Home > These Violent Delights(3)

These Violent Delights(3)
Author: Micah Nemerever

They exchanged a long, wordless look. Paul summoned a wry smile; Laurie deliberately didn’t return it. When a door finally swung shut above their heads, she tensed almost imperceptibly.

“God,” she said. “This thing is going to be a drag and a half.”

Audrey drove, a little too fast. His mother rode shotgun, gloved hands folded in her lap, watching the window. She didn’t complain about Audrey’s driving, or her decision to take the interstate; she didn’t even mention the unseen tangle behind Audrey’s right ear. Whenever the car entered an underpass, the reflection of his mother’s face became visible in the shaded glass. Paul took measure of her—the blankness of her eyes and the fine lines at their corners, the way her lavender knit hat cinched into her dark auburn hair. It was easy for him to hate her; it was almost primal.

They were late enough that the rest of the fleet of cars outside their aunt Hazel’s house were already dusted with snow. After Audrey parked she drew a deep breath, then turned to give Paul and Laurie a sardonic grin.

“Okay, gang,” she said. “Let’s go pretend to be normal.”

It was just like every other family gathering—filled with well-meaning, exhausting people, eager to pull Paul’s scars open and uniquely qualified to do so efficiently. Hazel’s husband, Harvey, who adored Paul without reservation, had a way of behaving as if Paul’s every interest and gesture was outlandishly wrong for a boy. Today he rattled Paul’s shoulders and asked, as if even the premise of the question were a laugh riot, “So when’s your next butterfly-hunting expedition?”

“They’re all dead at the moment,” Paul answered, forcing a smile, “but thanks for checking in.”

The family treated all four of them with conspicuous delicacy. His mother was pillowed on all sides by his aunts’ soft voices and gentle pats on the arm, so that nothing too sharp stood a chance of reaching her. When Paul and his sisters drifted too close to any group, conversations became artificially light. Younger cousins, who had clearly been instructed to be careful, fell silent altogether rather than cause offense; they exchanged panicked glances, then retreated in a flurry of whispers.

There was something different about the way the family dealt with Paul; there always had been. But now it had distilled—the fascination, the wariness, the anxious undercurrent of worry. He tried to be polite, which was the nearest he could get to making himself too small to see. He forgot conversations as soon as they ended; all he could remember was what people said as he was walking away. Ruth says college isn’t doing any better for him as far as friends go. No surprise—it’s not his fault, but he’s a little intense, isn’t he? Oh, it must be so hard for her, he looks more like his father every day . . .

His grandfather caught him creeping into the pantry, where he’d been hoping to gather his thoughts. He gave Paul a knowing smile, which Paul couldn’t find the energy to return. Just past his grandfather’s shoulder Paul could see Hazel, resplendent in her first-generation suburban finery, trying to convince Laurie to taste a spatula of frosting.

“It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” his grandfather said. “All this fuss.”

Paul pressed his shoulders against the dry-goods shelves and shut his eyes. He didn’t need to nod. He and his grandfather had repeated this exchange at every family party since he was five.

“Holding up all right? You’ve got no sort of poker face, Paulie.”

“Everyone’s treating me like a time bomb,” Paul said, more frankly than he would have dared with anyone else. “So there’s that.”

His grandfather made an amiable, dismissive noise at the back of his throat.

“It’s in your head,” he said, as if this would be a great comfort. “What, you think anyone’s still upset about that business with the Costello kid? Boy stuff, the whole thing. That was nothing—ancient history. Your mother might feel a little different,” he added, “but she wouldn’t know, would she? A boy has to defend himself.”

He was deflecting and they both knew it, but Paul let him believe he hadn’t noticed. After a moment his grandfather gave his arm a quick shake.

“Come on,” he said, “why don’t we go show Mamaleh what you’ve painted for her?”

He’d put it off as long as he could, but there was no avoiding it now. His great-grandmother had been placed in the den, her wheelchair folded and set aside to give her a place of honor in one of the good armchairs. She looked like a baby parrot, kindly faced and vulnerable, tiny beneath her blankets. The air around her had a sweet, powdery smell of decay.

When Paul leaned down to kiss the rice-paper skin of her forehead, she clasped a hand around his fingers. She looked toward Paul’s mother and nodded, so feebly that the gesture was almost invisible.

“You and Jakob had such beautiful children, Ruthie,” she said, and Paul felt a rare moment of kinship with his mother when he noticed the falter in her smile.

An awkward hush fell over the room as his great-grandmother struggled with the wrappings. When the paper fell away, the silence didn’t lift.

Paul had based the painting on the sole photograph to survive his great-grandmother’s adolescence in Lithuania. He had invented from it a proud, handsome girl with long black hair, and a smile—not unlike Laurie’s—that had a trace of mischief in it. He had meant to make the painting happy and gentle for her, something to brighten her dimming days. He watched her adjust her thick glasses to look at it more closely, little hands shaking like thorny branches. He knew, even before she spoke, that it was the cruelest thing he could have given her.

“It is very strange,” she said, accent distilled by memory. “Strange to think that I am the only person who remembers me this way.” She smiled at Paul, peaceful and resigned, and Paul wished he could fade into the air. “It is always the same, you know, in my mind. No matter how old, when I look into a mirror, this face is what I expect to see.”

He couldn’t hide his dismay, but she was too nearsighted to see it. She reached for his hand again and squeezed it; her skin was feverishly warm.

“It is a beautiful memory,” she said. “Thank you.”

He retreated as soon as he could without drawing notice. He found himself in his aunt’s bedroom, where the dwindling sunlight was blotted to a thin stripe by the curtains. It was cold; Hazel still wasn’t middle-class enough to leave the heat running in an empty room. Paul sat in the window seat, stretching out his thin legs and trying to forget that he existed. His only companions were the shadows of family photographs and the quiet, snuffling snores of the cat at the foot of the bed.

The door slivered open, and Laurie edged inside. She put a finger to her lips, grinning, and installed herself beside him on the window seat.

“This is so fucking boring,” she said, reveling in a word that hadn’t yet lost its novelty. She swung her stockinged legs up to drape over his; Paul only gave her a halfhearted shove before yielding to the intrusion. “Hazel wanted me to find you and tell you there’s cake in a few minutes. It’s gross, though, the frosting is full of coconut.”

“You’re the only one who doesn’t like it, weirdo,” said Paul automatically, but he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm to tease her.

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