught him at the kitchen door. Not that he was in any danger of running away, of course, since that would require actually leaving, which he didn’t do anymore.

“Hey,” I demanded.

“What?” He sounded exasperated and was gesturing with both hands at the door. “I have to get this stuff done, Sylvia. Look, can Walter’s dartboard really stay there forever? I don’t think so,” he said with a chuckle that made it sound as if I had been the one who ripped a hole in the door and patched it with a dartboard.