The Illusionist (20 page)

After someone dies, it's the voice that lives forever—not even
the image of the face. Eventually,
that
fades. But the voice you can summon in your head, it echoes throughout the skull. I could make my mother's voice come to me by concentrating and re-creating it in my head, the soft round tones of her voice. I should try, as an exercise, to eradicate him. The only way to stop the suffering—but right now I just couldn't. Wasn't ready to destroy the memory of him. Still needed to see his image, to picture him with me, I was still in a fresh stage of grief.

We were in the open countryside now, the land rising and falling all around me, snow-covered fields glowing in the darkness. Pine trees lined the roadside, skeletons of deciduous trees. Now and then there was a house, windows dark. People away for the holidays. Scary it was so cold out there, what if the car broke down? There was no one on the road to help. I imagined the scene, mother and son found frozen to death in a snowbank, their car broken down, mother lying as if trying to protect her baby from the cold with her own body, two lost creatures alone and abandoned by the world.

It would be cold in the house when we got home, though the embers in the woodstove sometimes stayed alight. Even before modern insulation, these houses had to stay warm somehow.

I rounded the curve of Church Road and I glanced up automatically toward my house. I could see the faint shape of it, a blur in the dark. A light was on in the window. I didn't remember leaving a light on. I was always careful because electric was the most expensive utility in the county.

At Schermerhorn I made the left, past my mailbox. Here the road dipped and I drove cautiously because of the icy patches. The county didn't plough because this was a private road and Mr. Jukowski did it for us whenever he cleared his barnyard for the milk truck.

We climbed the hill and I could feel the engine straining. C'mon, baby, you can do it! . . . Hope this thing lasts.

All around me, the immense, navy blue sky, the hills dipping and rising, luminous in the moonlight. Belonging to us alone.

We came to the yard, and then I saw it. The red Dodge truck, parked in solitude. And in the window of the house, there was the yellow light.

They always come back, I thought. They always come back. At least once.

The front door was unlocked. Inside, the lamp by the couch was burning. But the house was silent, empty seeming, no sign of him. Bobby trailed in behind me. “Shut the door for Mommy, please.” It was cold in here, the woodstove must've died out.

I walked into the bedroom. On the bed, under the comforter, was the outline of a body. In the faint light from the other room, I could see part of a face. At first, I didn't recognize it. I could just discern one eye nearly swollen shut, the skin on the cheek blackened. Then the soft, tufty hair, the oval shape of the head, the high cheekbones, the jaw drawing to a point at the chin. “Dean.”

He turned. I saw more clearly now in the light from the main room, the whole face swollen, a vertical black line under one of his eyes, little threads sticking out where they had stitched it up.

“What happened?”

He closed his eyes. “Jesus. Oh God.”

He lifted his head, caught sight of Bobby behind me. “Hi, Bobby,” he said. Then he sank back down on the pillow and closed his eyes.

“What happened?” I asked again.

“I can't talk. I'm so cold. . . .”

“You need a doctor.”

His voice was faint. “I saw a doctor.”

I turned. “Bobby, honey, you go get ready for bed now.”

“Dean?” Bobby said.

“I know, honey. Dean. Go get undressed and put your jammies on for me, okay? Please, honey.”

But he lingered. “I need to help Dean,” I told him. “You go get undressed for Mommy.”

Bobby drifted back into the main room. I knelt down on my knees by the bed, afraid to sit on it for fear of jarring him and hurting him. I pushed the comforter in around the edges of his body. “You're all cut. Please—tell me—what happened?”

He opened his eyes. I could see them, vaguely, in the dark. “Can I stay here?” he said. “I got nowhere to go.”

“I guess,” I said. Said it after trying to get him arrested and jailed, after wanting to kill him, wanting him dead. All it took was one small request. “Yes. You can.”

“I'm hurtin',” he said.

“Oh God . . .”

“You sure I can stay here?”

“Yes, I told you.”

From the other room, Bobby called out to me. “Mommy, I can't get the snowsuit off. Mommeeeee!”

“Let me just get him.” I hurried out of the bedroom into the main room, unzipped Bobby's snowsuit, pulled it roughly down off his arms and legs, then removed his jeans and sweatshirt till he had on only his little Jockeys and his undershirt.

“Go pee, honey. Quick. Go pee for Mommy.”

I heard him tinkling in the bathroom and then he came back in. “Put these on.” I helped him into his blue feet pajamas, took him by the hand, and nearly pulled him into his little room. He lay down on his bed obediently—he always knew when I was pushed to the limit.

“What's wrong with Dean?” he asked.

“Dean got hurt, honey. He's gonna be okay.”

“Is Dean gonna stay here?”

“For a while. I gotta take care of him now, honey. You go to sleep, okay?”

I turned out the light by the side of his bed.

“I want the night light!” he cried.

I switched on the little Mickey Mouse light in the outlet. There was a soft glow in the room. “No song tonight because Mommy's too tired. Please be a good boy and go to sleep.”

“What's wrong with Dean's face?”

“He got hurt.”

“Who hurt him?”

“I don't know. Please go to sleep for Mommy. Merry Christmas, honey. You warm enough?”

“Yeah.”

“You got Barney?”

“Uh-huh.” He was holding the purple Barney in the crook of his arm. Right thumb went to the mouth, left hand twirling a lock of dark hair. A sign he was preparing for sleep.

As I stood there, I felt the walls of the house quiver in the wind, only a thin membrane between us and the great outdoors, the wind and the cold. On the way across the main room, I opened the door to the woodstove and threw in some logs.

Back in the bedroom, he still lay under the comforter.

I could just see the outline of his features, his dear face. I sat down on the edge of the bed. All in one place, beneath my fingertips. I owned him now. I could hear his teeth chattering, felt his body shaking, the mattress vibrating with it.

“I'm so c-cold,” he said. “Can you get in beside me?”

I undressed quickly, put on the sweatpants and sweatshirt I usually slept in. “Stand up a minute,” I told him, “so I can get the covers down.” With difficulty, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He stood up and I gripped his arm and pulled the top sheet and comforter away for him. He lay back down again, and I covered him.

I climbed inside next to him, reached out my arms, tried to
push one of them underneath his body so I could hold him, but he jumped. “Ouch!”

“What hurts?”

“Oh God. I want to take a bath. I gotta take a bath. I stink. I feel so dirty. I can't sleep in these sheets like this.”

“You don't stink.”

“I can smell them. . . . Can you make a bath for me?”

“A bath?” He never took a bath, usually only a shower.

“A shower will hurt too much,” he said.

I climbed out of bed again; went into the bathroom and pulled aside the mildewy shower curtain. Turned on the water, rinsed the grit out of the old clawfoot tub with the palm of my hand, then filled it with hot water.

Back in the bedroom, he had propped himself up on his elbows. He pushed his legs across the mattress painfully.

In the full light of the main room, with a shock, I saw his face. One side green and bruised, streaked with yellow where it looked like it had been washed with Betadine. A line cut right through the flesh from his eye to his cheek. The wound was crisscrossed with black thread, the ends sticking out in a stubble.

“Oh babeee,” I whispered. “Your face . . . Your jeans got mud on them—and blood. You can't wear those jeans. I can give you sweatpants and a sweatshirt.”

He hobbled into the bathroom—and shut the door behind him. Still wouldn't let me see him.

I listened, heard mostly silence, the water sloshing in the tub.

He was in there fifteen minutes or so. When he came out again, he was carrying his clothes rolled tightly in his hand. “I need a plastic bag.” I handed him a grocery bag, and he packed the dirty clothes inside and tied the ends together.

In the places where his face was not greenish brown and streaked with yellow, he was pale, there was a deep groove of exhaustion carved under the left eye, the one that wasn't swollen shut.

The woodstove was humming vigorously now, heating up the house.

“What happened to you!”

“They attacked me. Sexually.”

“Who's ‘they'?”

“Brian and Jimmy.”

“Jesus . . .” Trying to understand. Then, I couldn't help it, I asked. “But—what did they do? I mean—” Did they rape him? It was hard to say that word—the word was too terrible to speak out loud. “I mean—? Did they—?”

“Tore me,” he replied.

“Oh God.” Made me hurt down there just to think of it. I imagined his flesh flat and taut, like silk. “You gotta go to a doctor.”

“I went to the hospital. They called in this rape crisis lady. She keeps on me till I tell the cops. They said they'd kill me if I went to the cops! Brian hates me because of Melanie.”

I moved away from him, sat down on the couch, rubbing my face with my palms. “You nearly killed me,” I told him. “I wanted to die. You lied to me. Then you stole from me.”

“The thing is, I had the money to give back to you. I had it in my pocket. I knew I should give it to you. But Terry, I was fuckin' desperate.”

“So, where's the money?” I wanted the money returned—as a symbol. I didn't care about the money itself.

“They fuckin' took it,” he said. “The cops confiscated it for evidence. They fuckin' took all my money. They took my wallet. I was gonna give it to you, I swear.

“I saw the paper,” he said. “That was lies. All lies. All the sex stuff.”

But that part didn't matter to me. Whatever he was, I accepted him. All parts of him, all his “deformities.” I didn't care anymore
what
he was. Other people didn't understand it. But I did. Anyway, it was like I was in this daze, my sole focus to be with him, as if there was no time at all, no reality—except for Bobby and Dean—
and no time but those long stretched-between moments we were together.

“But what about all those arrests they said you had?”

I was asking him this to give him a chance to wipe it all away, to exonerate himself so we could finally be together.

“That was just little stuff,” he said. “From when I was a kid. It was nothing. I was riding around in a car with my buddies, and we were chasing this other car with our friends in it.”

“And the check-cashing stuff?”

“That was one time,” he said. “Once. I cashed this check belonging to this woman, the mother of a friend of mine. It was twenty-five bucks. Can you believe they would still hold that against me?” And he looked away, stared morosely at the floor.

“But if this hadn't happened, you'd still be with Melanie?” I asked him.

He walked over to the couch, sat down next to me, touched my hand. I saw the skin on his cheek blackening, the bruise spreading out like a dark stain across his face in front of my eyes. He looked at me straight in the eyes, full of honor, deeply serious. “Terry, I never had sex with Melanie Saluggio. I swear. Ask her! I never saw her with her clothes off. That was only—between you and me. I never fucked Melanie.”

“No?”

“It wasn't that kind of thing. It was different. We never even saw each other with our clothes off. I swear—”

“Did you kiss her?”

“I kissed her—yeah. But I never fucked her. We never had sex.”

“So—but—I thought you loved Bobby. I mean like he was your own? I thought you loved
me.
I was dying.”

“I love Melanie. But not the same way. It can never be the same way as with you. Melanie was like my sister.”

“Then why did you leave and steal my money?”

“I shouldn't have done it! But I had nothing—nada. I was
totally freaked. I did that before I ever went to stay with Melanie.” He cupped my chin in his hand, looked into my eyes. “Now I want to stay with you. I want to stay here forever, Terry. I'm going to make it up to you, all the pain I've caused you.”

“Forever?”

He gazed into my face, one dear eye a slit. “Forever,” he said, his voice husky. Then he dropped his hand and looked away. “I need to sleep.” He looked at me. “I need you to hold me.”

“You nearly killed me. I thought I was going to die,” I said again.

“I know. It's over now.” He was talking like someone in pain, every part of him concentrated just on the hurting in his body. His voice seemed to fade, as if he couldn't talk anymore.

“You still love her?”

“Yeah. I do love her. But like I told you—it's different.” He drew his arms around his body, hugging himself. “It's so cold in here. Will you hold me?”

*  *  *

All that Sunday he slept. Slept like a baby, like a sick person, all his energy consumed in the knitting up of his wounds, duplicating cells to bridge the cut, sending out white blood cells to fight the infection, his flesh reabsorbing the old blood from his bruises.

In the morning, Bobby went to the bedroom door and stood looking in and watching. He turned to me. “Dean sick,” he said.