All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 18
The thought flashed in my head that we might have sex now. The house was empty. We had not done it in weeks, but Dan had been a little warmer to me lately. It felt like the right moment. It would be good for us. I had just showered too. I had on a good bra. I was ready if he was.
“Did you get all the way into town?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?”
“I told you, I forgot something.”
“What did you forget?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
He did not come upstairs right away, so I went back into the bedroom to finish dressing and picking up.
His shoes creaked on the stairs, then he came into the room without his suit coat. His red necktie was off; it dangled from his right hand. His cuffs were turned up. His watch and wedding ring were missing.
I said, “What’s that look? What are you up to?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened? Did you mess up your tie?”
He nodded.
“You came all the way home for that?”
He shrugged.
I picked up some folded clothes of Dan’s and began to put them away in his bureau.
Dan crossed to a little side table where I keep my cigarettes, and he took off his glasses and put them down.
Then he came and stood directly behind me as I continued to work. He was a small man but still taller than me, and I was in bare feet as well, so I sensed him behind and slightly above me. He was playing a game. We were so close.
His arms reached over and around my head in an odd way, laying the necktie loosely around my neck—not the way a man typically lays a necklace on a woman, but with his forearms crossed so that his left hand was behind my right shoulder, his right hand over my left shoulder. He was very delicate about it, even wary, the way you might loop a collar over the snout of a skittish dog, ready to jerk it if the dog snapped.
I still did not understand what was happening.
Behind me, I felt him wrap each of the tie-ends one time around his fists, drawing up the slack.
I was about to say, Dan, what are you up to?
The tie zipped tight around my neck, across my Adam’s apple.
A shock of pain. My head snapped back then forward.
We crashed forward into the chest. Dan pressed me up against it to hold me still.
Somehow the strap slid up my neck to the soft fold under my chin, where it sunk in. I clawed at it but it was clamped tight all around and I couldn’t get my fingers under, couldn’t get ahold of it.
No air.
Another bolt of pain, in my right foot. I had kicked the heavy bureau in front of me.
Somehow we fell to the floor. Dan’s weight was on my back, his lips by my ear, his clenched breathing, straining.
My mouth made no sound at all. I did not scream, I could not even speak. No air, no gasp, no breath, no voice.
I knew now that I was dying.
The more I struggled, the tighter he pulled the noose.
My lungs clutched and convulsed—a frustrated, instinctive need to inhale, to inflate—but this was more distant, under the other things: air, foot, agony.
How long? Minutes, seconds? It all happened so fast, kids, so fast.
Then nothing. I broke through. In an instant, there was no pain, no panic. I was not dead. I knew exactly what was happening. I knew Dan was on top of me, still squeezing and hauling up on the rope like he meant to pull it right through my neck. I felt my spine arch backward as he pulled. But I felt no pain. Dying brought a kind of anesthesia. And a wonderful warm feeling: relaxed, calm, peaceful.
BOOK 3
1
Hell is the red-eye from San Francisco. Not the takeoff, when everyone is fresh and hopeful, and not the landing, when everyone is relieved and hungover and morning-after sweaty. I mean the squalid, endless middle of the flight, when the plane is lit only by a dim reddish glow, and the passengers snuffle in their sleep with their drooly mouths hanging open and no shoes on their oniony feet. You think: We are packed inside this metal tube, and if that tube ever cracked apart—like in Lockerbie—we’d tumble out of the sky and splatter on the ground. We are delicate little animals with thin, elastic skins and twiggy bones. It’s a wonder we live as long as we do.
I am coming home to bury my mother. My sister Mimi called yesterday morning—no, it must have been two days ago; it is now 1:30 a.m. California time, 4:30 Boston time—to tell me that Mom’s remains were dug up by a construction crew in Trout Lake, Vermont, beside a lake where we vacationed once when we were kids. She said a three-man crew was clearing a building site out of the forest, using a big Michigan loader to level the ground, when they shoveled up Mom’s skull. It was so faded and dirt-stained that it looked like a rock at first. Only when they turned over the next scoop of earth did the crew realize what they had found.
Maybe that is why, in this flying tennis ball can, surrounded by sleepers, my mind is revving with morbid thoughts: A human head is just a brain-case. The bottom half is complicated by holes, all the inputs in the human body: food hole, air holes, sight holes, sound holes. (Other holes, the waste outlets, are located, wisely, as far from the intakes as possible while still permitting the creature to run and jump.) But above all the head-holes is the essential, magical part, the bony dome that helmets the brain. We are like Russian dolls: inside my head is my skull, inside my skull is my brain, and inside my brain, somewhere, is me, Jeff Larkin.
* * *
—
At Logan we shuffle off the plane like refugees or prisoners of war, stiff and defeated, all swearing silently never to take the red-eye again.
Miranda is waiting at the gate, smiling, expectant. No one else on earth is ever so visibly excited to see me. She is dressed in full bohemian weirdo mode, in some kind of daffy scoop-neck peasant blouse, baggy jeans, black Doc Marten shoes. Her wrists are armored with bangles and string bracelets. Her hair is swirled up on top of her head, a few flyaways artlessly left to dangle around her face. My sister has always affected a careless indie style, as if she would never stoop to mere attractiveness. She is oblivious (I think) to how lethally attractive this makes her to men.
She bumps a kiss onto my cheek and hugs me around the shoulders, pinning my arms to my sides.
I didn’t miss you at all, she says.
I didn’t miss you either.
You ready to go bury your mommy?
I can’t imagine a better way to spend the day.
All right, then. Can we go get breakfast? I’m starving.
Absolutely. Burying mommies is hard work. We’ll need our strength.
So I know what you’re thinking. We should be all solemn and tragic when we talk about our mother, and in public we are. But it’s tiresome, trust me. Anyway, when your family is ridiculous—not just in the ordinary sense, but actually the object of ridicule—what else can you do but laugh along with the joke? Here’s what I’ve learned as I approach my thirtieth birthday: Don’t face up to your problems with honesty and courage. That’s just crazy. You’re better off burying them under an avalanche of sarcasm. It’s not a foolproof method. Sometimes problems come unburied. They wiggle up out of the ground like earthworms after a rain. When that happens, my advice is: just fire up your Michigan loader and bury the little fuckers all over again. That’s the tricky part—the part Miranda can’t always manage. Anyway, this is how we talk, Miranda and me, and I’m not going to apologize for it. You try living our lives, then you can criticize.
So we wander around Central Parking awhile because Miranda has no idea where she left her car.
This place is crazy! How does anyone find their car in here?
I don’t know, Meem. I think they just take the closest one.
We finally find the car, and Miranda navigates out to the road. She sits very erect in the driver’s seat, as if this is her first day in driving school.
So what happens now, Mimi?
Nothing. We can’t do anything till the DA decides what he’s going to do.
What about the funeral?
Can’t have one. The DA has to release the body. Or the bones, whatever. It’s evidence, I guess.
Jesus. How long is that going to take?
Nobody knows.
Who tells you these things?
The DA’s office. They assigned us a social worker.
Great. So what do we do in the meantime?
We have breakfast.
What about Dad? Have you talked to him?
Not since they found her.
And before that?
It’s been a while.
Weeks?
Months.
Jesus, Mimi. Who calls who? Does he call you or you call him?
I call him. But I’m not going to anymore.
Yeah? Why not?
I just can’t.
I should call him. Fuck.
Do what you have to do, Jeff.
I haven’t talked to him in…a year? More? I should call him. What about Alex?
Team Dad all the way.
There’s a shock. I guess I have to call him too. God, this is a root canal. Maybe you should just take me back to the airport. Nobody knows I’m here yet.
Aunt Katie knows.
Really? Where is she in this whole thing?
She wants Dad’s head on a spike.
Like you?
Miranda considers before answering. She says, I’m not sure. Sometimes I want his head on a spike, then sometimes I just want to forget the whole thing and move on. I want to just be normal.
You mean this isn’t normal?
Ha ha, Mr. Funnyboy.
She takes me to a place called the Blue Diner. (You’ve got to hand it to Miranda, she has a sense for the poetic.) We take a booth and both order pancakes. Together, we feel like kids with adult privileges: we can order pancakes whenever we want to.
So tell me about California. Do you surf?
I do not surf. I’m the only one.
How sad for you. And how’s it going with the wife?
This is more sarcasm. I do not have a wife. Probably never will. Miranda is talking about my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend as of forty-four days now. Her name is Rachel. The thought of Rachel occupies my brain like a baseball-size tumor.
Please tell me you’re not still parking outside her apartment and spying on her?
I shrug.
Jeff, what are you doing? That’s crazy.
I know, I know. But it’s not spying. It’s just, if I happen to be there and I happen to see her, what’s the harm?
You’re a stalker! Can you please find a new hobby?
Does drinking count?
Sure. Just promise you’ll stop obsessing about her.
I’m trying.
She’s not worth it. You’ll be okay.
How do you know she’s not worth it? You never met her.
I just know.
And how do you know I’ll be okay?
Because you’re always okay.
Mimi, I am never okay.
Well, you better be okay this time. This family can’t have two fucked-up children, so get your shit together, big brother.
Weirdly, that actually works for a moment. I feel a little brighter, a little less fucked-up, just because Miranda needs me to be.
I read your story, Mimi. It’s really good. I liked it.
Thank you.
Have you showed it to anyone?
Just you.
You should show it to Phil.
Phil Solomon?
Yeah. He’s writing a book, a novel.
He is not. Phil? Can he even write?
I don’t know. Nobody knows. Including him.
Well, don’t show it to him. It’s personal. I don’t know what to do with it yet.
You can’t publish it, you know. You used everyone’s real names. And you showed Dad murdering Mom. And Aunt Kate’s story about him raping Mom? Are you crazy? You can’t publish that.
Well, I don’t think anyone’s rushing to publish it. I didn’t write it to publish it, anyway. I just wrote it to get it out.
Like taking a shit.
No, not like taking a shit, you pig. Now I want to show it to Phil just so I can have another adult to discuss it with.
So can I ask about it? Okay, I liked that it was in Mom’s voice. That was kind of cool. I liked hearing her voice. I don’t even know if that’s what she really sounded like, but it felt good. Only I was thinking, if the story is told by a dead person, doesn’t she have to explain where she is? Like, what’s it like to be dead? Is she here? Is she in heaven?
Why does it matter where she is? Why does everything have to be so explicit and obvious?
It’s just kind of a natural thing you’d want to know from a dead person, isn’t it? What happens when you die?
Jeff, you are such a…man. It’s a story, it’s imagination. You just go with it.
It’s a story but, I mean, come on, it’s only kind of a story, right? So is she, like, a ghost? Or just a literary device? What is she?
I don’t know. She’s whatever you want her to be.
You don’t know?
Of course I don’t know. I’ve never been dead. How would I know?
I’m just sayin’. If I was writing it, I’d talk a little about how this dead person is able to tell the story, so readers don’t wonder.
So go write your own story.
Hey, I’m just giving you feedback.
All right, well, thank you for your insightful feedback. Now can we talk about something else?
Sure. How’s your love life?
Okay, maybe something else?
Ooh, listen. You know what you could do? If Mom is a ghost, she could come back and haunt Dad.
Oh my God, are you drunk right now?
Only a little.
Okay, forget the story. Jesus, Jeff. Let’s talk about my love life.
Great. How is it?
That was a trick. I don’t have a love life.
Really? No boyfriend? No…other friend? Like, really none?
None. I live in a nunnery.
Good.
Why good?
Because you’ll bring home some crunchy hipster jackass, and I’ll have to pretend to like him.
What would you rather I bring home?
I’d rather you just buy a dog. What about your old rich guy? What happened to him?
Oh my God, that was ages ago. He’s long gone.
Good. What a cliché. A sugar daddy.
I know. Just don’t tell Alex. I don’t need the lecture.
Well, looking on the bright side, you actually did something boring. That’s kind of comforting.
He had a Porsche, y’know.
Of course he did. That’s what rich guys with small penises do. They buy Porsches.
Why don’t they just buy small underpants?
They buy both. Didn’t anyone tell you?
No! Nobody told me. My big brother moved to California so I have to find this stuff out on my own. You could have warned me about rich guys with small penises.
I wanted you to find out the hard way.
Oh, you’re super funny, Jeff. Excellent penis joke.
The waitress arrives with the pancakes. She overhears the last comment and raises her eyebrows.
I give her the crazy sign, nodding toward Miranda and drawing circles with my finger beside my temple.
The waitress grants me a noncommittal smile and leaves.
So are you going to call Jamie while you’re here?
Mimi, why would I do that?
Because it’s the nice thing to do? Because she’s a friend?
Your friend, maybe.
Of course she’s your friend! She was your sister.
She was not my sister. For someone who talks about penises so much, you’re a little confused about biology.
Well, she’s still my sister.
How does she look?
After all these years, that’s what you want to know?
Yes.
So shallow.
Penis owners are all shallow, trust me.
Believe me, I know.
So tell me.
She’s gorgeous.
She is not gorgeous. Stop it.
I think she’s gorgeous.
All right, whatever. Just tell her I said hi.
I’m not your secretary. You want to say hi, call her and say hi.
I don’t want to. You want me to.
I don’t care what you do. I just thought—since you two used to—I just thought you might want to talk to another human being sometime.
Well, you were wrong. I don’t want to talk to any human beings, ever. I’m like a tree.
Trees say a lot, actually. You just have to know how to listen.
Oh, please. Weirdo. Are they coming to the funeral, Sarah and Jamie?
I doubt it.
Who’s going to show up for this thing? We could have this funeral in a phone booth.
Dad said it’s going to be private. Immediate family only.
Dad said?
Yeah. Only Aunt Katie says it’s not up to him. She says Mom’s family is having the funeral and Dad’s not invited.
Well, that’s awkward, isn’t it?
If he shows up, Aunt Katie says she’ll have him arrested.
Well, sure. What else would you do? When the guy who murdered your sister shows up at her funeral, you don’t just offer him a Kleenex.
Stop it. Not funny.
Maybe we’ll have two funerals. Split up the bones like french fries.
Stop it, Jeff. That’s not funny.
I am not happy when I make these jokes. I don’t know why I do it. Yes, I know it’s my own mother, and yes, I know it’s not funny. I hate myself for it. Believe me, my self-loathing dwarfs whatever little loathing you might already have conceived for me.
