The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

The vastness of the house on Dimler Street was surprising to her, something Marabeth had always taken for granted, and never really seen until she had seen it through Joyce’s eyes, and how odd that on this one floor it was only she and Joyce in the room on the other side of the great shared bathroom. Yes, Jim was down the hall, but upstairs among four bedrooms, Kris was the only one asleep, if he was asleep.

Back in her old bedroom, which was the size of her living room downtown, with ceilings almost twice as high, and the curtains open over Dimler Street, Marabeth’s head was filled with exciting thoughts, and she tossed and turned in the large bed thinking she would never get to sleep until, at last, stretching out and yawning, that was exactly what she did.

She woke in the middle of the night, and it was such a sharp waking, and it was so definitely dark, that Marabeth realized she had been in a deep slumber. Even as she lay there, fiddling with the thought of going to the bathroom, she remembered what had woken her. Slowly, the dream returned to her. Her father Nathan Strauss, tall like Kris, but more handsome than his son, chiseled jaw, wavy hair and wolf eyes like some 1950’s movie star. He was in that dirty old coat he loved so much, trudging through grey February looking snow toward the river, and he carried a great bundle with him. He sat down on a rock, breathing.

He looked so lost and even in the dark, as he stared out at her, or at nothingness, she thought, “He is young. He’s not very old at all.

“Father, I see you. Father I see you. I hear you. Come back. Please. We’re waiting for you. Mother’s done nothing but wait for you.”

But he did not hear her or see her. Now Nathan Strauss stood up and shook his head, and hefting the bundle over his shoulders, he began to move away, out of her focus.

Marabeth remembered it now, and sat in the darkness, heartsore. She was not a crying kind of person, and could not see her way to doing it now. But she was full of an incredible sadness for someone she was sure by now she would never see again, at least, not in this life.

Kris Strauss’s life could be markedby a steady progression upstairs. Grandmother had always lived on the first floor, lived there before his parents, and as a little boy he stayed downstairs in the room beside her. When they were all children, he and Marabeth shared a room for a long time, and even though the house was full of rooms, it was also full of relatives. For a long time Delia stayed upstairs, and Maris, then her sisters too. Peter had a room up there as well.

But when Marabeth turned seven, Dad had said, “It’s time for big girls to have their own room, and Marabeth had chosen the room that was always hers. For some reason Kris couldn’t quite remember, her parents were not completely pleased with the choice.

“Honey, it’s kind of big for a little girl. Are you sure you want it?”

Without complaining, Marabeth simply reminded them, “You said I could have any room I wanted.”

“Besides,” Mom agreed, “we’re right down the hall. And she won’t be a little girl forever.”

And so Marabeth had moved up, leaving Kris the room to himself, but he was always coming up with his parents or falling asleep in a corner of Marabeth’s large room.

“I think he wants to be upstairs with us,” Dad had said one night at dinner. “We could all live on the second floor. It’s colder downstairs anyway.”

“You should,” Delia had said. “I hate climbing up those steps. I’d be glad to switch rooms with Kris. Me and Jim could be down there.”

Kris couldn’t remember if Jim had pointed out that there was no reason he should share a room with his mother, but Delia had gone downstairs and Kris had taken her room,

But as the years had gone by, Kris noticed that everyone ignored the plain doorway that ended after the staircase where the stairs continued up to the third floor, and because it wasn’t an attic, exactly, and not locked away, Kris became very curious about it. On one hand, there just weren’t enough people in the house to fill the whole thing, but on the other hand, the third floor seemed completely forgotten. Even Marabeth, it seemed, had no real desire to go upstairs, and so he had gone up himself. He was surprised when he learned that upstairs, in the hallway, the lamps still had working light bulbs. It was a long empty hall, one filled with a sort of peaceful solitude not at all like an abandoned attic.

He’d expected it to be covered in dust but the warm lamp in the center hallway which he emerged into revealed polished honey colored hardwood floors and white walls with a print of two on them, a hallway with windows near the top of the ceiling at both ends. There were three doors on either side. Later, when Kris descended, and it did feel like a true descent, to the first floor, his grandmother would tell him how long ago the top floor had been servant quarters. Two long dormitories, one for the men and the other for the women, and then in time, part of one had been cut off to make a kitchenette for them, and after plumbing, another had been cut up to make a bathroom.. This part of the house, clean and forgotten, where no one ever came, became Kris’s sacred place, and little by little, he had moved things from his old room to one of the rooms upstairs, a room which few people in his family had ever seen. Through all the years, when cousins with their little intrusive feet came running all through the house, when guests he did not wish to see made themselves present, no one came this high up. Something about it told people to keep away.

Upstairs was a good place to be a teenager. Tonight he felt it, all those strange feelings that had come with adolescence. At first he had thought they were sexual, for they came when sex came, and his father had sat him down and told him, “If you start to feel strange, it’s okay, you know. If you start to feel odd in your skin. You have to tell me. If you… If you, I don’t know. If you begin to feel weird. When your body changes...”

Kris hadn’t wanted to talk about that. He’d become moody.

“I know about sex, Dad.”

Nathan, Kris now remembered, had looked like he was about to say something but, instead, his father had said, “Well, alright.”

They had all watched him for some time. Or so it seemed. It seemed as if Nathan never wanted his son out of his sight, and then, one night, when he was fourteen, after a day of feeling particularly angry, he went into an uncontrollable tantrum that had spiraled into a rage before he descended into the black madness he hated to talk about, and when he came out of it his father had said:

“I wondered if it would happen to you. It’s depression, you know? Well, worse than depression. It’s a… an upsetting of the nerves, you know. You can black out from rage and anger. I hoped it wouldn’t happen to you. You can’t detect schizophrenia until the teenage years, and I was hoping it would pass you over.”

“I’m… crazy?”

“No,” Nathan frowned while Rebecca stood up, shaking her head.

“No, you have a sickness. A lot of us do. And there are medicines. You can control it.”

“But I didn’t want to give it to you until it was time,” Nathan had said. “And now… I think it’s time.”

“Will it… screw me up?”

His mother laughed, touching her red hair.

“No, it will keep you from being screwed up.”

Her laughter seemed hollow, but then, how happy could she be about seeing her son flip out and lose his mind?

“We will go to the doctor tomorrow,” Nathan said. “Get a referral. Get things sorted out.”

Kris did not look reassured. Marabeth had not been there, almost as if she knew he wouldn’t want her to see him like this.

Nathan, looking weak and weary and worried, hugged his son quickly.

“Relax,” he gave a brittle laugh, “It just means you’re like your old man.”

The next day they went downtown or to the part of Germantown which touched old downtown and visited Dr. Keibler. Kris had seen him on occasion, and remembered that the old doctor was some type of cousin. They did not bring Mom or Marabeth, and when they got there, Dr. Keibler told his father. “We’re going to talk, just me and Kris. Do you mind?”

And Kris couldn’t tell if he was being condescended to or not, but he said, “Yes.”

Even now Kris couldn’t remember what they had talked about, except that he talked about the agitations and the nerves that happened some time, and how he had felt before blacking out.

“Have you ever seen birth control?” Dr Keibler asked.

Kris frowned.

“I’m fourteen!”

“That’s a no. Look,” Dr. Keibler said, handing him a radiating disk, “you have to take this every day. And you have to take the pills in order. That’s why I’m asking. That’s how birth control works, and that’s how this medication works. It is a constant thing. Don’t skip your days. Don’t neglect your medication.”

Grey light was coming through the thin curtains when his door burst open and there was laughing and there were girls on his bed, and Jim burst in singing:

“Willie, bring your little drum;
Robin, bring your fife and come;
And be merry while you play,

Tu-re-lu-re-lu,
Pat-a-pan-a-pan,
Come be merry while you play,
Let us make our Christmas gay!”

“What in the…?” Kris shook the cobwebs from his head.

“We know this is your secret place,” Marabeth leapt upon him, tickling him out of his foul mood. “But I didn’t think we could trust you to wake up on your own.”

“I know we couldn’t,” Jim sat down on the bed. Kris knew that Jim’s life hadn’t been easy, not exactly. But he was well muscled, and his torso and breast clearly defined under his wife beater. Even in the morning his blue eyes shone, and his golden waves were in perfectly tousled curls.

“I’ve put on the coffee and made the fire, and Grandma and Aunt Becca are just getting up.”

Jim slapped Kris’s thigh with that overabundance of friendliness and familiarity that Kris could never respond to. “Come on, sleepy head. Time to go down and greet Christmas day.”

“Could I put on clothes?”

“I like you better without them,” Joy said.

“Let the man get dressed,” Jim stood up. “But just your jammies.”

Jim was in his white and black checked pajama pants. “See you in five sir, and not ten.”

While his sister, Joy, and his cousin disappeared down the hall, then Kris heard them going down the steps, he got up and, hair a mess, slapped his cheeks and then went to his coat and pulled out the disk of pills. They were little, and he didn’t really need water, but he walked down the hall to the bathroom, cupped some in his hand and took it anyway.

“We’ve got Danish and sausageand coffee and, oh my God, are you drinking a beer?”

“It’s Christmas, Mom,” Kris said, coming from the refrigerator and handing one to Jim.

“You just can’t take them anywhere,” Grandma commented. “They’re not fit to enter civilized kitchens.”

“And I did eggs,” Rebecca continued.

“You really went overboard for Christmas morning.” Joyce said.

“It’s just sausage and eggs. The Danish made itself.”

“Talented Danish,” Kris commented as he broke off a piece.

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“You know,” Jim stretched, “I feel sorry for all those poor souls who get up and go to church on Christmas morning.”

“The bishop does Christmas morning Mass,” Grandma said.

“That’s not quite enough of an incentive to make me get up early and sit in a church full of people.”

“I’m surrounded by heathens,” Marabeth’s grandmother lamented, lavishly putting her hand to her brow.

“When is everyone coming over?” Marabeth asked, and Joyce noticed she had already eaten a piece of Danish, and here she was taking another one, and so Joyce helped herself too, dipping the edge of the pastry in some of her egg.

“Peter’ll probably be here first. He’ll probably get here before noon.”

“Myron?” Joyce asked.

“You smitten by Myron?” Kris asked.

“Shut your mouth,” Joyce said.

“She’s probably trying to figure out how to get away from him,” Marabeth differed. “But I think he’s with his ex wife and the kids most of the day.”

“That’s very grown up,” Joyce commented, thinking of the man she had met last night and how she didn’t expect grown up behavior from him.

“And what about Joyce?” Jim said. “Are you staying with us or what?’

“I can’t wear these pjs all day,” Joyce said, “and I’m not going to wear the same thing I wore last night.”

“I guess none of us will,” Jim said. “I know I’m going to go home and get dressed.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Joyce remembered, “you all are a family who gets dressed for things.”

Rebecca laughed, and Kris clapped his hands and chuckled at that, but Grandma said, “I’ve been part of this family so long, and I’m so old, I don’t know how other families do things at all.”

“I’m afraid I don’t either,” Joyce said. “I’ve never had much in the way of family tradition. I will give my mom a call, though.”

Marabeth took a big swig of coffee, almost slammed her mug down, then declared, “I’ve gotta go back to my place for a bit. Howabout I take you back and then we’ll come back when we’re ready?”

“I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

“Look,” Rebecca said, “if you’re sick of us that’s one thing, but if you’re trying to be kind, we’d love to have you. We get tired of just seeing each other, and as for wearing out your welcome, everyone in this family wore their welcome out years ago.”

“Alright then,” Joyce decided, “what time is dinner?”

“Dinner is whatever time you get here,” Rebecca said. “We just put out the food and everyone helps themselves.”

Joyce shook her head in mock disappointment.

“I really did picture this as a grace around the table family.”

“You saw how many cousins we have,” Kris said. “There really isn’t a big enough table.”