The Mentor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  Frustrated and annoyed with the way the story was proceeding, he turned back to where he left off.

  When I woke up again, a familiar face sat in the chair across from my bed. Professor Lansing, looking genuinely worried. I wasn’t strapped in anymore.

  “I told them that wasn’t necessary,” the professor said, indicating my wrists.

  I sat up, my head heavy like a medicine ball.

  “I can’t be here.”

  I tried to get out of bed, my legs buckling under me. I collapsed to the floor that was filled with bugs and grime.

  The professor held out a hand and helped me up.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said, tugging at his collar. “I left her … it’s been days.”

  “Sssshhh,” he said, with his finger over his lips. “I’ve signed your release. I told them you were having a hard time in school and with … what happened to Mia … it’s was only natural you might snap.”

  Hearing her name made me weep, deep sobs that felt like they’d been buried for years.

  “How many days have I been here?” I asked, praying that it hadn’t been long enough for her to die.

  He held up two fingers. “Two nights.”

  I counted how long it had been since I’d seen her eat. Four days. She had enough food and drink within reach to survive, but what if she was serious about killing herself? I just wanted to scare her. Show her how devoted I was. Spend time alone with her heart—not make it stop.

  “I need to go,” I said, taking another step. I crashed right to floor again.

  “No, you need another day of rest before they’ll let you go. You are pumped full of drugs.”

  “But then what if she dies…?” I began, debating whether to tell him what I’d done. This man I looked up to, who’d never see me in the same light again. I couldn’t. She had enough food. She wouldn’t let herself starve. No human could do that to themselves.

  “She’s already gone,” he said, guiding me back to the bed.

  “She’s gone?”

  “At least for now. You being here one more day won’t help bring her back if she’s … run away. You need to focus on healing yourself.”

  “Thank you for helping me, Professor Lansing,” I said, eating my tears.

  “I hope I’m not wrong,” he said.

  “Wrong about what?”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Having you released.”

  In his eyes, it was as if he KNEW.

  “I’m better now,” I said. “I had lost myself.”

  “You’ve crossed some invisible line,” the professor said. “And you feel as if you’ve come to a place you never thought you’d come to. And you don’t know how you got here. It’s a strange place that has caused you to consider death and annihilation. I’m ad-libbing a bit, but that’s from Raymond Carver’s ‘Whoever Was Using This Bed.’”

  “I was just reading that story. I skipped ahead in your syllabus.”

  I blinked and he was at the door.

  “I hope I’m right about this,” he said, his eyes downcast and saddened. Then he walked out.

  * * *

  KYLE LOOKED UP from the manuscript because he heard the front door to the bar open. He checked to see if it was Bill, but the mailman came in instead. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was three o’clock. He was about to return to Devil’s Hopyard but then thought about what he’d just finished reading. The institution he’d actually wound up in was state run and a nightmare, since he lost his insurance after his father died. It had been two days of his life he never cared to think about again. The only saving grace was that he’d been too zoned out to care what was happening, the whole experience a blur. He could recall snippets of patients screaming, mutilating themselves, even going to the bathroom on the floor. After the drugs wore off, he could also remember William coming by to tell him he was being released.

  “I’m vouching for you,” William had said. “You don’t deserve to be here.”

  “I had lost myself,” Kyle replied, at his lowest. Life seemed pointless.

  “I’ve always looked to literature when times were tough,” William continued. “My wife found the church to fulfill her, my god is a good book.”

  He passed Kyle a copy of East of Eden. It was a brand-new edition with Oprah’s seal of approval and a tree on the cover.

  “Let this be your drug,” William said.

  Kyle held the book in his hands. The pages smelled really good.

  “Read this and write an essay for me, Kyle.”

  Kyle rubbed his head, as if trying to erase any lingering drugs that were still clattering around inside.

  “What should the essay be on?” he asked.

  “Whatever you want it to be. The essay will count for any classes you’ve missed. That way you won’t fail the semester. I’m also hoping it gives you focus.”

  Kyle’s lip quivered. His dad dying, Mia vanishing, the cops harassing him, and now time spent in a state facility strapped to a bed—he’d taken so many wrong turns he thought it’d be impossible to find himself again. At least William cared enough to try to get him on the road back to normal.

  “Thank you for helping me,” Kyle said, his chin on William’s shoulder as he let the tears go. William stood there patiently, allowing Kyle to grieve.

  “I hope I’m not making a mistake,” William said, once Kyle stopped sobbing.

  “With what?”

  “Having you released, Kyle.”

  William looked at him threateningly, but it had worked—Kyle never touched hard drugs again. He spent Pepsi-fueled hours reading East of Eden and writing a really good essay on spirituality in literature. He wrote about how the characters each found their own versions of God, and in his conclusion, he wrote about how he came across a feeling of a higher power while sitting on the Green with springtime finally in the air. Free of his winterish past, he’d reached the end of East of Eden and read the word—timshel—out loud. He remembered the professor saying that the word referred to man’s ability to choose between good and evil. Right there he saw two divergent paths laid out before him: one dark and treacherous, full of addiction, sin, and self-loathing; the other lined with tall bookcases and a life devoted to literature. He stood up and walked into literature’s welcoming arms, never swaying again.

  * * *

  STILL AT THE bar, Kyle reread chapter 28 because there were so many parallels to what actually happened in his life. Since there were records showing he’d spent time at a state facility, anyone reading Devil’s Hopyard might really start to believe he’d been the guilty one and not William.

  He stopped himself from thinking any more of these insane thoughts. He needed to calm down. First off, Devil’s Hopyard hadn’t been published and the likelihood it ever would be was slim. Sure, there was a chance William could self-publish it and gain an audience. Authors certainly had successes with self-publishing, but the majority didn’t. There was no reason to think that William’s wild accusations could get him in trouble.

  Kyle looked down and saw he’d gone through three pints of beer already. He had to stay sober enough to question Bill whenever the guy finally showed up. William’s wife was also on his list to interview, provided William wasn’t home.

  He flipped through the remaining pages William had given him, about fifty or so left. He knew there wouldn’t be a resolution when he got to the end of those pages, because in real life, a resolution hadn’t occurred yet. Still, he had to know where the plot went, at least if it answered what happened to Mia and whether she died or managed to escape and then kept running. He had a bad feeling that the fictionalized version of him was about to “cross some invisible line” that he could never return from, just as Raymond Carver ominously wrote.

  “’Nother one?” Alicia asked, coming over to clear the empties. She’d taken to wearing dark sunglasses indoors to survive her migraine.

  “Just a club soda. Thanks.”

  “How’s the b
ook coming along?” she asked, and sprayed some club soda into a glass for him. “Looks like you’re about to reach the end.”

  “I hope so,” Kyle said, as she tended to another customer and he got back to Hopyard.

  I burst out of the institution into the sunniest day Connecticut had seen in a while. When I entered the nuthouse, it’d been rainy and cold, so it almost seemed as if I’d spent an entire season stuck inside. I got in my car and drove right over to the shack in Devil’s Hopyard, praying to an unknown entity that Mia would be all right.

  When I reached the shack, I moved away the surrounding brushwood and listened with my ear flush against the door. No sound. I put the key in the lock, quaking, and unlatched the dead bolt. When I swung open the door, the smell hit me right away and I knew what had occurred. Flies had already taken to her body, but she seemed peaceful, as if she’d just closed her eyes and never got a chance to open them again.

  I was angry and trashed the shack, flinging the mattress and trying to rip up the sheets. Mia had spilled to the floor, and I spied the heart-shaped tattoo on her ass. It was the first thing I ever noticed about her. She’d bent over in class to pick up a pen that she dropped and wasn’t wearing any underwear. I was writing an answer on the board at the time, but it must have looked like chicken scratch. All I could pay attention to had been the little black heart she’d permanently etched into her left butt cheek.

  And now it had revealed itself again. I think I must have vomited, but once I got myself together I whipped out my key chain with my Swiss Army knife attached to it and began to cut out that tattooed heart. Just to keep a piece of her with me because I already missed her so. I know it sounds awful, but like a surgeon, I made careful incisions, then I found a pan I’d left in the shack to cook eggs and made a fire outside. I fried up her piece of flesh, her other heart, and took little bites so it would last as long as possible. We had been reading East of Eden in class before this all started, and I thought of the way the novel ended, since Professor Lansing always liked to test us on the final sentences of great classics.

  “Timshel,” I said out loud, as I swallowed the last bite of heart. I knew the word referred to man’s ability to choose between good and evil. I had written an essay for the professor arguing that we were all descendants of Cain, and like Cain we had free will to decide between good and evil. But as much as we inherited Cain’s curse, we also inherited the ability to redeem ourselves. In his weakness and filth, Cain made a choice and murdered his brother; but no matter how deep-rooted the sin, there was always a chance for redemption. If you improve yourself, you will be forgiven; if you don’t, sin will rest at the door. I realized I had to accept my sins as well and work toward conquering them.

  I’d done terrible things; there was no going back.

  I could only go forward.

  * * *

  KYLE SLAMMED THE manuscript closed, completely freaked-out now. Here he was just thinking about the last lines of East of Eden and how they saved him freshman year, and now his character in Devil’s Hopyard was going through the same revelation. He scanned the bar to see if William was watching. He pictured the bastard rubbing his hands together in delight. Just as he was about to make a mad dash for his rental car to flee Connecticut in fright, he realized that William had obviously used his essay to influence the character’s angst. William was a master at fucking with someone’s head, and Kyle knew he needed to stop getting so worked up over what was obviously fiction.

  He was about to dive back into the final pages when the front door to the Royal Wee opened again. A wiry guy with spooked eyes entered.

  Jackpot. It had been over a decade since Kyle had seen him last, but despite the receding hairline, Bill looked just as odd as he remembered.

  29

  BILL WENT RIGHT over to his sister. They spoke in hushed tones so Kyle couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed to be about her migraines. Bill felt her forehead, rather tenderly, almost like a lover would, and fixed some frazzled strands of hair escaping from her bun. She hugged him, and the two rocked together for about a minute, as if they were relieved to be reunited. Then Alicia whispered something in her brother’s ear and pointed at Kyle.

  Kyle quickly glanced away, pretending to be absorbed in whatever was on the TV. He could feel the energy shift in the place as Bill sidled up next to him.

  “My sister says you had questions about our dad?” Bill asked. He had a ghostly pallor as if he was allergic to the sun. Purpling skin, almost translucent. Bags the size of quarters under his eyes. A ball of what Kyle guessed to be chew tucked in his bottom lip.

  “Yes, I’m Brett Swenson,” Kyle said, extending his hand.

  Bill had one of those creepy handshakes where the person’s hand felt like it melted in your palm. A chill crawled up Kyle’s back.

  “Bill Lansing,” Bill replied, chewing away. “Come on, let’s go to my office.”

  Bill’s “office” was a room in the back about as welcoming as a sketchy van with tinted windows. Kyle sensed that something bad had transpired there, but then he wondered if that had to do with the way he viewed Bill. The one time he’d met the guy was at a charity function at Bentley. Bill must have been about fifteen or sixteen at the time, and his parents had stuffed him into a suit that he clearly wasn’t comfortable in. Kyle had gone to smoke a cigarette and found him outside. Bill had trapped a wren in his hands and was slowly pulling apart the feathers of the chirping bird.

  “Hey, I don’t think the little guy likes that,” Kyle said, trying to play it cool since he knew it was the professor’s son.

  “But I like it,” Bill said, plucking another feather and letting it float to the ground. The wren now had a patch of raw pink skin peeking through.

  “Seriously, man, that bird can’t fend for himself.”

  “Fuck it,” Bill said, and tossed the bird into the sky. The wren seemed confused and took a second before spreading its wings and fleeing the scene.

  Bill rose and got in Kyle’s face. “Are you happy now?”

  Kyle took a drag. “I’m elated.”

  “Well, fuck you too.”

  Bill exhaled a hot spurt of air from his nostrils and took off. In the moment, Kyle recalled that people who hurt animals tended to have psychopathic tendencies. He should’ve realized it was an unfortunate trait that ran in the Lansing family.

  “You look familiar,” Bill said now, as he got comfortable on a dusty couch and picked up a pipe filled with marijuana. “Smoke?”

  Kyle didn’t want to, but he was game to anything that might help Bill divulge some Lansing secrets.

  “Thanks.” He took a hit of what was clearly schwag, its taste like tar, criminal in his lungs. He hoped it was actually pot.

  “Yeah, you do look familiar. Licia said you’re an editor working on my dad’s book?”

  “Yes and I’m here to do a profile. Where he came from, some background of Bentley and of Killingworth too.”

  Bill was more interested in his pipe. He tapped out the ash and packed another. “Yeah, Licia mentioned you were asking about things in this town.”

  “I read about a girl who went missing here years ago,” Kyle said, not wanting to waste any more time.

  Bill didn’t answer right away. He took a bunch of hits from his pipe. Then he glided his hand through the air, finding it fascinating. He let out a chuckle, similar to his father’s, soft at first until it echoed throughout the tiny office.

  “Her name was Mia Evans,” Kyle said, feeling a little faint from the hit. He held on to the edge of a table to make sure he stayed upright.

  “Yeah, I remember that name,” Bill said. “Pretty girl who just up and vanished.”

  “She was a student of your father’s.”

  “My father’s had a lot of students, but I’m sure you know that.”

  “Did it hurt him when she disappeared? Did he talk about it at all?”

  Bill pointed at Kyle as he rose from the couch. It seemed like he had somethi
ng important to say but then forgot it by the time he stood up.

  “And why are you asking about this now?”

  Bill made his way over to a small fridge in the corner and grabbed himself a beer. He opened it with his teeth and spit the bottle cap in Kyle’s direction.

  “Because it’s very similar to what your dad wrote about in his book,” Kyle said. “Devil’s Hopyard.”

  This caught Bill’s attention. His tell was an eyebrow raise, ever so slight.

  “I’m curious to know if this girl’s disappearance influenced his work,” Kyle said.

  “So why don’t you ask him?”

  “I thought I’d find out from the people who know him best.”

  Bill took a swig of beer that emptied half the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, never taking his eyes off of Kyle.

  “Yeah, she was a student of his. He was real broken up when they couldn’t find her. But the whole town was, even people who didn’t know her.”

  “Did you know her?”

  Bill killed the rest of his beer and then spit the ball of chew into the bottle. He placed it down among similar empties.

  “Nope. She was just a name, nothing more.”

  “But she was more to your father?”

  Bill started rubbing his chin, repeating the motion over and over while staring in Kyle’s eyes.

  “She was just his student,” Bill said, nodding. “And like all his students, I’m sure he cared very deeply about her well-being. My father is a good man. He’s a mentor to those lucky enough to have him as their professor. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  “Why would I say so?” Kyle gulped.