Apprehensions and Other Delusions Read online

  When he arrived home, he headed for the basement at once, his nerves strained just the way Mom said hers were at the end of the day. He could hear Margaret Lynne’s CD player blaring out an electric-guitar-and-drum with three voices wailing about disappointed desire and the general unfairness of societal pressures on young lovers. Most of the time he was pissed off at her for causing such a rumpus, but now he was glad for her defiance, for it assured him more privacy than he had expected. “Okay,” he said to the puppy as he took the little mutt out of his pocket and set him down on the floor. The little dog began to sniff out his surroundings, then found an upright pillar and urinated on it.

  “Hey!” Henry cried out. “Don’t do that. I’ll bring some papers for you. But you can’t go around doing that. Mom’ll notice.”

  The puppy looked up at him and whined.

  This was going to be difficult, Henry realized, but he was determined to carry on; he had so much to gain and he’d waited for so long for such splendid opportunity. The puppy was everything he had been hoping for.

  “Henry!” his mother called from upstairs. “Are you down there?”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Henry called back. “I’m on the computer.”

  “What?” She was shouting now to be heard over the clamor of the boombox. “What are you doing?”

  Henry raised his voice and repeated himself, holding his breath, hoping she wouldn’t try to investigate.

  “Make sure you do your homework!” his mother yelled.

  “Yes, Mom,” Henry told her, and looked over at the puppy. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’re a good boy, Henry,” she told him, her voice lowered but still loud enough to be heard.

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said, mistrusting her praise. He waited for the greater part of a minute, as if there was a possible hazard in her good opinion. When nothing more happened, Henry went to put out food and milk for the puppy, selecting a Styrofoam burger container from among his collection on a rough basement shelf for the kibble. “You can start out with this.” He was careful to move quietly, making an effort to keep the puppy from romping around too much, and hoping he wouldn’t howl or whimper or bark or anything like that. “You gotta be quiet,” he admonished the little dog. “You’re not supposed to be here.” He wondered briefly if he had made a mistake in bringing the puppy home, then decided that he needed to learn how to catch and fatten prey. “You eat your food. I’ll bring down paper for your piss and poop. Just be quiet. It’s important that you—” He reached out and took the puppy’s little muzzle in his hand, closing the puppy’s mouth.

  The puppy whimpered and gave a tentative wave of his tail.

  Henry shook his head and went to get one of the old deli pint containers. He put this on the floor next to the kibble and poured half the milk into it. “You can drink this. I’ll bring you more water.”

  The puppy began to devour the food, only interrupting himself to lap the milk. He was clearly famished and wanted to stuff himself. It was good to see him eat so eagerly—he would be fat and sassy soon, and he would be full of life. Henry patted the puppy’s head, anticipating the day he would reap the harvest he was sowing now. How great he would taste! And the energy he would provide! Henry thought he might not be able to contain it all, and that made him feel sick and excited at once. He went over to his rickety old chair and sat down, already thinking about what he could eat tonight that would sustain him while the puppy improved. He was getting hungry for life and he wasn’t sure he could wait for the puppy to reach a size and vigor that he longed for.

  By the time Henry left the basement he had taken up the first layer of old papers. The house was silent, Margaret Lynne having gone out an hour ago. He stopped in the kitchen and took a half-finished Whopper with everything from the fridge as a stopgap meal. It wasn’t enough to give him what he sought most, but it was better than nothing. He went off toward his room, pausing in the living room where his mother was asleep in front of the television, which had the late news on. He washed up in the bathroom, doing his best to keep quiet. He decided not to wake his mother, for that would mean helping her into bed, and that was more than he wanted to do. It would be at least a week before the puppy would be ready, and he would have to be very careful in the meantime. If only school weren’t still in session, he could spend the time making sure the puppy wasn’t discovered. He noticed that Margaret Lynne wasn’t home yet. This meant trouble tomorrow, he knew, so he would have to get up early and take care of the puppy before things exploded at breakfast. All these possibilities kept him unpleasant company as he got into bed.

  * * *

  “Oh my God!” Henry’s mother exclaimed from the top of the basement steps. She swayed a little and blinked against the darkness. “How can you? What are you doing?”

  Henry looked up from his half-consumed meal. There was blood on his chin and shirt, and the skin and guts of the puppy lay at his feet on the last of the papers. He was so elated by what he had been eating that he was unable to conceal anything he had done or to comprehend what his mother was staring at. “Mom?”

  “Henry. What ... you ... you’re eating ...” She started down the stairs, her face fixed in shock. “That looks like—”

  “Just leave me alone, Mom,” Henry pleaded, alarmed by the shock he saw in her face. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  “Not wrong?” Her distress was increasing as she was increasingly aware of what he was doing. “It’s raw! And still alive!”

  “It’s good,” said Henry, not even her outrage enough to stop the power from the puppy’s life surging through him, making him feel strong, almost invincible. “It’s not important.”

  “It’s terrible,” said his mother, coming down another two steps. “Eating raw meat!” She peered at the mess around him. “What’s that at your feet?” The color drained from her face. “I thought you were doing fine, that it was Margaret Lynne who was causing all the trouble.” Her indignation was marred by a slight slurring of the words.

  For once Henry didn’t want to be compliant. He got to his feet, spilling the sections of the butchered puppy onto the floor. “Now look what you made me do.” He lowered his head, staring up at her from under his brows.

  “Henry!” His mother wailed out his name, her face set into a mask of anguish. She reached out, shaking her fist at the boy.

  “Leave it alone, Mom—I know what I’m doing,” Henry warned her, convinced that he could persuade her to see his point of view if he only had the chance. “It’s nothing to bother about.”

  “You’re sick! God, you’re sick!” she muttered. “You need help.”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Henry said, more sharply than before.

  “And you’re dangerous,” she went on as if to herself. “Bachman isn’t anything compared to you.”

  The mention of the brain-damaged patient at the clinic was too much for Henry, who stood up straight. “It’s nothing like that!” The puppy’s vitality made him brave, and he faced his mother without feeling the need to appease her.

  “It’s disgusting—disgusting!” She reached for the flimsy banister and almost had it when she lost her footing, tumbling down the stairs to the concrete. Henry could hear her bones break, and saw that she was still breathing though her eyes were glazed and there was blood around her head.

  “Mom!” Henry shouted, and hurried toward her.

  She was trying to talk, but failing. Only her hands fluttered a bit, but there was no control to the movement. Henry knelt beside her, helplessness washing through him in a debilitating tide. Her eyelids flickered but then they stopped; she was still breathing a little.

  “Oh, oh, Mom!” Henry started to cry, but then he sighed as he realized what he would have to do. He went back and found his pocketknife, hoping it would be up to the task ahead of him. She still had life in her, and that life would endure in him; it would ca
ncel her dying—for she had to be dying—if he could get some of her into him before her heart gave out. He couldn’t do anything else to save her. “It’s for the best, Mom. Let me take your life into me. You’ll see: it’ll make us both strong.” He sliced at her arm; the limb flopped once, like a beached fish, and he continued to cut until he had a strip of skin and muscle. He began to chew on it, finding it salty and a bit stringy at first. The wonderful energy began to well in him, making him light-headed. There was blood everywhere, and he was afraid she would bleed to death before he could take all her life into him. “Hey, Mom. You’re the best!” The puppy was nothing compared to his mother. He didn’t know how much more he could eat, there was such vitality in his mother’s body, and it filled him as nothing ever had before. He continued to eat as the life ran out of her, and left her an empty corpse.

  By the time Henry had packed his mother’s body into a large plastic trash bag, he was already making plans, anticipating the hour when Margaret Lynne would be home. She was so full of life, he thought, and it would sustain him much longer than poor, exhausted Mom would do. School was out tomorrow, and no one would miss Margaret Lynne—they’d think she was with their father. He began to hum as he neatened up the basement, contemplating the hour when Margaret Lynne would arrive and he could once again embrace life to its fullest.

  About Renfield’s Syndrome

  There really is such a condition: the compulsion to eat bugs, small animals, and other creatures in the belief that their lives will strengthen the devourer. I wanted to see how far I could push it.

  WHEN ERIC first moved into the flat above Fanchon, she considered him nothing more than a noisy intruder. He played music every hour of the day and night, he spent the greater part of his afternoons doing something—she could only imagine what—that made her living room sound like the inside of a drum, and he was surly to her on those rare occasions when they actually met. She was too daunted to approach him.

  “He’s driving me crazy!” she complained to her old friend Naomi at the end of an especially loud two hours. “He’s the most obnoxious creep Peterson’s ever let into this building, and that includes the idiot with the saxophone. This guy’s never quiet.”

  “Have you told Peterson?” asked Naomi in her most reasonable and irritating tone, the one she reserved for undergrads. “Haven’t any of the other neighbors complained?”

  “Once, I called him once, but so what? All he did was say he’d talk to him, and what good will that do?” She sighed. “Listen, I’d invite you over for a drink tonight, but I don’t know what the place is going to sound like.”

  “I’ll meet you somewhere,” Naomi suggested much too promptly for Fanchon’s current mood. “What about the Gryphon? Say ten, fifteen minutes?”

  Fanchon knew she could not afford the time, the money, or the calories, but she liked the restaurant tucked into the side of a multi shop building; she let herself be persuaded, assuaging her guilt with the promise that she would not touch the smorgasbord offered at five in the afternoon—the salmon paté on black bread had been her undoing more than once. “All right. The Gryphon. Four-thirty.”

  “And tell that bastard he’ll have the place to himself for an hour or so, and to get it out of his system while you’re gone.” Naomi didn’t sound as sympathetic as Fanchon would have liked, but her humor was welcome.

  “I hardly ever see him, let alone speak.”

  “Small wonder, but ... See you in a bit.” Naomi hung up.

  Since it was sunny, Fanchon decided to walk in spite of the nip in the air. She pulled on a bulky sweater over her silk shirt and changed into low-heeled shoes. She examined her grey slacks in the mirror, thinking that she really ought to take them to the cleaners. Above her, sound rained down, engulfing as a storm at sea. She made a rude gesture to the ceiling as she picked up her purse and went out the door, taking care to lock the deadbolt. It was senseless to take chances.

  Naomi was waiting for her, leaning back in one of the comfortable, caterpillar-shaped love seats away from the window. “You made good time,” she called out, waving so Fanchon could locate her.

  “You’re looking very smart,” said Fanchon as she sat down opposite Naomi.

  Naomi brushed the lapel of her cobalt-blue wool suit. “It’s supposed to be impressive. I like it. I never used to wear blue.” In her right hand she held a very small glass of something clear. “How’s the noise front?”

  “You heard it, didn’t you?” Fanchon asked.

  “Not over the phone,” said Naomi. “Just a kind of rattle. It didn’t seem very bad. But that’s phones for you.”

  “That’s more or less what Peterson said when I called him.” Fanchon leaned back and tucked her purse into the curve of the chair.

  “You ought to talk to him again, get him to understand what’s happening. You ought to insist he come over and listen for himself. He’s the landlord. He’s responsible for keeping the building in good order, isn’t he? The Rent Board could probably make him put in better insulation or—” She made a sweeping swipe with her arm.

  A waitress appeared behind the love seat. “Want another aquavit?”

  “Sure,” said Naomi, glancing at Fanchon. “You?”

  “Coffee,” said Fanchon. Then forgot her stern resolution. “And a small brandy, in a snifter.”

  The waitress nodded and went away.

  “So how’s everything with you?” Naomi asked. “Other than the neighbor, I mean? Any luck with the class load, or are you still stuck with that eight A.M. thing? I forget what it’s called.”

  “Working Women of the Nineteenth Century,” said Fanchon. “I’ve got it and eleven sleepy sophomores.” She looked around. “When I set this up, I thought doing all my teaching in the morning would leave me lots of time for research, but it isn’t working out, and not just because of the noise.”

  “Does it really go on all the time? Nighttime, too?” The aquavit was almost gone.

  “Day, night. Afternoons are probably the worst, but it happens any time. Loud heavy metal banging and noise.” She saw the waitress returning and dug out her purse.

  “Three dollars for the brandy, one-fifty for the coffee. Three-fifty for the aquavit.” She took the offered money and made change. “If you want refills, try to order in the next fifteen minutes, okay? We get swamped after five.”

  Fanchon made a point of giving the waitress a two-dollar tip. Then she looked at Naomi. “How about your schedule?”

  “Busy, busy, busy. We’re seeing more faculty—not the top guys, they have their own shrinks—but midlevel. I had a mathematician in the other day, in a real state. He’s so worried about ozone he can’t sleep.”

  “What do you think is causing it?” Fanchon asked, thinking she wasn’t being fair to impose on her friend when so many other demands were being made of her.

  “I don’t know,” said Naomi, taking her second glass of aquavit. “There is a hole in the ozone, and it probably will get bigger, and that will cause problems. He’s right about that. I can’t say anything to dismiss his fear. Some of the others are upset about the world economy, the air quality, the crowding. They’re all real things.” She took a long sip. “I probably shouldn’t drink this stuff, but it’s good.”

  Fanchon picked up the small brandy snifter and held it between her palms, warming it. “Is it any worse than pills?”

  “Depends on whom you’re talking to,” said Naomi. “Well, you’re the historian. What compares to our ecological worries?”

  “People are always afraid of catastrophe. If it isn’t the ozone layer, it’s plague or famine. If it isn’t that, there are barbarians or the Inquisition or Lady Wu.” She lifted the snifter and let the brandy fire her tongue.

  “But what in the past has had the potential to obliterate the whole planet? Aside from nuclear war. That was what I heard five years ag
o.” She looked away toward the frosted windows and the autumn afternoon beyond. “You ever stop to think how any people in this town are in the destruction business? The guys in math and physics are calculating the end of the world every day. They come to me with horrible things on their minds, and they can’t talk about them. I tell you, Fanchon, there are times I think it’s easier to go crazy.”

  “Better than become impervious to it all, I guess,” said Fanchon.

  “I guess,” echoed Naomi. She glanced at the door as a group of men came in. “Ah, the sociologists have arrived.”

  “Is that good?” asked Fanchon, noticing how animated Naomi had become.

  “Well, Bill’s with them.” Her blush was very out of character and Fanchon could not resist mentioning it.

  “What’s special about Bill?” Now she felt like an intruder, a duenna at an assignation.

  “I’ll let you know when I’m sure.” She waved. “There he is: tall, moustache, tweed jacket, jeans.”

  “Well, that describes most of them,” said Fanchon, taking the rest of her brandy in a single gulp.

  “Red-brown hair going grey. It looks a little like cinnamon and sugar on toast.” Her laughter was self-conscious. She snuggled more deeply into the love seat. “He’s spotted me. I’ll introduce you.”

  “Thanks,” said Fanchon, not at all certain what she meant. “I hope things work out the way you want.”

  “Yeah.” Naomi laughed uncertainly. “It’s not always easy to figure out what that is, you know?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Fanchon. “If you ever learn the trick, you teach it to me.”