“Let’s christen this pristine lawn of yours,” she whispered into my mouth, pulling me down till the grass became deafening. It didn’t last long, partly because I hadn’t seen Harriet for a week and needed her warmth but also because I was wondering about the flattened patch of grass and why it should be like that. It could have been eager lovers, like us, stealing in from the main road, but my mind was trying to convince me that it was something buried beneath the grass, poisoning its roots and halting any growth. I tried to remember, as I looked into Harriet’s liquid eyes, if the shape had resembled a body.
Harriet didn’t mention my haste. I hoped it was because she needed me, too, but I couldn’t ask. She stayed with me and I was glad because near midnight I heard the slow shush of footsteps circling above my room.
I checked the attic in the morning while Harriet made French toast. I felt vaguely daft once I’d poked around: what the hell did I expect to find? There was nothing up there but an old wardrobe. Inside, my grandparents’ wedding garb draped from coat hangers, the faded blacks and whites clinging together. I thought I could smell a whiff of perfume. They must have had such a close, warm marriage. I tried to imagine how I would feel if Harriet died in such horrifying circumstances, but it was a pointless exercise; our lives were beyond comparison. A whole generation of values and ethics had changed. If I couldn’t empathize with a system as staid and correct as theirs, what hope did I have of assimilating the lives of two people who were born of that era with Harriet and me?
When Harriet left, she took with her any warmth and character the house was starting to accumulate. Angry for no apparent reason, I stormed into the garden shed but I couldn’t find anything with which to shave the lawn. By the time I’d dressed and opened the front door, my rage had evaporated and asking a neighbor for his mower seemed unnecessary.
I made a shopping list, trying to imagine how the house might look once I’d imbued it with something of me. Hopefully my character would replace that of my grandparents despite there being half a century of their community witnessed by these walls. What had they talked about on the still nights when it was too cold to go out? But in asking the question, I kind of knew the answer, which unsettled me because it implied an intimacy with them I could never have shared.
I called Harriet that evening, but she couldn’t come round; she was traveling to Mold to watch a friend perform in a new play. I dropped enough hints about my possibly accompanying her, but either she ignored them or this was a “friend” night and lovers weren’t allowed. I rang home, hoping they’d not think I was lonely, and chatted with Dad about budgets for a while till the proximity of his voice and the easy way in which he spoke relaxed me. Soon I didn’t mind being alone again. I listened to a John Lee Hooker album but that only made me think of Harriet; funny how you can be sad about someone even when a relationship is going well. I suppose it’s the self-pity everyone lingers over from time to time. Wondering how people will react to news of your death, that sort of thing. Tragedy is not completely unattractive.
I didn’t want to go to bed in such a solemn mood, but it was my own fault. Even the TV couldn’t help. Of the stations still broadcasting, one was showing an Ingmar Bergman film dealing with incest, the other a play about a cancer ward. I switched off and took a book upstairs.
I must have dozed because the telephone made me jump and the book slid to the floor. It was Mum. She told me Grandma had died; a heart attack apparently, as she was making a cup of tea. I didn’t feel sorrow, only fear. I tried to reassure Mum and told her I’d be over in the morning. When I replaced the receiver, the air had somehow thickened.
Trying to force sleep to claim me only made me more restless. The pillow was full of prickles, the blankets hot and itchy. Each time I closed my eyes, Grandma’s meaty lips loomed and I smelled naphthalene clinging to that heavy coat she always wore. Something stirred over my head; the muffled creak of weight shifting on the floorboards. Her mouth twisted and pursed and tightened, fluting her words into my ear. What had she said to me that day? It seemed critical I remember. I wished Harriet was with me. I wished I’d not left home. I wished I had less of an idea of what lay buried in the garden.
“Thank God you’re coming back.” Was that what she’d said? I shifted in bed, feeling too much like something packaged and waiting to be unwrapped. The footsteps above me completed one final circle then began to descend. Outside, the grass wakened with a soft roar and it was then, as a shadow spoiled the thin line of light beneath my door, that I realized Gran hadn’t been mourning my departure so much as celebrating my arrival.
ICE CREAM AND TOMBSTONES
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Born in Los Angeles on March 20, 1955, Nina Kiriki Hoffman grew up in Southern California, fled to Idaho, and now resides in Eugene, Oregon. I bet she has cats. Hoffman has burst rather suddenly onto the horror scene, rapidly earning acclaim for her thoughtful and unpredictable manner of messing with your brain.
Hoffman says: “My first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, came out from Avon last year. Am working on another for them, and looks like I sold a fantasy young adult book, too. Been selling lots of stories to anthologies.”
I’ll be watching.
She was sitting on my mother’s tombstone, eating an ice cream cone. I wanted to kill her.
“Hi, kid,” she said. “Nice day, huh?” She licked the strawberry scoop, between the chocolate scoop and one that looked like coffee, but might be maple or butter rum or something like that. Then she leaned back, eyes closed, and let the sun shine on her face.
For the middle of winter, it was a pretty nice day. Sun in an ice-blue sky shone bright enough so that bare trees looked brown instead of black and skeletal. I wanted to kill this woman, but I couldn’t help wondering how she could eat ice cream on a morning when there was still ice across all the puddles, and piled slush along the streets. I had stepped in a puddle on my way here with the flowers, broke through the ice (it was half an inch thick), and splashed water on my sneakers and socks. My feet were freezing. It was my twelfth birthday, and nobody had given me a card or a present at breakfast—maybe they forgot. I felt grumpy.
“Get off there!” I yelled.
She crossed her legs so she looked like some kind of leprechaun or something perching on the stone. She wore pink satin slippers, black-and-white striped socks that went up above her knees, and what looked like three coats on top of each other. Some sort of dark wool skirt stuck out from under them a little. She also had a green muffler around her neck and she wore tan knitted gloves with holes in most of the fingers. She looked familiar, and I didn’t know why.
“Oh, now,” she said, “now.”
“Go on!” I yelled. I ran at her, wanting to push her right off so she’d break a leg or her head or something vital.
“Lexi,” she said.
I stopped. She said my name as if it belonged in her mouth. It gave me pause. Most everybody called me Alexandra, except Daddy. He called me Lexi. He said it was what my mother had planned to call me before I was born. When my stepmother, Candace, called me Lexi, I yelled at her to stop it.
“Lexi,” said this woman, sitting up straight and opening her eyes so she could stare at me. Her eyes were brown, like mine. She licked the chocolate scoop on her ice cream cone. “Want a bite?”
I felt so cold inside I couldn’t even speak. I shook my head.