Archives for February 2019

George unlocks the front door with a twist of the rusty skeleton key. Absentmindedly placing the key in his right front pocket, George feels the click of it against his father’s brass knuckles. He quickly removes the key and sticks it in the breast pocket of his blazer, next to the numbered and color-coded index cards.

“What’s taking so long?” George’s wife, Claire asks. “Your family will be here soon and we’ve got a lot of work to do before then.”

George doesn’t reply to his wife, but rolls his eyes, as he catches himself worrying if the key might have scratched ‘the implement of destruction’ that he stole exactly one year ago today, the night his father died.

It was the night that his father was brought home from the hospice. George snuck downstairs while his mother and siblings hovered around Father’s death bed. George stepped into the empty study and slipped what he had come to think of as his inheritance into his pocket.

George had every intention of simply taking them home and putting them on his own desk in his own study. But fear that one of his siblings might ‘drop by’ and discover them, drove George to keep them in his pocket.

Every night as Claire readied herself for bed, George would take the brass knuckles out of his pocket and place them in the drawer of his bedside night stand. No matter how gently he tried to lay them down, there was always the thud-clunk against the wood of the drawer. He’d push them to the back of the drawer in an attempt to hide them from a casual glance, but no one else ever opened the drawer. The scrape of the metal on wood sent a pleasing tingle up George’s spine and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Some nights, he would slide them back and forth a few times until he heard Claire turn the bathroom doorknob.

George found himself waking earlier and earlier this past year. The anticipation of the first touch of the brass knuckles, the want of the cold metal in the palm of his hand haunted his dreams and became his first thought each morning. He worried at first that his wife would see him take them out in the morning or notice the unusual object in his pocket, but Claire paid little attention to the appearance of others. Reflective surfaces were her obsession.

George looks at his own reflection in the arched window pane of the front door. Over his reflected shoulder Claire is hopping from one foot to the other behind him. George shakes his head to ground himself in the present moment and clear his memory.

“Will you hurry up,” she demands. “This child of yours is pressing on my bladder something fierce.”

With a grunt, George shoulders the door open over all the mail stacked up behind it.

“I swear, George,” Claire says, pushing past him and waddling down the hallway to the bathroom, “one day your constant day dreaming is going to be the death of me.”

Stooping to pick up the mail, George sees the front entrance to his family home from the eye-level of his six year old self.

“Oh, George,” his father said. “You shoe laces are still untied and your coat is buttoned up all wrong. Come here.”

Young George averted his eyes and backed away.

“I said, ‘Come here.’ Why are you being so bashful?”

George stepped forward and stumbled over his laces.

“See,” his father said, stooping to quickly tie the shoes. “You’ve got to try harder, little man. Your twin brothers were tying their shoes long before they were your age. And what’s with these buttons?”

Father’s thick fingers struggled with the tiny buttons on George’s coat. George let out an involuntary choking sound.

“Well, stop squirming. It’s not like I’m trying to hurt you.”

George’s eyes watered. He sensed his father’s frustration and knew what always happened next.

“Stop that crying right now, boy, or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

 Father’s right hand swung quickly and smacked George’s left ear with a pop.

George stands up, his hand reaching behind his ear to feel the scar left by his father’s signet ring. As he puts the mail on the hall table, George shakes his head to clear the memory. He isn’t sure if he’d actually heard the noise or if it had been part of his memory.

The downstairs’ toilet flushes and George hears rushing water. Clair emerges from the bathroom under the stairs with a sigh.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it there,” she says. She wrinkles her nose and continues. “This whole house smells musty, George. I thought you said you’ve been collecting the mail and airing it out.”

Walking back towards George, Claire runs a finger along the side table by the coat rack and clucks her tongue. She pauses to look up at the many Schmidt family portraits hanging along the hallway. She stares into the oily eyes of George’s late Grandfather.

“I’m glad I never meet him,” she says with a shiver. “The rest of your family is bad enough, but there’s something . . . off about him.”

“He was a great man,” George defends, “Grandfather built this house almost a century ago.”

“Maybe it’s just a bad painting,” Claire shrugs. “I’ll start here in the living room and you straighten up your father’s study. If we’re quick about it, we’ll be done long before your siblings even have time to pick up your Mother from the nursing home.”

“Senior assisted living facility,” George corrects.

“Whatever,” Claire waives her hand. “Do you think your sister, Mary, will actually make it to this family function?”

“Paul picked her up from the rehab center yesterday. She stayed overnight at the rectory and will meet Peter at the nursing . . .”

“Oh, gawd,” Claire misses George’s mistake, “an old folks home, an alchy clinic, or a church: I don’t know which is worse.”

“Let’s just get started, darling. Mother hasn’t seen the place in months and I’d like to clean it up a bit before she gets here.”

“You’d like to avoid giving her something to bitch about,” Claire says. “Don’t worry. That’s exactly why we’re going to turn this family memorial service for your Father into a family intervention where you . . .”

Claire continues rehashing her plan, but George tunes her out when he hears a noise coming from his Father’s study behind him.

George thinks of calling out to his wife or even calling the police, but he has learned to suppress his fears and insecurities. With a well-practiced move, George’s right hand curls around the brass knuckles in his pocket as he turns the knob with his left.

Opening the door, George is confronted with a pigeon sitting on Father’s desk. Before George can think, the pigeon leaps from the table and flies directly at him. George stumbles back and slams the door on the pigeon’s head as it tries to make good its escape.

The bird’s head does not detach completely, but George is splattered with tiny drops of blood as feathers rained down.

“. . . and that’s why they’ll have to . . . What was that noise?” Claire asks, returning to the hallway. She stops and stares at George. George stares back, shrugs, and nods his head at the partially decapitated pigeon still stuck between the door and the frame.

Clair tilts her head and adjusts her gaze. She squints and furrows her brow before screaming and jumping back. When George moves to comfort his startled wife, the door opens and the pigeon drops to the floor. Claire screams again.

“There, there, dear,” George attempts to sooth. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

“Of course not; it’s dead!”

George takes a moment to help his wife sit down on the staircase before returning to the mess of feathers behind him.

George steps over the carcass and into Father’s study. He immediately feels the rush of cold air against his face. Looking up, George sees that a broken tree branch has smashed the window behind father’s desk. Another step forward and George is back in his childhood.

“Twirl me fast,” George’s younger sister, Mary, shouted from her father’s swivel chair. “Faster!”

Paul, one of George’s older twin brothers, spun the chair with one hand as he smoked a cigar with the other. Peter, the other twin, stood at the liquor cabinet and poured himself a mixture of everything on the rocks.

George sat on one of the hard-backed chairs across the desk from father’s chair and traced the connecting loops of what he thought of the time as merely a decorative ‘paperweight’ which so obsessed him. He would spend hours tracing the connecting loops and lines. Circles featured prominently in his childhood artwork. Whenever George was bored, he would absentmindedly trace its shape with his finger.

The children’s unsupervised play was interrupted with Mother’s early return from her errands. She decided to walk around the side of the house to check on the new gardener.

“What is going on in there!” Mother not so much asked as screamed outside the window.

Peter spilled some cherry liqueur and Paul dropped the still burning cigar on the Persian rug. Mary continued to spin, unable to stop her momentum. But her giggles quickly turned to whimpers when she heard Mother’s voice. George dove under the desk, but he knew there would be no hiding and no reprieve.

“Don’t any of you dare move a muscle,” Mother commanded as she stormed off towards the back door into the kitchen.

In moments, Mother stood in the doorway of her husband’s study. Her own hesitation to enter his sanctum without his presence was short lived. One by one, the children received a beating. Peter, being the oldest, was first. It only stopped when the wooden spoon that mother had armed herself with broke over his bruised knuckles. Paul’s knuckles actually fared worse when Mother switched to a ruler from the desk. When that too broke, George’s backside was left red and swollen due to the shoe that mother removed to beat him. Only Mary was struck with an open hand.

“What is going on in there?” Claire yells from the hallway. “What’s taking you so long?”

George snaps back to the present and realizes that he is now holding the brass knuckles to his nose, smelling them. While he can now distinguish the smell, they still remind him of pennies. He can taste them on the tip of his tongue. He doesn’t know why, but he feels comfort in this talisman from his childhood.

“Just a moment, dear.”

George goes to return them to the desktop, but is distracted by the dead pigeon still lying across the threshold. George slips the brass knuckles back into his front pocket and stoops to pick up the dead bird. He gathers as many of the scattered feathers before stepping back into the hallway.

“I’ll just throw this away,” George says, “and then we’ll start cleaning.”

“Could this day get any worse?”

George offers his wife a hand to help her up. Looking over her head and up the stairs, and back to the moment he heard the screams.

The screams startled George from his drawing and he bumped the table, causing the Arlo Guthrie record to skip.

George looked out his window toward the shed in the backyard just as his father, uncharacteristically in shirtsleeves, marched back into the house.

George rushed downstairs as Father walked past. He stopped to pat George on the shoulder.

“You okay, little man?” his father asked.

Young George did not answer. He was often too anxious of saying the wrong thing to speak. But that time he just wasn’t sure. George thought he had been okay. But then the scream and Father’s unusual concern had George frightened.

Not knowing what else to do, George looked down. That’s when the boy noticed his father’s bloodied fingers curled into the holes of the brass knuckles.

“Stop staring at it and do something,” Claire barks.

George blinks and stares down at the dead pigeon in his hand as blood trickles onto his knuckles.

“Yes, dear,” George replies with a sigh. He follows Claire down the hall towards the kitchen to dispose of the feathered corpse and clean himself up in the sink.

George stops on the threshold of the kitchen and blinks again.

Father stood in the doorway so that George had trouble seeing the kitchen, but he could hear the rest of his family inside. Mary sobbed uncontrollably and Paul mumbled the Lord’s Prayer under his breath.

Leaning to his left, George could just make out Mary cradled in Mother’s arms.

“Did you take care of that dirty little man?” Mother asked.

George hadn’t been sure who Mother had meant or who she had asked, but Father responded.

“Of course I did,” Father shouted. “I know what has to be done and I do it.”

“Is that supposed to be another crack at my mothering instinct?”

“What instinct?” Father ask as he turned to leave. George stepped to the side to get out of Father’s way.

“And where are you going now?” Mother shouted after him.

“I’m calling my dad to help get rid of the b . . ,” Father stopped when he almost tripped over George. “. . . to help take out the trash.”

“At least I don’t have to go running to my daddy to clean up my messes.”

“Just shut up,” Father said and stormed off down the hallway to his office. “And shut those damned kids up, too!”

George poked his head into the kitchen and saw his mother shake Mary by the shoulders. Her pigtails swung back and forth as her head bounced off the refrigerator.

“See what you a mess you’ve made, you little tramp!”

“But he . . .” Mary’s words were stopped cold with the back of Mother’s hand.

“I know what he did,” Mother said, more calmly now. “You’ll just have to get used to that sort of attention from men. That’s what they do. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you can use it to your advantage.”

Mother turned around, but didn’t seem to notice George. She walked over to Paul who still muttered to himself and swayed in the corner. Mother didn’t say anything to him, just snatched the Rosary out of his hand and shoved them in the boy’s mouth.

Next, Mother turned her attention to Peter. He sat at the kitchen counter and held a package of frozen peas to his eye.

“Some ‘man’ you’re turning out to be,” Mother snarled, “couldn’t even protect your own sister.”

Peter dropped the peas and glared at Mother. Several seconds past as they stared each other down. Mother let out a snorting chuckle and pushed past George.

“Go to your rooms,” was the last words spoken about the incident by anyone in the family.

George catches himself taking a step back out of the kitchen, as if to head up to his old bedroom.

“Where do you think you’re going with that thing?” Claire asks, as she opens the cupboard under the sink. “And where is the garbage can in this house?”

Stepping back into the kitchen, George points towards the back door with his free hand.

“I should’ve known,” Claire clucks her tongue, “that your mother would hide the garbage as far away from her as possible. That woman keeps secrets from herself. It’s like I’ve been telling you, George . . .”

George shrugs as he opens the back door and steps into the rear garden. He leaves the door open, Claire’s voice growing dimmer as he walks straight towards the shed. George flings the bird carcass onto the disused compost heap. Bending, he lifts a rusted old shovel with a dry-rot handle and one-handedly tosses some debris over the bird.

“Hurry up, George! I want you to rehearse what you’re going to say to your family one more time before they get here.”

George squeezes his eyes shut. Taking a deep breath, he opens his eyes slowly and takes the numbered and color-coded index cards out of the breast pocket of his blazer. Without a second glance, George tears them neatly in half before dropping them on the compost heap.

After a bit more shoveling to hide the cards at the bottom of the heap, George stands up and sees his reflection in the shed window and his grandfather inside.

“Just don’t stand there, lad,” Grandfather said.

It was the day after the incident. The children heard Grandfather arrive later that night, after Father’s phone call. The two patriarchs had spent most of the night out in the shed with the light on. George and his brothers had tried staying up to see when Father would come inside or if Grandfather would leave again without seeing them. But one by one, they had fallen asleep.

George had awoken first to the sound of Mary sobbing, again. Mother could be heard rearranging furniture in the living room downstairs, as she was wont to do on occasion. George looked out his bedroom window to see Father and Grandfather carry a bag around the side of the house. A moment later, George heard the car engine turn over and then being driven away. Only Grandfather returned to the shed.

George slipped on his robe and boots silently. He tiptoed downstairs and out the backdoor.

The shed door was open and the bare bulb still on. George pushed the door open and peered in to see his Grandfather sitting on a workbench.

“Come on in,” Grandfather beckoned. George did as he was told and shut the door behind him. His eyes were drawn to the brass knuckles sitting on the side table beside Grandfather.

“I hear you like to draw these,” Grandfather said. “Do you even know what they are, boy?”

“It’s Father’s paperweight,” George said. “He keeps them on his desk, but yester . . .”

“They’re called ‘brass knuckles’ or ‘knuckle dusters.’ ‘Schlagring’ in the original Deutsche . . . not that your mother will let you speak your true native tongue. And these were originally my father’s.”George’s eyes grew larger in anticipation of the story to come.

“Come sit on my lap and let me tell you the long bloody history of these beauties.”

George climbed onto Grandfather’s knee. Grandfather handed the brass knuckles to George who cradled them in his own lap.

“Your great-grandfather bought these back in Schwandorf,” Grandfather began the tale, “where I was born. Do you know where that is?”

“Father says it’s in Germany and . . .”

“Not just German; the Free State of Bavaria. The best part of Germany,” Grandfather interrupted. “But that doesn’t matter now. When we all immigrated to America, this was one of the things he brought with him.”

“How come, Grandfather?”

“To protect us, of course,” Grandfather laughed. “That’s why he gave them to me when I joined the Army to fight in the Great War.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

“I killed plenty,” Grandfather’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “One night, I was ordered to crawl across No Man’s Land and reconnoiter on the enemy.”

“What does ‘reck-om-otter’ mean?”

“It means to spy on the bad guys.”

“You were a spy?”

“I was that night,” Grandfather continued. “I made it all the way across the muddy field. I was so close I could hear those dirty Prussians talking. They were bragging about how they killed my friends earlier that day.”

“What did you do, Grandfather?”

“I did what any man would do. I crawled into their trench. I held my knife in one hand and meines Vaters Schlagring in the other,” Grandfather took the brass knuckles from George and wrapped his long powerful fingers through the metal loops, his own knuckles going white, “and I killed four of them before the alarm was raised.”

“Did you get away?”

“Of course I did,” Grandfather laughed. “I slit one of their throats, gutted two more, and beat the fourth one to death with these, before escaping back into the night.” Grandfather handed the brass knuckles back to George.

“Did you give these to Father after you won the war?”

“No,” Grandfather said. “Your father wasn’t born, yet. And I had more work to do with them.”

“Like what?” George asked. “Did you have more spying to do?”

“Sort of,” Grandfather said. “Less ‘James Bond’ and more ‘Al Capone,’ but it was secret . . . so don’t tell anyone. You know what happens to snitches, right?”

George nodded his head yes, afraid to ask what ‘snitching’ was.

“I eventually gave those to your father when I retired. If I’d known he’d just leave them on his desk as a paperweight . . . but I suppose he used them yesterday.”

“Can I keep ‘em?”

“No. One day they’ll be given to Peter, when he takes over the family business,” Grandfather said, taking the brass knuckles back.

George tried to hold onto them, but Grandfather simply tugged harder, “Let go, George.”

“Let’s go, George!”

George looks around, unable to tell from where, or when, the second voice is coming.

“What is wrong with you,” Claire shouts from the kitchen door. “Why are you just standing there when we’ve . . .”

“Shut up.”

“What did you just say?” Claire shrieks, putting her hand on her hip and raising one eyebrow.

George turns in the yard and marches slowly back across the garden. Claire’s eyebrow drops and her forehead crinkles. George’s right hand slips into his pocket as he approaches the house. Claire does not see the brass knuckles swinging in his fist by his side.

As George crosses the threshold into the kitchen, Claire wraps both her arms over her belly instinctively, taking several shuffling steps backwards.

“There’s a problem that needs fixing,” George says calmly.

“What’s wrong? I don’t under . . .” Claire stammers, continuing to retreat.

George takes another step forward, pinning Claire up against the counter.

George brings his left hand up and caresses Claire’s cheek. His hand slips down to her throat as he leans in and gently kisses her on the lips. George’s hand slides down over Claire’s pearl necklace and between her breasts.

“What’s gotten into . . . You never . . .” Claire’s voice breaks and her eyes tear up.

George’s left hand comes to rest on Claire’s stomach.

“I’m very sorry, dear,” George says softly.

“I’m sorry,” George wailed between blows and kicks from his brothers.

“What are you sorry for, you little piece of shit?” Paul shouted. “There’s no forgiveness without a full confession.”

“I don’t know,” George said from his protective ball on the musty rug in their bedroom.

“Oh, now you’re claiming to not even know what you did,” Peter screamed in George’s ear. “Then what are you sorry for, asshole!”

“I was just doing my homework,” George sniffled, “when you came in and started beating me up. I didn’t do anything.”

“But you did do something, didn’t you?” Peter said, bending George’s left arm behind his back.

“AAAH!”

“Tell us where you put ‘em,” Peter hissed, “and maybe I won’t break your arm, again.”

George thought of crying out for help, but Mary would never dare enter the boy’s room, Father wouldn’t be home for hours, and Mother wasn’t any more likely put down her cocktail to help this time either.

“Come on, Peter,” Paul said. “Let’s go check his ‘secret’ hiding spot in the attic.”

“Yeah,” Peter said with a twist and pop of George’s shoulder. The shag carpet muffled George’s scream and was soaked by his tears.

“Dumb-dumb here,” Peter said with a laugh, “thinks we don’t hear him stomping around up there. I bet that’s where he moved our stash.”

The twins left the room and pulled down the hide-away ladder to the attic at the end of the hall. George sat up and cradled his dislocated shoulder.

“Leave my stuff alone,” George yelled. “I didn’t . . .”

“Oh, but somebody did,” Mary said as she poked her head into the bedroom, careful not to cross the threshold.

“What are you talking about?” George asked.

“I stole their stash and put it in your hiding spot in the attic.”

“Why would you . . .”

“I wanted to try some and I didn’t want to get blamed for it, so . . .” Mary trailed off and skipped down the stairs without further explanation.

George got his legs underneath himself and stood up, slowly. He stepped up to the doorframe of his bedroom and with a practiced efficiency, slammed his shoulder back into place with a pop and a whimper.

George flinches at Claire’s hand on his left shoulder.

“I asked you why you’re apologizing, George. You’re scaring me.”

“I left the notecards are home,” George says, slipping the brass knuckles back into his pocket.

“Oh, George,” Claire says with a nervous chuckle. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Would you please drive back to the house and . . .”

“Now?” Claire asks. “Your family will be here soon and we’ve still got the pigeon blood and feathers to clean up.”

“I can take care of that. And if you hurry . . .”

“Do you need the notes, George? We’ve practiced the speech a hundred times already.”

“Yes. But you know how I can get. If I don’t have the notes . . .”

“Of course, sweety,” Claire says, kissing George on the cheek. “I’ll go get the notes.”

“Thank you.”

George and Claire exit the kitchen and walk down the hall towards the front door.

“I suppose it’s only fair that you clean up this mess. You’re the one who killed the poor pigeon.”

“You’re right, dear.”

“This house is creepy enough as it is. And now the blood and gore . . .”

“You best hurry up, dear. That might be my family now,” George says, opening the front door.

Peter’s BMW is parked at the curb, in front of the fire hydrant. He is helping Mother into her wheelchair. Paul, in his clerical cassock, is helping keep wobbly-legged Mary upright on the footpath.

Claire kisses George on the cheek one more time before waddling around Mary and Paul to get to George’s Mercedes in the driveway. Paul is helping Mary up the steps and into the house.

“Where should I stash our little drunk, here?” Paul asks, with a head nod and a wink towards his sister.

“Praise the Lord!” Mary yells. “And pass the Jesus-Juice!”

“She broken into the Communion wine around six this morning and has been hitting it pretty hard since then.”

George points to the living room and waits at the door. “Plop her down over there on ‘the Group W bench,’ I suppose.”

“Good God, George,” Paul says, “are you still quoting Arlo fucking Guthrie songs?”

“Loser,” Mary slurs.

Peter is wheeling Mother up the path as Claire drives away, waving out the open car window.

“Where’s that tramp going?” Mother asks, as Peter turns the wheelchair around to pull her up the steps and into the house. George holds the door open.

“You’re still just as useless as ever,” Peter snaps at George.

“I hope you’re not intending to wait for that whale you married,” Mother says. “I want to get back in time for happy hour.”

“I keep tellin’ ya, Mother,” Mary screams from the living room. “Claire’s not fat; she’s pregnant! I’d’ve thought you’d be happy somebody’s not aborting your grandkids for a change.”

“Don’t worry, Mother,” George says calmly. “It’ll all be over soon.”

George closes and locks the front door. Turning to face his family, George reaches into his front right pocket and smiles.