by Homes, A. M.
George is in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee. There’s blood on his hands and flecks of something on his face, pieces of the lamp—shards. “No parking on the grass,” he says to the first police officer who arrives. “Please inform your troops.”
“Which one of you is Mr. Silver?” the cop asks. I assume he must be a detective because he is not wearing a uniform.
We both raise our hands, simultaneously: “I am.”
“Let’s see some identification.”
George fumbles as if looking for his, flapping the hospital gown.
“We’re brothers,” I say. “I’m the elder.”
“So—who did what to whom?” He’s got his notebook out.
George sips his coffee.
I say nothing.
“It’s not a complicated question; either way we’ll dust the lamp for prints. Dust,” the detective calls out. “Get a full evidence team.” He coughs. “So—is there anyone else home, anyone else we should be looking for? If it wasn’t one of you that clocked her with the lamp, maybe the person who did it is still in the house, maybe there’s another victim to be found.” He pauses, waiting for someone to say something.
The only sound is the tick-tock of the kitchen clock. I almost lose it when the cuckoo pops out—cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, six times. “Rake the house,” the detective shouts to his men. “Make sure there’s nobody else. Any evidence—bag it. That includes the lamp.”
He turns his attention back to us. “It’s Monday morning, I got out of bed to come here. My wife gives it to me every Monday morning, no questions asked, she likes me to start the week happy, so I’m not exactly feeling fondly towards you.”
“What the fucking fuck are you fucking thinking, you fuck,” George blurts.
Two large cops move to block the kitchen door. Suddenly there is no exit.
“Cuff him,” the detective says.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” George says, “I was talking to my brother.” George looks at me. “And those are my pajamas,” he says. “Now you’ve gone and done it.”
“I’m not going to be able to help you this time,” I say.
“Have I committed a crime?” George asks.
“Hard to know, isn’t it,” one of the cops says, cuffing him.
“Where are you taking him?” I ask.
“Is there a particular place you’d like him to go?”
“He was in the hospital. He must have walked out last night—notice the gown under his clothes?”
“So he eloped?”
I nod.
“And how did he get home?”
“I don’t know.”
“I fucking walked, in the fucking dark. Pussy Licker.”
The ambulance takes Jane, the cops take George, I’m left behind with an officer waiting for the evidence team. I start to go upstairs, the cop stops me: “Crime scene,” he says.
“Clothing,” I say, flapping my pajama legs—actually George’s pajama legs.
He escorts me up to the bedroom, which looks like a tornado hit, the lamp in pieces on the floor, blood, the bed undone. I change out of my brother’s pajamas, and without a word to the wise, I borrow George’s clean clothes, still in the dry cleaner’s plastic bag hanging off the closet door.
“Leave the dirties in the room,” the cop says. “You never know what’ll come into play.”
“You’re right,” I say, and we go back downstairs.
As the cop follows me down, I feel strangely like a suspect. It occurs to me that it would be smart to call George’s lawyer and update him on the turn of events, but I can’t remember his name. I’m also wondering if the cop is somehow watching me, if I should be worried about making fast moves, reaching for anything and so on. Also, how do I get away from him in order to make a private phone call?
“I think I’ll go put some laundry in the dryer.”
“Wait,” the cop says. “That you can do later. Wet clothes stay wet.”
“Okey-dokey.” I sit at the kitchen table and casually pick up the phone and go through the caller ID, thinking the lawyer’s name is there and will ring a bell. Bingo—Rutkowsky.
“Okay if I use the phone?”
“It’s your nickel.”
“Okay if I step outside?”
He nods.
“Did I get you at a bad time?” I ask when Rutkowsky, the lawyer, answers.
“Who is this?”
“Silver, Harry Silver, George Silver’s brother.”
“I’m on my way into court,” the lawyer says.
I’m standing in the front yard, barefoot in the wet grass. “There have been developments.” I pause. “George walked out of the hospital last night, and Jane has been injured, a lamp got her on the head. The police are here, waiting for an evidence team, and…”
“How come you’re there?”
“I was asked to keep Jane company while my brother was in the hospital.”
“Where is Jane?”
“She’s off to the hospital.”
“And George?”
“They’ve taken him as well.”
“Is there the sense that the crime is serious?”
“Yes.”
“When the police come, follow them even if they ask you to leave, you go wherever they go. Don’t allow them to move anything, and if they ask you to touch or move anything, keep your hands in your pockets. They can take photos, they can pick up things with tweezers and put them in baggies.”
“The neighbors are watching out their windows.”
“I’ll meet you at the house at four-thirty; until then, don’t disturb the scene.”
“I’ll leave a key under the fake rock by the front door, in case I’m not back.”
“Where are you going?”
“The hospital.”
“Let me have your cell in case I need you.”
I give him the number and he hangs up. In my head I hear Jane’s voice: “Condoms?”
Yes. And where are they now? Gone, used, finished, dropped in the kitchen trash, loaded with jism.
I go back into the house. “Mind if I make a fresh pot of joe?”
“I won’t stop you,” the cop says. “Was that dog always here?” The cop points to Tessie, who is licking the water from my feet. Her bowl is dry. “That’s Tessie.”
I give the dog fresh water and kibble.
The evidence team suits up on the front lawn, laying out white Tyvek onesies and then climbing into them as if mounting a hazmat operation, complete with booties and latex gloves. “No, really, it’s okay,” I say. “We’re not contagious and the carpet’s already wrecked.” They don’t respond. “Coffee anyone?” I ask, holding up my mug. Usually I don’t drink coffee, but this morning I’m already on my fourth cup; I’ve got my reasons. As directed, I follow them from room to room. “So you use film and digital?”
“Yep,” the photographer says, snapping away.
“That’s really interesting. And how do you know what to photograph?”
“Sir, if you could please stand back.”
Before they leave, the cop takes out his notebook. “A couple of queries before I go. There are some blank spots, holes in the story.”
“Like what?”
“Were you having sex with her when your brother came home?”
“I was sleeping.”
“Have you been having a relationship with your brother’s wife?”
“I am here because my brother has been in the hospital.”
“And your wife?”
“She’s in China. It was my wife’s suggestion that I stay with my brother’s wife.”
“How would you describe your relationship with your brother?”
“Close. I remember when they bought the house. I remember helping them pick things out—the kitchen tiles. After the accident, I comforted Jane.”
The cop slaps his notebook closed. “All right, then, we know where to find you.”
When the cop leaves, I discover Jane’s purse on the
front hall table and go through it, pocketing her cell phone, house keys, and, inexplicably—lipstick. Before I put her lipstick in my pocket, I open it, sweeping “Sweet Fuchsia” across my lips.
From the car, I call Claire in China. “There’s been an accident; Jane has been injured.”
“Should I come home tomorrow?”
In China tomorrow is today, and where we are today is tomorrow there. “Stay where you are,” I say. “It’s too complicated.”
Why was Claire so willing to let me go? Why did she send me into Jane’s arms? Was she testing me? Did she really trust me that much?
“I’m going to the hospital now and will call again when I know more.” A pause. “How’s work?”
“Fine. I’ve been feeling punk, I ate something strange.”
“Maybe a worm?”
“Call me later.”
When I get to the hospital, they tell me Jane is in surgery and George is still in the Emergency Room, shackled to a gurney in the rear.
“You stupid fuck,” he says when I part the curtain.
“What happened to your face?” I point to a row of fresh stitches above his eye.
“Call it a welcome-back present.”
“I fed the dog and stayed until the cops were finished, and then I called your lawyer—he’s coming later.”
“They don’t want me back on account of how I ‘ran away.’ It’s not like anyone told me what the checkout policy was and that I needed some sort of permission to go.”
A hospital housekeeper passes through with a metal mop and bucket.
“Is he contagious?”
“No, just violent; come in,” I say.
A young male doctor wheels in with an enormous lighted magnifying glass. “I am Chin Chow and I am here to pluck your face.” The doctor leans over him, plucking shards from his face. “You’ve got no tits,” George tells the doctor.
“And that is a good thing,” Chin Chow says.
I go to the nurses’ station. “My brother has stitches in his head—they weren’t there when he left the house this morning.”
“I’ll make a note that you’d like the doctor to speak with you.”
I go back to George, his face now a polka-dotted canvas of bloody red spots. “Chow Fun fucking plucked me, trying to get me to confess: ‘Oh, so what bring you here today? You have rough night at home?’ He fucking dug holes in my face with no anesthesia. ‘Stop,’ I said a hundred times. ‘Stop. Stop. Stop.’ ‘Oh, you a big baby, cry, cry, cry. You a big boy now, act like a man.’ That was no doctor, that was an undercover agent, trying to pry a confession out of me.”
“Really? I think he was making conversation. I doubt he knows why you’re here.”
“Yes he does, he said he was going to read all about me in the New York Post.” And with that George starts to cry.
“Aw, come on, don’t start that.”
He sputters a little longer and then, snorting and snuffling, he stops. “Are you going to tell Mom?”
“Your wife is having brain surgery and you’re worried I’m going to tell your mother?”
“Are you?”
“What do you think?”
He doesn’t answer.
“When did you last see Mom?” I ask.
“A few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks?”
“Maybe a month?”
“How many months?”
“I don’t fucking know. Are you telling her?”
“Why would I? Half the time she doesn’t even know who she is. How about this: if she asks about you, I’ll say you were transferred overseas. I’ll send her tea from Fortnum and Mason and let her think you’re still a big macher.”
He wriggles on the gurney. “Scratch my ass, will you? I can’t reach. You’re a pal,” he says, breathing deep with relief. “A pal when you’re not a complete son of a bitch.”
An orderly brings George a lunch tray, and, arms and legs bound, he manages to contort himself sufficiently that with his knees he bounces it off the tray table and onto the floor.
“One per customer,” the lunch lady says, “try again tomorrow.”
“Start an IV on him so he doesn’t get dehydrated,” I hear the nurse say without missing a beat.
“They’re not fucking around,” I tell him, when she pulls back the curtain, needle in hand, with four guys singing backup behind her. “Speaking of lunch, I’m going to the cafeteria.”
“You may not die today,” he says, “but I will unwind you like a spool of thread.”
“Can I bring you anything?” I ask, cutting him off.
“Chocolate-chip cookies,” he says.
I go through the cafeteria line, circling steaming trays of mixed vegetables, stuffed shells, meat loaf, cold sandwiches made to order, pizza, doughnuts, cereal; I go around and at the end my tray is empty. I circle again and get the tomato-rice soup, a bag of Goldfish crackers, and a carton of milk.
When I tear the package open, orange crackers take flight, littering the table and the floor around me. I collect what I can. They are different from what I remember; I’m not sure if it’s the Goldfish in general or the flaw of the hundred-calorie pack—they’re smaller and flatter and now with facial expressions. They float on their sides, looking up at me with one eye and a demented half-smile.
I eat thinking of the “worm” in the Chinese food, of the way the man at the deli near my apartment says “tomato lice.” I eat picturing the pot of soup on my mother’s stove, soup that formed a membranous skin across the top as it cooled, and how she would obliviously serve me that stringy clot, which I always ate imagining that it was really blood.
I eat the soup, pretending it is blood, pretending that I am transfusing myself while Jane is upstairs having a “craniotomy and evacuation”—those are the words they used. I imagine a surgical stainless dust-buster sucking out the porcelain and bone. I imagine her coming out of it all with steel plates like armor and required to wear a football helmet twenty-four hours a day.
Did she even know it was happening? Did she wake up thinking, This isn’t real, this is a terrible dream—and then, when it was over, did she have a pounding headache? Did she think my hair was a mess?
She is in surgery, my spilled seed loose inside her, swimming furiously—as much as we did it with protection, we also did it without. Will anyone discover me swimming there? Do I need a lawyer of my own?
The soup warms me, reminding me that I’ve not eaten since last night. A man with two black eyes passes, lunch tray in hand, and I think of how my father once knocked my brother out, flattened him, for not much of a reason. “Don’t be confused who’s the boss.”
I think of George: the dent in the Sheetrock from his foot “slipping,” the coffee cup inexplicably flying out of his hand and smashing against the wall. I think of a story Jane once told me about heading out for Sunday brunch and George hitting a trash can as he backed out of the driveway and then getting so angry that he went back and forth over the can, rocking the gears from forward to reverse and back again, hurling the children this way and that, stopping only when Ashley threw up. Do outbursts against inanimate objects signal that someday you’re going to kill your wife? Is it really so shocking?
In the hospital men’s room, as I’m washing my hands, I glance in the mirror. The man I see is not so much me as my father. When did he show up? There is no soap; I rub hand sanitizer into my face—it burns. I nearly drown myself in the sink trying to rinse it off.
My face is dripping, my shirt is wet, and the paper-towel dispenser is empty. Waiting to dry, I carve Jane’s name into the cinder-block wall with the car key.
A hospital worker almost catches me, but I head him off with a confrontation: “Why no paper towels?”
“We don’t use them anymore—sustainability.”
“But my face is wet.”
“Try toilet paper.”
I do—and it catches in the stubble of unshaven beard and I look like I’ve been out in a toilet-paper snowsto
rm.
Monday, in the late afternoon, Jane comes out of surgery; they bring her down the hall attached to a huge mechanical ventilator, her head wrapped like a mummy, her eyes black and blue. Her face looks like a meatball. There is a hose coming out from under the blanket, a urine bag at the end of the bed.
I kissed her down there last night. She said no one had ever done that before, and then I kissed her again, deeply. I made out with her down there. I used my tongue—no one will ever know that.
I am telling myself that I did what I was told. Claire told me to stay. Jane wanted me—she pulled me towards her. Why am I being so weak? Why am I looking for someone else to blame? I ask myself, Did you ever think you should stop yourself, but in the moment you couldn’t or didn’t? Now I understand the meaning of “It just happened.” An accident.
The doctor tells me that if Jane survives she will never be the same. “Even in the short time she’s been with us, there has been a decline. She is retreating, folding into herself. We cleaned the wound and drilled holes to accommodate the swelling. The prognosis is poor. Does her family know? The children?”
“No,” I say. “They’re away at boarding school.”
“Let them know,” the doctor says, leaving me.
Do I call the children directly or do I call their schools first? Do I phone their respective headmasters and explain, Their mother is in a coma and their father is in shackles and perhaps you could interrupt study hall and suggest they pack a bag? And do I come right out and tell them how awful it really is—do I interrupt the children in the middle of their day to let them know that life as they know it is over?
I reach the girl first. “Ashley,” I say.
“Is it Tessie?” she asks before I can say more.
“Your parents,” I say stumbling.
“A divorce?” She collapses into tears before I say more, and another girl calmly takes the phone.
“Ashley is not available right now.”
To the boy I say, “Your father has gone insane. Maybe you should come home, or maybe you don’t want to come home, maybe you never want to come home again. I remember when your parents bought the house, I remember picking out things.”