Norman Rush - Mortals

“He was murderous but he was in a forked stick because I wasn’t touching him and because he obviously didn’t want my mother drawn into this, if he could avoid it. Then I pretended to lose interest. I acted disgusted and made as if to get out of there, leave him alone. He shot upstairs to his room then, clearly with the idea of securing his time capsule and keeping it out of my hands by any means necessary. He was clearly terrified I would get hold of it.

“I spun around and as soon as I heard him get his door unlocked I shot up there with the idea of forcing my way in after him and seeing what I could see before he started screaming for help. I was in the grip of the moment. I don’t justify any of this. It was craziness.

“I did it. I pushed my way in just as he was practically falling across the typewriter to protect it and at the same time rolling this sheet of text down so that I couldn’t read it. He began screaming immediately. But I saw the title, all in caps, on the handwritten draft he was working from, which was CRIMES BY THIS FAMILY OF FINCH, and then our address and the date.

“Instantaneously my mother was there. It was clear I had violated the rules and was in his room against his wishes, so that was all she needed to know. I was ordered to go and sit in my father’s den until he got home. She wasn’t interested in any explanations from me. She liked to hit, I was afraid of her. She’d caught me in his room and that was sufficient. It was so stupid of her.”

“Why?”

“Because as soon as I was in Coventry he was free to bury his time capsule and cover his tracks. He did exactly what I would have done. At first, later, he claimed he’d thrown everything out, down a storm drain, destroyed it, when my father got around to questioning him. Hours later. Then, I don’t know what it was, but he didn’t stick to that position. Maybe it was just some instinct of defiance he couldn’t control, but he said that in fact he’d buried the thing on the property, or hidden it on the property, rather. I think he implied he’d buried it. You understand that when my father came home and questioned me I told him everything.

“And Rex was astounding. He realized how upset everyone was about it, but he was like a prisoner of war refusing to supply anything but his name, rank, and serial number. He would only confirm what we already knew. He acknowledged the title of the thing he’d written, but he refused to say what he meant by it and he refused to reveal what the document said. My mother was pathetic. She was trying to get him to say that it was a story he’d written. And that was the only other substantive thing he would say … that, no, everything was true that he’d written. It was all true.

“I was pretty dumbfounded myself. I couldn’t really imagine what this document was about. I thought maybe it was primarily calumnies against me, coming out of our terrible sibling situation. Or maybe it was a compilation of all Rex’s grievances against everybody in the family. The situation was a Rorschach for everybody, I guess. Something about it drove my father particularly insane. I couldn’t figure out, I still can’t, if the original idea had been for Rex to privately express his paranoid feelings and then to bury them and then get rid of them that way, without intending any of it to come to the attention of anybody in the family … that is, perform a totally private therapeutic act in the form of a childish plot to get the satisfaction of somebody far in the future finding this account and thinking badly about the Finches, Rex excluded. I couldn’t fathom it.

“It led to hell.

“I could feel it developing into hell that first evening. My father was in some way deeply wounded and maddened by this thing happening. My mother was frightened. I was horrified at what I’d wrought by bringing the whole thing to light in the first place. And Rex was becoming more obdurate by the minute. He had been given a role that was perfect for him. He was somehow able to play it as a free speech matter and take the position that what he had done was his private business. I had broken into his room. We were the ones who were acting insane, was Rex’s message. I think he even seemed to get smaller, more compact. He was afraid of what kind of punishment he might get. But inside he was overjoyed, I know.

“My father kept shouting out new scenarios of what Rex was damn well going to do and what was going to happen to him if he didn’t. He gave one deadline and then another deadline and so on. You have to look at it from his standpoint. Here he has an absolutely uncontrollable eleven- or twelve-year-old kid who has concocted some kind of slanderous document and secreted it someplace on the property. But he was also working himself up. There was something untoward about his intensity over this, and that got my mother and me more upset than we already were.

“And you have to keep in mind the family culture that made this so exquisite. Supposedly we were very against violence. We were liberals. My father was ex — Ethical Culture. No guns for toys, for us. That kind of thing. Don’t hit back in school. Hitting was stupid — except for her, of course. Let the bullies demean themselves by hitting you. That reminded me of the only thing I could think of that might be in any way considered a crime of the Finches. There had been hysteria during the last year of the war when my father’s draft category came up, and I had an inkling that he’d done something not quite right through a friend to keep from getting called up. This is the Second World War I’m talking about. But Rex was too young to know anything about that, if there was anything to know. On the other hand Rex was kind of a snoop. Maybe he knew something I had no clue about. He was definitely a sort of a snoop. And he was precocious. So there we were. It ended when Rex produced a coughing fit. He’d been crying, of course. He was asthmatic. It was a complete impasse, and we were all exhausted so we just stopped talking to one another and ate cornflakes for dinner. Except my father. He didn’t eat.”

Iris said, “You’re sweating. But please don’t blot yourself with the sheet. This story is very extreme. You’re upset.”

“I am. Let me get a towel. I’m perspiring. Put on the airconditioning for a few minutes. I’ll be right back.”

Iris attended to the airconditioner. Ray went again into the bathroom.

When they were back in bed, Ray said, “After all this time you still hold your palm over your shame when you walk around naked.”

“Only sometimes.”

“What governs when you do it versus when you don’t?”

“Search me. But I think I know why I did it just now.”

“Why?”

“I want to hear the rest of this story and I think I didn’t want to distract you.”

“But what about your breasts, which are twice as distracting?”

“Well, if I covered up everything it would have ended up calling even more attention to the, um, ensemble. I guess. Besides I don’t know if my breasts are twice as distracting as my shame. My breasts are not what they were. On the other hand my whatnot is exactly what it was and it was always very good at distracting you. But I think the discussion we’re having right now is unwise, I mean, on this subject matter.”

“It distinctly is. But your breasts are perfect. And that’s all I’ll say.”

“Let’s be wise . We’re talking.”

“Right.”

He waited. “Well, notice something about this situation Rex created. It was another manifestation of his genius in arranging events that are basically indescribable. Like eating the crucifix. Suppose my father had wanted to talk to a child specialist of some kind. Was he supposed to say that the problem he was having was that his son had written a criminal history of the family and buried it somewhere on the grounds? Impossible.