Little Merritt Rides the Elevator All the Way to the Top
by Nate Brown
Perhaps we had given him too much?
Perhaps, in loving Little Merritt as we had, we failed to see the deep flaw in his character, a bruise that’d been there all along, spreading under the surface of his sweet-smelling skin. These days, I like to think that had I been perhaps less in love with my child that I could have saved him, that I could have saved us all.
Little Merritt was our only child, and because of this he was particularly beloved. Because he was beloved, he was lavished with gifts—from his grandpapa, from our friends, from Rowland’s associates and tenants. Our nursemaid, Claudine, swaddled him in soft woolen blankets during the winter of his birth and, later, at our direction, styled him in the manner of Rowland and Rowland’s father in a sharp, herringbone morning coat, a miniature of the very jacket that Rowland himself wore to the breakfast table. We’d happily acquiesced to the luxuries that Little Merritt’s station and disposition demanded. How was one to tell, with any infant, what was necessity and what was whim?
Oh, there were signs of what was to come, but they were only clear to me after much reflection. The photographs have helped me to see those days somewhat more objectively. In analysis, Dr. Kurz recently asked me to have a courier retrieve a selection of images from our townhome to his office, but instead of looking through the pictures himself and commenting on the gaiety of days past, Dr. Kurz insisted we review them together from a distance.
Dr. Kurz arranged the pictures, seven in all, against the wall at the far end of his salon, several yards from where I sat upon his tufted sofa. At this distance, said the doctor, the particulars of our portraits and photographs—our home and its great rooms, its velvet cushions, thick curtains, and grand moldings—might become somehow too distant for me to recognize as my own. Looking at pictures of our little family from across the room was an exercise in making what was familiar to me alien. In doing so, Dr. Kurz had hoped that I might find something in Little Merritt’s visage that I had failed previously to see, something that was clear as crystal to him.
Captured in one image as a toddler, Little Merritt stands poised to stomp one of Rowland’s beloved Persian kittens. But the image had been jocular, I insisted. There had been no real danger!
In another, Little Merritt struggles mightily to bear his father’s hunting rifle. He is smiling as he attempts to level the weapon at the photographer Rowland had hired.
Dr. Kurz seems to believe that if I could only see Little Merritt as he had been then, rather than delight in the memories of his impishness, I might have sensed petulance or some intimation of the rage for which our boy has now become quite famous.
Yet, I saw nothing then, and if I am being truthful, I see nothing much in those same pictures now. Which isn’t to say that I do not have my regrets! Perhaps there was something telling in Little Merritt’s inverted smile and furrowed brow, though I’d once thought these worthy of admiration.
What a discerning little man he is! I’d exclaim as he denied a bite of whatever it was that Claudine had prepared for him. What a shrewd landlord he’ll be!
When Little Merritt drew stick figures whose averted eyes were shot-through with crimson arteries, we’d laughed heartily. When his own stick figure was some twenty times larger than the one he drew representing his father, my dear Rowland, we thought it fanciful. It was a family tableau, me and Rowland dwarfed by our child. Rowland’s prized new tower was drawn in Little Merritt’s scrawl behind us, that great building virtually piercing the sky. Of course, Little Merritt wasn’t fifteen stories tall! Of course he wasn’t sharp-toothed and black-winged!
Rowland’s tower, then the tallest in New York, was rendered in crude detail, but included the ornate cornices and the grand reflecting pool in front. It was coincidence that he’d drawn Claudine standing dangerously close to the pool and that, but a year later, she would be found floating in that very water, which had gone pink from her wounds, her chilly flesh as slick as the surface of a pearl freshly plucked from an oyster.
Rowland had envisioned Little Merritt taking over the firm one day and had ordered a frame for the boy’s drawing, complete with a brass plaque that read Little Merritt Takes the Elevator All the Way to the Top, a sign, I think of Rowland’s aspirations for our boy, his desire to leave the company in the hands of his heir.
The picture had initially hung in the library over Rowland’s spirits table. Later, after Claudine’s cadavre had been shipped back to her family in Quebec, Rowland ordered the picture moved from the library to the entry hall. It was an oddity, I told Dr. Kurz, that even after Claudine’s death, Rowland might have the picture displayed still, and this time in such a conspicuous location.
Perhaps it was his way of honoring our poor, dead Claudine? I’d ventured.
Dr. Kurz tendered his own interpretation: Perhaps Little Merritt’s picture might serve to caution those who entered our home? I lost my composure then and, in a fury, I’d frightened the good doctor.
So many perhapses, Dr. Kurz! I’d objected. So many maybes and what-ifs!
Madam, said Kurz, You must compose yourself.
I saw that I’d frightened the doctor, and I wondered if he’d seen in me what we’d all seen in Little Merritt as he grew?
In every memory I have of him, I am smiling and handing Little Merritt to Claudine, observing as the girl tends to his fingernails or laces his boots. Yet, in those same memories, I seem always to be wagging a finger at Claudine for whatever indiscretion might have occurred: a broken glass, a lost kitten, an unsightly scratch across her cheek. It has taken me years to realize this, but in every picture taken of him, Little Merritt’s eyes are trained on the lens of the photographer’s camera. There is not one picture in which he seems to see our dear Claudine, not one in which he is looking at Rowland or me.
One morning, not long before Claudine’s accident, Little Merritt asked for his beverage at breakfast. He mispronounced the word, as many children do, but while most toddlers say melk or malk, Little Merritt reached for his rich morning drink, sweetened with honey and served alongside hot breads and butter. He pronounced the word clearly enough, though the word he spoke was not milk.
Clear as crystal, as Dr. Kurz would say, Little Merritt looked past his cup and extended his hands toward Claudine’s collar.
I want it, he said. I want blood.
Nate Brown is a writer and editor who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He teaches writing at Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and the George Washington University.
