Even pain became boring after a while.
Finally, she was ready to end it. She picked up one of his steak knives, and pulled back for a neat thrust.
Before he died, he wanted to hear Brahms, the “Ode to Joy,” Chuck Berry, Eric Satie. Not Little Fucking Aled Osmond’s Long-Haired Snowman From Jones.
Madeleine’s elbow kinked and she paused. Throughout it all, her face had been a paper blank. Now, he saw an expression…
Could it have been a full week?
Night had come and gone several times. There had been periods of sleep and rest between the busy-work. She had been taking care to keep him alive.
He had never seen her change before.
Her hair might be bleaching. Her skin might be tanning. She might be wriggling inside uncomfortable clothes.
She dropped the Sabatier and stood away from the bed. Knowing this chance might never come again, he picked up the knife with nailless fingers and worked it into her unresisting throat.
A week later, Madeleine was still on his bed, in a circle of dried blood. He’d taken out the knife, cleaned it, and clanged it to its rack in the kitchen. There were flies in the bedroom, and her skin was already yellow in patches and starting to give, suggesting the skeleton beneath useless meat.
He had stayed in the flat with her, recovering slowly. He’d used up all the iodine and bandages in the bathroom cabinet. He daren’t go out. And he didn’t even like to leave the bedroom.
Madeleine must not be left alone.
She was the broken doll now. He’d made many sketches of her, and the bedroom was carpeted with them. He would draw her slack, empty face as it was, and then try to superimpose one of her personalities on it.
Madeleine, Maddie, Mad.
He had to stay with her for more than a week. He had to. It must be a week now. Something was moving under her face.
Peter waited for the next change.
A FATHER’S GIFT
by W. M. Shockley
Life was nearly perfect for Joshua Benjamin Yosevs until the summer of his thirty-fourth year. He had his wife, Socorro, and the two boys, Kevin and Harlow. Both his parents were still alive, although he hadn’t spoken to his father in ten years.
And then, during one hot Saturday in August, a small pogrom from seventeenth century Poland invaded his mind. The cavalry rampaged, raped, and murdered seventeen Jews. The next year, his thirty-fifth, in August a nineteenth century Russian pogrom attacked him. There were more, at shortening intervals, with skips in the chronology. But always the butcheries came from the past and moved ever closer to the present.
Again it was August. Joshua was thirty-six when things took a violent lurch toward the worst.
In his backyard, Joshua rocked slowly in the hammock listening to Kevin teasing Harlow with a frisbee. The boys could get along together for all of three minutes before Harlow cried. Joshua had scolded Kevin countless times, but Kevin always teased and teased until Harlow cried. It was building now.
“Get it, boy,” Kevin said.
Harlow yipped like a dog, his yelps fading as he ran from the arching sycamores which held the hammock. The world’s best kids—Joshua knew they would learn to get along some day. It would just take them some time.
Time to get up and stop the teasing, Joshua decided, but Socorro responded first, shouted, “Don’t get him too hot, Kevin.” She wasn’t going to wait for Kevin to make Harlow cry.
Joshua turned his head and started the hammock swinging. A blur in the distance had to be Harlow, wobbling. He was funny to watch as he ran. He was getting the knack. He had learned to run before he walked, taking short, fast trips before falling. As he learned to slow down, though, he forgot how to run. Only now was it coming back to him.
Socorro was wearing shorts in the heat, and Joshua noticed the map pattern of the varicose veins near her knee. The faint blue barely showed under the nut-brown tone. Why, when they made love, or when he stroked her legs, did the veins not ruffle the surface? The wonderful surface. Her legs, when shaven, were smooth. Perfectly smooth and yet offering the perfect degree of resistance. Even with the varicose veins, her legs were something to behold. To hold. One, dangling over the table, bounced slowly against the bench. Later, he thought. When the boys are asleep. Saturday night. He’d been too tired last night. Thirty-six and too tired!
“Kevin!” Socorro shouted. “Let him have it.” Wrong choice of words, Joshua corrected silently.
“Oh, Mom,” Kevin said. “He’s better than a dog.”
“No fleas,” Joshua offered. As usual, Socorro ignored Joshua’s attempt at humor. She had talked to him about joking when she was trying to discipline. Lectured him.
“That’s enough, Kevin. When he gets that one, that’s it. I don’t want him too hot.”
“Can I call Jeremy to play?” Kevin asked.
“Ask your father.”
Joshua kept his eyes closed, not wanting to have to say “no” to his son. He heard Kevin approaching.
“He’s resting his eyes,” Kevin said.
Uncle Morry, Joshua thought, the family tradition, “rested his eyes” after dinner in the recliner. He never slept there, only rested his eyes, snoring like a steam radiator. Uncle Morry who always brought candy bars when he visited. The candy bars made Mother mad. But Joshua’s father would defend his brother Morry, not his wife.
What kind of man was he who would take his brother’s side in preference to his wife? Joshua knew what kind of a father he had. Now, he knew. He’s in the synagogue right now, no time for children, no time for Mother. I’ll never, he vowed for the thousandth time, treat my kids like that. Kids were far more important.
“Yes,” Joshua said, “go call Jeremy. He can come over here and you can both play with Harlow.” The wisdom of Solomon: make it so Kevin didn’t want to go.
Kevin started to complain, but when Joshua opened his eyes, he saw Kevin running toward the back door. He ran better than Harlow by a long shot. Of course, Harlow would do as well when he was nine, too. They’d get older, learn more things, marry, but Joshua would always know them, love them. He’d never disown them, pretend they were dead, cease to love them.
The patterns of the leaves and branches overhead shifted slightly. Everything seemed to move sideways as if an earthquake had hit the hammock. After an initial queasiness, Joshua recognized the warmth as it crept up from his toes.
Oh, shit, he thought. Why me? He knew another “vision” was coming. Another pogrom, another massacre. Why? he wondered. Why now? He didn’t want another vision. At all. Ever. There was too much blood and too much gore in them. But he had no choice. Dr. Veille told him they were some sort of seizures that might be controlled by phenobarbital. Phenobarb—he had spent many a college night trying to get phenobarb. Probably the phenobarb would not work anyway—these were not normal seizures, he knew that instinctively.
Black uniforms—goddamned Nazis in S.S. uniforms, and locals in black uniforms with gray sleeves—formed a line. Inside the line, the Jews’ faces were packed tightly, some screaming, some crying, some oddly silent, dull with resignation. One woman’s nose was flattened against the hair of the man in front of her. She sobbed silently. Like some monstrous, multilimbed insect, the naked people inside the line of guards moved. Slowly, lashed and taunted by the guards. Joshua glimpsed a single female breast forced out from the crowd. A large cowhide whip slashed across it.
He could not move to help. He could only witness. As always. He wanted to scream. He could not. He watched through tightly closed eyes as the line was whipped relentlessly forward. A woman of sixty fell to the ground. She smiled as she was crushed. The rest pressed forward, surged forward, were beaten forward. A machine gun fired tiny holes which spouted red into ten naked men and seven naked women who were lined up against a rock cliff. The bodies fell into a very large pit where others—some writhing, most still—awaited them.