I’d never seen Birchie this way, violent, weaving, puffing. Wattie was so calm, though, that I thought, She’s seen this. She’s seen Birchie this way before, and more than once. God help us. I obeyed her, putting one hand on Sel Martin’s arm for a second to hold him with me.
Birchie’s chair was tipped over, and the pitcher of lemonade had fallen or been pushed off the table. It was now a large puddle dotted with melting ice and chunks and slivers of glass near us. Birchie’s cup was overturned on the tabletop, and her lemonade was still flattening and spreading across the wood. One liquid finger, then another, reached the edge of the table and began drip-dropping onto the floor. It was a soothing sound, a pattering, like summer rain.
That sound had no place in this electric room, where Birchie told us in a screechy, rage-filled voice, “I said no, I said no, I said no, I said!” She turned from one of us to the next, the dirty fork held up by one ear in her bent arm, tines facing us, like it was a butcher knife.
Frank Darian was talking to Birchie, apologizing for something? I couldn’t follow because Batman was asking quietly, “What meds is she taking?”
I could not remember the names, but Wattie answered, “Exelon and Sinemet.”
“I’m so sorry,” Frank said again. “I should have called.”
“Nothing for anxiety?” Batman’s stutter had not come into the room with us. Maybe it was the feel of the long cloak, still hanging down his back, or maybe he was in nurse mode.
“What are you whispering about?” Birchie said, turning her fork toward us, glaring. “Are you having secrets from me? Are you making more secrets?”
“I was telling Mr. Martin here that you have Valium for when you’re mad like this,” Wattie said. “In the kitchen cabinet, left of the stove. Maybe Frank can get one for you?” It was a sweet-voiced question, yet every person in the room but Birchie heard it as an order.
“Of course,” Frank said, and started forward.
“Go the long way, Frank,” Wattie said, and he obeyed her, turning away from the dining room and going through the entry and up the hall as Wattie went on, saying, “Maybe we should all sit down,” ignoring the fork and the way Birchie’s chest was heaving.
“How on earth can I? He took my chair!” Birchie said. “This won’t do! This will not do at all!”
“Your chair fell over. Frank didn’t take it. He went to get your pills,” Wattie said, sweet and reasonable.
“You’re bleeding,” Sel Martin said.
“What?” I said, but he was speaking to Wattie.
“Not Frank! Don’t be stupid. I meant him,” Birchie said, turning to jerk her fork toward no one, toward nothing, toward her own empty spot at the head of the table.
While she was in profile, Sel stepped forward, through the wreckage of the shattered pitcher. He ignored the crunch of glass under his shoes and grabbed Lavender’s linen napkin off the table. He went to Wattie and bent to examine her arm, up high near the shoulder.
“Mm, that’s pretty deep,” he said. He pressed the napkin to her arm, and red splotches came soaking through the white linen.
“Did she do that?” I asked Wattie, but she ignored me. “Did Birchie hurt you?”
“How’d you get back in my house, you salty bastard?” Birchie talked over me, furious. She was staring at the portrait that hung to the left of the table’s head. Her father, Ellis Birch, stared back with his proud painted eyes. “We took you out. How did you sneak back in my house? We crashed you in the car!” She was outraged, as if the bones had escaped the evidence locker, refleshed themselves, and come straight home to reclaim the head of the Birch table. It had been her spot for sixty years now.
It made me want her rabbits back. Birchie’s rabbits had gone bad, but at least she knew they weren’t really there. She didn’t curse or yell at them. That was saved for Ellis Birch, her father, the man she’d ended with a hammer. The worst part was, this shrieking version of my Birchie, lofting her fork, had no remorse. She looked ready to end him all over again.
“Keep pressing on it, and keep it lifted. We need to get it clean,” Sel told Wattie, folding her hand over the napkin. “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
Birchie heard him and glanced his way, fork still lifted high. When she saw Sel, she began to giggle. It was a high-pitched, girlish sound, almost garish coming from her small, elderly mouth.
She shook her fork at the portrait and asked, still tittering, “Do you know he’s black? Look how black he is!” She leaned in, smacking her lips.
“I did notice that,” Wattie said, unfazed, as if Birchie were talking to her. She was working hard to get Birchie to notice or talk back to someone, anyone, who was actually present.
I felt my cheeks flush and said to Sel, “She’s sick.”
“S’okay. I knew I was black.” He flashed me a quick smile before turning to Frank, who’d returned with the pills. I hadn’t noticed him come up behind us until he was handing me an amber bottle. Sel said to Frank, “Can you get their first-aid kit?”
“Look how black he is, I said, you salty bastard!” Birchie was still talking to the portrait.
Frank, his whole face gone pink with embarrassment and stress, said, “Sure, yes, it’s in the pantry,” and went back up the hallway.
Birchie stared the portrait down. “We’re having ourselves a little, tiny black baby. Come next year there’ll be a tiny black Birch sitting at your table, eating up Vina’s recipe for sweet potatoes. Eating right off your spoons. Little toasty marshmallows. Off your spoons. How will you like that?” That girlish, awful laugh got out of her again. “How will you like sitting at this table then?”
She was blowing, puffing her air out, then pulling in a tiny panted sip on the inhale. The hectic splotches in her cheeks had spread to stains that ran from her chin to the outside of her brow line.
“How do we make those sweet potatoes?” Wattie asked, holding the napkin tight to her arm. “I forget. Do they take brown sugar or molasses?”
Birchie swayed, her head cocked. She was listening, but not to Wattie. The lifted fork trembled in her hand. Drool had collected in the corners of her mouth.
Birchie said, “He doesn’t like it, Wattie,” staring the portrait down, weirdly joyful.
“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Wattie said. “But I need you to tell me, how much butter?”
“Fuck those sweet potatoes,” Birchie said, her fury reigniting, but at least she was talking to Wattie now. Not a painting. Not the bones. “Why won’t you hear me, Wattie? You know him. You know, but you will not ever hear me.” Her gaze went right back to the portrait, and I knew we’d lost her again. “She knows you, you fuck, you fuck, you fuck-fuck-fuck.”
“Birchie?” I said, but she was gone.