Inhabited

by Charlie Quimby

  “I’m not after money, if that’s what you think. This is…an administrative matter.”

  “You could’ve called first.”

  “I thought you’d say no.”

  “I might have,” she said.

  “See.”

  He was still Isaac, maddening circumlocutions, argumentative, insisting on his peculiar logic. His eyes her shade of blue.

  “You can’t just expect everything to be fine after all that’s happened.” She didn’t mean to lecture but it was how she felt.

  Isaac rubbed his hair back and tilted his head toward the sky.

  “Where are you staying?” she asked. Softer, trying not to provoke.

  “There’s no staying anywhere. I’m camping here and there.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t camp. You’re a grown man, not a Boy Scout.”

  “Mom, it’s not the camping.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Nothing. Everything. I can’t explain. I came for my birth certificate, that’s all.”

  Administrative matter, my foot. She saw the tension in him, one arm pinned rigid against his side, the fingers plucking invisible strings. Her baby, her pride, her failure, her phantom. The stitch in her chest, the knot in her stomach, the crick in her neck. A pregnancy she had carried going on forty years. A wedge, a conundrum, a timebomb, a scapegoat. All those words about to explode from her and out slipped Oh, sweetie.

  She wasn’t ready for him yet.

  I know I have it somewhere, she said, leaving him on the step. Call me tomorrow. Not, wait a second and I’ll be back. She had always been so organized; she had to know right where his birth certificate was. Why did she think she could fool him? He had extensive practice sensing when he wasn’t wanted.

  Joe said, “Your showing up here’s a big deal to her. When you talk to her next time, consider that she’s your mother, not some random custodian of vital records.”

  That was Joe. The deadpan distance, the sincere tone, the after-the-fact advice. He had taken Isaac to breakfast once a week, given him the bike, let him stay in their guest room after Carl booted him for the last time. Even after the kitchen mess, Joe had talked Shelly into serving as Isaac’s payee. In his own way, each brother had offered protection. Joe had played stepfather. Jake had given him a knife.

  “Is there something else going on? You can get a copy of your birth certificate in town, you know.”

  “Sure, if I’ve got some identification. But I don’t.”

  “It can’t be that hard.”

  “It’s not, as long as I’ve got an unexpired fishing license and a gun permit. Or a current pay stub with motor vehicle registration, or a Social Security card and Medicaid card. Oh, there’s other ways if I bring a utility bill and voter registration card plus a booking photo and baptismal record. Or my tax return and a mortgage document plus a certified copy of my ass from my last employer’s copy machine.”

  “Come on.”

  “Look it up. Colorado has a million ways to validate your identity—and I have like zero point five.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Joe asked.

  “Nothing. Write the governor. Give me a ride back to town.”

  “Look, I know you’re frustrated. But don’t blow it with her.”

  “I always manage to piss people off, don’t I?”

  Joe cinched the Raleigh onto the Subaru’s bike rack and checked it over as if they were about to drive across the country.

  “You haven’t pissed us off, Isaac—you’ve worn us down.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Pissed off is an emotional response. People don’t stay pissed. Worn down is a long process. It’s hard to repair something once it’s been eroded away.”

  Each filing cabinet drawer opened with a particular sound. Those fully loaded with invoices or tax records produced a rumble, while lighter drawers clacked on the rollers and whooshed when closed. To Marian’s ear, the drawer labeled FAMILY, stuffed with non-uniform envelopes, construction paper, track ribbons, report cards and class pictures, rattled in the middle register. Its five tabs marked a series of subordinate files and accordion folders organized by birth order. Isaac’s section bulged deepest in the drawer. AWARDS, EDUCATION and PICTURES sang of promise while FINANCE, LEGAL and the overflowing MEDICAL teemed with complication and heartbreak. A single folder, MAIL, recorded his years since he last left the house. Mail had stopped coming for him and it was empty. Only the thin Birth folder seemed unburdened with connotation. It verified a male child, Isaac David, had been delivered, named, baptized and immunized. She set aside the birth certificate. Such a simple and matter-of-fact record, a boarding pass for a flight she thought had crashed. Perhaps it only had yet to land.

  There were no files labeled UNEASY TRUCES, FALSE STARTS or DISASTERS. The documentation for those categories was largely anecdotal and unforgettable. The last qualifying disaster began with Carl’s funeral, when she took Isaac out to buy a proper outfit. The helpful saleslady held up shirt and tie combinations for his consideration. But when Isaac tried to feel the fabric of one, she snatched it away. It was just a reflex but it made Marian mad, too, so she didn’t blame her son for blowing up at the lady. He survived the mass and when he stepped up to the grave she had a fleeting hope that Carl’s death might finally be their chance to reconcile. But grunting with the effort, Isaac flung down clots of earth until they pried the shovel from his hands.

  Likewise, there were few records of her efforts at truce, as when she drove past the soup kitchen hoping to catch a glimpse of him. She scanned the Blotter column daily in case his name should appear. On the freeway once, he materialized above her on an overpass and she couldn’t even slow the car before he vanished. She wrote his name in the memo line of her monthly checks to Catholic Outreach and the Salvation Army, as if the aid would somehow find its way to him. She prayed novenas to Saint Jude over the postcards she stamped Return to Sender. Rosaries and votive offerings sent requests for his safety and peace of mind. She avoided conversations about her friends’ children and did not burden them with her loss. She found no succor in the NAMI and Al-Anon meetings, where strangers told stories of their pain. She read Courage to Change and did not change.

  For years she had believed that a cure for his illness would bring Isaac back whole. Then her stroke and slow transition out of numbness enlightened her. Her recovery was a stumbling forward, not a repossession. The absent, avoidant Isaac probably was himself—as she was herself now. Which was to say, the mother and son she remembered would never reunite except as ghosts wander-wafting through the rooms of this accursed house.

  The kitchen. This was where she first suspected. Isaac had left for college from the house where he was raised. When returned to the new house, he seemed different but of course college was supposed to change people. He announced a plan to complete his studies online for the master’s degree he would need to land a library job. Working at Safeway as a night stocker would cover his tuition and allow him to pay a modest rent to stay in their lower level. He seemed on a good path, and they agreed on a temporary arrangement that would help advance him to self-sufficiency, which seemed to be working until early one morning she found the kitchen in disarray. All the food had been removed from the refrigerator, cupboards and pantry. Dishes and glassware were stacked on the counters. Isaac claimed the entire kitchen had tilted out of balance when he emptied a box of Raisin Bran and he realized how much its equilibrium depended upon him. It had been the same way at school.

  Nothing would stay where it belonged, he said. Stacks of books and information someone else had ordered. The college was saving money by making me its library.

  He showed her a sheaf of medical records. Before coming home, he had checked himself into a hospital. He was taking medication and attending counseling sessions. He said he was getting better and he was an adult, so he would handle it.

  He had always been a good worker when he was well. But one day he was transf
erred to Safeway’s produce department after becoming distressed by the new planogram for the canned vegetables. The store manager stopped seeking her out when she shopped. The checkers who’d always mentioned Isaac when he was away in college kept their chat general. They must have known he was losing it. Why didn’t she?

  The guest room. When Carl pried open the bedroom door, the moist exhalation of mold, urine, armpit and root cellar had revolted them both. Isaac was curled in his sheets with a pillow over his head. Her first frantic thought was that he had died. Then she saw the skulls of cantaloupe. Liquefying asparagus. Blackened avocadoes and bananas. Blue lemons. Flaccid, disgusting cucumbers.

  He answered with nonsense. His autonomic nervous system was paralyzed, so he had to stay awake to breathe. The Y2K Bug was not a programming error; it was part of the Pope’s plan to prevent aliens from attacking in 2001. He flung a jar of pennies through the television screen to bring the earth forty days of peace.

  While he was away, they fumigated the room, sent the mattress to the landfill and replaced the carpet. After he was discharged, they took him back. Where else could he go?

  The office. She sat at Carl’s desk, a polished hunk of mahogany made for signifying rank, not performing work. Carl had coveted this symbol of his rise from unplugging toilets but his plumber’s temperament had ruled the desk too posh for the company offices. The scars on the surface had been filled in and the repair was apparent now only because she had seen where Isaac stood as he punched holes in the ceiling with a golf club.

  She had heard a thudding deep in the house, which she first attributed to shoes tumbling in the washing machine. Then a crash and an arpeggio of glass. More thumps and thrashes. She isolated the racket and yanked open the office door. The blinds had been ripped down from a broken window and the walls had holes from his fists, the golf club and various items of Carl’s Isaac had turned into projectiles. Drawers were upended on the floor. Carl’s Rocky Mountain sheep was missing a horn. The other trophies had been pitched outdoors.

  Get down this instant! Her command snapped his head around and he locked into her gaze with reddened eyes. His shoulders heaved from exertion and rage. He swung the golf club across the desk, spraying a burst of shattered glass and Jolly Ranchers.

  Wh-y-y-y! One long word the way a thunderclap is one word. The way a gunshot is one word. The way goodbye is one word.

  The shed. Isaac’s abrupt departure left behind an array of meticulously organized junk—matchbooks from businesses in cities he’d never visited, their locations keyed to maps; a similar collection of promotional pens and mechanical pencils; a map with coins glued to it, accompanied by a spreadsheet that noted the date, location and heads-tails orientation of each discovery, tallied by month; swizzle-stick menageries of lobsters and monkeys, tropical fruits and Polynesian artifacts; flattened pasta cartons with cellophane windows; bus, train and airline schedules; many books, pamphlets and reams of files she couldn’t bear to examine. Carl was ready to burn it all but Marian prevailed. They moved everything into the small storage shed that had been Carl’s first workshop. Once they established contact with Isaac, she reasoned, they could arrange a deadline for him to clear it out.

  In retrospect, they should have changed all the locks. Their motorhome disappeared from the pole barn while they were at mass. Carl launched a furious search of boat ramps, campgrounds and shopping center parking lots, certain he would find Isaac occupying the Winnebago somewhere in the valley. It surfaced finally in a California impoundment lot, encumbered by tickets, towing and storage fees, its interior infested and the sewage tank overflowing. Isaac was in a shelter, living under a restraining order that kept him away from the Reagan Presidential Library. Carl pressed for felony theft charges, which achieved the goal of bringing Isaac back to Colorado. The court ordered Isaac into another mental health program. Carl sent his men to haul the shed’s contents to the landfill. Empty nesters at last.

  The throne room, Carl had called it, reserved for the king, leaving the master bathroom for her. This was the most-scrubbed room in the house.

  It was a given that Carl would not go out gently, but she had not imagined the final scene: her husband roaring as she groped her way out of a dream to shut off the deep-throated alarm clock. By the time she found him, he was silent on the floor, his boxers around his ankles. She pounded her bony fists against his chest before thinking to do compressions. The doctors later set her straight. If Carl’s heart had restarted, he still would have gone under like a ship running its engines full speed ahead with a hole blasted in its hull. There was nothing you could have done, they said, as if their verdict were a comfort instead of the story of her life.

  She lit a Parliament, as she did when she needed mental space. If she and Isaac had any future, it was shrinking fast. This cabinet mirror had always shown her a reflection especially timeworn and harsh, not the face in her head or the one she wore in other rooms; nevertheless, a prediction she had come to accept, the way of all flesh. Perhaps it was the effect of the glass and the lighting, and anyone who stepped in here saw their future selves and was appalled.

  She had always read too much into things, seen what wasn’t there. What was hope, if not that?

  Empty hearts fill rooms to the fullest.

  —“Home” with Meg Mogrin, Grand Junction Style

  Meg had offered Pandora a room without considering how much of her mental and emotional space the girl would occupy. At various moments, she felt like a host, an aunt or a mother. Was Pandora allowed the run of the house? Did she get her own key? Were meals included? Were housekeeping duties reasonable to expect or was she a guest? Meg wouldn’t impose a curfew, but what if Pandora brought someone home? And flip-flops were no way to go through life. Did she appreciate how Cody had hobbled her? Would it be too overbearing to buy her some sneakers?

  Jeez, why don’t you just ask her?

  Whether she wants shoes?

  About whether she wants you to fix her life. How did you get so angsty about what other people do?

  How do you think?

  Oh, it’s my fault!

  Let’s just call it cause and effect. I’m trying to avert disaster.

  As if it’s worked so far. Avert your own disasters.

  If you’d only listened.

  Who wants their big sister’s advice? I wanted your approval!

  I thought I’d have time for that later.

  Don’t we all.

  Pandora’s real. I can actually help her. Ghosts are only thoughts.

  Oh, ghosts’re real, too. We just seem like thoughts because we can pass through walls.

  To Meg’s surprise, Pandora agreed to shop on Main Street instead of the mall. With little fuss, she picked out a pair of New Balance—purple and on sale. Did she know they were designed for running?

  “Duh. Do you think I’m too fat to run?” She said it with a laugh and the slight flick of an edge. “I don’t think you’re too old.”

  Pandora wasn’t fat. She was just…well, she defied expectations. Meg lifted another sample from the sale table. The running shoes seemed lighter these days, more advanced somehow. Like the girls. Meg was supposed to do yoga now. It was more spiritual and gauged for diminished expectations, more befitting a woman in her forties who still wanted to look good. Who could show up on time and stay on her mat and follow the leader. Fuck yoga.

  Yes, the salesman said, he thought they had a pair in a seven-and-a-half.

  Outside the store a boy sat on a brick planter tuning a mandolin. The girl beside him was blond, waifish and attractive in a still-child-like way. Her long sleeves hung past her knuckles and her thumbs protruded through holes cut in the cuffs. The boy looked older, with a dark fringe of beard and broad shoulders, a watch cap rolled onto his head. A square of cardboard propped in the open instrument case said: STARVING ARTIST’S. ANYTHING HELPS.

  Pandora dropped in a few coins. Meg must have stared into the case too long because Pandora said, “I’ll pay you back as
soon as I get a job.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t what I was thinking.”

  It was that vagrant apostrophe. Plus the illusion that starvation ennobled artistry—or vice versa. Pandora had been taken in and the boy hadn’t even started to play. Meg spun down the sidewalk. Behind her, one string plucked over and over as the note rose in search of its twin tone.

  For lunch, Meg chose the Italian bistro, where the music burbled at low decibels and there was no risk of loud wait-staff renditions of “Happy Birthday.”

  Pandora scanned the options. “What’s a panini?”

  “A pressed toast sandwich.”

  “Oh, like with a George Foreman grill. And capicollo?”

  “Pork, dry cured and sliced very thin, sort of like a really lean bacon.”

  “Cooked?”

  “I don’t think so,” Meg said.

  “Well, I guess they wouldn’t serve it if it could kill you.”

  Pandora talked about older friends in Las Vegas who were playing in a show band in one of the minor casinos. She was thinking about waitressing there until they had an opening for a backup singer. Meg shuddered. What were the chances Pandora would end up working in one of the other Vegas industries?

  “The scholarship offer stands. You can still go to school. In a year everything will look different. Cody’ll be history and maybe your parents will have eased up.”

  Pandora shook her head so vigorously her shoulders joined in. “You know what my father said when I left? The difference between a happy dog and a miserable dog is obedience. He and Cody were basically telling me the same thing—to just roll over. How did you get past all that? You’re doing great on your own.”

  “I was lucky. My father wasn’t that way. My husband wasn’t either but he still became my ex. You’re right not to let other people define you in the name of love or happiness—or success, for that matter.”

  Pandora’s attention dropped to the cornichon on her plate. “Is that a pickle or is it just decoration?”