Kathleen Alcott: Infinite Home

Mostly, he thought of Helena, and sometimes his neural pathways brought her so close — her left index finger crooked from a childhood Ping-Pong accident; her long-limbed way of occupying and redefining physical space; the face she offered upon waking, both confused and grateful — that he felt like a magician.

EDITH AND DECLAN HAD LIVED a life together. She needed to remember this, and she worried she could no longer do so effectively. At times, she explored the possibility that all their possessions, all this carbon proof, might have been placed strategically throughout her living space as some elaborate ruse. Of course this was not, could not, be true, but her brain stumbled blithely over the sentiment that this would be an easier truth to accept. Where was he, then? Why hadn’t they spoken? What had he forgotten to tell her?

At the funeral, dressed in an old black suit and pearls, she had kissed everyone’s cheek, had told the story of their first storm in the house. How they had run around placing pots under every leak, and how that evening they had sat on the floor with a blanket and felt like they’d been given, instead of a nuisance, a melody. How that had been what he’d given her all their fifty-six years together, songs where they weren’t expected. She had stood at that carnation-wreathed podium and looked out at the rest of her life blankly: there was a question, surely, but couldn’t someone please repeat it?

In the first months without him, Edith had marveled at how many different types of quiet there could be. What had been so different about the levels of noise with him sitting in the chair, reading for hours in his drugstore glasses? Why did every shower, now, feel like such an exercise in fallacy, preparation for an event never coming, though this had always been a lone ritual?

She had been a stunning woman, a pronounced presence; Declan had been there to remind her of this, and now he was gone. She needed it to be communicated permanently in some way, so she could take full ownership of this new body, covered in layers of sweaters, these feet in their padded shoes.

“Aging gracefully” was a model much talked about, though Edith doubted anyone ever felt elegant or nimble amid the nearly inescapable fatigue, the persistent mutations of once-simple tasks and the shame thereafter. When the time came to collate all the rent checks and utility bills, she put the task off for hours, then days, dreading what an ordeal adding and dividing had become, the way she would sometimes face off with a column of numbers and realize they meant as much to her as someone else’s mementos. She would wipe her face and begin again, reading each figure out loud, entreating it to stay in the room.

THE KID ALWAYS SAID HELLO. Never just a cursory nod. Had insisted on learning Edward’s name when he moved in, not to mention his favorite flower and fruit. “Is there a nickname you like?” Paulie had asked. He preferred those ending in y . “Eddy?” he suggested. Edward’s head that day had been thick and jumbled: he couldn’t summon the energy to reject the suggestion, and from then on it was always “Hiya, Eddy!”

For a while the kid was practically Edward’s least favorite thing about living, and he timed his entrances and exits to avoid him. But even if he made his ascent during the kid’s violent assault on his stand-up Casio, Paulie would hear him and be sure to pop his head out: “Hello, my friend! What does the weather say today?” Edward made eye contact when guilt tugged at him enough — who was he to crush such benevolence, he wondered — but mostly kept the shade of his hat on his face, and the line of his sight on the unclean carpet. He knew from his own nocturnal schedule that Paulie also kept late hours, though for the kid they were celebratory, active, while Edward just prayed for sleep. Music always: singing, sometimes words but just as often not, sounds like a gang of monkeys bickering. Edward stopped crossing the hall to ask that Paulie turn himself down in order to avoid his neighbor’s repeated reflection that Edward looked sad. He bought noise-canceling headphones and played recordings of rainstorms across the world. Austin. Bangkok. The Amazon. Paulie was crazy for offering people tea; Edward had overheard him selling it to the other tenants. Chamomile Lemon English Breakfast Green Ginger! Always in the same order. The kid’s brain was broken, but Edward couldn’t of course recommend the health of his own. Paulie, it was clear, chased and cornered happiness daily.

Edward was asleep when it happened, and the cry came into his dreams as the voice of his brother. His unconscious re-created the familiar childhood scene of Zachary asleep and whimpering in the next room, victim to the awful stories their parents fed them, nightmaring of kidnapping plots and elaborate suicides. (He, too, had called him Eddy.) Edward, then, had felt useful and important when he went to him, as well-appointed and comforting as a chair by an open window. He would scoop up Zachary, who was always a little too thin, and speak with measured softness about the silly inventions of our brains while we sleep, then get right up to his ear and begin with the noises. The finest impressions of farts anyone in their neighborhood had ever heard, high trilly toots and trembling wet ones, plus a bassoon-like moan for good measure. It had never failed. In his dream Edward was brilliant and electric as he cradled his brother, who giggled and shook and held his little penis to keep from peeing.

Edward, turning against his flannel sheets, couldn’t understand why the sounds continued, until finally the banging on his flimsy door wrestled him awake.

When he opened the door, Paulie was standing there gushing red, and it took a moment in the sudden and grainy light of the hallway to identify the source. The kid’s hand was bleeding, saturating the fold of shirt he’d hid it in.

“Well for fuck all,” said Edward. “Get in here already.” Between cries and yelps he gathered that Paulie had somehow managed to drop his keyboard on his foot, which had set off a chain of events including a brush with the sharp edge of the kitchen counter, the swing of a cabinet door, and a cascade of glass. His face was contorting repeatedly, as though on a loop.

“I knew you were up!” Paulie spouted while Edward led him to the bathroom, and Edward understood the bumbled apology in the statement. He sat the kid on the toilet and calmly opened drawers, surprised at how easily he could assume the role of caretaker. Then he kneeled before Paulie and got his closest look yet at the upturned eyes, the undersized teeth, the signs of aging present on his forehead and around his mouth and in the sag of his ears: the kid was much older than Edward had assumed, maybe halfway into his thirties. Edward asked him to take deep breaths then showed him how — in for one, two, three, four, five, then out — while he examined the wound, applied antiseptic, wrapped gauze around it. Afterward, Paulie remained shocked by the sight of his blood’s great escape, and Edward took the initiative.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s watch some bad TV.”

In the living room, Paulie revived and quickly grew curious as he moved from the couch to the stack of DVDs beneath the television. Edward held his breath while Paulie destroyed the alphabetization, formed leaning piles on the floor, ran his hands over every cover, mouthing titles with a blank face. Edward let his attention drift from Paulie back to the screen: a bus threatened by a ticking bomb couldn’t stop, and a brunette actress he’d once insulted in a bar grew progressively more anxious.