American Morons

by Glen Hirshberg

  “Watch out,” Martin snapped. He wasn’t worried about me, of course. He didn’t want anything happening to the plaque.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said.

  Wordlessly, he held up his treasure. Black granite, with words engraved in it, clearly legible despite the fuzzy smear of grime across the surface. To the Big Judge, who takes care of his own. A muldoon, and no mistake. From his friends, the Knights of Labor.

  “The Knights of Labor?”

  “He knew everyone,” Martin said. “They all loved him. The whole city.”

  This was who my grandfather was to my brother, I realized. Someone as smart and weird and defiant and solitary as he was, except that our grandfather had somehow figured out people enough to wind up a judge, a civil rights activist, a bloated and beloved public figure. Slowly, like a snake stirring, another shudder slipped down my back.

  “What’s a muldoon?”

  “Says right here, stupid.” Martin nodded at the plaque. “He took care of his own.”

  “We should go, Martin. Now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  As the house unleashed another frigid breath, he tucked the plaque lovingly against his chest and moved deeper into the attic. The plastic at the end of the row was rippling now, flattening itself. It reminded me of an octopus I’d seen in the Baltimore Aquarium once, completely changing shape to slip between two rocks.

  “There,” I barked suddenly, as the air expired. “Hear it?”

  But Martin was busy wedging open box lids, prying out cufflinks in little boxes, a ceremonial silver shovel marking some sort of groundbreaking, a photograph of Grandpa with Earl Weaver and two grinning grounds-crew guys in the Orioles dugout. The last thing he pulled out before I moved was a book. Old, blue binding, stiff and jacketless. Martin flipped through it once, mumbled, “Hebrew,” and dumped it behind him. Embossed on the cover, staring straight up at the ceiling over my brother’s head, I saw a single, lidless eye.

  Martin kept going, almost to the end now. The plastic had gone still, the air-conditioning and the murmurs that rode it temporarily silent. I almost left him there. If I’d been sure he’d follow—as, on almost any other occasion, he would have—that’s exactly what I would have done. Instead, I edged forward myself, my hand stretching for the book. As much to get that eye hidden again as from any curiosity, I picked the thing up and opened it. Something in the binding snapped, and a single page slipped free and fluttered away like a dried butterfly I’d let loose.

  “Ayin Harah,” I read slowly, sounding out the Hebrew letters on the title page. But it wasn’t the words that set me shuddering again, if only because I wasn’t positive what they implied; I knew they meant “Evil Eye.” But our aunt Paulina had told us that was a protective thing, mostly. Instead, my gaze locked on my great-grandmother’s signature, lurking like a blue spider in the top left-hand corner of the inside cover. Then my head lifted, and I was staring at the box from which the book had come.

  Not my grandfather’s stuff in there. Not my grandmother’s, or Roz’s, either. That box—and maybe that one alone—was hers.

  Sophie’s.

  I have no explanation for what happened next. I knew better. That is, I knew, already. Thought I did. I didn’t want to be in the attic even one second longer, and I was scared, not curious. I crept forward and stuck my hand between the flaps anyway.

  For a moment, I thought the box was empty. My hand kept sliding deeper, all the way to my elbow before I touched cloth and closed my fist over it. Beneath whatever I’d grabbed was plastic, wrapped around some kind of heavy fabric. The plastic rustled and stuck slightly to my hand like an anemone’s tentacles, though everything in that box was completely dry. I pulled, and the boxes balanced atop the one I’d reached into tipped back and bumped against the wall of the attic, and my hands came out, holding the thing I’d grasped, which fell open as it touched the air.

  “Grandpa with two presidents, look,” Martin said from down the row, waving a picture frame without lifting his head from whatever box he was looting.

  Cradled in my palms lay what could have been a matzoh covering, maybe for holding the afikomen at a seder. When I spread out the folds, though, I found dark, rust-colored circular stains in the white fabric. Again I thought of the seder, the ritual of dipping a finger in wine and then touching it to a plate or napkin as everyone chanted plagues God had inflicted upon the Egyptians. In modern Haggadahs, the ritual is explained as a symbol of Jewish regret that the Egyptian people had to bear the brunt of their ruler’s refusal to free the slaves. But none of the actual ceremonial instructions say that. They just order us to chant the words. Dam. Tzfar de’ah. Kinim. Arbeh.

  Inside the fold where matzoh might have been tucked, I found only a gritty, black residue. It could have been dust from the attic, or split spider sacs, or tiny dead things. But it smelled, faintly, on my fingers. An old and rotten smell, with just a hint of something else. Something worse.

  Or maybe not worse. Familiar. I had no idea what it was. But Sophie had smelled like this.

  “Martin, please,” I heard myself say. But he wasn’t listening. Instead, he was leaning almost into the last box in the row. The plastic jammed against the wall had gone utterly still. At any moment, I expected it to hump up like a wave and crash down on my brother’s back. I didn’t even realize my hands had slipped back inside Sophie’s box until I touched wrapping again.

  Gasping, I dragged my hands away, but my fingers had curled, and the plastic and the heavy fabric it swaddled came up clutched between them.

  A dress, I thought, panicking, shoving backward. From her closet. I stared at the lump of faded material, draped half out of the box now, the plastic covering rising slightly in the stirring air.

  Except it wasn’t a dress. It was two dresses, plainly visible through the plastic. One was gauzy and pink, barely there, with wispy flowers stitched up the sleeves. The other, dull white and heavy, had folded itself inside the pink one, the long sleeves encircling the waist. Long, black smears spread across the back of the white dress like finger-marks. Like fingers dipped in Sophie’s residue….

  I don’t think I had any idea, at first, that I’d started shouting. I was too busy scuttling backwards on my hands, banging against boxes on either side as I scrambled for the opening behind us. The air-conditioning triggered, blasting me with its breath, which didn’t stink, just froze the hairs to the skin of my arms and legs. Martin had leapt to his feet, banging his head against the attic ceiling, and now he was waving his hands, trying to quiet me. But the sight of him panicked me more. The dresses on the ground between us shivered, almost rolled over, and the plastic behind him rippled madly, popping and straining against the weight that held it, all but free. My hand touched down on the Playboy. I imagined the tree-woman climbing out of the magazine on her pointy feet, and finally fell hard, half out of the attic opening, screaming now, banging my spine on the wood and bruising it badly.

  Then there were hands on my shoulder, hard and horny and orange-ish, yanking me out of the hole and dragging me across the floor. Yellow eyes flashing fury, Roz leaned past me and ducked her head through the hole, screeching at Martin to get out. Then she stalked away, snarling “Out” and “Come on.”

  Never had I known her to be this angry. I’d also never been happier to see her pinched, glaring, unhappy face, the color of an overripe orange thanks to the liquid tan she poured all over herself before her daily mah-jongg games at the club where she sometimes took us swimming. Flipping over and standing, I hurried after her, the rattle of the ridiculous twin rows of bracelets that ran halfway up her arms sweet and welcome in my ears as the tolling of a dinner bell. I waited at the lip of the closet until Martin’s head appeared, then fled Sophie’s room.

  A few seconds later, my brother emerged, the Knights of Labor plaque clutched against his chest, glaring bloody murder at me. But Roz took him by the shoulders, guided him back to his bed in my mother’s old room, and sat him
down. I followed, and fell onto my own bed. For a minute, maybe more, she stood above us and glowed even more than usual, as though she might burst into flame. Then, for the first time in all my experience of her, she crossed her legs and sat down between our beds on the filthy floor.

  “Oh, kids,” she sighed. “What were you doing in there?”

  “Where are Mom and Dad?” Martin demanded. The shrillness in his tone made me cringe even farther back against the white wall behind me. Pushing with my feet, I dug myself under the covers and lay my head on my pillow.

  “Out,” Roz said, in the same weary voice. “They’re on a walk. They’ve been cooped up here, same as the rest of us, for an entire week.”

  “Cooped up?” Martin’s voice rose still more, and even Roz’s leathery face registered surprise. “As in, sitting shiva? Paying tribute to Grandpa?”

  After a long pause, she nodded. “Exactly that, Martin.”

  From the other room, I swore I could hear the sound of plastic sliding over threadbare carpet. My eyes darted to the doorway, the lit landing, the streaks of soap in the mirror, the floor.

  “How’d they die?” I blurted.

  Roz’s lizard eyes darted back and forth between Martin and me. “What’s with you two tonight?”

  “Mrs. Gold and Sophie. Please, please, please. Grandma.” I didn’t often call her that. She scowled even harder.

  “What are you babbling about?” Martin said to me. “Roz, Miriam’s been really—”

  “Badly, Miriam,” Roz said, and Martin went quiet. “They died badly.”

  Despite what she’d said, her words had a surprising, almost comforting effect on me. “Please tell me.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t want me to.”

  “Please.”

  Settling back, Roz eyed me, then the vent overhead. I kept glancing into the hall. But I didn’t hear anything now. And after a while, I only watched her. She crossed her arms over her knees, and her bracelets clanked.

  “It was an accident. A horrible accident. It really was. You have to understand…you have no idea how awful those days were. May you never have such days.”

  “What was so awful?” Martin asked. There was still a trace of petulance in his tone. But Roz’s attitude appeared to be having the same weirdly soothing effect on him as on me.

  She shrugged. “In the pink room, you’ve got my mother. Only she’s not my mother anymore. She’s this sweet, stupid, chattering houseplant.”

  I gaped. Martin did, too, and Roz laughed, kind of, without humor or joy.

  “Every single day, usually more than once, she shit all over the bed. The rest of the time, she sat there and babbled mostly nice things about cookies or owls or whatever. Places she’d never been. People she may have known, but I didn’t. She never mentioned me, or my father, or my brother, or anything about our lives. It was like she’d led some completely different life, without me in it.”

  Roz held her knees a while. Finally, she went on. “And in the blue room, there was Sophie, who remembered everything. How it had felt to walk to the market, or lecture a roomful of professors about the Kabbalah or whatever other weird stuff she knew. How it had been to live completely by herself, with her books, in her own world, the way she had for twenty-two years after your great-grandfather died. Best years of her life, I think. And then, just like that, her body gave out on her. She couldn’t move well. Couldn’t drive. She couldn’t really see. She broke her hip twice. When your grandpa brought her here, she was so angry, kids. So angry. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to be dependent. It made her mean. That’s pretty much your choices, I think. Getting old—getting that old, anyway—makes you mean, or sick, or stupid, or lonely. Take your pick. Only you don’t get to pick. And sometimes, you wind up all four.”

  Rustling, from the vent. The faintest hint. Or had it come from the hallway?

  “Grandma, what happened?”

  “An accident, Miriam. Like I said. Your goddamn grandfather…”

  “You can’t—” Martin started, and Roz rode him down.

  “Your goddamn grandfather wouldn’t put them in homes. Either one. ‘Your mother’s your mother.’” When she said that, she rumbled, and sounded just like Grandpa. “‘She’s no trouble. And as for my mother…it’d kill her.’

  “But having them here, kids…it was killing us. Poisoning every single day. Wrecking every relationship we had, even with each other.”

  Grandma looked up from her knees and straight at us. “Anyway,” she said. “We had a home care service. A private nurse. Mrs. Gertzen. She came one night a week, and a couple weekends a year when we just couldn’t take it and had to get away. When we wanted to go, we called Mrs. Gertzen, left the dates, and she came and took care of both our mothers while we were gone. Well, the last time…when they died…your grandfather called her, same as always. Sophie liked Mrs. Gertzen, was probably nicer to her than anyone else. Grandpa left instructions, and we headed off to the Delaware shore for five days of peace. But Mrs. Gertzen had a heart attack that first afternoon, and never even made it to the house. And no one else on earth had any idea that my mother and Sophie were up here.”

  “Oh my God,” I heard myself whisper, as the vent above me rasped pathetically. For the first time in what seemed hours, I became aware of the clock, tuk-ing away. I was imagining being trapped in this bed, hearing that sound. The metered pulse of the living world, just downstairs, plainly audible. And—for my great-grandmother and Mrs. Gold—utterly out of reach.

  When I looked at Roz again, I was amazed to find tears leaking out of her eyes. She made no move to wipe them. “It must have been worse for Sophie,” she half-whispered.

  My mouth fell open. Martin had gone completely still as well as silent.

  “I mean, I doubt my mother even knew what was happening. She probably prattled all the way to the end. If there is an Angel of Death, I bet she offered him a Berger cookie.”

  “You’re…” Nicer than I thought, I was going to say, but that wasn’t quite right. Different than I thought.

  “But Sophie. Can you imagine how horrible? How infuriating? To realize—she must have known by dinnertime—that no one was coming? She couldn’t make it downstairs. We’d had to carry her to the bathroom, the last few weeks. All she’d done that past month was light candles and read her Zohar and mutter to herself. I’m sure she knew she’d never make it to the kitchen. I’m sure that’s why she didn’t try. But I think she came back to herself at the end, you know? Turned back into the person she must have been. The woman who raised your grandfather, made him who he was or at least let him be. Because somehow she dragged herself into my mother’s room one last time. They died with their arms around each other.”

  The dresses, I thought. Had they been arranged like that on purpose? Tucked together, as a memory or a monument? Then I was shivering, sobbing, and my brother was, too. Roz sat silently between us, staring at the floor.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” she mumbled. “Your parents will be furious.”

  Seconds later, the front door opened, and our mom and dad came hurtling up the stairs, filling our doorway with their flushed, exhausted, everyday faces.

  “What are you doing up?” my mother asked, moving forward fast and stretching one arm toward each of us, though we were too far apart to be gathered that way.

  “I’m afraid I—” Roz started.

  “Grandpa,” I said, and felt Roz look at me. “We were feeling bad about Grandpa.”

  My mother’s mouth twisted, and her eyes closed. “I know,” she said. “Me, too.”

  I crawled over to Martin’s bed. My mother held us a long time, while my father stood above her, his hands sliding from her back to our shoulders to our heads. At some point, Roz slipped silently from the room. I didn’t see her go.

  For half an hour, maybe more, our parents stayed. Martin showed them the plaque he’d found, and my mother seemed startled mostly by the realization of where we’d been.

 
“You know I forgot that room was there?” she said. “Your cousins and I used to hide in it all the time. Before the hags came.”

  “You shouldn’t call them that,” Martin said, and my mother straightened, eyes narrowed. Eventually, she nodded, and her shoulders sagged.

  “You’re right. And I don’t think of them that way. It’s just, at the end…

  “Good night, kids.”

  After they’d gone, switching out all the lights except the butterfly in the hall, I thought I might sleep. But every time I closed my eyes, I swore I felt something pawing at the covers, as though trying to draw them back, so that whatever it was could crawl in with me. Opening my eyes, I found the dark room, the moon outside, the spider shadows in the corners. Several times, I glanced toward my brother’s bed. He was lying on his back with the plaque he’d rescued on his chest and his head turned toward the wall, so that I couldn’t see whether his eyes were open. I listened to the clock ticking and the vents rasping and muttering. A Muldoon, and no mistake, I found myself mouthing. Who takes care of his own. When I tried again to close my eyes, it seemed the vent was chanting with me. No mistake. No mistake. My heart twisted in its socket, and its beating bounced on the rhythm of the clock’s tick like a skipped stone. I think I moaned, and Martin rolled over.

  “Now let’s play,” he said.

  Immediately, I was up, grabbing the sock-ball off the table where I’d left it. I wasn’t anywhere near sleep, and I wasn’t scared of Roz anymore. I wanted to be moving, doing anything. And my brother still wanted me with him.

  I didn’t wait for Martin this time, just marched straight out to the landing, casting a single, held-breath glance at Sophie’s door. Someone had pulled it almost closed again, and I wondered if the wooden covering over the opening to the attic had also been replaced. Mrs. Gold’s door, I noticed, had been left open. Pushed open?

  Squelching that thought with a shake of my head, I started down the stairs. But Martin galloped up beside me, pushed me against the wall, took the sock-ball out of my hands, and hurried ahead.