Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,10
his language skills? He was only two years old and it was like talking to Sean O’Casey. If he’s an idiot, then he’s an idiot savant.”
“Well, you’ve got the idiot part right anyway,” said Uncle Tom, not bothering to look over at me but continuing to whisk a bowl of pancake batter.
Pop ignored him. “And let’s not forget he’s left-handed. Everyone knows that being left-handed denotes incipient genius.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then Princeton better start recruiting from the Arctic Circle,” Uncle Tom said. “Show me a polar bear that isn’t left-handed.”
As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to understand why Ma hated me, figuring the reasons were psychologically complex, mostly beyond my grasp, and maybe even a bit flattering. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized my greatest sin was that I looked like my grandfather.
Right from the start the resemblance was apparent, and it only increased over time. I was like a living portrait of the Falcon through the seven ages of man. Still am. Tall and narrow—Pop called us “the matchstick men” on account of our long limbs—I inherited the Falcon’s wide cheekbones (he could have passed for a Russian model), full lips (he could have passed for an Italian porn star), curly black hair (same again), mortician’s pallor, dark blue eyes, and permanently clenched jaw. Bingo took great pleasure in pointing out that I even inherited the Falcon’s girlish ankles.
The Falcon kept an Old English mastiff called Cromwell, his habitual companion. When one Cromwell died, he was immediately replaced with another, which he also named Cromwell. The Cromwells represented the only living creatures to which he showed affection, feeding each one a constant stream of shortbread cookies and carrying on long, complex conversations with them alone in the library when he thought no one was listening.
I once overheard him asking a Cromwell what time he’d like to eat, which seemed a very lonely question to ask a dog. I slipped away, not wanting to hear any more.
I was ten years old and staying with my grandfather for a weekend when one of the Cromwells died suddenly of a heart attack. I came down the long, winding stairs to the hallway, where he lay on the black-and-white floor tile surrounded by my grandfather and various members of the household staff.
When I realized what had happened, I quietly began to cry. My grandfather, in his indigo housecoat, silver hair falling over his forehead, turned sharply at the first sound of my sniffling.
“Oh, Lord,” he said. “I suppose this is what we have to look forward to for the rest of the visit.”
Feeling embarrassed and ashamed, I wiped my tears and watched as Cromwell the fifth or sixth, I’d lost track, was wrapped in a white cotton sheet by two of the housemaids and carried off by the cook and the groom to be buried on the grounds of the estate, a secret location only the Falcon knew.
Bingo and I spent many days looking to no avail for the Cromwells’ burial grounds. I suspected the Falcon paid frequent visits, but I never had the heart to follow him.
Even now I have no idea where the Cromwell collective lies buried, nor do I look any longer. Like my grandfather, it represents a mystery I’m content to leave unsolved.
Later that night, I awoke to the sound of pacing on the floor beneath me. I got up and crept partway down the stairs, stopping and concealing myself in the darkness in the curve of the banister railings. My grandfather was at the end of the hallway in front of his bedroom, pacing back and forth, back and forth, illuminated by the light from the moon as it shone through the windows in the landing. He was wearing his dressing gown and plain black slippers; he was rubbing his hands and crying.
I sat in the shadows for a long time, feeling almost paralyzed with the cold, my feet achingly exposed, until he went into his bedroom and shut the door. I waited for a moment, and then I did the same. It was my first indication that there was more to the Falcon than he was prepared to reveal to a ten-year-old boy.
Two days later the new Cromwell arrived, a three-month-old British import, an identical fawn-colored match to all his predecessors.
The Falcon greeted him indifferently. The next morning, I saw him offer the new Cromwell a shortbread cookie, and as the puppy wagged his tail and took up