“The man couldn’t even get up to pee he was so eaten alive. I had to help him. I took a cup and opened the fly of his pajamas and took…took him out down there and put him in the cup and...and it hurt him so much, I saw the pain in his face as he tried to force the piss out of his bladder, he tried so hard, and when it finally came out”— he looked down at the stained pajama crotch— “it was more blood than piss. Then he thanked me, for chrissakes! Told me what a good boy I’d been and asked me to tell Mom to buy a real good pumpkin so he could carve it up nice and scary for you. How the hell could I remind him that Mom’s been dead for four years?” He cast a pleading glance at Jack, who nodded, then gestured him Continue.
“So I went out and bought some pumpkins. He was bound and determined to build you a ‘real’ Jack Pumpkinhead for Hallowe’en. ‘This’ll show her how much I love her, how proud I am.’ Christ! You’d’ve thought he was finally getting to build his own Sagrada Familia, his own little masterpiece, like Mom’s unfinished quilt.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath to calm himself down, then started banging a fist against the side of his leg.
“He dragged out that old Oz collection that Mom used to read to you just so he’d make sure to get Jack’s face exactly right. I lost count of how many times he cut himself while carving. He stopped worrying about it after a while and let himself bleed into the pumpkin, all over the seeds...”
Marian thought about the third bowl of treats: Be sure to bring your magic seeds.
“...but he couldn’t finish,” continued Alan, “the effort got to be too much. He made me promise I’d finish building Jack for you. Then he just ...laid there. He was minutes away from dying and all he cared about was making you happy. He stared at the shadows and mumbled about Gaudi, coughed up a wad of something I don’t even want to think about, and died. No wailing, no wringing of the hands, no sackcloth and ashes. Just sickness and pain and sadness, memories of mopping up the vomit in the middle of the floor because he couldn’t get to the bathroom in time, or wiping his ass when he shit himself because he was too weak to get off the couch, or cleaning the blood from his face and nose after a violent coughing fit, all the time having to look in his eyes and see the regret and fear and loneliness in them— that’s how his existence culminated; in a series of sputtering little agonies to signal the end of a decent man’s life. And he never stopped hoping that you’d come see him.”
Marian felt the heat brewing in her eyes, reached up to wipe away the first of the tears, and swallowed back the rest as best she could. She would not give in, would not feel bad, would not show weakness. “I’m sorry it was so hard on you, but people die and there’s nothing—”
“— we can do about it except let go, yeah, yeah, yeah— you played that scene earlier, remember?”
The doorbell rang again: Trick or treat, smell my feet ...
Jack opened the door. The children gasped in awe.
“Well, lookee here. Is that a mummy before me? And Spider-Man— I take it that the Green Goblin and Doc Oc are otherwise engaged?— how good of you to come!”
The giggles again, the whispers and aaaahs.
“So,” said Alan, “what do you think?”
She was surprised at how steady her voice was. “I think that Aunt Boots told me you haven’t been sleeping well, and you know what happens when a person doesn’t get enough sleep? They start having waking dreams.”
“That’s my Marian, always the rational one. Okay, fine— if I’m having waking dreams, then explain Mr. Pumpkinhead over here.”
“Come to the shortcut in the cemetery tonight,” called Jack as he began closing the door, “and be sure to bring your pumpkins and your magic seeds.”
She didn’t have an answer. Alan was throwing too much at her too fast, she needed time to sort this out, she needed order and calm, needed .
“Alan, look, I ...” She had to buy some time. She was letting herself be drawn into his world of grief and dementia. How romantic and seductive it seemed when one was this close. “I couldn’t bring myself to come here any sooner. I couldn’t just sit around here waiting for Dad to die. I can’t stand anything like that, I never could. I need to be where everything is vibrant, healthy, alive...goddammit, I was too scared, I admit it, it’s just that...I didn’t know Dad wanted me here so much.” “Would it have made any difference?” A beat, a breath. “No.” Jack poked his head around the corner. “Good girl.”
Alan said, “Jack told me something about Mom. Did you know she always thought you didn’t love her? She told Dad she thought you were embarrassed to have her for a mother because she was just an ignorant factory gal.”
Marian felt something expand in her throat. “God, Alan, I never felt that way. I always thought she was a good— a fine woman. She almost never complained about things and always managed to come up with some extra money whenever we wanted something special. I don’t think I ever saw her buy a thing for herself. How could she believe I thought so...little of her?”
“You never told her.” His voice was empty.
Then Jack spoke. “The last time you kissed her, you were nineteen years old.”
Alan took her hand. “Remember how we used to make fun of her getting tired so quickly? It never crossed our minds that she might be sick. That’s why we were so shocked when she
died.”
Marian looked at Mom’s favorite chair and remembered the way Dad had cried when he’d found her there, dead. “She never said anything.”
“It wasn’t her way,” said Alan. “But we were her family. If we’d cared a little more, we would’ve known.”
Marian hugged herself. She could feel the affliction and loss trapped within this house; the loneliness...God, the loneliness.
“It becomes easier, once you accept it,” said Alan. “Love it. Embrace it as you would a child. Hold it against you. Let it suckle your breast like a baby would. Let it draw the life from you. Love the pain. Love the emptiness. Love the guilt and remorse, cherish the loneliness, love it all and it will make you strong. It’s what makes us whole.”
“No. I can’t— I won’t feel bad about not knowing. They could have said something to me, could have talked to me, asked me things. It’s not my fault.”
“I never said it was.”
Marian rubbed her eyes, then held her hands against them for a moment. “Alan, please, I don’t know what to...what to say or do...I don’t understand how—”
“—how this started?”
Marian pulled her hands away from her face as Jack answered the call of more trick-or-treaters. “Yes.”
“It started a long, long time ago, before either of us were ever born, I guess. But I suppose, for us— you and me— it started with Grandpa...”
* * *
It was three weeks after Alan’s ninth birthday, about seven-thirty in the evening. Marian and her brother were settled in front of the television to watch the next hair-raising episode of Batman. The Green Hornet and his trusty aid Kato were making a special guest appearance tonight, so both were barely able to contain their excitement, stuffing popcorn into their mouths by the plentiful handful.
The opening credits were just starting when there came a knock at the front door; it was a timid, almost inaudible knock. Alan and Marian looked at each other.