The Accidental Siren

3.4 Saintly Ms. Grisham

Monday.

When boys are twelve, phrases like “She's not my aunt, she just wants me to call her that,” don't stand out as particularly odd. Three baptisms and “Little Madonna” sounded strange, but not perverse and certainly not dangerous. I blame part of my naiveté on my age, part on the era. Either way, our brief tree-top dialogue and my conversation with the alter boy churned for days before warning signs registered in my developing brain. If Ms. Grisham wasn't Mara's mother, aunt, or grandma, then who was she? If Mara was adopted, surely she'd call the woman “Mom” like Livy did. And if she was a foster kid, she wouldn't be living with the same woman for so many years.

Something was very wrong.

Last night I dreamt that Mara was in my bedroom. She was wearing the same footie pajamas from the evening we met, but her hair was crimped like it was in church. My room became a snow globe of slow-drifting feathers and my ceiling's glow-in-the-dark galaxy dissolved into a holy dusting of Milky Way stars. Mara watched them, her head against my forearm, cuddled against me with fuzzy limbs brushing against my skin.

I woke up wet for the second time in a week, then snuck another load of laundry to baptize my sticky shame in a barrel of tumbling bubbles.

If Ms. Grisham didn't have legal custody of Mara, that was a humungous problem... but maybe it was a problem that I could use to my advantage.

It goes without saying: my mother had a big heart. If she knew what I knew about the little girl in Whit's suburb, she would do everything in her power to set things straight. However, Mom's emotional response would be countered by Dad's debilitating logic. He would explain in his calm, condescending tone that we don't have all the facts, that we don't know the whole situation, and that it would be a shame to call Social Services on an innocent woman.

If I wanted to convince them both of Mara's situation, I was gonna need proof.

Meanwhile, the castle routine continued as usual. Despite her fears, Livy passed the seventh grade with As on every exam. The twins were little balls of mayhem, and Fantasia was... still just a baby. Dad spent the first eight hours of every weekday at the firm, then came home and retired to the eagle-watching tower with binoculars and a glass of wine. At seven o’clock he emerged in a lackadaisical mood for dinner and time with the family.

Every Monday, Mom hired a pair of babysitters to supervise an at-home daycare in our basement. Her friends arrived at noon, dropped their youngsters alongside the twins and Fantasia in the downstairs playroom, then joined my mother in the library for “The Demi Moore Cigar Club.” Although it would be two years until the Ghost actress appeared on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, rumors of her bold tastes and macho elegance earned the respect of women from Hollywood to West Michigan. Mom's club even had its own cigar box with fancy clips and trays.

When the ladies were settled, I wiggled through my secret passage and held my ear to the seam of light that defined the library-side hatch. The voices were clear, but despite bouts of laughter, the conversation was dull.

The privacy of the passage encouraged my curiosity. From my stack of books I removed a children's encyclopedia I normally used for screenplay ideas (the entries on medieval times and the Brother's Grimm provided a full sketchbook of inspiration). I held the hefty book beneath Mickey's lamplight and turned to the index.

“Sex, see Reproduction.”

Back to the “R”s.

“Reproduction, 44, 180, 234, 496”

Flip to page four-ninety-six and... jackpot!

I stumbled across this page a dozen times during my research, but I always gagged at the drawings of naked people and giggled at the word “scrotum.”

This time, something was different. I read the curious words with genuine interest: “seminal,” “fallopian,” “cervix,” “urethra”; black lines connecting each word to a corresponding pastel blob in the exposed guts of the nudists. The pictures fascinated me, particularly a colorful cross-section of an erect penis sticking straight up inside a vagina. I tried to imagine how it must look in real life, but I couldn't get the technical drawing out of my head. As I focused on the image, a warm feeling swelled between my thighs--

“Hey dorkface!”

It was Livy! I slammed the book, snapped off the Mickey lamp, and hugged my knees in the darkness.

“James!” she yelled again. “There's a package for you!”

*  *  *

The film was already warm when I opened the envelope; the brown ribbon hugged the reel in a tight, immaculate spiral of images and magnetic sound.

Whit wasn't due for another forty-five minutes.

I heaved my father's projector from the storage closet to my hideout. He bought the machine at a garage sale a few years back so we could watch Mom's old family movies from Cleveland. Now it was mine.

Clamps with rubber tips held a white towel to the banisters, creating a small but reliable movie screen. My stubby fingers rushed to feed the film's tiny perforations into the projector's gears while drops of sweat formed on the peaks of my ears. Dismantling a time bomb would have been less nerve-wracking.

A flick of the switch and the bulb ignited the towel with a tattered white square of scratches and specks. The cone of light illuminated a swirl of dust and I inhaled deeply the robust scent of heated acetate.

Like the click of a baseball card in bike spokes, the machine pulled the film across the lens to create a wild scramble of orange and yellow. The built-in speaker screeched. I lowered the volume so the women wouldn't hear.

Suddenly, the ladies, the castle, my world dissolved. I was alone with my thoughts and the unfocused image... and Mara's voice. I didn't know the song--another church song--but the effect was the same. Heavy breathing accompanied the melody. It was a raspy, distorted breathing that tugged my neck hairs like a static-charged balloon.

The image bounced, cleared, and reeled into it's final position, gazing into the darkness of a single familiar lamppost and snow covered trees. The picture bobbed with morbid breaths. Then, from the grainy shadows and the winter wonderland, the boys appeared; only a handful, zombie-like and staring directly at me.

There was no question that Ms. Grisham was the crappy camera operator, sitting in her recliner beside the window. Her breath became a chant that muffled Mara's voice; a garbled tirade with words unfamiliar.

The snow zoomed through the lamplight and stuck like spit-wads to the faces of the boys. Then, the camera whirled in a burst of blue and yellow streaks and landed on a wide composition of the antique living room. Mara crowned that blood-red platform like a music-box ballerina. She was in her underwear; her ankle handcuffed to the bolted eye-hook in the center of the stage.

*  *  *

In the driveway, Mom laughed with Mrs. Bullard and Mrs. Greenfield as the other women strapped their kids in car seats. There were jokes about roach clips, compliments on the newest phase of the castle's renovation, and playful suggestions to make the cigar club a daily retreat.

When the last minivan was gone, Mom noticed me straddling Leo's stone back. Her smile faded when she saw my eyes. I stepped off the lion, approached her slowly, and fell into a bear hug.

I told her about Roslyn. I told her about my late-night trip to the Grisham house. I knew the consequences, but I didn't care.

Whit arrived at the peak of my confession. My cheeks were red and stained with tears. The film was in my mother's hand.

Despite her calming reassurance--despite the burning embarrassment and the sickness from what I saw--I could not shake the memory of the raspy chant that distorted my angel's song.