Last Will

by Bryn Greenwood

  The Verb That Created God

  “You bought me a BMW,” Meda explained, after she shut the bedroom door. I glanced around at her room, looking at all the landmarks of happiness and misery.

  “I hope that’s okay.”

  I’d almost forgotten about the car, and I was half afraid it was going to cause an argument. When I looked at her, though, she wore a smiling frown. Concerned and a little embarrassed wasn’t a look I recognized on Meda.

  “I went with Celeste to pick it out, so it’s what I wanted. It’s really nice. I never thought I’d have a station wagon. Or a BMW. Thank you.”

  “I wanted to be sure you had reliable transportation, since I haven’t been here much. And I know how you feel about driving the Rolls.”

  “Where were you?” she said.

  “I had to go to New York to sort out a problem with a piece of real estate that’s a historical property. Pen was in the middle of a lawsuit, so I went to an arbitration meeting. And I went to Pennsylvania on some foundation business. And Boston to see my mother.” I heard myself talking, just to be talking. Meda reached out to me, so I said, “I just wanted to see you, I wasn’t thinking of—I need a shower.”

  “I know how to fix that.”

  Because there was so much kindness in the offer, and none of her usual bristling, I let her take me into the bathroom and turn on the shower for me. It was an old house, so there was a window over the bathtub. Standing there with hot water vapor clouding around me, I looked out the top half of the window and watched the sleet glazing every surface in the backyard: the dead grass, the sagging clothesline, the shed, the house next door, the line of dilapidated houses beyond it.

  I didn’t resist Meda when she led me to her bed. I put myself in her hands, knowing she wanted to redraw the lines of me. She insisted on it, knowing my intentions when I touched her, how my hands shaped her flesh.

  My scars were the places she didn’t attempt to rework with her hands and her mouth. It seemed only natural. When I remade her in my mold, I never attempted her mouth. Her throat, her earlobes, her breasts and the crease beneath her breasts, her belly, the heat sink of her vulva. When I touched them, she ceded them to my design. Her mouth was a thing set in stone, an immutable icon to be adored but unchanged unless by the caressing hands of ten million pilgrims. When I kissed Meda, I knew her mouth came before any creation I commanded. Her mouth was not God, but the verb that created God.

  She exhausted me with every technique I knew existed and some that were new to me. I think she intended to assert her power, unnecessary as that was, and if it had been only a matter of wanting to submit, I would have. I would have relished the act of submission if I’d been able, but I felt everything receding from me. All I wanted was to stop that going away, to stop watching the world’s destruction from a distance.

  Frankenstein

  Meda

  “Stop, stop, please stop, please stop,” Bernie said, fast and hoarse. I did, and felt guilty, because he sounded upset and he was shaking all over. We lay next to each other until he was calm enough to talk.

  “You could have said stop sooner and I would have stopped,” I said.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, I should have said stop sooner.” He put his arm around me to show he wasn’t mad, but I wanted to defend myself.

  “I would have stopped,” I said. “That’s the worst feeling ever, knowing that saying stop won’t mean anything. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t stop him from hurting me.” The back of my neck prickled when I understood he meant the guy who kidnapped him. Bernie was quiet, and I didn’t even know what to say. I turned my head into his shoulder, because I didn’t want him to see my face. “I mean, it was that, but it poisoned everything, like you said. It changed the way I see the world.”

  “And yourself.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “What Ray did to me changed how I saw myself. For the longest time, I felt like a monster. You know, like Frankenstein. Like there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t made like other people. That’s what Gramma always told me. We’re not like other people. And after it happened, that was what she said, too. It’s what happens to people like us. She said, ‘People eat chickens because that’s what chickens are for.’“

  “Oh, Meda,” he said. He kissed my forehead, and I felt guilty, because I’d wanted to make him feel better, and he was trying to take care of me.

  “Do you ever feel that way, like there’s something wrong with you because of what happened?” I already knew the answer.

  “There is something wrong with me.”

  “There isn’t either,” I said.

  “There is. You said it. I’ve just—I’ve been amputated. Something’s been cut off, so that I can’t—. Maybe it’s silly, but I always thought it was my soul. Like they opened me up and cut out that part of me, and after that I was always separated from myself. I can’t get back into myself.” He sounded so exhausted and sad. “Do you still feel like you’re a monster?”

  “No. Not anymore. That was the best part about having Annadore. Not in the beginning when I didn’t want to be pregnant. But the labor wasn’t as bad as everyone said it would be, and when they gave her to me, the first time I nursed her, I felt better. I didn’t feel like a monster, because a monster couldn’t do something beautiful like that.”

  “I like that. I wish I could have a baby.” He laughed.

  “You’re going to.”

  “Not like that, though,” he said. “Are you at least a little happy about this baby?”

  “I’m not sorry I’m going to have this baby. I hope—” I was scared to say what I hoped.

  “I’m sorry it has to be over between us.” He whispered it, almost crying, I think because of how tired he was. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked his age. He looked even older than he was.

  “It’s not over. It’s just complicated. You need to sleep.”

  “No. I’m awake,” he said, the way Annadore sometimes did. He was fading and, after a couple of tries, he let me leave. It was after midnight by the time I got rid of Loren and her crew, so I made a bed for myself on the couch. I woke up at about six, thinking I would make Bernie some breakfast, but he was already gone.

  Headache

  “Are you okay? Do you need some aspirin?” Celeste asked.

  “Did I ask for some aspirin?” I’d gotten in from Boston Sunday evening, and except for the blessed but brief rest I’d gotten in Meda’s bed, I hadn’t been able to sleep.

  “You were rubbing your head like you had a headache.”

  “You’re giving me a headache.”

  I breathed in, out. I apologized. It wasn’t her fault. I had to keep reminding myself of that. The first meeting of the foundation’s board of directors was scheduled for the following evening, but at that moment there was a film crew set up in the study, displacing Celeste and me into the dining room.

  To spare me from Celeste and vice versa, I went into the study, where Lionel Petrie greeted me effusively. He loved “the opulent, old world atmosphere” of my grandfather’s study. He didn’t mention if he also loved how the wood paneling made the room like the inside of a coffin, or how the desk brooded like an Easter Island monolith. For the commercial, they’d brought a giant painting of my grandfather, father, and uncle from the corporate office, and hung it on the wall behind the desk, displacing the painting of my grandmother that had hung there my entire life.

  The commercial was a toll. It was a price I had to pay. I had survived the shareholder meeting. If I could make it through the commercial, I would make it through the meeting with the foundation’s board members. If I made it through that meeting, I would be my own man for a few weeks. There would be nothing looming over me, and then. Then, I didn’t know.

  “Are you about ready in here?” I said abruptly, and heard the truth of Meda’s accusation: my grandfather’s voice.


  I regretted my impatience once filming began, because everyone was unhappy with how it went. I looked terrible, my voice was hoarse, and I hated the script. It started out, “Sixty years ago in this office, my grandfather had a vision, blah, blah, blah,” and it got worse from there. At one point, I was supposed to fold my hands on the desk, right over left. Right over left. Half the time, I did it the wrong way, revealing what no one, least of all me, wanted revealed: that ugly stump of a finger. Subconsciously perhaps, I was indicting my grandfather.

  By two o’clock, Lionel looked nervous, and everyone else was cursing the misbegotten marketing brainstorm that had brought us to that point. We agreed to try again the next day.

  Reburying the Dead

  Aunt Ginny

  Meda answered the door in her housemaid disguise and kissed me on the cheek. With a laugh, she said, “Consider yourself warned. He’s not in a good mood today.” She was already the lady of the house, whether she wanted to admit it or not. I hated myself for being a snob so late in life, but it was clear to me that Meda was who she was all of her own doing. Her family was not charming enough to have produced her. I couldn’t help thinking it was imperative for Bernie to marry her, primarily to improve himself, and secondarily to rescue her from her family.

  Bernie came out of the study just then, and Meda’s warning was quite accurate.

  “Celeste, why is everything scheduled for today?” my not-so-sweet nephew snarled when he saw me.

  “You said, I’m sorry, sir, you said you didn’t care. That I should schedule it whenever. I’m sorry.”

  Bernie gave the poor girl a look that was dangerously like Pen.

  “Now, Bernie. If we’re a little late, I suppose that Mr. Cantrell will wait on us. There’s plenty of daylight left,” I said.

  He nodded and apologized to the girl, but the dark look stayed.

  At the cemetery Mr. Cantrell awaited us with a crew of workmen. The air felt wonderfully sharp and a little damp. The sort of air that reminded me, even in a cemetery, that things were done with winter and ready to start growing again.

  “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to say a few words. We have Mr. Raleigh here as well.” He gestured in the direction of a hearse parked nearby.

  “It was all said at the funeral,” Bernie said. I agreed, and once the facing marble from the vaults had been removed, the business of moving coffins began.

  “Have you eaten today?” I asked Bernie. He looked ill.

  “I don’t think I could.” He seemed about to say something else, but the workmen came by with the first coffin, and Bernie said, “This is the one from the top right? It’s Uncle Alan.”

  He brushed the dust from the top of Alan’s coffin with his bare hands. I was touched that seeing his uncle carried out should affect Bernie so deeply, more so than his father and brother did when their coffins were brought out a few minutes later. Once the moving had been finished, Pen’s coffin was carried in, and at Bernie’s suggestion, we stepped into the emptied mausoleum.

  I didn’t want to upset him, but because she had called me, I said, “Your mother was worried about you.”

  “She was going to Baker Act me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she wasn’t.” I had feared she might, particularly since she’d done so before.

  I was reluctant to part with Bernie for the night. Not that I was convinced I could do anything for him, but I was frightened of the black mood on him, maybe even a little afraid of Pen’s ghost. I put my arm into his as we walked back to the car. Wanting to make him think about something positive, I said, “Now that I have some money of my own, I want you to tell me what you think I should do with it. To help with the foundation, the work you’re doing.”

  “I think you should hold onto it, and if you like you can leave it to the foundation in your will.”

  “I hope I can do a bit of good before I’m quite dead.” He didn’t even smile at my little joke.

  Medicine

  “I’d like to go to pray, if you wouldn’t mind taking me,” Aunt Ginny said, as we were leaving the cemetery. I didn’t have the energy to resist. When we went into the chapel, I half expected to see a casket flanked by flowers at the front. I looked around like you can’t at a funeral, at the holy water font, the banks of candles, and the discreetly martyred saints. It was all in good taste, with none of the garishness that bespeaks real passion. I dutifully went through the motions on Aunt Ginny’s behalf, but seeing her fragile neck bowed so earnestly, I was ashamed of my cynicism. For the first time in my adult life, I tried to pray.

  It was more like wishing on the candles of a birthday cake, because I remembered only my childhood prayers, the calling down of God’s blessings on a list of people. I stumbled in making that list, because most of the people I had been taught to bless were dead. So I prayed for something good for the people I could think of. That was all, just something good for Meda and Annadore, and for Aunt Ginny, and for Muriel and Miss Amos, even for Mrs. Trentam, Mrs. Bryant, Celeste, and Loren. For my mother, too.

  My spiritual healing or whatever it was didn’t survive the preparations for filming the next day. To get past the taboo about drinking in the morning, I told myself it was like taking medicine. I needed something to calm my nerves, I thought, and then I knocked back a glass of scotch. Once I’d crossed that invisible line, I felt I was capable of a number of things that had been prohibited before. It wasn’t a good feeling. When Mrs. Trentam and Meda came into the kitchen, I was relieved. As bad as it was, at least it wasn’t a secret then. There were witnesses to the appalling depths to which I had sunk.

  “What are you doing?” Meda said.

  “I’m getting ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” Missed reference. They stared at me. I could see my epitaph so clearly then. Moody, alcoholic billionaire with a bad habit of knocking up his employees. On my headstone, something fit for the 19th century: “He was a bad ‘un and we’re well shut of him.”

  “You’re drinking, what?” Meda picked up the bottle. “Scotch, at nine in the morning.”

  “But it’s good scotch.”

  I offered her my glass to refill, and she poured in more than I thought was necessary to make her point. Watching her pour, I marveled at how her face seemed to be lit from within, ruled by its own mystical chiaroscuro. I wanted to ask her if it was a dream that she had said our relationship wasn’t over, but I was afraid it was.

  “Aunt M., maybe you could go outside for a sec,” Meda said. After her aunt was gone, she looked at me and shook her head. She put her hand on my arm, her touch as insubstantial as a snowflake. “You don’t look very good.”

  “You’re about the fifth person to tell me that this morning.”

  Lionel Petrie wasn’t any happier about my appearance. I had a tic over my left eye that I hoped the alcohol would cure. Meda’s face was so kind I couldn’t bear to look at her, and she started to put her arms around my waist. I pushed her away from me and barely made it to the sink before I vomited.

  “What’s the matter? Please don’t say it’s because of me.”

  “It’s not you. It’s this stupid commercial.”

  “Don’t do it, if you don’t want to,” she said.

  “I have to.”

  “You have to?”

  “I’m trapped. There are all these things I’m responsible for. That’s bad enough, and then there’s this thing with you. You used to make me happy.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve got all these things weighing on you, but I can’t be the one who decides if you’re happy or not. That’s not right.” She said it like an apology, but with the confidence that she was right.

  The library had made me happy, but it was no use to me there. I couldn’t win. If I didn’t do the commercial it was one more thing I failed at, one more responsibility I shirked. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The camera, the eye of the world, that was the most monstrous part of it.

  “I can see why you don’t want to marry me,” I said. “I really am messed
up.”

  “It’s not so much you. It’s this whole situation.” I didn’t press her on that, not wanting her to withdraw the kindness.

  Bernie’s Close-Up

  Meda

  One of the guys on the film crew opened the door and said, “Mr. Raleigh? Lionel says we’re ready for you.” Bernie looked horrible, leaning over the sink. I thought he was going to puke again.

  “He’ll be ready in a minute.” I wasn’t so sure, but the guy nodded and left.

  “I don’t like them filming me. I hate the idea of being on television, of being filmed. It makes my flesh crawl,” Bernie said.

  I remembered what his aunt had said about him not wanting to be noticed, and then I thought of something that scared me so much, I was glad Bernie wasn’t looking at me. To keep from freaking out, I pinched the inside of my arm as hard as I could. Somewhere out there was the guy who hurt Bernie. He was out there, sitting around, watching TV. I put my hands on Bernie’s back and hoped he wouldn’t feel how much they were shaking. I made my voice as cheerful as I could and said, “When you were little didn’t you like to perform? Your aunt said you sang and danced and put on little shows. Think of it that way, like you’re performing. I used to pretend I was a queen getting crowned when I went to those pageants. Or sometimes I pretended I was a slave getting sold at market.” He gave me a funny look over his shoulder. “You know when you’re a kid, weird stuff seems cool. Seems romantic.”

  “I thought a drink would calm my nerves. What should I do?” I thought he meant about the commercial, but then he said, “Just tell me what you want me to do. Do you want me to stay here to try to work this out? Or should I go back to Kansas City and leave you alone? I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I think you should do what you want to do,” I said, even though I didn’t like to give people advice. Since I’d already done it once, I did it again. “Sing something. Sing that Oklahoma song you sing in the shower sometimes.”

  He started laughing. “I’m not doing a musical number for you in the kitchen.”

  “Not here, out there. Go out and sing that first and then do the commercial. You’ll look stupid right off the bat, so you can get that out of the way, and it’s something you’re good at.”