My father was on edge. He came home from work with furrowed brows. I had noticed before that he was like that when he hadn’t been hunting for a long while. He slammed the front door, chucked down his keys and briefcase, then began to search for a reason to spew all his rage. He went from room to room, scrutinizing everything in the house, the floor, the furniture, my mother, Coco, Sam, me. Sniffing out a scent. Times like those, we knew it was best to vanish to our bedrooms. My mother couldn’t, she had to prepare the meal. Sometimes he settled for merely grumbling before going to sit in front of the TV. This could go on for several days. Brewing. And then, as always, he finally found it.
“What’s that?”
He asked the question quite gently, and very quietly. My mother knew that whatever she said it wouldn’t go well. But she answered anyway.
“Macaroni with ham and cheese.”
“I know it’s macaroni with ham and cheese.”
He was still speaking very softly.
“Why did you make macaroni with ham and cheese?”
And the longer he spoke in this gentle voice, the more dreadful his building rage would be. This was the scariest moment for my mother, I think, when she knew it was going to come, that he was examining her, savoring her fear, taking his time. He acted as if it all depended on her answer. This was the game. But she lost every time.
“Well, everyone likes macaroni with—”
“EVERYONE? WHO IS THIS ‘EVERYONE’?”
And so it began. The best she could hope for was that my father’s anger would be expended in the yelling—which was in fact more like a roar. His voice detonated from his throat to devour my mother, ripping her to shreds, annihilating her. And my mother was OK with that. Annihilation. If the roaring didn’t suffice, his fists were ready to help out, until my father’s rage was totally spent. My mother always ended up on the floor, motionless. Like an empty pillowcase. After that, we knew we had a few weeks of calm ahead.
* * *
I don’t think my father liked his job. He was an accountant at the amusement park that had made the little zoo go bust. “The big eat the small,” he would say. It seemed to amuse him. “The big eat the small.” Personally, I thought it was amazing to work in an amusement park. When I set off for school each morning, I said to myself: “My father’s going to spend his day at the amusement park.”
My mother didn’t work. She looked after her goats, her garden, Coco, and us. She couldn’t care less about having her own money, as long as her credit card worked. Emptiness never seemed to bother my mother. Nor the absence of love.
The ice-cream man’s truck remained parked in front of our house for several days. I asked myself all sorts of questions. Who’s going to clean it? And once it’s been cleaned, what happens to the bucket full of water, soap, blood, bone fragments, and bits of brain? Will they pour it on the old man’s grave so that all the pieces of him stay together? Has the ice cream in the fridges melted? And if it hasn’t melted, will someone eat it? Can the police put someone in prison for asking for whipped cream? Will they tell my father?
At home, we never talked about the death of the old ice-cream man. Maybe my parents considered that the best response was to act as if nothing had happened. Or maybe they told themselves that the birth of the baby goats had made us forget the mincemeat face. But in fact, I think they had simply not given it any thought.
Sam remained silent for three whole days. I didn’t dare look in his big green eyes because I was sure that in them I would see, projected on a continuous loop, the film of that exploding face. He didn’t eat anything either. His fish and mashed potato grew cold on the plate. I tried to entertain him. He followed me around like a docile robot, but he was dead inside.
We went to see Monica. Something quivered beneath the skin on her neck when she learned what had happened to the ice-cream man. She looked at Sam. I hoped she’d do something for him, that she’d take out a cauldron, a magic wand, or an old spell book. But she just stroked his cheek.
-
THE WARM ODOR from Nutmeg’s belly still lingered. I think it lingered more in my head really, but my abiding memory of the summer was that persistent icky scent, which clung to me even in my dreams. It was July and yet the nights seemed darker and colder than in winter.
Sam came to snuggle in my bed every night. With my nose buried in his hair, I could almost hear his nightmares. I would have given everything I had to turn back time and go back to that moment where I had asked for the ice cream. I imagined the scene a thousand times: “Chocolate and stracciatella in a cone, please sir,” I say to the ice-cream man; “No whipped cream today, my little lady?” he asks; “No thanks, sir,” I reply. And my planet is not sucked into a black hole. And the old man’s face does not explode in front of my little brother and my home. And I continue to hear the “Flower Waltz” the next day and the day after, and the story ends there. And Sam smiles.
* * *
I remembered a film I’d once seen, in which a crazy scientist invents a machine to go back in time. He uses a car all cobbled together, with wires everywhere, and he has to drive really fast but he manages it. I decided that I, too, would invent a machine and travel through time and sort everything out.
From that moment on, I saw my life as a flawed offshoot of reality, a draft version intended to be rewritten. It made everything seem more bearable. I told myself that until such time as the machine was ready and I could turn back the clock, I would have to coax my little brother out of his silence.
I took him to the labyrinth, straight to the Boom-a-roller. “Sit down.” He obediently sat. I took my place at the wheel and began bouncing up and down on the seat with all my strength, shaking the car like never before. “Boom-a-rollerrrrr! Boom-a-rollerrrrr! Boom-a-rollerrrrr! C’mon, Sam! Boom-a-rollerrrrr!” He just sat there, unresponsive, his big green eyes quite empty. He looked so tired. Luckily the owner didn’t hear us, because in the state Sam was in he would have let himself be caught without a fight.
At home, I made new puppets, invented new stories. My little audience of one sat in front of me as I told him of princesses who tripped over their dresses, farting prince charmings, and hiccoughing dragons … Eventually, without really knowing why, I led him into the carcass room. My father was at work and my mother had gone out for some groceries. When we entered the room, I felt the hyena’s eyes on me. I carefully avoided meeting her gaze.
And at that moment, I understood. It swooped on me like a hungry beast, slashing my back with its claws. The laughter I’d heard when the old man’s face exploded, it came from her. That thing I couldn’t quite discern, was living inside the hyena. Her stuffed body was a monster’s lair. Death resided within our home, and was scrutinizing me through her glass eyes, its gaze boring into the back of my neck as it savored my little brother’s sweet scent.
Sam let go of my hand and turned toward the creature. He approached and placed his fingers on the rigid muzzle. I didn’t dare move a muscle. The hyena was going to awaken and devour him. Sam fell to his knees, his lips quivering. He stroked the dead fur and put his arms round the beast’s neck, his little face so close to the huge jaw. Then he began to sob, his sparrow-like body shaken by floods of terror. The horror burst and poured down his cheeks, like from an abscess that had taken its time to ripen. I realized that this boded well, that something was circulating in him anew, that his internal mechanism was working again.
* * *
A few days later, the ice-cream man was replaced by another one, and the “Flower Waltz” returned. Every evening, the mincemeat face loomed in my mind. Every evening, I saw something snap in my little brother’s eyes. That music struck at a part deep within him, the central component of his joy-production process, destroying it a little more each day, rendering it ever more irreparable. And every evening I told myself that it was no big deal, that I was just in the flawed offshoot of my life, that it was all intended to be rewritten.
Whenever