Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

“I think you have a weird thing with your brother. I don’t mean, like, sexual or anything. I just mean that he’s sort of — and you believe what he says, even when he lies. And that’s, like, sort of what abused people do. You know?”

I laugh. “Are you kidding? You’ve got to be joking.”

He looks at me. His crazed eye dances.

I don’t like looking at it. The eye makes me feel sick suddenly. I swallow and look down at the cigarette-burned weave of the couch. “Yeah, he’s like you said. He’s — he can be mean. But, God, he gets me. Okay? I can’t hurt him accidentally because he’d be ready for it. I think you’re the same way. And that makes you the only two fucking people in the whole world—” I stop talking. And realize that what I am about to say is the truth. I swallow. “You’re the only people,” I say, “who would be ready for me if I did something. You wouldn’t let me hurt you. So I guess I feel safe with you. Because like it or not, I am unpredictable and dangerous.”

Aidan rips off the top page of doodles and crumples it in his hand. He pushes himself up on his left hand and with his right he throws the wadded paper into the kitchen. It hits the rim of the trashcan and falls to the floor.

He looks over at me. “You want to meet her?”

“What? Who?”

“My sister,” he says. “Stella. You want to meet her?”

I rub my hand over my mouth. “No.”

He watches me.

“No,” I say louder. “ No . If I see her I’ll fucking kill her. I’ll stab her with some sharp fucking object. I’ll rip off her fingernails one by one and I’ll dig out her eyeballs and choke her with them. I don’t want to meet her. I don’t—”

“ Hey ,” he says.

I realize he’s been saying it as I’ve been talking but I didn’t hear him.

“Shut up. Stop.”

I close my mouth.

“This is what I mean,” he says. “This. You were nice to Miranda, in your own way. You were polite anyway, and for you that was, like, being Mother Teresa. Especially when she was so rude to you. And you don’t hate Stella, you just want to hurt her like she hurts me. I don’t think your shrinks were right, okay? You’re not unpredictable. You’re not some pre-serial killer, and you’re sure as hell not a joke. You’re not going to do anything you don’t want to, and you don’t want to hurt people. So you don’t have to be afraid with anyone. Not anyone. Okay?”

I look at him. But he won’t look away. His one good eye won’t shift. The pupil doesn’t even move. I end up looking away first.

After a while he gets up and goes into the kitchen and picks up the wad of crumpled paper and puts it carefully in the trashcan.

The next morning, a Saturday, I run then get in the Chevelle and, instead of going to the library like I usually do, I head away from campus. Turn north onto the freeway and churn my way through slushy snow to Hudson.

Harvest Home is in Hudson. A sprawling, single-story facility with brick and white daub walls, a sprawling, mostly empty parking lot, and sliding glass doors that open in front of an overhang with clearance high enough for an ambulance. I know this because an ambulance currently sits under the bricked overhang. The lights are turned off. It looks routine, no desperation. But maybe there is never desperation here. The inmates are already rubbish, pushed to the edges, swept into a neat pile. Maybe one more or less does little to upset the cosmic balance.

I imagine the hallways smell of urine mixed liberally with pureed baby food. I sit in the car and contemplate going inside. Approaching the front desk and asking for Stella Devorecek’s room number.

One of my therapists had a Down syndrome client. The girl was twice my size with flat, coin-shaped eyes. She was kneeling in front of a toy box in the waiting room the first time I saw her. I went over to a chair and climbed on it to wait while my mother filled out paperwork. The girl lumbered to her feet and came over to me. Snot was crusted on her short upper lip. A diaper crinkled and wadded between her legs when she walked. Before I could react she put her arms around me and leaned her hot, damp face against mine.

They pulled me off her in only seconds. When I was taken into the therapist’s room I looked back at her. Her mother was cradling the oversized girl, but the almond-shaped eyes gazed blankly back at me, the flat button nose oozing blood and mucus. She wasn’t crying. I came out an hour later and she was still there, arms wrapped around her mother’s neck, a slick of mucus running into her open mouth. She waved bye to me when I left.

I sit in the Chevelle and tap my fingers on the steering wheel. I finally make up my mind to go inside, and I turn the key in the ignition and drive away instead.

Miranda Devorecek comes to the door quickly this time. I can hear noise, silverware and tinkling laughter, and there are Audis and Toyotas packing her wide driveway. She halts when she sees me.

I put my foot across the lintel. “Hi.”

“Oh, God. Look, will you please go away? I’m having — well, obviously you won’t care about that. If you don’t leave, I will call my brother.”

“Your brother?” I grin. “And what would he do? He’s no Sly Stallone. I mean, he might win a fight with a Chihuahua. Maybe.”

“I’m asking you nicely.”

“Which is weird,” I say, and move forward. She backs up and I slip inside. “When you think about it, I mean. Insane people tend not to respond to niceness, the banality of civilization, and you know I’m — what did you call me? — right, one of these people . So why ask nicely?”

Someone comes into the foyer holding a tiny crystal cup of a pink fizzy drink. The woman has straw-colored hair and is wearing a casual lavender shirt and tan slacks that easily cost a couple hundred dollars.

“Oh,” she says.

“This is my brother’s roommate,” Miranda says. “Mickey, right? I assume that’s short for something.” Her thin mouth is wrinkled like she’s holding vinegar in her mouth. “She’s here for the party.”

“Well,” I say, “not really. I hate parties. The last one I attended, I tried to burn the house down afterward.”

The woman in lavender stares at me. Her eyes flicker to Miranda, who looks at me steadily. The skin under her eyes looks blue.

She says, “That was quite possibly the most insensitive thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Really?” I smile. “Could I have some punch, maybe? It would make a nice contrast to the tea I had the other day with that disgusting old woman who used to be your neighbor. The one with the cats who sings in a choir.”

“Judy Greene?” Miranda looks surprised. She raises her chin slightly. “You can follow me to the kitchen. The punch is in there.”

I follow her to the kitchen, walking past the glare of the lavender-shirted woman. A room opening off the foyer is thronged with women in fake-casual clothes and bright-colored paper bags full of tissue paper. Most of the bags are silver and pink.

“Wedding shower?” I say. “For you, or someone else?”

“Someone else.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re divorced, aren’t you? I read about it on the Internet.”

She inhales but doesn’t say anything.

We go into the kitchen, a long room with a red baked clay tile floor, stainless steel appliances, and fake wood beams across the ceiling. A crystal bowl of fizzing punch sits on a table flanked by pink and silver napkins and paper plates and platters full of tiny cookies covered in powdered sugar.

“I assume this is your revenge. For what you overheard me saying about you yesterday. I can only say that I’m sorry you overheard. That was — impolite. However, I stand by what—”