CRAFT ESSAY - Kleist

The Marquise of Oh!

Heinrich von Kleist’s brief, funny novella, The Marquise of O—, begins in media res, with the titular knocked-up widow placing what we’d now call a personal ad in a local newspaper announcing that “she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; and that she was resolved, out of consideration for her family, to marry him” (p. 68*). Has a story ever begun with a more intriguing premise? The reader is immediately sucked in: who is the daddy? Why doesn’t the Marquise know who the daddy is? Will he come forward? Kleist proceeds to take a leap backward in time, to a few months earlier, when a seemingly civilized (and appropriately named) Russian officer, Count F—, rescues the Marquise from a gang of would-be rapists, then carries her back to her quarters, where she promptly faints. We are led to believe, then, that the Count takes advantage of the lovely Marquise while she lies unconscious. But Kleist’s remarkably restrained, pathologically polite narrator would not dare spell it out for us in crass or explicit terms. Instead, he employs the power of punctuation: “Then — the officer instructed the Marquise’s frightened servants, who presently arrived, to send for a doctor” (p. 70). Please note the dash. Perhaps the author chose it for its resemblance to a mattress, or a divan. In any case, knowing already that the Marquise will soon be in the family way, the reader is more than willing to fill in the blank. What follows is a headlong comedy of manners as the Marquise starts to experience the familiar symptoms of pregnancy while totally ignorant of her condition. As the translators, Luke and Reeves, point out in their Introduction, the basic plot of an unconscious woman raped without her knowledge has “a long, ribald history” (p. 18), from the Greeks to Montaigne. What feels modern even today (and think of how modern it must have been in 1809!) is Kleist’s rock-solid sense of structure and pacing. Imagine the story without that opening section about the advertisement. We would not be on the lookout for a surreptitious insemination, and thus would not be able to put two and two together (otherwise, Kleist would have had to explicitly show us Count F—‘s foul deed). As constructed, the story allows the reader to remain one step ahead of the Marquise and her family—and, in lock-step with the Count, a curious position in that we can’t help but emphasize with him as he tries so hard to atone for his assault by wooing the marquise. “Go on!” we want to tell her, “Accept his proposal. He’s the guy who will eventually answer your ad, anyway!” But Kleist, like a skilled writer of situation comedies, stalls and complicates, withholding the inevitable happy ending until the final sentence. This teasing is made bearable, even pleasurable, by the breakneck pacing. Paragraphs go on endlessly, each one packed to overflowing with incident. One paragraph lasts from pages 81 to 85, as the Marquise’s baffled family attempts to come to terms with Count F—’s inexplicable (to them) obsession with the heroine, which has led him to jeopardize his career and reputation. During this long section the reader (unlike the Marquise) knows that the woman is pregnant and that the Count is here to do the honorable thing, and this knowledge fuels the momentum as scene is piled upon scene until the Count finally leaves town under the mistaken impression that the Marquise’s hand will be his when he returns. The rollercoaster pacing is also due to the author’s reliance on summary. He provides only what is absolutely necessary to keep the story in motion—no descriptions of the Marquise’s dresses, the Colonel’s elegant home, the rolling Italian countryside. In a few short lines on page 73, for example, we are informed that the Marquise’s family have had to move from the citadel to a house in town, where they “reverted entirely to their former way of life,” with the Marquise resuming her children’s education, as well as her hobbies of painting and reading—though she is now “afflicted with repeated indispositions” (i.e., morning sickness). A different author may have written a scene about the family’s move, with the Marquise directing the movers to be careful of the armoire, or a scene depicting her instruction of the children in the Greek classics. But Kleist keeps the ball rolling, often summarizing dialogue as well. And while this extensive use of summary may have been typical of the time, Kleist’s use of direct speech, however selective, was apparently unique (according to Luke and Reeves, p. 18). Pages 87-90 are mostly taken up by dialogue as the Marquise and her mother carry on a conversation about the possibility (or impossibility) of the daughter’s apparent condition. Kleist repeats this tactic on pages 103-4, with another dialogue-heavy scene between mother and daughter. These two episodes, which function almost like scenes from a play, contrast sharply with the rest of the story in that the narrator sits back and allows the action to play itself out in real time. Thus, the mother/daughter relationship takes on more significance than any other in the tale, which is appropriate in that it is the mother who, first, complicates the situation by banishing her inappropriately pregnant daughter, and, second, devises a way to get at the truth and ultimately vindicate her.

And finally, a word about the narrator who so skillfully keeps the story afloat. He is omniscient, but unlike the omniscient narrators of, say, Laughter in the Dark, or The Assistant, this one does not much bother with inner dialogue. Occasionally, he might dip into the Marquise’s head (“the turmoil and anguish of her heart ceased,” p. 93), or her mother’s (“she wiped away her own tears, wondering whether the violent emotional upheaval she had caused him might not be dangerous,” p. 103), but they are not prolonged glimpses into their souls. The narrator much prefers to keep the action hurtling, with a just enough psychological insight to keep the characters real, toward the story’s satisfying conclusion

---

* The Penguin Classic edition, translated by David Luke and Nigel Reeves.

CRAFT ESSAY - Malamud vs. Malamud

I Never Meta-Fiction I Didn’t Like

Bernard Malamud’s novels The Assistant and The Tenants were published fourteen years apart—in 1957 and 1971, respectively—and while you’ll find thematic and formal similarities, reading the two novels back to back reveals how literary fiction was transformed by the meta-fiction experiments of the1960s.

Similarities

Both novels are set in bleak urban landscapes: The Assistant in a run-down grocery store; The Tenants in an abandoned apartment house.

In both novels, the third-person narrator occasionally assumes the informal tone of the Jewish characters, using a Yiddish-influenced sentence structure: “Tessie lugged out of the room a trunk” (The Assistant, p. 79), “Better he saved himself the long trek” (The Tenants, p. 36). This provides colorful glimpses into the culture of the characters and also lends the novel the old-fashioned quality of oral storytelling.

Both narrators frequently use blunt monikers for the major characters. This seems more than just a way to avoid overusing their names: when Morris Bober is referred to as “the grocer,” or Lesser as “the writer,” these roles seem as freighted with meaning as those of an old-time drama featuring, simply, “the Hero,” “the Girl,” and “the Villain.” Often, these monikers are employed by the characters themselves, as the narrator translates their thoughts for us. Thus, Bober thinks of Frank Alpine as “the Italyener,” and Lesser thinks of Willie Spearmint as “the black.” For these desperate men, both living on the precarious edge of society, everyone can be boiled down to his heritage.

Another similarity between the two novels is the balancing of the inner and outer lives of the characters. In The Assistant, the omniscient narrator spends an extraordinary amount of time within the minds of Bober, Frank, and the grocer’s daughter, Helen. In The Tenant, we are privy to Lesser’s thoughts and feelings. In both novels, the narrator deftly balances these psychologically revealing inner monologues with action and dialogue that propel the stories forward.

Differences

If, as John Gardner and others have noted, the omniscient narrator disappeared when people started to question the existence of God, then the Lord Almighty must have died somewhere between 1957 and 1971. In The Assistant, the God-like narrator dips in and out of different characters’ minds throughout, sometimes within the same paragraph. In The Tenants, the much more limited third-person narrator remains close to one character, Lesser (the writer), through whom we see everything. Any psychological insight into Willie, or Irene, for instance, is Lesser’s insight.

The two novels are also structured differently, with The Tenants made up of short, punchy scenes, while The Assistant, by comparison, rolls out luxuriously. The opening ten pages of the former are comprised of five separate sections, while the first ten pages of the latter are divided into just two. As a result, The Tenants feels more propulsive, in keeping with its more violent, racially charged themes, while The Assistant moves at the pace of one of those slow, unprofitable workdays behind the counter of Morris Bober’s grocery.

But the most startling difference between The Assistant and The Tenants is the author’s embrace, in the later novel, of a much more experimental style. Throughout, Malamud tries changeups in form—mixing first-person and third, past tense and present—that he may have deemed too radical for the earlier novel. And though he was not too timid to include dream sequences in 1957 (e.g., Bober’s dream of his dead son, Ephraim, on page 225 of The Assistant), he did make sure they were clearly introduced as such (“He dreamed of Ephraim…”). In The Tenants, on the other hand, Lesser’s sometimes long, drawn-out dreams are dropped into the narrative unannounced (pp. 19, 70, 131, etc.), where they mix with his real life as if un-separated by sleep.

Other experiments: the dropping of quotation marks on page 43, when Lesser gets high with Willie (on page 46, during their pot-fueled exchange, there’s even a brief section written in play format). Similarly, on page 74, Malamud drops the quotation marks for half the dialogue—Lesser’s half, so that we get the sense he’s paraphrasing more than quoting. In The Tenants, the author repeatedly takes risks with metaphor and poetic language that would be unthinkable in the earlier novel: “Goatskin siren, stop piping to my heart” (p. 13), “The wind like a live ghost, haunting itself” (p. 52), “His breath rang like struck metal” (p. 154). Even a seemingly simple line like “The empty hall was empty,” which is awarded its own paragraph on page 23, is emblematic of Malamud’s new, freer style. In 1957, such a line would have been redundant. In 1971, in a metafictional novel about writing, it somehow makes sense: the hall, always empty, remains empty, despite Lesser hearing noises.

Endings

Throughout The Tenants, Lesser obsesses over how he will end his novel. “Some endings demand you trick the Sphinx,” he says (p. 169). Both this novel and The Assistant, appropriately enough, end on startling notes, but in different ways. Here is the final paragraph of the earlier novel:

One day in April Frank went to the hospital and had himself circumcised. For a couple of days he dragged himself around with a pain between his legs. The pain enraged and inspired him. After Passover he became a Jew. (p. 246)

Rarely does a novel conclude as surprisingly and yet, in a weird way, as truthfully. Frank Alpine, the Italian-American drifter whom we’ve watched struggle with his inner demons—including a narrow but vivid streak of anti-Semitism—and whom we have rooted for in his quest to win over his boss’s daughter, Helen, finds success in neither business nor love, but only in his spiritual journey of suffering. The “uncircumcised dog,” as Helen calls him on page 168, maims himself for his new religion. But as crazy as this dramatic shift may be, Malamud prepares us for its appropriateness, so that it feels inevitable.

First, there is the thematic motif of suffering. Everyone in the novel is in pain: Morris, the immigrant grocer whose health and business are going down the toilet; his miserable wife, Ida, who resents Morris’s longstanding lack of ambition; their daughter, Helen, whose dream of attending college has gone unrealized; and, of course, Frank, the loner, working for chump change at the grocery, first in order to atone for earlier robbing the place, and then to pursue his doomed love for Helen. For Frank, who equates suffering with being Jewish (a belief reinforced by Morris’s own view of “Jewishness”), it only makes sense that he would convert.

On a craft level, Malamud lays the groundwork for his ending by boring so deeply, and so relentlessly often, into the psyche of Frank Alpine. When Frank peeps at Helen in the bathroom (p. 75), the narrator describes his actions—the squeezing into the air shaft, the climbing of the dumbwaiter rope—but at the heart of this episode is Frank’s interior thought process. “If you do it,” he tells himself, “you will suffer.” Yet he can’t resist, and when he sees her, “he felt a throb of pain at her nakedness, an overwhelming desire to love her, at the same time an awareness of loss, of never having had what he had wanted most, and other such memories he didn’t care to recall.”

What does this have to do with Frank’s conversion at the end? The reason that sudden turn feels so organic is that Malamud has allowed us into Frank’s tortured head. Imagine a less psychologically penetrating author—someone like Cormac McCarthy, who does not allow his narrator this kind of intimacy—throwing such a curveball. It would not ring true. But because we know Frank so thoroughly—because with every action we’ve been privy to his re-action—his extreme final act makes emotional sense.

The ending of The Tenants is no less extreme, with Lesser, enraged at Willie for destroying his manuscript, taking an ax to Willie’s typewriter. This leaves Lesser, after ten years of labor on his third novel, “nauseated by not writing…nauseated…by the words, by the thought of them” (p. 210). The novel then ends on a surreal note as the two men stalk each other in the halls, hurling vicious racial slurs, and finally killing each other: “Lesser felt his jagged ax sink into bone and brain as the groaning black’s razor-sharp saber, in a single boiling stabbing slash, cut the white’s balls from the rest of him” (p. 211). In a heartbreaking coda, the comically pathetic landlord Levenspiel, who has been begging Lesser to vacate the premises for years, pleads for mercy in both English and Yiddish: “Mercy, the both of you, for Christ’s sake, Levenspiel cries. Hab rachmones, I beg you.” He goes on to repeat the word “mercy” ninety-eight times.

Remembering that this novel was written during a time of violent racial strife, one can’t help but hear the author pleading with whites and blacks to put aside their differences. On a purely craft level, he is breaking with tradition—and with the kind of rigorous literary “form” that the old-fashioned Lesser preaches to Willie about—and striking out into more experimental directions, including the sort of confrontational style that Willie embraces in his writing. As with the powerful ending of The Assistant, Malamud has prepared us, in this case by previously establishing a surreal sensibility (with the dreams and unconventional punctuation), so that the climax, while bizarre and more symbolic than “real,” makes both thematic and formal sense.

49 LOVE LANE - Section 7

*

Dear Daisy,

I forgive you, sweet pea. I only hope you can forgive me. I have no legitimate excuse, but I was very angry at your father—for cooperating with that desperate news man, and then for neglecting to cut your fingernails as I’d asked—and I was startled. When you have children of your own, Daisy, you’ll understand how difficult it can be to keep your guard up. There will be those moments when you are unprepared, vulnerable, when there’s just not enough insulation between outside forces and your raw insides. Then you will say or do something you’ll regret, as I did tonight. Before you were born I promised myself I would never punish you in that way, no matter what. I thought it would be easy, as a reasonable, modern woman, to control myself. But in the past year I’ve noticed time and again that it’s so tempting to give in to primitive feelings, and very, very difficult to remain composed, in a moment of anger. Only later—sometimes much later—do you realize how this can affect your child. I fully expect, days or weeks or even months from now, you will discharge your resentment at me, just as you did today (for some previous sin of mine, no doubt). For now, you lie asleep in your crib, dreaming, I hope, of better moments. I love to watch your eyes while you sleep, the way your lashes flutter like little insect legs. What do you see? If I dream of childhood years past, do you dream of some prevous life? Heaven? I don’t believe in those concepts except when watching you sleep, when I suddenly turn into one of those people who claim to have seen angels. Even with that awful doll in your arms, you are perfect. I believe I’ll take a picture to show you, when you’re grown, how hideous that thing is, and how beautiful you were.

12. What’s That Smell?

“Press.”

So smug, this guy, how he answered the telephone. Like Woodward, or Walter Winchell. Like he owned the news.

“Why did you run that article?” I asked.

“Who is this?”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Larry?”

Was he kidding? How many people did this guy piss off every week?

“It’s Carl,” I said, then paused to let it sink in. Nothing. “Carl Hammond.”

“Oh. Hey, Carl.”

“You put a picture of my house on the front page!”

“Yeah, I thought it looked pretty nice.”

I stood unmoving on the deck, my elbows tucked in, like a man awaiting a body blow. Meanwhile, the sun poured down heat like oil.

“My wife is livid,” I said.

“Well, I’m sorry about that, Carl, but this is a good story.”

“You called me ‘unemployed.’”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s not for public consumption!”

I could hear typing in the background.

“Are you typing?”

“Have you found out anything?” he asked.

“About what?”

“About Arliss Taylor? Or Annette?”

“No,” I said, turning to watch the door. Abby was inside with the baby.

“All I could find was that Taylor got out however many years ago,” Harper said. “But who knows where he is now?”

I didn’t appreciate how he’d commandeered the discussion, deflecting my righteous anger, but I really wanted to know more about Taylor.

“I did an internet search for him,” I said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“I just got some young guy out in Arizona. An athlete.”

“Me too. Our guy’s probably flying under the radar. Pumping gas in Louisiana or something.”

I took a step toward the door. Abby was baby-talking to Daisy, still trying to make up for her outrageous behavior last night. I’d never seen her so livid, not even when I confessed about Okay Peterson. I understood how shocked she’d been, and how hurt—those baby fingernails can smart—but, Jesus. Daisy had been looking at her warily all morning.

“Listen,” I said, “I just wish you’d given me some warning about the article. I was caught off guard.”

“Fair enough.”

I pulled at my collar, stupidly hoping some fresh air would somehow fall in and cool my sweaty chest.

“Another thing,” I said.

“Hey, Carl, I gotta go.”

“Those photos?”

“What about them?”

“Did you notice anything odd about them?”

“Like what?”

“Like in the window?”

“Which window?”

“You didn’t notice a face in the window?”

“No. Look, Carl, it’s crazy here. I’m sorry about the article, but news is news, okay? Let me know if you dig up anything on Taylor or Bingham.”

“Sure.”

Click.

I sat in a plastic deck chair and rubbed my sweaty wrist across my sweaty brow. The sky, the trees, the house, the lawn—everything looked greasy. Across the street Mrs. Schwinn, wearing a thin flower-print housedress, pushed a purring lawnmower back and forth across her lawn. Just watching her produced viscous drops of perspiration on my face.

I picked up the newspaper from the deck table. Maybe those weren’t faces, after all. In this unforgiving light I could believe they were reflections—clouds, patches of sky—or maybe shadows. Earlier I’d shown the photos to Abby and asked her what she thought.

“I don’t see anything.”

“There,” I said, pointing. “That doesn’t look like a face?”

She looked closer. “Maybe Quasimodo’s face.”

But she wasn’t really looking. She still thought I was foolish to pursue the Dead Baby Story and would say anything to push me off the trail.

I watched Mrs. Schwinn crossing and recrossing her lawn. I pictured her whispering through a cracked-open door to a young Philip Harper thirty years ago, her husband behind her tossing out hints of devil worship and other strange business. I wondered if Harper had talked to her for this new article.

She pushed the mower across the last strip of shaggy grass, paused, pulled a blazing white handkerchief from her housecoat pocket, and wiped her face. Then she bent down and switched off the engine. The air seemed to open up in the silence, only to be filled by a sopping heat.

I stood and walked down the deck stairs to the yard. “Mrs. Schwinn!”

She didn’t hear me. Maybe the lawnmower engine had left her temporarily deaf.

“Mrs. Schwinn!”

Still no acknowledgement. She pushed the mower toward the small shed in the corner of her back yard.

“Hold up!” I had nearly reached the stone wall that lined our property when my shoe slipped across something squishy. I knew what it was before I looked. Sure enough, I had stepped in a thick pile of deer shit. “Dammit.” I dragged the bottom of my shoe across the grass, but the shit had embedded itself into the treads. I scraped the sole over the jagged stones of the wall, which helped some, but hardened brown strips still filled the shoe treads.

Mrs. Schwinn had rolled the mower into the shed and headed now to her front door.

“Hey, Mrs. Schwinn!”

She saw me now and gave a jerky nod as she continued on.

“Can I speak to you, Mrs. Schwinn?”

I jumped down from the stone wall and ran up her walkway. She had reached the door by the time I caught up with her.

“Mrs. Schwinn,” I puffed, but she did not turn. I wondered if she was angry at me, maybe about the article. She reached for the knob.

“Mrs. Schwinn!” I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, her tight face startled, eyes bulging.

“Oh!”

Her dog, Streudel, started barking on the other side of the door.

Only then did I notice the waxy plugs in her ears. “I’m sorry!” I bellowed.

She reached up a boney hand and removed the earplugs. “You spooked me.” Her voice sounded off, the words malformed, as if she were deaf or speech-impaired. Meanwhile, Streudel kept at it with staccato yelps and yips.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ve been calling you, but you couldn’t hear me.” I pointed at the earplugs in her hand. She looked older today, I thought, her cheeks sunken, her pulled-back hair thinning above her forehead. When I had put my hand on her shoulder I could feel her spiky, fragile bones.

“Did you happen to see this?” I held up the newspaper. She stared at it as if I were dangling a snake.

“I don’t read the papers anymore. At my age, what does all that matter, anymore?” She turned to the door and snapped, “Streudel!” and the dog went silent.

“Look,” I said, pointing to the photographs. She looked from the photos to my house and back, as if comparing them. “Did this reporter talk to you? Philip Harper?”

“Is this about the little girl again?”

“Yes. Did Harper call you?”

“There was a fellow stopped by.”

“Did you tell him anything?”

“About what?”

Was she losing it, I wondered. “About the little girl,” I said, trying to sound patient.

“That was a long time ago.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Can you tell me anything, Mrs. Schwinn?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I live in that house. I need to know.”

She appeared to think this over. I could hear Streudel wimpering just a few inches away.

“Mister Schwinn could have told you some things,” she said.

“I’m sure he could have. Like what?”

“He heard things.”

“What kinds of things did he hear, Mrs. Schwinn?”

She shut her eyes for a moment, as if to see her late husband. Her dried out lower lip quivered, and I could see then why she’d been talking so oddly: she had no teeth. She must have left her dentures inside. I pictured them grinning in a tall glass of fizzy water.

“Have you ever heard something that just sounded wrong?” she asked. “Maybe the way your car engine is running, or a creaking in the wall? You know it spells trouble, but if someone asks you to explain, you can’t?”

“I suppose so.”

“It’s like that. Mr. Schwinn heard things. Maybe I did, too. But if you asked me why my hair stood up I couldn’t properly tell you. Understand?”

“But—“

She opened the door and Streudel leapt out and stood on his hind legs, reaching up to paw at Mrs. Schwinn’s housedress.

“Hello, Sweetums,” she cooed.

“If you tried to explain,” I said, “maybe I’d understand.”

She entered the doorway and turned as the dog squealed and pranced across the floor.

“You’ve got a lovely family,” she said. “Best to let it be.”

She shut the door. From where I stood I could hear her talking to Streudel in a chirpy sing-song voice. Sweat rolled off my nose, lending a hint of salt to the smell of freshly cut grass in the air.

I walked back across the lane, climbed the stone wall. Each step involved an inordinate amount of effort, as if I were traversing the floor of a pool filled with warm gelatin. Even the birds had gone silent, their song requiring too much effort.

I climbed the steps and opened the sliding deck door. Abby, her hair plastered across her shiny forehead, sat across the living room reading to Daisy. Fans blew hot air around. The baby’s eyes peered down dully at the open book.

I set the newspaper down on a side table. A sweat stain, from my hand, dampened the photographs.

Abby looked up from the book. “Oh, God. What’s that smell?”

*

That afternoon, I drove to St. Mary’s Cemetery on the edge of town, a se veral-acre square surrounded by well-kept homes on three sides and St. Mary’s Church and Rectory on the fourth. The heat vibrated above the road, but a wind blew out of the west, pushing ominous clouds above the swaying trees.

“Looks like rain,” I said to Daisy, sitting in the back. Her mother had shooed us from the house while she attempted to clean the deer shit from the living room rug. I offered to do it but she lunged at the chance to do something other than care for the baby.

“Take her to the library or something,” she said. “Some place air conditioned.”

Of course I didn’t particularly want to face the flunty-eyes librarian, so I thought we’d have ourselves a little nature outing, of sorts.

I pulled into the narrow cemetery entrance and followed the gravel lane between elaborate mausoleums and statues.

“Where do you think Jane is?” I wondered.

“Baby!” Daisy shouted.

“That’s right, sweetie.”

I glanced back to see her clutching at her foul little doll. The thing appeared to be decomposing by the hour, losing hair and paint, its thin, faded dress not much more than a tissue.

Daisy herself didn’t look all that much more presentable. Her blonde hair pointed out in all directions, purplish bags hung below her eyes, dried cottage cheese curds clung to the corners of her mouth. Brown stains dotted her yellow cotton top and she wore mismatched socks. Thank goodness I didn’t take her to the playground, where the local mothers would have called child services and had her dragged off to a foster home.

About halfway through the graveyard, I eased over to the side of the lane and parked.

“Okay, Daze. Ready to commune with the dead?”

She smiled, god bless her.

I pulled her from the car seat and lugged her across the grass toward a cluster of modest headstones near a tall oak tree. I figured, given her mother’s situation, Jane’s marker would be small and simple. Daisy wrapped one arm around my neck, her little rump balanced in the crook of my arm. I could smell the musty odor of her doll just inches from my nose. Its one open eye glared up at me.

St. Mary’s was not the most cared-after graveyard I had ever seen. Shaggy, overgrown shrubs encroached on plots, grass blades shrouded markers, small trees erupted from graves.

Despite the wind and clouds the air remained thick. “I wish you could walk,” I told Daisy. Our combined body heat pulled the sweat out of my chest.

I walked row after row, noting the names and dates.

J. Lambert Bour

1902 - 1949

Clarissa A.

His wife

1908 – 1967

And next to that:

Hanford C. Bour

AIC US Air Force

Korea

1931 – 1952

Some were simple:

MOTHER

Agnes C. Moffat

Some very old:

Elizabeth

Wife of John B. Entwistle

Died Apr 10 1883

Æ 61 yrs 9 mo

& 23 days

Julian G. Hampton

Of Co. K 23 Rect.

Died at US Marine Hosp.

New Orleans

July 2, 1863

Æ 42 yrs 9 mos & 26 days

The wind had picked up, and I could smell rain in the air. Leaves flicked across the grass as smoke-colored clouds hovered just above the treetops. From the far side of the cemetery came the sound of heavy machinery.

“Let’s check it out, Daze.”

In the corner of the graveyard a small, faded orange excavator sat parked beside a hole in the ground. Its mechanical arm reached into the hole and scooped up a bucketful of rich, brown earth. The machine spun to its left and gently dumped the earth onto a pile. As we approached, Daisy grew tense and squeezed my neck with her little fingers. I stroked her back and said, “It’s okay, sweetie,” but she started whining and squirming until I could barely hold onto her. The man operating the excavator looked over and waved. I wondered when they’d stopped using human grave diggers. These machines seemed so undignified. Digging a grave should be hard work, I thought.

Daisy continued struggling and whimpering, so I had to turn and walk away. She didn’t calm down until we were half-way back to the car. That’s when I noticed a small, rectangular footstone made of polished gray marble. JANE LaRAY BINGHAM. The grave seemed almost an afterthought, crammed as it was between two others, their tall, white headstones worn at the corners by age and wind.

I set Daisy down on the grass. I’m not a kneeler, normally, but I felt the need to lower myself, maybe out of respect, or maybe because I felt hot and exhausted, so down I went. Jane’s name looked as if it had been carved in a hurry, the angles slightly uneven, the stone itself more like a remnant than an actual, regulation-size grave marker. Next to it sat a green plastic flower vase, empty.

I hadn’t known what I would feel at this moment, but I thought I would feel something other than heat, which seemed not just to pour down from the sky, but also up from the deep lava core of the earth. The trees had stopped swaying, the gentle swish of fluttering leaves replaced by the clank of the excavator. The sun emerged from between two black clouds, dripping yellow all over the trees and grass. The temperature climbed even more, the heat pounding at us. The grass here had not been mowed in a long time. I pulled the long blades and sprinkled the clippings on the ground. I pictured poor Jane down there in a rotting box, her bones, her hair, her cracked little skull. She probably wore a dress, white socks, Mary Janes. What was left of her?

“Daisy?”

I turned to see her crawling across the grass, clearly thinking of what it would take to climb to her feet and walk. With every spurt forward she lifted a leg and placed one foot flat on the ground, as if about to sprint the one hundred yard dash, then, still unsure of herself, returned the knee to the ground. I laughed, never having seen her move so fast. She clutched her doll as she neared Jane Bingham’s stone. She paused and reached out her tiny fingers to touch the marble.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the sun slipped back behind the clouds like a penny into a pocket. The wind picked up, knocking trees together. The temperature plummeted so quickly I felt a chill at the back of my neck, as the humidity lifted like fog.

I heard the rain before I felt it. Thick drops splattered across the leaves overhead and bounced off headstones. I lifted Daisy and ran toward the car. With each step I heard the raindrops chasing us, like the paws of a cheetah at our heels, until, just as I reached the Corolla, we were instantly soaked. Daisy cried out in shock at the cold water. I opened the door and tossed her into the car seat, saving the straps and buckles for after I got in myself. By then, having dashed around to the driver’s side, I felt as though I’d dived into the ocean.

I turned and strapped Daisy in. She laughed, thinking it some kind of game, maybe a special bath. Her doll’s sparse hair lay wet across its head, its one eye wet and shiny, its paint peeling beneath a sheen of rainwater.

*

When we returned home, Abby was out. I peeled Daisy’s clothes from her slick, chilled skin and wrapped her in a fluffy towel. Then I removed my own wet clothes and pulled on a robe. I sat on the sofa with Daisy on my lap, rubbing her back as the rain continued to pound the roof. Just one o’clock and the light had been sucked out of the sky. The living room felt like a submarine at one thousand leagues. On the way home great bolts of lightning had electrified the atmosphere, followed by bass rumbles of thunder. All that had since moved off, leaving behind distant drum rolls.

Soon I heard the familiar steady breathing of Daisy sleeping. I held her for a while, letting her warmth wash over me. I wondered where Abby had gone off to in this weather. I hoped she hadn’t taken a walk around the lake only to get caught in the downpour. Then I hoped she had.

Why was I so angry at Abby? The things I dreaded most from her—questions about the job, say, or the need for a second car—had not yet arrived. She had been so un-inquisitive, in fact, that I wondered if she knew what had happened and was allowing me to torture myself until I came clean. But that was not Abby’s style. If she found out I’d lost my job she would come at me like a heat-seeking missile. I was sure my anger had bubbled up as a by-product of this anticipation.

I carried Daisy to her room and slipped on a new diaper as she lay in the crib. She still clutched the doll, which stared up at me now with its one eye. I reached down and tried to pull it from Daisy’s hands, but her fingers held tight. Even in sleep she wanted the damn thing. I tried again, and she grunted and rolled away from me, onto her side.

I looked around for a blanket. It had been so hot lately there’d been no need for one, even at night, but now the room had cooled. Abby kept the blankets in a pair of baskets under the crib.

I reached under and pulled a basket out into the room. On top lay a heavy wool blanket. I felt underneath for the soft pink blanket a distant cousin had sent when Daisy was born. Abby didn’t care for it—she said it was too pink, even for a girl—but Daisy loved to stroke its fur-like material. No luck. I pushed the basket back and pulled out the other. On the bottom lay the soft blanket. I was half surprised Abby hadn’t thrown it away.

When I pulled out the blanket I noticed something heavy buried in its folds. A wooden box, resembling a cigar box, with a star carved into the top. I turned it over, looking for a lid or opening. There seemed to be something inside, so this was not a solid block of wood. Dirt crusted the carved lines of the star, and the wood gave off a faint smell of decay.

Where the hell did this come from? Why was it under the bed?

The kitchen door squealed open. Startled, I dropped the box onto the floor. For some inexplicable reason, I hurriedly returned it to the basket and pushed it back under the crib.

Abby came in, as dry as powder.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Didn’t you see my note?”

“What note?”

“I left it on the counter.” She gazed down at Daisy in the crib. “She needs a blanket.”

I reached under the crib, but she pushed me out of the way. “I’ll get it,” she said.

*

Dear Daisy,

A close call today, darling. Your father nearly stumbled upon the box, which I’d left hidden under your crib. This is our little secret, and I remain determined to find a way inside—without your father! Thank goodness I arrived home in time. Frannie had called earlier (while you were at the library) to invite me over for lunch, and while she can be a bit over the top, I enjoy her joie de vivre, so I accepted. Arnie and the kids were out so the conversation was unedited, which for Frannie means a fair amount of joyful cursing, sarcasm, and ribaldry. I wanted to know what it’s like to have two kids, which led her to a long list of pros and cons, foremost among the latter being a near complete lack of marital romance. “There just ain’t enough minutes in the day,” she said in that rubbery accent of hers. I told her what my 7^th grade teacher taught us in parochial school: sex comprises just one percent of our lives. That she was a nun didn’t seem to detract from her expertise for us at the time; she was right about everything else, from long division to the meaning of that turtle crossing the road in The Grapes of Wrath—why would she lie about this? In college, and then later, in my wild 20s, I used to giggle at the memory of Sister Mary Margaret’s ruddy face squeezed into her wimple as she dutifully explained the cold biology of sex and how unimportant it would be to us. But now, Daisy, as I get closer to Sister MM’s age (whatever that was; it’s so hard to tell in those ridiculous get-ups), I can see how it all averages downward toward that sad one percent. Which is not to say that we should accept it. Frannie demands satisfaction every Thursday night, whether Arnie wants to or not. Maybe I should try that with your father. If I could time it to ovulation, all the better! I know you’d love a little brother. More about that later.

13.

Every summer the Pateks threw a neighborhood party. “Not a big deal,” Mrs. Patek told me on the phone. “Just some of the other neighbors, a little barbecue, some wine. You can bring a salad if you like.”

“What are their names again?” I asked as we marched up the lane to the Pateks’ house. I carried a bowl of mixed greens, Abby carried Daisy.

“Gloria and Mark,” Abby said, rolling her eyes.

“Gloria and Mark, Gloria and Mark,” I chanted, trying to memorize the names. “Have I met them?”

“Gloria brought us a pie when we moved in, remember?”

“She did?”

“You’re hopeless. She has red hair, dyed. Fiftyish, maybe. Drives that massive SUV.”

“Right.” I remembered the car, one of those unnecessarily large ones that housewives drive in case they needed to haul a sofa somewhere. “And Doug?”

“Mark,” Abby said.

“That’s what I meant.”

“I’ve never actually spoken to him, but he looks like a nice guy. Balding, flabby.”

We turned into the Pateks’ driveway. The original cottage had been completely made over into a modern two-story house with large vertical paneless windows. As we neared the ornately carved front door, we could hear the sound of chatter from the back yard.

Abby pushed the doorbell. “So it’s Gloria and Mark. Got it?”

“Of course.”

The door swung open. I recognized Gloria immediately, with her reddish-orange hair and pale, unwrinkled face. The pie had been strawberry-rhubarb.

“Howdy neighbors!” she said, a bit too loudly, as if she’d had one too many glasses of Chardonnay. She had squeezed herself into tight, high-riding jeans that accentuated her paunch, and a pale blue blouse cinched up beneath her bulbous breasts. She was trying a little too hard to hold on to some faded beauty. “Come on in!”

She led us through her immaculate, sparsely furnished house to the kitchen.

“Let me take that marvelous looking salad, and you three go back and say hello to everyone. There’s wine and beer and lots of things to munch on.”

We stepped through the sliding glass door onto a large stone patio. Several people stood around with plastic cups in their hands.

“That’s Mark,” Abby whispered, nodding toward a beer-belled man in a loud Hawaiian shirt beside a hulking, stainless steel grill.

“Beer and white wine in the cooler!” he shouted while waving a greasy spatula. He turned to the others. “Everyone know these guys?”

Those whom we knew—the Johnstons, Mrs. Schwinn—nodded and waved. Monica wore what, for her, was a conservative summer dress that hung to her knees. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the strategically slipping spaghetti strap.

Frannie hurtled herself at Abby for a hug. “Here,” she said, pulling her toward the crowd. “Let me introduce you around.”

We met the Millers, an older couple dressed for Miami in pastels, and the infamous “mixed” Pierces, Rose and Perry, and their two children with beautiful skin.

“Abby and Carl recently moved into number 49,” Frannie explained.

“Oh, the Princes’ old place?” Perry Pierce asked. He wore a spotless white shirt that contrasted with his dark skin.

“That’s a sweet little house,” Mrs. Miller said. She leveled he blue eyes at mine. “How do you like it?”

“We’re still getting used to it,” Abby said before I could answer. “It’s just so quiet here.”

“You hit a home run when you moved here!” Mark Patek shouted from the grill. He poked at a row of sausages engulfed in flames.

“I could tell you what’s in those sausages, Mr. Patek,” Ellis Johnston said. “But you may not want to know.”

“You can’t scare me, kid. I once ate monkey brains in Borneo.”

“Then I guess pig anuses don’t bother you.”

“It’s all natural.”

Ellis shook his head and walked over to his sister. While smiling directly at me she reached out and flicked her brother on the ear with a finger.

“Ow!”

“Monica,” Arnie cautioned. He handed me a beer and said, “Hey, Carl.” Then he leaned in close and whispered, “I’ve got something I want to show you later.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” He mimicked inhaling a cigarette, holding in the smoke.

“I don’t know, Arnie.”

“We won’t take no for an answer.”

“We?”

He walked off toward Mark, who stabbed at a sausage, releasing fiery juices onto the coals. Thick smoke billowed across the well-manicured lawn. A tall, solid wood fence ran around all three sides. Anything could happen here and no one would see it.

While Abby chatted with Frannie, I stared up at the pale blue, almost white sky. Since the storm a few days earlier the air had cooled, though direct sunlight still had a bite. Back here, shaded by tall maples, breathing felt like biting into a crisp apple.

Maybe we did hit a home run, I thought.

“So Carl,” Perry Pierce said, “what do you do?”

Instantly, the home run went foul as he trained his intense brown eyes at me. I looked down and watched him swirl a cup of white wine.

“Teach,” I said. “You?”

“Finance.”

“Oh, that’s interesting.”

“Not really. It’s just shuffling money around. Where do you teach?”

I drained my beer and badly wanted another.

“Have you heard of the Pfister School?” I asked.

“Of course. That’s a good school. We’re thinking of sending our son there, when the time comes.”

Perry’s son, about three, rolled on the grass, clowning with Daisy.

“Beautiful girl,” Perry said.

“Thank you.”

“What do you teach, Carl?”

“English. Drama.”

“I never got into that,” he said. “I was a math kid.”

“You’re better off, I’m sure. Pardon me, Perry. I just need a fresh beer.”

I waggled my empty bottle, but something about his expression made me wonder if he believed my excuse.

“Can I get you something?” I asked.

“I’m good, thanks.”

I opened a bathtub-sized cooler and grabbed a beer. Frannie and Abby chatted nearby, their voices low and conspiratorial.

“That Perry Pierce is kind of yummy, don’t you think?” I heard Frannie say.

I glanced over at Perry, who was now chatting with Mrs. Miller. He was good looking, I supposed. A little plump, but he carried it well.

“I wouldn’t mind some of that brown sugar,” Frannie added.

Abby laughed. “You have a one track mind, Frannie.”

“I admit it, honey, and it’s a big, wide track with not nearly enough traffic.”

I wondered what Arnie would say if he heard this. He’d probably laugh. As long as he could get high, he was happy.

I carried my beer over to where Perry was chatting with Mrs. Miller.

“You’re back,” Perry said, surprised.

I realized then that Perry Pierce was accustomed to people making excuses to disengage.

“We were just talking about how neighborhoods change,” Mrs. Miller said. She wore the look of a therapist, her eyes soft. Her purplish white hair clashed with her dark, tanned skin and Caribbean blue blouse.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Fifteen years.”

“Six for us,” Perry said.

“So you weren’t around for the big murder.”

“I saw that in the paper,” Mrs. Miller said. “I’d heard rumors over the years, but I wasn’t sure they were true. What an awful story.”

“Murder?” Perry asked.

“What kind of rumors?” I asked Mrs. Miller.

“Oh, just that a little girl was killed by her father.”

“Where?” Perry asked.

“That’s all?” I asked Mrs. Miller.

“Basically. Except that it was pretty tawdry.”

“When did this happen?” Perry asked.

“Tawdry? How so?”

“Oh, gosh. You should speak to Herman. He may remember better than me.”

I looked over at Mr. Miller, who stood chatting with Arnie and Mark Patek. He looked pretty sharp in a pale pink polo shirt and faded jeans. I guessed his waist to be 32 inches.

“What murder?” Perry asked.

I explained the story to him.

“Good Lord,” he said. “You live in that house?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it weird knowing what happened?”

“I guess so.”

“Any strange noises at night?” he asked.

“Oh, Perry,” Mrs. Miller scoffed.

“Just the usual ‘Wild Kingdon’ stuff out in the yard, that’s all,” I said.

Mrs. Miller, perhaps looking to steer us away from the story, said, “I think your Leo likes Carl’s little girl, Perry.”

Perry’s little boy sat on the lawn pulling at the grass. He handed Daisy a clump, but she ignored him.

“Women,” I said.

Leo climbed to his feet, moved closer, and sat right next to Daisy, practically on top of her, and put his arm around her shoulders.

“Awww,” everyone cooed.

Daisy grimaced and pulled away.

“Be nice, Sweetie,” Abby said. “Leo likes you.”

Daisy looked up and said, “Fuck.”

“Did she just say what I think she said?” Perry laughed.

“Daisy!” Abby cried.

“I don’t know where that came from,” I said.

“It’s amazing what kids pick up,” Perry said, still laughing. “You work on the alphabet for weeks, and the one time you drop the F bomb they learn it like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Leo remained undeterred, reaching around Daisy and pulling her close.

“Now be a good girl, Daisy,” Abby said.

Then Daisy reared back and scratched Leo’s eyes.

“Daisy!”

The boy fell back onto the ground, his little hands over his face, and howled. Perry was on him immediately, scooping the boy up into his arms.

“I’m so sorry,” Abby said, reaching for Daisy, who stared up at her with a strange half-smile. Perry ignored her and rushed Leo into the house. His wife followed close behind, asking, “What happened?”

I joined Abby, who held Daisy in her arms.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Fuck,” Daisy replied, matter-of-factly. She then leaned down and bit Abby on her bare shoulder. Abby let out a sharp cry and nearly dropped the baby.

I saw red. I grabbed Daisy and strode over to the far corner of the yard. Not everyone had seen her scratch Leo and bite her mother, but I was aware of people watching now and wanted to get as far away as possible. Unfortunately, the Pateks did not have a large yard.

I held her at arm’s length and shook her.

“Do—not—do—that,” I grunted through clenched teeth.

Her face remained eerily calm for a few seconds, even as I shook her, then her expression quickly transformed into hurt and fear. She started bawling.

“Carl!” Abby cried out behind me.

She elbowed me aside and yanked the baby away. I could see four little teeth marks, red and still wet, on the pale skin of her shoulder. She pulled the baby close and marched off. Everyone watched her go, then looked over at me. I may as well have pulled my pants down and crapped on the lawn. I wished I could fly over the fence. After an interminable moment, people started turning away. Mark poked at the sausages, the Millers muttered under their breath. Arnie came over with my beer, which I must have set down on a table.

“Don’t sweat it, Carl. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve throttled my kids.” He smiled. “I try not to do it in public, though.”