My Second Death (29 page)

My father clears his throat. When he speaks his voice is soft, almost invisible. “I apologize for losing my temper. Can you at least — can you just tell us why you lied? Did you — did you think we wouldn’t believe you?”

“I didn’t say anything because, for the millionth time, it wasn’t a big deal. It
wasn’t
. It was just games. Just — games. And I knew if anyone found out they’d make this huge fucking deal out of it.”

I get up. My muscles feel twitchy. I want to run. I go over to the window again.

Aidan says, “You get it, don’t you? I know it’s hard to hear, but you should know. She has problems, yeah, she may even have that antisocial thing. But the rest of it, the cutting, that’s not — it’s not her fault. It’s
not
.”

I spin around.

My father’s head is raised, his eyes unseeing but fixed on Aidan. I don’t like the way my father is looking at him. I hit my palms against my thighs and rock on the balls of my feet. My skin crawls. I feel like when I was on the anti-anxiety meds. I want to smash my face into the corner of the metal window frame.

“Not my fault? I mutilate dead bodies. Even if it’s not my fault it’s pretty fucking dire. You’re, you can’t just say words like that.”

“You can if they’re true.”

“Oh come on. You sound like you ate a barrel full of clichés and then drank a quart of laxative.”

They all stare at me.

I hunch my shoulders. “Look, what does it matter? None of this
changes
anything. Do you think I wouldn’t change if I could? Oh, God, you don’t deserve this, him or me, you really don’t. Okay? Dad? No one deserves this.”

Dad says, “But — ”

“She lied because she loves him,” Aidan says loudly. In the sudden quiet he clears his throat. “Sorry,” he says. “I thought it was obvious.”

I run out of the room.

David John Brandis dies at 3:58 P.M. without regaining consciousness. His death is ruled a suicide.

The obituary lists calling hours on Wednesday, December 28 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio.

The newspaper does not list the burning of a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle, nor does it describe the snow-caked ghost yard near Firestone Park where the fire-scorched carapace is towed the morning of Tuesday, December 27.

The funeral is held Saturday at noon. New Year’s Eve. The phone rings all morning and falls silent at 11:49.

The house creaks and murmurs to itself in the absence of human voices. I sit on the mattress in my parents’ garage. I pick a hangnail on my thumb. Watch a tiny seed of blood emerge. I blot the blood on the yellow blanket beside me. Then I clasp my hands together between my knees.

The reception is held at the house. I listen to the cars pull up, the voices and clatters in the kitchen as caterers light butane-fueled warming pans and set out silverware.

Someone knocks on the garage door. I consider answering or getting up but my muscles feel sluggish. My throat hurts.

The door creaks open.

“Honey? Are you going to come in and get something to eat?”

My mother stands framed by a sugar-white cap of snow on the carport roof. The sky flames with dying light behind her, bronze and vermillion.

“No.”

“All right.” She stands in the open doorway. Her boysenberry lipstick has bled into the fine cracks around her lips. “Are you okay?”

Cold air snakes around my ankles. “Yes.”

“Do you want to come inside?”

I open my mouth to say that the answer should be patently obvious. She is holding the edge of the door so hard her knuckles are bone-white, but her thumb rubs the edge of the door lightly, back and forth. My mouth closes. I think of all the little gestures she makes, the pauses and arrested movements. I wonder if it is my hand she is holding onto in her mind.

I swallow. “I can’t — I don’t want to go in there. I’m sorry.”

“Mrs. Brandis? Where do you want the candles?”

Mom’s shoulders tighten. Her mouth opens like she’s going to say something to me. Then she smiles, a tight press of her lips, and nods. She turns her head to answer the person in the kitchen and moves away, still talking, explaining where she wants the mini quiches.

The door stands open.

I grip my knees.

Another car pulls up by the house and parks along the curb. A flock of starlings squabbling in the bare oak branches rises up, raucous, hoarse as a frenzied crowd. They rush, disjointed black streaks, into the bell-like dome of the sky.

Time passes.

Voices come near again.

I blink and look up.

My parents come out of the house, talking quietly. Sounds drift from the open kitchen door. The tintinnabulation of silverware and metal platters. The click of ice cubes. Human sounds.

My mother is talking in a low voice. My father stands with his fists balled in his suit jacket pockets, looking at the empty, oil-stained gravel. My mother comes close to him. She gestures in the direction of the garage door, then shakes her head. She presses her hands against her mouth. Her shoulders start to buck with harsh sobs. The cold wind presses her blouse against her skin. He puts his hands on her shoulders, smoothes them down her arms. She leans into him and he circles his arms around her waist and anchors her there. They stand against the stark outline of the setting sun, darkened shapes convergent like falling rocks caught by the weight of the other. Heavy with needing.

I get up and shut the garage door and go back and sit on the mattress. Press my hand under my ribs. It’s so hard to breathe.

Aidan opens the door without knocking and walks in carrying a paper plate with thin black and gray lines around the rim. My mother’s class showing itself even in disposable cutlery.

He sets the plate down on the concrete floor near me. A roast beef and cheese sandwich wedge, a slice of pickle, and a handful of mints. He is wearing a black suit and the pants have a cluster of vertical creases at the back of the knees. He turns his head, fingers a nick on the underside of his jaw.

He takes off his suit jacket. The underarms of his white shirt are faintly yellow. He comes over and lays down the jacket and then sits down on the mattress beside me. The familiar smell: Ivory soap, cigarettes, acrylic paint.

“So,” he says. His left leg jiggles up and down. “Your mom wants you to eat.”

I don’t say anything.

Aidan waits for a while. Then he says, “Mickey, he’s dead. Nothing you say can hurt him now. So when are you going to tell?”

I rub my hands on my knees. Look at the plate of food on the floor. The pink horseradish sauce is crusting along the meat.

“You need to tell someone. The truth, I mean. You need to tell the cops about Dave killing those people. If you do it, fine. If you don’t, I will.” He pauses, and then says, “And also your parents. They should know the whole truth.”

A brief icy gust of wind sweeps in. Goosebumps stand on my bare lower arms.

He presses his hands into his thighs and stands up, slowly.

“Anyway. That’s all I came to say.”

He goes to the door.

“He — my brother was right.”

Aidan stops and turns around.

“About me. And so what happened, when I — when I stabbed him — oh. Even if it was accidental — it
was
, but the point is — ”

He watches me in silence for a bit. Then he says, “I know it’s hard.” He waves a hand impatiently. “All of that, yes, I understand. But right now. What you’re really afraid of. I know what you’re afraid of. But you don’t have to be afraid. You’re not the only one. It’s not exactly easy having a big sister who assaults you practically every time you go visit. It’s not easy loving her even when she — when she breaks my family into pieces just by being alive. Lots of people go through shit for the ones they love.”

“It’s not
hard
.” My voice sounds old, cracked with disuse. “It’s goddamn
awful
.”

“I know,” he says.

I look up at him. “You don’t know. You don’t fucking get it.”

“No,” he says.

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. My brother isn’t a serial killer.”

“Mickey — ”

“He didn’t kill those people, you know, across the street, and the woman in the apartment downstairs — ”

“Jesus God, Mickey, are you really going to sit there and take the blame for a murder you didn’t commit again? How gullible do you think I am?”

“I’m not — just
listen
. He didn’t kill those people because of any compulsion. It was clean, organized. He doesn’t — he didn’t
have
to kill. He did it for me.”

He swallows hard, the nodules of his Adam’s apple moving convulsively.

“Because he thought it would make me — I don’t know. Free. Because he loved me.”

“No.”

“Yeah, I fucking know. Okay? I know that’s sick. I know he was sick, even if he wasn’t a serial killer. But I don’t know — I don’t know
why
or who fucked up who or if, if anything could have turned out differently.” I pleat my fingers in the blanket pooled around my feet. Lean forward. “I — I didn’t kill him — ”

He says, “Mickey, don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“
Fuck
you! Please.” I am hoarse. I haven’t talked this much in days. I swallow. My mouth is so dry. “Let me — say this. I didn’t kill him but I — ” I’m startled by a strange gasping sound that bursts out. I bury my face against my knees. “I should have.” God, my chest hurts. It feels like it’s being crushed from the inside. “When I was ten years old. I should’ve done it then. He’s the one I should have pushed. I could have saved — everyone. I could have saved the world.”

For once, Aidan is silent.

The silence is so stark that I lift my head.

He’s just looking at me, his mouth partially open. His hands are curled at his sides.

“So how can I tell my parents about him? They are barely — I would kill them too.”

I almost tell him,
If I unclench my hands the world will burn
.

My mouth tastes like burning paper.

Aidan looks down at the floor. The lines by his mouth are stricken so deeply I could lay a pencil in the creases.

He opens his hands, his fingers spread against his thighs. He closes them again.

After a long time, he walks out. The door stands open after him.

Days pass.

The spring school semester begins.

Normalcy and patterned behavior return. I still live in the apartment but most nights I spend sleeping on the mattress in my parents’ garage. I attend office hours and sit at my computer with my headphones in, my fingers on the keyboard, waiting to find words to type.

Stephen attends school. Plays video games.

My mother folds laundry and teaches Mozart to talentless teenagers.

The dean leaves pink slips in my mailbox and sometimes I ignore them. Sometimes I don’t. When I sit in his office he is polite, his voice like chilled cream, and he asks after my dissertation, my health, my running habits. I answer his questions. When I leave his eyes follow me and I feel the weight of his gaze like cords tethering me to the earth.

The asshole drones in the graduate student office buzz, talking about weekend parties and grading student papers and which professor one should never take, or always take. They don’t know anything about my family until Telushkin accidentally tells them. He comes into the office to ask if I’ve finished a chapter and says that he doesn’t mean to rush me, that he knows I’m still grieving for my brother. For a few days my fellow grad students are quiet, awkward, their voices peat-smoky and conciliatory. Slowly, when I show signs of neither grief nor joy, they resume normal cadences and volumes.

In February I drive to Judith Greene’s house.

The house still smells like cat litter and cherry-flavored cough syrup. She brings me a tiny cube of red Jell-O and a cup of Earl Grey tea with cream.

“Why are you here? Are you going to — tell anyone what I told you? No one will believe you. You used to be in therapy. You probably
are
crazy. Are you going to?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

I sit on her floral couch and a cat twines between my legs. I can see pink skin between patches of flaky white fur on the cat’s spine.

The tea tastes bitter, almondy. I wonder if the cream has soured. I set the china cup in its saucer. Flecks of tea leaves swirl in the pale liquid and its rippling meniscus catches at the light.

“Because I want to know something.”

She sits stiffly on her armchair watching me. She’s wearing red cotton pants that are two sizes too small. Her flesh bulges against the fabric. When she walked in from the kitchen I could see the dimpled jiggling flesh of her ass and thighs.

Cat hair clings to her soft pink sweater. Her mascara is clumped. She scratches at one earlobe with her chipped pink thumbnail.

“What do you want to know?”

I look at her. And then I reach for my tea. It still tastes strange. I swallow and make a face. I don’t know what to ask. I don’t know why it matters so much to me to know the answer.

“Do you regret it? Killing her, I mean. Do you wish you hadn’t done it?”

She blinks. Her finely wrinkled skin sags, dragging down the corners of her mouth.

“No,” she says.

“But you miss her.”

Her forehead creases. She looks up at me. “I
had
to do it. Alan left her and took her babies with him. And she was so, so — she couldn’t — her
soul
was tortured. She couldn’t
stand
it anymore.”

I look around at her walls, the old sepia-tinged photographs of distant ancestors. Framed images of gay-looking singers.

“You cry a lot, don’t you?”

Her little pink mouth opens and closes and opens again. “I don’t — how — why would you
say
that to me?”

“No reason.” I feel strange. Dizzy. The cat is rubbing its cheek against my calf and purring. I can feel its vibrating ribcage. “It doesn’t matter. Forget it.”

I sigh.

She says, “Do you feel all right? It looks like you’re sweating.”

She doesn’t sound very sympathetic.

I raise a smile. For some reason I feel sad. I stand up. The close air in the tiny house is making me sick.

Before I leave, my hand curled around the doorknob, I turn back to her. She’s watching me with those small bright eyes.

“By the way,” I say, “I know you put Ambien in the tea. You’re a fucking moron.”

She swallows. Then after a pause, probably because I don’t seem to be coming for her with a knife, she leans forward and says, “You deserve to die. You’re not a nice person at
all
.”

I smile. “Now that is the gospel truth. Yes.” I lean my forehead against my knuckles. “Okay. Well. I’ll come back next week, okay? Tuesday maybe.”

Her small mouth opens. The yellowish enamel of her tiny crooked teeth. The soft hairs around the corners of her upper lip. She makes a soft noise like a grunt. Doesn’t say anything else. A cat gives a rusty meow.

I go out and shut the door behind. Then I sink down on the front stoop and wait for the dizzy specks to clear. Trees sway overhead.

As I make my way down to the shiny red V4 Ford Focus my parents bought me, I watch the houses shimmer with watery luminescence.

My brother died because I killed him and I didn’t cry, I won’t ever cry, but somehow I think that Judith Greene is still more terrible, more wicked than I am. More alone than I am. If I am capable of feeling anything at all then what I feel for Judith Greene is pity.

I pull left off Brown Street and drive.

The edges of my vision sparkle.

A car’s taillights flare red and smudged through a gray mist. A stoplight. I put my hand on the gearshift when I step on the brake, but this car is an automatic. Rain plinks against the windshield. A film of clouds shreds like crepe paper.

A car horn behind me beeps.

The light has changed.

The apartment lights glow in the darkness. I stand at the door with my keys in my hands and can’t remember climbing the stairs. I let myself in.