Eddie's Bastard Read online

  In fact, Grandpa wasn’t saying much of anything these days. It seemed as if the whiskey was making him drunker and drunker, as if his drunkenness had reached the point where it never left him, and every sip of whiskey only made it worse. Somewhere along the line he’d surrendered to it. I wasn’t sure when this had happened. It was a gradual process, I guess. It happened a little bit more every day. You never see these things when you’re right on top of them. But when I compared the Grandpa I’d known as a little boy to the Grandpa of my early teenage years, I could see the difference right away. The old Grandpa sang, talked, laughed, bellowed challenges to the Munchkins. This Grandpa was a specter. I found myself wishing he would just die and get it over with. Then I hated myself for thinking that.

  And so it went.

  Anyway, Grandpa spoke often enough, to be fair, but rarely to me. He talked to himself instead, or to someone I couldn’t see.

  “I have a date,” I said. I liked to keep up the pretense that he and I were a normal family, to pretend that we had conversations about things that mattered.

  He looked at me with vacant eyes. Slowly they focused on me.

  “Swell,” he said, with an effort.

  “Yuh. Movie. With Annie.”

  He began to murmur again, gently. He was telling himself stories.

  “Quit it,” I said. “Wait until I get my notebook.”

  He fell silent.

  “You hungry, Grandpa?”

  I’d become the cook for both of us. I also cleaned the house, did the laundry and the dishes, shoveled the snow from the driveway, and did the million and one other things that must be done to prevent a house from reverting back to a state of chaos. Grandpa never asked me to do these things, but I knew that if I didn’t the whole place would fall apart in a matter of days. I don’t think he ever noticed this either. Perhaps he thought the servants of his childhood had moved back in. More likely, though, he just didn’t care.

  “You hungry, Grandpa?” I repeated.

  But he never answered.

  I threw my books on my bed, went into the kitchen, and made two peanut butter sandwiches and two cups of hot chocolate. Then I went upstairs again and got my notebook. I set one sandwich and one steaming mug of chocolate next to Grandpa—though I knew he would never touch them—opened my notebook to a fresh page, and waited. He was talking to himself again now, oblivious to my presence. When he muttered loud enough for me to hear, I wrote down what he said. In this way I was learning the story of how Willie Mann found the money. I’d gotten several pages of snippets in this manner—because sometimes, if your history has been stolen from you, you have to steal it back. They were something like this:

  “…the iron triangle…”

  “…was the field Pop told you you could have once you got married…”

  “…made in England…”

  “…a big old letter R on it…”

  “…cut off their heads…put ’em in a barrel…”

  “…Daddo had to set on the other side of the kitchen…”

  Grandpa was speaking not about someone, but to someone; and that someone, I had determined, was the ghost of Willie Mann. He’d been with us for some time now. I remembered when the strange things stopped happening, and things got calmer. Keys no longer disappeared, I no longer heard footsteps upstairs when both Grandpa and I were sitting downstairs. The end of those events had marked not the removal of ghosts from our house, but simply a change in the kind of ghost. The old poltergeists had been replaced by a serious ghost, one that seemed to have a purpose and did not have time to play around. It all had something to do with me, I imagined, but as of yet I didn’t know what that was. I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting for, but I knew something was coming, and that it would happen soon.

  About once a week I gathered everything I had recorded from Grandpa and added things in the middle to make them fit. I was in the process of turning it into a story. When it was finished I was going to send it off to a magazine and publish it. I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I had made up those things I’d said to Annie about the moon and the white white snow, although I was too shy to tell her so. Words came to me all the time. I saw them typed out in my head as they were spoken by other people. I wrote poems in the privacy of my bedroom, and some of them were not too bad. This exercise with Grandpa was my first attempt at a short story. It seemed to be taking forever, and it was a strange way to go about it, but I didn’t know that then. And in my own way, I was enjoying it.

  The week passed on without anything earth-shattering happening: my painfully throbbing symbol of adolescence remained my own secret, although I still lived in constant fear of someone noticing it. Had I known that every other boy my age in Mannville and, in fact, on the entire planet was suffering from the same malady, I would have relaxed somewhat. But my lack of social contacts was still affecting me, and I had nobody to compare notes with.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t had the chance to make friends; I simply hadn’t wanted to. Other guys my age bored me. I used bigger words than they used, thought about different things than they thought about, and felt that most of what they did was ridiculous and boring. They rode around on their ATVs, chewed tobacco, and worked on cars. Sometimes they got in fights, but it never seemed to be over a matter of principle, which to me was the only reason for fighting. They seemed to fight for sheer enjoyment. This struck me as almost animalistic, just another lingering relic of our days as tree dwellers. They were fighting to establish social hierarchy, and I knew that in fifty years this hierarchy would still exist among them because none of them were ever leaving Mannville. What was worse, none of them wanted to.

  Saturday arrived. The movie began at seven-fifteen. Around three o’clock I was too excited to wait any more, so I began to get ready. First I took a shower, during which I carefully scrubbed every square inch of my body with a washcloth. Then I brushed each tooth, back and front, and rinsed with mouthwash for a full minute. I cleaned out my ears, my eyes, and my nose. I meticulously trimmed finger- and toenails. I shaved, even though it was completely unnecessary, and then cauterized my raw face with aftershave, which brought tears to my eyes. Then, thoroughly sterilized and reeking of bay rum, I spent a further half-hour getting dressed, putting on each item of clothing very slowly and exactly and making sure it fit just so. When I was completely ready it was five o’clock. I still had two hours before I was supposed to meet Annie at the hill.

  Writes Willie Mann:

  There is nothing like the ritual of courtship to bring out what is simultaneously the bravest, the most ridiculous, and the most vulnerable in men. Our vanity overtakes us, and we preen ourselves like birds. This seems all the more ridiculous when one considers that the end result of all this is to gain the privilege of removing all our finery, and in fact all of our clothing, in the presence of the one for whom we don it in the first place.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d finally started to grow. Although I would probably never reach the six feet I so earnestly desired, at least I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life looking up at other people. Annie was only an inch taller than I was now, and that distance was shrinking rapidly.

  At six-forty-five an idea occurred to me. I sneaked the keys to Grandpa’s Galaxie from the hook on the kitchen wall, started it up, and drove slowly to the base of the hill. Grandpa himself had been passed out all afternoon in the living room, and I knew he wouldn’t notice that the car was gone even if he woke up. I giggled to myself as I guided the clattering Galaxie down Mann Road. Driving was a brilliant idea; now I would have a car in which I could make out with Annie, should the opportunity arise.

  She was waiting for me at the foot of a giant oak. The headlights of the Galaxie caught her like a rabbit, and for a moment she froze, confused. She’d been expecting me on foot. I turned out the headlights and opened the door.

  “Come on,” I called.

  “Oh my God,” she said. I opened the passenger door for her and she slid in next
to me. “Billy, this is dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Do you know how to drive?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “I mean really drive!”

  “I’ve been driving since I was five,” I reminded her.

  “Lawnmowers don’t count, Billy! You have to be sixteen to drive a car! What if Madison sees you?”

  Madison was Mannville’s police officer. He usually spent his Saturday nights parked in the square, which was where the movie theater was. Annie was right; I’d forgotten about him. But there was an easy way around that one.

  “We’ll park behind the bank,” I said. “Then we can just walk across the Square to the theater. He’ll never see us.”

  Annie said nothing. I was crushed. Here I was, being gallant and manly and daring, and she thought I was just being stupid.

  “Are you mad?” I asked her.

  “It’s not that,” she said. The tone of her voice had changed suddenly. It was flat and dead, as though another person was speaking. I knew instantly what that meant. Her father had been after her again. I stopped the car and turned on the interior light. Then I took her chin in my hand and gently examined her face.

  “No bruises,” I said. I brightened my voice to hide the sudden twist of apprehension in my bowels. “You look all right.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I look fine.”

  “You still wanna go?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  She began to shake, just barely noticeably. I was still holding her chin. I thought now might be a good time to kiss her, but something told me not to; instead I put my arms around her shoulders and drew her to me tightly. Her arms remained down at her sides.

  “Hug me back,” I whispered in her ear.

  “I don’t know how,” she said.

  “It’s easy,” I said. “You just pick up your—”

  “Billy,” she said.

  “What.”

  “I know how you feel,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I know how you feel about me,” she said.

  I pushed back from her quickly, horrified. Had she brushed against my crotch by accident? Did she know what a pervert I’d become? “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to appear casual.

  She smiled weakly, but there was no mirth in her eyes. “You’re going to hate this,” she said. A sick feeling shot through me. My secret is out, I thought. She knows what I really am. I’m a three-legged monster. I’m a demon of lust, a sex-wanting maniac. I’m damned.

  “You’re the sweetest guy in the world, Billy,” she said. “I think you’re wonderful, and I want to feel the same way about you. I really do. But I can’t feel that way. In fact, I can’t feel anything at all.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “Nice boy meets nice girl and they fall in love,” she said. “That’s how it happens, right?”

  “I guess,” I said guardedly. She was suddenly sounding much older than herself. And I was still waiting for the accusation.

  “Well,” she said, “I want you to know something.”

  “All right.” Here it comes.

  She sighed. “No. Wait. First let me tell you something else.”

  “What?”

  “I was really happy that you wanted to go on a date with me.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes, I was. You were perfect. The way you asked me. All silly and sweet. Just the way a nice boy should ask a girl on a date. Just like I always imagined it would be, if anyone ever asked me out.”

  “Well, good,” I said, thoroughly confused.

  “But now I have to tell you the other thing.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “I’m not…I’m not a nice girl.”

  “Well now, there you have something,” I said. “You’re not always nice. To me, I mean. Sometimes you get kind of bossy.”

  “I’m not joking around. Please.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I mean I’m not a nice girl like you meet at school. Or innocent.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “I kind of thought you were.” I was still trying to tease her, but it was failing miserably. It was too late to make this into something lighthearted. It was not me she was accusing; it was herself, and I hadn’t the slightest clue what she was talking about.

  “Well, you were wrong,” she said. “I’m not innocent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she said carefully, “that I’m not a virgin.”

  I stared at her. This was worse than if she’d accused me of something. This was not what I’d expected at all. The Galaxie was parked on the side of Mann Road, the engine running. The heater was finally starting to work.

  “Well, I…um…”

  Annie almost laughed.

  “Don’t you know what I mean?” she said.

  There was a long silence.

  I’d always known what she was about to tell me, or at least I’d known it for long enough that it felt like always. But I didn’t want to hear her say it. Not now. Not tonight. I’d been gibbering with excitement all week about our big date, and this is how it was: scary. That was it. I was scared. Of her, a little bit. Of how she sounded so much older. And of the fact that what we’d tacitly agreed never to mention was about to be said out loud.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I said.

  “I have to,” she said. “Please let me say it.”

  I looked at her.

  “If you really love me, Billy, and I know you do, you’ll let me say it. I have to tell someone. And you can’t tell anybody.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Do you promise?”

  “Do I promise?” I echoed.

  That night brought about a number of changes between Annie and myself. The first was that she told me the truth for the first time, there in Grandpa’s old Galaxie. The second was that I flat out and deliberately lied to her. I lied through my teeth, and I looked her in the eye while doing it. And this was my great lie: “I promise,” I said, “that I will never tell anybody.”

  She turned her gaze to the windshield, looking out at the whiteness.

  “The reason I’m not a virgin,” Annie said, choosing her words carefully, “is because of my dad. And that’s why I’m not nice and innocent like the other girls are at school. And you deserve someone like them. You’re a sweet guy, Billy, and you’re the best friend I have. But I’m not what you need. I’m a load of problems and I’m going to be crazy when I get older. In fact, I’m probably crazy right now.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  She said, “You could at least not stare at me.”

  “You’re not crazy,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

  She looked at me again.

  “My dad is fucking me,” she said.

  I must have flinched, looked away. My ears didn’t quite believe the word she’d just used. She never swore like that. Ever.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear me say what I just said?” Her voice was growing higher and her shaking was visible now.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You don’t like to hear it, do you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Well,” she said, “then just imagine how it must feel to have it actually happen.”

  “I can’t,” I said. I was shaking now myself.

  “No. You couldn’t. Nobody can.”

  Annie looked out through the windshield at the quiet, frozen night. Grandpa was right; there was nothing Simpsonlike about her, not a trace of the sloping brow or jutting jaw. Her nose was long and thin, her lips beginning to fill out with the first flush and fullness of womanhood. She’d cut her hair perhaps only three times since I’d known her, and tonight it fell down her back in a long single braid, soft and clean and reddish-brown. She was beautiful. Not in the
same way I thought Elsie Orfenbacher was beautiful; more so, somehow, not in a womanly sort of way, or yes, like a woman, but like something else too, maybe like…I didn’t know. She was just beautiful.

  I cleared my throat.

  “You’ve always known, too,” she said.

  “Yeah. Or I kind of knew.” What the hell am I supposed to do now? I asked myself.

  “I want to know what you think of me,” she said.

  “What I think of you?”

  “Yes, Billy. What you think of me.”

  “I…still think the same,” I said.

  “Would you still ask me on a date now, if I’d already said it? If I’d already told you?”

  “Of course!”

  She examined me closely.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “You’re lying about something.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “It’s not a fair question. I always knew. You just told me that yourself. And you were right.”

  “You didn’t know. You guessed. That’s not the same thing.”

  “No. I always knew. I used to spy on you when I was a little kid,” I said suddenly. “Did I ever tell you that?”

  “You what?”

  “I used to sneak up the hill and hide in the trees.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Because I was in love with you,” I said. “I’ve always been in love with you. You used to sing to yourself all the time. And you had imaginary friends.”

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  “Do you remember them?”

  “Yes, you creep,” she said. “You spied on me?”

  “I was watching out for you. I used to hear him yelling. That was when I decided I was coming after you. I’ve always loved you, Annie,” I said again. “I always will, too. No matter what happens.”