AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Grandma, what’s got in you?”
Grandma watched the knob twist. “No use telling, you wouldn’t believe, child. Out of the goodness of my heart I moved you here a year ago. Tom and I always spit at each other. Now he wants me gone, but he won’t get me, no sir! I know his trick. One day you’ll come from the store and I’ll be nowhere. You’ll ask Tom: What happened to old Grandma? Sweet-smiling, he’ll say: Grandma? Just now decided to hike to Illinois! Just packed and left! And you won’t see Grandma again, Liddy, you know why, you got an inkling?”
“Grandma, that’s gibberish. Tom loves you!”
“Loves my house, my antiques, my mattress-money, that’s what he loves dearly! Get away, I’ll work this out myself! I’m locked in here till hell burns out.”
“What about your canary, Grandma?”
“You feed Singing Sam! Buy hamburger for Spottie, he’s a happy dog, I can’t let him starve. Bring Kitten up on occasion, I can’t live without cats. Now, shoo! I’m climbing in bed.”
Grandma put herself to bed like a corpse preparing its own coffin. She folded her yellow wax fingers on her ruffly bosom, as her mothlike eyelids winced shut. What to do? What weapon to use against that clockwork mechanic? Liddy? But Liddy was fresh as new-baked bread, her rosy face was excited only by cinnamon buns and raised muffins, she smelled of yeast and warm milk. The only murder Liddy might consider was one where the victim ended on the dinner platter, orange sucked in mouth, cloves in pink hide, silent under the knife. No, you couldn’t tell wild truths to Liddy, she’d only laugh and bake another cake.
Grandma sighed a lost sigh.
The small vein in her chicken neck stopped throbbing. Only the fragile bellows of her tiny lungs moved in the room like the ghost of an apprehension, whispering.
Below, in its bright chromed cage, the lion slept.
A week passed.
Only “heading for the bathroom” ran Grandma out of hiding. When Thomas Barton throttled his car she panicked from her bedroom. Her bathroom visits were frantic and explosive. She fell back in bed a few minutes later. Some mornings, Thomas delayed going to his office, purposely, and stood, erect as a numeral one, mathematically clean, working on her door with his eyes, smiling at this delay.
Once in the middle of a summer night, she sneaked down and fed the “lion” a bag of nuts and bolts. She trusted Liddy to turn on the beast at dawn and choke it to death. She lay in bed early, hearing the first stirs and yawns of the two arising people, waiting for the sound of the lion shrieking, choked by bolt, washer, and screw, dying of indigestible parts.
She heard Thomas walk downstairs.
Half an hour later his voice said, “Here’s a present for you, Grandma. My lion says: No thanks.”
Peeking out, later, she found the nuts and bolts laid in a neat row on her sill.
On the morning of the twelfth day of imprisonment, Grandma dialed her bedroom phone:
“Hello, Tom, that you? You at work, Tom?”
“This is my office number, why?”
“True.” She hung up and tiptoed down the hall stairs into the parlor.
Liddy looked up, shocked. “Grandma!”
“Who else?” snapped the old one. “Tom here?”
“You know he’s working.”
“Yes, yes!” Grandma stared unblinkingly about, gumming her porcelain teeth. “Just phoned him. Take ten minutes for him to drive home, don’t it?”
“Sometimes half an hour.”
“Good.” Grandma mourned. “Can’t stay in my room. Just had to come down, see you, set awhile, breathe.” She pulled a tiny gold watch from her bosom. “In ten minutes, back up I go. I’ll phone Tom then, to see if he’s still at work. I might come down again, if he is.” She opened the front door and called out into
the fresh summer day. “Spottie, here, Spot! Kitten, here, Kitt!”
A large white dog, unmarked, appeared, yelping, to be let in, followed by a plump black cat which leaped in her lap when she sat.
“Good pals,” Grandma cooed, stroking them. She lay back, eyes shut, and listened for the song of her wonderful canary in his golden cage in the dining room bay window.
Silence.
