The Amulet. A.R. Morlan
letter spiraled to the lush carpet below with a dry flutter of stiff rag paper. After poking the logs behind the grate until they sent upsputtering points of light, like a miniature meteor shower inst the sooty bricks of his fireplace, the owner of the third largest glass-making factory in all of Austria-Hungary rubbed palms together with a dry snicking sound and said aloud, not caring if his cowed servants heard him or not, “Poor Josef—always acting like a hysterical woman. Even as a boy...and now as a man, if ‘man’ I dare call you, my friend.
“A native lackey goes on a rampage, and my poor Josef is shaking in his drawers, blaming a trinket of gold alloy. Josef will believe me when I tell him that I simply had to dispose of the amulet, for his own safety. He would never dream of asking me where or how, or impose on me to show him the contents of my safe. Trusting, unquestioning Josef—”
“You called for me, sir?”
Summoned by the sound of her employer’s voice, Nezval’s parlor maid now stood in the doorway, her reddish-brown upswept hair a blaze of burnished copper in the fireplace’s still low-burning light. After giving his excelsior-bedded golden treasure a final, longing glance (later, later, I will discover what Josef was so intimidated by, he thought), Nezval turned his attention to the young woman waiting next to the opened door, admiring the swells and valleys of her as-yet-unused body under the prim white aproned black uniform, the metallic gleam of her coiled reddish hair, until he hit upon the best mode of attack, of getting the most service for the money he paid the girl. He said nonchalantly, in a tone that belied the growing tumescence in his lower regions, the eager anticipation tingling in his hands, his lips, “Yes, Anna, the fire needs tending,” then waited, his insides already aflame, until the tall, buxom maid had crossed the parlor, with a gentle sighing swish of black wool brushing against starchy petticoats below, on her way to the fireplace. And when she had her back turned to him, Karel Nezval was able to shut and lock the thick oak parlor door, unnoticed by his obedient parlor maid.
October 1931
Lucy’s bare feet made soft slapping sounds on the dusty plank floor as she made her way down the upstairs hallway, heading for the staircase. Her cotton nightgown brushed against her calves, almost making her giggle, but she curled her lower lip between her teeth and bit down hard, telling herself, Gramma doesn’t giggle when her night skirt brushes her legs—she just lets it trail out like twilight, all dark and deep and wide behind her. Lucy always tried to be like her grandmother, even though her blue serge middy skirt only came down to her knees, and the blue wasn’t blue enough—not that rich, plum-like blue-black of Gramma’s night skirt, with the star-like twinkle of lacy petticoat peeping out from under the thick rolled hem when she walked.
Gramma had been everything to Lucy, for all of her six and a half years on earth, just as Lucy was everything to her mother’s mother. Ever since Gramma’s big house with the gingerbread trim on the roof overhang and big curved porch was taken away by the county (Mother said it was all President Hoover’s fault, “For getting us in this mess,” but Lucy didn’t think that her Gramma even knew the president), Gramma had lived in Lucy’s house.
Downstairs, because climbing the stairs was too hard for a woman with too-white hair and soft, puffy, dotted arms, and teeth that could pop out of her mouth. But Gramma’s age wasn’t the only reason she slept downstairs. Lucy wasn’t supposed to know any of this, but like maiden Aunt Dora said, little pitchers have big ears, and Lucy couldn’t help it if her room was next to Mother and Daddy’s.
“Couldn’t she live somewhere else—anywhere else?” Mother had said to Daddy many a time after Gramma swept into their house and settled down in the sewing room off the kitchen, And Daddy’s answer was always the same: “She’s your mother, you’re her daughter, and you happen to be an only child. Where else is she supposed to go?”
And Mother’s answer was always the same, too. Never answering Daddy, she’d almost sigh, “I wish Lucy hadn’t attached herself to her like a barnacle on a barge. It isn’t healthy.”
“Your mother did all right by you—you turned out swell. Why shouldn’t Lucy be fine?”
There was always a pause there, as if Mother wanted to say more, but couldn’t or wouldn’t. Then: “But those were different times. When I was small every mother wore long swishing skirts and tucked lace hankies in their sleeves. It’s 1931—she shouldn’t be dressing like that. And don’t tell me I should buy her a dollar cotton pongee dress from Sears and burn her old things. Oh, I know that’s what you were thinking, and it wouldn’t work. My mother has worn a long black skirt for ages—since before Poppa died. And I do believe she will die in that awful thing. What’s that Lucy’s taken to calling it—night skirt? Some such silliness—and she fosters it. I won’t stand for it, the way she addles poor Lucy’s mind. It’s bad enough we’re old—”
“Old? I feel pretty fit for—”
“Fifty. And I am forty-five. Perhaps having a baby so late wasn’t the ideal thing to do—after all, my mother is in her seventies.”
“Oh, you worry too much,” Daddy would always end up saying, before turning over in bed and making the old spring mattress creak and groan like a withered tree in a thunderstorm.
Lucy could almost feel her mother’s anger seething out of her, through the wallpaper and plaster of the wall between their bedrooms, and into her. She imagined her mother’s displeasure as something cold-bright and pulsing, like the full moon swimming in a foggy sky.
Arid as she lay in her too-short bed, her feet poking through the white enameled spindles at the bottom, Lucy wondered if Gramma could feel Mother’s seeping anger dripping down on her, through the floor to the sewing room below. Gramma often told Lucy that grandmothers have a way of knowing all sorts of things. And since Lucy’s other grandmother and both her grandfathers died back in 1918, during the influenza epidemic, Lucy took her Gramma’s word for it.
After all, Gramma wore the night skirt with the star-sparkling white petticoats, while Lucy’s mother only wore a rayon slip under short cotton and pongee dresses. And didn’t Gramma sit Lucy down on her big lap and whisper in her ear that short dresses were bad—that they weren’t special, like the rippling soft and oh-so-dark-it-sucked-in-the-light night skirt?
Once, Lucy had tried tying her winter coat around her waist, using the sleeves like apron ties to keep it around her body. But even though the coat was blue-black wool, it just wasn’t the same as Gramma’s night skirt. The ripple of the material wasn’t there, and neither were the other things. Hadn’t Gramma laughed when she had seen Lucy strutting around in her thick, ersatz skirt?
Bending over to scoop Lucy up in her plump arms, she’d whispered in the girl’s ear, “Is my Lucy trying to wear a night skirt? Oh, Lucy, Pumpkin, Gramma’s night skirt is very special—not for little girls. Oh no, no, no.” But when Gramma said, “No, no, no,” it didn’t sound like it did when Mother said it (as Lucy slapped down the uncarpeted stairs, her small mouth twisted like she’d just tried to eat a peeled lemon), oh no, not at all....
And hadn’t Gramma shown Lucy how special her long blue-black-purple skirt could be? There was that time in the front yard, in winter (the most special, secret time, when Lucy swore on her heart and hoped to die that she wouldn’t tell Mother or Daddy what she’d seen), and the other time, when Lucy had scooted along the floor while Gramma was napping she’d lifted up the hem of the night skirt and curled up in a little ball under the heavy fabric.
As she made her way down the stairs in the darkness of evening toward Gramma’s room, Lucy remembered how she had been able to see only a faint haze of light, like trying to look through the stacks of screen windows resting against the house, the day Daddy changed the windows in early summer. But the more she’d looked, the better she could see—only through the cloth of the night skirt, things looked different. Colors changed, and the shapes of things, too. At first, Lucy hadn’t recognized Mother at all, for seen through that night-dark fabric, Mother was a horned, angled creature, all hard surfaces and spikes.
That was when Lucy whimpered, and Gramma nudged her out from under the night skirt and had Lucy on her lap before