The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

”How do those guys selling the lotion in the kiosks always know the people they can run up to and rub the lotion on?” Joyce wondered as Marabeth opened the door to her apartment on their return.

“Every hawker sees me coming and knows I’m a safe target.”

“And how do I remember that the name of the guy who played Cousin Larry on Perfect Strangers was Mark Lynn Baker?” Marabeth asked as they entered the apartment, carrying heavy bags.

“The human mind is a strange thing.”

“What the hell is that?” Joyce wondered.

“what the hell is what?’

“Mara, are you deaf?”

“But now Marabeth heard the humming in the house, and she tensed remembering the dream and then looked around.

“I’m not getting killed today.”

“We should leave,” Joyce whispered.

“This is my house,” Marabeth whispered back, “At least up until the first of the month.”

She looked around and settling on an old candlestick, she pulled out the white candle, laid it on the kitchen table and then advanced to the entrance of the hallway to wait for the bathroom door to open. When it did, she launched herself down the hall with a scream and received a scream in return and then stalked back into the living room while Kris shouted, “Holy shit, Mara!”

Down the hall, into the living room came Kris Strauss, wet from a shower and wrapped in one of Marabeth’s turquoise towels.

“What are you doing here?”

“Preparing to air dry, but that’s not gonna happen now.”

“It could,” Joyce said, assessing him.

“Hello Joyce,” Kris said, neutrally before looking at his sister again.

“I do have a key. I always come here. I just got back from Chicago. I didn’t feel like going back to Mom and Dad’s.”

“Well, you…have a point. But you totally scared the shit out of me.”

“It’s my fault,” Joyce said. “I was the one who told her to watch out. I was the one who got paranoid about robbers and everything.”

“Joyce wanted us to bring all of her stuff to the apartment while she’s here. She thought robbers might break into her car.”

“That’s actually a very safe assessment,” Kris said. “This is the biggest time of year for robberies.”

“Oh,” Marabeth said.

“Yeah,” Joyce said with a touch of triumph.

“So…” Kris pointed in the direction of Marabeth’s bedroom. “My clothes are in there. You mind if I go change and stuff?”

“Ahh.... Yeah,” Mara said. “Glad to have you home.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kris said. “And I’ve got… stuff to tell you.”

“Private stuff,” Joyce assessed.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kris said. “Just… I’ve seen some stuff in the last few days.”

“Well,” Marabeth said, “it is Chicago.”

“Kris,” Joyce said, “I will kick myself if I don’t tell you that you have just the right amount of chest hair. I mean, you look really lovely in a towel.”

Kris stood there looking at her, and he tilted his head, almost doglike.

“I don’t know exactly how I feel about that,” he told her, “but I’m going to say thank you, and go and get dressed.”

As he left Joyce said, “I really do just wish he would wear the towel and leave it at that.”

“Are you through?”

“Or maybe not even the towel.”

Marabeth looked at her.

“I imagine he’s like, just hairy enough all over for it to be nice, but not too hairy. You know?”

“I don’t know,” Marabeth said, “and I don’t want to.”

“The sky goes grey so quickly,” Marabeth noted as they sat on the sofa.

“I feel like I just got out of bed, and to be honest, I did wake up, but, it’s like it’s almost night again.”

“Almost Christmas Eve,” Kris said. “Well, I guess it’s been Christmas Eve all day, but,” he shrugged.

They sat on the sofa like children, a crocheted blanket over him and one over her, their knees gathered to their chest as she sipped on cocoa and Kris on bouillon.

“I even don’t shudder at the prospect of midnight Mass,” Marabeth said.

:”But, you were always the one more religious than me.”

“Well, it’s not the religion that makes me shudder,” Marabeth said. “It’s the family.”

“Ah, they’re not so bad.”

“You’re right,” Marabeth allowed.

“Well, you did flee the country.”

“But I came back.”

“But not to the neighborhood.”

“Ick! No. That’s too much.”

“Property values are rising and everything,” Kris said, “Are you sure?”

“As long as it’s crowded with Kellers and Strausses, then yes, I’m sure.”

Kris yawned and Marabeth said, “You know, you can crash here until we go to church. If you don’t feel like going home.”

“It’s not that I don’t feel like going home,” Kris said, stretching. “I just don’t feel like going home yet.”

“Because of Chicago?”

“Yeah.”

“I like Chicago as much as the next girl,” Marabeth said. “I like it better than New York, but the way you talked about it… You said you saw things. Things that changed you.”

“Yeah,” Kris said, though he didn’t explain it further until she kept looking at him.

“It’s,” Kris began. “It’s…Have you ever read those…? No, that’s not it.”

Kris didn’t quite frown. He had a far off look in his eyes.

“I’m trying to say what I saw, but it’s like I can’t. It’s like I want to tell you everything, and then the words die and somehow I can’t. Do you believe people can put spells on you?”

When Marabeth stared at him, Kris said, “You were always the person who believed in more than I was able to.”

“Yes,” Marabeth said, “and that’s why when you ask me if I believe that people can put spells on you, I’m a little bit taken aback”

“Well,” Kris shook his thick, messy hair, “I don’t think anybody put a spell on me. I think it’s likely that I just can’t speak because the whole situation was… was a spell put on me.”

Marabeth was a patient woman. Her little brother had, even in childhood, been the kind of boy whose eyes narrowed and took on a far off quality before trying to describe something deep and lofty, and though the cousins had had little time for it, Marabeth had thought it was adorable. Eventually she realized it was more than adorable and so she sat, waiting for him to get his thoughts together.

Suddenly Kris laughed and clapped his sister on the knee.

“It’s… so much out there. More than we’re usually willing to admit. The stuff we don’t think is real, it’s real. There’s another world, and we’re part of it Mara. And I don’t know how.”

“Yes,” Marabeth said, excitedly. “That’s what art is like.”

“No, I don’t mean a metaphorical world,” Kris said. “I don’t mean like Paris is out there or culture is out there or…”

“Neither do I,” Marabeth said. “All my life, when I paint, I’m trying to get to something, like a dream I woke from but I can’t remember. There is a world, not necessarily a happy one or an easy one, and I belong to that world, and I guess you belong to it too, and I’ve been trying to see it. Sometimes I do, Kris. I had a dream this morning, a dream I still can’t piece together, and it’s part of that world too.”

Kris was nodding the whole time his sister spoke, and now he took his hand through his brown hair which immediately stood up again.

“Do you know what I think?” he said.

She waited.

“Whatever that world is, or, that… MORE is, it’s what undid Dad. It’s why he left that day and never came back. It’s why everything was the way it was. It’s why I almost lost it. But I don’t care, you know, because whatever it is, it’s a part of me. I have to find it.”

The large, high ceilinged living room was filled in the house on 1958 Dimler Street. On the stereo, Grandma played her favorite Christmas album of the Westminster Choir, and over the crowd around the great Christmas tree, the choir sang:

Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella!

Bring a torch, to the stable call

Christ is born. Tell the folk of the village

Jesus is born and Mary's calling.

Ah!* Ah! beautiful is the Mother!

Ah! Ah! beautiful is her child.

“Ah, there she is!” Myron called as Marabeth entered the house. “The prodigal returns. And who is this lovely lady?” he said looking at Joyce.

“Nothing for me?”

“Bah!” Myron, a tall, wide eyed and round headed man in his thirties said, slapping Kris on the back, “We see your ass all the time.”

“This is my friend, Joyce McNamara,” Marabeth said, “and by the way, please stop acting like you never see me.”

“Joyce,” Myron offered his long skinny arm, “may I get you a punch?”

“He’s recently divorced,” Marabeth told Joyce

“What?” Myron blinked, smoothing his hair back dramatically from his prominent forehead.

“If you want to be a Strauss family rebound, that’s up to you,” Marabeth shrugged.

“”Howabout I think about rebounding later, and get a punch for now?”

“Marabeth,” an old woman called, “what took you so long to get here and Kristian, when will you finally learn to comb your hair?”

“Grandma it is combed.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?” the white haired woman wondered, running her fingers through his nest of hair.

“Mara you look so nice tonight. Even your mother won’t complain. And Joyce, that shade of green!”

“I thought that with my red hair I might look like a Christmas tree.”

“Nonsense,” Grandma said. “And even if you did, what’s more beautiful and stately than a Christmas tree?”

As Myron returned with her glass, and Joyce nodded, she raised the punch to her lips and someone at her side said, “You want to sip that super slow.”

Joyce turned to the blond man who had just arrived, and Myron stuck out his lower lip in consternation at the look on her face, but she was a grown woman and she only asked, “And why is that?”

“Because it’s the strongest punch in Lassador,” the man said. “Maybe even the state of Ohio.”

“You know for sure?” Joyce said.

“I know cause I made it.”

He held out his hand, “Jim. Jim Strauss.”

He was one of the only blonds in the room, and Jim was not simply blond, he was a little bit golden, even his skin, and his eyes were a bright deep blue, completely unlike Kris’s ice blue eyes, Joyce thought.

“Jim,” Joyce said. “Joy, Joy MacNamaa.”

“Is Jim hitting on Joyce?” Kris murmured.

“James is just being friendly,” Grandma said. “You know James. He always had a big personality.”

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Marabeth said, “but Joy seems to like it. And she’s a grown woman, so...”

“Yeah,” Jim said, “I got a little carried away with the punch. I mean, I like it strong, but oops. You know, a little too much bourbon, and—”

Joyce interrupted him with an exclamation.

“Wow!”

“See!” Jim pointed at her and then the punch.

“This is some good shit,” Joyce said. “Really opens your eyes. I kind of need a cigarette after that.”

Jim Strauss pulled a pack of Camels out of his breast pocket. “That can absolutely be a thing,” he told her. “But you can’t smoke in here.”

“Well, I can’t smoke outside,” Joyce said, “I’ll never need a cigarette that bad.”

“Don’t even worry about that,” said Jim. “We’re not barbarians. We got a smoking room just like fancy people in old days. C’mon.”

Joyce looked back at Marabeth and Kris, and Kris was scowling for some reason, but Marabeth shrugged and whispered, “Go on.”

And so Joyce did.