Josephine
The other day I learned of the death of my cousin Edward.
His father was my father’s brother, but our families were not close, and I hardly knew him, save for one summer – or, really, part of one summer – we spent together at our grandparents’ house, a sunny yellow house with a mansard roof outside Harvard Square.
Edward’s death was what you might call a delayed death, the postponed death of someone who had previously beaten the odds and was living on borrowed time. Before he had even begun kindergarten, Edward had been in and out of various prestigious children’s hospitals. He had appeared once appeared on the national news. He sat placidly between his mother, a large woman with a shiny chin and brittle blonde hair, and my sad-sack Uncle Arthur. “This little boy has a mysterious form of brain cancer,” said the reporter in a measured voice that contained the correct proportion of shock to dispassion.
Who could have resisted him? That plaintive angel between his two flawed parents. His pale skin seemed nearly translucent, with a blue cast like the chlorinated water of a swimming pool; his round, bald head only amplified the size of his brilliantine eyes and emphasized the downward turnings of his mouth. He was the spitting image of arrested, perpetual innocence – of undeserved suffering from an illness that did not leave him repulsive, but rather rendered him more ethereal. He didn’t say a word, blinking slowly, while his mother babbled on about “hopeful new treatments” and “prayer,” “chemotherapy” and “miracles” -- as though those things have anything to do with one another.
But “miracles” do happen, I suppose, because he lived. He left behind the cancer ward and all his dying compatriots, the television cameras, the ministrations of the make a wish foundation, the visits from sports stars and celebrities. He became a survivor.
But by the time I knew him – the summer we were thrown together – all of that was very nearly ancient history. He would be thirteen in the fall, and although I was two years younger, I was at least an inch taller, and we were both in the same grade at school.
He was staying with our grandparents because his parents were getting divorced. I was there because my parents, who had been separated, were getting back together. We did not get along.
It was an immediate, bristling dislike – a marrow-deep hatred. You could say it was in our blood.
He was delicate, blonde, fastidious. He had a persistent, dry cough and would tap his tapered fingers nervously on his chest before clearing his throat. He sat with his legs crossed, and sometimes the top leg would kick out, as though impelled by misfired reflex. He moved his lips excessively when he spoke, in a way that had nothing to do with the formation of words but was more like an insect moving its mandibles. I found him grotesque.
I am certain he felt the same about me. When we met, he looked me over with disgust: my bitten fingernails, my unruly dark hair, my baggy clothes. At dinner, he would stop eating to scowl at me across the table if I chewed with my mouth open. Fifteen years ago, I was much like I am now: large, sloppy, and oblivious -- unmannered. You know I’ve never been able to curb a belch or comb my hair. I remember once colliding with Edward as I cantered down the stairs. He recoiled, and pronounced his one word of judgment on me: “gross.”
My grandparents did little to curb our enmity. For whatever reason, I was the favorite – although that would soon change.
Why was such a dirty little cretin – because I was filthy, cretinous -- a favorite? My father’s mother, my grandmother, is, like my own mother, a foreigner. She was born in Austria. You’d be hard pressed to determine where she was from by the way she spoke. I think she taught English before the war, and she spoke the language without accent or inflection, although her speech was peppered with british expressions: “trousers,” “washroom,” “petticoats.”
My grandfather had been a doctor, and though he had given up his practice a decade earlier, in his old age he retained the competent and efficient mannerisms of his former profession. His passion was the problem of overpopulation, and he spent many evenings in his dim study writing eloquent letters to newspapers alerting them of the urgency of his cause.
He had met my grandmother during the war, I think, the circumstances were vague and I didn’t have the wit or words then to inquire. Now it is too late to ask.
In any case, my grandmother’s attitude toward life was consistent with that of fin de siecle Vienna – the Vienna that must have existed a generation before her birth, but which had been buried – buried alive! – by a century that had sent the previous era into exile. I think she saw in me, in my constant sketching and in my disorder, in the thunderclaps of my melancholia -- she saw in all this the sure symptoms of what she would call an “artistic temperament.” For her, being an artist was the most exalted state of existence, and she was proud that her ambitious, worldly son had produced such wild, impractical progeny. “My little animal,” she called me, affectionately, “my little beastly Jo-Jo.”
Edward she just called Edward.
But as I said, I believe our hatred wasn’t merely circumstantial. This was something in our blood, I think. My father and Edward’s father are – I suppose the word for it is “estranged.” I’d never quite been sure why; my father didn’t speak very much about my Uncle Arthur. It seemed to me less the result of some specific fight, but rather the continuation of a simmering hatred that had always existed between them.
Looking at the photograph of the two of them that stood on my grandparent’s mantelpiece, you can see the difference between them. They hardly look like brothers. The picture must have been taken during a fishing trip. My father, probably about 12, is in the foreground, slender, bare-chested, beaming, holding up a silvery fish in triumph. He is a redhead; his face is spangled with freckles whose pattern seems to map out a future of little resistance, successful endeavors. In the middle shadows lurches Uncle Albert, seven years his senior, likely home from college for the summer. He is wearing bellbottoms, and he holds his hands behind his back, uncomfortable. His sideburns terminate in a sparse, untender beard that seems stuck on to his heavy jaw like a sick lichen. You can see dark stains spreading from his armpits. His eyes are in shadow; you cannot read them.
Their fates seem to be foreshadowed in that photograph. My father, all-American, optimistic, lucky, slightly brutal – now wealthy, a banker, married to a glamorous French woman -- my mother, who will always be more beautiful than I am. Uncle Albert, overweight, mediocre, a failure in every sense, whose own son, Edward, this flawless, antiseptic prig, seemed to be everything he was not. Special. Chosen.
I, grateful for love, told myself that my grandparents saw through his act, saw his dustless perfection for what it was: a craven cry for attention. As though I were any less craven! In any case, over the course of the summer, with my grandmother’s indulgence, I became semi-feral. I slept late, the thick curtains of my bedroom blocking out all light, and I walked barefoot throughout the house and garden. The soles of my feet grew tough and dark, like an animal’s paws. I left off brushing my hair, and it matted into a thick tangle at the base of my neck. Sometimes I spent the whole afternoon in the sap-scented shade of the three pine trees that grew in the backyard, drawing in my sketchbook, or more often, sitting still and silent and content.
As for Edward, he stayed indoors most days, reading. His fair skin burnt easily and painfully, and he had never really been interested in sports or other things boys did.
I suppose you could say that we both had the habit of solitude. Even though our bedrooms were next door to each other, we avoided one another as much as we could. At night sometimes I heard him coughing his short, percussive coughs. Sometimes the coughs sounded as though he were tapping the wall between our beds, knocking out some code or notice.
The days passed lazily, as I gauged the slow and vagrant pulse of a dying summer. Fourth of July, for me, has always marked the point where I begin to feel the season, which once seemed endless, irrevocably slipping away. And for this Fourth of July, my grandparent’s neighbors – the Walters – were having a barbeque.
Edward chose not to go; he said he felt unwell. He did look a little clammy. “Well, if you need anything, dear, or change your mind,” my grandmother said, “we’re right across the street.”
The Walters’ granddaughter was named Lisa, and she was one of those devious, thin-lipped girls for whom I’ve always had an immediate dislike. We had met earlier in the summer, with the mutual suspicion that children have when friendship is presumed or foreordained by some parallel alliance among our elders.
While the grown-ups chatted on the patio, we sat side by side on the swings at the other end of the backyard. We had absolutely nothing to say to each other.
I sighed, loudly and without restraint. My toes dragged furrows in the mulch.
She gave me a quick glance, and then continued looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “…I bet I know something about you that you don’t know,”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“About your dad, my grandpa told me.”
“About my dad?”
“Yeah. He said that when your dad was little, all these cats went missing from the neighborhood and no one knew what happened to them. Then one day they found them all in the shed behind your grandparents’ house, all hung up on ropes and dead, and your dad did it.” She waited for my reaction.
“My dad?”
“Yeh. That’s what my grandpa said. He said there was six of them, and that your dad killed them all!” She was looking at me, her chin up, with an infuriating smugness.
I was horrified. I was indignant. I thought back to the picture on the mantle, the picture of my dad, when he was my age, my proud, boyish, arrogant father holding up that silvery fish. I didn’t believe it. “You made that up!”
We went to settle it. Our grandparents were sitting outside, on the patio lined with gray flagstones. A glass bowl of salted almonds on the middle of the table, and water beaded on the pale green glass of the bottle of white wine, two-thirds empty, that sat between them. The leaves were vivid in the slanting afternoon light, and they shook softly. Distant, the pop and yelp of sparklers going off.
I hung back, I had second thoughts about disrupting their civilized, adult gathering – but Lisa had no such compunctions. “Grandpa,” she shrilled, “isn’t it true that Jo’s dad killed a bunch of cats?”
Hearing this, my grandmother stiffened. My grandfather looked at me, then looked at my grandmother, who was noticeably furious, looking at no one. In the silence, Lisa’s grandmother stepped out of the kitchen with a platter of raw hamburgers, shellacked with barbeque sauce and ready for the grill. “Why, what’s the matter?” she said. Then sharply, “Lisa! What have you done?”
Lisa’s grandfather silenced his wife, and squinted at me. “No, it’s not your father that did it.”
“But grandpa,” she stomped her foot, looked to her grandmother in appeal, “you said…”
“It wasn’t her father, I said, and you shouldn’t be repeating that kind of thing around.” He looked nervously at my grandparents. My grandmother avoided his gaze, her lips half-parted. It was up to my grandfather to say, “It’s alright, Harry, you know kids, how they are…”
Long after the barbeque, after the fireworks, and as I was getting ready for bed that night, my grandmother came into my room. She sat on the edge of my bed. “I want you to forget what that awful little girl told you today,” she said sweetly. Remembering how upset she looked that afternoon, I hugged her, resting my head on her shoulder.
“And could I please ask that you do not mention it to Edward?”
“Okay, grandma,” I whispered.
“She was an awful little girl, wasn’t she?”
“I think she was a little young for me to play with. She’s not even in middle school.”
“Those people never knew how to raise their children. Awful children!”
What she left unsaid was that girls like Lisa – catty, pretty, popular -- were nothing like me, nothing special like I was. But I understood it from the way she looked at me, the care with which she examined my drawings, pointing out details that she particularly liked, lavishing her praise.
In late July, after a clutch of muggy, suffocating days, one of those summer thunderstorms that you see gathering in the afternoon came to break the heat with blasts of dark water against the windows and lightning shaking the ghastly, backlit sky.
I stood outside, perched on the stone wall, watching the storm gather over and beyond the neighbor’s roofs. I remember my pleasure at the cool, directionless wind, the faint ozone smell, the increasing clatter of the leaves and silence of the birds.
My grandmother called me inside: “Josephine!” and I ran, grinning, into her soft arms.
I watched the storm from the big windows of the dining room. After a particularly loud crack, the power went out with a weak little noise.
My grandmother gathered us together in the study, with cheese sandwiches and bananas.
The candlelight didn’t reach far enough to illuminate the corners of that large room, filled with the dark scents of ashes and leather.
“Why don’t we read Mother Goose?” Neither Edward or I objected that we were too old for nursery rhymes.
My grandfather took down a book from the shelf.
“Who killed cock robin?” he asked, archly, and continued.
“‘I,’ said the Sparrow,’With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.’”
“This is a very nice one, though very sad,” said my grandmother.
"Who saw him die?" "I," said the Fly, "With my little eye, I saw him die."
"Who caught his blood?" "I," said the Fish, "With my little dish, I caught his blood."
"Who'll make the shroud?" "I," said the Beetle,"With my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud."
"Who'll dig his grave?" "I," said the Owl,"With my pick and shovel, I'll dig his grave."
I looked at Edward, and I thought I saw him tremble in the flickering dark. I pulled closer to my grandmother, who caressed and kissed the crown of my head.
My grandfather continues:
"Who'll be the parson?" "I," said the Rook,"With my little book, I'll be the parson."
"Who'll toll the bell?" "I," said the bull,"Because I can pull, I'll toll the bell."
All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.
“We used to have a picture book of this, where they used real stuffed birds and animals in the pictures.” My grandmother to me. “I remember your father was terrified by the picture of the fish with a little dish of red blood. It reminds me, come to think of it, of some of your beautiful pictures. Oh, where could that book be now?”
“How about my dad?” asked Edward. “What did my dad do?”
“Why, what do you mean, dear?” Asked my grandmother, with some tension in her voice.
“Did you read him stories out loud too, or was it just Uncle George?”
My grandfather answered, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Your father was a lot like you. He liked to read all day long, just like you do. Ha ha! I don’t think we ever had to read aloud to him! As soon as he could walk, he could read!”
“That’s right,” said my grandmother. “He was a very precocious and intelligent boy, just like you are.”
The next morning dawned clean and bright. I was up early, up and in the garden in my shiftless pajamas, a glass of orange juice on the ground next to me, my sketchbook on my lap. I remember clearly: I was drawing a snail, a dun-colored snail that was cautiously finding its way up the stalk of a tomato plant.
A shadow fell over my sketchbook. My grandmother was standing next to me, her arms crossed. “Come here,” she said, “come with me.”
I followed her into the house, up two flights of stairs to the hallway that separated by bedroom from Edward’s.
Drawn on the wall in black magic marker was a picture of the type that often finds its way to the stalls of public restrooms: the larger-than-life image of a solitary priapic urge. But surprisingly sophisticated: a finely rendered illustration of a repulsive gesture.
I felt cold, and then I felt hot. My cheeks burned. My grandmother glared at me. She didn’t ask, “Did you do this?” she didn’t say, “Why did you do this?” She just looked at me with disgusted, horrified eyes – eyes that would later betray other, more indelible emotions: disappointment, confusion, shame.
“You dirty girl,” she said. “This is sickness! This is sick!”
“I didn’t do it!” I protested, in a low voice. “I didn’t do it!”
“Then who did, Edward? Are you going to tell me Edward did it? You’re the one who, this whole summer, has been covering every piece of paper with your pictures. Look at you! Look at your dirty hair!”
I ran from her, ran through the house to the sunroom, where Edward, dressed formally, as always, in a button down shirt, and pressed slacks, sat in an armchair, reading – reading – I remember it so vividly – a Penguin paperback edition of Huckleberry Finn.
I stood before him. He placed his bookmark in his book, and put his book on his lap, and waited.
“I know what you did! I know what you did!”
He stared at me with impassive eyes, as through he were looking at me through three inches of clear water. “And do you think they would believe you if you told them I did it?”
I could have hit him. “You – you disgusting…” I sputtered. “Ha! I guess it runs in the family. Did you know that your dad, your dad killed people’s cats! He slaughtered all the neighbor’s cats!”
Edward looked at me, looked at me with pity! “Runs in whose family, Josephine?” he said. And then he shook his head. He returned to his book.
Outside the house, the air was bright with birdsong. I stepped back, helpless against the gloom that was constricting my vision – I felt as though my vision was stifled, the peripheries knocked down like a wall, dull and lightless black. Stunned, I walked into the kitchen. My grandparents were there. They had been talking about me. The curtains were drawn. My grandmother was holding the phone in her hand.
“It’s your mother,” she said curtly.
I held the receiver to my ear.
“Hello?” I said.