Monsters

by Karen Brennan

  Try to be nicer to her, he tells his daughter, but his daughter’s face hardens at the suggestion. She can’t help it, he continues, Try at least not to swear or to attack her physically. This last was routine, according to the caregivers, the daughter grabbing a cane or other object and hurling it at the roommate or wheeling her own chair to the edge of the roommate’s bed and menacing her. After much pleading, the daughter will promise to try to ignore the roommate, but because she has a memory deficit, she will soon forget her promise. She is brain injured, he told the roommate once. I am brain injured too, said the roommate, snout a-wobble. My brain fell out of my head. Why do you think I look like this? I know, he said (though he had no idea), And I’m so sorry.

  His daughter has been sick longer than he remembers and he visits her in the facility every other day. He brings her salad and iced mochas, sometimes a t-shirt or a book. She does not remember very well, so the book will go largely unread. Perhaps the first chapter will be read over and over for the next year. At this point, the daughter is declining. This is not his word, but the word of her caregivers at the facility. Decline, he thinks, like the stock market. He doesn’t like the word because it feels euphemistic, a gentle sort of word for what is happening lately to his daughter.

  Sometimes people look at the stars and marvel how far we have not come—in other words, they look and they realize that any progress from factory to grave, as it were, is less than an eyeblink compared to the progress of planetary bodies over all those millions of eons and still shining due to the mysterious business of light years. Another way of saying this is to marvel at how everything outside of our perishable selves seems to last indefinitely. When he looks at his daughter he tries to remember this—that she and he and all others have not much time on the planet, no matter how implacably constructed, and so are deeply insignificant.

  “I go from city to city, from town to town,” goes the song and he hums it as he drives to the facility. This time he thinks to bring the roommate a little peace offering. He does this (he admits to himself) not out of compassion but because he believes it might cut down on the complaints. The complaints knuckle him under. He has lately been in the habit of inserting his buffler so he will not feel quite so hollowed out.

  He brings a floral-scented cushion for the roommate. The daughter rolls her eyes. Why her? Why always her? she asks, because she doesn’t remember. She is declining, says a caregiver sorrowfully. Not only is she not remembering, she is confabulating. Now she thinks the roommate is the other daughter, the preferred sister.

  Today’s caregiver wears a wreath of orange labbies around her head and long black mards embossed with zanims. How clever, he says, indicating the zanims and hoping to distract her from the topic of his daughter’s decline. Everything is infectious in today’s world, says the caregiver. We must do our parts to curtail the spread.

  “I go from city to city, from town to town, looking for a bowl of soup, looking for a dog to poke,” goes the song inside of the father’s head. Usually he pushes his daughter to The Dollar Store, then to Safeway. She can have whatever she wants, he tells her. The sky’s the limit. Today she is on a stretcher and possibly cannot go out, they say. He gets, No you cannot push that stretcher across the street even though it is on wheels. She is declining, she cannot hold up her head.

  He takes out the buffler in order to release some of his gnarls. He remembers the daughter when she was an athlete, running cross-country into the woods where she would disappear for a little while and then reappear in front of the pack. Those moments did not require bufflering and there were no gnarls building up—only, like, one glister after another. It was a veritable sea of glisters everywhere rocking and shining, the daughter running into the woods and emerging in the lead, or later on, the celebrations, the glisterous celebrations in the bright lee-pads.

  Her forehead is covered with freckles—how they have persisted when all else has declined.

  He smells the place where her hair stretches back from her forehead, the place where the freckles begin. Is it a nice smell? asks the daughter. It smells like you, says the father, a mixture of ruts and splay. I thought so, says the daughter. It’s what I would imagine.

  The roommate is neither happy nor unhappy about the gift of the cushion. Her face wears a neutral expression. What am I supposed to do with this? she hisses. Perhaps for your bed? he suggests. She waves one hairy floot. You need to help your daughter. She calls me a fucking bitch and tells me she hates me. It is a pretty cushion with mignons and bings, a little embroidered monkey swinging from a branch in the middle. Perhaps it will cheer you up, he says.

  The stars. They are, after all, so far as to be nonexistent. Perhaps all things perceived at a great distance no longer exist. Only in memory do these things unreasonably persist. The insides of our minds may as well be skies filled with what is no longer in existence. When we look at the night sky, we are therefore perceiving a vast memory covered with recollections.

  Imagine a mind without memory: a starless sky or a sky simply hollowed out like a feeling when overcome—or emptier.

  The caregiver with the orange labbies and embossed mards is busily hooking up an apparatus called the Hoyer Lift to the daughter so that she can be transported to the toilet, set down upon it and then removed. They say that in deference to the father they will allow her to sit in a wheelchair for a short time today. Now the father can push her to Burger King for a salad and a mocha. Afterwards, they walk up and down the Safeway aisles looking for shampoo and a magazine and the daughter’s head is soon resting on her own shoulder at a horrible angle. In this pose, she cannot help but stare at the rows of phosphorescent lights on the Safeway’s ceiling. And this makes her say, When are we leaving?

  The sky is so blue today and the clouds are noble and stately, like ships passing in front of our eyes, he remarks. They remind us, says the daughter. Of what? says the father. Oh who can remember, says the daughter.

  At The Dollar Store, which is going out of business so that everything is now only fifty cents, they purchase a little figurine of a dwarf that looks as if it’s made of mucus and spit. The dwarf has a very wide face and a tiny grimace which reveals just a sliver of tooth. It is so resolutely hideous that they cannot stop themselves from laughing right in the store in front of the sales clerk. Good Lord! says the daughter. When she laughs she gets very red-faced and she clenches her one good fist. She is one of those who wheezes when she laughs and now she is wheezing and wheezing at the ugly figurine. Something to remember me by, says her father, who is also laughing.

  The roommate has the TV on, as usual, when they return. She is a fucking bitch and I hate her, says the daughter matter-of-factly. The TV is cranked all the way up because perhaps the roommate’s meadow vole’s ears, despite their alert, pink interiors, are defective. The father approaches the caregiver who is still with labbies jittering around her head, as if she were about to be attacked by wolves, he thinks unkindly. Can we get the roommate to turn down the TV a bit? No, that is not possible, says the caregiver. She has rights, too, she adds.

  A buffler does not repair so much as stave. Constructed of translucent slop-jet and a series of prons and rivvels, the idea is to simulate forgetfulness. An excellent photograph might accomplish the same unless the photograph were to show the daughter having emerged victorious from the woods, a good four or five seconds ahead of her competitors, her sweet face rapt and dripping with sweat, her green shorts flashing like the neon streak of a dragonfly past the father’s gaze who is beaming as she crosses the finish line and accepts a high five from her coach while still running, then looks up to catch his eye and grin.

  No one ever would have predicted that her factory-made brain-box would not survive. How fragile we are! The father often thinks, thinking also, at the same time, How intrepid we are!

  Before he leaves, he places the hideous dwarf figurine on his daughter’s bureau and she looks at it in bewilderment, as if she has never seen it before. What in the
world is that? she asks him. This is when he cradles her head in his arms and smells that lovely place where her hair meets her freckled forehead.

  The TV lowered, the roommate is now snoozing into her cushion, the rattle of her monster breaths causing the embroidered monkey to somersault on the embroidered branch. Don’t love her, says the daughter. Don’t ever love her. At this the roommate will open one hand-slicked eye and hiss, She needs your help. YOU FUCKING BITCH! the daughter will then scream and this scream will pierce the father’s heart and neatly hollow him out, despite the buffler.

  “I go from city to city, town to town, looking for a soup to sip, a dog to poke, for a rock to throw and life has done me dirt, alright, life has done me dirt.” The words to the song are not precisely accurate, the father knows, but they capture the defeated spirit of the time.

  MOUSE CHOIR, AN OPERA

  1. Today a mouse choir will perform for us Verdi’s la donna e mobile, which means woman is fickle.

  2. The mice with their weak chins and strong noses have ferreted out our desires which are otherwise secret.

  3. Kafka had a habit of incorporating mice into fiction.

  4. Our desires are not so extraordinary, claims Rigoletto, a grotesque dwarf.

  5. Adorable in bonnets and knee socks, they approach the stage like a band of three-year-olds, uncertain of what is required, bewildered….

  6. Kafka had a habit of visiting prostitutes.

  7. Verdi began an affair with a soprano “at the twilight of her career.”

  8. They assemble in a pool of greyness.

  9. There was, for example, one called Josephine, a soulful queen.

  10. Woman is fickle woman is fickle they will soon sing, but they know not what they sing.

  11. We, on the other hand, with our hidden desires, our secret yearnings…

  12. How we long to be placed in another era, among a new crop of mice!

  13. Before singing, it is customary to squeak a little

  14. as if pumping the air out of a room.

  THE COUPLE

  At first Martin was with Erin, then he was with Carol, but before that he was with Melanie. After he left Carol, he went back to Erin but then he met Joan and decided to be with her instead of Erin, only he didn’t tell Erin and when she found out she blamed Joan. At the time, Melanie was with Gaylord, but then Gaylord died, so she began to be with Martin since Joan was away most of the time, though she and Martin both denied they were with each other to Joan. Dana wasn’t with anyone, but Martin secretly longed to be with Dana, but he wouldn’t admit this to Joan. Melanie meanwhile met Luke and told Joan she would be with him for a long, long time and finally Dana met someone who kept changing his name but she seemed to be happy with him for at least a week and a half. Martin recommitted to Joan since the others were taken but Joan wasn’t sure she wanted to be with anyone. Erin really wanted to be with Martin and hated Joan and Joan was tired of all the drama. She told Martin he should be with Erin and that she, Joan, would be with no one since being with no one is what she most desired since it entailed no drama. The older she got, the less tolerant she was of drama, said Joan. But Martin enjoyed drama and refused to give her up.

  WRONG BODY TYPE

  She said she was the wrong body type for this outfit, whereas the other one was the right body type. She herself was short-waisted and long-legged and the other was short-legged and long-waisted. Therefore, she herself could wear a jacket below the hips but the other had to beware of such jackets. In this particular case, she herself was unable to wear a blouse with a shirred bodice because the flouncing below breast-line gave her a dwarfed look which was unattractive and misleading. Because, on the whole, she was not unattractive. The other was more attractive, true, but she herself was attractive enough, especially if she wore clothes that suited her body type. Oh pass me the salt, she herself said to another person not involved, not at all involved, in this story.

  THE HUG

  In your acquaintance is an attractive woman who is given to lengthy and, in your opinion, unreasonable hugs. Grinding herself joyfully, bosom to bosom, this person’s hug borders on hostility, you believe. No matter who you are, you get the hug. Long minutes after the hug has begun, you are released. You find it outrageous! He, on the other hand, takes pleasure from the hug. I like a person who is warm and open with their feelings, he states pointedly. And though you try to disabuse him of his opinion, observing that the nondiscriminatory hug suggests, au contraire, a mechanical and insincere way of relating to the world—even Hitler would get the hug! you argue—he will not be swayed.

  THE EVENING VISITOR

  They’d been watching TV, a show about a group of people who compete to cook the best meal for a team of judges. Just as the loser was about to be revealed, the one who’d be eliminated and sent home, the doorbell rang. Who could it be at this hour? Sam said. A murderer, Ruth said.

  They peered out the window to the front stoop. No one. Some kids, probably, he said. They rang and ran. We used to do that, she said. We’d gather up dog shit in a bag and light it on fire and ring a doorbell. Then the person would come and stamp out the fire. Did you really do that? he asked. No, she said, but we did a lot of ringing and running.

  Then the doorbell shrilled out in a commanding way, followed by a series of sharp slaps to the door itself, as if an emergency were in progress. Hold your horses! said Sam, turning the deadbolt.

  Framed in the doorway’s dark rectangle was a tall, rail-thin man wearing a bulky green coat and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He carried a large plaid suitcase covered with stickers. I wonder if I could have a word, he said. From a side pocket he produced a card that read, Mr. Millbank, Tricks of the Trade.

  Ruth put her hand to her mouth to stifle a delighted laugh. She figured someone was pulling a prank, one of their friends. By all means, she said, gesturing elaborately to Mr. Millbank to enter their home. Ruth, Sam hissed under his breath. He was more prudent than she, less likely to surrender to whim. My name is Ruth, said Ruth to Mr. Millbank, and this is my boyfriend, Sam. How de do, said Millbank, who swept by them into the living room and looked around. Very nice art on the walls I see, he said.

  How may we help you? asked Sam, his arms crossed tightly in front of him. He shot Ruth a dirty look and she winked at him.

  Interesting phraseology, said Mr. Millbank, the offer of help, when it is I who have come to help you. He smiled. It seemed to Ruth he had more than the usual share of teeth—hundreds of tiny teeth in a wide sloppy mouth. When he removed his hat—a ridiculous hat, like the hat of a rickshaw driver or a scarecrow—an outlandish shock of red hair tumbled out and fell nearly to his waist. Oh my! said Ruth. If she’d been in a theater witnessing a performance, she couldn’t have been more thrilled.

  She almost clapped.

  Button by button, Mr. Millbank unfastened his voluminous coat. His fingers were thick and stubby for such a tall, slim fellow and they fumbled awkwardly with the coat buttons. At last the coat fell open—two large, gray flaps framed a narrow body and gave him the look of a moth. He turned to Sam and nodded graciously. But since you ask, you may take the coat and hat.

  The cooking competition was still going on. They could hear snatches of the judges’ final assessment—“under-salted,” “I almost threw up,” “what was that brown puddle on the top?” and so on. As amused as Ruth was by their visitor, she longed to see the rest of the show; the results of the competition were for some reason meaningful to her, whereas Sam did not care so much about these shows. He felt it was not enjoyable to watch a show about food when one could not taste the food. He preferred the history channel, which Ruth dubbed The Hitler Channel. Still, in the manner of one who was doing his part in their relationship, once a week he watched the show with her, his hand resting placidly on her knee.

  Ruth could not say why she liked these types of competitions as much as she did. She supposed it was because the unplanned dramas of real life fascinated her. She refused to believe these shows wer
e fixed.

  Millbank had settled himself on their leather couch, red hair spilling over his shoulders in silky, girlish waves, plaid suitcase at his feet. Without his hat and coat he was less imposing, almost frail-looking. Still he was odd, with all that hair, his face a tiny oval in the center, the cavernous mouth with its dozens of teeth. Ruth could not shake the impression that there was something insectile about him. Hoisting the suitcase to his lap, he snapped open the several latches, which produced a series of sharp, mocking cracks, like gunshots.

  What have you there? asked Sam, an amused glint in his eyes. Ruth was glad to see that Sam was getting into the spirit of it.

  I have knives, said Millbank, that you wouldn’t believe. He removed a number of polished wooden trays from the suitcase and squatting to the ground, he laid them on the floor, end to end. Like you wouldn’t believe, Millbank repeated. The trays were covered with a dark velvet-looking fabric, the kind of fabric you might see blanketing jewels in a jewelry case. Knives, repeated Sam.