Apprehensions and Other Delusions (6 page)

The puppy whimpered and gave a tentative wave of his tail.

Henry shook his head and went to get one of the old deli pint containers. He put this on the floor next to the kibble and poured half the milk into it. “You can drink this. I’ll bring you more water.”

The puppy began to devour the food, only interrupting himself to lap the milk. He was clearly famished and wanted to stuff himself. It was good to see him eat so eagerly—he would be fat and sassy soon, and he would be full of life. Henry patted the puppy’s head, anticipating the day he would reap the harvest he was sowing now. How great he would taste! And the energy he would provide! Henry thought he might not be able to contain it all, and that made him feel sick and excited at once. He went over to his rickety old chair and sat down, already thinking about what he could eat tonight that would sustain him while the puppy improved. He was getting hungry for life and he wasn’t sure he could wait for the puppy to reach a size and vigor that he longed for.

By the time Henry left the basement he had taken up the first layer of old papers. The house was silent, Margaret Lynne having gone out an hour ago. He stopped in the kitchen and took a half-finished Whopper with everything from the fridge as a stopgap meal. It wasn’t enough to give him what he sought most, but it was better than nothing. He went off toward his room, pausing in the living room where his mother was asleep in front of the television, which had the late news on. He washed up in the bathroom, doing his best to keep quiet. He decided not to wake his mother, for that would mean helping her into bed, and that was more than he wanted to do. It would be at least a week before the puppy would be ready, and he would have to be very careful in the meantime. If only school weren’t still in session, he could spend the time making sure the puppy wasn’t discovered. He noticed that Margaret Lynne wasn’t home yet. This meant trouble tomorrow, he knew, so he would have to get up early and take care of the puppy before things exploded at breakfast. All these possibilities kept him unpleasant company as he got into bed.

* * *

“Oh my God!” Henry’s mother exclaimed from the top of the basement steps. She swayed a little and blinked against the darkness. “How can you? What are you doing?”

Henry looked up from his half-consumed meal. There was blood on his chin and shirt, and the skin and guts of the puppy lay at his feet on the last of the papers. He was so elated by what he had been eating that he was unable to conceal anything he had done or to comprehend what his mother was staring at. “Mom?”

“Henry. What ... you ... you’re eating ...” She started down the stairs, her face fixed in shock. “That looks like—”

“Just leave me alone, Mom,” Henry pleaded, alarmed by the shock he saw in her face. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“Not wrong?” Her distress was increasing as she was increasingly aware of what he was doing. “It’s
raw!
And
still alive!”

“It’s good,” said Henry, not even her outrage enough to stop the power from the puppy’s life surging through him, making him feel strong, almost invincible. “It’s not important.”

“It’s terrible,” said his mother, coming down another two steps. “Eating raw meat!” She peered at the mess around him. “What’s that at your feet?” The color drained from her face. “I thought you were doing fine, that it was Margaret Lynne who was causing all the trouble.” Her indignation was marred by a slight slurring of the words.

For once Henry didn’t want to be compliant. He got to his feet, spilling the sections of the butchered puppy onto the floor. “Now look what you made me do.” He lowered his head, staring up at her from under his brows.

“Henry!” His mother wailed out his name, her face set into a mask of anguish. She reached out, shaking her fist at the boy.

“Leave it alone, Mom—I know what I’m doing,” Henry warned her, convinced that he could persuade her to see his point of view if he only had the chance. “It’s nothing to bother about.”

“You’re
sick!
God, you’re sick!” she muttered. “You need help.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Henry said, more sharply than before.

“And you’re dangerous,” she went on as if to herself. “Bachman isn’t anything compared to you.”

The mention of the brain-damaged patient at the clinic was too much for Henry, who stood up straight. “It’s nothing like that!” The puppy’s vitality made him brave, and he faced his mother without feeling the need to appease her.

“It’s disgusting—
disgusting!”
She reached for the flimsy banister and almost had it when she lost her footing, tumbling down the stairs to the concrete. Henry could hear her bones break, and saw that she was still breathing though her eyes were glazed and there was blood around her head.

“Mom!” Henry shouted, and hurried toward her.

She was trying to talk, but failing. Only her hands fluttered a bit, but there was no control to the movement. Henry knelt beside her, helplessness washing through him in a debilitating tide. Her eyelids flickered but then they stopped; she was still breathing a little.

“Oh, oh, Mom!” Henry started to cry, but then he sighed as he realized what he would have to do. He went back and found his pocketknife, hoping it would be up to the task ahead of him. She still had life in her, and that life would endure in him; it would cancel her dying—for she had to be dying—if he could get some of her into him before her heart gave out. He couldn’t do anything else to save her. “It’s for the best, Mom. Let me take your life into me. You’ll see: it’ll make us both strong.” He sliced at her arm; the limb flopped once, like a beached fish, and he continued to cut until he had a strip of skin and muscle. He began to chew on it, finding it salty and a bit stringy at first. The wonderful energy began to well in him, making him light-headed. There was blood everywhere, and he was afraid she would bleed to death before he could take all her life into him. “Hey, Mom. You’re the best!” The puppy was nothing compared to his mother. He didn’t know how much more he could eat, there was such vitality in his mother’s body, and it filled him as nothing ever had before. He continued to eat as the life ran out of her, and left her an empty corpse.

By the time Henry had packed his mother’s body into a large plastic trash bag, he was already making plans, anticipating the hour when Margaret Lynne would be home. She was so full of life, he thought, and it would sustain him much longer than poor, exhausted Mom would do. School was out tomorrow, and no one would miss Margaret Lynne—they’d think she was with their father. He began to hum as he neatened up the basement, contemplating the hour when Margaret Lynne would arrive and he could once again embrace life to its fullest.

About
Renfield’s Syndrome

There really is such a condition: the compulsion to eat bugs, small animals, and other creatures in the belief that their lives will strengthen the devourer. I wanted to see how far I could push it.

WHEN ERIC
first
moved into the flat above Fanchon, she considered him nothing more than a noisy intruder. He played music every hour of the day and night, he spent the greater part of his afternoons doing something—she could only imagine what—that made her living room sound like the inside of a drum, and he was surly to her on those rare occasions when they actually met. She was too daunted to approach him.

“He’s driving me crazy!” she complained to her old friend Naomi at the end of an especially loud two hours. “He’s the most obnoxious creep Peterson’s ever let into this building, and that includes the idiot with the saxophone. This guy’s never quiet.”

“Have you told Peterson?” asked Naomi in her most reasonable and irritating tone, the one she reserved for undergrads. “Haven’t any of the other neighbors complained?”

“Once, I called him once, but so what? All he did was say he’d talk to him, and what good will that do?” She sighed. “Listen, I’d invite you over for a drink tonight, but I don’t know what the place is going to sound like.”

“I’ll meet you somewhere,” Naomi suggested much too promptly for Fanchon’s current mood. “What about the Gryphon? Say ten, fifteen minutes?”

Fanchon knew she could not afford the time, the money, or the calories, but she liked the restaurant tucked into the side of a multi shop building; she let herself be persuaded, assuaging her guilt with the promise that she would not touch the smorgasbord offered at five in the afternoon—the salmon paté on black bread had been her undoing more than once. “All right. The Gryphon. Four-thirty.”

“And tell that bastard he’ll have the place to himself for an hour or so, and to get it out of his system while you’re gone.” Naomi didn’t sound as sympathetic as Fanchon would have liked, but her humor was welcome.

“I hardly ever see him, let alone speak.”

“Small wonder, but ... See you in a bit.” Naomi hung up.

Since it was sunny, Fanchon decided to walk in spite of the nip in the air. She pulled on a bulky sweater over her silk shirt and changed into low-heeled shoes. She examined her grey slacks in the mirror, thinking that she really ought to take them to the cleaners. Above her, sound rained down, engulfing as a storm at sea. She made a rude gesture to the ceiling as she picked up her purse and went out the door, taking care to lock the deadbolt. It was senseless to take chances.

Naomi was waiting for her, leaning back in one of the comfortable, caterpillar-shaped love seats away from the window. “You made good time,” she called out, waving so Fanchon could locate her.

“You’re looking very smart,” said Fanchon as she sat down opposite Naomi.

Naomi brushed the lapel of her cobalt-blue wool suit. “It’s supposed to be impressive. I like it. I never used to wear blue.” In her right hand she held a very small glass of something clear. “How’s the noise front?”

“You heard it, didn’t you?” Fanchon asked.

“Not over the phone,” said Naomi. “Just a kind of rattle. It didn’t seem very bad. But that’s phones for you.”

“That’s more or less what Peterson said when I called him.” Fanchon leaned back and tucked her purse into the curve of the chair.

“You ought to talk to him again, get him to understand what’s happening. You ought to insist he come over and listen for himself. He’s the landlord. He’s responsible for keeping the building in good order, isn’t he? The Rent Board could probably make him put in better insulation or—” She made a sweeping swipe with her arm.

A waitress appeared behind the love seat. “Want another aquavit?”

“Sure,” said Naomi, glancing at Fanchon. “You?”

“Coffee,” said Fanchon. Then forgot her stern resolution. “And a small brandy, in a snifter.”

The waitress nodded and went away.

“So how’s everything with you?” Naomi asked. “Other than the neighbor, I mean? Any luck with the class load, or are you still stuck with that eight A.M. thing? I forget what it’s called.”

“Working Women of the Nineteenth Century,” said Fanchon. “I’ve got it and eleven sleepy sophomores.” She looked around. “When I set this up, I thought doing all my teaching in the morning would leave me lots of time for research, but it isn’t working out, and not just because of the noise.”

“Does it really go on all the time? Nighttime, too?” The aquavit was almost gone.

“Day, night. Afternoons are probably the worst, but it happens any time. Loud heavy metal banging and noise.” She saw the waitress returning and dug out her purse.

“Three dollars for the brandy, one-fifty for the coffee. Three-fifty for the aquavit.” She took the offered money and made change. “If you want refills, try to order in the next fifteen minutes, okay? We get swamped after five.”

Fanchon made a point of giving the waitress a two-dollar tip. Then she looked at Naomi. “How about your schedule?”

“Busy, busy, busy. We’re seeing more faculty—not the top guys, they have their own shrinks—but midlevel. I had a mathematician in the other day, in a real state. He’s so worried about ozone he can’t sleep.”

“What do you think is causing it?” Fanchon asked, thinking she wasn’t being fair to impose on her friend when so many other demands were being made of her.

“I don’t know,” said Naomi, taking her second glass of aquavit. “There is a hole in the ozone, and it probably will get bigger, and that will cause problems. He’s right about that. I can’t say anything to dismiss his fear. Some of the others are upset about the world economy, the air quality, the crowding. They’re all real things.” She took a long sip. “I probably shouldn’t drink this stuff, but it’s good.”

Fanchon picked up the small brandy snifter and held it between her palms, warming it. “Is it any worse than pills?”

“Depends on whom you’re talking to,” said Naomi. “Well, you’re the historian. What compares to our ecological worries?”

“People are always afraid of catastrophe. If it isn’t the ozone layer, it’s plague or famine. If it isn’t that, there are barbarians or the Inquisition or Lady Wu.” She lifted the snifter and let the brandy fire her tongue.

“But what in the past has had the potential to obliterate the whole planet? Aside from nuclear war. That was what I heard five years ago.” She looked away toward the frosted windows and the autumn afternoon beyond. “You ever stop to think how any people in this town are in the destruction business? The guys in math and physics are calculating the end of the world every day. They come to me with horrible things on their minds, and they can’t talk about them. I tell you, Fanchon, there are times I think it’s easier to go crazy.”

“Better than become impervious to it all, I guess,” said Fanchon.

“I guess,” echoed Naomi. She glanced at the door as a group of men came in. “Ah, the sociologists have arrived.”

“Is that good?” asked Fanchon, noticing how animated Naomi had become.

“Well, Bill’s with them.” Her blush was very out of character and Fanchon could not resist mentioning it.

“What’s special about Bill?” Now she felt like an intruder, a duenna at an assignation.

“I’ll let you know when I’m sure.” She waved. “There he is: tall, moustache, tweed jacket, jeans.”

“Well, that describes most of them,” said Fanchon, taking the rest of her brandy in a single gulp.

“Red-brown hair going grey. It looks a little like cinnamon and sugar on toast.” Her laughter was self-conscious. She snuggled more deeply into the love seat. “He’s spotted me. I’ll introduce you.”

“Thanks,” said Fanchon, not at all certain what she meant. “I hope things work out the way you want.”

“Yeah.” Naomi laughed uncertainly. “It’s not always easy to figure out what that is, you know?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Fanchon. “If you ever learn the trick, you teach it to me.”

Naomi drained her aquavit. “Well, that’s my limit.” She frowned. “You want another?”

Ordinarily Fanchon would have refused, but this time she decided she might as well have another. Perhaps more brandy and coffee would warm her up, for she was still very chilly. “Sure. Why not.” Impulsively she reached for her purse. “I’ll buy. We’ll celebrate something—things working out for you, me getting some peace and quiet—something.”

“You don’t have to,” said Naomi.

“Let me,” said Fanchon.

Naomi considered it and accepted with a quick nod. “God, it is a world of despair sometimes, isn’t it?”

“General malaise?” Fanchon suggested. “It comes with fall, or the new semester, or taking chances with Bill?”

“It’s worse than that, I think,” Naomi said, gesturing to the waitress for the same again. “It’s getting so that there’s very few reasons to feel good about who you are and what you do. And that’s not midlife crisis talking, it’s a very scared psychologist.”

Fanchon sat still, staring at her empty snifter and half-full coffee cup. “I don’t have any answers. It’s all I can do to try to explain to my students why Victorian women were so savagely exploited by employers. The present and the future are beyond me.”

The waitress brought their drinks. “The smorgasbord is out.” It was part of the same pitch she delivered at this time every evening. “Five-fifty for all you want.”

“Thanks,” said Naomi as Fanchon handed the waitress a ten-dollar bill. “We’ll get something in a couple of minutes.” She straightened up. “So. What are you going to do about that neighbor of yours?”

“I suppose I’ll have to talk to Peterson again. But to tell you the truth, I wish it would just go away. The noise.” She sipped her coffee and found it too hot. “I don’t want it to come down to one of us moving. I’m not prepared to move, and I’ve got a pretty good idea that the guy doesn’t want to move, either. He just got here.”

“Maybe if you approached the neighbor again, talked to him about the problem as a way not to go to the landlord, maybe he’d be more cooperative.”

“Are you practicing shrinkery on me?” Fanchon asked, doing her best to avoid the discussion completely.

“Habit,” said Naomi. She looked up as a tall, mustached man approached her. “Oh, shit. My hair’s a mess.”

“You look fine,” said Fanchon in the same tone she used with her older sister when she claimed to be poorly groomed.

The man reached down, putting his hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “I don’t want to interrupt, but I’ve got a table reserved for us in twenty minutes.” He smiled vaguely in Fanchon’s direction. “Excuse the interruption.”

“No problem,” said Fanchon. “I’m not staying long.”

Naomi beamed at him. “Twenty minutes is fine.” She patted his hand before he removed it and slipped away. “Well, what do you think?”

“Seems pleasant enough. But ten seconds probably isn’t long enough for good judgment.”

“Thanks a bunch. You’re supposed to be bolstering me up,” Naomi protested.

“Hey, with my track record, I’m the last person you ought to be asking for bolstering. Two failed live-ins in eight years isn’t a recommendation.” Fanchon drank her coffee quickly. Then she tossed off the brandy, feeling its jolt with certain pleasure. “It’s getting pretty dark. I better head for home.” She picked up her purse. “I really hope it turns out okay for you, Naomi.” She almost meant it.

“So do I,” said Naomi. “But what about upstairs?”

“I guess I’ll try your way—I’ll talk to him. It can’t hurt. If that doesn’t work, I suppose I’ll have to call Peterson.” She smiled crookedly. “I’ll call you.”

“Good,” said Naomi, her attention already on Bill. It was colder and Fanchon realized her sweater wasn’t enough to keep her warm. She hugged her arms across her chest and walked faster.

Evenings were always the hardest for her, the time when the noise was more intrusive. It made her feel isolated, empty. “Maybe I should get a dog,” she said aloud. She had got into the habit of talking to herself in the last two years, and occasionally it troubled her. “Peterson doesn’t allow pets.” Maybe she would get a tank of fish. She doubted the landlord would object to fish. The house seemed fairly silent as she approached it, but as soon as she went in through the kitchen door, the steady, thumping, screeching wail shuddered down the walls from above. Fanchon gripped the edge of the sink and gave up on eating dinner. She hated scenes. Angry voices made her stomach hurt.

She went out the rear door and climbed to the upper flat. “Hey!” she shouted, pounding on the door. There was the sound of banging pots in the kitchen. “Hey! In there!”

Loud, hurried footsteps sounded and a moment later the door was jerked open. “What is it?” her upstairs neighbor demanded.

Now that they were face-to-face, it was difficult for Fanchon to speak. “I ... I have to talk to you. It’s about the music you play.”

“Again?” He folded his arms. “I had a call from the landlord about it. I said I’d turn it down and I did.”

“Turned it down?” Fanchon forced herself to be calm. “Look, I’m sorry to disturb you this way, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve turned it down to me. I can’t get any work done because of the racket. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what kind of sound system you have, but it’s—”

Her neighbor scowled at her. “What are you talking about? You’re the one with the system that takes the roof off.” He sizzled with resentment. “You aren’t the only one with work to do.”