I trust your life will bring you plenty of magic.
The rest of the album is empty. I slide it back into the bookshelf and wait for Vaughn. What is it like to marry someone and then have it not work out? What is it like for him to live alone? I wonder if he thinks about these things much, or at all. I can never tell if other people are dissecting themselves and the world the way I do.
I watch him cycle up the street, the bag of Chinese takeout dangling from his handlebars, then dismount and walk toward the house. He’s wearing navy blue rain pants, a faded red sweatshirt with a hole in the elbow, white tennis shoes, and a ball cap. He knocks on the front door, then opens it and says, “Anybody home?”
Part Three
XX.
if you ask me what I remember about Julian, I’ll tell you that his lower lip jutted when he spoke, exposing his bottom teeth. I used to study the way he talked, watching his lip shoot down if he said a word that started with G, J, U, or Y. He had tiny, coffee-stained teeth. He had a gummy smile. His lower lip was plump, topped by a skinny upper lip that seemed to fall down upon the bottom one like a lid when he closed his mouth. He had a deep groove between his top lip and his nose—this little thing is called the philtrum, I’ve since discovered. His eyes darkened when he drank. He was always going to the bathroom, especially at night. Up, up, and up again, five six seven eight times before finally settling in to sleep. Anywhere we went, he had to find the bathroom. He wore a blue windbreaker when it was cold out, and underneath, a mustard-colored fleece. His skin was perpetually flushed. His hands rough and cracked. He slept in striped pajama bottoms. His stomach sagged over the waistband of his pants. Hideous but odorless feet. On Sundays he didn’t shave and padded around the house in gym shorts and a ripped T-shirt a couple of sizes too big. His socks pulled to the knee, and little black slippers. He liked to read. He read everything—novels, magazines, menus, flyers, instructions. The bathroom, stacked high with newspapers.
I think of my memories as being card-cataloged and neatly put away in drawers in the big black desk inside my head. I can open most of the drawers, take out a card, look at it, consider it, put it away. I have drawers for Lydia-Rose, for Miranda, for our pets, for Vaughn, for Blue Jay School, for Matthew. I can search through them and find almost anything if I need to. I can’t remember Par and Raquelle—though I swear I can remember the smell of the little bags of cumin and turmeric that had spilled in the cupboard, wafting out with a stale mustiness each time Raquelle reached in to find a certain spice. I’m certain I can remember that smell.
When I want to store something in my memory—when I want to make sure it ends up in the card catalog—I burn it into my brain. This isn’t hard to do. I never want to forget that moment in Gregor’s apartment when Matthew was across from me, whispering, You’ll never forget your first time, a little dot of acid on his finger. I framed him with my eyes. I took a picture. I filed it. Done. It’s there now, and I’ll never forget it. This mindfulness has a flipside: when I want to forget, I can do that, too.
Easy. I take another picture. But then I take a huge black Jiffy marker—the fattest one you can buy—and I color over the picture in my mind. It doesn’t take long, and the picture is covered with black ink forever. If I look really hard, I might be able to see the outline of whatever lies beneath, and if I can see too much, I reach for the marker again. If it refuses to disappear, if the image keeps bubbling to the surface, I encase it within a brick wall. This takes more time. I have to get the bricks and the mortar. I have to start from the ground up: lay the bricks, the mortar, the bricks, the mortar, until I have a wall in front of me, the memory entombed behind it. This might take a few hours, but it works.
But we are naturally self-destructive. If I press myself against the brick wall, I can find a tiny pinhole where the mortar didn’t settle and left a little space for me to look through. I can see the blood on Julian’s back and the jar of Vaseline. I can see what’s on the television, the silvery-green eyes of the panther, the naked body of Nastassja Kinski. I can see the fear on my little face.
It is six in the morning, and I have left Miranda’s under the guise of going for a run before school but instead I am standing outside of Julian’s periwinkle house on Olive Street. Things have changed: there are huge, unruly rhododendron bushes lining the sidewalk now, obscuring the house from the road. The lawn is neatly mowed and edged. He must have a gardener. A Price’s Alarms sign is jammed into the dirt beside one of the bushes. The park across from their house has a new playground—it’s made of big brightly colored plastic, like all the playgrounds are now, instead of the splintery wood and chains and metal bars that I used to play on with Lydia-Rose. It’s still dark out, though the horizon is lit by a faint orange haze. I hear seagulls and the crash of the surf down the block and the occasional car speeding along Dallas Road. The lights in the house are off. The lights in all the houses are off.
There are a few ways to go about doing this. I can be petty if I want to. I can destroy the rhododendrons, which I hate anyway, or I can graffiti his door. I can do little things to his house, once a week, until he’s forced to put up security cameras. I can knock on the door, introduce myself, pretend I have no memories, and accept the invitation inside. I can sit in the living room, run my fingers over the piano keys, and ask to go the bathroom. I can squirt some Ipecac into his big bottle of mouthwash. If I find myself in the kitchen, I can put a shot or two into the milk, the plastic jug of pulpy orange juice. I can prank-call him at night, but after a while he’ll turn off the phone. How many times will he vomit until he throws out the milk and the juice? Would it even work if he only swirled the mouthwash around and then spat it out?
Through the tiny window in the front door, I peer in and can see a distorted image of the foyer, warped by the beveled glass. Muddy boots lie in a heap on the floor. The stairs leading to the second floor are covered with magazines and newspapers, and I wonder how anyone could go up or down. I try to see into the living room, but my view is obscured. The mailbox is nearly full. I take out the mail and sift through it. Julian Marchand. Julian B. Marchand. Mr. J. Marchand. J.B. Marchand. There are a few pieces for a Karl Marchand and the rest is junk.
I look through the window again, and that’s when I see the wheelchair at the very end of the foyer, near the entrance to the kitchen. Was it there a minute ago?
Thirty seconds later I’m on the back deck, looking through the French doors that lead into the kitchen. My footprints leave marks in the dew. The wooden deck is slippery and I brace myself on the railing and peer in. The eucalyptus tree is molting in the backyard and I’m sure that any minute now a strip of bark will fall on my head. I stand underneath it on Julian’s porch, look up at the thick drops of dew plunking down from the wet leaves, and smirk at my stumpy reflection in the French doors. There’s a cigarette in my hand and a pack of Camels stuffed in my pocket. I’ve got on a well-worn pair of jeans and a striped turtleneck sweater. The nicotine makes me reel, and I crush the remainder of the smoke under my shoe.
It looks like no one has mopped the kitchen floor in years. The white linoleum is stained brown, sections of it covered in what looks like tar. The kitchen table is swaybacked from the weight of buckets filled with water or paint, I can’t tell. It looks like its legs are going to buckle. The refrigerator door is ajar, the light out. Nothing is on the fridge except a few muddy handprints.
I can’t see the sink, but under the kitchen table is a mountain of vegetable peelings, which ants have surrounded and are in the process of carrying away to some other location.
Who has such an immaculate lawn and such a disastrous kitchen? Also resting on the kitchen table are issues of Reader’s Digest and a bunch of dog-eared paperbacks. I can’t make out the titles, except for one—Slaughterhouse Five.
Do I leave? Do I ring the doorbell? Do I break the glass panes of the French doors and walk in? The sun rises behind me, and I can see my reflection now in the golden light. I would give the whole world
not to be so small. I look like a midget standing out here. A midget with a golden afro, backlit by the sun. The weirdest cherub around.
And then I’m doing it. I’m breaking the window with a rock, my sweater wrapped around my arm. It isn’t easy. It takes three tries. I take a deep breath and visualize the rock, and my hand around it, sailing through the glass. The glass breaks and I shake off the shards, reach in and turn the deadbolt, open the door.
The smell of rotten vegetables, whatever tar-like substance is on the floor, and the buckets, which, I can see now, are full of pickling vinegar, surrounds me when I step into the kitchen. It’s a big kitchen, with high ceilings broken up by tracks of halogen lights. I flick them on, but the bulbs are burnt out. Either no one has heard me or no one is home. It’s cold. The heat is off. I pull my sweater on and hug my shoulders, try to figure out what to do.
The sunlight rushes through the windows and fills the room. I can see my breath. The ants continue to carry away little bits of carrot peel. I push the fridge door closed and examine the sink, which is full of mason jars. The counter is covered in cucumbers. I’ve never seen so many cucumbers in my life.
The walls are still painted a pale yellow, although the paint is cracked and bubbled near the ceiling. The gas stove is covered in grime, little coils of hair pressed into the stickiness. A cast-iron pan sits, unwashed and rusting, on one of the burners. There is a rag rug at my feet, which once was red but is soaked through with so much mud that it might as well be brown. A car dealership calendar is on the wall, still flipped open to February, displaying a picture of a blue Model T Ford.
I don’t know what accounts for the delay, but when the alarm goes off I’m poking my finger into the soft green flesh of a cucumber. It’s a horrible piercing sound and I’m immediately furious at myself for ignoring the Price’s sign, for not taking it seriously. Will it turn off at some point? Will the police come? I press my back into the countertop and push my chin into my chest, willing the sound to stop. My heart pounds and my armpits bead with sweat.
And then Julian is in the doorway, in a plaid flannel bathrobe and bare feet, his hair pushed flat against his head, his eyes small from sleep. “Jesus. Get the fuck, the fuck out of here.”
He doesn’t have his glasses on, and he squints at me, sees how small I am and makes a kind of disappointed grunting sound, as though he’s bored. He lets his body slump against the doorframe.
“Do you remember me?” I step toward him.
“Get out.” He barely raises his voice. He spins and disappears into the foyer, where I hear the beep of little buttons being pushed on the alarm’s console. And then it’s over. The sound stops, and the silence fills my ears. The smell of the vinegar and vegetables comes rushing back, too, and I brace myself on the countertop.
“Hello?” I call out when he doesn’t reappear. “Hello?”
I walk into the foyer and then through the living room, but he’s not there either. The piano is where it was when I last saw it, a coating of dust like icing sugar over its black keys.
When he finally walks into the room, he is dressed in corduroy trousers and a button-down shirt. His hair wet and combed back, his face washed.
“Hi, Shannon,” he says, and we make eye contact for the first time that morning. He motions to the couch, pushes a pile of junk mail to the floor. “Sit down?”
He looks lumpier but mostly the same. Doesn’t look like age has really hit him hard yet. He fiddles with his watch strap, then reaches for one of the half-dead plants, a foxtail fern. He pets it the way someone would pet a dog’s tail: long, pulling strokes. Finally, he sits across from me on the piano bench. He still looks, incredibly, like a hedgehog. I wait for him to speak, to see that lower lip pull down and reveal those hideous little teeth.
“You want coffee?” he says and I see them, I see the teeth. “Cup of coffee? I’m going to put some on.”
I shake my head and watch him stand up shakily and disappear into the kitchen. I hear the tap and the freezer open and the whir of a grinder and the kettle boiling, and then he comes back into the room with a French press in one hand and a tall silver travel mug in the other.
“There’s plenty if you change your mind.”
I scoot closer to the coffee table and put my feet up on it. I suppose I’m trying to be irritating.
“Next time, knock,” he says and we both start to laugh. It is funny after all.
He pushes the filter down and pours himself a cup of dark, sludgy-looking coffee.
All my plans of breaking every bone in his face, smashing a vase over his head until both split open, kicking his shins until they bleed. All my plans disappear. I can’t even find the strength to straighten out my sweater, which is caught underneath me and is pulling on the back of my neck.
“My dad lives with me now. I know it’s a mess.” Julian laughs softly and shakes his head. “It’s not always this bad. We’ve been making pickles. We get tired. We forget to put stuff away.” He takes a loud slurp of coffee. “Who cares anyway. Who cares what this place looks like.”
The sunlight filters in through the back of the house, but the living room is still dark. Julian coughs into his hand and reaches for the lamp.
“Suppose you’ve come to raise the dead,” he says.
“I’m just here to ask why,” I mutter. I say it so quietly that I barely hear myself.
“Why.”
“Why.”
“Why what?” He gives a kind of hideous-sounding chuckle and runs his hand through his hair.
I wish I were taller. I wish I could do the splits. I wish I were good at sports. I wish I were a ballerina. I wish I didn’t feel like a small, weird-looking dwarf sitting in a crazy man’s house at dawn.
“You’re pretty bold, you know. Breaking into my house. Do you know what you’ve put me through?”
The sound of horrible phlegmy coughing comes from upstairs, and Julian shifts uncomfortably on the piano bench. “Shit,” he says. “Shit.” He puts both hands on his knees and straightens his legs, then walks stiffly toward the staircase. I watch him ascend and then listen as he opens and shuts a door, and then the sound of more coughing and Julian’s voice.
Next to the couch is an old desk with cubby-style drawers. I slide them open quietly and peek inside each one. Receipts, checkbooks, a paperback copy of Gift from the Sea, a spilled box of ballpoint pens, gross-looking erasers, graph paper. One of the drawers is empty, save for a wedding ring. I put it on my finger. If Julian notices, I’ll give it back. That’s my bargain.
When he returns, I am flipping through the little paperback, one leg up on the piano bench. “Why is your garden so neat and your house such a mess?”
“Neighbors complained,” he says. He walks to his French press, swishes the coffee around for a second, and pours the rest into his travel mug. “So we hired Juan.” He takes a sip and then spits it into the mug. “God knows I don’t give a damn what it looks like out there. Be right back.”
He goes into the kitchen, and I hear him filling the kettle again.
And then Julian’s father appears at the bottom of the stairs in gray sweatpants with elastic ankles and a faded turquoise sweatshirt. His slippers look homemade. He’s a short man with a long face—wide-eyed, stout—with pearl-gray hair cut in short bangs. His eyes are bathwater green. We look at each other. What feels like ten minutes goes by.
“Shannon?” Julian calls.
I leave Julian’s father standing on the stairs and walk into the kitchen. Julian’s got both hands on the kitchen table and is half bent over, grimacing, bracing himself.
“I ate this huge omelet before bed last night,” he says, clearing his throat. “Bad idea.” He shakes his head like a dog coming out of water, blinks a few times, and stares into one of the pots of vinegar.
I put my hand under my nose to stop the vinegar smell from reaching me, but it’s too late, and I have to clench my jaw to keep from gagging.
Julian taps his foot on the floor, turns to t
he fridge, and opens a can of diet ginger ale.
“Can I have some ginger ale?”
Julian nods and passes me a cold can.
He looks so ugly in the harsh light of the morning. That lip, those teeth. He grimaces again and pushes a handful of antacids into his mouth. I can hear his father coughing, and the sun has risen, and the heater has come on and is blowing hot air up through the floor vents. There’s nothing I need to do or say to him. It’s been done. He’s done.
“You’re always welcome here.” He holds out his hand, but I don’t take it. He shrugs, drops his hand to his side, and takes out a broom and dustpan from the closet and starts sweeping up the broken glass. I watch him for a second. He bends down and slides the glass into the dustpan and shakes it into the trash. He moves jerkily, as if someone is directing his movements with a remote control. I leave him and walk into the living room.
There are no photographs, nothing on the walls. No art. The hardwood is covered with a threadbare Persian rug, half of it faded from the sun. Sometimes I feel so weak, as if nothing has ever really happened to me. I feel as weak as a sponge. I walk to the window and set my can of ginger ale on the sill. I put my hand on the glass, leave a handprint. The glass is cold under my palm, and my hand is damp when I take it away. This mark is all I’ll leave Julian with. This is the last he’ll ever see of me. But I’ll always be here in this house, like a ghost.
XXI.
i am an easy birth, as was Eugene. My mother pants, like Jo taught her to do, and Luella tries to get her to relax.
My head appears, then retracts, and Luella makes space with her fingers to prevent my mother from tearing. Each contraction brings me closer and closer to being born. The air in the bedroom is cool and sharp on Yula’s legs and somehow soothing.
Y: A Novel Page 22