Swansong

by Rose Christo

  He was barely older than a child when he ruined somebody else's life--and his own. He grew up in prison.

  "I don't think anyone's all bad or all good," I tell Judas.

  He looks at me.

  "Even the people who commit the most evil--in a warped way, don't they believe they're doing it for good?"

  "You sure about that?"

  " 'If I hurt this person, I'll feel better. If I feel better, I'll have more of myself to commit to the people and things that matter.' You bomb a city and millions of civilians die, and it's horrible, but you think you're pleasing your God, or benefiting your civilization--it doesn't excuse it. It doesn't. But if you think you're doing something good, and the world tells you you aren't...it's your word against theirs. Aren't good and evil a matter of opinion? One opinion happens to be more popular; but it's still an opinion..."

  "Are you trying to make me feel better?" Judas asks.

  "No," I say. "Maybe," I say. I don't know. "I think my brain's been scrambled."

  "It has," Judas says. "No getting around that."

  "I wish I had died," I say. Even as I say them, I know the words aren't true. "If three people had to die, and only one could live--I wish I had died with Mom and Dad."

  "So you wish your friend had survived. Not Mom or Dad?"

  "No. If Mom had lived and the rest of us had died, she'd be in the same position I'm in right now. The same for Dad. If Joss had lived--Joss' parents are still alive. And Joss is a singer." Was. Why do I keep forgetting-- "If Joss were the one with brain damage, she'd still be able to sing."

  "Don't be so sure. Sometimes brain damage affects speech, vision. You're lucky."

  "My hands keep shaking. They won't stop. I..."

  "You think you can't paint?"

  I don't know what to think. "If I can't," I tell him, "I can't go back to school."

  Judas looks at me. He looks away.

  He says, "One of your meds--Mirapex. It's supposed to help with your memory. D1 agonist."

  It's the best news I've heard since my birthday. I breathe with relief.

  "They give Mirapex to Parkinson's patients, too. So, who knows--maybe your hands will stop."

  "I hope so..."

  "Wendy."

  "What?"

  "Go get your paints." Judas stands. "I'll help."

  We head into my room and pick up the paint cans. I've got tubes full of oil paint, but for acrylics, I always use house paint. It's cheaper, for one. They tell you not to use house paint on canvas, but if you mix it with coffee or jelly, it glides just fine. Pails hanging from my arms, I follow Judas back into the sitting room. He sits on the floor and twists the lids off of the cans. They're already mixed.

  "Go ahead," Judas says, and nods at the very bare wall.

  It's not like me. I always follow the rules. I never make a burden of myself. I never make a mess.

  I dip my hand into one of the paint cans. It comes back swimming in blue. I swing my arm back, as hard as I can--and let go. A glob of blue flies at the white wall. It splatters and streaks, loud in its vibrance, offensive in its saturation.

  Handful after handful, I fling paint at the wall. Blue and red and yellow. Purple and orange and green. My hands are cold and wet. Rivulets stain my clothes, my face. Harder and harder I throw the paint until I'm breathless, until I want to scream, but can't. The paint screams for me. It screams This isn't fair and I should have died and Mom, Dad, where are you? How could you leave me?

  The wall looks like a rainbow threw up all over it. I stop slinging paint and collect my breath. My anger ebbs away, catharsis flooding through me. All my anger is painted on the wall. All that's left in me is realization. Aftermath and realization.

  They're gone. The people I love are gone.

  "This world is insane, Judas." The words slip past my lips, muffled, accidental. I’m crying. It’s soundless.

  "So make another one," Judas suggests.

  I laugh. I have to laugh. God abandoned us on my birthday. I know he's not coming back.

  But the person who lets me throw paint at his walls--the brother I never really knew--he's right here. He has nobody. I have nobody. We have each other.

  "We match, you know," I tell Judas.

  He looks at the paint on my hands; then at my face.

  I smile. I try to. "The scars on our faces. Everybody will know we're family."

  We're family.

  Judas smiles reluctantly, a sad smile, a crumpling smile. Half of his face doesn't move.

  Please, God. You took my family away from me. Please don't take my new family, too.

  * * * * *

  The social worker arrives the very next morning. He's a weedy, flustery man who keeps touching his glasses, like he's afraid they'll fall off.

  "I'm so, so sorry for your loss," he tells me.

  We're alone in the kitchen. Apparently Jude's not allowed in the room when Mr. Tenner--the social worker, I mean--questions me.

  I smile briefly. "Me, too."

  Mr. Tenner asks me a whole lot of questions that don't have straightforward answers. What are my first impressions of my brother? Do I feel safe here? Do I feel suicidal? I hedge my responses. Judas is great, not at all scary, and this apartment is very nice, the neighbors are friendly (I haven't met them), and no, I'm not suicidal, I'm just lucky to be alive. I don't know whether Mr. Tenner believes me or not; he touches his glasses so frequently, I can't see his expression behind his hands. He takes so many notes, he makes me feel like a walnut, cracked open down the middle and--well--edible, I think. The coffeemaker finishes brewing and I pour Mr. Tenner a cup. I don't drink coffee; I just use it for my paint. Judas doesn't care much for it, either.

  "That's a lovely bracelet," Mr. Tenner says, blowing the steam from his mug.

  The little gilded swan jingles around my burned wrist. I touch her outspread wings with my index finger. "Zeus seduced Leda when he was a swan."

  "Oh?"

  "Their children must have been really screwed up."

  Mr. Tenner leaves me once he's satisfied that I'm not about to blow my brains to bits. He has a brief chat with Judas by the front door--I don't hear it, but I'm guessing it's about the therapist. When he's gone, Jude calls me into the sitting room. We go through my prescriptions together.

  "This one you take twice," Judas says, peering closely at one pill bottle. He picks up another. "This one you take weekly. Christ," he mutters. "You'd better write all this down."

  I do. I tape the lined notebook pages to the wall beside my bed. I stack the drugs on the nighttable. I'm afraid if I put them anywhere else--the meds, the reminders--I'll forget all about them. I can't trust my own mind.

  The therapist is the next day. I try and dress nicely; but my striped blue leggings are baggier than they used to be; and my favorite skirt, orange and yellow, won't stay in place without a belt. Judas drives me to a squat sandstone building out east. The clinic looks out of place in this commercialized city, where rust and glass and plastic are the status quo.

  "You really don't have to do this," I mutter for the umpteenth time.

  "You're living with me," Judas says. "You're going to need therapy sooner or later."

  The clinic's lobby is plastered in parenting posters. The support beams look like they don't belong in a building like this. Two desks stand off to the side, one for checking in and one for checking out. Judas signs me in at the former. The woman behind the desk hands him a small blond folder. We open it when we sit down on the colored plastic chairs in the waiting area. My name's inside it, and there's a check mark next to today's date.

  "I feel like we're in the subway," I mutter.

  "You want me to wait outside the door?" Judas asks. "When they call you upstairs."

  "It's okay. I can find my way back down."

  He ignores me: My name echoes over the loudspeaker and he follows me up the drafty staircase.

  My therapist's name is Dr. Grace. I didn't know Grace was a last name. We sit together in a tiny
, carpeted room, a spectral screensaver dancing on her laptop. Dr. Grace smiles nervously at me. She's very fair-haired; I wonder if she's Scandinavian.

  "Talk," she tells me.

  I talk. I don't know why. I talk about the nights I stayed up watching "football" with Dad. I talk about the time when I was eight and Mom barged into my school to protect me from a bully. I talk about the teddy bear I owned when I was four, the one Jude decapitated with a pair of scissors. So much makes sense about Jude, in hindsight. I even talk about Jocelyn, how she complains about my dubious fashion sense, how she always steals a tiny piece of my lunch. Day after day, I have to remind myself that Jocelyn isn't here anymore to steal my lunch. And when my phone doesn't ring at three in the morning, and she's not on the other end, complaining of cramps, the silence that ensues is the loudest silence of all.

  When I leave Dr. Grace's office, I feel--lighter, almost, like gravity isn't trying to pull me down. Judas meets me out in the hall. We walk past black-and-white photos in crooked photo frames. We walk downstairs, over to the checkout desk; then out the front door.

  "Did you go to therapy?" I ask Judas. "In prison?"

  "No."

  Something tells me he could have used it. But he's the adult; I'm the kid. I don't have the right to pry.

  * * * * *

  Late at night, Judas shows me the stairwell that leads to the apartment building's rooftop. I'm not sure I like the roof, because the ground--if you can call it that--is scratchy and dirty, and the water tank nearby smells stale; and if I take a step too close to the parapets, I'll fall twelve stories to my death.

  They say it only takes one second to fall four stories. If I jumped, I'd be dead in three seconds.

  You'd think people who survive terrible accidents walk away with a new lease on life. You'd think they learn to appreciate what they almost lost. There's no almost for me. I lost something too precious to appraise.

  Judas sits on the filthy roof. I sit tentatively next to him.

  The sky looks amazing. I tilt my head back and soak it in. The darkness of the night is more blue than black, more royal than midnight. How come I've never noticed that before? Where the stars glow, spotty against the open canvas, the blue takes on an almost liquid radiance. It swims in front of your eyes. It's pulsating and alive, somebody's long-lost heartbeat, and it draws in a shuddering breath that leaves the stars rattled in its wake, twinkling faintly. All this beauty, my eyes hurt just looking at it. But it's so beautiful, I don't want to look away.

  "They're dead," Judas says.

  I think he means Mom and Dad. Until he says--

  "The stars. Most of them are already dead."

  "What do you mean?" They were alive?

  "They're so far away, by the time their light gets here, they've already stopped emitting it. You're only looking at their afterimage."

  "But they're sparkling," I say weakly, childishly. I don't want them to be dead.

  "Earth's atmosphere refracts the light. It only looks like it's sparkling."

  I feel like I could punch him. No; I don't mean that. I'd rather hug him. I can't bring myself to, but I'd like to. He's my only family now.

  "What are you going to do for work?" I ask him. Anything to change the subject.

  He shrugs. "Not a lot of people tripping over themselves to hire felons, believe it or not."

  "That's surprising." Maybe if I try to joke...

  "Probably go into deliveries. I don't know." Judas lies down on the surface of the roof. Is that really hygienic? "Saved up enough with UNICOR. We're okay for a while."

  Especially if we're selling Mom and Dad's place. I don't voice this. "Maybe I could help you."

  "You're a kid."

  "I've had summer jobs before."

  The silence between us says what he doesn't say: Not with brain damage you haven't.

  "Hey, Jude?"

  Judas laughs quietly. I smile feebly and roll my eyes. I didn't mean to channel the Beatles.

  "Jude," I say. "Do you ever think about changing your name?"

  "That won't work. You change your name, the feds can still find you."

  "Not that, I--" I laugh in spite of myself. "You're named after one of the biggest jerks in recent human history." Why would Mom and Dad...?

  And Judas just looks at me. "Judas was innocent."

  "Huh?"

  "Judas Iscariot. He didn't do anything wrong. He's got a bad rep is all."

  "Well, that's..." Silly. This is silly.

  "You study any Greek in that school of yours?" Judas asks.

  I shake my head. I stop, suddenly dizzy, dull pain flickering in my temples.

  "John, Chapter 6, Verse 71. 'For it was Judas that should betray him, being one of the twelve.' "

  Jude's been away for ten years. He's had a lot of free time on his hands. Maybe it makes sense that he's been catching up on some reading. "But you just said 'betray'..."

  "That's the English translation. The original Greek word was paradidomi. Paradidomi doesn't mean 'betray.' Paradidomi means 'hand over to God.' Judas didn't betray his master. He helped him rid himself of his human flesh."

  Stunned, I sit in silence.

  "Funny, isn't it?" Judas says, his hands tucked under his head. His expression is melancholy. I've learned not to anticipate anything else. "One botched translation, and the entire course of history changes. We're human beings. It's our job to misunderstand one another. We base our lives around those misunderstandings. But there are two sides to every story. You change your perception, you change your life."

  "My life was changed for me." I don't even mean to say the words. They escape me while I'm preoccupied.

  "Then your perception's about to change, too," Judas says. "I guarantee it."

  4

  Ode to the Levant

  One of us has to be there for the house closing--Mom and Dad's house, I mean. If I'm not living there anymore--and I can't--then I can't call it my own.

  "I'll go without you," Judas says. He puts our breakfast bowls in the sink. "You shouldn't have to go back to that place so soon."

  I don't want to. I can't. Mom and Dad have been living in that house all these years; and if I walk into that house and it's empty, devoid of everything that made it home...

  Judas grips my shoulder.

  "Jeez." I try to smile. "Is this ever going to feel...not-weird?"

  "Doubt it," he says.

  I laugh. I have to. I'll go insane if I don't.

  Judas leaves early the next morning. He leaves me with notes on the refrigerator and the square, chrome-topped kitchen table. I retreat into my bedroom with one of his notes--Don't run the kitchen fan, it's busted--and open up my paints. I mix them with old coffee and try--try--to ignore the tingling in my hands.

  If I'm going back to school, I have to paint. There's no getting around it. I prop up a bulk canvas against my closet door. I don't have an easel, but that's okay; I sit on the floor, legs folded. I'll start with something easy, I think: a sunrise. I plant my wood palette on my lap and mix red and white. I slather my badger brush in pink paint and touch it to the canvas.

  From the start, it's a disaster. My hand won't stop shaking. The paintbrush trembles on the canvas. The pink paint blots.

  I drop the brush on the palette. I drop my head in my hands.

  The headache starts.

  It starts at the back of my head--the base of my skull and the tip of my spine. It crawls into the space behind my ears, throbbing, dull. It creeps across my scalp and into my forehead. And that's where it explodes.

  Knives. Fire. The pain's so bad it blinds me, excruciating, white-hot nothingness filling my eyes. My fingers stiffen, icy and numb. I brace myself, my hands on the floor. I can't see the floor. I can't see anything. I can't see anything but pain.

  My chest spasms in dry retches. The back of my throat tightens, choking me. I draw one gasping, desperate breath--

  --and the pain subsides.

  Faint, frightened, I sit up on my knees.
The room is dim and blurry, my eyes stinging. My head feels light on my shoulders.

  What was that?

  Brain damage. I keep forgetting. Why do I keep forgetting?

  The pulsing aftershock echoes in my lobes. I don't think I can paint right now. I seal the lids on my paint cans, pull the covering over the canvas. I pick up my palette.

  Something doesn't feel right. I don't mean my head, I mean the space around me. It looks changed, somehow, but I can't describe how. As far as I know, the door's the same; the floor's the same. I run my fingers along the edge of the palette.

  --Didn't I lay my paintbrush on the palette?

  I put the palette down and crouch on the floor. I peek under the bed. There's nothing there but dust and springs. I turn around ease open the rolling closet door. There's nothing there but wire hangers and clothes.

  I sit on my knees a second time, puzzled, lost in thought.

  A loud bang resounds through the apartment. Somebody's knocking on the front door.

  I pull myself off the hardwood. I feel like I'm floating toward the ceiling. I drag myself out into the sitting room. I unlock the door, pull it open--

  "So it is you!"

  I step back.

  I don't recognize the boy on the other side of the door. He's as skinny as a telephone pole--if a telephone pole had pierced ears, I mean. His hair is messy, tawny; coupled with the giant eyeglasses, he makes me think of an owl.

  He must notice my unfamiliarity. "We go to school together," he says. "Kory Cohen? I'm the sculptor guy?"

  "That's..."

  "I hang out with the sociopaths?"

  Oh. "Oh!" Cavalieri's a big school; in any given class, you're sitting with eighty or more students. But the sociopaths--right, there's this group of boys, very self-absorbed; they sit around pondering absurdism and nihilism and they all address the teachers by first name.

  "I saw your name on the mailbox," Kory says. He steps right past me, inviting himself into my apartment. That's a sociopath, alright. "Rozas isn't exactly a common surname, is it?" He pinches the bridge of his eyeglasses and gives me a Look, as if to suggest that I had better agree with him. "I saw what happened to you. It's all over the news. Unsurprising, of course. There are more than five million car wrecks in the US every year."