A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers Page B

have the curtains open so she can see the yard and the street. During the day it is often very bright outside, and though the brightness is visible from inside the family room, somehow the light does not travel effectively into the family room, in terms of bringing to the family room any noticeable illumination. I am not a proponent of the curtains being open.
    Some people know. Of course they know.
    People know.
    Everyone knows. Everyone is talking. Waiting.
    I have plans for them, the nosy, the inquisitive, the pitying, have developed elaborate fantasies for those who would see us as grotesque, pathetic, our situation gossip fodder. I picture strangulations— Tsk tsk, I hear she ’ s-gurglel —neck-breakings— what will happen to that poor little fo-crack!—I picture kicking bodies as they lie curled on the ground, spitting blood as they — Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ, Vm sorry, Vm sorry! —beg for mercy. I lift them over my head and then bring them down, break them over my knee, their spines like dowels of balsa. Can ’ t you see it? I push offenders into giant vats of acid and watch them struggle, scream as the acid burns, breaks them apart. My hands fly into them, breaking their skin—I pull out hearts and intestines and toss them aside. I do head-crushings, beheadings, some work with baseball bats—the variety and degree of punishment depending on the offender and the offense. Those whom I don ’ t like or my mother doesn ’ t like in the first place get the worst—usually long, drawn-out strangulations, faces of red then purple then mauve. Those I barely know, like the family that just walked by, are spared the worst—nothing personal. I ’ ll run them over with my car.
    We are both distantly worried about the bleeding nose, my mother and I, but are for the time being working under the assumption that the nose will stop bleeding. While I hold her nose she holds the half-moon receptacle as it rests on the upper portion of her chest, under her chin.
    Just then I have a great idea. I try to get her to talk funny, the way people talk when their nose is being held.
    “ Please? ” I say.
    “ No, ” she says.
    “ C ’ mon. ” “ Cut it out. ” “ What? ”
    My mother ’ s hands are veiny and strong. Her neck has veins. Her back has freckles. She used to do a trick where it looked like she would be pulling off her thumb, when in fact she was not. Do you know this trick? Part of one ’ s right thumb is made to look like part of one ’ s left hand, and then is slid up and down the index finger of the left finger—attached, then detached. It ’ s an unsettling trick, and more so when my mother used to do it, because she did it in a way where her hands sort of shook, vibrated, her neck ’ s veins protruding and taut, her face gripped with the strain plausibly attendant to pulling off one ’ s finger. As children, we watched with both glee and terror. We knew it was not real, we had seen it dozens of times, but its power was never diminished, because my mother ’ s was a uniquely physical presence—she was all skin and muscles. We would make her do the trick for our friends, who were also horrified and enthralled. But kids loved her. Everyone knew her from school—she directed the plays in grade school, would take in kids who were going through divorces, knew and loved and was not shy about hugging any of them, especially the shy ones—there was an effortless kind of understanding, an utter lack of doubt about what she was doing that put people at ease, so unlike some of the mothers, so brittle and unsure. Of course, if she didn ’ t like someone, that kid knew it. Like Dean Borris, the beefy, dirty-blond boy up the block, who would stand in the street and, unprovoked, give her the finger as she drove by. “ Bad kid, ” she would say, and she meant it— she had an inner hardness that under no circumstances did you want to trifle with—and would have him struck from her list until the