Mail piled up on the floor inside the front door. Newspapers scattered outside on the porch. Haven't the neighbors noticed that something's wrong? Maybe not. Or if they have, maybe they'd rather not get involved. Maybe they prefer to believe that the Krejcis are on vacation, out of town for a few days, that's all. As if anything like that has ever happened before.
And Josef doesn't have any friends anymore, no one to check up on him, no one to come calling: all of them are dead. Did he ever have friends? Seems like it's always been just the two of them—Meena and Josef—all along.
He will still be there, upstairs in his bed, just the way she left him, but she won't go in to look, she'll just go straight to the telephone, call the police, turn herself in. Or maybe she should make the call now, before she goes back, so that when she gets home someone will have found him, someone will have taken him away, and then it will be as if it never happened.
They would know she didn't kill him, wouldn't they? Of course she didn't. Someone must have seen him fall. There would have been witnesses, people who will come forward and tell the truth about what happened. This isn't what it looks like, they will say. It's not what it seems. Maybe that bullet-headed detective that she saw on the television will be waiting for her, wanting to ask her a few questions about her father's death. And her involvement in it.
As Meena trudges along the trail, her canvas sneakers—smooth-soled and not made for hiking—skid on the soft dirt, but she doesn't slow, she presses on, enjoying the rhythm and the movement, heart beating, blood pumping, alive and alert. On either side of her the tall narrow trunks of the pines shoulder each other, so close together they form a solid seeming wall that rises toward a widespread canopy of needled branches that creak and sway with breeze.
And, she thinks, her anger rising with the effort of ascent as the trail angles upward at a steeper slant: isn't it just like him to leave her like this? Holding the bag. It isn't fair. After she's given him everything she has, everything she is, her whole life, in fact. These inconsiderate men, thoughtless of the women, their wives and daughters, left behind to clean up after them when they're gone. That coward Ed Madrick, sick with cancer at seventy years old—locked himself in the bathroom and put a gun to his head, leaving an unspeakable mess for his wife to come home to after an otherwise unremarkable day spent playing bridge with her friends. Ronnie Fleming, recently widowed, closing up the garage and starting up the car, so he could be found dead by his granddaughter, who'd dropped by for a surprise visit, hoping to maybe cheer him up a little with her company. Barnes McGregor, whose emphysema, after a lifetime of smoking, was so bad that even though he was hooked up to oxygen all the time, still he had to sleep sitting up—alone in an extra bedroom downstairs—until he fell out of bed one night and broke his neck. Lying there in his own mess for his wife to find when she came down to wake him up the next morning. Peter Stepanek, drove his car into a brick wall. Ozzie Pickering fell down the basement stairs. Mark Bloomberg lost both his legs to diabetes. George Hendricks: colon cancer. Mike Ingalls: heart attack. Ernie Chapman: stroke. What a mess.
It's all very well for Mimi Hanrahan to keep warning her, fine for her to say that Josef Krejci is going to die someday, too. Just like everybody else. Mimi taking Meena by the shoulders to get her attention, pulling her close to look her in the eye. "Meena, you understand that, don't you? He will die." How many times had she heard that? Why hadn't she listened? But if she had, what would she have done?
And all very well, too, for Josef Krejci to decide to retire, to give away what was left of his groceries and then turn the building over to a developer who would tear it down to the ground as if it had never existed, what did he care? He was already an old man by that time, past a reasonable retirement age, plus he had a couple of office spaces and small houses over in Bohemietown that he'd bought for a song a long time ago, and he could still count on an income from the rents that he collected on them.
But what about Meena? What was she supposed to do once the grocery store was gone? She'd graduated from high school with honors in her classes and then not gone on to college because she had agreed to stay there in Linwood and work for him.
"You don't need a job, Meena," he said. "What do you need a job for? A girl like you."
But Meena always worked anyway. She always had a job, she would have gone crazy otherwise. What else was she supposed to do all day? She was in the credit department at Fairchild's downtown for six years. Cooped up all day in a windowless office on the top floor where no one ever went, riding the escalator downstairs at lunch time to eat alone in the tearoom on two, ducking into the ladies' lounge on three for a smoke twice a day, home in time to fix supper for her father every night. And she worked in circulation at the newspaper for a while, too, filing, until they switched over to computers and didn't need her anymore. All for a few dollars an hour—she never did earn enough money that she could afford to move out of her father's house, rent an apartment, and support herself on her own. Not that she would have done that anyway. But she did make enough to keep her dignity at least, she believed.
Over one summer she was a housekeeper for a family down the street. The Brainards: Jay and Dana, he was an attorney and she worked in public relations. They were busy people and they needed someone to come in and keep the place clean and cook sometimes and also take care of the kids. Out of the blue Meena went ahead and applied for the job and right away they hired her, no problem. She was exactly what they were looking for—an adult woman with good references and no family of her own.
She wasn't abandoning her father, although maybe he believed she was. She told him, "I'm not leaving you." And it was true. Meena wasn't going anywhere, but she knew he worried that she would.
"It's just the two of us," he'd say. "You know we're all we've got." And she would tell him, "Don't worry, Dad. I'll always be here for you." And she meant it. And she was.
The Brainards had two children, a girl and a boy. Lily was eight and Sam was five.
Meena was there six days a week looking after them that summer, sometimes for twelve hours at a stretch, but she didn't mind that. It wasn't like sitting at a desk or working behind a counter, it was more like being a part of someone's normal everyday life. She took them to the park, and to the pool. They drove downtown to the library or walked around the zoo. She packed a picnic lunch and they ate outside on the grass under a tree. They watched cartoons and she told them stories and they drew pictures and they played with clay. Meena took them to the doctor and the dentist and they went with her to the grocery store, and more often than not people who didn't know better thought she was their mother. It was a natural assumption, and Meena didn't try to correct it. Why should she? What did it hurt if she wanted to pretend?
That was a happy time for her, the time that she was able to spend with those children. In that house.
She told the kids about Leo Spivak. She held him up as an example whenever she wanted to make a point about not doing something that was dangerous.
"Don't play with matches," Meena said to Sam, who frowned back at her. "I knew a boy once, his name was Leo Spivak." And then she'd say that Leo set his bed on fire and burned off all his hair. While Sam's eyes widened and Lily groaned. Or, "Don't go in the street." Leo Spivak had been run over by a car, crushing his foot so flat that the doctors had to cut it off. "Stay away from firecrackers." Leo Spivak put some in a jar once, and the explosion blew his hand to pieces. Leo Spivak blinded by a BB gun. Leo Spivak bit by a rabid squirrel. Leo Spivak falling off a roof and breaking his back, paralyzing him from the neck down so he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. On and on it went, Leo Spivak this and Leo Spivak that—by the time Meena was finished with him, he was a legend of calamity in the Brainard household, blind and deaf and scarred and maimed, hairless and limbless, just lucky to still be alive.
Some years after that she was downtown and she came out of Fairchild's to see Leo Spivak standing on the corner, waiting for the light
. There he was, the real thing, in the flesh, wearing a wool coat over a suit and tie. He was respectable looking—and still in one piece. A little bit overweight, even. And although she knew, as she had always known, that everything she'd told those Brainard kids had been made up just to scare them, still it seemed to Meena to be a miracle that Leo Spivak was alive. And whole. She didn't dare say hello. Instead, she spun away from him and didn't look back until she was at the end of the block, to see that he was gone.
Intact. Unharmed. She never saw him again, but she believed that he must still be out there somewhere, a rough boy transformed by time into an ordinary man living an ordinary life, free from blame and unbothered by his memories or the small consequences of a childhood long past and mostly forgotten.
First it will be the view that stops Meena in her tracks. The path has widened, the trees have thinned, and she's on the lantern jaw of a bluff that juts out over the highway winding into a crease between the mountains. The river is a thin slip of silver breaking through the green.
And then, at her feet, fresh kill: the headless carcass of a fawn—softly speckled pelt, curved hip, sharp backward angle of the knee, hooves paired, daintily, demur as a young girl's feet in glossy black ballet slippers, folded modestly to the side, knees clenched.
Frails
1968-1969
Mrs. Grandon always had been drawn to drama, everyone knew this about her already and so maybe they should have known that when the time came she would make sure her marriage ended with a bang and not a whimper, with the quick relief of one last big blowout of a fight, a knockdown drag-out disaster that began with accusations and counter-accusations, escalated to doors slammed, fists clenched, teeth bared, and then peaked in a bloodbath of flashing lights from a patrol car parked in their driveway askew. The cop calls for backup, unsnaps the holster that holds his gun, picks his way through a debris-strewn aftermath, warily climbs the steps up to Mrs. Grandon's locked front door.
Those who were watching from their own yards or porches or windows, depending on how discreet they were trying to be about it, should have guessed that something like that was bound to happen. Most of you had been well aware of what was going on with the Grandons for some time already. You ought to have been expecting the worst, and not been surprised or scandalized when that was what you got.
All except for poor little Rags, who didn't seem to know whose side he was on or whether it was only a game after all, and so he limped hopefully back and forth across the yard, from the house to the car and back again, in a confused obsessive loop. While Mr. Grandon sat there at the wheel of his blue convertible, turned the radio on and up loud, pounded his fist against the horn, made such a racket that he had to know everybody heard and everyone was watching, but what did he care?
Mrs. Grandon was standing in the doorway on the front porch, a backlit silhouette, throwing things. It didn't matter what—anything she could get her hands on, that would do.
In your father's considered opinion, this was a waste of everybody's time, his own included. The cops would come, there would be paperwork, and for what? Everyone was losing sleep, as well as peace of mind. That woman was only making a mess she'd have to clean up later. A pity, he said. Unfortunate for everyone, all around. Waste of time, not to mention money, not to mention well-being.
And sure enough, there she was out there in her bathrobe the next morning. Just as dawn was breaking Mrs. Grandon was stooped in the grass, searching the bushes by the house for the bits and pieces of all her broken stuff. And later she would be resolutely sweeping the sidewalk, determined to pick up every single shard, dustpan in one hand, straw broom in the other. Her hair tied up under a pretty red bandana, big cotton gardening gloves on her hands. Shattered glass glittered on the pavement—bits of crystal, fine porcelain, painted china. Books tumbled out into the yard, their pages flayed against the ground and curling into the damp grass. After a while your father couldn't stand it anymore and he went out to help—dragging the garbage can across the grass and setting it down on the walkway near her, taking hold of the dustpan, bending over it, backing away from the broom as she swept toward him.
As for Mr. Grandon, he almost got away clean. With one last long sorrowful bellow from the car's horn, he gave up, shifted into gear and retreated, backed out to the street, swept around and was gone. He only cared about his car, Libbie said later, arching a skeptical eyebrow in her judgment of him. He had only been considering the consequences of something banging into a fender, she insisted. Or crashing into the windshield. Or tearing through the precious fabric of that white canvas top.
It was Mrs. Spivak who called the police. She explained later, patting a palm against her breathless chest, that she thought the neighborhood was under attack, that the Negroes were rioting in the streets and had brought their terror over here to Otis Road. That they might be about to set the world on fire and burn the whole town down.
Meanwhile, Mr. Grandon had been stopped and pulled over down the street, at the corner where Vernon Boulevard crosses over the Old River Road and begins to turn in toward the tracks. A flashlight shining in his face, blinding him as he did his best to explain. His voice soft, controlled, conciliatory. No, he was not drunk. He was stone cold sober and only trying to get away, running for his life in fact. Had they been to his house yet, for God's sake? Had they seen it, what she'd done? Jesus. They could test him, if they wanted to, if they didn't believe him. Go ahead.
But he never touched her. If anything, she was the one who had pummeled him. This, with a smile. Indulgent. Her small fists. A wink and a shrug. No damage done.
Mr. Grandon was convincing. He was a salesman, after all. Who could argue with a man like that? As decent as he was. He was sincere; he seemed to be honest. Maybe he had said something to his wife that he shouldn't have, and maybe in reaction she had got a little upset. But that was all there was to it. No big deal, really. And he had circumstances on his side, besides. She had been hospitalized, after all. She'd been in and out of the Cedarcrest Retreat for years now, that was a documented fact. It was the medication, if you want to know the truth. Difficult to balance and get exactly right. But he had already put a call in to her doctor, and so she was going to be good as gold again soon. You could be sure of that.
He was sorry for the disturbance, sorry for the inconvenience, sorry for the mess. But, he insisted, it was over now, and done with. No need for any worry. He had everything under control. She'd be okay, he'd see to it himself. He'd lie low for a few days. Give her a little time to cool down. Winking at them. They must know what he meant; didn't they see stuff like this going on all the time?
Your father claimed that he had seen it coming, too, the Grandons' estrangement. He was quick to judge the situation, ready to come to a conclusion and eager to say that he, for one, couldn't blame a man for walking out on an ugly mess like that one next door: what it looked to him that the Grandon family who were his neighbors had become.
His evidence? Mrs. Grandon came into the store one afternoon and she rolled a shopping cart up and down the aisles, took her time, picking up this and then that, examining it, putting it in the cart. Then when she was finished with her shopping, she rolled up to the register. Started setting her items on the counter: crabmeat, sardines, capers, hearts of palm, smoked oysters and fancy mustard. Josef was all smiles. "Will there be anything else?" he asked.
She eyed him, frowned, seemed to consider, then shook her head. "No, I don't believe so," she said. Running a hand through the close curls of her hair. Chewing on her lip. "I believe that will be all." Considered further, then adding, "Thank you very much."
"Having a party?"
She shook her head, lifted her chin, touched her throat with her fingertips. All but batted her eyes. "Oh no," she says. "Just stocking up."
He rang in the items, told her the cost.
She listened carefully, concentrating to be sure she'd got it right. Then she beamed back at him. "Just put it on our account, would you plea
se?"
His face was shiny, cheeks rosy—with embarrassment, amusement, concern? His skin seemed to be stretched tight as a drum over the big bones of his face, and you could tell just by looking at him what he was thinking. He was imagining what kind of a world poor Mr. Grandon had to wake up to every day there in his own home across the two driveways next door. With his son away at school and his daughter seething with contempt at home and that distracted woman beside him in his bed, that wife with her crabmeat and her capers and her credit account.
"A house full of women," he said to you, at dinner, as if that said it all. He shook his head, sucked on his teeth, dabbed at his lips with the corner of his napkin. The gold band on his finger gleaming, as you looked up to see the blurred reflection of your own face in the glass pane of the window across the room, and Mrs. Chadima pushed in and out through the swinging door carrying one plate of food after another to him at the dining room table, offering water, coffee, more wine? Matka was there too, but she kept her own counsel, she was only watching, only chewing and chewing, and breathing heavily and nodding, "Ano, ano." Yes.
"Frails," Josef called you. Even your mother, frozen in time within the confines of the silver frame that he kept on a shelf in the living room. Women. He shook his head. He was, it seemed, resigned.
And yet, what you knew was that your father had it all wrong. Because, as you tried to tell Libbie over and over again, it wasn't Mr. Grandon who had left his family. It was Mrs. Grandon who had kicked him out.
She spent the next few days after their big fight packing up what she could of her husband's stuff. It was over, as far as she was concerned, and now she wanted him gone. She set her jaw; she blinked back tears. Her face was thin as a splinter, pale as a petal, and she had taken to wearing a darker, more dramatic lipstick: blood red. She was beautiful. Short bangs feathered her forehead, her hair fell straight to her shoulders from a tender middle part, fine lines fanned from the corners of her eyes, they cupped the sides of her mouth and puckered the edges of her lips as she drew in smoke from her cigarette, then nervously tapped off its ash. A black velvet turtleneck, the graceful stem of her throat, the sharp angle of her squared shoulders and the softer curve of her breasts.
The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci Page 19
