My Second Death (17 page)

“
What?
”

I smile. “Okay, I’m kidding.” I am not, of course, although technically it was Dave and not me who stapled the webbing between my thumb and palm. The scar is faded now and the only time I can see it is when my hands are very cold and turn pink, the scar stays pale.

Aidan gives me a strange look and then he looks down at his sketchbook and starts drawing again.

“What’s that look for?”

“What about Dave?” he says. “He’s a little, I don’t know.
Off
. Right? And I don’t mean because he does drugs. I mean, there’s something a little — ”

He stops talking and for a while is quiet.

“A little what?”

He bites his lower lip and then erases a line. Studies the page. Sketches soft hash lines and then erases another line. “A little
sado
.”

I look at the dark bowl of Aidan’s skull, the lines of his shoulder blades like thin wings under his almost-translucent shirt. I wonder what Dave looks like to other people. Most people only see his public self, the laughing, teasing, slightly zany self. A few people see glimpses of his other self. I imagine he must look to them like a brightly colored moth with the faintest aureole of flame crimping the edges of his wings.

“Right?”

“Right, what?”

“I mean, Dave’s sort of — out there. At least sometimes. Am I right?”

“Hey, at least he’s not a psychopath.”

“Mickey! What is this?” Aidan frowns and turns his head to look at me. “I tell you all about my family. And now you’re, what,
protecting
him?”

I laugh.

He looks at me. His eyebrows peak and his mouth goes down at the corners.

“Jesus, are you serious? Fine. What do you want to hear? Do you want me to tell you he’s a raving lunatic? How can I say that? How would I even know what a raving lunatic
looked
like?” I notice that my thumb is folded tightly against my palm. Maybe because I was just thinking about the staple thing. I unclench my hand.

Aidan says, “That would be a start.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Aidan picks at the carpet weave with the sharpened pencil. “You know what Dave told me about you?”

I shrug.

“He told me about you pushing that guy down the stairs when he tried to — you know. But he also said — well, he said that you were the one who cut your roommate. But, well, you said you didn’t touch her and you don’t lie. But the thing is, I think your brother knows the truth, too, that you didn’t do anything to your roommate, that she was a total psycho. Because you tell him pretty much everything else, so why wouldn’t you have told him that? So he, well, he just blatantly lied about you, and anyway, even if he didn’t know the truth, he really made it seem like you were sort of temporarily stable but basically unpredictable and dangerous.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Gosh, he wouldn’t
dare
. Except — oh, right, that’s the truth.”

“No, it’s not true. That’s my point. Telling me was stupid and unnecessary and, worse than that, it was just
mean
.”

“Are you insane? In what universe am I
not
unpredictable and dangerous? Christ.”

Aidan breaks the lead tip of his pencil. He looks at the ragged wooden end of the pencil and then he sighs and lays the pencil across his sketchpad. “He’s just — he strikes me as the sort of person who might make up a story about someone just to watch other people react. Which is kind of mean. You know? I guess I’m saying I don’t like him. Okay? I don’t like your brother.”

“Terrific. You don’t like my brother. I pretty much detest him. But then, I detest the human race. What’s your point?”

“I think you have a weird thing with your brother. I don’t mean, like, sexual or anything. I just mean that he’s sort of — and you believe what he says, even when he lies. And that’s, like, sort of what abused people do. You know?”

I laugh. “Are you kidding? You’ve got to be joking.”

He looks at me. His crazed eye dances.

I don’t like looking at it. The eye makes me feel sick suddenly. I swallow and look down at the cigarette-burned weave of the couch. “Yeah, he’s like you said. He’s — he can be mean. But, God, he
gets
me. Okay? I can’t hurt him accidentally because he’d be ready for it. I think you’re the same way. And that makes you the only two fucking people in the whole world — ” I stop talking. And realize that what I am about to say is the truth. I swallow. “You’re the only people,” I say, “who would be
ready
for me if I did something. You wouldn’t let me hurt you. So I guess I feel safe with you. Because like it or not, I
am
unpredictable and dangerous.”

Aidan rips off the top page of doodles and crumples it in his hand. He pushes himself up on his left hand and with his right he throws the wadded paper into the kitchen. It hits the rim of the trashcan and falls to the floor.

He looks over at me. “You want to meet her?”

“What? Who?”

“My sister,” he says. “Stella. You want to meet her?”

I rub my hand over my mouth. “No.”

He watches me.

“No,” I say louder. “
No
. If I see her I’ll fucking kill her. I’ll stab
her
with some sharp fucking object. I’ll rip off her fingernails one by one and I’ll dig out her eyeballs and choke her with them. I don’t want to meet her. I don’t — ”

“
Hey
,” he says.

I realize he’s been saying it as I’ve been talking but I didn’t hear him.

“Shut up. Stop.”

I close my mouth.

“This is what I mean,” he says. “This. You were nice to Miranda, in your own way. You were polite anyway, and for you that was, like, being Mother Teresa. Especially when she was so rude to you. And you don’t hate Stella, you just want to hurt her like she hurts me. I don’t think your shrinks were right, okay? You’re not unpredictable. You’re not some pre-serial killer, and you’re sure as hell not a joke. You’re not going to do anything you don’t want to, and you don’t
want
to hurt people. So you don’t have to be afraid with anyone. Not anyone. Okay?”

I look at him. But he won’t look away. His one good eye won’t shift. The pupil doesn’t even move. I end up looking away first.

After a while he gets up and goes into the kitchen and picks up the wad of crumpled paper and puts it carefully in the trashcan.

The next morning, a Saturday, I run then get in the Chevelle and, instead of going to the library like I usually do, I head away from campus. Turn north onto the freeway and churn my way through slushy snow to Hudson.

Harvest Home is in Hudson. A sprawling, single-story facility with brick and white daub walls, a sprawling, mostly empty parking lot, and sliding glass doors that open in front of an overhang with clearance high enough for an ambulance. I know this because an ambulance currently sits under the bricked overhang. The lights are turned off. It looks routine, no desperation. But maybe there is never desperation here. The inmates are already rubbish, pushed to the edges, swept into a neat pile. Maybe one more or less does little to upset the cosmic balance.

I imagine the hallways smell of urine mixed liberally with pureed baby food. I sit in the car and contemplate going inside. Approaching the front desk and asking for Stella Devorecek’s room number.

One of my therapists had a Down syndrome client. The girl was twice my size with flat, coin-shaped eyes. She was kneeling in front of a toy box in the waiting room the first time I saw her. I went over to a chair and climbed on it to wait while my mother filled out paperwork. The girl lumbered to her feet and came over to me. Snot was crusted on her short upper lip. A diaper crinkled and wadded between her legs when she walked. Before I could react she put her arms around me and leaned her hot, damp face against mine.

They pulled me off her in only seconds. When I was taken into the therapist’s room I looked back at her. Her mother was cradling the oversized girl, but the almond-shaped eyes gazed blankly back at me, the flat button nose oozing blood and mucus. She wasn’t crying. I came out an hour later and she was still there, arms wrapped around her mother’s neck, a slick of mucus running into her open mouth. She waved bye to me when I left.

I sit in the Chevelle and tap my fingers on the steering wheel. I finally make up my mind to go inside, and I turn the key in the ignition and drive away instead.

Miranda Devorecek comes to the door quickly this time. I can hear noise, silverware and tinkling laughter, and there are Audis and Toyotas packing her wide driveway. She halts when she sees me.

I put my foot across the lintel. “Hi.”

“Oh, God. Look, will you please go away? I’m having — well, obviously you won’t care about that. If you don’t leave, I will call my brother.”

“Your brother?” I grin. “And what would he do? He’s no Sly Stallone. I mean, he
might
win a fight with a Chihuahua. Maybe.”

“I’m asking you nicely.”

“Which is weird,” I say, and move forward. She backs up and I slip inside. “When you think about it, I mean. Insane people tend not to respond to niceness, the banality of civilization, and you know I’m — what did you call me? — right, one of
these people
. So why ask nicely?”

Someone comes into the foyer holding a tiny crystal cup of a pink fizzy drink. The woman has straw-colored hair and is wearing a casual lavender shirt and tan slacks that easily cost a couple hundred dollars.

“Oh,” she says.

“This is my brother’s roommate,” Miranda says. “Mickey, right? I assume that’s short for something.” Her thin mouth is wrinkled like she’s holding vinegar in her mouth. “She’s here for the party.”

“Well,” I say, “not really. I hate parties. The last one I attended, I tried to burn the house down afterward.”

The woman in lavender stares at me. Her eyes flicker to Miranda, who looks at me steadily. The skin under her eyes looks blue.

She says, “That was quite possibly the most insensitive thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Really?” I smile. “Could I have some punch, maybe? It would make a nice contrast to the tea I had the other day with that disgusting old woman who used to be your neighbor. The one with the cats who sings in a choir.”

“Judy Greene?” Miranda looks surprised. She raises her chin slightly. “You can follow me to the kitchen. The punch is in there.”

I follow her to the kitchen, walking past the glare of the lavender-shirted woman. A room opening off the foyer is thronged with women in fake-casual clothes and bright-colored paper bags full of tissue paper. Most of the bags are silver and pink.

“Wedding shower?” I say. “For you, or someone else?”

“Someone else.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re divorced, aren’t you? I read about it on the Internet.”

She inhales but doesn’t say anything.

We go into the kitchen, a long room with a red baked clay tile floor, stainless steel appliances, and fake wood beams across the ceiling. A crystal bowl of fizzing punch sits on a table flanked by pink and silver napkins and paper plates and platters full of tiny cookies covered in powdered sugar.

“I assume this is your revenge. For what you overheard me saying about you yesterday. I can only say that I’m sorry you overheard. That was — impolite. However, I stand by what — ”

“Tell me about your mother.”

Miranda stiffens. Then she turns away from me and goes over to the table. She ladles punch into a plastic cup and turns around and hands it to me. She glares at me, and I am startled again by how eerie it is to be stared at by Aidan’s eyes, only his eyes in her face are twinned, synchronized, perfected.

“Some people,” she says, “deserve to die.”

I take the punch and sip it. It’s frothy and citrusy. “This is good.”

“Thank you.” She can’t help it. The words slip out. She looks irritated. “She was one of them.”

I almost choke on my drink. I thought Miranda was insulting me. I swallow and lower the cup. “What?”

“I answered your question. Now please leave.”

“Well,” I say, “that was sort of a bizarre answer. Could you explain it?”

“No.”

I take another sip, then drain the cup. I look around for a trashcan.

“Plastic recycling is in the cupboard there.”

I go to the sink and rinse the cup and then put it in the bin Miranda points out to me.

“Your old neighbor thinks the sun shone out of your mother’s ass.”

A pink stain spreads across her face.

“Is this what you’re into? Dredging up pointless
gossip
? You get off on the salacious details of other peoples’ lives, other peoples’ pain?” Her voice trembles. “Get out of my house.
Now
.”

I want to ask what she means by salacious gossip but she has a point. Asking more is just prurient interest at this point. They were just kids, Miranda and Aidan. Nothing they think they know has any more truth than the other person’s, and neither of their truths are helpful. Her brother thinks their autistic sister committed a crime and he tortures himself daily for loving her anyway. Miranda, on the other hand, believes that her mother committed suicide and she spends her days pretending she is a damaged shell of a human being so that she doesn’t have to admit that she’s stronger, better, and more whole than her own mother.

I shrug and walk toward her front door. She comes after me and reaches around me to yank the door open.

I turn in the doorway. She is very close to me. Her skin is a poreless matte and she smells faintly of orange peel.

I say, “For the record, you’re more like your brother than you think. And you don’t deserve to be punished.”

She inhales. Her blue-veined eyelids close briefly.

I leave and when I look back, she is leaning against the door, holding onto the edge with both hands.

The sun is setting when I get back to campus. I park and walk toward the library. The cracked slabs of the sidewalk cant drunkenly, exhausted by a season, a lifetime, of freezes and thaws.

A group of students is clustered around something on the sidewalk ahead of me. When I get closer I see that they are staring down at something hidden by the overhanging shrubbery. The knot of people takes up the whole sidewalk. I stop and look around for options. To the left is a thick slide of brown mud, and I’m only wearing sneakers so I don’t want to wade into it. When I look back at the group of students, someone has moved and I see that they are looking down at an animal, growling and writhing under the bush. I look with more interest.

One of the students, a guy in blue and yellow athletic sweats, turns and sees me watching. He moves to the side. The animal is a brown cat writhing and meowing in a puddle of shit and blood.