Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

He pulls my hair back.

Jesus. I close my eyes and swallow. Hot spit pools into my mouth.

I swallow rapidly, twice. And then gag. The taste burns.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

He holds on and I throw up. He lets me get a hand free to wipe my mouth. I spit and then try to pull away. He grabs my wrist and holds on again. We fight until I throw up again. I lie with my face near the vomit and try to calm down. Everything stinks.

“You — fucking pervert,” I say. “Your sister? The one who knocks you around when you go visit her? Remind me to send her a fucking gift basket.”

Aidan laughs. His breath hot on my neck. I jab an elbow back but he moves. My skin is feverish and sweating, my tongue is dry and tastes like bile. I blink and drop my head, rest my cheek against the floor. “ Please get off me.”

And he lets me go.

I scramble away on hands and knees and crawl into a corner. I gag and spit and wipe my mouth with my hands. “You rat bastard asshole!”

He gets onto his knees and watches me. His good eye is dark and grave, his walleye tugged like a restless compass needle towards an uncertain pole.

He gets up and goes into my bathroom. He comes back with towels and starts to clean the floor. He stops briefly and then glances up at me. I’ve scrambled onto the bed, wedging myself into the corner, the knife gripped in my hand. He bends down, his bare neck thin and white, the knobby vertebrae in bas relief. He wipes up the floor. Goes back into the bathroom to rinse out the towels. Then comes out and scrubs at the floorboards. I watch him squirt cleaner fluid and then scrub with the towel. The acrid stench of bleach drifts through the room.

My fingers are squeezed so tight around the handle that they tingle.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

He says, “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay. Am I okay. What the hell do you think I am? I fucking — I want to—”

He looks at me. “But you’re not going to. Okay? You’re not going to do anything. You’re going to put the knife down and feel like shit and deal with it.”

“I am fucking dealing with it! I was fucking dealing with it before you assaulted me!” I hold out my free hand, the one not gripping the knife. “Look at this, you asshole! Look at my hands! I’m—” The tremor is visible. Each finger quivering like a leaf stirred by an unseen wind.

He looks at the shaking hand. Lines crease by his mouth. “Now you know what it feels like,” he says. And he bends his head and starts to scrub the floor again.

I blink. “What? Like what feels like?”

He gestures with the vomit-soaked rag. “Guilt,” he says. “Or grief. Whatever you felt when you killed the cat. I don’t know. The point is, you’re going to have to learn how to feel things without going — you know. Without taking it out on whatever makes you feel that way. You have to learn to feel shitty and just keep feeling it and not do anything. That’s what people do. They just — bear it.”

He stops talking.

I stare at him.

He points at me. “So don’t ever do that again. Don’t freak out with the knife like you’ve crossed some invisible boundary and it’s too late. It’s not too late. You’re not Satan’s bitch just because you had to put a cat down. You’re just a person. People feel bad. You just have to learn how to feel like hell and go on.” He stands and balls up the rags. He carries them into the bathroom. I hear the hamper lid shut. A cupboard door closes. The sink faucet runs and then is shut off. He comes in. “You want any dinner? Or not yet?”

I open my mouth. Close it. He shrugs and walks out. I hear the silverware drawer bang in the kitchen. I peel back my fingers. The knife falls onto the blankets in front of me. My hand is sweaty and pink. A headache prickles behind my right eye and my stomach feels clammy, but my heart rate is slowing, evening out.

I stand up.

He’s at the freezer holding a bag of frozen chicken patties. He turns when I come in. “Mac and cheese and chicken patties? Yes? No?”

I swallow hard. It can’t be worse than what I just felt. I go up to him and lean in and kiss his cheek. His skin is cool. I back away quickly, bump a hip into the counter edge. I fold my arms tight across my chest and look at the wall behind his head.

“Do not,” I say, “attempt to reciprocate, or I will really and truly stab you in the fucking eye and I am quite serious about that.” The refrigerator hums, starting to defrost as the freezer door stands open. The skin around his eyes tightens. For a long time he is quiet.

And then he smiles. “Okay.”

He goes to the cupboard and takes down a cardboard box of macaroni and cheese. “Do you add milk or water to the cheese mix?” He squints at the packet of powdered and chemically-enhanced cheese.

“I think you use milk.”

“Crap. I think our milk went bad.”

“I told you we needed more milk.”

“Yeah.” And he looks over at me. “Me too. Okay?”

I don’t know what he means, but he flushes and I feel faintly dizzy myself.

Thanksgiving is next week. The first serious signs of winter have crept in and hunkered down. I run under flat gray skies stacked with clouds like steel-hawsered frigates. Cars tires froth through a salted slush thick with wet leaves, cigarette butts, and other detritus.

On Monday I come in from my run and see my cell phone lit up on my bed, ringing. Dave’s phone number blinks on the screen. I ignore it and shower.

After my shower I check my voicemail. When his familiar voice picks up I realize how long it’s been since I talked to him. Weeks, probably. Maybe a month. Even when he lived in New York I never went this long without talking to him.

I wonder why I’ve stopped returning his calls or picking up. I’m not paying attention but I focus when he mentions a copper band. I realize he’s asking about a mystery, if I have made progress in my Sherlock Holmes impression on Aidan’s familial drama.

“—Because I don’t want to sound cliché, but you really were made for greater things. I mean, watching you run around after that boy’s late lamented maman is like when I see the Dalai Lama on a bill board advertising fucking peace or some such asinine shit. You’re meant for mountains and goddamn yaks . Do you know what I mean? Your art student’s mommy died bloodless, it was a fucking Angela Lans bury murder.”

Something cold settles in my gut and I shiver. My thumb hits the delete key before I am even conscious of making the decision. I slide the phone back under my pillow.

And then I take a breath. I pull out the phone and call him.

He picks up right away. “My darling!”

“Sorry I haven’t called.”

There’s a brief, awkward silence. I never noticed before how easily we talked. There was never anything uncomfortable between us, not like when I try to talk to other people. Dave’s mind is like an Olympic athlete, preternaturally quick, prescient in its ability to seize on my fragmented thoughts and make of them something coherent.

I clear my throat. “Are you going to Dad’s thing?”

Our father has an annual party for faculty members. The notes about this event have been appearing regularly in my mailbox at work.

He laughs. “Oh, I love it. Are you inviting me? And will we go? And will we join the common throng and will we whisper and giggle like all the beautiful morons in their feckless fancy?”

“I hate it when you start alliterating. Are you coming or not?”

He stops laughing. “Listen,” he says. “Don’t go there. They sap your soul, doll. They drain you of everything vital, everything beautiful.”