Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

I get up and shut the garage door and go back and sit on the mattress. Press my hand under my ribs. It’s so hard to breathe.

Aidan opens the door without knocking and walks in carrying a paper plate with thin black and gray lines around the rim. My mother’s class showing itself even in disposable cutlery.

He sets the plate down on the concrete floor near me. A roast beef and cheese sandwich wedge, a slice of pickle, and a handful of mints. He is wearing a black suit and the pants have a cluster of vertical creases at the back of the knees. He turns his head, fingers a nick on the underside of his jaw.

He takes off his suit jacket. The underarms of his white shirt are faintly yellow. He comes over and lays down the jacket and then sits down on the mattress beside me. The familiar smell: Ivory soap, cigarettes, acrylic paint.

“So,” he says. His left leg jiggles up and down. “Your mom wants you to eat.”

I don’t say anything.

Aidan waits for a while. Then he says, “Mickey, he’s dead. Nothing you say can hurt him now. So when are you going to tell?”

I rub my hands on my knees. Look at the plate of food on the floor. The pink horseradish sauce is crusting along the meat.

“You need to tell someone. The truth, I mean. You need to tell the cops about Dave killing those people. If you do it, fine. If you don’t, I will.” He pauses, and then says, “And also your parents. They should know the whole truth.”

A brief icy gust of wind sweeps in. Goosebumps stand on my bare lower arms.

He presses his hands into his thighs and stands up, slowly.

“Anyway. That’s all I came to say.”

He goes to the door.

“He — my brother was right.”

Aidan stops and turns around.

“About me. And so what happened, when I — when I stabbed him — oh. Even if it was accidental — it was , but the point is—”

He watches me in silence for a bit. Then he says, “I know it’s hard.” He waves a hand impatiently. “All of that, yes, I understand. But right now. What you’re really afraid of. I know what you’re afraid of. But you don’t have to be afraid. You’re not the only one. It’s not exactly easy having a big sister who assaults you practically every time you go visit. It’s not easy loving her even when she — when she breaks my family into pieces just by being alive. Lots of people go through shit for the ones they love.”

“It’s not hard .” My voice sounds old, cracked with disuse. “It’s goddamn awful .”

“I know,” he says.

I look up at him. “You don’t know. You don’t fucking get it.”

“No,” he says.

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. My brother isn’t a serial killer.”

“Mickey—”

“He didn’t kill those people, you know, across the street, and the woman in the apartment downstairs—”

“Jesus God, Mickey, are you really going to sit there and take the blame for a murder you didn’t commit again? How gullible do you think I am?”

“I’m not — just listen . He didn’t kill those people because of any compulsion. It was clean, organized. He doesn’t — he didn’t have to kill. He did it for me.”

He swallows hard, the nodules of his Adam’s apple moving convulsively.

“Because he thought it would make me — I don’t know. Free. Because he loved me.”

“No.”

“Yeah, I fucking know. Okay? I know that’s sick. I know he was sick, even if he wasn’t a serial killer. But I don’t know — I don’t know why or who fucked up who or if, if anything could have turned out differently.” I pleat my fingers in the blanket pooled around my feet. Lean forward. “I — I didn’t kill him—”

He says, “Mickey, don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“ Fuck you! Please.” I am hoarse. I haven’t talked this much in days. I swallow. My mouth is so dry. “Let me — say this. I didn’t kill him but I—” I’m startled by a strange gasping sound that bursts out. I bury my face against my knees. “I should have.” God, my chest hurts. It feels like it’s being crushed from the inside. “When I was ten years old. I should’ve done it then. He’s the one I should have pushed. I could have saved — everyone. I could have saved the world.”

For once, Aidan is silent.

The silence is so stark that I lift my head.

He’s just looking at me, his mouth partially open. His hands are curled at his sides.

“So how can I tell my parents about him? They are barely — I would kill them too.”

I almost tell him, If I unclench my hands the world will burn .

My mouth tastes like burning paper.

Aidan looks down at the floor. The lines by his mouth are stricken so deeply I could lay a pencil in the creases.

He opens his hands, his fingers spread against his thighs. He closes them again.

After a long time, he walks out. The door stands open after him.

Days pass.

The spring school semester begins.

Normalcy and patterned behavior return. I still live in the apartment but most nights I spend sleeping on the mattress in my parents’ garage. I attend office hours and sit at my computer with my headphones in, my fingers on the keyboard, waiting to find words to type.

Stephen attends school. Plays video games.

My mother folds laundry and teaches Mozart to talentless teenagers.

The dean leaves pink slips in my mailbox and sometimes I ignore them. Sometimes I don’t. When I sit in his office he is polite, his voice like chilled cream, and he asks after my dissertation, my health, my running habits. I answer his questions. When I leave his eyes follow me and I feel the weight of his gaze like cords tethering me to the earth.

The asshole drones in the graduate student office buzz, talking about weekend parties and grading student papers and which professor one should never take, or always take. They don’t know anything about my family until Telushkin accidentally tells them. He comes into the office to ask if I’ve finished a chapter and says that he doesn’t mean to rush me, that he knows I’m still grieving for my brother. For a few days my fellow grad students are quiet, awkward, their voices peat-smoky and conciliatory. Slowly, when I show signs of neither grief nor joy, they resume normal cadences and volumes.

In February I drive to Judith Greene’s house.

The house still smells like cat litter and cherry-flavored cough syrup. She brings me a tiny cube of red Jell-O and a cup of Earl Grey tea with cream.

“Why are you here? Are you going to — tell anyone what I told you? No one will believe you. You used to be in therapy. You probably are crazy. Are you going to?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

I sit on her floral couch and a cat twines between my legs. I can see pink skin between patches of flaky white fur on the cat’s spine.

The tea tastes bitter, almondy. I wonder if the cream has soured. I set the china cup in its saucer. Flecks of tea leaves swirl in the pale liquid and its rippling meniscus catches at the light.

“Because I want to know something.”

She sits stiffly on her armchair watching me. She’s wearing red cotton pants that are two sizes too small. Her flesh bulges against the fabric. When she walked in from the kitchen I could see the dimpled jiggling flesh of her ass and thighs.

Cat hair clings to her soft pink sweater. Her mascara is clumped. She scratches at one earlobe with her chipped pink thumbnail.

“What do you want to know?”

I look at her. And then I reach for my tea. It still tastes strange. I swallow and make a face. I don’t know what to ask. I don’t know why it matters so much to me to know the answer.