The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

Joyce looked on the painting, mesmerized.

“I love your work,” she said, “I always have. But this…”

“Is far too crazy.”

“No,” Joyce said. “It should be terrifying, but it’s also marvelous. It might be one of my favorites.”

“I used to have dreams of being eaten,” Marabeth said, “dreams of being eaten alive, and now I wonder if this isn’t part of it.”

She stopped painting. What was left of the background was an almost luminous golden red, but most of it was taken up by a whirling darkness that resolved itself into a great wolf, and its teeth were jagged and its mouth longer than any real wolf. It devoured a girl all in red, her red cloak still hanging from her mouth. The girl’s face was round and beige and pale, and it remained unconsumed along with hands hanging limply from the wolf’s jaws, and the girl was not fighting, rather she seemed in ecstasy.

“It’s Pamela’s Red Riding Hood,” Joyce said.

“Or rather Hagano’s,” Marabeth said. “And Hagano is the man I dreamed of, the blond man of my dreams looking at me from the snow. I know it was him. And Red Riding Hood… She wants to be devoured. She must be devoured.”

“In the book,” Joyce said, “Hagano said that people added the woodman because they didn’t understand the story.”

“And I didn’t understand it either,” Marabeth said. “But now,” as she continued to add darkness to the wolf’s pelt, “I think I do. The Grandmother became the wolf, and in the end, because she was of the blood, Red Riding Hood did too. She was not consumed by a monster that was separate from her. The monster was her nature.”

“Grandmother, what big teeth you have,” Joyce said. “Then… the Grandmother really was the wolf?”

“Yes,” Marabeth said. “And so was Riding Hood. She was sent to become the wolf, sent by her mother, who was possibly the wolf already. It is… an initiation. I am sure of it. It’s really the only thing I am sure of.”

The phone rang, and Marabeth went to get it while Joyce continued staring at the painting, at the slit almond eyes like shards of glass that belonged to the wolf, at the face of the blissful girl hanging from his mouth. Beyond her, Marabeth talked on the phone. When she was off, Marabeth said, “That was Kris, he said he was on his way to get me. Grandmother went down to the police department to… look at Dad’s remains.”

“What?”

“She said she had to. They were being taken to the funeral home. She wanted to escort them. Mom went too. She fainted.”

“Call Kris and tell him not to come,” Joyce said, “I’m taking you.’

“Thanks for that,” Marabeth said.

“Don’t thank me,” Joyce said, “I don’t really feel like being left alone tonight.”

“Bring the book,” Marabeth said.

“Of course.”

As soon as she came into the house, Marabeth felt the need to put the book in her old room and keep it from everyone else. There was an air of trouble in the house. Of course there was, and she didn’t want to add to it. She was surprised coming out of her room, to see Jim coming down the hall.

“I thought I heard you come in,” he said.

“Yeah,” Marabeth answered.

“We’re all in the kitchen.”

“How much is all?”

“Peter, Kris. Myron is here too. Grandma. Aunt Becca’s lying down.”

“Jim, what all happened?’

“The police said that they were bringing Uncle Nate to the funeral home, no that the Steiglers were coming for him. And Grandma said she had to go and see him before anyone else did.”

Marabeth looked doubtful and Jim said, “I know.”

“Your mom and Kris went with her. But Kris didn’t go in to see Uncle Nate. Grandma did, and then your mom did, because she felt she needed to be with Grandma, and maybe she thought she had to because she was married to Nate. That was a terrible idea. Someone should have stopped her. They had to bring her out of the room. They said she just whimpered and passed out. Grandma just stood there.”

“But…” Marabeth began. “But,” she started again, and then she simply said, “But what’s left? What can be left?”

“It turns out a lot can be left,” Jim said. “But it just doesn’t look like a person anymore. Not really. Grandma said she had seen all of her children after they died, and she had to see Uncle Nate.”

“Well, where is she?”

“In her room. Just kind of sitting there.”

“I’m going to go see Mom,” Marabeth said.

She thought she should go check on Joyce too.

“She’ll be fine,” Jim said, “But yeah, I’ll go down there and see.”

Jim went down the back stair and Marabeth down the front to avoid the kitchen. She went though the living room, and down to her mother’s room. Her door was open, and she could hear her family in the kitchen.

Marabeth walked in and was surprised by the largeness of the room. She’d always imagined the back rooms of the house to be small, but now she saw that wasn’t so. Rebecca Strauss was not on the bed, but sitting in an easy chair under the window, her crossed feet spread out in front of her.

Marabeth sat at her mother’s dressing table, pulled out her cigarette roller and her bag of tobacco.

“Mom, you shouldn’t have done that,” was all she said. “He’s been gone so long.”

“I looked for a trace of him,” Rebecca said. “I tried to look into what they showed me, and I looked for a trace of him, and in just a second I saw it, the him in what was left. That’s when I passed out. It was like suddenly what was in front of me transformed and I could see your father in it, and that was too much.”

Rebecca shook her head.

“Now, I can’t remember much of anything. I can see your father’s face, but it’s Nate when he was young and handsome. And I can vaguely remember, like a nightmare more than anything, the morgue, and standing there next to Natalie, and she… She didn’t do anything. She just stood there and looked. All I can think is, curse you, you old bitch for making me do something I never would have done. Not that I had to do it, but when she did, I felt like I had to.”

“No one else did.”

Marabeth handed her mother a cigarette and Rebecca said, “I don’t smoke these. Filthy things.”

But when Marabeth lit it, Rebecca took a drag, and then Marabeth set to rolling her own.

“You shouldn’t either,” her mother told her.

“Shouldn’t what?”

“See your father’s body.’

“All right, Mom,” Marabeth said, thinking how that had never been an option.

“I’m going to see the others,” she told her.

“I’ll be back.”

Her mother nodded, and Marabeth went down the hall. Her cousins were drinking and Marabeth said, “I don’t want us all to turn into alcoholics.”

“We were talking about the funeral,” Kris said.

“You know, I hadn’t really thought about it,” Marabeth said. “I guess we should have it as soon as possible.”

“There’s no rush,” Myron said.

“Of course there’s a rush.” Marabeth said. “He’s been dead for half a year.”

“We were going to talk it over with the Steiglers tomorrow,” Kris said.

“I don’t understand what there is to talk about,” Marabeth poured herself a drink. “The police department has done its part. The Steiglers do cremations, right?”

“We can’t cremate our dad!” Kris said, suddenly looking very desperate. “We need to have a Catholic funeral.”

“When did you ever care about a Catholic anything?” Marabeth said. “And besides, Catholics get cremated. It’s not 1955.”

“Grandma would want a coffin.”

“Grandma went into a morgue and saw a bloated dead body and made Mom almost pass it out. Enough is enough. Call the Steiglers and arrange for the cremation. I don’t know why it wasn’t done tonight.”

“He was our dad!” Kris pounded his fist on the table.

“He was our dad! Not a fucking piece of meat, Mara. Not trash to be burnt up because it doesn’t look nice anymore. He was our dad. He deserves… what we have, the full funeral, not just some jar with ashes, and…”

Marabeth stood there silent, and Myron touched Kris on the back, and looked at Marabeth and then lowered his eyes.

She did not speak immediately. It was a while before she replied.

“I am not trying to burn him up and get rid of him like trash,” Marabeth said. “But I am trying to get him into the ground and move on. He is dead.”

“He’s our—” Kris began again.

“You can keep on saying he’s our father till Jesus comes back, and he’ll still be dead,” Marabeth said. “He’s been dead for a long time. He’s been laying out half buried, exposed to the elements, and I don’t have to pop my head into a morgue to wonder what that looks like. But to go through the… farce of embalming what’s left of him and… whatever the Steiglers do, just so Grandma can see a casket funeral…” Marabeth shook her head. “I’m not doing it. And you can bang your fist on tables and shout all you want.”

“You’re a bitch,” Kris said suddenly.

“Kris!” Peter said while Joyce, not reaching out to touch Marabeth, just looked at her.

“You’ve always been a bitch. You’re cold. That’s why Pamela gave you that book, because she knew you were like her.”

Marabeth took a huge breath, “Well,” she said, “when all my brother is capable of doing is banging tables, insulting his relatives and sneaking out to fuck whoever it is you were fucking, and Grandma is dragging Mom into morgues to stare at bloated corpses, someone has got to be.”

Kris opened his mouth.

“Shut the fuck up,” she said. “Don’t say another goddamned word. You’re too weak to do the one thing I’ve asked of you today, and all you want to do is call me a bitch and apparently talk shit to Jim who, guess what, is the only brother you have. Well, guess what, Kris? We all are going through something. Everything’s not about you. But you sit here and be sad, and you sit here and be angry, Baby Brother, and I will go and arrange things in a suitable way so that Grandma can have her casket or…whatever.”