The Lovely Shadow (2 page)

I was only seven years old then and I suppose
the few things I came to understand that day were probably a bit
beyond my years. One; I am very fond of pretty women. Two; I would
probably be terrified of Playboy magazines for the rest of my life.
Three; though the pen is supposedly mightier than the sword, I can
tell you from experience that when that mighty pen is set to a
sheaf of papers, and that sheaf of papers is rolled into a tight
tube and used to bludgeon you, then the paper is suddenly mightier
than the pen. And four; (and probably most important) my mother was
utterly insane.

My mother hadn’t always been insane. The
Sickness that had only rarely showed itself before didn’t come on
her in full until December 23rd, 1989. That was when my older
brother, Joe had been killed in a car accident on an icy road.

He was 16, exactly one week shy of ten years
older than me, and he had a different Father. His father was my
namesake, John, and my mother’s only true love. They had met when
my mother was only sixteen. He was three years older than her,
already graduated from high school and working in a local factory.
To her that made him seem like a full-fledged man of the world who
would be able to take her under his wing, show her the world,
protect her from all harm, and provide for her fully.

From the stories my mother told us, John had
performed his duties admirably. My mother graduated two years after
they’d started dating. He took her to dinner at the local Denny’s
to celebrate her graduation and at some point during dinner, when
my mother got up to pee, John surreptitiously dropped a ring into
her coffee. After returning from her trip to the restroom, they
chatted while she finished her coffee.

When there was only a gulp left in the cup
she tried to chug it and nearly choked on the ring. In a fit of
coughing she spit the ring across the table and it landed right in
front of John who deftly plucked it up, slid out of his booth and
dropped to one knee in front of my still sputtering mother. He
proposed, she accepted, and bam! Life was suddenly perfect.

Two years into nuptial bliss my mother got
pregnant with Joe. John had insisted that they name the child after
his grandfather, Joseph, but my mother wanted to name the child
after her father, Martin. In the end they had compromised, and on
June 17th, 1973, a wrinkled screaming baby boy named Joseph Martin
Krimshaw came bursting into the world.

Life was good. Even the death of my mother’s
parents in a tragic house fire later that same year could not
detract from the sublime perfection of her happy world.

Sadly, the good times wouldn’t last forever.
In January of 1975 John was at work in the factory. He should have
been home with his wife and son, but money was tight and there was
some overtime available on the night shift so he took it. There was
an explosion. The details have always been sketchy, but the story
that has been pieced together by various accounts runs something
like this:

John had been running a welder in the back
part of the factory, building a frame for a new piece of equipment
when his friend Charlie Patten came by on a forklift to deliver
some metal beams to him. They most likely chatted for a bit while
they worked together unloading the heavy beams and leaning them
against the wall.

They were likely still chatting as Charlie
started to drive away which is why a distracted Charlie backed his
forklift into the beams, knocking them over and damaging the wall
they were leaning against about eight feet up. John and Charlie
probably started standing all the beams back up before anyone could
see their faux pos, not knowing that inside that damaged wall there
ran a propane line right alongside electrical wiring, both of which
had been damaged when the beams fell.

The inside of the wall was filling with
propane; the loose broken wiring was being jostled with the
vibration the men were causing when they bumped the heavy beams
against the wall. Eventually two loose ends of wire managed to
swing just close enough together to cause an arc between them. If
the resultant fireball hadn’t killed them almost instantly, the
heavy metal beams flying at them certainly would have.

There was an investigation which proved that
the building was not up to code and the accident was a direct
result of this derelict construction. From this came a nice hefty
settlement for my mother, as well as a nice chunk of money from
John’s life insurance policy and monthly Social Security checks for
both her and Joe. My mother, if she was frugal, was financially set
for life.

But money can’t buy happiness so they say,
and they are right. My mother always said a little piece of her
soul was lost that day and she was convinced that she would never
smile again. But she still had Joe, and Joe was a little piece of
John. And eventually, she did begin to smile again knowing that
John’s spirit was alive and well in Joe.

I think in some ways my mother believed that
Joe had become an incarnation of the man she loved. I think she
truly believed that somehow when John died, he’d managed to push
Joe’s soul aside and insert his own soul into tiny Joe’s infant
body. I think that’s when my mother’s Sickness really began.

My mother raised Joe as best she could and
would often call him “Johnny-Joe” as a nickname. This nickname was,
I believe, a manifestation of the Sickness that had only just begun
to sink its yellowed and scaly talons into my mother’s brain, but
things were okay for them for several years. It was just the two of
them and they didn’t need anyone else. Unfortunately for my mother
sometime in September of 1982 she stepped out.

My mother hadn’t had much social life since
John died because she had committed herself fully to raising Joe
the John Child. However she did have one close friend, Katelyn
Patten, the former wife of Charlie Patten who’d been blown to bits
with John. My mother and Katelyn had met at the hospital the night
of the explosion and in their intermingled grief they found some
semblance of solace between them. In fact, I believe it was Katelyn
who saved my mother from stepping fully into madness back then.

Over the course of a couple years, Katelyn
had managed to pull her life back together and had even begun
dating again. She tried often to get my mother to join her at the
local tavern for a beer or the theater for a movie, but my mother
resisted for several years. Katelyn, however, was persistent and
eventually my mother agreed to go to a movie with her. They saw
E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.

My mother wept through a great portion of the
movie, somehow empathizing with that little alien fellow in the
film; with his aching loneliness and desire to return home. She saw
her own home as being in the arms of John and understood that she
could not return there. That film, aside from breaking my mother’s
heart, woke up in my mother a new feeling…hope.

“Why, if a little heartsick spud like E.T.
can have a happy ending in his life,” she’d said to Katelyn, “then
I suppose I can too.” And that was the start of my mother’s new
social life.

Throughout that summer she and Katelyn went
to several movies and often went dancing at the local tavern.
Katelyn’s fourteen year old daughter, Bess would come over and
babysit Joe while the two ladies went out.

My mother began to disassociate Joe from John
and saw him again as a separate entity. She had, in essence,
started to heal. Then came a night in September of 1982 when my
mother had a bit too much to drink and began an instant spiral back
into her Sickness.

As I was growing up my mother was always
telling Joe and I stories about John, and what a wonderful husband
and father he had been. After one such story, when I was around
five years old, it dawned on me that I didn’t ever come into these
stories and John was not my father. So I asked my mother to tell us
about my Father.

Her reaction was instantaneous and
frightening. It was the first time I can ever remember seeing her
face pucker into that mask of anger and hate that became so
prevalent on her only a couple years later. That horrible face only
lasted for a second before she was able to swallow it back down and
resume most of her normal composure.

When she spoke her voice was a bit strained
and her eyes shone with anger and she said, “Johnny, I’m only going
to tell you this story one time, and only because as a bastard
child, you deserve to know. Do you understand?” I, of course had no
idea what a bastard child was, but did want to know about my daddy
so I nodded my head up and down and stared at her with wide
eyes.

“Okay then,” she said, speaking softly in a
very controlled tone. “Your daddy was a dirty sex fiend who fed me
magic juice one night that made me fall asleep. When I was asleep
he planted you inside me and he stole a piece of me should have
only been John’s, and then he ran away. I never saw him again.”

I was mesmerized by her story and not quite
bright enough yet to see the danger in her eyes so I asked, “What
was his name, Mama?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits and her mouth
puckered and she spat her words at me like a cobra spitting its
blinding venom.

“He didn’t deserve a name!” she screamed. “He
was a filthy sex fiend who only wanted one thing! He was poison! He
was trash! He stole what was John’s and he ran away! And it was all
because of that bitch, Katelyn! She let it happen!”

As my mother started yelling, I recoiled in
fear. Joe, who was standing behind me, caught me and wrapped his
arms around me in a bear hug from behind and shouted over my head,
“Mama! Stop it! You’re scaring him, and it isn’t his fault!” His
words seemed to hit my mother like a fastball to the forehead and
her countenance went blank for a second, then it softened and
looked very much the way a concerned mother’s face should look.

She stumbled forward and reached for me,
crying.

“Oh Johnny,” she said, grabbing me in her
arms as Joe released me from his. “Johnny, I’m so sorry.”

She pulled me in close and nearly suffocated
me between her breasts as she gripped the back of my head and
buried her face into my hair. When she released me a few moments
later, I was fairly certain that I had snot in my hair.

She put her palms against my cheeks and
turned my face up towards hers and said, “Johnny, your daddy was
bad, but Joe’s Daddy was good…so good, Johnny. That’s why I gave
you his name, Johnny. So that the goodness of Joe’s daddy could
fill you up and push out the poison that your daddy left in you. Do
you understand?”

I thought I sort of understood, was pretty
certain that I somehow did not feel good about understanding, and
was definitely certain that I was ready to be done with this
conversation so I shook my head.

“Good,” my mother said. “Now, it’s off to bed
with you, Mister.”

That night should have changed my perception
of my mother, but being young and resilient, it didn’t. I didn’t
notice the subtle changes taking place in my mother, but looking
back now, I can see that Joe saw them. He saw them very
clearly.

My mother became more withdrawn from me and
clingier towards Joe. She had begun calling him Johnny-Joe again.
Her sour lemon pucker face showed itself more frequently, and her
outbursts became a regular occurrence. I think there may be truth
to the old statement “if you keep making that face, it’ll stick
that way” because my mother’s wrinkles seemed to increase daily.
Even when she wasn’t puckered, her face remained deeply lined.

I seemed to be a jolly good catalyst for
bringing forth her outbursts, since they were almost always
directed towards me and generally had something to do with my good
for nothing, sex-fiend, father. But after her outbursts she always
found herself again and would come to me crying, hugging and
apologizing, and always trying to explain that it was just the
poison that my daddy left in me that got her so upset.

Joe protected me from my mother as best he
could. Usually it was something as simple as a hand on my shoulder
and nearly imperceptible head nod to stop me from saying something
that would set my mother off. If subtlety didn’t work, his
protection might include a hand over the mouth, and if I seemed to
be really intent on pissing my mother off, Joe would sock me in the
arm to completely distract me.

I loved Joe dearly. He was the perfect older
brother. He shared his toys, he shared his wisdom, he shared his
mother, and he shared his life with me. Most of what I know about
my mother before the Sickness took her came from stories Joe told
me. I idolized Joe and I lost more than a brother when he died on
that December night. I lost my mentor, my protector, and my only
friend…I suppose I also lost my mother.

After Joe died, my mother’s Sickness decided
it was time to quit poking its talons gently into her brain and
just ram them in full force. After ripping through the grey matter,
her Sickness withdrew its talons and desecrated the sanctity of her
mind by spitting venom into the gashes that were left behind.

The Sickness grew rapidly and manifested
itself in various ways. My mother became more withdrawn and for
longer time periods. At first I didn’t mind the distance. My mother
had always homeschooled Joe and me, and as she started to withdraw
after Joe died she seemed forget about schooling me altogether.
Then the distance that started out lasting only minutes at a time
began to last for hours, then days, and finally for as long as a
week and I grew lonely.

Another manifestation of the Sickness was
that it seemed to take very little effort on my part (the act of
breathing seemed to be more than adequate) to send my mother into
one of her pucker-face screaming fits, and it wasn’t long after
Joe’s death that the puckering and screaming met a new
friend...hitting.