The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

It was early afternoon when Kris Strauss woke up, and he felt more refreshed than he could remember. He could always tell how late it was and he thought, with a mix of amazement and disgust that he could not believe he’d waken up so late. He was still in his clothes, for when he had come home, he had not really thought he would sleep. He had left a little night light on, now drowned out by the grey light of the sun. When he rolled over, his elbow hit something hard and it took him a while to realize it was a book, a little while longer to realize it was The Book of Pamela Strauss.

Kris frowned and then ran his hand over it, but he didn’t open the book. He ran a hand through his hair and yawning, got up and went out of his room, down the hall, down the stairs, to Marabeth’s room. But she wasn’t there, and so he left the book there and went down the back stairs to the kitchen where his grandmother and his mother were sitting up with his sister and Joyce.

“At last the sleeping beauty arises,” Joyce said.

“I don’t know how beautiful I feel,” Kris said. “Is there still coffee.”

“If you make it,” his grandmother said. “It’s past twelve o clock.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Kris yawned while he went through the high cupboards, pulling down coffee filters and coffee. He remembered how, after she’d turned thirteen, Marabeth had always kept a coffee pot in her room so that she didn’t have to see people until she had faced the day with a cup in her. It seemed like such a good idea right now.

“Mara,” Kris began and then stopped himself.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll ask you later.”

“Alright,” she said, her voice strange, but containing a note that said she had some inkling of what he was about to say.

“It’s really about time for me to go home,” Joyce said. “I need to see what my place looks like again.”

“I actually do too,” Marabeth said. “I can come back tonight,” she told Natalie and her mother, “but I want to see the place I pay rent on, at least for a moment.”

Joyce said, “We can leave in a minute.”

“No,” Kris said before Marabeth could answer.

“I mean, I’ll drop her off.”

He added, “I need to run some errands. Let me just finish this cup of coffee.”

“Why did you leave me that book?”

“Where did you go and not come back from till six in the morning?”

“Now you’re dissuading.”

“Six-forty-five, in fact.”

“You were waiting up for me.”

“No, I was awake. I was just going back to sleep. I kept reading, then putting the book down, and then pacing around, and then reading, and then walking around the house. You know, it’s a well built house, you don’t really hear floorboards squeaking and all that. It’s a nice place to be insomniac. Thought about Dad a lot. Thought about this Eve Moreland. Went back to reading. And then heard you tip up the stairs.”

“So are you going to tell me why you left me the book?” Kris turned on Birmingham, ignoring Marabeth’s question.

“I knew you wanted to know about it. I thought that reading it would let you know what I know.”

“Did you finish it?”

“Oh, God no! It’s hardly begun. But… Good Lord, the beginning’s enough.”

Kris didn’t speak right away and then he said, “Mara, I don’t want to read it.”

Marabeth turned to him, and he looked at her a moment, taking his eyes off the road.

“I’m sorry. I know it makes me a coward, but I don’t want to read it. I mean, I feel like whatever it is, it will make me crazy, the craziness that I take pills for, the craziness that, to be frankly honest, I felt last night. I feel it today. It’s like a shark on the other end of a shatterproof glass tank I live with every day. I know it won’t break through. It can’t. But I feel it. And, I know that’s nuts, but—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marabeth said, “Really, I’m serious. I’ve read enough of this book. I understand.”

“Maybe you should tell Joyce about it.”

“Joyce?”

“She’s your best friend.”

“It’s a book that says that Pamela and Friederich were werewolves. It’s—”

“Mara, if you really trust her—”

“Of course I do—”

“And you really need to share it, then let Joyce read it. You can tell me everything,” Kris told her. “I just…. I can’t read it.”

Marabeth nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, Baby Brother, you don’t ever have to be sorry. At least not for that.”

Marabeth took a long shower in her own shower. When she had awaken this morning, her mind had played that evil trick on her. First feeling the bed, and then looking around it at the room, she had taken a while to remember she was not in her apartment, but in the house on Dimler Street where she had grown up. And then it all came back. Her father, missing so long, was officially dead. His satchel had been returned to her, worse for wear but bearing several documents, one of them the large bound journal which read The Book of Pamela Strauss.’ And, slowly, as she had come into consciousness, she had remembered everything Pamela had written.

Well, now, back in her apartment, she had to wash herself free of it, be back in her place with the white walls and the low ceiling, the balcony doors that looked out onto bleak day after Christmas Birmingham Street. Here, hung up on a white wall, was the wicker sun that had survived college and marriage and divorce. In her housecoat she stood there feeling odd, feeling tired, feeling very discontent. When she felt like this she had to stop and take stock, and now she did. She did not take her eyes from the door until the sunlit white door became greyish blue with the passing of the day, and at last she said, “I thought I would feel freer. I thought away from the house, and from the family, I would feel free of all that business. But I don’t ”

She really only felt like this was no time to be alone, like she didn’t understand the world at all anymore, and she didn’t feel entirely safe.

“Paint,” she said, rising slowly, and stripping her housecoat. It was so warm that, after she drew the curtains on the white and grey world, she could walk around in this house naked, and she needed her paints more than she needed shorts and a tee shirt.

“Paint it out.”

Something in her wanted to go back home, but she had spent a long time fighting not to go home, to get out of Germantown, and she didn’t want to run back to her family just now.

“Besides,” she said, as she went to her supply closet, “sometimes you have to get through things on your own. At least for a little bit. Stare them down.”

Nevertheless, when Joy called her and asked her what she was doing, and Marabeth answered, “Painting,” and Joy said, “Mind if I come over?” Marabeth was only too glad to say, “Get over here, now.”

Marabeth greeted Joy with a cigarette and said, “I need you to keep an open mind.”

“I’m not even going to ask you about what,” Joyce said. “Then she said, “Fuck it, you need to keep an open mind too.”

“About what?”

“I slept with Peter.”

“Peter who—? What the fuck?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Marabeth blinked, then, handing over the lighter she said, “Well, you are a grown ass woman and he is a grown man, so…” she shrugged.

“And what do you need me to keep an open mind about?”

Marabeth brushed Joyce over to her desk which was before the wall with the window cut into it that divided the living room from the kitchen.

“The journal.”

“I need you to read this. At least up to where I bookmarked it.”

“Okay,” Joyce nodded warily. “Do I need a drink?”

“Wine’s in the fridge. Get me a glass too?”

“Sure thing, and why do I need to keep an open mind?”

“Because according to that book,” Marabeth said, “I might be a werewolf. And so might Peter by the way.”

“I wondered if you’d ever get here,” Jim said when Peter came into the house.

His cousin shrugged. He was in jeans and a pullover, and his hair was a bit of a mess today.

“I had some things to do. Remember, I had work.”

“Wasn’t work like one conference call?”

“I had a couple of consultations too. And had to take the kids to Desiree.”

“I never did like her,” Jim reflected.

“Well,” Peter said, going to the refrigerator as he kissed Natalie on the cheek, “now, neither do I.”

“Yes, and Peter dropped Joyce off too,” Natalie said as she headed out of the kitchen and back to the front of the house. “That was very nice “

Jim raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, that was very nice.”

Peter looked after his great aunt, his eyebrows hooded, and then he sat down at the round kitchen table, legs splayed, and opened a bottle of Gatorade.

“What’s this about you brought Joyce home?”

“As you remember, she took me home because I was…”

“Feeling absolutely no pain.”

“Right,” Peter said, flicking his cousin on the head. “Well, she stayed over last night, and then I brought her back here this morning.”

Jim thought about asking more questions, but simply said, “I hope she likes our family. She’s gotten far more of us than most people ever do.”

Peter shrugged. “I think she fits in.”

Kris was coming down the back stairs and he said, “Hey, Pete, Jim. Have you seen Mom and Grandma?”

“In the front,” Peter jerked his thumb.

Kris nodded and went out of the kitchen and up the hall.

“I was about to say I wonder what’s getting him, but that’s dumb of me,” Peter said.

“It’s like I keep forgetting Uncle Nate’s gone, and then I remember it all over again.”

“I had a dream that Nate was teaching me touch football,” Peter said. “You remember, Nate was like the tallest best looking guy in the family. He was the glamorous one. And he was always so patient with me. My dad wouldn’t teach me anything. But Nate always had time.”

“Is that why you always have time for Kris and me?”

“Uh,” Peter looked startled. “Yeah. I guess. You and Kris together sort of make up a Nate. He’s got Nate’s height and color and you’ve got the wavy hair and the looks.”

“I’ve got the gayness too. Nate didn’t have that.”

“That is… so far from anything I was talking about it. He had the touch with the ladies. You’ve got the touch with everyone. I called this morning, and a voice that wasn’t yours picked up.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “Ryan.”

“Ryan,” Peter nudged him under the table.

“Yeah,” Jim shrugged, suddenly shy. “He’s a nice guy.”

“Is he nice enough to bring him home and let the Strausses and Kellers get a look at him?”

“Actually he’s so nice that’s never ever going to happen. And anyway, it’s not serious. I mean, it’s a serious friendship, but… It’s not like a romance.”

Kris came back into the kitchen and Peter said, “Are you going to hang out with us for a little bit?”

Kris shook his head, “I can’t.” He lifted his phone. “I gave my number to that Detective McCord. He said they’re ready for us to take Dad’s remains.”

“And do what?” Peter looked horrified.

“Mr. Steigler is coming to take him so… we can have a funeral.”

“I hadn’t even thought about it,” Peter said. “I mean… we will have to have a… But… why are you going?”

They heard a jingling of keys and then Natalie Keller came into the kitchen. She was in her purple overcoat, her white hair wrapped by a scarf, and Rebecca, in her red coat, her red hair uncovered, followed.

“We’re on our way to the morgue,” Natalie said, stalwartly.

“But why?” Jim demanded.

“Because I have to see him,” Natalie said. “I could not live with myself if I didn’t see him before we decided what to do. I just can’t leave it in Steigler and Steigler’s hands. He was my son.”

“Then we’re going,” Jim said, standing up, and Peter did too.

“No,” Natalie said. “you’re not. And it’s bad enough Rebecca’s coming.”

“I’m not letting you do this alone.”

“But it will be just us,” Natalie said. “Us and only us. Not even you,” she said to Kris.

Kris looked worried and strange, and even though Jim had not quite forgiven Kris, he reached out and took his cousin’s hand, and though Kris did not look at him, Kris gripped his hand tight.

“Alright,” Kris said, after breathing deeply. “But I’m driving.”

“Alright,” Natalie said. “You’re driving.”