A Book of American Martyrs(150)

That is why my grandmother has invited me here. To be closer to my father.

On the eggshell-white walls of the small guest bedroom were works of art, framed drawings, woodcuts, paintings in Fauve colors. These were contemporary artists of whom Naomi had possibly heard—Moser, Daub, Kahn. There were bookcases crammed with books including outsized art books with slightly torn covers suggesting how closely they’d been read, studied. Naomi pulled one out—The Complete Little Nemo. A massive book of color plates of the classic surrealist comic strip of the early twentieth century—Naomi seemed to recall, Madelena had sent an identical copy to Darren for one of his birthdays.

Was it after receiving Little Nemo that Darren had become so interested in drawing comics? Or had Madelena known of his interest, and had carefully selected the book?

Naomi remembered: for her thirteenth birthday, no card or explanation included, her grandmother had sent her a hardbound copy of Homer’s Odyssey; for Melissa, barely able to read at the time, an illustrated copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in an edition identical to the one Naomi had cherished as a child—Naomi hadn’t known, or had forgotten, that this favorite book of her childhood must have been a gift from Madelena Kein!

Naomi had grown up knowing very little about her father’s mother. Wryly Jenna had spoken of Madelena as her “phantom mother-in-law.” In the Voorhees household among countless books, magazines, journals and newspapers stacked on tables, chairs, sofas, floors and stairs there’d been books by Madelena Kein with such titles as An Inquiry into (Human) Consciousness (Oxford University Press), Do We Mean What We Say; or, Do We Say What We Mean? (Columbia University Press), Transformational Ethics: A History (University of Chicago Press). It wasn’t clear whether Gus had read these books though he had certainly hoped to read them. Darren and Naomi had tried, without much success. At the University of Michigan graduate library Naomi had made an effort to seek out articles and essays by Madelena Kein in publications not otherwise available—Philosophical Studies, Philosophical Review, Harvard Review of Philosophy, Journal of Psychology and Linguistics, Ethics, Meme; she’d had slightly more success reading reviews by Madelena in popular publications like the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.

But what did she know of her grandmother, having read, or having tried to read, these works of Madelena Kein? The pieces were densely argued, opaque with obscure phrases, enigmatic, riddle-like, possibly brilliant, resistant of paraphrase. Was this what philosophy had become? Confounding questions and paradoxes, and no answers?

Naomi lay her suitcase on a cedar chest at the foot of the bed. She would stay here? In this perfect place? She felt a twinge of excitement and yet uneasiness, apprehension.

A tinge of homesickness like a faint blue shadow falling over her face.

How absurd! Homesickness for—what? Where? She had not had a permanent home for years. She had never felt comfortable in her grandparents’ house in Birmingham, Michigan, a girl’s room in rosy wallpaper, a girl’s bed with a pink satin coverlet, white lattice windows. Her memory of the last house in which she’d lived with her family, before her father had departed, was the rented, fly-infested house on Salt Hill Road in Huron County, Michigan. She had hated that house as much as her poor trapped mother had hated it.

I can live here, with my grandmother—can I?

Is that what she is offering me? A life with her?


IN THE AFTERSHOCK of the murderer’s death she had not been “freed” after all—not as she’d expected.

She’d been ill for some time. A mud-malaise of the spirit.

She’d returned to the archive—now grandly and bravely retitled Life/Death/Life of Augustus Voorhees, MD.

Or maybe less formally—Life/Death/Life of Gus Voorhees.

Life/Death/Life of My Father Gus Voorhees.

Life/Death/Life of My Dad Gus Voorhees.

She’d considered (not seriously: desperately) marrying a young biology post-doc at the U-M medical school from Ceylon whose mother was an American epidemiologist and whose father was a Ceylonese pharmaceutical executive—their feeling for each other had been intense, but short-lived.

She’d considered dropping out of college. Or, deferring college.

She’d considered transferring to Bennington. (Was this even possible? Bennington College was a private college, reputedly very expensive. The University of Michigan was a state university, with tuition and costs kept reasonably low for residents of the state.)

She’d considered—well, it was not serious enough, it was not minutely imagined enough, to merit the word “consider”—killing herself, from time to time.

(Except: her father would have been devastated if he knew. Worse than devastated, disapproving. What’s my little worrywart done to herself? Sweetie, no! And so, suicide was out of the question.)

She’d returned again to the archive . . . She’d amassed so much material, she could not give up; yet, so much material amassed, she could not bring herself to assess it, even to catalogue it. At the same time she knew that more was needed for a fuller portrait of Gus Voorhees. Much more.

Out of nowhere, then: the invitation to visit Madelena Kein.

Please understand: I will not be “interviewed.” I will speak to you—you will not question me.

There are some things I wish to tell you (that were not secrets from Gus, he knew of them). These are spare, sparse truths—but crucial.