My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(98)
She rolls up the tumble-dryer fluff in the palm of one hand and puts that hand against her other hand and clasps them together on her stomach; then she looks with determination at Wolfheart and says, with authority:
“We don’t beat people to death in this leaseholders’ association.”
Wolfheart’s fist is still vibrating in the air. His chest heaves up and down. But his arms slowly fall down at his sides.
She is still standing between Wolfheart and Sam, between the monster and the shadow, when the police car comes skidding into their street. The green-eyed policewoman jumps out, her weapon drawn, long before the car has stopped. Wolfheart has dropped on his knees in the snow.
Elsa shoves the door open and charges outside. The police roar at Wolfheart. They try to stop Elsa, but it’s like holding water in cupped hands: she slips through their fingers. For reasons she won’t understand for many years, Elsa has time to think about what her mother said to George once when she thought Elsa was sleeping. That this is how it is, being the mother of a daughter who is starting to grow up.
The wurse lies immobile on the ground halfway between Audi and the front entrance. The snow is red. It tried to get to her. Crawled out of Audi and crept along until it collapsed. Elsa wriggles out of her jacket and the Gryffindor scarf and spreads them over the animal’s body, curling up in the snow next to it and hugging it hard, hard, feeling how its breath smells of peanut cake, and she whispers, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid” over and over again into its ear. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, Wolfheart has defeated the dragon and no fairy tale can end until the dragon has been defeated.”
When she feels Dad’s soft hands picking her up off the ground, she calls out loudly, so the wurse will hear her even if it’s already halfway to the Land-of-Almost-Awake:
“YOU CAN’T DIE! YOU HEAR?! YOU CAN’T DIE BECAUSE ALL CHRISTMAS TALES HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS!”
32
GLASS
It’s hard to reason about death. Hard to let go of someone you love.
Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups are generally people, and people are generally shits. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all the idiocy—space exploration, the UN, vaccines, and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the not-a-shit side as one can.
Once Elsa asked why so many not-shits had to die everywhere, and why so many shits didn’t. And why anyone at all had to die, whether a shit or not. Granny tried to distract Elsa with ice cream and change the subject, because Granny preferred ice cream to death. But Elsa was capable of being a bewilderingly obstinate kid, so Granny gave up in the end and admitted that she supposed something always had to give up its own space so that something else could take its place.
“Like when we’re on the bus and some old people get on?” asked Elsa. And then Granny asked Elsa if she’d agree to more ice cream and another topic of conversation if Granny answered “Yes.” Elsa said she could go for that.
In the oldest fairy tales from Miamas they say a wurse can die only of a broken heart. Otherwise, they’re immortal. This is why it became possible to kill them after they were sent into exile from the Land-of-Almost-Awake for biting the princess: because they were sent away by the very people they had protected and loved. “And that was why they could be killed in the last battle of the War-Without-End,” Granny explained—for hundreds of wurses died in that last battle—“because the hearts of all living creatures are broken in war.”
Elsa thinks about that while sitting in the waiting room at the veterinary clinic. It smells of birdseed. Britt-Marie sits next to her with her hands clasped together in her lap, watching a cockatoo sitting in its cage on the other side of the room. Britt-Marie doesn’t seem so very keen on cockatoos. Elsa isn’t wholly conversant with the exact emotional utterances of cockatoos, but she reckons the feeling is mutual.
“You don’t have to wait here with me,” says Elsa, her voice clogged with sorrow and anger.
Britt-Marie brushes some invisible seeds from her jacket and answers, without taking her eyes off the cockatoo, “It’s no trouble, dear Elsa. You shouldn’t feel like that. No trouble at all.”
Elsa understands that she doesn’t mean it unpleasantly. The police are interviewing Dad and Alf about everything that has happened, and Britt-Marie was the first to be questioned, so she offered to sit with Elsa and wait for the veterinary surgeon to come out and say something about the wurse. So Elsa does understand that there’s nothing unpleasant about it. It’s just difficult for Britt-Marie to say anything at all without it sounding that way.
Elsa wraps her hands in her Gryffindor scarf. Inhales deeply.
“It was very brave of you to step between Wolfheart and Sam,” she offers in a low voice.
Britt-Marie brushes some invisible seeds and possibly some invisible crumbs from the table in front of her into the palm of her hand. Sits there with her hand closed around them, as if looking for an invisible wastepaper bin to throw them in.