Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

I stand up and brush the dirt and grit off my jeans. Then I march away from Desiree, heading back toward campus. Dave doesn’t follow right away but then I hear his footsteps behind me. I think about breaking into a run. I know he can’t keep up with me, but he somehow figured out where I was going. Like maybe he’s followed me before. I try to think if I’ve ever seen him but I know I haven’t. And I would sense my brother’s presence. I know I would.

I let him catch up with me.

He falls into step, his breath coming fast. White gusts swarming into the pearlescent air.

“You shouldn’t smoke so much.”

“What?” he says. “What’s that apropos of?”

I don’t correct his grammar. “You’re too young to be so out of breath from such little exertion.”

“Aw. I think you’re worried about me.”

“I always worry about you,” I say. And then, because I can’t stand it anymore, the sound of his panting breath or the smell of him, like cigarettes and the warmth of his aftershave, I break into a run and leave him behind.

I pull up to the driveway of my parents’ house at five-thirty that evening. Aidan’s rusted yellow hatchback Tercel crunches up the drive behind me. I still don’t know why I agreed to bring him. There is already a neat collection of shiny cars along the cobbled street, year-old Audis, convertible Mustangs, even a cherry-red Porsche GT2. No one embraces the most cliché iterations of midlife crisis like academics.

I lead the way to the porch and open the front door. Light floods out into the gray-blue twilight, followed by a warm swirl of cologne, hair gel, wine, sizzling butter, cinnamon. Laughter clinking like wine glasses. A glitter of color, rustling fabrics, and the flash of rings and bare skin in the living room and solarium. I wind through, Aidan in my wake. The Persian rug underfoot, a stained glass panel in the dining room reflecting flickering flames from dozens of candles.

“Michaela! Michaela, come over here.”

I turn to see who’s yodeling my name across the room. My dissertation director, wearing a mustard-colored corduroy jacket, sweeps his arm over his head. When I turn back, Aidan has abandoned me. He threads his way through the throng in the direction of the fireplace. When I stand on my toes, I see why. Stephen is sitting on a folding chair near the fireplace, shoulders hunched, headphones on, a plate of shrimp and prosciutto balanced on his lap. It occurs to me that my quiet roommate is, in fact, closer in age to my younger brother than to anyone else in this room. Excepting me, of course. I don’t tend to think of Aidan as young.

My dissertation director’s breath smells sweet. He crowds in too close, wheezing and chattering about career plans and my dissertation chapter.

“—And have you met Dr. Scott Renfield? Visiting lecturer from Purdue I was telling you about?”

A thin man is standing beside Dr. Telushkin, gazing into the middle distance. When Telushkin says his name, the thin man raises his eyebrows and looks at me. His eye sockets are sunken, the skin over his thin cheekbones delicately puckered like the crust that forms over boiled milk.

He reaches out a hand.

I wipe my palms on my thighs, shift my weight back. “Right,” I say. “Dr. Renfield. You, um, you wrote that book on Chaucer and financial reform.”

“That’s right. Yes.” He rolls his lips together when he talks and makes a moist kissing noise. His rejected hand wanders back to himself, smoothes his tie and fingers the tie pin. “Won an NEH grant with that project.”

I don’t know what to say. I hear myself saying, “That’s — prestigious.”

Prestigious. Terrific. I cough into my hand and look around for Aidan. But I don’t see him with Stephen. I wonder if he’s gone to the dining room to collect food.

“I’d like to talk about your project, if you have time. Bob tells me wonderful things about your work.”

He’s looking at me, eyes bright and wet-looking in the worn palimpsest of his face.

I look down at the floor. Pick at my thumbnail and glance up at Telushkin. “Yeah, well, his work is in folklore, so he, um, he tells tall tales for a living so, you know. Grain of salt.”

The professor from Purdue rolls his lips together. Telushkin clears his throat.

I smile. Try a short laugh.

And their faces ease into jocularity. Telushkin puts his hand on Renfield’s shoulder and they both chortle, fake, belly-rolling chuckles as if what I’ve said is the most hilarious thing they’ve ever heard.

Then Telushkin says, “Get you something to drink, Scott? Michaela?”

I shake my head.

Renfield turns to look after Telushkin when he waddles away.

I exhale and back up a step, preparing to worm my way out of the crowded room. A woman in a sleeveless black dress is standing right behind me. Her arm brushes mine. I flinch away and swipe at my sleeve but the instinctive act makes the backs of my fingers brush her bare shoulder. I swallow hard. Her shoulder is palely freckled like a bird’s egg. I want to scratch my fingernails into its melon-cool surface. I grip my fists and turn away from her. My tongue feels dry and swollen, a ball of panic wadded into the back of my throat.

My father is standing near the piano, isolated in shirtsleeves and a loosened tie, the god at home coming faintly unraveled at the seams. Light glistens on the lenses of his glasses, turning them opaque and white. A woman in chunky turquoise jewelry comes up to him, smiling, but he doesn’t notice. His face is aimed away from her, turned in my direction, the white ovals of his lenses fixed on me.

I wonder what he is thinking. His daughter, the academic, being singled out for an introduction to a visiting scholar. His daughter, the antisocial basket case, quivering and twitching and sweating after a two-minute conversation.

My fingernails press into my palms until I feel a faint tickle, the splitting of skin. I duck my chin and head for the kitchen.

The kitchen table is laden with platters and dishes and crystal-clear scarlet Jell-O moulds and mounds of crusty bread and fruit trays and the scent of butternut squash and nutmeg. A woman at the sink turns around. She is familiar, someone who comes to help my mom throw her semiannual bashes for dad’s private-box-at-sporting-events colleagues.

“Hi there, Michaela.”

I nod and slide around the island.

Aidan comes into the kitchen. He stands with his hands in his pockets. Grins. “Having a blast? Saw that guy chatting you up. What do you think? You could pull off the whole trophy wife thing, right?”

“Fuck you.”

Mom comes into the kitchen carrying a platter of hors d’oeuvres.

“Oh Aidan, I didn’t see you. I’m so glad you — oh, honey, there you are, your father wondered where you’d — do you think you can you take the plate out when you go back to the living room? Aidan, have you met people yet?”

“My mother,” I say, folding my arms across my chest and leaning my hips against the island countertop, “is decompensating. Notice her decreasing linguistic control and scattered concentration.”

“Oh honey, not today.” Mom sets the platter down with a sharp crack. The woman at the sink starts rinsing off some green leafy garnish and clipping fronds to set along a plate of cold cuts. Congealed fat seams the pink-purple slices of beef. The salty tang of cold meat makes me swallow. I push my hands into my jeans pockets.

A voice in the living room slices through the burbling murmur. The murmur pitches headlong into hilarity. It sounds like a revel, an orgy perhaps.

Mom smiles. “Oh, that sounds like Dave.”

“I didn’t know Dave was coming,” Aidan says.

Mom heads into the main room, her treble voice reaching for her firstborn son. Aidan follows her out into the living room.