Son of Destruction

41




Dan


‘You never know what you’re gonna get. Sometimes she’s all talkatalka, and the rest, she just stares. You’re not leaving now.’ Steffy pushes Dan into the room and closes the door as far as the institutional doorstop permits, giving it a kick to make her point. She peers into the Geri-chair where her great-grandmother is tipped back, apparently to help blood make it all the way up there to her brain. In spite of the touch of lipstick put on by an aide, she looks transparent, like what’s left after an insect sheds its carapace.

‘Oh.’ Dan has never seen anybody this old. ‘Oh!’

‘GRAMMY, ARE YOU IN THERE?’

Where she had been staring at the TV in its ceiling mount, old Mrs Henderson turns to see who yelled. She lights up like a paper lantern.

Triumphant, Steffy hisses, ‘See? She knows me. That’s why somebody has to come.’

‘Can she hear us?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Hello, Mrs Henderson.’

Just as suddenly, she lapses. All the lights go off inside.

Sighing, Steffy studies the lunch tray with its plastic dishes and plastic-looking food. ‘GRAMMY, YOU HAVEN’T TOUCHED YOUR CUPCAKE. HAVE A BITE.’

Dan turns to go.

‘LOOK, GRAMMY, IT’S CHOCOLATE. Sugar usually perks her right up.’ Steffy will say anything to keep him here. ‘When she gets going it’s a riot. Plus, you’re looking for something or somebody, right? Give her a minute to perk up, OK? She knows some amazing shit.’

‘She doesn’t look very perky to me.’

Everything is in stasis here. Dan delivered Steffy as promised, and when she asked him to come up to the room it was clear that she needed it so he walked point, seeing her up the stairs and down terrible pastel halls lined with saccharine repros chosen to help people forget that they came here to die. He kept Steffy talking to cover the babble in the health care wing, which is where they are. They talked about her boyfriend Carter, but not really; they talked about why stain-proof flooring, why the wide bedroom doors; they talked about Nenna not at all. They jabbered, trying to blur the occasional outraged cry coming from rooms they passed, the spontaneous groan, but old voices knife into a sensitive nerve. Dan came inside Golden Acres because the girl needed it, but he can’t stay. He doesn’t have the time.

‘If she comes to, tell her I said hi.’

‘Give me a minute!’ Steffy’s fingers lock on his arm like teeth. She yanks him into the space between Mrs Henderson and the TV. She mutes the set. ‘That’s better, isn’t it, Gram? Dan,’ she says in her mother’s exact ceremonial voice, ‘this is Grammy Henderson.’

‘I don’t think she’s in there any more.’

‘F*ck she isn’t. Grammy!’ She ratchets up the volume. ‘Grammy, this is my friend Dan.’

‘Look, I really can’t . . .’

‘You have to! GRAMMY, THIS IS DAN.’

‘Hello, Grammy.’

‘Her name is Blanche.’

‘Hello, Blanche.’

Waiting, Dan is aware of life going on elsewhere – conversations hitting the same dead end in rooms all along the hall. Sudden, inadvertent cries. Half Fort Jude’s history is deposited here, stored inside of old people a lot like this one, who remember, but can’t explain. Did Steffy’s great-grandmother know the incendiary Lorna Archambault? God knows she’s old enough, but at the moment she is beyond speech. He can wait forever and never find out. He imagines every room in Golden Acres is like this one, dense with history, but history under lock and key.

In a city where everyone seems to know everything that goes on, these old parties have probably processed and stored all the information he needs. If age didn’t kill, they could tell him everything. Solve his life. Decades worth of answers are layered inside these old patients’ heads. Soon they will all be gone. Their random access memories are shot. Death will erase their hard drives and local funeral directors will deal with what’s left. He’s running out of time! Talk to me. What would he uncover if he could go from room to room, cracking secrets out of their shrinking heads?

Shit, Dan thinks. It’s just as well I didn’t come here for answers. Look at her!

Dressed in pink seersucker today, with knotted bones that used to be feet tucked into sheepskin booties that have never walked a step, Blanche Henderson stirs. There’s a button missing on the dress and someone has closed the neck with an oval brooch which, he notes uneasily, seems to contain human hair. Other people have the good grace to die off before they reach this age, but Grammy is still among them. Studying the husk of a woman who’s been around too long, Dan marvels. How did you get to be so old?

Sensing his impatience, Steffy says, ‘Grammy?’

The old woman’s body has given up on her but the spark won’t let go, no matter how much she wants it to fly up.

Grammy’s in there somewhere, fixed on something only she can see. Great age has one compensation. Time and space are nothing to her. Dan has no idea how long it will take Grammy to get back from wherever she is roaming; she could be anywhere, wandering around in search of the white light or spinning her wheels on memory lane or excavating truths that at the time she didn’t recognize as such.

Is Blanche aware that Steffy has brought an outsider into the close, obscenely intimate space where – soon, if she’s lucky – she will die? Does she have any idea that Dan is willing her to speak so he can escape? He gnaws his lip until blood comes.

‘Hang on and I’ll get some cupcake into her.’ Patiently, the girl holds a sticky cube to her great-grandmother’s lips. Steffy tickles Grammy’s cheek until the mouth pops open. She slips in the cake like mail into a letter slot. ‘There.’

Like a vet giving a dog a pill, she strokes Grammy’s throat. It takes a long time for her mouth to move. They wait a long time for her to swallow. Watching for signs of life, Dan thinks: Steffy’s right about the smell. Then he thinks: There isn’t enough Lysol in the world. Everything is desperately pretty in Grammy’s room. Pink eyelet curtains, matching dust ruffle, pink comforter and ruffled eyelet pillow shams that in no way obfuscate the fact that this is a hospital bed. Aqua walls. Above the bed hangs a framed repro of that pretty-pretty painting of a Southern belle at a piano; Dan thinks the dress comes in different colors according to which company supplies the repro, but he isn’t sure. Then the chair clanks into upright position and he jumps out of his seat.

‘Hello,’ the old lady says, blinking. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me, Grammy. Stephanie. Nenna’s girl?’ She shoves him closer. ‘And this is Dan.’

‘How do you do,’ Dan says, looking into opaque eyes. The disturbing thing about Grammy Henderson is that she is pretty much bald. What little hair she has stands up bravely, a handful of white threads that one of the attendants has brushed to a shine and fluffed so it will look like more. She doesn’t exactly look at him. She just holds up the knot of bones that passes for a hand as though she’s used to having it kissed. Instead, he bends down and carefully – every segment of this lady ought to be stamped FRAGILE – he takes it. It’s like shaking a bunch of dried flowers.

Startled, she looks up, shouting, ‘Company! Stephanie, get my wig!’

Steffy whispers, ‘It’s been years since she wore the wig. This is a very big deal.’

‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Dan. Dan Carteret.’

‘Little Lucy’s boy!’ That flash. As suddenly, Blanche goes back inside.

How does she know? Did Nenna come running with the news? He snaps forward, hanging on the next word, but Grammy’s gone. Amazing how still a person can be, for so long.

Long becomes too long and Dan gives up on her. It’s late. He turns to Steffy, assuming they are done. ‘OK then. Where do you want me to drop you?’

‘Oh, I have to stay. Staff’s night off, I have to feed Grammy when her dinner comes.’ She turns with a steely glare, all teeth. ‘You’re hanging in with me, right?’

This is a moral dilemma that Dan will not have to face.

Grammy has fought her way to the surface. ‘Those poor babies!’ she pre-empts, rolling down a track that was laid more than thirty years ago. ‘I warned Lorna not to steal Sam Carteret’s baby away after Lily died, but she didn’t care. She went up to Charleston with lawyers and took Lucy away from him. I said, “Lorna, that baby is all he has left!” I said, “You’ll be sorry,” and she was. I said, “That girl will never forgive you,” and she never did.’

The next thing Blanche says is so bitter that it astounds him. ‘No wonder Hal Archambault divorced her. She was a mean, willful . . .’ Her mouth is working, but lady that she is, she can’t use that word. Instead she spits. ‘We used to be friends!’

Steffy dabs at the glob with a tissue and Grammy goes on. ‘The Carteret boy was sick with grief, but she was bent on it. I said, “Lorna, if you do this you will live to see history repeating,” but I swear, that woman marched on Charleston like Hitler, she hated all men. That’s why Lily sneaked off to Valdosta to marry Will, and Lucy . . .’

‘Lucy.’

Thoughts rush across the space behind Grammy’s eyes like cloud formations; she reaches out and snatches one. ‘Sam sent Lorna a post card. Your new granddaughter is named Lucy. P.S., it killed Lily. In case you cared.’

Lily was Lucy’s mother. Chapter. Verse. Verified. Thud. My great-grandmother. It’s . . . Blinking, he tries to shake it off. In the blood?

‘Lorna had a hard heart before Hal Archambault left her for that tramp, so no wonder, but the divorce turned it to stone. Poor Lucy! She was Lorna’s perfect dollbaby, all dressed up with nowhere to go. No boys allowed in that house, and as for men, men! She looked at men and she saw . . .’

‘Wait.’

‘Liars, fornicators and cheats. Lucy couldn’t go with any boy her grandmother didn’t approve, and nobody was good enough for Lorna Archambault. She had to sneak away from parties at the Fort Jude Club to see poor Hal! I said, “Give that girl little freedom or you’ll lose her,” but she was like the Gorgon, beating Lucy to death with snakes. No wonder it ended the way it did.’

His mouth forms: How?

With a tremendous effort, Grammy spits, ‘Her girls fell in love and she couldn’t keep them. We all know how that ended, with Lily dead and Lucy dead to her.’

Dan is aware that he is holding his breath.

‘She was awful to those boys,’ she says without naming them because at Grammy’s age people become interchangeable and time is all the same. ‘Both times.’

This rolls in like news in a foreign language. Beggared, he murmurs, ‘Ma’am?’

‘Lily eloped – so sad – and then she died and Lorna swooped down like the wolf upon the fold and took Lucy away from poor Sam, she was a spiteful, controlling old . . .’ Grammy’s mouth knots, twitching while she searches for the euphemism. Finally it pops out like a cherry pit. ‘Witch!’

Steffy murmurs, ‘Wuow, that’s the most I’ve heard out of her in weeks! Here, sweetie, just a little more cupcake, OK?’

But Grammy is rolling now, heading for the exit ramp. ‘It was spite, pure and simple,’ she says, just before she runs down. ‘Spite!’

Dan gives her a gentle push to keep the recital rolling, ‘You said, both times.’

‘She didn’t care how much in love they were. She saw Hal in every man. At least Lucy was forewarned.’ Grammy’s eyes crackle. ‘Thanks to me.’

‘You knew my mother?’

‘Lucy was too smart for her. Sweet girl!’ Abruptly, she seizes Dan’s hand and pulls him close. He can smell death coming out of her mouth. ‘You look like her.’

It hits like a mallet and his breath catches. ‘Yes Ma’am.’

‘Your mother fell in love but she kept it a secret. She had been warned.’

Everything in him rushes forward. ‘You warned her?’

‘God help me, I tried to warn them both!’ Grammy is tiring. She drops his hand.

‘I tried to tell them history repeats itself. It always does.’ She sighs. ‘When she got pregnant, she went where Lorna couldn’t hurt her.’

More, Grammy. More. ‘Who did?’

‘Oh, those poor boys!’

‘Boys? Which boys, Ma’am? Ma’am!’

Lapsing, she comes back with, ‘He was devastated.’

‘Who?’

Used up, Grammy Henderson waves her hand, fighting off invisible flies, but she’s still in there, and at some level she knows that Dan is waiting with teeth clenched so tight that the enamel cracks. She says with finality, ‘Terrible, what got old Lorna, but she brought it on herself.’

Oh, lady, don’t stop now. ‘How? Oh, please, Mrs Henderson, just one more answer. What set her on fire?’

But Blanche has talked a lot for a woman her age – what is her age? Half past ninety and hurtling to the finish line – and she’s spent. She says crossly, ‘That’s enough.’

‘What did it?’ Oh, please. ‘What?’

With the wave of a southern lady banishing anything unpleasant, she changes the subject. ‘Nenna, has my dinner come?’

‘Not yet, Grammy,’ Steffy says.

‘You were telling us about Lucy.’

Blinking, she asks politely, ‘Who?’

‘Lucy Carteret, remember?’ Dan presses even though he knows Grammy is shutting down. He gives her everything he has. ‘I’m her son.’

‘Don’t.’ Feebly, she swats him away.

‘Please!’

‘Oh, don’t!’ Exhausted, the old woman cries, ‘I want my dinner now!’

Silence overtakes them.

‘I have to go,’ Dan says when it’s clear that this time, Grammy won’t be back.

‘Dude . . .’

He turns. ‘And I’m not kidding.’

‘Dude!’ Then Steffy sees his face, and lets him go.