— Ki let herself be picked up. He was a complete stranger to her, and old people always seem to scare little children, but she let him pick her up. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked her. She shook her head, but the way she was looking at him . . . it was as if she almost knew. Do you think that’s possible?’
‘Yes.’
‘He said, “I’m your grandpa.” And I almost grabbed her back, Mike, because I had this crazy idea
. . . I don’t know . . . ‘
‘That he was going to eat her up?’
Her cigarette paused in front of her mouth. Her eyes were round. ‘How do you know that? How can you know that?’
‘Because in my mind’s eye it looks like a fairy tale. Little Red Riding Hood and the Old Gray Wolf. What did he do then?’
‘Ate her up with his eyes. Since then he’s taught her to play checkers and Candyland and box-dots. She’s only three, but he’s taught her to add and subtract. She has her own room at Warrington’s and her own little computer in it, and God knows what he’s taught her to do with that .
. . but that first time he only looked at her. It was the hungriest look I’ve ever seen in my life.
‘And she looked back. It couldn’t have been more than ten or twenty seconds, but it seemed like forever. Then he tried to hand her back to me. He’d used up all his strength, though, and if I hadn’t been right there to take her, I think he would have dropped her on the cement walk.
‘He staggered a little, and Rogette Whitmore put an arm around him. That was when he took the oxygen mask from her — there was a little air-bottle attached to it on an elastic — and put it over his mouth and nose. A couple of deep breaths and he seemed more or less all right again. He gave it back to Rogette and really seemed to see me for the first time. He said, “I’ve been a fool, haven’t I?”
I said, “Yes, sir, I think you have.” He gave me a look, very black, when I said that. I think if he’d been even five years younger, he might have hit me for it.’
‘But he wasn’t and he didn’t.’
‘No. He said, ‘I want to go inside. Will you help me do that?’ I said I would. We went up the mortuary steps with Rogette on one side of him, me t sort of like a harem girl. It wasn’t a very nice feeling. When we got into the vestibule, he sat down to catch his breath and take a little more oxygen. Rogette turned to Kyra. I think that woman’s got a scary face, it reminds me of some painting or other — ‘
‘ The Cry? The one by Munch?’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s the one.’ She dropped her cigarette — she’d smoked it all the way down to the filter — and stepped on it, grinding it into the bony, rock-riddled ground with one white sneaker. ‘But Ki wasn’t scared of her a bit. Not then, not later. She bent down to Kyra and said,
‘What rhymes with lady?’ and Kyra said ‘Shady!’ right off. Even at two she loved rhymes. Rogette reached into her purse and brought out a Hershey’s Kiss. Ki looked at me to see if she had
permission and I said, ‘All right, but just one, and I don’t want to see any of it on your dress.’ Ki popped it into her mouth and smiled at Rogette as if they’d been friends since forever.
‘By then Devore had his breath back, but he looked tired — the most tired man I’ve ever seen. He reminded me of something in the Bible, about how in the days of our old age we say we have no pleasure in them. My heart kind of broke for him. Maybe he saw it, because he reached for my hand. He said, “Don’t shut me out.” And at that moment I could see Lance in his face. I started to cry. I said, “I won’t unless you make me.”‘
I could see them there in the funeral home’s foyer, him sitting, her standing, the little girl looking on in wide-eyed puzzlement as she sucked the sweet Hershey’s Kiss. Canned organ music in the background. Poor old Max Devore had been crafty enough on the day of his son’s viewing, I thought. Don’t shut me out, indeed.
I tried to buy you off and when that didn’t work I upped the stakes and tried to buy the baby.
When that also failed, I told my son that you and he and my grandchild could choke on the dirt of your own decision. In a way, I’m the reason he was where he was when fell and broke his neck, but don’t shut me out, Mattie, I’m just a poor old geezer, so don’t shut me out.
‘I was stupid, wasn’t I?’
‘You expected him to be better than he was. If that makes you stupid, Mattie, the world could use more of it.’
‘I did have my doubts,’ she said. ‘It’s why I wouldn’t take any of his money, and by last October he’d quit asking. But I let him see her. I suppose, yeah, part of it was the idea there might be something in it for Ki later on, but I honestly didn’t think about that so much. Mostly it was him being her only blood link to her father. I wanted her to enjoy that the way any kid enjoys having a grandparent. What I didn’t want was for her to be infected by all the crap that went on before Lance died.
‘At first it seemed to be working. Then, little by little, things changed. I realized that Ki didn’t like her ‘white poppa’ so much; for one thing. Her feelings about Rogette are the same, but Max Devore’s started to make her nervous in some way I don’t understand and she can’t explain. I asked her once if he’d ever touched her anywhere that made her feel funny. I showed her the places I meant, and she said no. I believe her, but . . . he said something or did something. I’m almost sure of it.’
‘Could be no more than the sound of his breathing getting worse,’ I said. ‘That alone might be enough to scare a child. Or maybe he had some kind of spell while she was there. What about you, Mattie?’
‘Well . . . one day in February Lindy Briggs told me that George Footman had been in to check the fire extinguishers and the smoke detectors in the library. He also asked if Lindy had found any beer cans or liquor bottles in the trash lately. Or cigarette butts that were obviously homemade.’
‘Roaches, in other words.’
‘Uh-huh. And Dickie Osgood has been visiting my old friends, I hear. Chatting. Panning for gold. Digging the dirt.’
‘Is there any to dig?’
‘Not much, thank God.’
I hoped she was right, and I hoped that if there was stuff she wasn’t telling me, John Storrow would get it out of her.
‘But through all this you let Ki go on seeing him.’
‘What would pulling the plug on the visits have accomplished? And I thought that allowing them to go on would at least keep him from speeding up any plans he might have.’
That, I thought, made a lonely kind of sense.
‘Then, in the spring, I started to get some extremely creepy, scary feelings.’
‘Creepy how? Scary how?’
‘I don’t know.’ She took out her cigarettes, looked at them, then stuffed the pack back in her pocket. ‘It wasn’t just that my father-in-law was looking for dirty laundry in my closets, either. It was Ki. I started to worry about ICI all the time she was with him . . . with them. Rogette would come in the BMW they’d bought or leased, and Ki would be sitting out on the steps waiting for her.
With her bag of toys if it was a day-visit, with her little pink Minnie Mouse suitcase if it was an overnight. And she’d always come back with one more thing than she left with. My father-in-law’s a great believer in presents. Before popping her into the car, Rogette would give me that cold little smile of hers and say, “Seven o’clock then, we’ll give her supper” or “Eight o’clock then, and a nice hot breakfast before she leaves.” I’d say okay, and then Rogette would reach into her bag and hold out a Hershey’s Kiss to Ki just the way you’d hold a biscuit out to a dog to make it shake hands.
She’d say a word and Kyra would rhyme it. Rogette would toss her her treat — woof-woof, good dog, I always used to think — and off they’d go. Come seven in the evening or eight in the morning, the BMW would pull in right where your car’s parked now. You could set your clock by the woman. But I got worried.’