A Brief Lunacy (12 page)

She stands again, still as a dead tree. Her arms cross her chest, and her jaw sets hard. When Jessie sets her jaw, she isn't kidding around. She said once that she isn't stubborn. She just makes up her mind and doesn't change it.

“Is that all? You think you're naked, do you? You had a chance.” Jonah saunters over toward me as if he were on a Sunday stroll in the park, stops directly in front of my knees, kicks them open, and aims. “One shot is all. No need for any more. It wouldn't kill him right off, of course. Might not kill him at all.”

He stands back and takes the pistol in both hands and points it. I close my knees, try to protect myself. I can't help it. Maybe he should get it over with.

“Oh, go ahead, you fucker,” I say. “Shoot my goddamn balls off.”

“Stop,” she says. “Stop it. It isn't important. Here. I'm doing it.”

She pulls out the bottom of the purple T-shirt until it frees itself from the waistband of her jeans. I turn away, but from the corner of my vision I see it flutter down to join her sweater. I know she has nothing on under that shirt. Nothing at all. I hear her kick off her sneakers, and catch her bending to pull off her socks. I begin to make some marks on the paper, just light strokes, nothing definable, anything to keep from looking. But then the jeans fall, drop to her bare ankles, and I watch as best I can as she pushes down her underwear to her knees, pushes the rest of the way with one bare foot.

“Now,” Jonah says, “draw your lovely wife. Stop your
sniveling and draw.”

J
ONAH SITS, WATCHES
, waits for me to pull off my sweater, but I'm not going to. Fuck him, as the kids would say. Two can play this game. He's getting up. He's confused. He's scared. But he doesn't move toward me. I'm ready to do something. What? I don't know. Perhaps he is weaker than we are. Perhaps if I refuse to take anything off, he'll be frightened and give up.

He kicks Carl hard on his taped leg. And again. Carl groans like a child. I've never heard Carl groan. He doesn't speak. His eyes fill up and he's going to cry. My Carl. Crying because a madman kicks his leg. My Carl. His hands clutch the pencil. He's scared, too. Three scared people. How crazy is that?

It's easy to pull off my sweater and I'm grateful for the time it covers my face. Carl's smell still permeates the wool,
even though it's been a year since he's worn it. My braid catches and tugs at my neck. Jonah's ready to kick again. I know he is.

Well, I'm not going to budge. He can kick me if he wants. What else can he do? He can damn well rip the clothes off himself. I'm not stripping.

What's he doing? What? He kicks at Carl, smiles at me, grabs the gun with both hands. He's going to shoot Carl's genitals off. Jesus. He's going to.

“Stop,” I say. “Stop it. It isn't important. Here. I'm doing it.”

My God. He was going to. I swear this time he's really going to shoot. And what does it matter if I have no clothes on? I undress slowly but steadily. Just like college art class, I say to myself. I've done this before. In front of a whole class. And for money. I can do it here for love. Carl doesn't even open his mouth. He's just going to sit there and draw his naked wife, as if he were a student and I were the paid model. He doesn't look at me. He resembles a dying man, a soft, amorphous mess taped to a chair.

This Jonah is nuts. But he's smart. That's why he's hard to trick. And this isn't really like art class. I don't have a robe to put on between poses. I don't have the choice of walking out. If I stand still, he'll back off. That's it. He'll get confused and then I'll grab the gun. I stand like a step dancer waiting for the music to begin.

What's wrong with me? Am I weak? Stupid? And how can he keep going with those pills in him and no sleep and all this fear? I'm exhausted and I haven't taken any pills.

I've never been modest. My friends in college wondered how I could strip for money, albeit art-school money and not money from some sleazy joint downtown where girls sucked up coins into themselves. I've heard about those places. No, I'm not modest. But I'm old now. My breasts hang like two deflated sacks and I'm not proud of them.

But I don't even try to cover myself. Why? Jonah stands beside Carl.

“Now,” Jonah says, “draw your lovely wife. Stop your sniveling and draw.”

Jonah backs away as if to get a better perspective. I close my eyes and pretend I hear students scribbling, voices saying,
I can't seem to get the arm right. How can I fix it? The angle of the hip is too severe.
I hear the sound of the charcoal against the paper. He's drawing. I stand still as a guard at Buckingham Palace. I can't bring myself to pose, to change my position, and no one asks me to.

He sniffs. When I open my eyes, I see he is crying over the sketch pad.
Oh, Carl. I'm sorry.
He draws over the dampness until the paper tears; then he moves to a dry spot. Jonah doesn't even look at the drawing. All I can detect are some dark lines.

“Move,” Jonah says. “Look like you're enjoying it. Relax.”

“Relax?” I ask. “Put that fucking gun down and I'll relax.”

Carl's head jerks up from his work. I think he wonders if his lovely wife would say such a thing. “Jessie?” he says. Nothing else. Just my name uttered in astonishment.

Jonah moves toward Carl as if to kick him again but he
stops short when the telephone rings.

“You answer this time,” he says. “Say anything even a bit suspicious, I shoot his damn testicles off. Got it?”

“Got it,” I say, amazed at my own brazenness in my unclad state. It will be Douglas House again. I'll let them know something is wrong. I've seen that done in movies. They ask a question and I answer something entirely different. When I reach for a towel hanging on the back of a chair, Jonah shakes his head and points the gun at Carl's crotch. The phone rings again.

“Hello?” I say into the receiver.

“Mom? Is this Mommy? Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Is he there? Did Ralph get there? Isn't he cute? Hello?”

“Yes,” I say again.

“I'm in Belfast. I've got my dress. It's lace and off-white and down to my ankles. I charged it to your account at Britts. Mom? Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

Jonah watches me with the gun pointed at Carl. The corners of his mouth twitch and his tongue licks at the white spit collected there. Ralph. I knew it. Did I know it?

“Well, thank you for calling.”

“I'm going to hitch,” Sylvie says. “I'll be home by dark. Wait till you see me in the dress. Mom? You sound weird.”

“Yes. I am.”

Good or bad to have Sylvie here? What if she walks into this scene? I try to speak softly so Jonah won't hear. Why doesn't Carl make some noise? I don't even know what to
say. I'm freezing.

“Maybe you should stay the night in Belfast. Just charge the motel to us. I'll pick you up in the morning, dear. Sylvie?”

“Pick me up now. You never loved me. You never thought I could find a man who loved me. Pick me up now. I'll wait at the doughnut shop. That's where I am now. Eating a lemon-filled doughnut.”

“It's Sylvie, isn't it?” Jonah grabs the receiver from me. “Hello, my darling.” His face softens. The fingers of his left hand release their tight curl around the gun and I will it to drop to the floor. “Their car. It's at the garage. Won't be ready until tomorrow. We'll all come and get you together. We don't want you hitching a ride, do we, Jessie?” He arches his brows at me and expects me to answer. I shake my head. His gaze drops to my nakedness and I try to curl my body, try to conceal myself. “Yes. We're all here together. We're on a first-name basis . . . Yes. We're getting on great. By morning we'll be old friends.”

Carl's doubled over, his head leaning on his lap, his face away from us. The pencil rolls across the floor. For a moment I think he's dead, but he adjusts his head, and the toe of one shoe taps on the other. He's given up. Has he given up? What if we both give up? Is that what Jonah wants? For us to give up?

Now Jonah turns away and speaks softly into the phone. “Sylvie, darling. My luscious dolly. Yes, I love you. You know that. Do you love me? Do you?” He slumps into the chair by the telephone. “Oh, God. Thank you. Thank you
for loving me. Thank you.”

When I reach for the towel again, he lowers the receiver and stands. If Sylvie knew about the gun, would she love him? I remember when I stopped loving Harry, my twin, my best friend in the whole world. After it was all over I loved him again, but it was different. Funny how you can turn love off and on. I was only a kid. Seven or eight. We had our own language that no one else understood. We were inseparable. Our father paid little attention to us and that was fine because we had each other. We were roughhousing at the top of the stairs when I saw him go off balance. I knew he was going. I grabbed for his shirt but it slid right through my fingers. I remember the feel of the cotton slipping past my thumb. What a strange thing to remember. Did I make it up? Did I try hard enough? Could I have held on to that shirt?

I can hear the thudding in my mind any time I choose to conjure it up. Thud, thud, thud. Thirteen steps. And Harry howling at the bottom, blood spurting out of his thigh. Father thought I'd be devastated, but I hated him. I hated him for being hurt. I had no one to talk to. No one to play with. Months in the hospital with the broken thighbone and the infection that developed in his hip. Bone grafts. Body casts. And me, left with dotty old Gram while my father hovered around Harry's hospital bed. I never told them how I felt. I never told anyone. I wasn't allowed into the hospital and it was months before I saw him. Would I have tried harder to save him if I'd known how much attention he would receive? Of course I tried as hard as I could, but I was a child.
I no longer think as a child.

I love him now. But what is love, anyway? I think about it sometimes. And what is Sylvie's love for this boy?

“She loves me,” Jonah says. “Your daughter loves me.”

“Would she love you if she knew how you were treating her parents?”

“I have to do this. I said I'd prepare the way. God told me to know you.
Know you.
”

I tuck the towel around myself and he doesn't speak of it. I'm afraid to put on my clothes, but the towel doesn't seem to rattle him.

“I love to touch her,” he says. “Her skin. It's like marble, smooth, firm. She has a scar on her leg, her thigh. Did you know that? I kiss it sometimes. Poor, hurt Sylvie. My mother's dead.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“I killed her. That's why this has to be done right. I loved her and I killed her.”

“Why did you kill her?” I ask. Carl raises his head to listen.

“Don't you remember?”

“No. I'm sorry.”

“In the papers. The boy in the well. That was me.”

“In the well?”

“Yes. I have the article. In my wallet. I always carry it. To show people. But you don't show your trophies, do you, Carl? You don't show your victims.”

“His victims?” I ask. There is no answer from anyone.

The gun is only a foot away from my hand. Jonah is gentle.
Thinking about something far away. A beautiful mother who is dead, perhaps. I reach like the itsy-bitsy spider toward the hand holding the handle of the gun, but when I touch it he pulls away. It's all too fast. Everything. The noise shatters the quiet and I feel the rush of air on my foot. A bullet bores into our wood floor inches away from my bare toe.

“My God. What are you doing?” When Carl attempts to stand, the sketchbook slides from his lap to the floor by his feet. He totters and falls back into the chair.

Jonah rips the towel from me and tosses it toward the kitchen. “Enough of this. Back to drawing. Pick up his stuff.”

“What?”

“Pick it up. Look, his pencils rolled under the chair. This will be all. I just want to fit in. I want you to love me. You can't love me until I love you. And I can't love you until I know you.”

Oh, this is making perfect sense. I just know that he is capable of killing us. I have no doubt of that. Why? I have no idea. But in his mind this all makes perfect sense.

When I bend to pick up the sketch pad, my breasts hang empty and flat. I can feel him watching me. My belly hangs, too. My baby belly, Carl calls it. My eyes close and I wait for a heavy belt to come down on me. Why do I think that? I was never really beaten and certainly never with a belt. I suddenly miss Harry. And my mother. My lips form the word “Mom.” Mother? Mummy? What would we have called her? She was always “your mother” or “our mother.”
She loved me. Don't mothers always love their children? Did she even get to hold us? Harry was first. Did she die before she got to see me?

Then I remember Dad and the belt. What was that for? Something Harry did, I think. Spilled something? A bottle of molasses. That was it. All over the kitchen floor. And Dad unbuckled his belt and pulled up my skirt and spanked me until Harry fessed up, and then he did it to Harry. Dad cried later, said he was sorry, he'd never do it again. And he never did. Big welts sprang up on my bum. Gram had to put ointment on them. But Dad loved me, too. What does that mean, anyway, love?

The pencil has rolled way underneath the chair but my fingers push it out so that I can pick it up. When I place it on Carl's lap, I stroke the side of his reddened cheek, but I don't feel anything. Where's the love? Where's my love? I don't want to cry in front of them in this state but I've lost my love for him. Why? Where is it? Carl, the light of my life, the man who kisses my neck in the morning, the man who fills the kettle too full. I am alone. Naked and alone. Christ. That sounds like the Bible. Naked and alone in the wilderness.