How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (18 page)

T
HEY GET INTO his car and drive. East out of Seattle via Interstate 90, an awe-inspiring highway that plows up Snoqualmie Pass like a great Roman road, full of majesty, a masterpiece of engineering that reduces the Cascade Mountains—at one time a fearsome and perilous range—to a mere speed bump, nothing more than a brief ear-popping transition for the masses. South at Ellensburg onto Interstate 82, which veers through the Yakima River Valley and into Yakima itself, a small agricultural hub with delusions of grander things: upon reaching Yakima, the traveler is met with a roadside billboard proclaiming the city THE PALM SPRINGS OF WASHINGTON. So be it.

Dean directs Evan off the freeway and through a ghostly commercial district, distinctive because of the hundreds of empty boxcars stenciled YAKIMA VALLEY APPLES, or YAKIMA TOMATOES, which are piled five-high alongside the handful of railroad tracks that run through the center of town, up a broad avenue and into a neighborhood called Nob Hill. It’s an old neighborhood with pretty tree-lined streets and nice houses. It’s not a wealthy neighborhood, but it’s not poor. It’s a neighborhood of people who care about their houses, tend their own gardens, pay the neighbor’s kid to mow their lawn. The lots are small, the houses neatly arranged behind white picket fences. Kids play in the street or in front yards, dogs wander without leashes, the roads are peppered with Neighborhood Watch signs designed to ward off burglars and thieves.

Dean’s house is light blue with white trim. There are rose bushes in the front yard, but they haven’t been cut back recently. The dead heads cling to the vines, little bundles of withered petals that stay the growth of new buds trying to emerge. Strangely, the grass is uniformly green, as if it has been watered regularly for the past week by a computer-controlled sprinkler system that works ceaselessly, even in the face of death.

Dean hesitates before getting out of the car, as if he’s having second thoughts.

“You okay?” Evan asks.“You want to go in?”

Dean nods slightly.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, ” Evan says. “If you need some things, just tell me where they are and I can go in and get them and we can go back to Seattle.”

“No, ” Dean says quickly, turning to Evan. He looks afraid. Not of ghosts, but of what he is feeling. They get out of the car and walk up the flagstone path to the front door. Dean takes out his key and lets them in.

“Make yourself at home, ” Dean says with deliberate casualness as he turns and heads off down the hallway, disappearing behind a closed door.

Make yourself at home. Easy enough to say. But Evan can’t. He can’t move, he can’t even step into the house. He is struck, standing in the foyer. His feet are rooted to the tiled floor. He is overcome with a horrible creepy feeling. Dean may not be afraid of ghosts, but Evan is.

The house is of generic, inexpensive construction. The décor is run of the mill. Wall-to-wall carpeting, a fireplace of laid sandstone, ornate brass-plated light fixtures, overstuffed Levitz furniture; not bad, but not good either. The art on the walls consists primarily of framed posters. Again, not bad, but not great. It’s all very Tracy, though. That’s what gives Evan the creeps. Everything cries out
Tracy
. And Evan isn’t really sure why. He tries to recall her home in Seattle, when they were in high school together. Maybe that’s it. This house has the same kind of feeling. It’s a feeling that Evan has always taken note of, since, growing up in his parents’ house, which was immaculately decorated with expensive furniture and artwork— posters only allowed in the kids’ bedrooms, and barely then—he noticed the difference when he went to other people’s houses. Upon reflection, Evan suspects that the furniture in front of him may very well be the same furniture Tracy’s parents used to have. It’s hard to furnish a house on a limited budget—parental hand-me-downs are acceptable.

And then . . . here’s Evan assuming that Tracy was on a limited budget when he doesn’t even know what it was she did for a living. So many things, so much weirdness rushing through Evan’s mind. He doesn’t feel totally comfortable with it, with the idea that he is looking at his parallel universe, where he might have been living for the past however-many-years had he gone down a different path. Very Twilight Zone. It disturbs his equilibrium. He needs to walk to keep his balance.

He walks straight through the living room toward the back door. The kitchen and breakfast nook are to his right. Something smells of dirt or mildew, and it seems to be coming from that direction. He doesn’t want to confront the smell. Not yet, anyway. Because that smell is the echo of death. A house, suddenly abandoned. Food left on the counter
—I’ll be back in a minute, honey
— and a silly miscommunication, a “You go right, I’ll pass left, ” resulting in a collision of powerful, heavy metal boxes that twist and deform in grotesque ways after impact, and then what was inconceivable is quickly woven into the fabric of the universe by small Turkish girls who have been waiting patiently for instructions as to which design to make, which patterns to use to illustrate the story of your life, their little fingers so adept at tying intricate silken knots, the humidity of the coastal summer making them furrow their brows, the workings of the massive loom casting skeletal shadows across their laps. Evan opens the sliding glass door and steps out into the backyard. Outside, there is no smell.

The yard needs some work. A kind neighbor has mowed recently, but that’s about all he’s done. Weeds are running rampant in the flowerbeds, and some kind of creeping vine has ransacked a couple of low bushes, all but strangling the life out of them. But even with a Gray Gardens feel, the yard is kind of nice. A small brick patio, an ivy draped arbor overhead to give shade, a playable patch of lawn, a bird bath with green water in it, a couple of bird feeders hanging from the trees, a barbecue grill: propane, not charcoal. A small, round glass-topped table with a closed umbrella sticking out of the middle and four vinyl-webbed chairs around it.

Very nice, very nice. A nice little life. No glamour, very few frills. Neat and tidy. Functional. Efficient. Pared down, in a sense, to provide the least amount of padding between parent and child. Quite unlike Evan’s backyard when he was fourteen, which was full of balls and bats, bicycles, basketball hoops, golf clubs. Tools. Weapons. Things used by father and son to bridge the gap of intimacy. Things to do that can then be talked about. Never talking about feelings or thoughts. Talking about the shot just made in a game of Horse, or how to chip from the fringe. Men are genetically engineered to behave in this way. Since the beginning of time, back in the caveman days, fathers didn’t chat with sons about poetry or music. They took their sons out to the savannah and stalked okapi. You don’t talk about sonnets on the savannah or the okapi will escape. You are silent. A single spear is thrown, dartlike, through the air, piercing a heart. The men rush to the fallen prey. They stand over the kill. They talk about what a good throw it was, how it could be thrown better the next time. They do not talk about their feelings.

He reenters the house. The smell is worse, if that’s possible. It smells like wet dirt. He ventures into the kitchen, a narrow galley bookended by the entry hallway on one side and the breakfast nook on the other. He glances around for something offensive smelling. Nothing jumps out at him.

He returns to the living room. Nothing. He looks down the hallway. A light is on in the bedroom at the end. Must be Dean’s room. Dean isn’t inside. Evan hears movement from the other direction. He quietly walks toward the sound.

The hallway is dim and ends at a single door which is open. Evan looks inside. It’s Tracy’s room. It’s pretty big, a double bed, a large dresser, a writing desk, a TV, a bathroom off one corner, a lot of closets. It’s warm-feeling, decorated with tans and browns. It’s sophisticated, not frilly. It’s like the backyard: there is no extra junk, but it still doesn’t feel empty. It feels full, but full of something other than objects. It feels, strangely, full of soul. It feels like it was lived in by someone who enjoyed living in it.

Dean stands silently at the dresser, his back to the door and to Evan. He’s looking through Tracy’s jewelry box. Evan watches for a couple of minutes as Dean opens each small drawer and pokes through her belongings. Occasionally, he removes something, a ring or a bracelet, examines it, feels its heft, considers it, then sets it back in the box. At last he takes a necklace, a thin chain with a locket on it. He holds it up and stares at it as it glitters in the sunlight from the window. Then he gathers the chain into his hand. He closes the jewelry box door without replacing the necklace. He closes the jewelry box door without replacing the

“I should probably go to the store, ” Evan says.

Dean starts. He jerks around.

“What?” he asks, clearly wondering how long he’s been watched.

“I should go to the store and get some supplies. You want to come?” He hadn’t meant to startle Dean. Just the opposite. He wanted to console Dean. He wanted to share Dean’s thoughts.

Dean doesn’t answer. Evan walks toward him. He can see the pain on Dean’s face from being in his mother’s room. He wants to hold Dean, to hug him. He wants to tell Dean he’s there for him. He reaches out, touches Dean’s shoulder.

“You okay?” he asks softly.

Dean jerks away.

“Let’s go, ” he says.

He brushes past Evan. As he walks toward the door, he slips his hand to his jeans pocket. He tries to stuff the necklace into the pocket, but it falls to the ground. Dean quickly kneels and scoops the chain off the carpet.

“What’s that?” Evan asks.

“I didn’t steal it, ” Dean says quickly, standing.

“I know. I just wondered what it was.”

“Nothing. It’s just a necklace.”

He slides the necklace into his pocket, and then stands with his back to Evan, not moving. He’s being interrogated. He’s waiting to be dismissed.

“Was it your mother’s?” Evan asks, and immediately feels like an idiot.
No, it belongs to someone I’ve never met, but my mother keeps it in
her jewelry box.
Duh.

Dean shrugs and looks at the wall. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Yeah, Evan thinks. Sometimes he feels exactly the same way.

“So let’s go, ” Evan says.

Dean nods and leaves the room without looking back at Evan.

THEY GO TO THE local supermarket and buy the junk you would expect them to buy: potato chips, corn chips, popsicles, cereal. They return to the house and Dean wants to go Rollerblading. His injuries feel much better and he wants to get out on his good skates like in the old days. It’s early, and the late July heat has dissipated enough to make the evening almost idyllic. Evan gives his blessing, partly because he knows that if he doesn’t, Dean will go anyway, so why fight it.

Dean dons his helmet and blades and takes off; Evan goes into the kitchen to put things away, and the smell is so intense now, it almost knocks him down. He sees what it is instantly. Sitting on the counter is a bunch of rotten bananas. Really rotten. Blackened bananas, sitting in a pool of their own rotten banana juices. A million fruit flies are swarming in a cloud above them, dipping down in intervals to suck up the sugary mess. It’s absolutely foul.

He finds a garbage bag, scoops the mess into it with a wad of paper towels and seals the bag shut along with most of the fruit flies, who have chased the banana frappé into the bag. He cleans the counter briefly and then commences putting things away. He picks up the frozen waffles and popsicles and turns toward the refrigerator, where he notices a piece of notepaper held to the refrigerator door by a magnet. He looks closer.

It’s a note from Tracy:

Dean—

There’s a pizza in the freezer and carrots in the fridge . . .
EAT THEM! I’ll be a little late.

Love you,
Mom

Evan cautiously opens the freezer door, not wanting to see what he knows is there. Inside are ice cubes, ice cream cartons, various unmarked containers. And there’s a small frozen pizza in a box— pepperoni—and Evan is suddenly overcome with sadness, like falling into a pool of warm water, it’s suddenly all around him, inside him, without him feeling the change. Just a stupid pizza, that’s all. Nothing to be upset about. But it’s proof. The day she died, Tracy wrote a note to her son telling him about dinner, telling him that she would be home late, probably working overtime or attending a community board meeting or something, and she was probably driving to that meeting to drum up support for a new playground or new after-school activities or a firmer anti-drug program in the high schools when her car was hit by a truck and she was killed. The truck driver probably walked away from the accident unscathed, unmoved, angry, even, at the scratch Tracy’s puny car had made on his front left fender. But Tracy was dead, and her plan—that Dean would eat a frozen pizza and some carrots for dinner—was scuttled once and forever.

Evan drops the note into the garbage can and looks around the kitchen, hoping to see something that will make him feel better, or at least make him feel not so alone. He walks to the hallway and looks toward Dean’s room, but Dean isn’t there, he went skating; Evan can’t try to connect with him. He can’t call his parents or his brother. He tries calling Lars, but Lars is out. He tries calling Mica in Jamaica, but she’s not in her room. There’s no one. He’s absolutely alone, just him and Tracy’s ghost, and she’s got such cold hands, they make him shiver.

WHEN EVAN WAS sixteen, he took the bus to his grandfather’s apartment once a week to play the guitar for the old man. It was a forty-minute ride, but Evan didn’t mind it. These private recitals were something they both enjoyed, even though Evan had long suspected that his grandfather was too deaf to hear.

His grandfather was old, eighty-seven, but he was still a spry little man who got around as best he could and refused every offer of help. That was why, the week before he died, Evan was surprised by his grandfather’s question.

“Is there anything I have that you want?” he asked Evan.