The Wicked: A Love Story

“Well, goddamn,” Marabeth put the book down.

It was so far removed from anything she had known about these people. Steiger she had known her whole life, but as a very old man. Pamela, she had known, but she had been an ancient woman. Grandmother… but Grandmother was always old and there had been no knowledge of her grandfather. Caroline, as the record told, had always been dead and Delia…

But I knew Delia. I knew poor mad Delia. She was Mother’s best friend. She was… she is Jim’s mother. Her own mother was Caroline Dashbach who died in childbirth. She was…But… it wasn’t possible.

“But it changes everything. It explains everything,” Marabeth said, conscious that she was walking around in the motel room talking to herself.

“That’s why Jim never had the Change. Why he’s different from Kris.”

All of their lives, Jim was their first cousin, the son of their Uncle Byron—someone Marabeth just barely remembered—and their Aunt Delia, the daughter of Steiger Frye, their grandfather’s best friend. But if this journal was true, and it was, then Delia was not just the daughter of her grandfather’s best friend. No, Delia was…

“Pamela’s daughter, the granddaughter of Friederich.”

And, and now she had to bend her mind, a child of deep incest, begotten by Pamela on Steiger who was not simply her grandfather’s best friend, but…

Pamela’s son. Friederich’s son. Delia was Friederich’s granddaughter twice over. Pamela’s daughter, Pamela Strauss’s daughter, and her granddaughter.

“And niece,” Marabeth murmured with a shudder.

“She was always so kind ot me,” Jim had said about Pamela. “I was never afraid of her. She used ot take me on her knees and tell me stories…”

Jim was Pamela’s grandson. He was Pamela’s great grandson, her soul scion. He was the only one of Friederich Strauss’s descendants who was….

But her mind did not go to incest.

“He is the purest descendant of Friederich. He is the only descendant of Pamela, several times over. He is… the only one of us who comes from the mating of Friederich and the wolf that created Pamela.”

It was the reason Delia had died insane, probably, but it was also the reason Jim of all the men in the family without the female female barrier, did not change, did not manifest the curse… or the ability.. in the same way.

Marabeth reflected that what she was thinking was so very German. A little too twentieth century German.

“He is the purest one of us all.”

It never occurred to her not to tell him. She went down the hall before she let the thought of protecting him come. Too many people were kept from knowing things because people wanted ot protect them. She rapped on the door and then thought, God, I hope he and Seth weren’t—

But the door opened, and though Seth looked sleepy, he smiled at her. He was a good guy. He was.. yes… just what Jim needed. Jim was sitting up in bed and he pulled a tee shirt on and came out of the covers, joining them.

“You guys have to read this,” Marabeth said, entering the room, and putting the book down on the bed.

“What?” Jim began. “Is it that important?”

“Yes. And you need to read it yourself. How far did you get?’

“Good God, Mara, until I had to stop., It’s more than I really ever wanted to know, but…”

“But where did you stop?”

“I dunno. When Grandma got married to Granddad Jimmy.”

“Well, then you have to get to 1955.”

“1955?”

Marabeth nodded.

“When your mother was born.”

The Book of Pamela Strauss

THE YEAR THAT DELIA was born was full of happiness as well as sorrow. Of course, Caroline was gone ,and this was a great sadness for Katherine and for Natalie. She and Natalie had been close, and from then on, Natalie would never have such a close friend. But the truth is, I cannot say that Steiger was overly moved by his wife’s death. He was sad. Sadness was there. I do not mean to make him seem worse than he was. But he had Delia, who was the pride of his lfie, and after all, his true daughter, and he knew that I would care for her. I was glad to do it.

Steiger was the only one who could keep Jimmy from his drinking. Steiger did not seem to suffer from the dreams Jimmy did, and there were times when Jimmy either forgot or chose to forget to take his pills, and then he was locked in the basement causing terror to all above. Kristin and Byron were just babies, and I thought that life in the house on Dimler Street would always be like this, alternating between the joy of the baby, whom Natalie loved like a second mother, and the sadness and occasional terror of Jimmy and his fits of drunkenness. And then there were the times when he descended into being a monster.

Jimmy’s rages subsided in Steiger’s arms. Steiger, having brought a child into the world and been married once, never felt the need to be married again. Whatever complicated business had gone on in the two marriages, now Jimmy came to Steiger the way I came to Friederich. Steiger and Delia had moved into the coach house, and Jimmy would spend his nights there.

But Natalie was jealous, and what woman would not be? In her way she feared Steiger, or respected him, and she said nothing around him, but one night when he was gone, I heard her screaming at Jimmy, “Your sisters don’t go through this with my brothers. Caroline had to live like this. That’s why she died! That’s why she was so unhappy. How dare you shame me this way, always running off to him! How dare you.”

When Steiger came back, Jimmy went to him, but only for a little while. Natalie spoke to him and left him changed, and a few days later Steiger announced that he and Delia were moving.

“We are going to do a bit of traveling, see the country. I’ve seen the world, but not much of the country, and this little lady should experience the same thing.”

I could have killed Natalie for taking my son and granddaughter, ah, my daughter, from me. I almost did. I contemplated it. And she had separated Jimmy from his best friend, all to have a man who could never really be hers. She paid for it however. With Steiger gone, there was no sobriety, many fights, thrown furniture, though no black eyes, and the medicine was gone, that is to say, Jimmy refused to take it, and so the rest of the family did not come during the full moons when Jimmy was chained below, screaming.

Natalie came to me later that year, and I was put out with her.

“What do you want?’

“Pamela, I am pregnant.”

“With whose baby?”

“Jimmy’s!” she almost shrieked. “What kind of question is that?”

“A very good kind considering my brother is as mad as a hare. Or a wolf? Didn’t you see that when you married him?”

She didn’t answer, and I said, “So it is Jimmy’s”.

“Yes?”

“You’re married to a homosexual werewolf and still you manage to have children, while Claire, married all these years to a man who loves her has only one son. Marriage is a mystery.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ve had two children already, I’m sure you know just what to do.”

Was she coming to me woman to woman? Even if she had not known that Steiger was my son and that Delia was our daughter, even if she had not known how much I loved them, she knew that I loved them, and what was more, she surely must have known I had little sympathy for her current situation. Was she looking to me to ask if she should have the baby?

“I’ve heard that you know of… herbs… ways.”

“You want to kill your baby.”

“I don’t WANT to kill my baby.”

“You are coming to me, having the audacity to ask me to kill your baby.”

“I don’t want to do this. Have a child that could be like Jimmy. It’s bad enough Byron will be! I don’t want to do this! I don’t want to do this!”

She kept screaming until I slapped her. The second time I slapped her because I wanted to hit her. She sank down in the old chair in the corner of my room and I said, “Stop your crying. Go back and have your baby. He is a Strauss. He will not be like Jimmy or Byron. Jimmy was weak. He was always weak. You knew that when you married him. And Byron is deficient.”

Natalie’s eyes flashed, but hadn’t she been the one to say she wanted an abortion?

“Byron is…not right in his head,” I said, firm. “Go back and have this baby. He will be different.”

I think that all that summer and autumn, as Natalie grew, her womb was filled with sadness and sorrow. She swelled with misery. There was no joy in her pregancy, and the truth is, Jimmy was barely lucid for it. The January night that Nathan Friederich James Strauss was born, I was in the room with Natalie and my younger sisters. We lifted the child and held him to us, counting his toes and kissing his feet, and the sorrow in Natalie seemed to lighten. Her brothers were in the house as well, waiting to see their nephew, but no one said anything about Jimmy, who was passed out drunk in the library.

“I always thought I could own Jimmy,” Natalie confessed, “that if I just had him to myself he would be a proper husband. But now I see that isn’t so.”

As she drifted off to sleep she said, “Pamela, bring Steiger and Delia home.”

When we return, the melancholic conclusion of: The Wicked.