The November 2009 Featured Story is by Christina Hoag

Feel free to email Christina at: choag24@gmail.com

MY MOTHER'S KNIVES

By Christina Hoag

I was glad when the downstairs neighbor moved out. I didn’t like Gladys at all. She told me I should go on a diet and see a skin doctor.  She complained that I jangled my keys too loud and thumped up the stairs when I came home from work at two in the morning. It wasn’t my fault she was a light sleeper. She screwed up her nose at me when I said hi to her in the hallway, like I reeked or something. I didn’t. I showered every day with deodorant soap.

But I fixed her. I told the landlady that Gladys’ teenage son had moved in. If there’s one thing that Mrs Priscoletti hates, it’s “unauthorized residents.” Then I complained that he was smoking pot, playing heavy metal music real loud and bringing over friends with pierced eyebrows and noses. I laid it on pretty thick. I knew Mrs Priscoletti wouldn’t renew Gladys’ lease.

Gladys tried to get back at me when she moved out – she took my “Welcome” doormat with the picture of the rose cottage and little dog. I went to Wal-Mart and got another one exactly the same.

Mrs Priscoletti always moved fast to line up new tenants, not like when she had to make a repair. So I sat at my typewriter by the attic window, making up stories about the people I saw on the street below, and waited for my new neighbor. I’ve had this portable typewriter since I was a kid, that’s how long I’ve been writing stories. I’m lucky my mother never threw it out. She tried to, but I hugged it so hard to my chest she couldn’t get my arms off. So she ripped up all my stories instead. I hid them after that.   

The new tenant arrived the Saturday after Gladys moved out. He pulled up in a car filled with junk. I leaned out the window to get a good look. I just caught the bald patch on his head as he unlocked the front door and stepped in. A woman with mousy, shoulder-length hair followed him. I rushed downstairs but stayed on the steps. They didn’t close their front door so I could hear almost everything.

“Paul, this is real nice! You did good, baby.”

“Yeah, look at this – it’s got a little back yard.” Their voices faded out. I ran to my bedroom in the back and yanked up the window.  Paul had black hair and a mustache, big glasses and a belly hanging over his belt. She had a flat stomach.

He pointed at the flower bed. “I can plant string beans over here, eggplant there, put my tomatoes in this sunny spot here.”

“And I’ll sit right here and work on my tan!” She laughed. He put his arm around her and kissed her head.

Paul didn’t have any furniture, just boxes. I waited til they almost finished unloading the car – I didn’t want to get stuck carrying stuff – and went downstairs. I poked my head in the door. I heard giggling and play growl noises from the bedroom.

“Yoo-hoo!” I called. The sounds stopped and they came out, hair all mussed, shirts rucked up. I put on my nice-as-apple-pie smile.

“Hi, I’m Mary Grace Nagy. I live upstairs.”

“Paul Ventimiglia, and this is my girlfriend Denise.”

“Are you both settling in okay?”

“It’s just me moving in, but I don’t have much to settle. My ex-wife got all the furniture.” He chuckled and gave Denise one of those “in the know” looks. She rolled her eyes.

He had a nice way about him, warm eyes, a real smile. I stared at his mouth. He had a gap between his front teeth. My father had a gap just like that.

“If you’re getting furniture delivered, I can let them in for you,” I said. “I’m home days.”

“Oh, you work at home?” Denise raised her eyebrows.

“No, I work nights, cleaning state offices downtown.”

“That’s very nice of your to offer about the deliverymen, Mary Grace,” Paul said. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

“You lived here long?” Denise asked. She sure was nosy for someone who wasn’t even my neighbor.

“I’ve lived in Chambersburg my whole life,” I said. “We were the only Hungarian family around. It was all Italian back then. Now the Italians are old, like Mrs Priscoletti, the young ones all move out of Trenton. I’ve lived in this…”

Denise nudged him. “We better get the rest of those boxes, babe. We gotta be at Charlie’s at six.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Sorry, we’ll have to talk more later, Mary Grace. Nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you.” Denise said, and turned up the edges of her mouth.

I smiled at Paul and half-lifted my hand at her.

The following Saturday morning, a truck pulled up and delivered a couch, a bed, table and chairs and other junk. I guessed Paul wasn’t going to take me up on my offer about the delivery man.

A girl came over. She looked like him, probably his daughter; nothing special, another of those teenage girls you see at the mall, slobbering all over their boyfriends outside the arcade.

In the afternoon, they went out. I waited by the window til I saw his car pull up – he was by himself. He must’ve dropped off the kid. I raced downstairs and pretended like I was checking the mail in the hallway when he came in. He smiled at me.

“Hope we didn’t wake you this morning,” Paul said. “Those delivery men weren’t too quiet.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t hear a thing.”

“It was such a hassle. The couch wouldn’t fit through the door and we had to take the door off the hinges to get it in. We kind of nicked the door jamb.”

“Oh, Mrs. Prisco isn’t going to like that,” I said.

“She doesn’t have to know, does she?” He winked at me.

“When my mother and I moved in here, she’s dead now, but back…”

“Mary Grace, sorry, I gotta get ready to go out with Denise.” Paul was unlocking his front door. “She’ll kill me if I’m late. I’ll catch you later.” The door closed.

She really had him on a leash.

*****

Paul settled into his routine. He’d leave the house shortly after eight, sit in his car for a minute to warm up the engine and drive off. He’d return just after five. Tuesdays and Thursdays he came home for lunch and Denise would come over. She had her own key.

If I sat in my bedroom with the window open, I could hear the kitchen noises from downstairs: the clatter of the dishes and utensils, the water running, the scrape of the chairs, the clunk of pots and pans. On the weekends, I could smell lots of garlic and onion, hear the sizzle of hot oil in the frying pan.

A couple times I heard grunts and groans. When that happened, I slammed down the window and went up to my typewriter in the attic, pounding my feet on the stairs as hard as I could.

Since I was home when the mailman came, I’d always pick up the mail. Mrs Priscoletti was too cheap to put up mailboxes outside, so the letters came through the old slot in the front door and landed on the floor. I put Paul’s stuff in a neat pile by his door. He had a lot of credit cards – Visa, American Express, MasterCard. I never had a credit card.

On my nights off, I’d listen to his door to hear what show he had on TV, then I’d run upstairs and tune in my TV to the same one. After a couple weeks, I didn’t even have to listen at the door. I knew what he’d be watching. He liked cop shows the best.

One night, I knocked on his door after he got home. He came to the door in his undershirt. He had black hair on his chest and shoulders. A gold cross glinted around his neck. I suddenly remembered: my father had a gold cross. I used to swizzle it back and forth on its chain when I sat on his knee.

“Mary Grace, anything wrong?” Paul was staring at me.

“Oh, just remembered something that slipped my mind.” I waved my hand. “Anyway, sorry to bother you, but the gas man came yesterday and said he needed to get into the basement to get an exact reading on the meter. Something about too many months of averaging,” I said. “This always happens. I told Mrs Priscoletti years ago to have the meters moved outside but she’s too cheap.”

Paul scratched his chin. “What a pain. I guess I’ll call the gas company or something.”

“You know, if you leave me the key on the sixth of the month, I could let the gas man in. No big deal.”

Paul’s face perked. “That’s real nice of you, Mary Grace. Thanks.”

I was thinking that he was so different than Gladys. She acted like I wanted to rob her apartment when I asked for her key. The next month she put up these cards in the window with the meter reading on them.

But Paul smiled at me. “Mrs Priscoletti is cheap, isn’t she? My tub really needs to be replaced, but she’s sending her son to grout the crack instead.”

“She’s always been like that. She did the cheapest job possible to convert this rowhouse into apartments. My mother always said that Mrs Priscoletti would end up paying double what she would’ve if she’d done a proper job in the first place.”

“I’m sure. Well, I’ll get a copy made of the key for you later, Mary Grace.”

“I took care of my mother til she died – that was five years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.  Listen, I got a pot of sauce on the stove, it’s going to boil over, I’ll catch you later.”  

A few days later, I found an envelope pushed under my door. It was Paul’s key with a note saying to keep it in case of emergency. I hummed all night long as I vacuumed my floors.

*****

The next morning after Paul left for work, I let myself into his apartment. I grabbed a handful of candies from a glass bowl on the coffee table and sat in the recliner chair in front of the TV – just where Paul sat. I stuck my finger in the pot of tomato sauce left on the stove...spicy. I opened the kitchen cabinets – lots of pasta and dishes from Wal-Mart.

His phone receiver smelled of cologne. I spotted the bottle in the bathroom and sprinkled a bit on my neck. The medicine cabinet had regular things like aspirin and Tums. The best stuff was in the bedroom, like it usually is. I found two copies of Penthouse under his bed. I saw a pair of his underwear on the floor, size 40. It had a big heart, you know where. I stuffed them in my pocket. He’d think he lost them in the laundry or something.

From then on, I hung out in Paul’s apartment almost every day. I watched TV and listened to his goopy Barry Manilow CD. I took off all my clothes and got into his bed so I could rub the smell from his manly dark brown sheets all over me. I flipped through his photo albums – his wedding, his baby’s christening. I sipped the dregs from the Bud cans in the recycling bin.

I was always real careful to leave everything exactly how I found it and to get out before he got home.

But one day...one day I slipped up.

I fell asleep in the recliner and it was a Thursday – one of the days they came home for lunch.

I jerked up when I heard the hallway door bang shut and voices. I raced to the bedroom and dove into the closet. I heard them come in and go to the kitchen. The fridge opened, the cutlery drawer rattled, dishes scraped. Then I heard Denise giggling and saying, “Stop, Paul. Oh, you!”

They thumped across the living room and crashed into the bedroom door, laughing. I opened the closet door a crack.

Denise was sprawled on the bed with Paul on top of her. He was kissing her, pinning her arms above her head. I pushed the door open a little wider. He pulled the blouse out from her skirt and unbuttoned it. He pushed up her bra and squeezed her. Then he spread her legs and moved on top of her. As he rocked back and forth, I watched the gold cross bounce off his chest.

That night I dreamed of my mother sharpening her knives.

*****

Not long after that, I heard all this knocking at the front door early one Sunday morning. I looked out. Denise was on the porch. “Paul, it’s me! Answer the friggin’ door, would you?”

He didn’t answer. I looked across the street. His car was there. She pounded the door with her fist.

It was getting annoying so I went downstairs. I wanted to tell her to piss off. Paul came out of his apartment at the same time, his hair a mess and his eyes puffy. He opened the door and she tumbled in.

“What took you?” Denise yelled to him, her face hard. “I’ve been out here for ten minutes already.”

“I was zonked out. I took a Tylenol PM,” Paul said. “Where’s your key?”

“I can’t find it. It might be in my other purse.”    

She saw me staring at them and practically shoved Paul into the apartment.

“She gives me the creeps,” I heard her say. “Something …”

“Shh,” Paul said, and then the door shut and I could only hear the mumble of voices. I felt stabbed in the stomach, but at least Paul tried to protect me.

I wasn’t careless like Denise. I got a copy made of Paul’s key just in case I ever lost it. I keep the keys in the music box my father gave me for my ninth birthday. When you open it, a little ballerina twirls to “Somewhere My Love,” the song from “Dr. Zhivago,” my favorite movie.

I made some chocolate peanut butter cookies a few days later and took a plate down to him when Denise wasn’t around. It was kind of a thank you for trusting me with his key.

“Want some vegetables from my garden?” Paul asked me. “I’ve had a bumper crop this year. I can’t eat them all.”

He loaded up a paper bag of eggplants, tomatoes and string beans and handed it to me.

“Thank you, Paul,” I said. “This is so generous of you. It’s really so nice.”

Tears scalded my eyes. I blinked them back. The last present I got from anyone was the music box. My father disappeared the day after he gave it to me, and of course then my life became all about my mother.

Paul scratched his chin and looked down, like he was embarrassed or something. “Well, uh, thanks for the cookies. They look real good.”

“I used to make cookies for my mother all the time,” I said.

“Well, thanks again.” I guess he really was embarrassed. I got the message. I told him I’d see him later.

I couldn’t eat those vegetables. I put them in a bowl and carried them around with me everywhere I went – upstairs to the attic, to my bedside table at night, to the bathroom. But after a couple weeks, they shriveled up and rotted.

Paul had left the empty cookie plate by my door. I figured he wanted more cookies, but was too shy to ask. So I took him down another plateful – oatmeal chocolate chip this time.

“Oh…thanks,” Paul said when he answered the door. “But you shouldn’t go to the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble, really. I love baking,” I said.

“It’s just that…I’m on a diet.”

“You don’t need to go on a diet. You look perfect. The eggplant and tomatoes were the best I ever had, by the way. And the string beans, too.”

“You want some more? I have plenty.”

“That would be great.”

“Hold on a sec.” He came back and gave me the bag. “I have to run. I was just about to go out.”

“No problem. Thanks. We’ll talk later.”

“Sure thing.” I liked the way he said that – sure thing.

I went upstairs. This time I was prepared. I had bought a couple dozen bottles of clear nail polish and I painted each eggplant, tomato and string bean so they would keep forever.

Then I moved my typewriter down from the attic into the living room by the front window so I could see Paul more closely when he went in and out. He was inspiring me to write a lot of stories.

One Saturday night, I heard yelling from downstairs. I tiptoed down and pressed my ear against the door.

“How do you think that makes me feel when you talk to her, when you have anything to do with her? Huh?”

“Listen, she’s the mother of my daughter. She's a part of my life, like it or not.”

“I know that Paul, but you don’t have to rub it in my face all the time.”

“Jesus, Denise, I’m not rubbing it in your face, I swear. I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry.”

They calmed down and I went back upstairs. My chest felt it was bursting. Denise really was getting to be a pain. Poor Paul.

I waited until the lights were out downstairs and in the neighbors’ windows. I grabbed my one of my mother’s carving knifes, went outside and slashed the tires on Denise’s car. I fell asleep in the living room so I’d hear everything the next morning.

I woke up when the door slammed downstairs. My heart jumped. I crawled up to the window. Her heels click-clacked on the sidewalk. Then they stopped.

“Oh my God, Paul, ohmyGod, ohmyGod!”

“What, what?...Jesus Christ!”

I couldn’t help it. I keeled over onto the floor laughing.

*****

A couple days later, the car had four new tires. I went out again, this time with my mother’s paring knife, and scratched “bitch” on the fenders. A policeman came. He knocked at my door and asked if I had seen anything.

I shook my head. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You sure? Mr. Ventimiglia says you watch everything that goes on in the street.”

“No, I really haven’t seen anything.”

He cocked his head and looked at me for a second then scribbled on his pad. He ripped off the sheet and handed it to me. “If you remember anything, call me.”

“Sure thing, Officer.”

Paul knocked at my door a little later. I smiled my biggest smile, but he didn’t smile back.

“Mary Grace, I’m going to need my key.”

The smile dropped clean off my face. “Why? Is…is there a problem?”

“I just think it’s safer with this trouble we’ve been having.”

“What about the gas man? I was taking care of that for you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I just really need the key.”

“Sure thing, hang on.” A rage rose in my throat like vomit. I got the key from the music box and handed it to him.

“It’s these kids round here, you know,” I said. “The neighborhood’s not what it used to be.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking I might have to move out. This is crazy.”

“You can’t leave!” I couldn’t help myself. His eyes widened, then they flicked over my shoulder and narrowed for just a flash. He turned and left.

I closed the door and swiveled to see what he’d been looking at over my shoulder – it was the bowl of varnished vegetables on the kitchen table.

She had totally turned him against me. Denise was corrupting him. He needed me to protect him.

My mother’s voice echoed in my head. “People will corrupt you, Mary Grace, that’s why you have to stay close to me. I’ll protect you from evil people.”

I closed my eyes and she was pushing up my nightgown with the blade of her knife.  I opened my eyes and my mother was gone, but my lungs felt real tight like I’d been running for my life.

*****

I waited until late that night then I threw a dozen eggs at Paul’s car from the living room window. His car looked like it was crying yolks.

The next morning I woke up to banging at my door. It was Paul. His face was all twisted.

“What the hell kind of game are you playing?” he yelled as he waved his arm at the street. “What the fuck is your problem?”

I threw myself at him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Denise did it,” I told him. “She’s corrupting you, Paul. But I’ll protect you. We’ll protect each other.”

He struggled to pull me off. I hung on, just like I had hung on to my typewriter and just like my mother, he couldn’t loosen my grip.

“Let go of me! You’re fucking crazy! You did that to my car. And you vandalized Denise's car too. I know you did. You weirdo!”

Weirdo! That’s what they called me in school. I let him go and he staggered back. “Don’t you ever come near me or Denise again or I’ll call the cops!”

She must be really corrupting him to make him yell names and threaten me like that. I was losing him.

*****

The next day I let myself into Paul’s apartment with the spare key he didn't know I had made and crawled into the closet. I sat there breathing in the leather of his shoes, shaking the numbness out of my legs.

I heard a noise at the door. My whole body tingled. How could that be? It wasn't even Thursday!

They entered the apartment talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I didn’t have to wait too long. I left the closet door cracked a bit and peeked out.

The bedroom door banged against the wall. Paul walked in carrying Denise and laid her on the bed. They started kissing and rolling around. His hand pushed up her skirt to her hip.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, tight. I felt the prick of the knife tip as my mother spread my legs. I felt the pain bolting through my body. Where was Daddy? Where did he go?

I heard Paul groan and Denise cry out. I felt the knifepoint in my leg. My mother would press the tip of a knife into my flesh if I made a sound. Why didn’t Daddy protect me? Why did he leave?

“Could you get me some water, babe?” I heard Denise say, and I opened my eyes. She was lying back with her eyes closed and her neck arched, shiny with sweat.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Want anything to eat?” he asked, and she shook her head.

I heard the fridge door, then I lunged out of the closet and flung myself on top of her, plunging in my mother’s knife wherever I could.

She screamed and tried to push me off. I stuck my fingers in her face and kept swinging the knife. I felt the power of making my mother scream and it doubled my strength.

Blood was making her body slippery. She was squirming and her arms were fighting me but she couldn’t do much.

Suddenly Paul was there, grabbing me from behind. I surged with anger. He should have been protecting me, helping me. Daddy should have been there.

I wouldn't let loose of Denise. I wrapped my arms around her neck with my fingers in her hair, like I was hugging her, so when he yanked me upwards, I pulled her up with me.

She wasn’t really struggling any more. She was whimpering, just like I used to when my mother finally left me alone. But if my mother heard me crying, she’d come into my room and the steel blade of the knife in her hand would glisten in the light of the street lamp shining through the window.

I couldn't stop stabbing. With my arms still wrapped around her, I was stabbing her in the back but the blade kept hitting bone. Paul was trying to pin down my arm but I was moving too fast.

I finally hit the spot – the knife slid between the ribs. She went limp. I paused for a split-second and he seized my wrist. We started struggling.

Now it was Paul’s turn. He didn’t appreciate anything I’d done for him, nothing after all this time. He was selfish, greedy, thoughtless. Selfish, greedy, thoughtless. That’s what my mother yelled at me with each thrust.

I knew Paul wanted to take the knife away from me, so with my free hand, I reached down. I found his privates and squeezed as hard as I could. He yelled and loosened his grip on my wrist.

I yanked my hand free and sank the knife into his stomach. He fell back. I left the knife there, still protruding from his bloody stomach, and dragged myself upstairs. I was so tired, I didn’t even wash the blood off. I flopped onto the bed. I didn’t have to cry myself to sleep for once.

*****

I’m sitting at my typewriter at the window, but it’s a new view now.

There’s a grassy slope and big trees with benches underneath. People are strolling around.  There’s my handsome doctor, Dr. Kramer. He has a tanned face that crinkles at the eyes when he always smiles and asks, “And how are you today, Mary Grace?”

I asked the kitchen manager if she’d let me bake cookies one day. I think Dr. Kramer would like chocolate coconut.

Christina Hoag

Christina Hoag is a reporter with The Associated Press in Los Angeles. A former staff writer for the Miami Herald, she was a correspondent in Latin America writing for Time, Business Week, The New York Times, Financial Times and Houston Chronicle, and has won prizes for enterprise reporting and interpretive writing. Her fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry have been published in The Oddville Press, StraitJackets, Liquid Silver eBooks, Clever, Hackwriters, Bent Pin, ExPatLit, Sex and Murder, and The Smoking Poet.