Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

“You don’t hate her.”

“I adore her.”

He flips the pad up and pulls a clean page down.

“Okay. Your other sister isn’t your mother’s biggest fan ever,” I say. “We did discuss that, in between her telling me to get the fuck out of her house.”

His pencil tip hovers over the page. Then he digs it down and draws a strange geometric shape. He wiggles the pencil, sketching, shading. “Yeah. I heard.”

I rock a little on the couch and wonder if there is another orange in the refrigerator. “What about you? You a big fan of your mother?”

“She was hard to live with,” he says. “I didn’t hate her, though.”

“Hard to live with how?”

He’s drawing a foot. I watch the arch, the tendons, the protruding anklebone, emerge.

I realize my bare feet are resting on the carpet. I pull them up onto the couch and tuck them under me. He erases part of the toes and with a few clear lines he transforms the foot into a cloven hoof. He doesn’t look up at me, but I can see his lips curl up in a smile.

“ Ass hole,” I say. And grin.

He puts his pencil down and rolls onto his side, propping his head on one hand. “What?” he says.

“Your sister said you were kind of like her. So, what made her hard to live with? She was a sucky artist? Or she liked nineties hits?”

“Hey, I’m a terrific artist and the nineties ruled .”

“Har har.”

Aidan rolls his pencil across the devil hoof drawing. “She was really emotional. You’d have hated it. Crying, laughing, wiping her nose on her sleeve. That sort of thing.”

I open my mouth but Aidan says, “And no, I’m not like that . But the sad thing. I get down sometimes. Miranda thinks I’m—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“Going to off yourself like your mom tried to do?”

He looks over at me.

“Your sister spilled the beans about your mom’s psychiatric history. Said she tried to kill herself a couple times.”

Aidan rubs his fingers in the nubby carpet pile and studies the balls of lint he collects. Neither one of us likes to vacuum. “Mom was bipolar. When she was down she talked like she wished she was dead. It wasn’t her fault, but it really bothered Miranda. You know, to think Mom wanted to die. She didn’t like that.”

“She hates your mom.”

“Hate’s part of love,” he says. “Hate is what happens to love when it gets sick.”

I raise my eyebrows and sit back on the couch. “Geez. It’s raining outside, but it’s a lovely day in here with Mr. Sunshine.”

He shakes his head, straightens up and reaches for his pencil. He glances up at me and smiles. Then pretends to pick his nose with the pencil. I laugh.

“So now your turn. Tell me about your house. What was it like growing up with you?”

“Oh, it was marvelous,” I say. “Being as I’m such a delightful person — a saint, really. My family members have often told me they feel they should have paid for the privilege of living with me.” I lick tacky, drying orange juice off my fingertips. “To be honest, I’m not the right person to ask. I’m a fucking lunatic, so the rest of the world looks crazy to me.”

“ And you cooked the dog.”

“Right. I cooked the dog.” I think. “I also stockpiled matches and tried to start the house on fire. It was raining, though. Go figure.” I still don’t know why my mother thought I would like a surprise party. They all screamed Surprise! a dozen of them, little eight-year-old girls in sparkly dresses, shrieking, giggling, eating cake and ice cream and party mints. Mom wouldn’t let me leave, kept telling me to smile and have a good time. And yes, stealing the matches from the kitchen and trying to burn the house down was an overreaction. But like I said, I didn’t know what I was doing and the rain put out the matches that I tossed under the front porch as soon as I’d lit them. “And I stapled my fingers. And this one time I put my mother’s bras in the freezer and all the frozen meat in her underwear drawer.”

“ What? ”

I smile. “Okay, I’m kidding.” I am not, of course, although technically it was Dave and not me who stapled the webbing between my thumb and palm. The scar is faded now and the only time I can see it is when my hands are very cold and turn pink, the scar stays pale.

Aidan gives me a strange look and then he looks down at his sketchbook and starts drawing again.

“What’s that look for?”

“What about Dave?” he says. “He’s a little, I don’t know. Off . Right? And I don’t mean because he does drugs. I mean, there’s something a little—”

He stops talking and for a while is quiet.

“A little what?”

He bites his lower lip and then erases a line. Studies the page. Sketches soft hash lines and then erases another line. “A little sado .”

I look at the dark bowl of Aidan’s skull, the lines of his shoulder blades like thin wings under his almost-translucent shirt. I wonder what Dave looks like to other people. Most people only see his public self, the laughing, teasing, slightly zany self. A few people see glimpses of his other self. I imagine he must look to them like a brightly colored moth with the faintest aureole of flame crimping the edges of his wings.

“Right?”

“Right, what?”

“I mean, Dave’s sort of — out there. At least sometimes. Am I right?”

“Hey, at least he’s not a psychopath.”

“Mickey! What is this?” Aidan frowns and turns his head to look at me. “I tell you all about my family. And now you’re, what, protecting him?”

I laugh.

He looks at me. His eyebrows peak and his mouth goes down at the corners.

“Jesus, are you serious? Fine. What do you want to hear? Do you want me to tell you he’s a raving lunatic? How can I say that? How would I even know what a raving lunatic looked like?” I notice that my thumb is folded tightly against my palm. Maybe because I was just thinking about the staple thing. I unclench my hand.

Aidan says, “That would be a start.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Aidan picks at the carpet weave with the sharpened pencil. “You know what Dave told me about you?”

I shrug.

“He told me about you pushing that guy down the stairs when he tried to — you know. But he also said — well, he said that you were the one who cut your roommate. But, well, you said you didn’t touch her and you don’t lie. But the thing is, I think your brother knows the truth, too, that you didn’t do anything to your roommate, that she was a total psycho. Because you tell him pretty much everything else, so why wouldn’t you have told him that? So he, well, he just blatantly lied about you, and anyway, even if he didn’t know the truth, he really made it seem like you were sort of temporarily stable but basically unpredictable and dangerous.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Gosh, he wouldn’t dare . Except — oh, right, that’s the truth.”

“No, it’s not true. That’s my point. Telling me was stupid and unnecessary and, worse than that, it was just mean .”

“Are you insane? In what universe am I not unpredictable and dangerous? Christ.”

Aidan breaks the lead tip of his pencil. He looks at the ragged wooden end of the pencil and then he sighs and lays the pencil across his sketchpad. “He’s just — he strikes me as the sort of person who might make up a story about someone just to watch other people react. Which is kind of mean. You know? I guess I’m saying I don’t like him. Okay? I don’t like your brother.”

“Terrific. You don’t like my brother. I pretty much detest him. But then, I detest the human race. What’s your point?”