That’s what Vic was doing right now. Reconciling the past with the present. Taking manufactured memories and inserting himself into them, seeing clearly what could have been.
Vic wasn’t staring at the well. He was staring at the happy beginning in full knowledge of the unhappy end.
“You mad, Spoils?” asked Coco, who had apparently recovered from her bout with the natural flavors. “Wishing ill by the wishing well is bad luck, you know.”
“Coco,” I said, giving her a telepathic shut up.
“What?”
“It’s okay,” said Vic. “I’m not mad. It’s just weird.”
Quite unceremoniously, he tossed the ashes through the small hole in the ice, and it was done. And even though he said nothing, he accepted my hand on one side of him, Zuz’s hand on the other, and, interlocked around the well, we stood in the cold until someone found the right words to say.
“And they called themselves the Kids of Appetite,” said Coco. “And they lived and they laughed and they saw that it was good.”
Together Baz and I repeated, “And they saw that it was good.”
If Vic said the words, I didn’t hear him.
VIC
It wasn’t just that I woke up in silence; it was silence that did the waking. For two years I’d fallen asleep with my iPod plugged in beside me, my operatic lullaby on repeat, and for two years I’d woken up to the soaring sopranos. But not this time.
I shifted sideways on the couch, pulled my earbuds out, and tapped the back of the iPod. It was an older model—battery life wasn’t what it used to be. Shit luck for me, seeing as I left my charger at home along with my phone and toothbrush and sunglasses. Lying there in the dark, I went through the checklist of things I would have brought had I not left the house in a state of panic, when, across the room, I heard a soft click.
The door to the greenhouse. Someone had either just entered or just left. I looked at the sleeping bags: Baz, Nzuzi, Coco . . .
Mad was gone.
I swung my feet to the floor. For the second night in a row, I was grateful for my new sleeping attire: hoodie, Metpants, boots. I stepped over and around the sleeping bags and tiptoed down the center walkway, carefully avoiding the loose stones, then pulled on my coat, and stepped outside.
I am swift and soft.
I am a stealth fighter.
I am a spook, a spy, an agent of speed and silence.
I made my way down greenhouse row, over Channel à la Goldfish, where Harry Connick Jr., Jr., swam aimlessly, not a care in the world. And on the other side of the bridge, I saw the bottom of Mad’s Nikes scrape their way under the fence. I needed to give her enough time to get across the street at least, so as not to be detected. I counted to ten in my head, then ran to the same spot, got down on my stomach, prayed she wouldn’t hear the rattling of the chain links, and shimmied under the fence to the other side.
Swift. Soft. Stealth. Spook.
Ahead, Mad rounded a bend onto an adjacent street. Even a sideways hug such as myself knew to follow at a distance. (Granted, now that I had kissed Mad, my hugs leaned a little more to the front than they once did.)
At first Mad started down the same street we’d walked last night, in the direction of my grandparents’ old house. But after a block or so, she veered. I followed quietly, covertly, passing a slew of houses, some of which were familiar from days past when I took walks to avoid incessant games of billiards, cuckoo clocks, and heightened geriatric sexual impulses.
Swift. Soft. Stealth. Spook. Spy. Speed. Silence.
I had this feeling that the streets of New Milford were wholly unconcerned with the goings-on of its nighttime inhabitants. Like the houses and streets and sidewalks slept as well, not just those living in and around them. The weather seemed to understand this: the wind blew harder, the air bit colder, the night fell darker. I pulled my jacket collar up around my face.
Prime conditions for a covert op.
There was no hurry in Mad’s step. It was a mosey, a leisurely stroll. A few blocks in, she stopped on a dime and turned in a full circle. At the last second, I dove behind a nearby snowman, knocking off its icicle nose. I waited there, in some stranger’s front yard, my back pressed right up against where the snowman’s crotch would be if snowmen had crotches. I counted to twenty just to make sure I didn’t step out too soon and blow my cover. Thank God for this snowman. This man made of snow.
A snowman is a very literal thing.
. . .
. . .
I poked my head around the side of the top hat just in time to see Mad, now less than a block away, walking through a yard toward the front porch of a house. I watched in amazement as she climbed the steps of the porch, opened the front door, and disappeared inside.
The house Mad had just entered was entirely out of place, set at least twenty yards off the road, with about ten or fifteen yards of space on either side. It looked like it belonged in the country, not the suburbs. A light in one of the front rooms flickered on, and a shadow, possibly Mad’s, crossed in front of a large bay window.
Now or never.
I bid adieu to the literal man made of snow and followed the imprints of Mad’s feet; at the front porch, I cut sideways through the yard toward the front bay window. Once there, my right foot sank into a storm drain that had been hidden under the snow. I shook my foot dry, shifted to the side of the drain, and put my face right up to the window, where a curtain hung a few inches shy of covering the entire pane. At the very edge, I peered into the house.
Swift. Soft. Stealth. Spook. Spy. Speed. Silence.
It was a living room, or had once been. Magazines and soda cans were strewn across the floor, TV trays stacked with paper plate upon paper plate upon paper plate. The walls were no different: dirty mirrors, crooked frames, pictures so dusty, I couldn’t see who was in them. Only one article in the entire room appeared to have been taken care of: a gun rack.
I knew nothing of guns. But these looked very serious. These were not rifles of a sideways-hug nature. Two of them had scopes and seemed pretty modern; the other two looked like antiques. But all of them sparkled, which made me think . . . it took a lot of effort for someone to clean just the one thing in a room this filthy.
Next to the gun rack was a set of mounted antlers, which I would guess once framed the head of a deer. But what did I know. (About this, not much.) The antlers were long and sharp, weaving this way and that with the coordinated chaos of a thick spiderweb.
Antlers and guns.
This was not my kind of house.
Mad entered the dark living room, took off her jacket, hung it on the mounted antlers, then disappeared into an adjacent room. Seconds later she reemerged with a can of soda and a bag of chips. I watched her step through the room, strategically plotting each move, avoiding pizza boxes and used tissues like land mines.
She plopped down in a recliner in the corner, aimed a remote at the TV, and flooded the room in blue light. An old woman walked into the living room next, a can of Coca-Cola in each hand, scooting trash across the floor with her slippers as she walked.
“Hey, Jamma,” came Mad’s voice through the window. The panes must have been paper-thin—her voice was a little muffled, but I could hear clearly enough.
The old woman sat on the couch but did not answer. She popped open both cans of soda with ease, took turns sipping from each one. Left, right, left, right, a double-fisted Coca-Cola extravaganza. I stood frozen to the ground, watching them watch TV and drink Cokes, like this was all just a regular night in.
A third person entered the room now, a man as disheveled as the house. I caught my breath because he looked shockingly similar to my favorite Matisse, Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt (which I suppose meant this man looked like Matisse himself). His hair was thinning on top, receded a few inches off his forehead. He had a bushy beard, angular eyebrows,
big ears, and a big nose, like all the pieces of his face just didn’t know when to stop growing. But more than anything I noticed his great empty eyes. Just like the painting, there was something entirely terrifying about them.
“Sick of this fucking shit,” said the man, crossing the room like a drunken bear. I watched along with Mad and Jamma as he calmly removed a rifle from the gun rack on the wall and slammed the butt end of it right through the television screen, shattering it in a blaze of dancing lights and wires and glass. The man turned, his rifle dangling from his left hand. “You,” he said, pointing a single finger down at Mad. “I fucking told you, did I not? I have an early hunt tomorrow, and the last thing I need is the goddamn TV blaring through the house all night.”
My entire body was numb, and not from the cold. I went to my Land of Nothingness and imagined the painting of this scene. It would be called Self-Portrait Man Terminates Television.
Not even Matisse could make that beautiful.
“Well?” said the Self-Portrait Man.
Mad cleared her throat. “You’re right. Sorry, Uncle Les.”
I emerged from my body, floated up and up into the sky where I looked down at Vic, saw him turn, trip, run back in the direction of the greenhouse. On his way, he picked up the icicle nose from the base of the snowman, pulled back his KOA wristband, and extended his tiny paths going nowhere. “Not too deep,” said Vic as he ran. For it had been a long time. And when he arrived back at the greenhouse, he caught his breath just outside the door, opened it slowly, careful not to wake anyone. Inside, he sneaked over to the Shelf of Improbable Things, where he pulled out his old jeans and, avoiding the dried pig’s blood, held the jeans tightly over his new cut until the bleeding stopped. It took some time, but when it was done, he lay down on the couch. That night his sleep was fitful, his dreams full of winding, painful paths, and empty-eyed uncles with antlers growing from their heads, and bubbly floods of Coca-Cola.
He barely slept at all.
MAD
My uncle had the uncanny ability to leave his shadow behind. He’d staggered from the room minutes ago, but the damn thing lingered still, a blanket of shade in an already dark room. I stared into the old TV, now nothing more than a pathetic, wood-paneled box, and wondered, not for the first time, what I was going to do.
“Come on, Jamma,” I said, heaving myself off the couch. “Let’s get to bed.”
Good start. Get the grandmother to bed. A micro-solution to a micro-problem. The decisiveness felt good.
Jamma took a swig of Coke from one hand, then the other. “But I’m thirsty.”
“You’re always thirsty,” I said, bending down to grab her under the elbow.
“I don’t need help,” she said. “I’m old, but strong as—”
“Strong as an ox, I know.” I crossed my arms, smiled as she stood without help. It was true: for a woman her age, she was surprisingly strong. We made a pit stop in the kitchen to set one can of Coke in the fridge, then a pit stop in the bathroom where I helped her sit on the toilet (again, with more than a little admonition).
Jamma had been living with us when my parents were killed; Uncle Les wasn’t her son, so by all accounts she wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me. But there was no money for a decent nursing home, and we were her next of kin. Uncle Les could have put her in a state or county-run facility, which cost next to nothing, but he didn’t. And I knew why.
Jamma could cope by herself if it came to it, but when I was home, the guilt of being away took over, and I found myself mothering her more than was probably necessary. It was her mind that needed the most assistance, and in that respect I was of little value.
We walked to Jamma’s room, where I helped her into bed; she set the second Coke on the nightstand, picked up a pair of mittens she’d been knitting since the dawn of time. “I’m almost done with them.”
She was always almost done with them, but I nodded and smiled anyway. “They’re going to be quite comfy, Jamma.”
“My hands are always so cold, you know. And I’m very thirsty.”
It was a constant push and pull: when I was here, I wanted to be anywhere else; when I was anywhere else, I wanted to be here. Wherever I was, I felt guilty for not being in the other place.
I sat on the edge of her bed, took the unfinished mittens, and placed them back on the nightstand. She liked her pillow fluffed; I fluffed it. She liked to lay her head so it fell right in the middle of the pillow; I helped her lay her head so it was exactly in the middle.
“How is school, Madeline?” On her sweet face, I saw a little of her old self where usually there was only vague emptiness. “What’s the name of that college again?”
It was her most lucid moment in months. Not only did she remember the fact that I was (supposed to be) in college, she also remembered my name. A home run on a good day was Jamma recognizing my face when I walked in a room, but this . . . this was rare rationality.
“Bergen Community,” I said softly.
“Bergen Community. Sounds lovely, dear.”
I nodded, swallowed down the lump in my throat, then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. It was strange, but I’d grown used to being forgotten, which made moments like this—moments of remembering—all the more difficult.
On my way out, I left the door open a crack just in case she needed anything. My room was across the hall, and even though she’d never once called out, I felt better knowing there were no barriers between us. If she needed me, I would know. I crawled under my covers and switched on the light by my bedside; it had a bright-red lampshade that splashed its color across the room like a painting. I tried reading, but my mind wandered to thoughts of my mother, how she used to sing when she cooked, holding the spatula as a microphone, or how we had to put the Christmas ornaments on the tree in the exact same order every year. I thought of Dad, and how he loved me in his own quiet way. I felt it in his hugs, far louder than his voice. I thought of Jamma before the dementia set in—she was my mother’s mother, and the two of them were thick as thieves, always playing pranks or whispering in the other room.
We were a family who knew one another.
And now I had Uncle Les. Dad’s brother, though they couldn’t be more different from each other. In a Venn diagram where set A = {Designated Guardians of Mad}, and set B = {People Who Don’t Give a Shit About Mad}, the intersection = {Uncle Les}.
Uncle Les hadn’t always been like this. I had memories of him from years ago, pictures in my head to prove his decentness. But that hardly mattered now. I was here now. Jamma was here now. And here, and now, there could be no future.
Macro-problems.
I switched off the red light. In the new darkness, I rolled over and closed my eyes. And I listened. Across the hall I heard the gentle, rhythmic click-click of Jamma’s knitting needles, working on mittens she’d probably never finish. And on the other side of my wall—in my uncle’s room—there were sounds too. Muffled curses, foul voices, the occasional low and deep moan. And always he sobbed in drunken lethargy before inevitably passing out on the floor.
This was the end of his daily routine.
Behind the relative safety of my closed eyelids, I remembered a day long before the accident, back when Mom and Dad were alive and things were still things. That day, we were let out of school early for teachers’ Professional Development day. It was around noon, which meant Mom and Dad were both at work—so I walked home. Nearing our house, I heard music coming from an open window, and saw Uncle Les’s car in the driveway, which was odd, as he rarely came over. I walked up the porch, recognizing the voice of my mother’s favorite artist, Joan Baez. It was turned up pretty good, too. I opened the front door, walked inside, and received an education: about the largeness of the world, and my own smallness in it; about the speed with which truth could change; about how little I knew of the people I loved.
Uncle Les
stood in our kitchen, wearing a beige pair of briefs and nothing more. He had his back to me: a mole on his left shoulder blade, a gleam of sweat across his skin. He drank orange juice straight from the container, holding it over the faucet as little trickles poured down the sides of his face and into the sink. Joan Baez was loud enough he hadn’t heard me come in. And just when I was about to ask what the hell he thought he was doing, I heard her—Mom’s voice from the bedroom down the hall. All she said was “Lester,” but it was more than enough. I turned around, walked out of our house, and did not come back until dinner, when I was long expected and Joan Baez had been silenced, and no one was standing in our kitchen in their underwear, drinking orange juice straight from the carton like it was his fucking orange juice in the first place.
It was not his fucking orange juice.
On the other side of the wall, I heard my uncle collapse onto the floor, thus completing his daily routine. He never knew I knew. Mom never knew either. I was glad about that. At least she died not knowing I knew the worst thing about her. And at least Uncle Les felt too guilty to put Jamma in a shitty home. But I was still left with the same question.
I opened my eyes in the darkness. “What am I going to do?”
The darkness answered, as always, with complete silence.
SEVEN
THE MANY CHUMPS OF SUBURBAN JERSEY
(or, Be the Racehorse)
Interrogation Room #3
Bruno Victor Benucci III & Sergeant S. Mendes
December 19 // 6:48 p.m.
Matisse’s Woman on a High Stool.
That’s what this room reminds me of.
. . .
“Do you like art, Sergeant Mendes?”