I had heard someone say once that desire is one half curiosity. Now I was all curiosity.
* * *
Next evening, Mommy was lying on the couch, the TV droning, her eyelids drooping. She was always tired from her job, always fell asleep right after dinner.
It was snowing again. I could hear the grinding of the plow on the road. They said this was the most severe winter in years. It seemed like there was no oxygen in the house and I couldn’t breathe, I wanted to get out, wanted the sensation of the cold air on my face.
The doorbell sounded and I got up to answer it. Dean was there standing on the threshold.
“I gotta talk to you!” he said. I felt my heart rise. I stepped aside and let him in and as he brushed past me, the cold from his leather jacket ruffled my skin.
Mommy, on the couch, opened her eyes, and he nodded toward her. “Mrs. Saluggio.”
She nodded back, her expression grave, her dark eyes watchful. “Hello, Dean. Close that door, Mellie. It’s freezing.” She was accepting him in some way. She guessed—with that sixth sense of hers—that we weren’t having sex.
Dean glanced toward the kitchen. “Can we talk in there?”
I led the way. We stood there, the humming of the big refrigerator filling the room. Most beautiful thing in the house, the refrigerator. Special-order, powder blue, ice maker and water spout, everything you needed, too big for the two of us really, but she liked the vertical freezer because it held more and you could buy food on sale and keep it.
He glanced toward my mother in the living room, and moved closer to me, lowering his voice. “Listen,” he said, “I need a place to stay.”
“What happened?”
“Terry knows about us. She’s freaked. She threw me out.”
My heart raced. “I’ll ask her. Wait.”
I ran from him to the living room, knelt down on my knees at the couch in front of her. “Can Dean stay here tonight?” I asked. I saw her look doubtful, her lips part to say no. “Please,” I begged. “Please—please—please! He’s got nowhere to go. He got kicked out of where he was staying.” Drowning out any chance for her to say no. “He’ll be homeless!” I cried.
She scrutinized me with those dark brown eyes, knowing everything, careful. Knew we weren’t sleeping together. Maybe some part of her had chosen him for me because she thought he was safe. I had a fantasy—we would both be her kids, we would live here together, the two of us, under her protection.
At last she said, “Well, a few nights, I guess. Get the extra comforter out of the upstairs hall closet, and a pillow.”
She switched off the TV and climbed the stairs to bed, and I carried the pillow and comforter down to him. And as I held it out to him, I envied this cloth that would touch his skin. Anything that would touch him, I wanted to be.
We were alone now, the house dark except for the light from the single lamp. I wondered, would he change into his pajamas?
He bent down, unzipped his backpack, removed a black ditty bag from it, placed it on the coffee table. His movements were tentative, careful, as if he were worried he was taking up too much space.
Then he stood still in the middle of the room. I realized he wanted me to leave.
“Let me cover you,” I said. I wanted to do that, make him like my child. If you loved someone, he was many different things to you. Lover. Father. Child. All those things. I wanted to cradle his head, to surround him completely, cover him with my body.
But he slid under the covers fully dressed. I tucked the comforter around his body. He reached up as if to kiss my forehead, but at the same moment I moved suddenly toward him, and caught him on the lips with a kiss. He seemed surprised.
Upstairs, in my own bed, I lay for hours thinking of him down there on the couch, imagined him breathing. And his whole being seemed to hang in the air of the house.
I couldn’t sleep. At 2 A.M., I tiptoed downstairs again. She had kept the light on the stairs burning. As if to sanitize the place, a warning to us to keep away from one another.
In the living room, I could see the mound of his body on the couch under the comforter. He lay still, as if he were sleeping. I stepped closer. He was on his stomach, his arm pushed up under the pillow. I could see his face in the light from the stairs, his eyelashes resting on his full, round cheek. He was still wearing his day clothes, his flannel shirts.
I could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, clicking on and off. Had he heard me come down the stairs? Was he just pretending to be asleep? I touched him on the shoulder, he turned over suddenly on his back. I thought for a moment he was irritated at being touched because I had startled him out of some deep sleep of exhaustion.
In the semidarkness, he opened his eyes. He looked panicked, as if he didn’t recognize me. “Melanie,” he said, and he closed his eyes again.
“I can’t sleep,” I said. “I came down to get some juice.”
“Hi,” he murmured, eyes still closed, as if he hadn’t understood me. As if he were not fully awake, and was pulled back into sleep.
The house was so cold. She always kept the heat down at night to save on fuel. I clutched my arms around my chest and shivered. Hoping he’d realize I was cold, that he’d sense I was naked under my nightgown, that he’d invite me in under the covers. I sat down on the edge of the couch, perching my hip there, but he didn’t move his body aside to make room for me.
“I’m cold,” I said. “Can I get inside with you?”
Eyes closed, as if concentrating on sleep, he reached his hand up, touched my hair. “Can’t,” he said. “She’ll throw me out. Then I’m fucked.”
I could feel the warmth emanating from the opening between his body and the comforter, could feel myself drawn to the warmth there as if he were a magnet, as if I were an animal who belonged there in his heat. “Please,” I said.
He opened his eyes now, and I could see them wide and gleaming. “We can’t,” he said. “She kicks me out, I got nowhere else to go.”
CHAPTER 17
MELANIE
For the next few days, Dean and I rode around in his truck while my mom was at work at the travel agency. We were both supposed to be looking for jobs. Sometimes we’d stop in at a store and ask if they were looking for someone and they’d always say nothing right at this moment, or the manager was out and come back tomorrow, or try again in another week.
We drove around in the yellow winter light, up and down between the rows of cars in the parking lot of the mall. One afternoon we went to the half-price matinee to see True Lies. The theater was empty, only a couple of men there, probably off-shift. I couldn’t concentrate on the movie because of Dean next to me, I would never remember it. Just noise up on the screen, and shapes moving, and him next to me, watching intently. I took Dean’s hand in mine. Wished we were alone, wished he’d take me somewhere so we could be alone.
When the movie was over, we walked out across the parking lot to his truck. A cold, wet wind swept across the asphalt. The traffic on Route 7 was thick, headlights on though it was only 5 P.M. This was what passed for rush hour in Sparta, the pulse of excitement in the air, the day’s work done, everyone pointed homeward. Seemed as if only Dean and I had not worked today.
We came to his truck, were standing on either side, about to open the doors, when I looked up and saw Brian’s blue Camaro turn in to the mall, Brian and Jimmy in front.
I knew Brian had been cruising around, looking for me. I thought sometimes that Brian spent whole days at a time driving around, hoping to spot me somewhere in town. He’d probably gone to my house and discovered it empty. Somehow, Brian always knew my schedule. I hardly paid any attention to him anymore, except for this awareness I had that he always seemed to be nearby. Sometimes he’d show up at a place just seconds after I arrived, as if he had mysteriously learned in advance where I’d be, before I even knew about it myself.
Brian had spotted us, and he drove diagonally across the lane toward me. He stopped his car abruptly
next to Dean’s truck, rolled the driver’s side window down.
I saw this look of raw pain shoot across his face. He looked from Dean to me, and back again, and his mouth opened, as if he were about to say something. For a moment, his expression was like the face on that gargoyle above the door of the old Opera House on Washington Street, the corners of the mouth turned down in tragedy. It was as if someone had struck him. And for a second, I felt guilty and I wanted to touch his shoulder and comfort him.
“Melanie,” he said. His voice seemed to choke up. He hadn’t known for sure, but now he knew.
Then that cold smile came on his face again, like he cared about nothing.
Dean stared at Brian, a little smile on his face. “Hey Brian,” he said, taunting him.
“Dean,” Brian murmured.
We waited, very still. I was uncomfortable, I turned toward the truck. “Well,” I said, “see you, Brian.”
And then Dean and I climbed in and drove off, and Dean waved over his shoulder at Brian smiling, smiling in his little triumph, but Brian and Jimmy just sat there, looking after us and they didn’t wave back.
A few nights later, when Dean and I came into the Wooden Nickel, Brian and Jimmy were there already sitting at a table in the big room. Chrissie Peck was at the bar reading her book and writing in a notebook. As we walked into the bar, I sensed that Brian was aware of us, though he didn’t look up.
Dean and I sat in silence for a half hour or so, just listening to the music on the jukebox. Sometimes I was afraid to speak for fear I would sound like a fool. I loved Dean, and I was afraid of him.
Then suddenly Dean stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where you going?”
He didn’t answer and left the bar.
After fifteen minutes, he returned and sat down again beside me, and we stayed sitting there, side by side, saying nothing.
At 2 A.M., Carl said he was closing up, and we went outside. Across the lot, Brian and Jimmy were getting into Brian’s car, when suddenly there was a commotion inside. I saw Brian ducking up and down in the front seat, his arms up, shielding his face like he was being divebombed by something.
Next to me, Dean started laughing. Pretty soon, he was bent over and hysterical. “What is it?” I cried.
I could see Brian panicked in the front of the car. Jimmy opened the front of the Camaro and started swiping at something, trying to bat whatever it was away.
From where I stood I could just make out this little yellow thing whirring around inside Brian’s car. “What happened?” I asked.
“It’s a canary!” Dean said. “A baby canary! I got it at Petland. I got his car door open and I put it there.” And then he started laughing again, laughing so hard at the spectacle of Brian and Jimmy frantically trying to get the little bird out of their car that he had to hold on to the side of the truck for support.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I said.
“Scared of a little bird!” Dean spluttered. Indeed, you could see Brian was terrified of this tiny alien thing flitting about inside his car, beating its little body frantically against the windshield.
People had paused in the parking lot on their way out of the bar to watch the crazy scene. “Oh Dean, why’d you do that?” I said. “You’ll just make him crazy!”
But Dean wasn’t listening to me. He was transfixed. “Look at him! Freaked out of his mind over a little bird!”
I could see it flapping crazily around the interior, bumping into the glass blindly, completely disoriented in its terror. “Oh God!” I cried. “It’s gonna die!” I ran toward Brian’s car as if to rescue it.
Brian was backing out of the car, arms raised in front of his eyes, and the little speck of yellow came whirring out after him, then flew up into a pine tree.
“How could you, Dean!” I cried. “It’s gonna freeze to death.”
Dean ran over, stood at the foot of the tree. “Here, little little little bird. Here . . .”
Brian was brushing himself off and glaring at Dean. “Fuck,” Brian said. “Fuck . . .”
“Here bird . . . Here bird . . .” Dean cooed.
Brian had recovered himself a little now and he walked over to Dean. “Fuckin’ asshole,” Brian said, so Dean could hear. But Dean just smirked. Then Brian climbed back into his car and just sat there darkly, panting and humiliated.
People had begun to drift away. After a few more minutes, Dean gave up trying to get the bird down from the tree and we drove home, leaving Brian sitting in his car with the door open, his legs out, and Jimmy standing over him protectively.
* * *
At home, Dean ingratiated himself with my mom. We’d cook dinner together for her when she came home from work, to show her how much easier it was to have Dean staying with us, how I was being good because she was letting him stay. Dean would make himself useful, he would clear the table, shovel the newly fallen snow from the walkway in the morning. When her car wouldn’t start one day, he tried to get it going, as if he knew how to fix cars. He looked inside the hood and fiddled around, but no luck. He couldn’t find the problem, and Mr. Lyon had to come over from next door and help us. Mr. Lyon said the battery was cold, and he jump-started the engine and had it going in a moment.
After dinner, Dean played hearts with her at the dining table, popping Skittles, his can of Mountain Dew at his elbow, while I lay on the couch watching TV, listening to the hum of their conversation and the sound of their cards slapping on the tabletop.
He showed her how to do magic tricks, though she didn’t really want to learn but was just humoring him, like she would a child. “See, what you do, when you’re talking to the other person, you touch the card just like this and you say, ‘You could have taken a card from here, looked at it, and replaced it here. . . .’ But really, when you’re handling the card, you let the card hang over the pile, like that. And you press your thumbnail on the edge, see—just enough to make a tiny cut. . . .” And she would try it and laugh. He was just making her love him too, pulling her in, I thought.
On Sunday, Dean went to church with us. The People’s Mission Chapel was in a small red brick building that didn’t even look like a church from the outside, and today Reverend Bill, with his round body, his hair flat on his forehead, was giving a sermon on the subject of “Until.” “We must learn to live until. . . .” Reverend Bill said.
Dean looked so beautiful standing there between us, his soft, wispy hair damp from his shower, his almond eyes, his full, red lips, his face soft from his night’s rest and glowing with health.
“Until we lose that ten pounds!” Reverend Bill was saying. “Until we pay off that mortgage. Until five o’clock comes and we can walk away from that job we hate. . . .” I wondered how many more “untils” Reverend Bill would say. “Until the Lord Jesus comes!” he cried at last.
In the pew behind us, someone’s stomach rumbled loudly and Dean stole a glance at me and smiled, and suddenly in the middle of the service we were both giggling out of control like third graders.
That night, as I lay in bed, I heard Mommy enter the room. I felt her standing over me in the darkness. As if she were waiting for me to say something. “I like Dean,” she said, finally. “I feel like he’s part of the family . . . as if he were my other child.”
I could just make out her form above me. I saw her shake her head, as if she had surprised herself, and now she was mocking her own love.
He had us both in his power now, I thought. The power of not doing. The power of holding himself back, of being mysterious, always keeping you wanting to know more, to hold him until you learned it all.
* * *
In the mornings, Dean and I would sleep late. She would leave early for work, and Dean would be asleep on the couch downstairs, and I’d be upstairs in my own bed. There was a world of work out there, people going to their jobs in the daylight, while he and I slept in the close, still air of the house, sleeping, sleeping, because there was nothing else to do. Someti
mes I wouldn’t get up for hours, until I had a headache from oversleeping and I was almost sick with it and forced to get up.
He had been with us about a week, it was nine o’clock in the morning, I was still in bed, when I heard the doorbell ringing downstairs. It was a harsh, rude sound, penetrating the silence of the house.
I climbed out of bed, pulled on my bathrobe, and stumbled down the stairs. Through the glass pane in the front door, I saw two policemen, a man and a woman, standing on the front steps. I unlocked the door. A blast of cold air hit me in the face.
“I’m Officer Jubey,” the man said. He was skinny, with buck teeth and a big Adam’s apple and hardly any chin.
He nodded over his shoulder at the woman cop standing behind him. “Officer Payette. Sparta Police.” The woman cop was short and squat, with bright orange hair, and a little pug nose all red in the cold and her policeman’s pants tight on her wide hips.
“We’re looking for a Dean Lily,” the man said. “He around here anywhere?”
Instinctively, I blocked the door, protecting Dean. I saw the cop swallow hard, his Adam’s apple traveling all the way down his throat, his eyelids fluttering in the cold. I saw the woman cop raise her hand to her hip and rest it on the holster of her gun.
“We got a complaint here about him stealing from a Terry Kluge,” Officer Jubey said.
Dean had come up behind me. He stood on the threshold in his socks, his face sleepy. “Whassup?”
The cop stared at him. Hesitated. “You Dean Lily?”
“Yeah?”
For a moment, he just stared, as if trying to figure out what Dean was. Then, momentarily, he seemed to recover himself. “There’s Terry Kluge says you been writing checks on her account?”
The cop said, “She got her checks back from the bank and she says you stole her checkbook and her ID?”
He waited for an answer. “You steal Terry’s checks, Dean?” He was calling Dean and Terry by their first names, as if he knew them both.
Dean was still groggy from sleep. “Whah?” Dean said.
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