Richard looked up, his eyes wet and yellow, like sad clams. Death would be a gift.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Brendan knew he should feel something for Richard. Anything. He understood the finality of his grandfather’s condition, that he could go any day now. He just wished he could feel something. Anger. Horror. Sadness. Love. He wished he could cry.
“I called it in three hours ago, so it should be ready.” Richard held up a twenty-dollar bill. “And whyn’t you pick up some mint chocolate chip while you’re at it.”
“I thought chocolate was bad for you.”
“What the hell isn’t? Here.” He flapped his hand.
Let the lamp affix its beam.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Brendan gave his head a shake to snap away the poetry jamming his mind. It was a constant distraction. White rhyming noise in turbo. At the moment it was Wallace Stevens for some reason. In ten minutes it could be Elizabeth Barrett Browning. God! There wasn’t enough room in his head. It was like a flash plague that would strike without warning—his only defense was to build mind quarantines to box them up.
“And get some hot fudge, while you’re at it.”
He could do it with the throw pillow from the couch. Or a quick shot to the throat, snap his trachea. Snap his limbs like carrot sticks.
Not even horror, like Trisha Costello dying the other night.
Can’t even cry.
Brendan slowly crossed over to Richard and pressed his face so close to him he could smell his sourness.
The old man flinched. “What? What the hell you doing?”
“Do you kn-know anything about these scars?” He lowered his head and parted his hair.
“Jeez, I already told you I know nothing about them.”
“Use your magnifying glass.” Brendan handed it to him and bowed his head down again.
Richard peered through the glass at his scalp. “Just a few white spots. Where the hell you get them?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“How would I know? Maybe your mother dropped you on your head. Probably explains things.”
“How b-badly do you want me to get your pills?” Brendan tried to put on a mean face, but he didn’t have anything inside to back it. Brendan never felt mean. He never felt much of anything. Just a flat-line awareness that something was missing.
“Here. Take these so you won’t forget.” Richard waved the empty vial. “What are you staring at me like that for?”
Brendan muttered under his breath.
“Aw jeez, Brendy, please no poetry, okay? I want to watch this show.” Then he added, “I think I liked it better when you couldn’t talk.”
Brendan looked at Richard. “W-what’s that?”
“I said would you please get me my pills.”
“N-no, about how you liked it better w-w-when I couldn’t talk.”
Richard made a sigh of exasperation. “It was just a joke.”
“Well, I missed it.”
“It’s just that you didn’t start talking until you were four or five. I don’t know. But God knows you’ve made up for it. So will you please get my pills or do I have to call 911?”
Brendan studied Richard for a few seconds then he picked the car key out of the candy bowl on the desk. Beside it sat a double frame with photographs of Brendan’s parents. They had died in a car crash on the Mass Pike outside of Worcester when he was nine. They were returning to their Wellesley home from a Christmas party. It was a night of freezing rain. But it wasn’t the ice that killed them. They were sideswiped by another vehicle on an empty stretch and driven into a concrete barrier. The impact was so great that they died instantly, said the reports. There were no witnesses to the accident, and the truck that hit them never stopped. But weeks later one whose paint matched that on his parents’ car turned up some miles away. It had been stolen. The police had no suspects, and today it remained just another cold case of hit-and-run. That’s when he was moved up here to live with Richard whose wife was still alive—Grandma Betty. She died ten months later. For the last seven years, it’d been he and Richard.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Brendan said, before he left. “Did my parents drink any kind of almond liqueur … cordial? Amaretto?”
Richard shook his head. “Jeez, you ask the damnedest questions.”
“W-when you visited them, what did they drink?”
Richard winced as if trying to squeeze up a memory. “I don’t know. They weren’t boozers, if that’s what you mean. You mother liked white wine, and your dad was a beer man. Why?”
“Did they cook with almond extract—cookies, candies, ice cream—stuff like that?”
“Are you going to get me my pills? I’m not supposed to go more than four hours, and it’s been six.”
If Richard went into cardiac arrest and died, Brendan would become a ward of the state and turned over to some foster home or orphanage. That would not be good. “I’m going,” he said. “What about you? Did you drink a-almond liqueurs or eat anything with a-almond extract?”
“You think I was some kind of boozer?”
“Did you?”
“Jesus Christ. What is it with you?” Richard looked confused and exasperated, maybe even a little frightened. “No. Scotch. I don’t think I ever had any Almaretto or whatever. And I don’t eat nuts because they get stuck in what teeth I got left. Okay? Now get me the damn pills before I croak.”
Brendan put his backpack over his shoulder, feeling the weight of his field glasses inside. “I’ll be back.”
“Christ, and before dawn, please!” Brendan was halfway out the door when Richard called out: “Hey, Brendy, you’re a good kid.”
No, Brendan thought. I’m a snowman.
13
Every Thursday night, Cindy Porter would stop at Morton’s Deli for some pastrami, sauerkraut, potato salad, kosher pickles, fresh sub rolls, and a copy of the Cape Ann Weekly Gazette. Then she’d head home and, weather permitting, she’d settle into the backyard hot tub with her boyfriend, Vinnie, and read the paper and pig out.
As a nurse, she knew better, given how the cholesterol, fat, and salt in one of her Mortons could probably send a hippopotamus into cardiac arrest. But the rest of the week, she did her tofu-wheat-germ-and-broccoli virtues. Besides, she had read about a study by some Harvard nutritionist who concluded that a steady diet of low fat and cholesterol statistically added at best two months to one’s life. Her weekly Mortons were worth a measly eight weeks, especially since her parents were in their seventies and still going strong.
It was a pleasant evening, and, as usual, she changed into her bathing suit. Vinnie was visiting his mother in Connecticut and wouldn’t be back until late. So she made herself a sandwich and settled into the tub with a cold Sam Adams and the Gazette. As the warm water gushed around her, she felt her muscles loosen in place. She took a bite of sandwich and washed it down with some beer.
The headlines were about the ongoing battle to build low-income housing. She was against it, only because she knew that only ten percent of the actual complex would be for poor families, the rest for expensive country condo living that would amount to a bonanza for developers. And that meant more coastal acreage would be jammed with construction, and more traffic clogging town roads. She made note of the town hearing next week.