Fierce Pretty Things

by Tom Howard

  * * *

  The kids are back. They’re laying ropes of silver garland around the scarecrows.

  The scarecrows were there when Dixon and Maude first moved into the house in 1967. That’s something he remembers. Molly was eight, B was five. Maude didn’t like them. She told Dixon to get rid of them after they moved in. They don’t even look like real scarecrows, she said. That was true. They were made of wood, hand-carved, with featureless round heads atop stick figure torsos. The arms and legs were strangely bent, all wild acute angles, hieroglyphics come to life. They’ll scare the children, said Maude. But Molly and B were thrilled.

  Anton and Angelina. Those were their names. Of course Dixon remembers this. He even remembers the histories the kids constructed for them. He remembers that Anton was the smaller and younger of the two, reserved but fierce-hearted, a warrior—

  (“But he has turned away from the ways of the blade,” the two agreed, speaking quietly to each other over breakfast, and the phrase turned away from the ways of the blade knocked on the door of Dixon’s soul and slipped inside.)

  —who feared lizards and cicadas, and wasn’t fond of clear skies, but oh how he loved windy nights—

  (“Anton will be happy,” one whispered from the backseat as they drove home under swaying elms from Maude’s sister’s place in Syracuse. And then the other: “I’m glad, after the lizard thing yesterday.”)

  Angelina was tall and limber and spoke four languages acquired during her years as a traveling ballerina. Born on the moon—

  (“The moon?” Dixon asked, skeptical. They said, “Why not the moon?”)

  —she had jumped too high one day during practice—

  (“A grand jeté,” Mol explained.)

  —and just like that, she was flung from the moon to the Earth. She wandered and danced and learned the ways of human beings—

  (“Human beans?” Dixon, horrified. “Just stop,” they said.)

  She kept her homesickness to herself. Mostly. But the moon, sometimes, made her howl. Not the full moon but the new moon, invisible in the evening sky. Angelina’s moon, the kids called it, when the skies were full dark.

  Maude wanted the scarecrows taken out when B died. She said they’d done no good. They’d protected no one. Dixon and Molly fought to keep them.

  Dixon scrambles to withdraw the pad from his pocket. But he doesn’t even know what he’s trying to remember, what’s worth saving about this memory. In the end he only writes MAUDE IS A TOUGH BIRD, which isn’t right at all.

  She has been angry, though. He knows it. Not for any specific thing Dixon has done, or if there’s a specific reason then Dixon has forgotten. She’s become a slammer of things. Dresser drawers, kitchen cabinets, the washing machine lid. And she swears. Good God, she swears. When she thinks he’s not listening—his hearing is fine, though—she swears like a pirate under her breath. Did she always swear? He can’t remember. Now everything is fuck this and motherfucker that.

  A week ago he found her journal. Shouldn’t have looked, he knew that. But it was a journal he’d given her a long time ago, brown leather with a gold Eiffel Tower on the cover, and as he took it in his hands he was just so happy to remember it, to remember anything, that he opened it and flipped through the pages.

  The entries were few, with years between entries. Maude wasn’t one to journal.

  From June, 1993: It rained all day today. I called Mol and complained too much. She said I needed a hobby and I said maybe I’d keep a diary. Dixon gave me this one so I’m going to start.

  From “The Fall, 1998”: There was a robin out in the garden that was so fat I thought it had to be my dad. Because he liked robins and he was fat himself, at least when he was in his 50s. We called him the Buddha. Well, Scotty called him that, and I laughed, but I never said it to his face.

  From January 21, 2004: Mol came to visit. She says she’s fine. We all stayed up so late talking. Dixon made us laugh. You don’t think that about Dixon. You don’t think he’s funny but he can be.

  Then a long series of blank pages, before suddenly the entries picked up again. Only they weren’t entries, just numbers that made no sense to Dixon. Like she was using the journal as a scratch pad.

  0–37—320!!!

  ≤ 3–25ng!

  6 × 1,200 = $7,200

  12 × 1,200 = $14,400!

  Then, hidden away almost at the very back of the journal, there was one last entry, undated. Last night I dreamed he was already gone and I was glad.

  Poor damn Maude.

  Dixon doesn’t blame her. He knows it’s a thankless job to care for him. Even though he thanks her whenever he can, often with Post-it notes.

  THANKS, MAUDE, when she helps him into his clothes.

  THANKS, MAUDE, when she changes his pull-up.

  THANKS, MAUDE, when she bathes him, and brushes what’s left of his hair, and cooks for him, and reads to him, and helps him brush his teeth, and shaves him, and scratches his back, and massages his vein-streaked legs, and takes notes at the doctor’s office, and cuts his pills, and separates his pills into little compartments marked AM and PM, and helps him into bed, and whispers him back to sleep when he wakes up, lost, in the hollows of the night.

  He’s thought about dying. He knows he’s close. Even when he’s fine, when the hip doesn’t hurt and his heart isn’t racing and he can think clearly, the pressure in his chest is there. It isn’t death. It’s life squeezing him out. It’s there on all sides of him, closing in, powerful and relentless, sensing the ending that’s approaching and rushing to fill the vacuum.

  Out in the yard, B is perched atop a thick, winding oak branch that hangs over the garden. Molly is doing snow angels down below.

  Dixon is okay with the ending. With the idea of it. Well. He’s almost okay. He’s afraid. He shouldn’t be, at his age, but he is. But it beats the alternative. It beats Maude starting to hate him. Or worse, hating herself for hating him.

  A handful of pills would do the trick, he thinks. Quick and painless and no one would suspect a thing. There certainly would be no autopsy on Dixon. So the last few days, he’s saved every other dose, depositing them in the sandwich bag he keeps in the pocket of his robe.

  He’d like to leave Maude a note. Just to explain. To say, if he can keep the words in his head long enough to say them, what he’s doing, and why. Or just to say goodbye. But what if someone else finds the note? Everyone will think he killed himself. Which, okay, yes, will be true. But there goes the insurance. Or—good God—what if they think Maude planted the note? What if the police get suspicious and start asking Maude questions, start wondering if she murdered him for the insurance money and used the note as an alibi?

  He could tell her to destroy the note. P.S. Maude, burn this before police arrive. Love Dixon. Then what? The police walk in, and Maude’s standing over a sink full of ashes. Looking guilty as hell. Who stands over a sink full of ashes? Murderers. Probably she’d have to make a run for it at that point. Maude! On the run! Cursing his name as she hid under a bridge somewhere, hunted down like an animal. Living off the garbage thrown from the highway above. Just lovely. A fine way to end things.

  No note, then. Maude can’t end up under a bridge eating garbage. Better to just let her believe he had a heart attack. Better to just let her move on.

  Still.

  It would be nice to at least remember the boy’s name before he goes. That would be something.

  Here’s what Dixon can remember: The way his hair fell over his eyes no matter how he and Maude combed it, like he was a sheepdog. The way his ribs stuck out of his stomach. The way he held his breath when Dixon kissed him goodnight. The way he liked to climb, fearlessly, like a monkey. The way he smelled like rain and salt air and woodsmoke, even after a long summer’s day far from the sea.

  Though sunlight fills the sky, flurries are coming down. B, hanging from the branch now, swings back and forth as he prepares for his dismount.

  Dixon closes his eyes. Reaches again fo
r the boy’s name. Not Bing or Benny or Basil or Bobbie or—

  He fumbles for the pad, heart racing.

  Not a B, but a bie.

  This time he won’t forget. This time he’ll set it down. He’ll have his boy back. He writes the name and underlines it, then adds six exclamation points. He just has to find a place to keep it. Someplace Maude won’t find it and get upset. The sideboard! They haven’t used the sideboard in fifteen years. And it’s right by the window where he sits. He wheels himself over and flings opens the top-right drawer, which is filled with yellow Post-it notes, and the notes scream out at him ROBBIE!!!! IT’S ROBBIE THE BOY’S NAME IS ROBBIE DON’T FORGET ROBBIE! NOT A B BUT A BIE ROBBIE IT’S ROBBIE! REMEMBER ROBBIE YOUR SON WAS ROBBIE THE BOY THE BOY THE BOY IS ROBBIE IT WAS MOLLY AND ROBBIE DON’T FORGET PLEASE ROBBIE HE’S WAITING FOR YOU TO REMEMBER ROBBIE YOUR BOY WAS ROBBIE HOLD ON TO ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE ROBBIE—

  Dixon’s face sags. His mouth falls open. He runs his hands across the notes, and as he does so he feels the air around him closing in, squeezing him.

  He looks out the window. The boy—Robbie—is no longer hanging from the oak limb. He’s nowhere to be seen. Down in the snowy garden, Molly is kneeling between Anton and Angelina. The flurries are coming down harder though the sun still shines, and the wind has picked up. Molly waves frantically at Dixon, beckoning him.

  “Maude,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse. Then louder, “Maude!”

  Nothing. Maybe she’s gone. Had she gone out somewhere without telling him?

  “Robbie’s hurt,” he yells out. “Maude! The boy!”

  Molly’s hair blows in the white wind. Her face stricken.

  “Maude!” he roars.

  He wheels himself to the sliding glass doors that lead to the backyard. It’s forty feet from the door to the garden. He can walk that far. Even in the snow, he can do it.

  Gripping the door handle, he pulls himself up from the chair. The hip complains but Dixon ignores it. He hears or feels the quietest of pops inside his chest. Pressure releasing. He can breathe again. With more strength than he’d anticipated, he flings wide the sliding glass door. Winter blows into the house as Dixon steps outside. Molly, in the garden, motions him forward.

  Then he’s moving through the snow, he doesn’t even feel the cold and he’s moving, by God, and he calls out I’m coming right now, and Molly mouths the words Hurry, hurry, and he’s trying to hurry, and then he doesn’t even trip over anything, his legs simply give out beneath him and he goes down, arms flailing. He lays face down in the snow, stunned, and then he tries to get up but he can’t because he can’t feel his legs. Or anything below his waist. He wipes the snow from his face and pushes himself up onto his elbows. It’s hard to see because of the flurries. He isn’t sure where he is, where the kids are. Then he makes out Anton and Angelina. Rising up as tall as gods, clothed in silver garland. No more than twenty feet away. Dixon can go another twenty feet. By God he can at least do that. He keeps his eyes fixed on the scarecrows and begins to crawl.

  Maude pulls into the garage, meanwhile, and shuts off the ignition. The car makes a series of little clicks and sighs as it falls asleep. Then it’s quiet. She stares straight ahead at the back wall of the garage, gray-lit by the weak afternoon light coming through the garage door window.

  God’s balls, she thinks.

  Dixon’s tools hang neatly on a rack above a small wooden table. His chisels, his claw hammer, his brushes, his saw blades dark with rust. Along the wall beside the table is a half-finished rocking chair, a trio of bent snow shovels, shelves of old paint canisters and grout, a spinning mirror that had once stood in Molly’s bedroom. The ghost of an enormous painted sunflower rises up behind it all. Its curved green stalk winds from the floor to the ceiling, then droops down, ending in a flower with a wide, toothy smile and laugh-wrinkled eyes.

  Not what we desired.

  That’s what the doctor had said, looking down at her latest labs. There had been a discussion of options, the same discussion they’d had a month before, the same discussion—more or less—that she and Dixon had listened to when Molly became sick. She’d imagined Molly there with her in the doctor’s office today, helping her ask the questions she needed to ask. She’d thought of going home to explain all this to Dixon.

  Dixon.

  God’s balls.

  For the past month she’s taken up swearing as a hobby. She’d never been a swearer. It was fun at first, all those fucks and goddamns and motherfucking twats, whatever she could find on Google. The combinations were good too. Cocksmacking motherfucking monkey fuck! Dip-shit fuckwad twat goblin! Delightful. Cathartic. Except the words lost their magic after a while, became only words again. Only God’s balls, her own invention, had stayed in regular rotation.

  She eyes the sunflower. For luck, for good fortune. That’s what Molly told them, when they caught her with the paint brush. After forty years, maybe it needed another coat.

  It isn’t that she’s dying. Or that Dixon is dying. It’s only that she’ll get weak. It’s only that she will, very possibly, die before him and leave him alone to face what’s coming, without understanding a damn thing that’s happening. She’ll have to find a place for him, and find the money to pay for it, and arrange to sell the house, and keep all of this a secret from Dixon. Who won’t know what’s going on but will feel the weight of it and will know that she’s the one bearing the weight.

  She has wished—has caught herself wishing—that he was gone. That she’ll walk in the room and he’s passed quietly away in his chair. Wouldn’t it be better? How could it not be better than what’s to come? She’s even thought about doing it herself. It wouldn’t take much—a handful of Demerol would do the job. God knows Dixon has asked for it. He has pleaded with her, though he never remembers. Which kills her.

  But she can’t. She can’t do it, among other reasons, because of the string of Post-it notes in her glove compartment, which Dixon wrote, stapled together, and left on her bedside table last Monday.

  MAUDE I KNOW THINGS HAVEN’T BEEN GOOD AND I’M SORRY BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW I’VE BEEN HAPPY ALL THIS TIME ALL MY LIFE AND THANK YOU FOR THAT AND IF IN THE NEXT LIFE YOU WANT TO BE WITH ME WHEREVER THAT IS THEN I WOULD LIKE THAT TOO MAUDE. AND IF NOT THEN I’M STILL HAPPY I GOT THIS. IT WAS AN HONOR TO KNOW YOU. DIXON.

  So, no. There’s no way she’s murdering Dixon. Not when he is who he is, and who he always was. He writes this to her and she’s going to euthanize him? God’s balls.

  She actually did try to tell him the truth. He was lucid then too. I get it, Maude, he said. Grim but reassuring. We’ll figure this out. And he patted her hand. He patted her hand. And in that moment, dear God, she believed him. There was still enough left of the old Dixon, the one who fixed things, that she believed him. Then an hour later he was back at the window, the matter forgotten, looking out at his goddamn scarecrows.

  What sad, strange things. She understands why he kept them. Well, no, she understands that they meant something to Dixon, even if he never spoke of it. Of the boy. Always too much for him. On my watch. That’s what he said, over and over, at the hospital that day. But it was an accident. A fall on the playground, of all things. Blamed himself. Of course he blamed himself. Maybe she did, too, for a while. But Dixon was blameless.

  Not what we desired. That’s all it was.

  And she doesn’t blame him now for trying to remember. For asking, again and again, about the boy. About Molly. It’s only that she’s tired, and, well, they were supposed to figure everything out together.

  Her shoulders fall, though she isn’t aware she’s been holding them up all this time. A trick of the light as the shadows creep up the garage wall: the sunflower dips its massive head lower, a giant peering in through the windshield at her.

  She thinks, Maybe it’s time.

  Maybe it�
�s time for both of them. While Dixon still recognizes her. Before he has to watch her slow fade from his life, without ever understanding or remembering why.

  They’ll sit together. Yes, yes. She’ll wait until he’s feeling good. Before the sun goes down, when the light is forgiving and she can see in his eyes that he’s seeing a younger, warmer, more open-hearted version of herself. A version of herself that she doesn’t always believe in any longer.

  Is it now?

  The sunflower fades, disappears into the gray evening.

  It’s quiet in the garage. Everything is still. Her heart, even her heart is still. She thinks, It must be now. That must be why my heart is still. She looks around the garage one last time, takes the keys out of the ignition, and goes inside.

  She feels the cold air, hears the wind before she even sees the open sliding glass door. Dixon’s wheelchair, empty. She goes to the door, and her heart is no longer still, and she looks out and sees him in the garden, down on the ground in the snow, wearing only his robe. His arms and his body are wrapped tightly around the smaller scarecrow’s legs. His silver hair flies madly in the snow. Maude drops her purse and rushes to him, snow in her eyes, and she thinks, Not yet, not yet, oh Christ not yet. Dixon lifts his head and sees her. His face is shining, triumphant. He says, I’ve got him, I’ve got him, Maude, and he extends one arm and reaches for her to pull her close, to bring them together, to bring them all together and keep them safe.

  6

  Grandfather Vampire

  The nickname came from Praeger, of course, who said it was because Mr. Leary looked like a vampire who’d stepped into the sunlight a million years ago and got bleached white as bone, and was condemned to walk the earth in torment, only he ended up in Westover married to Mrs. Leary, who taught us grammar. The name stuck, but kids mostly didn’t like Grandfather Vampire on account of the story Eddie Pastornicky told in second grade about seeing him fire a salt pellet at Rusty, who was Eddie Pastornicky’s neighbor’s Lhasa Apso, but there was also speculation that he was just mean because of some spell of tragedy way back. Maybe from the war, but we didn’t know which war, since we didn’t know exactly how old he was (between forty and eighty-five was the speculation), or when the wars in question had actually happened. And anyway, Mrs. Leary never said anything about a tragedy. When she talked about Grandfather Vampire it was to instruct us on not making damn fool decisions, like for example Mr. Leary wanting to buy the Super 130 drive-in movie theater that was buried in the high weeds behind the Shute Beach apartments, despite Mr. Leary not knowing anything, as Mrs. Leary put it, about anything. She liked to teach us moral lessons along with the grammar.