Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

“It’s Apartment B,” he says, watching me study the place. “The upstairs.”

A wooden staircase trails up the outside wall to the upper-floor apartment.

“So, do you want to come up or not?”

“No.” I shake my head and look away. I was joking, I almost say. I am here about something else entirely. Aidan never looked across the street. I won’t look either. But the shaking is coming back. I feel panic climbing up my throat like a centipede. “I should — I need to go. I’m late.”

He coughs and shakes his head. “Look, I’m really sorry if I scared you or anything. I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m not scared ,” I say. “I don’t get scared.” I wrap my hand around the keys in case it’s still shaking.

“Okay,” he says. “Well. You can come over if you want. It doesn’t have to be about renting the place.”

I don’t know what an obsessed person looks like. He looks calm, his mouth relaxed. But I don’t know what his game is. “Stop this,” I say. And I don’t know what I mean.

I turn away from him, fumble with the door, heave the heavy construction open.

When I climb in the car, his mouth moves. I can’t hear him but I recognize the words.

Bye, Mickey .

He gives a brief wave with his hand.

After I drive off I realize that I have pushed the delete call button on my phone and erased the almost-dialed call.

I drive south, past my parents’ house to the running trail in a metro park near the Cuyahoga Valley. My skin feels like it’s going to crawl off my skeleton if I can’t run fast and hard enough to pull my body back into some sort of order.

I think about the corpse, about the faceless homeless person who pulled a sheet over a mutilated body, a gesture so startlingly kind it makes my jaw hurt from clenching. I think about that stained sheet like a sacred shroud cast over a festering orgy of desecration. I think about the red and blue RE/MAX sign and Aidan’s sudden apparition, a gray-hooded specter, a human deus ex machina . I think about my parents’ garage and the stench of burning paper. I think about the smell of hot piss and how I stared at the wax-smooth skin of a man I had just murdered and wondered if I was supposed to feel something.

I run until the trail fades onto great slabs of slate rock, a vast shelf slanting up to a steep drop-off. Crouched at the stone lip of the precipice, I prop my hands on my knees, panting.

Scarlet and brown peaks and hollows of the valley spread out beneath masses of dark clouds piled against the western horizon. The whole earth is beneath me. If I could stretch my arms and lift off I would fly into the cold and limitless gray and be clean forever.

On the way back a low ripple of thunder curdles the air. The first drops of rain taste like rust and salt. I like running in the rain. The noise and the stinging slap of wet running clothes drown out everything else. I almost feel calm by the time I get back to the car.

When I return home I go through the garage into the house. I wipe my hands over my face and flick away the droplets.

The house breathes. Muted noises. Human voices.

I go through the kitchen and dining room into the solarium.

Stephen and another teenage boy I don’t recognize are in the living room. The strange boy turns his head sharply, stares at me from behind plastic-framed glasses, his moist pink lips slack. Stephen ignores me and slouches his spine lower on the couch. He twiddles the control in his hand and his avatar on the TV screen jumps across a dark chasm.

“You.” I point at the pale teenager. “Quit staring. And you. Where are the parents?”

Stephen says without looking at me, “I dunno.”

A distant voice calls: “Mickey? Honey, is that you?”

I look at Stephen. “Thank you, brother. Your usefulness is overwhelming.”

He shrugs.

The friend watches me, thumb immobile over the control. His eyes track me as I leave the room. I can feel the heat of his gaze and it itches between my shoulder blades.

My mother is in the basement sorting laundry. The fresh cottony scent of her detergent has seeped into the kitchen.

I stand at the top of the stairs, resting my palms against the doorjamb and looking at the carpeted wooden slats descending into shadow. Beneath the smell of the laundry detergent, I taste lingering traces of stranger scents: dust, macaroni and cheese, urine. I haven’t gone down those basement steps since that day when I was ten years old and met my first corpse at the bottom. Harmony of the spheres. I swallow a hysterical laugh and back away from the basement. I sit on a stool at the kitchen island and wait for her to emerge from the basement with a plastic laundry basket on her hip.

She smiles when she comes up.

“Hi, there.” Her smile fades. “You’re wet. You should dry off before you catch a cold.”

“Did you ever want me to move out?”

She falters. “What?”

“Of the garage. Do you and Dad have these fantasies where I’ll suddenly be like, Hey, I’m a fully grown woman with a PhD. I think I’ll rent a two-bedroom condo in Cleveland for a while, maybe go vegan and raise some cacti.”

“You want to raise cacti?” She sets down the laundry basket and puts her arms around her middle.

“Of course not,” I say. “You’re missing the point.”

“No — no, I think — oh, honey, your father and I have talked about it, of course, but — and you are doing well. Recently. I mean, at least from what I’ve seen, especially in the past few months, you’ve seemed — happier.” She shakes her head. “But you know we love having you here. That’s not a problem. There’s no need to — you should never feel like your father or I would ever pressure you to do anything, or to make decisions out of a need to… Sweetie, I’m saying you should move at your own pace. Don’t ever think we would pressure you to do things you’re not ready for.”

I smile a little. I am getting cold, just standing here with the basement door open. I rub my arms. “God, you make me sound like a recovering cancer victim.” I wave a hand to forestall her anxious protests. “But I get the message. Thanks. I was just wondering.”

I go into my garage and shut the door and sit down on the mattress. My sneakers leave dark wet patches on the concrete. My cell phone is lying on my pillow. I have four missed calls, and two messages. Three of the four calls are from Dave. One is from a number I don’t recognize.

I listen to the messages. The first voice is so quiet I unconsciously lean forward to hear better. But even without hearing the words I recognize the voice.

“Hey, Mickey, it’s Aidan. I got your number from your brother. I just wanted to apologize again if—” Some words are lost altogether as the sound of a siren goes by in the distance. “Sorry,” his voice says in my ear. “I’m — walking to class and it’s loud. Anyway, that was all I wanted to say. Bye.”

I delete the message and stand up to stretch and shower. I just can’t figure out what he’s after.

The next message comes on and even with the phone lying on the bed I can hear the digitalized squawking. My brother is not one for dulcet tones.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Mickey,” he’s shouting. “Just got a call from your new fucking boy friend! Did you put Ro hyp nol in his drink yesterday? God in fuck ing heaven, babe, he had, like, fifty questions about you, does Mickey do this, why did Mickey come see me, did you give her my address—”

He’s laughing but he’s not usually so loud if he’s not angry. I pick up the phone but don’t put it to my ear. My thumb covers the delete key. I wonder why he’s angry, but then think that maybe he brought Aidan home for his own purposes and for the first time in his life has been cockblocked by a sibling. The thought almost makes me smile. But I remember that Aidan’s interest in me has nothing to do with the sordid minidramas of suburban American life and I swallow hard.