The next morning, I awoke determined to make the call to Abbey. Taking the pen and pad of yellow paper I kept on my nightstand, I went downstairs to the piano room, sat down on the thick blue carpet, and went over in my head what I knew about her. Widowed, lives alone in Detroit, two kids about my age, artist, diabetic. I’d spoken with her maybe three times in the last thirty years.
I punched the number for local directory assistance and asked for the area code for Detroit. I got it, hit the flash button, and dialed Detroit information. They had a listing for Abbey, and I wrote it down on the yellow pad. Act calm. Don’t lead her at all. Just find out what you can about your grandmother’s family and get off the phone. I punched the numbers into the phone, took a deep breath, and waited. Abbey answered on the third ring.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded like she was surprised to get a call.
“Hi Abbey, it’s Cam West.” Two seconds of silence, then recognition.
“Ca—am!” She sang my name like a two-note song, high-low. “What a surprise! How are you?”
“Oh, I'm gr—”
“So, how are Rikki and Kyle?”
“We’re all great, Abbey,” I lied. “Kyle’s getting big. We moved to Massachusetts, you know ... two years ago.”
“You did?”
“Yup.”
“Well, are you happy there?” she said.
“Oh, yeah. Everything’s going great. How’re you feeling?”
“Pretty good,” she said. “I’ve got diabetes, you know.”
“I know,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. That was it for the small talk.
After an uncomfortable silence, Abbey said, “So ... what’s on your mind?”
Don’t screw this up. Sound calm.
“Well, Abbey,” I said hesitantly. “Uh, lately I’ve been wondering what my grandmother’s family was like. My mother really never told me anything about her life when she was growing up, and ... well, you lived on the same street when you were kids.”
“Yeah, across the street and two houses down,” Abbey said.
My stomach was churning, and a drop of cold sweat trickled down my side.
“So,” I said, “what was my grandmother’s family like?”
Silence. Wait. Don’t say shit. I looked nervously out the window, listening to the hum of the long-distance line. A squirrel scampered up a tree. After maybe a full ten seconds, Abbey spoke.
“There was no incest that I know of,” she said flatly, and her words hung in the air like the smell of lightning.
A shot of adrenaline flashed through my body, and my face felt red hot.
What??!! What the hell?!
With my pen gripped too tightly in my hand, I copied her words down verbatim. “There was no incest that I know of.” Next to that I wrote, “First words out of her mouth. Unsolicited.” My heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my chest. I felt light-headed. This was definitely not a response one would expect to that question. This was something ... tangible.
I shook my head hard to rid my mind of all the messy thoughts. Say something, asshole!
I swallowed hard. “What do you mean, Abbey?” I asked. Silence. More phone hum. I wondered for a second if she’d hung up on me, then decided she hadn’t. I waited her out. After about fifteen seconds Abbey started talking. I wrote it all down.
There were lots of brothers and sisters in my grandmother’s family. After they grew up, the siblings remained in the same neighborhood, but the sisters shopped at different grocery stores, sometimes traveling far to avoid bumping into each other. None of the women wanted their sisters to see what food they’d purchased. Abbey’s mother and aunts, including my grandmother, binged and purged by forcing toothbrushes down their throats; Abbey knew this because the cousins talked about it. When the children took craps they weren’t allowed to flush the toilet, but had to show them to their mothers or they'd be given enemas. Jesus!
“My mother, too?” I prodded. Both my armpits were soaked now and my stomach felt like a hundred crickets were floating in it.
“Your mother? Oh yeah, sure,” she continued. “I told her she could get out of getting an enema by saying she’d shit and flushed by accident.” Abbey sounded proud when she told me that. She was on a roll now, and I didn’t have to prod her too much. I just kept writing.
According to Abbey, everyone in the neighborhood knew that my grandmother’s family was crazy. She remembered watching one of her aunts beat her young son mercilessly on the head, for no apparent reason. He’d tried to run away but had gotten his foot stuck between two fence posts. When his mother caught him, she continued the beating.
Abbey said my grandmother was an extremely frightened woman, terrified her husband would leave her.
Like a stranger on a bus, Abbey kept talking, mostly to herself, remembering her childhood. Except the more she talked, the more she remembered things she didn’t want to remember. And the more uneasy she sounded.
Then she stopped talking, and there was a deadly silence for what seemed like a full minute.
“Abbey?” I asked, checking.
“You really opened a can of worms here, kid,” she said angrily. “You really opened a can of worms.”
“I’m sorry, Ab—”
“I wish you hadn’t called,” she spat. “Don’t call me anymore, okay? Just don’t call me.”
And she hung up on me.
For a few seconds I sat frozen with the phone to my ear. Then bile rose in my throat. I squinched my face and choked it back and quickly put the receiver down. Then I wiped my phone ear with my shoulder and rubbed my hand on my pants. I got up too quickly and became dizzy, stumbling against the piano.
I went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink until it ran hot, worked the bar of soap into a lather, and scrubbed my face and hands hard.
I toweled off and leaned over the sink, examining my reflection in the mirror.
Abbey’s words sloshed in my head like brown water in the bottom of a rusty wheelbarrow. I tried to focus. Bad grandma. Davy is good. Uh oh. Shudder, half-switch, fight it, gone ... back ... back ... stay back ... there. Clear. I’m clear. Go lie down.
Groggy, I went upstairs, leaving the yellow pad on the floor in the piano room. I climbed into bed, closed my eyes, and descended the cold stone steps into the dungeon of sleep.
“Cam? Cam? Honey?”
Mmm, honey ... brassy and shiny and thick and slow.
“Cam? Cam?”
A tunnel. The end of a long black tunnel ... Rikki in the white hole at the end of a long, black tunnel ... or is it the muzzle of a gun? Am I inside the barrel of a gun looking out ... No, that’s James Bond.
“Cam? Cameron?”
Rikki ... Rikki calling me ... Mmm, I love the sound of her voice.
“Cam!”
Huh? Bright light ... open eyes ... focus.
“Cam!”
The room … Rikki in the room, calling me.
“I can hear your voice,” I said thickly.
“Wake up, honey,” Rikki said worriedly. “You’ve been sleeping for six hours.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay,” I said. “I’m coming back now ... I’m coming back.” I blinked hard maybe six times and she started to come into focus. White sweater. Blue jeans. Sweet face. My Rikki.
Rikki sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my chest. “Are you there?” she asked.
My eyes focused on her. I was back.
“Mm hmm,” I said. My mouth felt numb. “Yeah, I’m back.”
“Good,” she said, patting my chest. “I was getting worried.”
“Sorry. What time is it?”
“A little past three.”
“In the afternoon?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I wiggled my fingers and toes and scrunched up my face a couple of times, feeling more and more like I was back in my body. After a minute, I sat up.
I looked up at Rikki. “I spoke to Abbey,” I said.
“I know. I found this,” she said, wagging the yellow pad with the notes on it. Rikki pointed at the page, clearly upset. “She said this? ‘There was no incest that I know of’? She actually said this?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “And all that other stuff, too.”
Rikki shook her head. “Jesus,” she said. “She actually said there was no incest that she knew of? What did she say that in response to?”
I shrugged. “I just asked her what my grandmother’s family was like, that’s all.”
“And she said that? Jesus!” Rikki massaged one of her temples. “I can’t believe this.”
“She doesn’t want me to call her ever again. Ever.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the more she told me, the more upset she got. Finally she said she never wanted to hear from me again and hung up.”
“Whoa,” Rikki looked at the notepad, shaking her head. “No wonder your mother never talked about her family.”
“Yeah.” I said, sitting up a little straighter. “I’m going to call her brother, Dennis. I need more.”
Rikki wagged the yellow pad. “This isn’t enough?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not enough.”
Rikki gave me a leery look. “What’s he going to tell you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing. But he was there, and he’s four or five years older than my mother. He’s got to know more than Abbey, right?” I took a deep breath and let it out. “I know he was in therapy for a long time,” I said. “And his wife’s a psychologist. She knew my grandmother, I’m sure. She and Dennis have been married for a long time.”
Rikki pursed her lips, considering that for a moment. Then she shrugged. “Okay.”
She placed the pen and yellow pad on the bed next to me and got up to leave. At the door, she turned around and said, “I’ll be downstairs.” As she walked out, I heard her mutter again, “Jesus.”
I took the brown leather address book from the drawer in my nightstand and thumbed through it until I found Dennis and Sandy’s phone number in Michigan.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed, I put the phone in my lap and glanced out the window at the big oak trees in the front yard. The gray afternoon light made them look sad. I cradled the receiver between my shoulder and left ear, picked up the pen and yellow pad, and dialed the number. This isn’t happening.
Before the first ring, I made up my mind to tell them straight out that I’d remembered something important about my grandmother, then just wait to see how they responded. I couldn’t tell them it was Davy who’d had the memory; that was way too crazy. Who the hell would believe that? I didn’t even believe it.
I was about to hang up after the third ring when Sandy answered the phone. I felt a little jolt of adrenaline at the sound of her voice. I said it was me, and she sounded surprised and pleased, not having heard from me in years. We went through the usual small talk before I blurted out, “Sandy, the reason I called is because I’ve been having strange thoughts that maybe I was sexually abused by my grandmother.”
“Grandma Lynn?” she gasped.
“Yes.”
After an uncomfortable pause, she said matter-of-factly, “That very well could be. She liked to fondle the children.”
Fondle the children?!
For a moment neither of us spoke, then Sandy said curtly, “Hold on a minute, I’m going to get Dennis.”
Her hand muffled the conversation on the other end of the phone. Then Dennis got on the line, and he didn’t sound anywhere near as pleased to talk to me as Sandy had. Instead, he accosted me right off. “What’s this about my mother?” he barked.
My sphincter felt like a bolt cutter and my hands got clammy.
I’m talking about this guy’s mother. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he might be outraged that I was making this awful accusation about his mother.
I took a deep breath and repeated what I’d told Sandy. “I’ve been having weird dreams and thoughts that your mother sexually abused me.”
I nervously tapped the pen on the yellow pad, listening to the interstate phone buzz. After what seemed like five minutes, Dennis said stiffly, “She used to bathe your uncle Alan ... way past when he was able to bathe himself.”
What?
Dennis paused. I scribbled.
“Once, from the hallway,” Dennis said, “I saw her washing him, but doing something she shouldn’t have been doing. She shouldn’t have done that!” he snapped. “That really pissed me off!”
An icy wind blew through my mind as I watched my hand robotically transcribe Dennis’s words. My face felt numb and my head ached like my brain was being jabbed with a knitting needle. The woman Davy said had abused him had been seen abusing another child.
I shook my head to try and clear it. “Did she ever do anything sexual to you?” I asked tentatively.
He barked at me, “That’s none of your business!”
I winced and clenched my teeth and almost dropped the phone. I wish Rikki were here. I took a breath and decided to keep going.
“Do you know if she ever did anything sexual to my mother?”
“Ask her!”
There was another painful silence.
I said flatly, “I think there’s more, Dennis. There’s something you’re not—”
“Ask your mother.”
“Dennis, what are you—”
“What the hell do you want from me, kid?! You come busting into my life from out of nowhere dragging up this crap about my crazy goddamn family! I’ve got my own pain!”
The long distance line hummed like fluorescent lights while I waited.
Then in a low, penetrating voice Dennis said, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, kid.”
“What? What do you mean, Dennis? What are you—”
“You figure it out,” he snapped.
My stomach tightened and I thought I might have to put down the phone and throw up. “Dennis, I—”
“I’m hanging up on you,” he said.
“Den—”
“That’s it!” he said, biting the word off like he was champing steel.
And I knew that was, indeed, it.
“Okay,” I said, stunned. “Goodbye.” And I hung up the phone.
I sat motionless on the edge of my bed in the fading light, Dennis’s words creeping over me like black spiders. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Something was not right. Something was very not right. I looked down at my hands; they were shaking. And inside—way inside—a sticky black substance oozed down the corridors toward the very center of me.
* * *
I went downstairs to the living room feeling very wavy, and lay down on the floor next to Kyle, who was building some sort of vehicle out of Legos. Rikki looked up from the book she was reading and raised her eyebrows. I nodded toward the piano room.
Without taking her eyes off me, Rikki said, “Kylie, Daddy and I are going into the piano room for a minute to talk.”
He said, “Okay,” and rolled his new vehicle back and forth, making a sound like a truck engine. I followed Rikki into the piano room, and we sat down next to each other on one of the love seats.
“So what happened?” she said, looking at me intently.
I told her everything. After I finished, Rikki covered my hand with hers and squeezed it. I saw fear in her eyes.
“I don’t know what’s happening here,” I said. “It’s all burning up behind me. I’m trying to get a handle on this but it’s burning up behind me. This isn’t happening.”
Rikki said, “I don’t understand. Dennis was saying your mother is an abuser? How would he know that?”
“This isn’t happening.”
Rikki and I sat quietly for a few minutes holding hands, while Kyle vroom-vroomed in the other room.
Then I said, “The voices ...”
Rikki snapped out of her thoughts and tilted her head at me. “Huh?”
“The voices.”
“What?”
“This stuff with Davy ... it won’t leave me alone.”
“What? What voices?” she said, searching my eyes. “What won’t leave you alone?”
“Rik, Davy’s not the only one.”
Rikki raised her eyebrows. “You’re saying there are more? More ... people?”
I nodded.
She let go of my hand and ran hers over her hair. From the other room Kyle’s little voice called, “Mom, Dad, are you comin’ back in?”
Rikki answered. “Just a minute, honey. Okay?”
“I’m hungry for chicken nuggets.”
“Okay,” she called back. “We’ll be right in.”
“Dad, you there?” Kyle called.
I cleared my throat. “Sure I’m here, Kyle. We’ll be there in a minute, okay?”
“Okay.”
Rikki rested her gaze on me. “Like who?” she said. “Who else is there?”
I screwed up my courage. “Well,” I said, hesitantly. “There’s an older guy who sits at a draftsman’s desk. He wears Ben Franklin type glasses. His name’s Per.”
Rikki’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding,” she said. “Like in, ‘I ate a pear’?”
“Right,” I said. “Per. But it’s spelled P - E - R.”
She looked bewildered. “How do you know this?”
I spread my hands and clasped them together in my lap. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just ... know it.”
Rikki leaned back, perched her feet up on the ottoman, and thought for a minute. Then she looked at me and said, “If I ask to speak to him ... to Per ... do you think he’ll talk to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never even spoken to him. You could try. You could just ask for him to come out, I guess. I don’t believe this.”
Rikki took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she put her feet on the floor, slapped her knees, and stood up. “Okay,” she said, “this is what we’re gonna do. We’re going to have something to eat, we’re going to put the little guy to bed, and then I’m gonna talk to Per.” She put her hands on her hips. “So, what do you want for dinner?”