Granta 125: After the War (6 page)

‘I am not a judge, I am only a priest.’

‘I am neither, but I know what is right and what is wrong. I told Marion, if anyone could get us to this psycho, you could, Father. And I was damned right.’

‘I got you to this major, that’s all. I don’t know what he is.’

The words hung in the back of the van like smoke. Why is it, I wondered, that some of us cannot shake our doubts whatever we do while others can be so dead sure of things? All I have for certain is a weird sense of complicity and the more I try to escape from it, the more it seems to grow. I wanted to ask the padre, why is that? He should know, but it was not my place to ask questions any more. I was only the driver now, no longer a fellow diner. They were deep in their own matters; talk that didn’t make sense to me. The major had been decent enough. Mr Patrick was the one proving to be dodgy.

The town, when we reached it, was quiet. A corner shop had a light on, a white fluorescent flare. One eating place was still open. Nothing else. I stopped at the junction and waited for a man on crutches to cross the road. I remembered how when we were coming I noticed several people with missing limbs in this town. There is a lot of damage around that one gets accustomed to very quickly. The burst shells of houses around Kilinochchi, which I have passed a dozen times or more; the wasted fields. The first time you see a toppled water tower or a building with its sides ripped off, it is undeniably a shock. This was the war, you think. But then soon after that a pile of debris, a flattened home or a broken man just becomes the surroundings. It is simply what is there. What happens. Like a soldier whacking a shuttlecock or a padre sucking a mango. You don’t look twice. You don’t think about the boy who lost his home
to a whistling bomb, or his mother who stepped on a landmine and lost both feet and now has to hobble around on stumps. North or south, you try to avoid thinking too much. What to do? You put a cassette in the machine and sing along with a song about moonlight and love. Paddy fields and doves. It is normal, you say. We have to live in a normal world, whatever happens. Is that wrong? The major did not seem to me a bad man. He was very correct in his manners and acknowledged me in a way that many people in the civilian world don’t. Not just with the mangoes, which was a treat, but in talking to me. No one has asked to have their photo taken with me before, except tipsy foreign tourists. No doubt he could kill a man without batting an eyelid, but I could not believe he would have really beaten a woman to pulp while visiting his family. How could he? I waited for Mr Patrick to say something more incriminating.

His phone beeped. ‘I’ll text Marion and say we found him,’ he said.

Father Perera shook his head. ‘We only have a fuzzy little picture that looks a bit like him, Patrick. No real evidence that he even met her. You should have asked him. Confronted him. If he is guilty, there would have been a sign.’

Mr Patrick was sweating even though the air con was on full. His face blazed. ‘Do you really have any doubt? Did you not see his hands? When we post the picture the driver took this evening, I am sure someone will recognize him. The two of them must have been seen together somewhere.’

‘I don’t know, Patrick. I just don’t know.’

To my mind, Father Perera was not giving Mr Patrick much pastoral guidance. The kind we need in times of trouble. I was also not too happy getting dragged in as the picture-taker. Matters are a lot clearer to a military man. They are trained to make quick decisions and fast exits. Although in Jaffna, I have to say, the major seemed to be in no hurry to leave. But then, if he is the monster they say he is, where can he go? Where can a big man who loses it go? After all, people do lose control, don’t they, in times of war? The
whole business is insane anyway, killing and maiming like there is no tomorrow. How can you shoot someone in the head and call it duty? How can anyone be normal after that? Father Perera was right. They should have asked him, not assumed. Got him to talk more about himself than their crazy PE routine and the taste of forbidden fruit. Father Perera should know how it works. That’s his field, after all. Redeeming the sinner, rectifying our faults. Drawing confessions. I believe Christians say there is nothing that cannot be absolved, if admitted. I’d like to ask him if that is true. It would make a difference, not only for the major but for all of us.

K
urt was closer to Mother than I. I faced that a long time ago, and Mother pretty well devoured all his achievements and self-aggrandizements. But there came a day when the tide shifted and while this may have marked Mother’s decline, it was a five-alarm fire for Kurt. He had given Mother yet another of his theories, a general theory of life, which was the usual Darwinian dog-eat-dog stuff with power trickling down a human pyramid whose summit was exclusively occupied by discount orthodontists like himself. Kurt had successfully prosecuted this sort of braggadocio with Mother nearly all his life; but this time she described his philosophy as ‘a crock of shit’. This comment had the same effect on Kurt as a roadside bomb. His rapidly whitening face only emphasized his moist red lips.

Kurt and I put Mother in a rest home a few months back. I don’t think you can add a single thing to putting your mother in the rest home. If ever there was an overcooked topic, popping Ma in the old folks’ home has to be a leading candidate. Ours has been a wonderful mother, and in many ways, all the things Kurt and I aren’t. We are two tough, practical men of the world: Kurt is a cut-rate tooth straightener; I’m a loan officer who looks at his clients with the view that it’s either them or me. The minute they show up at my desk, it’s stand-by-for-the-ram. Banks love guys like me. We get to vice president maybe, but no further. Besides, my bank is family-owned and it’s not my family. Kurt goes on building his estate for Beverly, his wife, and two boys, Jasper and Ferdinand. Jasper and Ferdinand spent years in their high chairs. Beverly thought it was adorable until Ferdinand did a face plant on the linoleum and broke his retainer. What a relief it was not to have them towering over me while I ate
Beverly’s wretched cuisine. Her Texas accent absolutely drove me up the wall. Kurt has lots of girlfriends in safe houses who love his successful face. His favourite thing in the world is to make you feel like you’ve asked a stupid question. Beverly has some haute cuisine Mexican recipes no one has ever heard of. She has to send away for some of the ingredients. She says she’d been in Oaxaca before she met Kurt. Some guy with his own plane. It was surprising that Kurt and I turned out like we did. Our dad was a mouse, worked his whole life at the post office. In every transaction, whether with tradespeople or bankers like me, Dad got screwed. To make it even more perfect, his surgeon fucked up his back. Last three, four years of his life, he looked like a corkscrew and was still paying off the orthopod that did it to him.

But Mother – we never called her ‘Mom’ – was a queen. Kurt said that Dad must have had a ten-inch dick. When we were Cub Scouts, she was our den mother. She volunteered at the school. She read good books and understood classical music. She was beautiful, et cetera. Like I said. This is the sort of shit that happens when kids fall in love in the seventh grade, brutal mismatches that last a lifetime. Dad’s lifetime anyway, and now Mother’s in God’s waiting room and going downhill fast. Kurt and I always said we hoped Mother cheated on Dad but we knew that could never possibly have happened. She was above it, she was a queen, and despite our modest home and lowly standing, she was the queen of our town. She gave us status, even at school where Kurt and I had to work at the cafeteria. People used to say, ‘How could she have had such a couple a thugs?’ meaning me and Kurt. Some words are born to be eaten.

Kurt and I have lunch on the days we visit her in assisted living. These are the times we just give in to reminiscence, memories that are often funny, at least to us. In the seventh grade, Mother took all of our friends to the opera,
La Bohème
, in her disgraceful old Pontiac, five of us in the back seat chanting ‘Puccini, Puccini, Puccini’. She was worried as she herded us into our seats under the eyes of frowning opera fans. We stuck our fingers in our ears during the arias. One little
girl, Lydia Rademacher, was trying to enjoy the show but Joey Bizeau kept feeling her up in the dark. Mother would’ve liked to have enjoyed herself but she had her hands full keeping order and succeeded almost to the end. When Mimi dies and Rodolfo runs to her side, we shrieked with laughter. The lights came up and Mother herded us out under the angry eyes of the opera patrons, tears streaming down her face. It was a riot.

T
he Parkway was a nice but short-lived restaurant that didn’t make it through the second winter. Before that we just had the so-called ‘rathskeller’ and its recurrent bratwurst, but it had turned back into a basement tanning parlour with palm-tree and flamingo decals on its small windows. While we still had the Parkway, Kurt was picking at his soufflé as the waiter hovered nearby. Kurt shook his head slightly and sent him away. Kurt has natural authority and he looks the part with his broad hands and military haircut. He rarely smiles, even when he’s joking: he makes people feel terrible for laughing. I’m more of a weasel. I don’t think I was always a weasel but I’ve spent my life at a bank; so, I may be forgiven. ‘Remember when she got us paints and easels?’ We laughed so hard.

Several diners turned our way in surprise. Kurt didn’t care. He has a big reputation around town as the guy who can get your kid to quit looking like Bugs Bunny; no one is going to cross him. It was a tough call selling our crappy childhood home but it helped pay for assisted living. Mother would’ve liked to have had in-home care – that is, when she was making sense – but the day was fast arriving when she wouldn’t know where the hell she was, unless it was the chair she was in. Anyway, we’ve got her down there at Cloisters. We just hauled her over there. It’s OK. Kurt calls it ‘Cloaca’.

Mother’s days are up and down. Sometimes she recognizes us, sometimes not, but less and less all the time. Or that’s what Kurt thinks. I think she recognizes us but isn’t always glad about what she sees. When she is a little lucid, I sometimes feel she is disgusted at the sight of us. I mean, that’s the look on her face. Or that we’re
hopeless. Or that I am: she never could find much wrong with Kurt. This used to come up from time to time, a kind of despair. She once screamed that we were ‘awful’ but only once and she seemed guilty and apologetic for days, kept making us pies, cookies, whatever. She felt bad. If she’d had any courage, she’d have stuck to it. We were, and are, awful. We will always be awful.

W
e were in Mother’s room at the centre. I won’t describe it: they all have little to do with the occupant. Me and Kurt in chairs facing Mother in hers. Her face is pretty much blank. Someone has done her hair and make-up. She still looks like a queen, keeps her chin raised in that way of hers. But she just stares ahead. Kurt bangs on about a Board of Supervisors’ meeting; then I do a little number about small-business loans, naming some places she might recognize. Mother raises her hand to say something.

She says, ‘I gotta take a leak.’

Kurt and I turn to each other. His eyebrows are halfway to his scalp. We don’t know what to do. Kurt says to Mother, ‘I’ll get the nurse.’ I stole around in front of Mother to get the call button without alerting her. I couldn’t find it at first and found myself crawling down the cord to locate it. I gave the button a quick press and shortly heard the squeak of the approaching nurse’s shoes. Kurt and I were surprised at how hot she was, young with eye-popping bazongas. Kurt explained that Mother needed the Little Girls’ Room. Ms Lowler winced at the phrase. Kurt saw it too. He’s quicker to take offence than anyone I know, which is surprising in someone who so enjoys making others feel lousy. When Mother came back from the bathroom, she was refreshed and a little communicative. She knew us, I think, and talked a bit about Dad but in a way we hadn’t heard before. She talked of him in the present tense, as though Dad was still with us. ‘I knew right away he wasn’t going anywhere,’ she said. We were thunderstruck. Mother yawned and said, ‘Doozy’s tired now. Doozy needs to rest.’

Outside, Kurt splayed both hands and leaned against the roof of his car. ‘Doozy? Who the fuck is Doozy?’

‘She is. She’s Doozy.’

‘Did you ever hear that before?’

The door was open to Ms Lowler’s office, which was small and efficient and clean, and refreshingly free of filing cabinets. Little uplifting thoughts had been attached to the printer and computer. Have-a-nice-day level. I took the initiative and asked if we could come in. ‘Of course you can!’ she said with a smile and hurried around to find us chairs. Kurt introduced himself, booming out ‘Doctor’ and I made a small show of modesty by just saying, ‘I’m Earl.’

‘Your mom has good and bad days in terms of her cognition generally but she never seems anxious or unhappy.’

‘She got any friends?’ said Kurt.

‘I think that’s still a bit beyond her. Her friends are in the past and she mostly lives there.’

Kurt was on it. ‘Who’s this Doozy? That name mean anything to you?’

‘Why, yes. Doozy is your mother. That’s her nickname.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘We’ve never heard it.’

‘Doozy is the nickname Wowser gave her.’

‘Wowser? Who’s Wowser?’

‘I thought it might be your dad.’

I just held my head in my hands. Kurt asked if this had gotten out. Ms Lowler didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, what he was talking about.

Kurt and I love to talk about Mother because we have different memories of her before she lost her marbles and we enjoy filling out our impressions. For example, Kurt had completely forgotten what a balls-to-the-wall backyard birder Mother was. We went through a lot of birdseed we really couldn’t afford. Dad shot the squirrels when Mother was out of the house. By holding them by the end of the tail he could throw them like a bolo all the way to the vacant lot on the corner. Naturally, Mother thought the squirrels had decided the birds needed the food more and had moved on.

Kurt remembered her gathering the cotton from milkweed pods to make stuffing for cushions. He was ambivalent about this because
we both loved those soft cushions but it seemed to be a habit of the poor. Dad was the one who made us feel poor but through her special magic Mother made us understand that we had to bow our heads to no one. By being the queen she transformed Kurt and me into princes. It stuck in Kurt’s case. Wowser and Doozy put all this at risk.

T
wo weeks later we were summoned back to the home by Ms Lowler who this time wore an all-concealing cardigan. She’d had enough. It seems Mother had been loudly free-associating about her amorous adventures in such a way that it wasn’t always best that she occupy the common room during visiting hours. She had a nice room of her own with a view of some trees from her window and Bible-themed Kincaid on the opposite wall and where she couldn’t ask other old ladies about whisker burn or whatever. That’s where we sat as before, except this time I located the call button. Kurt and I were in coats and ties, having come from work, Kurt shuffling the teeth of the living, me weaselling goobers across my desk. She smiled faintly at each of us and we helped her into her chair. Kurt started right in. I kind of heard him while I marvelled over the passage of time that separated us from when Mother ruled taste and behaviour with a light but firm hand and left us, Kurt especially, with a legacy of rectitude that we hated to lose. Kurt was summarizing the best of those days, leaning forward in his chair so that his tie hung like a plumb bob, his crew cut so short that it glowed at its centre from the overhead light. Mother’s eyes were wide. Perhaps she was experiencing amazement. As Kurt moved toward what we believed to be Mother’s secret life, her eyes suddenly dropped and I first thought that this was some acknowledgement that such a thing existed. Kurt asked her if she’d had a special friend she’d like to tell us about. She was silent for a long time before she spoke. She said, ‘Are those your new shoes?’

I followed Kurt into Ms Lowler’s office. ‘I would like to speak to you, Ms Lowler, about our Mother’s quality of life.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘She’s no longer here at all, Ms Lowler.’

‘Really? I think she’s quite happy.’

‘Ms Lowler, I’m going to be candid with you: there comes a time.’

‘Does there? A time for what?’

‘Ms Lowler, have you had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the principles of the Hemlock Society?’

‘I think it’s quite marvellous for pets, don’t you?’

Later, when Mother started thinking Kurt was Wowser, he really got onto the quality-of-life stuff. I waited before asking him the question that was burning inside of me. ‘Have you ever done it?’

‘I’ve never done it but I’ve seen it done.’

There were times when Mother seemed so rational apart from the fact that what she told us fitted poorly with the Mother we used to know. She said, for example, that Wowser always wore Mister B collars with his zoot suit.

Kurt told me that he never knew what would happen when he visited Mother. Lately she’s shown an occasionally peevish side. Today she suggested that he ‘get a life’. This was about a week after Mother had started confusing Kurt with Wowser, and a few days after Kurt had started addressing Mother as Doozy in the hopes of finding Wowser before he could add his own stain to our family reputation. ‘You’re in a different world when your own mother doesn’t recognize you, or thinks you’re the stranger who gave her a hickey.’