Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

The man behind Dave edges into the room. Mom says, “Hello!”

My elder brother is often drunk, is not morally averse to drugs, and despite his publication record and reviews, is less than normally intelligent in some ways. So it is not surprising when he walks in with random strangers, which he frequently does, of both sexes. My parents are overly polite. They think they are being open-minded, that Dave is a bisexual whose proclivities are a test for their middle-class morality. I told them once that Dave was not bisexual, that he just liked to fuck. They thought that I, in my pristine virginity, didn’t know what the hell I was talking about and they smiled kindly at me.

Dave laughs now, an affected yet oddly addictive giggle.

“Oh, God, I’m an asshole, I totally forgot. Mom, Stephen, this is Aidan. Aidan, this is my family.” He raises his eyes to mine. They are bright with laughter and he’s holding his mouth tight, like he’s sharing a secret joke with me. Like he’s about to say something that will send us both into peals of helpless mirth like stock characters in a Jane Austen novel. But he just says, “Oh, and that one is my sister. Michaela.”

The stranger moves around Dave’s side for the first time.

A dark buzz of hair covers his skull like moss. His eyes are wet-dark, bright, almost feral. One iris holds steady and the other zigzags like an unmoored boat in a storm. He looks right at me, as if I’m the only one of interest. I wonder if Dave has told him about me.

“Hey.” He speaks so softly I have trouble hearing him.

Mom says, “Welcome, Aidan. Come in. Dinner’s ready in five minutes.”

“Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Brandis.” The words are small and compact and appropriate, like a child reciting from a politeness grammar. He even looks at my mother when he talks, his solitary good eye moving reluctantly to her face. But as soon as he finishes talking he looks back at me, his singular eye focusing like a compass needle honing in on north. The wild iris swivels sideways, a shivering dark disc in a milk sea.

Dave comes into the living room, one arm around Stephen’s shoulders. “What are you playing? Oh, excellent. What’s the high score?”

I stand by the couch, palms pressed against my thighs, watching Dave fold his limbs as gracefully as a crane and Stephen throw himself down on the couch like a beanbag. Dave rests one hand on the back of Stephen’s head and with his other hand grabs a second game controller from the coffee table.

The stranger takes a step into the living room and hesitates. He is wearing a brown plaid shirt faded to translucence over a green T-shirt. Crusty patches of white and blue paint speckle the worn fabric.

He looks at the television. Then he looks up at me, the force of his stare reaching across the space between us. He holds out a hand to me. I notice Band-Aids on two of his fingers. He says, “Hi again. I know you.”

I look up at his face. We watch each other in silence.

Finally his fingers fold in on themselves and he pulls the hand back.

“You don’t,” I say.

Aidan’s eyelids open wide, startled, apparently, that I speak. “I’m sorry. I meant, we met before. I don’t know if you remember?”

“Are you a cutter?” I ask.

“What?”

I nod at his fingers. “I asked if you’re a cutter.”

There is a short silence. Stephen twists his head away from Dave’s hand, where it rests against his neck. He says, “Dave, stop it! Geez .”

Aidan says, “What do you mean?”

I smile a little. “No need to sound so anxious, dear stranger. I’ve got no problem with cutters.”

“Yeah, you really like cutters, babe, don’t you? Like your roommate when you moved into that dorm, she was a cutter, right?”

I didn’t know Dave was listening.

“Shut up.”

“I already told him about you, babe. Had to, you know? Had to warn the poor kid before he met you. I just told him about whatsername, your first roommate.” He snorts, as if the person in question were somehow barely relevant, scarcely worth the breath to speak her name. “First and last roommate.” The person whose name he doesn’t speak is the reason I moved into my parents’ garage ten years ago.

Stephen doesn’t say anything. He pretends he can’t hear a lot of the time.

There’s a short silence. Then Aidan says, “If you mean, do I cut myself on purpose, then no. I don’t.”

“Guess you’re just clumsy then.”

He frowns and looks down at his fingers. He folds them under his thumb and looks back up. “Guess so.”

I look at the TV screen.

After a while Aidan perches carefully on the edge of the couch. He leans forward, hands clasped between his knees. Dave, transfixed by the television screen, ignores him and shrieks in glee when his avatar shoots Stephen’s.

Aidan rubs his fingers over his knees, making a soft scratching sound. Then he says, “Stephen — you’re Stephen, right? Um, there’s one of those cop guys, behind the trashcan.”

“Yeah, I saw it,” Stephen says, surly. Then, more mellow, “Thanks.”

Mom comes back into the living room. She looks at us, at the walleyed stranger stiff on the couch, at Dave and Stephen entranced in vicarious bloodshed, at me standing like a sentry by the fireplace.

“Honey, have you met Aidan yet?”

“I might not enjoy the presence of others, Mother, but I do at least notice them. I am neither blind nor mentally deficient.”

“I’m sorry, honey. Aidan, can I get you anything? A drink? I’m making a spaghetti Bolognese for dinner.”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Brandis. Thank you.”

Mom goes back into the kitchen. From the kitchen, the clink of metal pot lids, the spicy tang of a simmering tomato sauce, a sweet cinnamon smell, maybe a pie baking. My stomach growls.

Dave says, “Shit! I almost had that one.”

Another quiet.

The air feels thick with human pores oozing urethra and my throat convulses like I’m going to gag. I get up and walk out of the living room.

The piano lid slips like satin under my sweaty fingers. I run my hands over the oil-slick keys and start to play. I never got very good at piano because I can’t sit on a bench with another person. I can, however, make my way through some easier Beethoven and Mendelssohn and Mozart. I like the way notes are precise and clean, the purity of sound produced by metal cables stretched so taut they are on the brink of snapping.

“Dinner’s ready! Honey, dinner’s ready.”

I keep playing, washing out the clinks of silverware and scrapes of chairs and shuffle of bodies. My mom comes into the doorway to tell me dinner’s ready but I let a staccato run erase her voice.

A hot hand claps down on my shoulder. I jump and the piano clangs atonally. I slam the lid shut and shove back the stool and lurch to my feet, spinning to face Dave who grins, sloppy-mouthed, like an idiot. His eyeteeth are crooked and yellowish.

“You’re such a fucking ass hole!”

“Dinner’s ready,” he says.

He’s still chuckling when I yank my chair back and sit down at the end of the table. Mom carries in a wooden bowl of salad. She sets it down and says, “Dave, wait till we’re all sitting,” because he’s reaching into a basket of buttered rosemary rolls. He pulls his hand back and sits down.

The front door swings open with a clatter. My father is nothing if not endowed with the innate capacity to make an entrance. He comes in balancing a briefcase, stacks of free papers, a few heavy tomes, and rain-fogged glasses. He nods at everyone, his eyes catching on Aidan, and says, “Pardon my tardiness. Cynthia.”

This last to my mother.

She smiles at him, but her eyes move away from his face before the smile reaches them.