Last Will

  I woke up each morning to discover the ceilings had been lowered while I was asleep. Every day the rooms in the house seemed smaller. I was a lobster put to boil on a low fire, feeling the water heating, but not realizing what the outcome of the hot bath would be.

  By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late.

  Or I never realized it at all.

  It was that late.

  I was a seafood metaphor.

  I didn’t know how many days went that way; I never did. I lost track, until I heard someone talking to me. I inhaled, smelling the dry, preserved familiarity of my bedroom, and over it, the scent of jasmine. A woman, not my mother.

  It was the funeral stopper, Meda Amos. She stood next to the bed, looking down at me, and said, “Mr. Raleigh, your aunt is here to see you.” When I sat up, she took a step backward, but I felt her looking at me—staring really—breaking the little agreement we’d had.

  Creepy

  Meda

  I wasn’t thrilled about working for Aunt Bryant again, but I was glad to get the money, even though it meant leaving Annadore with Gramma. The money for groceries had to come from somewhere. The work wasn’t bad, because it wasn’t like being a maid at a motel, which was the worst job I ever had. Mostly it was just keeping up with the way dirt sneaks in everywhere in a big, old house.

  We didn’t see much of Mr. Raleigh, which was fine with me, because I thought he was a little creepy. Not in a bad way, just kind of goofy and distracted. Aunt Bryant got nervous when we hadn’t seen him in a couple days and the dinner tray we left out on the kitchen counter one night wasn’t touched at all. Nancy knocked on his bedroom door, but he didn’t answer, so Aunt Bryant said we ought to open the door and have a peek, just to be sure he was okay. I didn’t feel like messing around, so I knocked louder and heard Mr. Raleigh mumble, “What? What is it?”

  “Do you, um, do you want me to make up your room?” I said, like it was a motel.

  “No, thank you.”

  I shrugged at Aunt Bryant, but she kept frowning.

  When I asked what she was worried about, she said, “Now, I better not ever hear this come back to me, because I won’t have you gossiping about the Raleigh family.” She waited until Nancy and I nodded. “After his father and brother died, he took a whole bottle of pills that the doctor gave Mrs. Raleigh for her nerves. The evening after the funeral, his uncle went up to the room at the top of the stairs, just by chance, you know, because there must have been somebody using the downstairs washroom. Mr. Alan went up and found him. Came downstairs white as a ghost, shouting for us to call an ambulance. It gives me a chill remembering that. Mary Beth’s Donald was a volunteer paramedic then. He says Mr. Raleigh was dead when they got here. They had to use the paddles on him.”

  “You don’t think he would again?” Nancy said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. He was just a boy then,” Aunt Bryant said, but she looked upset.

  The next day, Mr. Raleigh’s aunt came to see him and asked me to let him know she was there. He didn’t answer, even though I knocked really loudly, so I went into the room. He was sleeping, curled up on his side. His hair was matted to his head like he hadn’t washed it in a while. When I said his name, he rolled over on his back and looked up at me. Then he sat up and looked around.

  “Could I have some water, please?” he said. He was so hoarse I wondered how long it was since he drank anything. I filled the glass on his nightstand and when he finished that, I got him another glassful and he drank that, too. While he was drinking it, I looked at him sitting there in his underwear. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself, because I’d never seen anyone like him. Without his clothes, he was bigger than I thought, but too thin. Just big, raw bones and not much meat on him. The way he was built, he looked like a giant ten-year old, all arms and legs. While I was watching him finish his water, his aunt came upstairs.

  “That’s fine, dear. Thank you,” she said. That meant I was supposed to leave.

  Weakness

  Aunt Ginny

  After I’d sent Miss Amos out, he said, “I’m sorry.” He apologized because he’d been taught to think of it as his fault. His mother had never believed in his depression as a thing apart from his character; it was why she thought he was weak.

  “You haven’t been eating,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you taking your medicine?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Bernie. What would your mother say?”

  It nearly broke my heart to see him that way. He was even thinner than he’d been as a young man, when he was struggling to grow into his height. When you love another woman’s child the way I love Bernie, you put your trust in God to keep you close, because no one else thinks of your bond as special. No one consults you when they’re making decisions about his future. Yet, there he was, brought to me, for me to take care of. Whatever Katherine chose to believe about her sons, Bernie was as capable as Robby had been. He just hadn’t seen the thing he was meant to do.

  “Please, don’t call my mother. Please,” he said.

  I was ashamed for scolding him, and for having thought of calling Katherine. Seeing the state he was in, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He didn’t need her judgment or her doctors as much as he needed some kindness.

  “No, I won’t call her.” I took off my glove, meaning to check him for fever, but when I tried to put my hand on his forehead he shied away. “I know she’s a little hard on you, but you have to look at things as a whole. You know, when your grandfather was a little boy, no one thought he would amount to much. They used to call him Penny, because he misbehaved so much, and had a way of turning up at the wrong time, just like that old saying about bad pennies.”

  “That’s apocryphal,” he said.

  “I beg pardon.”

  “It’s not true, that story. People like the story so they keep telling it. Nobody ever called that man Penny.”

  “Yes, I know what apocryphal means,” I said, a bit annoyed with his ten-dollar words. “I only wanted you to see that life isn’t all set out for you. People change. And I think you should let an old woman tell her stories.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you still pray, Bernie? Would you like me to pray with you?”

  He shook his head and wouldn’t look at me.

  I loved him so much and he was returned to me a stranger again. Secretly, I had always believed God sent Bernie as a blessing to Alan and me, to make bearable what might have crushed me under its weight. It seems shameful, considering how young he was, but there were many times I cried on his shoulder, especially after Joan died. He never used those stabbing words that adults offer: She’s gone on to a better place. You have to keep on living. There will be other chances. It must be God’s will. They appear to offer comfort, but behind them all are the suggestion that you ought to stiffen your spine and stop crying. I once thought Bernie would make a great minister, because when he was only five years old, he knelt down and prayed with his grandmother in her final hours. He had such healing in him, such compassion, and they saw to it that he became nothing inside. They made him into an observer.

  “Well, why don’t you take a shower and then we can go have some lunch?” I said, trying to be cheerful. I’d forgotten how angry I was at the Raleigh family, and I felt the sort of fury that isn’t healthy for an old woman to feel. Once he was in the shower he must have felt better, because I heard him singing. That seemed more like the Bernie I knew, and just because he chose not to, it didn’t mean I couldn’t pray for him.

  Changing the Guard

  After Aunt Ginny left, I met up with Mrs. Bryant in the front hall and waited for her to say, “Good afternoon, Mr. Raleigh.” Instead, she reached into her apron pocket, presented me with a handful of message slips, and said, “I need to speak with you, Mr. Raleigh.” Five minutes later, she was sitting on the other side of my grandfather’s desk, looking over the piles of phone messages at me. br />
  “Mr. Raleigh and I had discussed me retiring. My health isn’t what it used to be, what with the arthritis,” she said. I accepted my defeat graciously.

  After Mrs. Bryant’s resignation, I called the office of the Chairman of Raleigh Industries, and his assistant said she would call the assistant of the VP of Human Resources, who would hire me an assistant, who perhaps would kill the rat that ate the grain that sat in the house that Jack built. Mr. Tveite was right. I needed help.

  I hoped, too, that replacing Mrs. Bryant could be accomplished from a distance, but my grandfather had always managed his own household staff. The next day, Mrs. Bryant presented me with her replacements. She asked me into the kitchen and forced me to engage in a farce of an interview, as though my opinion could be of any value. I wasn't surprised that one of her prospective hires was her daughter, Mary Beth Trentam, who seemed embarrassed to shake my hand. Nepotism I had expected, but I was dismayed when she reintroduced the other applicant saying, “And you’ve met Mary Beth’s niece, Meda Amos. She’s been helping out temporarily.”

  We didn’t shake hands.

  Once we were seated at the kitchen table, Mrs. Bryant began by explaining, “Mary Beth’s been working in retail, but she’s really been looking for something more stable.”

  “And I’ve come in a few times as temp help for Mother over the years,” Mrs. Trentam said. She was a younger version of her mother, well-built and just starting to go a little thick around the waist. Her hair wasn’t grey yet, but it gave away her age all the same. It was styled with such exacting detail that she must have worn the same hairstyle for the last fifteen years. That or it was a wig.

  In a tone of mournful confidence, Mrs. Bryant said, “Meda’s been out of work for about two months now. On welfare. I used to have full-time help, but she quit this August and I never hired anyone to replace her. It’s better to have two people steady. It’s a big house.”

  I considered all of it unnecessary information. My personal policy toward most of humanity resembles the Army’s policy regarding homosexuals. I won’t ask; please, don’t tell me.

  “I’m sure you know best, Mrs. Bryant,” I caught myself saying, for the third or fourth time in ten minutes. Meda sat to my right at the kitchen table, pretending to sip her coffee, although I could see the level in the cup hadn’t gone down at all. Her serenity had a small chink in it.

  If the lovely, shy creature tucked under God’s arm in the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco of Creation was intended to be Eve, she was nothing but a pale ghost of her Talmudic precursor. Meda was the darkly illuminated incarnation of Lillith, one of Adam’s earlier wives, whom he repudiated for wanting to be on top during sex. As though she could read my mind, Meda glanced at me before I could look away. Her eyes were blacker than my coffee and just as liquid.

  Based on my inability to look at her with anything like indifference, I knew it was a horrible idea to have her working in the house full time, but I agreed to it. I also agreed to the salaries Mrs. Bryant suggested. I would have agreed to almost anything to bring the interview to an end.

  “You’ll need to get the information to give the accountant for taxes,” Mrs. Bryant said. “Or I could call the accountant.” She was thinking of unanswered phone messages when she stressed the matter of paperwork. I couldn’t be trusted.

  Once they were gone for the day I wandered around the house, feeling like a time traveler. In my grandmother’s sitting room, the same lace curtains hung against walls not papered, but hand-painted in complimentary stripes. The furniture was all upholstered in the same shades of blue. I half expected to find her at the piano, absently picking out a song with one or two fingers. I wasn’t afraid of ghosts; as far as I knew, I was the only person who ever died in the house.

  I sat down in the library, trying to decide what to do. Reading was a slippery slope that distorted time. I needed to replace my grandfather’s TV. I needed to get cable or a satellite dish to give me a schedule. It was almost six o’clock and I couldn’t go to bed before ten, because it was dangerous to allow the rules of time to be loosened by four whole hours. Those were the calculations that led me to do the thing my mother had discouraged. Like I was a rowdy kid, she warned me that I wasn’t to be a “nuisance” to my Aunt Ginny, but the fear of my waiting bed won out. I drove into town.

  After we exhausted our small talk, Aunt Ginny asked if it wouldn’t be nice to look at some photo albums. I wanted to say no, but she had reached in with her bare hand and pulled me out of the boiling water. I settled in next to her with the albums across our laps and tried to linger over the oldest photos. My grandparents on their honeymoon in Paris. Aunt Ginny and Uncle Alan’s wedding. My parents’ wedding.

  “Look,” I said. “You’re so beautiful.” She still was beautiful. As we sat on the sofa, hip to hip, I took her hand into mine, admiring the slenderness of her fingers. Her skin had begun its decline into delicate crepe, making her hand an exquisite little creature in my own big, square hand with its ugly pinky stub. I couldn’t resist the urge to stroke her hand after I captured it, and the cool distraction of her engagement ring only added to the pleasure. To drag out the happy memories, I tried to keep Aunt Ginny from turning the page, but she was having none of it. After a few moments of being petted, she slipped her hand out of mine and pushed past those photos rendered harmless by age.

  On the next page was Aunt Ginny’s oldest child. If he had lived he would have been ten years older than I was. He was almost lost in the lace of a christening gown. His eyes were glassy, and death was haunting him. The photos ended before he could appear in a picture of his second birthday.

  Aunt Ginny’s second child peered out of a bundle of blankets in the middle of July, going to his christening, and then a few months later to his funeral. There wasn’t even a first birthday party. As we turned the pages, I recognized my brother by his glow of health. Robby was a non-descript baby, but he stood out in that procession of dying children. In later pictures, they went on being babies, while he moved toward adolescence.

  I lost count, wasn’t sure which cousin was which, until my own christening picture showed up as a milestone. I couldn’t imagine how it had been for Aunt Ginny, to go through every pregnancy hoping that each one might be different. I don’t remember the medical terminology, but the math was simple. Each baby had a fifty percent chance of inheriting that fatal gene. The odds don’t seem bad, but statistically it’s possible to throw a quarter up a million times and have it land tails up a million times. There were no points awarded for past efforts. Every time the scoreboard went back to zero.

  Another photo showed a birthday cake with two brave candles. The birthday girl slumped back behind her cake, her little face not plump, but swollen. In the chair next to her my brother devoured life in a fistful of cake.

  The next cousin looked dead already in his christening gown.

  One of the cousins didn’t live long enough to be christened. The only photo of her was in a hospital bassinet, a plastic band ringing her frail wrist.

  At last we came to the cousin I remembered most clearly: Joan, like a grey and wizened gnome, aged with the effort of living. We thought she would live, that she would start kindergarten in the fall, but she didn’t. At the funeral her small face was peaceful and unrecognizable.

  My cousins went on long past my ability to recall them. There were six of them altogether. Four basic elements recurred in the photos. Robby: sturdy and blond; me: taller, dark-haired; a succession of frail cousins: dying; my aunt: in a constant flux between the hopeful pastels of christenings and the determined black of funerals.

  More bothersome than my cousins was the face of my Uncle Alan. Seeing pictures of him made me think of one of the last times I’d been to Aunt Ginny’s house after I flunked out of McGill University. It would be a great story if after that failed venture into higher learning, I’d been stiff-necked and taken no beneficence from my grandfather, but that’s not how it happened. Although I rarely saw the man, I wa
s well aware my various career opportunities came to me through him. I didn’t receive them directly from his hand, but through his dogged emissary, Uncle Alan.

  They tried to make me a teacher, a production manager, even the assistant principal at a private school in Atlanta. They were all things dreamed up by my uncle and made possible by my grandfather’s connections. I didn’t have a degree in library science, but I worked at a library. I didn’t have a degree in anything, because McGill wasn’t the first college I failed out of. It was the last.

  Uncle Alan gave up on having his own children sooner than my aunt did, and he staked his hopes on me. We were both younger sons. In Aunt Ginny’s albums there were pictures of me on Uncle Alan’s knee, standing in the car seat next to him, playing catch with him. Was I already failing there?

  The visit I was thinking of, I listened to my uncle try to put a positive spin on my future. My grandfather, he said, was just as happy that I wasn’t going to finish college. A waste of time and money. Then he asked what I really wanted to do, and I answered something I’ve long since forgotten, and then began the venture of me being an assistant librarian. A year later Uncle Alan died, so it was a good thing I managed to hang on as a librarian. In the five years since his funeral, I hadn’t been to Aunt Ginny’s house even once.

  Aunt Ginny turned to the final pictures in the album and there I was graduating from high school, Uncle Alan’s arm around me. At nineteen I towered over him in my mortarboard. Off to one side of the picture, my mother fished in her purse distractedly. I can’t blame her for not looking much like a proud parent. I didn’t even earn enough credits to graduate from high school; I have a piece of paper that cost my grandfather a donation toward a new football stadium.