In the Shadow of Blackbirds(74)
I buried my face in my goose-down pillow. “Grant looks strong enough to be of use to someone trying to get rid of an embarrassing family member.”
“Stephen took his own life. You heard what Gracie said—his mother found him holding the gun. I’m sure it’s hard to fathom the boy you knew doing something like that to himself, but it sounds like he wasn’t even remotely the same person by the time he got home.”
“I don’t believe he committed suicide. I think they killed him.”
“People don’t commit murder because of embarrassment.”
“They didn’t know what else to do with him.” I turned my head to the side to look at her and her cross. “Do you think a mother could be capable of killing her own son to put him out of his misery?”
“No!” Her eyes got huge. “That’s a horrible thought. I’m sure Mrs. Embers held hope in her heart for Stephen’s recovery. Please, Mary Shelley, I don’t want him to keep coming to you. Tell him to stay away. Tell him if he has any decency left, he’ll leave you alone.”
“I can’t let him go until I find out why he’s still partway here.”
“It was as if the devil himself possessed you.”
“That wasn’t the devil.”
“He was no angel.”
I exhaled a long breath through my nose. “Do you know what my father told me about monsters and devils?”
She shook her head. “I almost hate to think what your father’s opinion on that subject would be.”
“He said the only real monsters in this world are human beings.” I licked my parched lips. “It was a frightening thing to learn, but it makes so much sense. We can be terrible to one another.” I dug my cheek deeper into the pillow. “And do you know the oddest thing about murder and war and violence?”
“Oh, Mary Shelley, please stop talking about those types of things.”
“The oddest thing is that they all go against the lessons that grown-ups teach children. Don’t hurt anyone. Solve your problems with language instead of fists. Share your things. Don’t take something that belongs to someone else without asking. Use your manners. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Why do mothers and fathers bother spending so much time teaching children these lessons when grown-ups don’t pay any attention to the words themselves?”
Aunt Eva nuzzled her chin against the crucifix. “Not every grown-up forgets those teachings.”
“But enough of them do. If someone killed Stephen, they didn’t treat him as they’d want to be treated. And those men who arrested my father punched him in the gut before they hauled him away. The Espionage Act already allowed them to take him away from me, but they also hurt him to teach him a lesson. He sank to his knees and couldn’t breathe after they were done with him.”
“Wartime isn’t like normal times.”
“But that’s the point. We wouldn’t even have wars if adults followed the rules they learned as children. A four-year-old would be able to see how foolish grown men are behaving if you explained the war in a child’s terms. A boy named Germany started causing problems all over the playground that included beating up a girl named Belgium on his way to hurt a kid named France. Then England tried to beat up Germany to help France and Belgium, and when that didn’t work, they called over a kid named America, and people started pounding on him, too.”
My aunt lowered her cross to her lap. “It’s not that simple. Africa and Russia are involved, Germany and England were competing to build bigger navies, the Serbs assassinated Archduke Ferdinand—you can’t break down the causes in a child’s terms. And you better not say those things in public. That’s exactly why your father went to jail.” She leaned forward. “You have to realize, he was once like Stephen. That’s where his anger comes from.”
My arms and legs went cold. “What are you talking about? How was he like Stephen?”
“They called the condition names like soldier’s heart during the Spanish-American War, this thing they’re saying is shell shock nowadays. The unexplained effects of war upon a person’s mind. Your father still had it when he met your mother.”
I lifted my shoulders and head. “Are you sure? He’s never shown any signs …”
“I remember him coming over to visit your mother when I was about seven. We’d all be talking about something that didn’t even have anything to do with the war, and he’d sort of drift away. He’d look off into the air in front of him and not say a word for at least five minutes. Your mother would take his wrist, check his pulse, and call his name, and eventually he’d shake out of it and ask what we were just talking about.” Aunt Eva sat up straight and put the cross aside. “My parents worried about my sister’s relationship with him. They thought she was confusing concern for a sick man with love, and they feared she considered him the ultimate test of her skills as a physician.”
“But they did love each other, didn’t they?”
“I’m sure they loved each other. Your father gradually got better, and they seemed happy enough. His own father worked him hard in that store to make sure he kept up a routine in his life. The marriage lifted his spirits, certainly. But I didn’t stop seeing those fading-away episodes until after you were born. Maybe he realized you were too important to lose.”