Michael Prescott: Riptide

The thought of the family documents in his possession raised a possibility in her mind. “Did you ever look through those old papers? The ones Mom passed down to you?”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

“Was there anything in there about our great-grandfather?”

“Who cares about him? He’s dead, dead as a door nail, dead and buried.”

The word dead reverberated in her, eliciting a series of sympathetic vibrations that brought up images of the skeletons in the crypt. “I know he’s dead, but…did any of the documents say when he moved into the house? Was he the original owner?”

He gave her a shrewd look. “Lots of questions. Why so curious?”

“I found something in the cellar that may have belonged to him.”

“Found what?”

“It’s not important.”

“So it’s a secret .”

“Richard …”

He picked up a pair of scissors from a table. Large scissors with long sharp blades. He worked the handles, snipping at the air.

“You’re always keeping secrets from me,” he said, his voice sliding into a lower register, a dangerous rasp. “Hiding things behind my back.”

She stayed very still, trying not to fixate on the scissors. “Do you remember anything about our great grandfather? Anything at all?”

He kept opening and shutting the scissors, snip snip snip . “If I do, I’m not telling. I can keep secrets, too.”

No help there.

A wordless interval stretched between them. “Are you sleeping okay?” she asked.

“What is this, an interrogation? You want a urine sample? Want to run an ink blot test on me?”

The scissors flashed, catching the light from the window.

She watched him. He was uncomfortably close to her. He could be on top of her in one long stride.

In psychology, a variant of political correctness insisted that schizophrenics were less dangerous than the general population. A comforting thought, except it wasn’t true. Schizophrenics were paranoid, and paranoid people could be violent. They could lash out unpredictably, ripping, biting-stabbing.

She knew the warning signs. Rapid breathing. Loud talk. Restlessness. Richard was showing all those signs now.

“I’m just making conversation.” She held her voice steady.

“Mom sent you here.” He waved the scissors, quick slashing strokes. “I fucking know it. Mom’s always on my case, telling me to get it together, take my meds, be a good little boy.”

“Mom’s dead, Richard. She’s been dead for five years.”

“Oh…right.” He planted the tips of the scissors on the window sill and twirled them. “Right.”

“I called you a little while ago. I called three times. Why didn’t you pick up?”

“Didn’t know who was calling.”

“The only way to know is to pick up. Or get an answering machine.”

“Answering machines record your conversations. Not just conversations on the phone. All your conversations, with everybody. It’s their way of keeping tabs on people.”

She didn’t ask who they were. “If the phone rings, you need to answer it.”

He took a step toward her. “I’ll answer the phone when I want to. Right now I don’t want to. There’s nothing you can do about it. So just back off .”

“I’m concerned about your welfare, Richard. That’s all.”

“Yeah.” He snorted, like an agitated horse. “Real concerned. You care so much.”

“I do care.” She wanted to reach out to him, but she knew physical contact would be a mistake. “You make it hard sometimes.”

“Blame me. Always me.” He switched the scissors from hand to hand, back and forth.

“Maybe you should put those down.”

“I’m not a kid anymore. It’s not like I’m running with scissors.” He clicked the blades like castanets. “You’re dirty,” he added. “All scuffed up, like an old shoe.”

Cobwebs and dust were all over her. “I was in the cellar. There was damage from the quake.”

“Damage to the seller. What was he selling?”

“The basement . Of our house.”

“Yeah, like I don’t know what a cellar is. Like everything has to be explained .” He set down the scissors on a table. “I’m a doctor, you know. I’m an MD. That’s more than you are.” He’d been halfway through his first-year residency when his life went off course. Medication had only slowed-not halted-his decline. “You can’t even stand the sight of blood. That’s why you quit.”

“It wasn’t blood. It was a cadaver. A dead body.”

“Dead body? Where? In the cellar?”

She looked at him, startled. “Why would you say that?”

He ignored the question. “You found something that belonged to our great-grandfather in the cellar. Damage down there. What kind of damage?”

“Part of a wall fell down. Just some old bricks.”

“Bricks. Bridge. London Bridge.” He sang tunelessly. “ London Bridge is falling down …”

“Why did you ask about a body in the cellar?” It had to have been one of his quirky associative jumps. He said so many crazy things that sometimes he hit on the truth by chance.

“Belonged to our great-grandfather,” he repeated. “He came over from London. Falling down, falling down …”

“Stop that. Answer me. What do you know about him? What made you say what you said?”

“ London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady …!” He fixed her with his stare. “Was it a fair lady in the cellar? Did she fall down?”

“Richard,” she said slowly, “if you know anything about the cellar or our great-grandfather, I want you to tell me. Please.”

“What’ll you give me if I do?”

“Anything, whatever you want.”

“I want the house.”

“You know you can’t live there. You can barely manage this place. Just tell me whatever you know.”

“I know it should have been my house. That’s what I know.”

She decided he had no secret information. He was only free-associating, riffing on her own conversational tacks.

“You know how that worked,” she said. “You got the money, I got the house. You thought it was fair at the time. You didn’t even want the house, remember?”

“Bullshit. Why wouldn’t I want the house? Think I want to live here? Like this? In this shit ? You took everything from me. It all worked out pretty good for you, didn’t it?”

She felt a burning pressure behind her eyes. “I’m not happy about-about how things have worked out.”

“Save it. I know you’re lying. You think I’m stupid, but I have news for you. I’m smarter than you think. I know things you don’t.”

“Richard…”

“I’m an MD.”

“I know you are.”

“I was a better doctor than Dad ever was. Him with his walk-in patients with no insurance, and then he puts a gun in his mouth. Right after I was born. Guess he really didn’t want a boy.” He laughed, an awful sound, empty of amusement.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“Sure it is. Everything’s funny. Because we think we’re always going to be the same person. But then you get older, and your brain…it changes. And suddenly you’re somebody else.”

The pressure on the backs of her eyes burned hotter. It pained her to know that he understood this much about himself. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Maybe you’ll change, too. Like Dad. Like me.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“If you were an MD, you’d know about genetics.”

“I do know about genetics, Richard.”

“Then you know it runs in the family. Like father, like son. Maybe like daughter, too.”

“I’m thirty, Richard. The…change typically starts by the mid-twenties. That’s how it was for Dad. And you.”