Y: A Novel (34 page)

I think of my memories as being card-cataloged and neatly put away in drawers in the
big black desk inside my head. I can open most of the drawers, take out a card, look
at it, consider it, put it away. I have drawers for Lydia-Rose, for Miranda, for our
pets, for Vaughn, for Blue Jay School, for Matthew. I can search through them and
find almost anything if I need to. I can’t remember Par and Raquelle—though I swear
I can remember the smell of the little bags of cumin and turmeric that had spilled
in the cupboard, wafting out with a stale mustiness each time Raquelle reached in
to find a certain spice. I’m certain I can remember that smell.

When I want to store something in my memory—when I want to make sure it ends up in
the card catalog—I burn it into my brain. This isn’t hard to do. I never want to forget
that moment in Gregor’s apartment when Matthew was across from me, whispering,
You’ll never forget your first time,
a little dot of acid on his finger. I framed him with my eyes. I took a picture.
I filed it. Done. It’s there now, and I’ll never forget it. This mindfulness has a
flipside: when I want to forget, I can do that, too.

Easy. I take another picture. But then I take a huge black Jiffy marker—the fattest
one you can buy—and I color over the picture in my mind. It doesn’t take long, and
the picture is covered with black ink forever. If I look really hard, I might be able
to see the outline of whatever lies beneath, and if I can see too much, I reach for
the marker again. If it refuses to disappear, if the image keeps bubbling to the surface,
I encase it within a brick wall. This takes more time. I have to get the bricks and
the mortar. I have to start from the ground up: lay the bricks, the mortar, the bricks,
the mortar, until I have a wall in front of me, the memory entombed behind it. This
might take a few hours, but it works.

But we are naturally self-destructive. If I press myself against the brick wall, I
can find a tiny pinhole where the mortar didn’t settle and left a little space for
me to look through. I can see the blood on Julian’s back and the jar of Vaseline.
I can see what’s on the television, the silvery-green eyes of the panther, the naked
body of Nastassja Kinski. I can see the fear on my little face.

It is six in the morning, and I have left Miranda’s under the guise of going for a
run before school but instead I am standing outside of Julian’s
periwinkle house on Olive Street. Things have changed: there are huge, unruly rhododendron
bushes lining the sidewalk now, obscuring the house from the road. The lawn is neatly
mowed and edged. He must have a gardener. A Price’s Alarms sign is jammed into the
dirt beside one of the bushes. The park across from their house has a new playground—it’s
made of big brightly colored plastic, like all the playgrounds are now, instead of
the splintery wood and chains and metal bars that I used to play on with Lydia-Rose.
It’s still dark out, though the horizon is lit by a faint orange haze. I hear seagulls
and the crash of the surf down the block and the occasional car speeding along Dallas
Road. The lights in the house are off. The lights in all the houses are off.

There are a few ways to go about doing this. I can be petty if I want to. I can destroy
the rhododendrons, which I hate anyway, or I can graffiti his door. I can do little
things to his house, once a week, until he’s forced to put up security cameras. I
can knock on the door, introduce myself, pretend I have no memories, and accept the
invitation inside. I can sit in the living room, run my fingers over the piano keys,
and ask to go the bathroom. I can squirt some Ipecac into his big bottle of mouthwash.
If I find myself in the kitchen, I can put a shot or two into the milk, the plastic
jug of pulpy orange juice. I can prank-call him at night, but after a while he’ll
turn off the phone. How many times will he vomit until he throws out the milk and
the juice? Would it even work if he only swirled the mouthwash around and then spat
it out?

Through the tiny window in the front door, I peer in and can see a distorted image
of the foyer, warped by the beveled glass. Muddy boots lie in a heap on the floor.
The stairs leading to the second floor are covered with magazines and newspapers,
and I wonder how anyone could go up or down. I try to see into the living room, but
my view is obscured. The mailbox is nearly full. I take out the mail and sift through
it.
Julian Marchand. Julian B. Marchand. Mr. J. Marchand. J.B. Marchand
. There are a few pieces for a Karl Marchand and the rest is junk.

I look through the window again, and that’s when I see the wheelchair at the very
end of the foyer, near the entrance to the kitchen. Was it there a minute ago?

Thirty seconds later I’m on the back deck, looking through the French doors that lead
into the kitchen. My footprints leave marks in the dew. The wooden deck is slippery
and I brace myself on the railing and peer in. The eucalyptus tree is molting in the
backyard and I’m sure that any minute now a strip of bark will fall on my head. I
stand underneath it on Julian’s porch, look up at the thick drops of dew plunking
down from the wet leaves, and smirk at my stumpy reflection in the French doors. There’s
a cigarette in my hand and a pack of Camels stuffed in my pocket. I’ve got on a well-worn
pair of jeans and a striped turtleneck sweater. The nicotine makes me reel, and I
crush the remainder of the smoke under my shoe.

It looks like no one has mopped the kitchen floor in years. The white linoleum is
stained brown, sections of it covered in what looks like tar. The kitchen table is
swaybacked from the weight of buckets filled with water or paint, I can’t tell. It
looks like its legs are going to buckle. The refrigerator door is ajar, the light
out. Nothing is on the fridge except a few muddy handprints.

I can’t see the sink, but under the kitchen table is a mountain of vegetable peelings,
which ants have surrounded and are in the process of carrying away to some other location.

Who has such an immaculate lawn and such a disastrous kitchen? Also resting on the
kitchen table are issues of
Reader’s Digest
and a bunch of dog-eared paperbacks. I can’t make out the titles, except for one—
Slaughterhouse Five
.

Do I leave? Do I ring the doorbell? Do I break the glass panes of the French doors
and walk in? The sun rises behind me, and I can see my reflection now in the golden
light. I would give the whole world not to be so small. I look like a midget standing
out here. A midget with a golden afro, backlit by the sun. The weirdest cherub around.

And then I’m doing it. I’m breaking the window with a rock, my sweater wrapped around
my arm. It isn’t easy. It takes three tries. I take a deep breath and visualize the
rock, and my hand around it, sailing through the glass. The glass breaks and I shake
off the shards, reach in and turn the deadbolt, open the door.

The smell of rotten vegetables, whatever tar-like substance is on the floor, and the
buckets, which, I can see now, are full of pickling vinegar, surrounds me when I step
into the kitchen. It’s a big kitchen, with high ceilings broken up by tracks of halogen
lights. I flick them on, but the bulbs are burnt out. Either no one has heard me or
no one is home. It’s cold. The heat is off. I pull my sweater on and hug my shoulders,
try to figure out what to do.

The sunlight rushes through the windows and fills the room. I can see my breath. The
ants continue to carry away little bits of carrot peel. I push the fridge door closed
and examine the sink, which is full of mason jars. The counter is covered in cucumbers.
I’ve never seen so many cucumbers in my life.

The walls are still painted a pale yellow, although the paint is cracked and bubbled
near the ceiling. The gas stove is covered in grime, little coils of hair pressed
into the stickiness. A cast-iron pan sits, unwashed and rusting, on one of the burners.
There is a rag rug at my feet, which once was red but is soaked through with so much
mud that it might as well be brown. A car dealership calendar is on the wall, still
flipped open to February, displaying a picture of a blue Model T Ford.

I don’t know what accounts for the delay, but when the alarm goes off I’m poking my
finger into the soft green flesh of a cucumber. It’s a horrible piercing sound and
I’m immediately furious at myself for ignoring the Price’s sign, for not taking it
seriously. Will it turn off at some point? Will the police come? I press my back into
the countertop and push my chin into my chest, willing the sound to stop. My heart
pounds and my armpits bead with sweat.

And then Julian is in the doorway, in a plaid flannel bathrobe and bare feet, his
hair pushed flat against his head, his eyes small from sleep. “Jesus. Get the fuck,
the fuck out of here.”

He doesn’t have his glasses on, and he squints at me, sees how small I am and makes
a kind of disappointed grunting sound, as though he’s bored. He lets his body slump
against the doorframe.

“Do you remember me?” I step toward him.

“Get out.” He barely raises his voice. He spins and disappears into the
foyer, where I hear the beep of little buttons being pushed on the alarm’s console.
And then it’s over. The sound stops, and the silence fills my ears. The smell of the
vinegar and vegetables comes rushing back, too, and I brace myself on the countertop.

“Hello?” I call out when he doesn’t reappear. “Hello?”

I walk into the foyer and then through the living room, but he’s not there either.
The piano is where it was when I last saw it, a coating of dust like icing sugar over
its black keys.

When he finally walks into the room, he is dressed in corduroy trousers and a button-down
shirt. His hair wet and combed back, his face washed.

“Hi, Shannon,” he says, and we make eye contact for the first time that morning. He
motions to the couch, pushes a pile of junk mail to the floor. “Sit down?”

He looks lumpier but mostly the same. Doesn’t look like age has really hit him hard
yet. He fiddles with his watch strap, then reaches for one of the half-dead plants,
a foxtail fern. He pets it the way someone would pet a dog’s tail: long, pulling strokes.
Finally, he sits across from me on the piano bench. He still looks, incredibly, like
a hedgehog. I wait for him to speak, to see that lower lip pull down and reveal those
hideous little teeth.

“You want coffee?” he says and I see them, I see the teeth. “Cup of coffee? I’m going
to put some on.”

I shake my head and watch him stand up shakily and disappear into the kitchen. I hear
the tap and the freezer open and the whir of a grinder and the kettle boiling, and
then he comes back into the room with a French press in one hand and a tall silver
travel mug in the other.

“There’s plenty if you change your mind.”

I scoot closer to the coffee table and put my feet up on it. I suppose I’m trying
to be irritating.

“Next time, knock,” he says and we both start to laugh. It
is
funny after all.

He pushes the filter down and pours himself a cup of dark, sludgy-looking coffee.

All my plans of breaking every bone in his face, smashing a vase over his head until
both split open, kicking his shins until they bleed. All my plans disappear. I can’t
even find the strength to straighten out my sweater, which is caught underneath me
and is pulling on the back of my neck.

“My dad lives with me now. I know it’s a mess.” Julian laughs softly and shakes his
head. “It’s not always this bad. We’ve been making pickles. We get tired. We forget
to put stuff away.” He takes a loud slurp of coffee. “Who cares anyway. Who cares
what this place looks like.”

The sunlight filters in through the back of the house, but the living room is still
dark. Julian coughs into his hand and reaches for the lamp.

“Suppose you’ve come to raise the dead,” he says.

“I’m just here to ask why,” I mutter. I say it so quietly that I barely hear myself.

“Why.”

“Why.”

“Why what?” He gives a kind of hideous-sounding chuckle and runs his hand through
his hair.

I wish I were taller. I wish I could do the splits. I wish I were good at sports.
I wish I were a ballerina. I wish I didn’t feel like a small, weird-looking dwarf
sitting in a crazy man’s house at dawn.

“You’re pretty bold, you know. Breaking into my house. Do you know what you’ve put
me through?”

The sound of horrible phlegmy coughing comes from upstairs, and Julian shifts uncomfortably
on the piano bench. “Shit,” he says. “Shit.” He puts both hands on his knees and straightens
his legs, then walks stiffly toward the staircase. I watch him ascend and then listen
as he opens and shuts a door, and then the sound of more coughing and Julian’s voice.

Next to the couch is an old desk with cubby-style drawers. I slide them open quietly
and peek inside each one. Receipts, checkbooks, a paperback copy of
Gift from the Sea,
a spilled box of ballpoint pens, gross-looking erasers, graph paper. One of the drawers
is empty, save for a wedding ring. I put it on my finger. If Julian notices, I’ll
give it back. That’s my bargain.

When he returns, I am flipping through the little paperback, one leg
up on the piano bench. “Why is your garden so neat and your house such a mess?”

“Neighbors complained,” he says. He walks to his French press, swishes the coffee
around for a second, and pours the rest into his travel mug. “So we hired Juan.” He
takes a sip and then spits it into the mug. “God knows I don’t give a damn what it
looks like out there. Be right back.”

He goes into the kitchen, and I hear him filling the kettle again.

And then Julian’s father appears at the bottom of the stairs in gray sweatpants with
elastic ankles and a faded turquoise sweatshirt. His slippers look homemade. He’s
a short man with a long face—wide-eyed, stout—with pearl-gray hair cut in short bangs.
His eyes are bathwater green. We look at each other. What feels like ten minutes goes
by.