his hands alternately flailing then clutching his breast, his feet kicking, his mouth shuddering, air squealing from a clenched larynx, trying to call for help, blubbering in disbelief that Brendan was sitting there transfixed in fascination just three feet away munching pretzel logs.
Maybe that would do it.
“Brendy?” he shouted from his chair downstairs in the TV room.
“In a minute!” Richard had called him that as long as he could remember, which wasn’t much. It came from Brendy Bear, as in Brendy Bear Hugs because Brendan was always hugging and kissing people, Richard claimed. He didn’t do that anymore. He hadn’t touched his grandfather in years. He hadn’t touched anybody in years. Nor did he understand the impulse. He had been misnamed.
Brendan really had nothing against Richard. In fact, he liked him the way a dog might like a devoted owner. He was a nice old man who treated him well, gave him money and, when he turned seventeen, his old Ford pickup which Richard had used for his plumbing business before retiring. Richard had taken him in when his parents died, raising him as best he could at his age. He was protective, kind, and generous with what little he had. There surely was no reason to kill him. It was purely academic. Brendan simply wondered what he’d feel—if anything. He wondered if he’d cry.
Richard had a bad heart. A couple years ago he had suffered a myocardial infarction and now suffered from ventricular tachycardia arrhythmia—rapid heartbeats. In his condition, Richard had maybe three years at best. His friends were dying off, one last week in fact—maybe his last. Brendan could tell that that bothered Richard.
Yeats was right about that.
In the medicine cabinet sat a row of maybe a dozen little amber plastic pill containers. Richard Berryman.
Lipitor, Enalapril, Demerol, metropolol, Pronestyl.
WARNING: This drug may impair the ability to drive or operate machinery.
WARNING: Do not use this medicine if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breast- feeding.
WARNING: This medication may decrease your ability to be human.
Generic name:
Brendan closed the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom. At the bottom of the stairs the light of the television made the foyer pulse. Brendan walked down, the lines from Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” drowning out all the other clutter in his head.
He entered the parlor.
The old man was sprawled out in his La-Z-Boy, his wispy white hair barely covering the old pink dome, his T- shirt rumpled, his pajama bottoms half up his pathetic white sticks of legs, his bare feet knobbed on the footrest like claws. According to the old photos, he used to be a big, strapping guy.
Richard looked up, his eyes wet and yellow, like sad clams. Death would be a gift.
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.
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.
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
