Sorrow's crown

TWO

Anubis threw me long, tense glances as he watched me putting on my sweats, getting ready for an early-morning jog. His dark, thick Rottweiler face seemed to have the same muscles it took to make every human expression. He proved to be especially adept at looking pissed and appearing skeptical and suspicious. Ever since the last time we'd run in the park, when he'd saved my life, he grew agitated whenever he saw me lacing my sneakers. After mauling a murderous punk named Carl who was trying to stick a knife in my throat, Anubis had been through hell; cops and photographers wiped evidence from his face and took dozens of pictures of him from every angle. Some of the townsfolk had demanded to have him put to sleep, and he apparently knew all about it, and held grudges.

"Come on," I said. "We'll stay away from the park, okay?"

It didn't placate Anubis. He slinked off to lie in the corner facing away from me.

Anna wheeled herself in the kitchen, busy with spatulas and cups, rattling pans and bringing platters to the table. She enjoyed cooking enough food for breakfast to choke six lumberjacks: eggs Benedict, French toast as well as pancakes, hash browns, heaps of bacon, and always more coming. She never told me to finish everything on my plate because of those starving kids in China and India. We both enjoyed the morning ritual, despite the disquieting heaviness in the air between us lately.

"Please darling, sit," she said. "Don't wait. Start eating." I did, and had half a forkful of pancakes in my mouth when she leaned in close and asked, "Why didn't you tell me? A child. Your first child."

I'd correctly guessed that small talk remained anathema to her. It also seemed like all the major conversations in my life occurred while I was trying to eat. I stared at the heaping piles of food on the table and knew neither one of us would take another bite.

"We just found out for certain yesterday," I said.

Disappointment threaded her features, and she had a hard time keeping the caustic tone out of her voice. "Even with numerous and various types of birth control available, and the information and statistics on hand, two intelligent people refuse to practice safe sex in the age of AIDS."

"You might want to amend that to 'two people in love.' "

"I'm not unaware of that," she said.

"Okay."

She wouldn't smirk the way some people might have at the idea of two people falling in love after only a few weeks, especially for a man of twenty-eight already once divorced, with an ex-wife who wore enough leather to put cattle on the endangered species list. Bringing up the subject of AIDS proved to be more focused on me than Katie. Anna was aware that my ex-wife Michelle and I had continued to make love on occasion even after our divorce, and nobody liked to think of the quality of health care where her biker boyfriends were concerned, least of all Michelle. Or maybe, least of all me.

Before taking over the flower shop, Katie had been in medical school, leaving the field when she realized that while she had the proficiency, she didn't have the love for it necessary to deal with the stress involved with being a fine doctor. She knew the realities and hazards of our sexual era.

"We were both tested," I told Anna. "And Katie and I are in love, and Michelle and I haven't been together in nearly a year." It came out sounding way too whiny and defensive.

"I know that, dear," my grandmother said, as if the knowledge didn't mean much, really. "But you must understand that even love is not an excuse where inescapable realities are concerned." Her smile grew broad and a lot more light-hearted, but her gaze remained firm, maybe even a little cold. She seemed caught between bursting with delight at the prospect of a great-grandchild in her life and wanting to break a wooden spoon over my head. "I know you're in love and happy, and I'm overjoyed for you both, but Jonathan, what were you thinking?"

I didn't really believe she wanted to hear the kinds of things I thought about when I was in bed with Katie. I shut up and drank some milk.

One of the reasons Michelle and I had been driven apart-besides the fact that she'd started growing overly fond of guys named Sycho-Kila and Wrecking Ball-was that she didn't want kids. A strange urgency sporadically possessed me. Some might call that instinct, others ego.

Anna couldn't keep from glancing over at the wall where she'd rearranged some of the photo collages. "Marriage might not hold the same sanctity it did several decades ago, but rearing children is another matter altogether. There is no greater responsibility or commitment."

"Despite the facts at hand not painting me as the most responsible person in the world, do you really think I'd be a second-rate father, Anna?"

"No, you will be a wonderful father." The severity cleared from her face as she imagined Christmas with laughing children again, a season full of presents other than ties, cologne, gift certificates, and cold cash. Lots of colorful paper and breakable parts, with un-followed directions in Japanese wafting to the floor. "But a stable family life is equally important."

"If one can be made, I'll make it."

"Of that I am assured."

"Are you?"

"That you'll do your very best at whatever you put your mind to? Yes, absolutely. Always, dear. However, I fear that these … complications might work against yours and Katie's relationship."

"So do I."

"Lord, that sounded shamefully indifferent. I apologize.”

“Don't. I know what you mean."

I got up and stood at the collages, witnessing my grandfather reading a copy of Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus. I had a first edition at the store that I couldn't look at without thinking of this picture: a man I'd never met nor even heard much about. Anna remained oddly silent about him, and I often thought the worst of him for that. It's difficult to give the dead the benefit of the doubt.

He and Anna had married within weeks of first meeting back in the late 'forties, when they were both still teenagers. He appeared to be a stolid man, lanky, a little thick in the middle but with arms of a mason or blacksmith. Actually, he'd been a milkman, starting his route at four in the morning, finishing by nine, and spending the rest of the day reading. He squinted, refusing glasses, with thick bushy thickets of overgrown eyebrows curling from their edges as if threatening to overtake his forehead. My mother said I'd inherited my love of books from him, my tenacity, and the fact that I was lactose intolerant but liked milk. Fine. Anything, anything at all, so long as I didn't get those eyebrows.

I hadn't spent the night at Katie's, as I'd been doing for the last eight weeks. After dinner she'd suggested a night apart and I'd agreed, though it seemed ironic that we needed time apart to work out our troubles about not spending enough time together. My bedroom felt like an open barn: huge and empty.

Katie hated Manhattan and had so far only spent one four-day weekend with me there. Though she enjoyed fine restaurants and theater, she despised the inherent speed and congestion of New York City, and all that it implied. Currents shifted every second, from street to street, hitting patches of warehouses, underground clubs, and classical brownstones and museums, layered side by side. The Koreans tumbled together on Korean Way, Italians down Canal; condensed passages of shops and youth down on St. Mark's and over by NYU, music and shouting, lots of blaring horns and sirens, and laughter. It annoyed her, turning off one block with a certain atmosphere and suddenly entering another with a completely different charge.

The homeless brought out her generosity, and for the first day she handed a buck out to whoever rattled their Styrofoam cup at us. She couldn't ignore anyone and stared wide-eyed at their approach. She may as well have had her PIN # tattooed on her cheek. At one point, five destitute men were lured from the shadows by her obvious innocence. It was like a scene from a Romero zombie flick, as the circle slowly closed around us and she handed out money.

"I feel sorry for them," she told me.

"I know.”

“You don't seem to care.”

“You get used to it.”

“I never could."

Of course she could, I thought-you had to in order to function in Manhattan, or any major city. You simply didn't have a choice. It wasn't until after we'd made love that night and I saw the quiet panic in her eyes that I realized I'd been wrong. She did have a choice and had already made it . . . to never return to the city. I felt vaguely troubled that the burden of our being together had fallen to me, and that the decision for our future had become mine alone.

Anna took my hand. "You're not interested in moving your shop here, are you?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“I didn't think so. Then why allow this facade to continue?”

“Certainly you know the answer to that," I said.

"Because you don't want to lose her. But prolonging the inevitable will only hurt her more in the end.”

“I don't know what the inevitable is."

Since I hadn't eaten, I didn't need to digest before my run, and I knew of a surefire way to get out of this conversation. "Hey, since we're already speaking about matters of the heart . . ."

She disliked redirection as much as I did, and grimaced. "Oh, please, Jonathan, now really . . ."

"Come on. How serious is it between you and Oscar? And is he going to make you take up skeet shooting?"

"We are friends, as you well know."

"I know he acts like a teenager, and I think I even caught you tittering once or twice."

"I do not," she said emphatically, "titter."

"Yes, you do. I heard it while you were acting giddy."

Her eyes widened. "And I most positively do not, under any conceivable circumstances, act giddy."

"Anyway, I'm going to see just how much pedestrian traffic there really is downtown."

"The two of you will work this out."

"Things have to break one way or the other."

I snapped the leash to Anubis' collar and we had a tug-of-war for about five minutes before I finally wore him down. "Not the park," I told him. "Just a little jog downtown. I promise, not the park."

He didn't look like he believed me.

I stood in front of the flower shop. Weather could shift radically in Felicity Grove, and yesterday's storm had collapsed into a warm, sun-packed day. Katie wouldn't get here before eleven; morning sickness had hit her hard, and the daily ritual of anguish left her so drained she usually went back to bed for a while. In those early hours, holding her in the bathroom and watching her suffer, she looked frail and weak and completely incapable of chasing ketchup-covered kids around a restaurant. With her hair sticking to her sweat-stained face, she still tried to smile for my benefit, and I always wanted to make love to her right then.

I tried not to think that Anubis was the reason why people weren't walking by me. He gave frowns of consternation, fully understanding that nobody in this town would buy Emerson's MayDay for twenty-four hundred dollars. We walked a little farther down to Fredrickson Street, and I watched the parking lot of Kinion's Hunting amp; Tackle fill and empty for twenty minutes. At only ten in the morning, a dozen men had already bustled into the store needing to purchase their Springfield M-6 Scouts, improved and updated from the original U.S. Air Force M-6 Survival Rifles, stainless steel construction with optional lockable marine flotation devices. I wondered if the ducks they shot would know the difference.

I knew that if I ever did move back to Felicity Grove I'd actually have to go to work for Oscar, or someone like him, and get involved with an occupation I didn't want to become involved in, most likely dealing with chickens or weapons.

"Come on," I said, and Anubis trotted beside me.

We headed back to the flower shop. I had a key and let myself in, but I always felt vaguely unsettled being in here without Katie. The floral arrangements had a real style to them, aesthetic with a flair for color and design. The refrigeration units thrummed dully, leaving cold patches and drafts. A slight vibration worked through the floor. The empty space at the side of the store appeared to be too confining for a possible bookstore. I shut my eyes and saw the place the way she always talked about it, then looked around and tried to see the same picture. Nothing came together.

I leaned against a wall and pretended to pull a book from a shelf and read, moving to peruse stacks of Harlequin romances, bird-watcher guidebooks, and football trivia, while coyly giggling at erotica written by "Anonymous" or "M" or "J." The sweetly cloying scent of flowers started to overcome me, that irksome vibration making my feet twitch. I could see myself becoming extremely whiny here.

"What do you think?" I asked.

Anubis remained the perfect partner for such discussions because he always grumbled like an older, more prudent investor. He sniffed around some plant-growth and discovered a patch of irresistibly lickable matter in a spider plant unfurled all over the floor. I had an image of the soil erupting with alien life, tendrils drawing him inside while mutant fauna jaws scarfed him down. I thought my mind would wander a lot like that while customers asked me if I carried back issues of Playboy or Soldier of Fortune magazines.

Anubis approached, sat, and stared at me as if he also saw my superiority complex showing. His tail thumped twice, expectantly. He grumbled some more.

"Okay."

I went to the refrigerator and took out some tulips, my mother's favorite. He started to growl, understanding their significance.

He didn't like the cemetery. It seemed like I was the only one who did.

~ * ~

At the cemetery, called Felicity Grave, an indistinct odor caught on the stiff breeze.

Leaves whirled. Rocky, root-strewn areas looked equally as well-kept as the flawlessly mowed grass jutting between the rows of markers. Bushes were impeccably pruned, dead branches and stumps cleared and toted away. Lawns remained lush, sweeping trimmed carpets that wound among the knolls and embankments, flowing down into the ravines of potter's field. Even the rubble of ancient angels, martyred saints, and scarred Madonnas wasn't neglected, the stone scrubbed clean.

I left the tulips on my parents' graves, brushing my fingers over their tombstones as I usually did. Certain formalities would stay with me forever. Wildflowers blossomed in erratic strips across the hollows, never hindered by unseasonable temperatures or heavy waves of sleet. The green had returned to some spindly tress growing among the more ornate and statuesque memorials. The old family mausoleums stood like granite condos. Anubis' mouth opened as I let him off the leash. The wind picked up a little.

Shifting breeze brought a wafting pungency.

"I am here, Jon!"

Anubis never growled at children or Crummler, but now he hunkered in the dirt, his head weaving as though trying to shake off dizziness, unable to draw a bead on Crummler. He followed me down the hillock, and the stink hit us at the same time. Crummler waved and pranced, bearing something.

An ugly sound worked free from the back of Anubis' throat, deep and lethal in its animosity. Hard ridges of his outlined muscles rose in the black fur, his hackles stiff; he held his snout low, tongue jutting, showing a lot of fang. The scent worked on him, his nostrils flaring, those black eyes beginning to roll as if he remembered the taste of the guy's throat in the park, and wanted a lot more.

"Jesus, no," I said. "No, Anubis, settle."

Crummler kept cavorting, still doing the dance Broghin and the kids had joined him in. I tried it out too, hoping it would calm him. I bounced around while he capered toward me. The edges of his beard stuck out, highlighted with red where his hair had draped onto his long, stained coat.

When he was ten yards from me I realized he was covered in blood and carrying a broken shovel, his hands filthy, and the coat still very wet.

I jogged down the knoll to him. "Are you hurt?”

“No!"

"Then . . ."

That acrid, burning stench. Nothing else like it in the world. I moved around one of the broad, groomed bushes and nearly stepped into the dead kid's mouth.

Parts of his teeth and features lay nearby. Someone had repeatedly used the shovel on him, making sure they took off every inch of his face. I couldn't tell much about him except that his clothes seemed to be the kind a teenager would wear: faded jeans, sneakers, black T-shirt, and an oversized leather jacket. Anubis stared at the corpse warily but with a strange calmness that unnerved me, as if this were nothing new. Crummler kept pirouetting. His wild, fevered energy and happiness had drained and been replaced by a maddening look of … sanity.

He smiled. "I am here, Jon."

"Oh shit," I said.

"I have been in battle . . ." His face fell, and he suddenly began moaning.

His mania meant something different now, with dark streaks of crusted blood on his hands and clothes. The same smile took on new connotations.

“… with myself."

He brought the shovel up, like offering a gift, hefting it too quickly so that the blade angled sharply toward my face.

A part of me wanted to shout, but for a man too impractical to practice safe sex in the age of AIDS, I wasn't foolish enough to let Crummler get another step closer with his wild grin and bloody shovel. .

This time I didn't slap like a nine-year-old girl. I punched him directly on the point of his hairy chin and he went flying backward to roll next to the body of the dead, faceless boy on the ground. He started sobbing, and I didn't know what the hell to do next.