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Authors: Karen Joy Fowler
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toll. I can’t believe it wouldn’t have mind-bent me like a spoon. (Not
that I haven’t been mind-bent.)
So Grandma Donna would clean the kitchen, maybe unpack some dishes or some of my clothes
if she felt energetic, since it was clear by now that no one else planned to open
those boxes. She’d make me lunch and cook something medicinal, like a soft-boiled
egg, take it to the bedroom, put our mother in a chair so she could change the bedsheets,
demand the nightgown for the wash, beg Mom to eat. Sometimes Grandma Donna was all
sympathy, delivering in salubrious doses her preferred conversation—details on the
health and marital problems of people she’d never met. She was especially fond of
dead people; Grandma Donna was a great reader of historical biographies and had a
particular soft spot for the Tudors, where marital discord was an extreme sport.
When that didn’t work, she’d turn brisk. It was a sin to waste such a beautiful day,
she’d say even when it wasn’t such a beautiful day, or, your children need you. Or
that I should have started nursery school a year ago and already be in kindergarten.
(I didn’t, because Fern couldn’t go. Or Mary, either.) And that someone had to put
the brakes on Lowell, he was only eleven, for God’s sake, and shouldn’t be allowed
to rule the house. She would have liked to see one of her children running the emotional
blackmail game Lowell got away with; he should have a close encounter with his father’s
belt.
She drove once to Marco’s, intending to force Lowell home, but she came back defeated,
face like a prune. The boys had been out on their bikes, no one knew where, and Marco’s
mother said Dad had thanked her for keeping Lowell and she’d send him home when it
was our father who asked. Marco’s mother was letting the boys run wild, Grandma Donna
told Mom. Plus she was a very rude woman.
Grandma always left before our father returned from work, sometimes telling me not
to say she’d been there, because conspiracy is folded into her DNA like egg whites
into angel food cakes. But of course, Dad knew. Would he have left me there otherwise?
Later he’d bring whatever she’d cooked back down from the bedroom and shovel it into
the disposal. He’d get himself a beer and then another and then start on the whiskey.
He’d put peanut butter on a cracker for me.
At night, from my bedroom, I’d hear arguing—Mom’s voice too soft to be heard (or maybe
she wasn’t speaking at all), Dad’s laced (I know now) with liquor. You all blame me,
Dad said. My own goddamn children, my own goddamn wife. What choice did we have? I’m
as upset as anyone.
And finally, Lowell, home at last, climbing the stairs in the dark without anyone
hearing him and coming into my room, waking me up. “If only,” he said—eleven years
old to my five, socking me high on the arm so the bruise would be hidden by my T-shirt
sleeve—“if only you had just, for once, kept your goddamn mouth shut.”
I have never in my life, before or after, been so happy to see someone.
Four
I DEVELOPED A PHOBIA about the closed door to our parents’ bedroom. Late at night, I could hear it, pulsing
in its frame like a heart. Whenever he let me, I huddled with Lowell in his room,
as far away from that door as I could get and still be home.
Sometimes Lowell felt sorry for me. Sometimes it seemed that he, too, was frightened.
We each carried the weight of Fern’s disappearance and our mother’s collapse, and
occasionally, for short periods, we carried it together. Lowell would read me a book
or let me jabber away while he played complicated games of solitaire that required
two or three decks of cards and were nearly impossible to win. If just anyone could
win a game, then Lowell couldn’t be bothered.
Sometimes, if he wasn’t completely awake, he’d let me climb into his bed after dark
to get away from our father’s
that I haven’t been mind-bent.)
So Grandma Donna would clean the kitchen, maybe unpack some dishes or some of my clothes
if she felt energetic, since it was clear by now that no one else planned to open
those boxes. She’d make me lunch and cook something medicinal, like a soft-boiled
egg, take it to the bedroom, put our mother in a chair so she could change the bedsheets,
demand the nightgown for the wash, beg Mom to eat. Sometimes Grandma Donna was all
sympathy, delivering in salubrious doses her preferred conversation—details on the
health and marital problems of people she’d never met. She was especially fond of
dead people; Grandma Donna was a great reader of historical biographies and had a
particular soft spot for the Tudors, where marital discord was an extreme sport.
When that didn’t work, she’d turn brisk. It was a sin to waste such a beautiful day,
she’d say even when it wasn’t such a beautiful day, or, your children need you. Or
that I should have started nursery school a year ago and already be in kindergarten.
(I didn’t, because Fern couldn’t go. Or Mary, either.) And that someone had to put
the brakes on Lowell, he was only eleven, for God’s sake, and shouldn’t be allowed
to rule the house. She would have liked to see one of her children running the emotional
blackmail game Lowell got away with; he should have a close encounter with his father’s
belt.
She drove once to Marco’s, intending to force Lowell home, but she came back defeated,
face like a prune. The boys had been out on their bikes, no one knew where, and Marco’s
mother said Dad had thanked her for keeping Lowell and she’d send him home when it
was our father who asked. Marco’s mother was letting the boys run wild, Grandma Donna
told Mom. Plus she was a very rude woman.
Grandma always left before our father returned from work, sometimes telling me not
to say she’d been there, because conspiracy is folded into her DNA like egg whites
into angel food cakes. But of course, Dad knew. Would he have left me there otherwise?
Later he’d bring whatever she’d cooked back down from the bedroom and shovel it into
the disposal. He’d get himself a beer and then another and then start on the whiskey.
He’d put peanut butter on a cracker for me.
At night, from my bedroom, I’d hear arguing—Mom’s voice too soft to be heard (or maybe
she wasn’t speaking at all), Dad’s laced (I know now) with liquor. You all blame me,
Dad said. My own goddamn children, my own goddamn wife. What choice did we have? I’m
as upset as anyone.
And finally, Lowell, home at last, climbing the stairs in the dark without anyone
hearing him and coming into my room, waking me up. “If only,” he said—eleven years
old to my five, socking me high on the arm so the bruise would be hidden by my T-shirt
sleeve—“if only you had just, for once, kept your goddamn mouth shut.”
I have never in my life, before or after, been so happy to see someone.
Four
I DEVELOPED A PHOBIA about the closed door to our parents’ bedroom. Late at night, I could hear it, pulsing
in its frame like a heart. Whenever he let me, I huddled with Lowell in his room,
as far away from that door as I could get and still be home.
Sometimes Lowell felt sorry for me. Sometimes it seemed that he, too, was frightened.
We each carried the weight of Fern’s disappearance and our mother’s collapse, and
occasionally, for short periods, we carried it together. Lowell would read me a book
or let me jabber away while he played complicated games of solitaire that required
two or three decks of cards and were nearly impossible to win. If just anyone could
win a game, then Lowell couldn’t be bothered.
Sometimes, if he wasn’t completely awake, he’d let me climb into his bed after dark
to get away from our father’s
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