What she wanted, she said, was for you to help her out, and you believed you owed her that much, it was the least you could do, wasn't it? After all that Mrs. Grandon had done for you? She could get you out of school, if necessary, and she'd be happy to put a call in to the attendance office, if need be. She would tell them that you were otherwise engaged that day. Or she could write a note, if you thought that would be better.
You could take the truck, couldn't you? Might you be able to arrange such a thing? And if so, would you mind? Her Thunderbird was too small; with it they'd have to make more than one trip, which would completely spoil the drama of what she meant to do.
You told your father that Mrs. Grandon was paying you to help with some spring cleaning; you probably wouldn't need the truck for more than an hour, you said, or at the most two.
Mrs. Grandon already had all of her husband's things packed up in suitcases and boxes, ready to go, but it took some time to get it loaded into the truck bed. You had to drag it down the back steps, pile it up onto a dolly from the garage, roll it across one driveway over to the other.
Early spring, a drizzly gray day.
"You sure this is what you want to do, Mrs. Grandon?"
Her face, set like concrete. "Yes, Meena, I'm sure." A hectic blush in her cheeks.
Mrs. Grandon didn't know how to work a stick shift, so you did the driving. And then even after you'd been so careful—a perfectly maintained twenty-five miles an hour, signals at every turn, full stops at the four-way intersections—Mrs. Grandon wanted you to pull over right out front of the real estate offices, in a no parking zone. She said not to worry, that if you did get a ticket, she'd take care of it. She patted your knee, smiled, unfolded a plastic rain bonnet and tied it under her chin. No problem.
Together you unloaded the stuff—the suitcases, the boxes, a sack of bathroom things, books, papers, car wax, records, photographs, tools, and that chemical toilet from the bomb shelter. You dragged it all out piece by piece and dumped it there on the sidewalk at the front door, under the snapshots of houses tacked up to a bulletin board in the front show window, beneath the black and white sign—"Grandon Homes"—spelled out in boldface letters overhead. A woman in a green raincoat stopped to watch you work; the look on her face was both puzzled and amused. She stood under the awning with her arms folded over her chest, while you struggled with a heavy box. You stopped what you were doing, stood, and glared, set the box down, waved your arms, until, embarrassed or frightened maybe, the woman turned and walked quickly away.
Someone was shouting, "Hey!" And Mrs. Grandon grabbed at your arm, yanked you toward the street. "Come on! Come on!" She was squealing with excitement, tripping over herself, clambering up into the truck, as Mr. Grandon skidded out the front door of the building, calling out again, "Hey!" and then falling over the piles of his own things. "What the hell?"
Mrs. Grandon laughed, throwing her head back with hilarity at the sight of her husband. His look of surprise. Bewilderment. Affront. And you behind the wheel, pulling away. You had your eye out for the cops, but what you saw in the rear view mirror was Mr. Grandon, surrounded by the piles of his own possessions, both feet planted squarely on the shining damp pavement of the sidewalk, his hands on his head, his mouth a hole that formed a crater in his face as he hollered after you, wailing with outrage.
"I have every right to this, you know," Mrs. Grandon said, as you drove off. She pulled the rain bonnet off, shook her hair free. "Every right," she said again. She lit a cigarette, sat back, satisfied. She leaned forward, turned up the radio. It was like she was a girl again, just like Libbie and you.
Mr. Grandon took a room down at the Fielding Hotel, on the ninth floor, overlooking the river. What else could he do? And it wasn't so bad, really. He was high up, and he had a view: of downtown Linwood, the cereal plant, the packing plant, the unlit vast expanse of cornfields rolling on beyond the edges of the city lights. He had a television set and a big bed, a mirror and a sofa and a chair. He had clean towels and small bars of soap, bottles of shampoo and room service whenever he wanted it, night or day, hot meals made to order and then kept warm for him under domed silver lids. He could go out, too, if that was what he preferred. There was the coffee shop in the lobby. Or, more to his taste maybe, the Pickwick Club in the basement downstairs. Out front there was the doorman to greet him, to say, cheerfully, "Good morning, sir," or "Good night." An elevator operator asking, "Which floor?" A concierge prepared to answer any question, meet any need. The uniformed man behind the reception desk was all smiles as he gave Mr. Grandon his messages, handed over his mail. Everyone seemed genuinely glad to see him, after all. This was nothing at all like home, and so maybe that was a relief? "Good morning, Mr. Grandon." "Hi there, Jack." "Nice day, isn't it?" "Good to see you again, sir." And so on. Because, everybody loved Jack Grandon, didn't they? How could they help it? How could you not?
The way you saw it though, Mrs. Grandon had made a big mistake, she'd committed a serious tactical error. Because by kicking her husband out, hadn't she also set him free? There he was, living by himself at the same hotel that Josef Krejci had been known to frequent, where he might find a woman in the lobby who would be happy to join him for a cocktail in the bar or dinner in the restaurant. Someone who might even be happy to follow him up to his room. Mr. Grandon could do just about anything he wanted now, and what was there to stop him? You asked Mrs. Grandon, didn't this bother her at all? No, was her answer. Because now she was free, too, she explained.
"Free to do what?"
"Whatever I want. Anything at all."
She slammed the truck door. Turned, squared her shoulders, marched back up the driveway to her house.
You were working school-day afternoons and weekend nights at the grocery store, where it was your job to keep track of the orders and the billings. Your father had put you on the payroll. You clocked in and out like everybody else, and he paid you by the hour. You used the money that you made this way to buy records and books in the bargain basement of Sanford's Everyday downtown. At Krejci's you sat at the desk under the stairs, just the way your mother once had done, and your fingers flew over the adding machine as you tallied the accounts. Your father told you that you were very good at this, and you wallowed in his praise.
And so it was that on the last Saturday in February you got up early to ride to work with him in the frozen dawn. The weathermen had been saying that Linwood was in for a storm that afternoon, so the store was unusually busy all morning, with people coming in to stock up on what they thought they might need in case they got snowed in for a day or even more.
Maybe you noticed the silence upstairs when you came in, or maybe you didn't. It wasn't until later, when you were at your desk there under the stairs, with all those numbers swirling in your head, and you looked up from your work to see the snowflakes that had begun to fall, big and fat and thick beyond the cold sheen of the front window glass. Early afternoon, but already outside it was dark as dusk and the streetlights had popped on one by one.
Your father was standing in the open doorway looking out and letting the cold air blow in, and maybe you both had the same thought at the same time, but he was the first to move. He looked up and you looked up and together you were listening but there was nothing to hear. No creaking floorboards, no television blare.
You watched him start up the steep stairs to the apartment overhead, an old man moving slowly, as if he were being dragged up there against his will. And then you were on your feet, too, away from your desk and coming around to follow him as he climbed. When he got to the top he stopped and so you stopped too, right behind, so close that you could smell him: pipe smoke, limes, sweat, the ointment he rubbed into his shoulder muscles, the oil he used on his hair.
A panic had begun to flutter in your chest, but you were trying not to think about it. Your breath was coming short, and you were gasping. Maybe you knew what was about to happen, but you were hoping not to know. You knew it and you didn't want to kn
ow it, so you closed your eyes and tried to disappear.
He knocked first, a courtesy that was so beside the point it brought you back and made you want to laugh out loud. And then he turned the knob and pushed at the door, expecting it to open, but it resisted him. He hesitated—maybe he was already beginning to guess at what he was going to find and was bracing himself against an expectation of the worst. He tried again, but still the door didn't budge. It was locked maybe? He turned to you, a pinched look on his face, and then with a groan he threw himself at the door, expecting to shoulder it open with the brute force of his body and his weight. His ears were pink with anger and frustration, and he was calling out to her by then, in emergency and hope: "Matka! Matka!"
He stopped a moment to listen, and then called out to her again, in the same way. "Matka! Matka!"
You heard the bell tinkle on the front door downstairs as a customer came in. You peered over the banister to see a woman in a fur coat standing near the counter below you. She looked up, her attention drawn to the racket that your father was making up there, and whatever she saw in your face at that moment must have frightened her, as she put a hand to her throat and stepped back.
It was only old Mrs. Krauss, from up on Vernon Hill. She shopped at Krejci's weekly and at that time she owed you a little over three hundred dollars on her account from December. You didn't even pause to say hello. You just tumbled down the stairs and elbowed your way past, barreling through the store and outside into the snow and around the back and up again to Matka's outer door. You used the key from under the mat to let yourself in. The apartment was dark, and cold, but you could see the shape of your grandmother there in the shadows on the other side of the room. She was sitting on the floor, propped up with her back against the door, and that was why your father hadn't been able to open it. Her knotted hands were folded in her lap in such a way that she almost seemed to have been posed there, with her swollen ankles encased in their dark stockings and her misshapen feet sticking out from under the hem of the black skirt that was spread out around her on the hardwood floor like a spill of inky water. Her eyes were open and her head was tilted slightly to one side, as if in puzzle over some question that she hadn't yet found an answer for.
Josef had come around after you and was pushing his way into the apartment, calling out to his mother, kneeling over her and wailing words that you didn't understand, Czech that sounded so crazy you had to turn away.
You went downstairs to turn off the lights and close the store. Outside the snow was falling, thick and cold. It was going to be a bad night, and everybody knew it. The storm that you'd been waiting for had turned into the blizzard they were predicting. Already the streets were piling up with snow and there was little traffic, just a deep cold stillness, with snowfall muffling down all around.
Inside the store it was warmer, and Mrs. Krauss was still there. She had finished her shopping and was standing patiently at the counter, waiting for you to ring her up as if this might be any other day and business as usual. In her basket there was a bag of sugar, a jug of milk, a box of butter, and a half-carton of eggs. You turned the sign on the door around and explained as kindly as you could that the store was closed. But this was not something that Mrs. Krauss wanted to hear. She'd come all that way, she argued, and in such weather.
"Couldn't you just allow me buy these few things?" she asked, smiling.
You shook your head. "We're closed, Mrs. Krauss. I'm sorry, but my grandmother..."
The old woman frowned and raised a gloved hand. She pursed her lips, which were thin and bright red with fresh lipstick. Her old skin was leathery-looking and powdered, her cheeks were pink with rouge. "Please, dear?" she begged. Her eyes twinkled with expectation, or maybe it was fear.
"Just take it then," you said.
Mrs. Krauss started to thank you, and began digging in her purse for her billfold.
"I'm locking up," you told her. "Get out of here," you said. "Please. Just go." You put the things in a bag and pushed it at her. You'd come around the counter then and you were nudging her toward the door, prepared to shove her out into the snow, when you looked up and saw your father standing there, watching.
"What are you doing, Meena?"
"I was just..."
His face was white, and fallen-seeming, slack and slipping from his bones. His eyes were dull. He shook his head, then turned to Mrs. Krauss and seemed to brighten at the sight of her. "Here dear, let me help you with that," he said, and took the bag of groceries from her arms. He reached and pulled her collar up around her neck for her, straightened the hat on her head, then took her by the arm and guided her toward the door.
"This weather," you heard him saying, his voice deep, soothing. "Terrible. You shouldn't be out in it. You should have called us, let us bring your things to you. Watch your step now. It might be slick."
He helped her into her car and then stood in the snow to wave her back out of the space where she'd parked, guiding her forward toward the street and sending her off with an encouraging thumbs up, calling after her, "Be careful now. Good night!"
That was Josef Krejci. The customer always came first and the customer was always right. He'd told you this over and over again: Without the customer a grocery store is nothing. Service, that's what people expect. Generosity. Kindness. Attention. Understanding. Love. And that's what you have to give them, if you want to get ahead. No matter what.
He left you there to finish closing up and went upstairs to Matka's rooms again. You emptied the cash drawer. Checked the coolers. Swept the floor and turned off the lights.
Maybe you heard the siren as the ambulance approached or maybe you didn't. There were voices first, and then the clamber of men's feet up the stairs and across the floor, shaking the ceiling overhead so it sounded as if there must have been a dozen firemen and paramedics up there, but later you would learn that there were only three.
Instead of locking up from inside the store and going up the stairs to the apartment, you put on your coat and scarf and hat and went out the back, locking the door behind you. You stood at the edge of the parking lot, away from the light and the ambulance and the folks in the houses nearby who had come outside to see what happened and you watched as the men struggled to bring the stretcher with Matka's big body laid out on it down those narrow stairs.
By the time it was all over, the snow was so thick that it had piled up on your shoulders and your head, and maybe it would have buried you after a while if your father hadn't found you and brought you inside again where it was warm and light, but by then the apartment was empty, and your grandmother was gone.
Matka was buried in the Bohemie Cemetery behind St. Wenceslas church, in a plot beside her husband, near where Agnes Krejci lay. That there were so many people at the service should not have come as a surprise to you, because you ought to have known how many friends your father had, how popular he was: Josef Krejci, the neighborhood grocer who had a smile for everyone, the most eligible widower, who'd been given the burden of having to raise his only daughter all alone. Some of them you knew from the store, some you recognized but couldn't name, and others you were sure you'd never met.
Libbie was not there, but her mother was. Mrs. Grandon kissed you on the cheek, then turned to Josef and shook his hand. She was wearing a high-collared black dress with full sleeves and a narrow waist that flattered her figure and a pillbox hat with a spotty veil meant to hide her eyes and conceal her grief, such as it was.
It was so cold and snowy still that few people came outside to the graveyard after the service was over. The snow was still fresh-seeming and white, piled all around and weighing down the branches of the trees, which creaked against the weight. There was a canopy over the open grave, and plastic grass laid down across the snow, edging the hole and its deep black Iowa dirt. The wind whistled in your ears. So cold! And colder still, the thought of Matka in her thin black dress, a large shadow huddled down there all alone. It had to be even worse than death itself, you t
hought—that coldness, that blackness, that emptiness, that dark.
Compared to a warming summer sun. Compared to a cozy yellow fire. Compared to the buttery quiet light of an empty kitchen in the middle of a humid August afternoon with a wasp trapped and buzzing angrily against the screen.
There was your mother's own grave nearby. The stone—simple, square, her name and the dates of her life carved in plain frank letters—"Dearest Departed Too Soon Gone"—was covered with a cap of snow that Josef swiped away with his gloved hand. You looked up at his face, pinkened by the cold and damp, to see that he was crying. You pretended not to notice. You were embarrassed, and you believed he'd be ashamed.
When you got home you went straight upstairs and thawed yourself out in a hot bath, put on pajamas and a sweater and climbed into your bed, even though it was only the middle of the day. You could hear music downstairs—your father in his study, listening to opera. Mrs. Chadima would be in the kitchen, sorting through the food that the neighbors had dropped off, putting a dinner together for you to eat later.
You fell asleep and dreamed of a golem, some shared figment of your grandmother's imagination, a concoction of vegetables and fruit that emerged from the basement of the grocery store to move through the streets of Linwood. He was looking for you, it seemed. His body was half rotten and the soles of his feet squelched on the pavement as he moved, solid with intent. You saw him coming, and you tried to turn and run away, but something was holding you in place and you couldn't move. Until he came so close that you could smell him. Ferment. Putrefaction. Desiccation. Rot. He reached for you, shriveled pickle fingers waggling, and you woke up in a sweat, both terrified and enthralled, to find your father there, standing by the bed, watching you.
The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci Page 20
