Shame

by Alan Russell

  Caleb started trembling. What the hell had happened there? One moment he’d been walking, and the next he’d been playing some twisted mental game. At least he hoped it was a game and not his father’s sickness coming to the fore. The deeper he got into his father’s biography, the more he felt touched by his darkness. He had always wondered and been afraid to find out what part of him was his father. That answer seemed to be closing in on him.

  Even with the earbuds removed, Elizabeth Line’s voice kept circulating through his head. She had narrated her own book. Every grisly detail. Her voice hadn’t changed over the years, was still slightly breathless, with a touch of the Midwest and just a hint of a gravel floor. Hearing her had bothered Caleb. She had brought an added intimacy to the work. In her telling, it was almost as if she was in his father’s head as well as his own.

  He hurried back to Lola’s bungalow, had to force himself not to sprint. After all these years, he thought, I’m still running away. But he’d never found a way to lose his shadow.

  Caleb opened the front door quietly, mindful of not waking Lola, but his precautions weren’t necessary. He heard footsteps, then saw her come rushing out of the guest room. She looked as if she had been caught doing something wrong.

  “I—I wondered where you were,” she said, backing up toward her room so as to not expose her back. Her face was to him, but she refused to meet his eyes.

  “I went for a walk.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She continued to back up. “Nothing.”

  Lola’s answer was too quick and her tone too falsetto. The pictures, Caleb remembered. He’d left them in an envelope on the nightstand.

  She was at her door, opening it.

  “Those pictures made me run as well,” Caleb said.

  Lola edged through the door sideways, then swung it closed behind her. Caleb listened as locks were turned. He didn’t come any closer but spoke loudly enough to be heard.

  “I found those photos in my truck yesterday,” he said. “Someone either followed me to the Sheriff’s Office or knew I was going to be there and planted them. I noticed the envelope when I was driving home.

  “You ever see that painting The Scream? That’s what I felt like when I pulled those pictures out of the envelope. Inside and out I didn’t feel human. All of me was just this scream that was desperate to come out.

  “I didn’t know what the hell to do. I thought about killing myself. But then I realized I couldn’t do that even if it was the only way to end the pain. I couldn’t kill myself, because my kids would have been condemned to growing up like I had. I couldn’t be that selfish.”

  From behind the door, she broke her silence. Her voice was small, still frightened. “Why didn’t you just contact the police?”

  “I was afraid to go back. I’m claustrophobic, and I knew that if I gave them the photos, this time they wouldn’t let me go.”

  “Did you know the girl?”

  “No—that is, I don’t know her name, but I know who she was. She worked behind the counter at the doughnut shop where I met Elizabeth Line the night before last. After Elizabeth left I just zoned out sitting there, trying to make sense of things. This girl had to tap me on the shoulder to wake me up. She kept apologizing for disturbing me and said that she wouldn’t be bothering me except that the shop was closing.”

  “She was the girl in the photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said that when you first saw those pictures you wanted to scream. Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was afraid if I started I’d never stop.” After a minute of silence, Caleb finally spoke again.

  “If you want,” he said, “I’ll leave.”

  He waited for an answer. Just when he decided one wasn’t forthcoming, he heard the locks turning. Lola walked through the door with a towel in hand.

  “Go shower,” Lola said, “but don’t dry your hair.”

  Lola set him up at the kitchen table, positioned him with his back to her. It was almost like facing up to major surgery, thought Caleb, looking at the bottles, tubes, and ointments lined up along the table. In a box but at the ready, were curling irons, setting pins, lotions, sprays, and metal implements that looked like instruments of torture but probably had something to do with hairdressing. Worst of all was the chemical smell. Caleb breathed through his mouth.

  She draped a plastic poncho over him and gave him a hand mirror. At first, they were about as comfortable together as two sixth-graders matched up on a dance floor. Caleb was rigid, had to force himself not to shy away from her touch, while Lola was tentative, still not sure if she was doing the right thing.

  She worked the hair coloring in with gloved hands. There was a stilted politeness to their conversation, their speech usually initiated by some stubborn tangle of hair, Lola offering high-pitched apologies while working at the clump, and Caleb assuring her it was fine. Gradually, both of them loosened up.

  Half an hour passed before Caleb was emboldened to look at himself with the mirror. He cringed at what he saw. “I thought I was going to be a blond,” he said. “I look more like a redhead.”

  “As one of the songs in my act goes, ‘We’ve only just begun.’ It’s going to take a few more applications.”

  “How did you happen to have blond dye?”

  “Could have made you red, white, or even blue. I used to change my hair color about as often as underwear. No more. Change my hair color, that is. I do change my underwear.”

  Caleb didn’t smile or respond in any way.

  “You always been this black hole?” Lola asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like your mood sucks all the light out of the room.”

  “Under the circumstances, I don’t feel like Mr. Happy.”

  “Were you ever Mr. Happy?”

  “I was happier....”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “You’re right.”

  “When in doubt, be the sphinx—that it? I suppose you think you were being noble by not telling your wife about your past.”

  “Noble’s not the word. I just didn’t see any reason to burden her with it.”

  “You did, anyway.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “’Course it is. And don’t think you didn’t put the mojo on your children, either. You don’t think your family knew something was wrong? You don’t think they sensed your secrets? They knew the family curse, even if you never gave it form.”

  “It’s sure enough got form now,” Caleb said.

  Too much form. Thinking about his family made Caleb ache. He became restive in the chair, felt the need to act, to do something. The tick-tock of the damn cat clock was driving him crazy.

  “How much longer?” he asked.

  “An hour or so.”

  He sighed, started fiddling with the hand mirror for want of anything else to do. He held the mirror up, pretended to look at his hair, but really sneaked a few glances at Lola.

  “Maybe I should have just gotten a wig.”

  “Wigs are obvious. When I’m through here, you’ll look like a natural blond, especially with your baby blues. All you’ll need is a surfboard rack and everyone will think you’re a native.”

  “Better not make me look like a native,” he said. “They’re the real minority around here.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. I’ve been here a year, and just about everyone I’ve met is from somewhere else.”

  The transient nature of Southern California was what had made it easy for Caleb to settle in San Diego. He’d never had to work at being anonymous.

  “How long you lived here?” Lola asked.

  “Almost twenty years. I left Texas when I was eighteen and kept going west until the ocean stopped me.”

  “You don’t have a Texas accent.”

  “I got rid of it.”

  “Wasn’t that hard?”


  “Not for me. I’ve always been good at taking on other voices, so I just picked one I liked and copied it. I lost lots of things when I came to California.”

  “Such as?”

  “Lost my first name for good. Lost my accent, lost my history, lost my face, and I tried to lose my demons.”

  “How’d you lose your face?”

  “Covered it with a beard.”

  Lola frowned, removed one of her gloves, and then ran a long-nailed finger down his smooth cheek.

  To Caleb, the tingle didn’t run so much down his face as down his spine. He suppressed a shiver. “I shaved a month or two ago,” he said, “and got rid of a beard I’d had for around twenty years.”

  “Why?”

  He thought about not answering, but with a shrug of his shoulders did. “I wanted Anna to take notice of me. She’d never seen me without a beard.”

  “An attention-getting device?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Not really.”

  Lola stopped working at his hair, waited for an explanation. Caleb wasn’t sure what had prompted his confession: his need to talk or his desire for her to finish with his hair.

  “She was seeing another man, a doctor.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I followed her to find out for sure. Can you believe that? I stalked my own wife.”

  “Did you confront her?”

  “No. That’s the most pathetic thing of all. What kind of a man allows his wife to go off with another man and does nothing about it? I saw them going into a hotel room together. And while I was watching them, someone must have been watching me. I’m sure I looked like the weak, simpering fool. Of course the detectives have me figured for a different role. They think I am a murderer, not a fool.”

  “And who do they think you killed?”

  “The doctor’s daughter. They think that was my way of getting revenge.”

  The way he offered the explanation, Lola thought, almost sounded like a confession. She watched as he held his hands parallel to each other, clenching and unclenching them. The movements made Lola uncomfortable. Was it just nervousness, she wondered, or a reenactment?

  His hands balled into fists. “He’s got me so tied up,” Caleb said, his voice small.

  “You start with the small knots then. You loosen them.”

  “I still don’t have a plan. I keep looking for one. I started listening to my father’s biography. I figure maybe somebody hates him enough to want to get revenge through me. But I don’t think that’s going to get me anywhere.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no shortage of people who hate my father. But killing innocent people seems a roundabout way of getting revenge. Why not just kill me?”

  “Maybe he wants to make you suffer all the more.”

  Caleb shrugged. Unconvinced, he said, “Maybe.”

  “That would explain why he left you those pictures.”

  “No,” said Caleb. “He left those to show me his disdain.”

  “Disdain?”

  “Last year our neighbors’ house was burgled. What upset them most wasn’t what the burglar took but what he left behind. He soiled their Berber carpeting. Taking their valuables wasn’t enough. The burglar had to add insult to injury. A deputy told the Howards that crime scenes were often marked in that way. I think that’s what those pictures were. The murderer took everything from me, but that wasn’t enough. He left me something much worse than a piece of shit, left me something I’ll never be able to get out of my mind.”

  Once again, Caleb’s hands started to clench and unclench.

  “I’m a private person. Knowing I was watched makes me feel powerless and dirty.”

  Caleb’s uneasiness was contagious. Lola turned her head to the kitchen window, half expecting someone to be looking in.

  “Don’t worry,” Caleb said. “I made sure we weren’t followed. No one’s ever going to catch me unawares again.” He lifted the mirror and looked at himself critically. His hair was lighter than before, at the sandy-blond stage.

  “Just a few more applications,” said Lola, “and we’ll get it so that you won’t even know yourself.”

  The notion didn’t displease Caleb. “I don’t think I’ve thanked you for all you’ve done.”

  “Now you have.”

  “You in the habit of rescuing strays?”

  “Sometimes. But I’m more of a sucker for the four-legged sort. The two-legged have taught me to be wary. But I had a feeling something was going to happen, and I was ready to be receptive to it.”

  “You took me in on a feeling?”

  “Not exactly. Don’t be angry when I tell you that your father has been in my thoughts on and off for the last few weeks. I don’t know why. I hadn’t thought about him in years. But his image kept coming to me. That’s why I wasn’t really surprised when I saw you. It was almost as if I expected you, or at least someone like you.”

  “Or like him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a psychic?”

  “I wouldn’t call myself that. But at times I’ve had glimpses of the future. It’s not as if I’ve known everything that was going to happen, but I have been clued into some events that would. Among certain tribes Two-Spirits were known for their ability to foretell things.”

  “Feminine intuition?”

  “It goes beyond that. I wanted to leave San Diego, but I stayed, trusting to my feelings that something significant was about to happen.”

  “Why’d you want to leave town?”

  “What else? Love gone wrong.”

  With his mirror, Caleb caught her vying expressions: a shaking head, a wistful smile, and a few sighs.

  “A sailor boy,” she explained. “He swore to me his love undying. We met in New Orleans, where I was the headliner in a show. He was on leave. My sailor boy wooed me here by sending a steady stream of roses and love letters. He said we could make it work.”

  “What happened?”

  “He fell in love with someone else.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. She’ll never love him like I did.”

  “She?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am. I just assumed it was another man.”

  “As a rule, my lovers haven’t been gay.”

  “But you’re still—male—aren’t you?”

  “I’m not transsexual, if that’s what you mean. And yes, my male parts are intact.”

  “Doesn’t that make you and your lover homosexual?”

  “Not to my thinking. I don’t consider myself a male. And my lovers, almost to a man, have been heterosexual. I know it’s a bit of a gender-bender, but it’s all perception. How do you see me now, as female or male?”

  “Both. What’s that word...?”

  “Androgynous. On the street we’re known as ‘chicks with dicks.’”

  “Do you want the operation?”

  “No. I am a berdache, a winkte with two spirits, male and female, combined into one. I don’t need an operation. I already am what I should be.”

  “Then why did you enhance your breasts?”

  “What you see is a result of estrogen and hormones. I never had an operation.”

  “What about your facial hair?”

  With a laugh, Lola said, “‘My, what big teeth you have,’ said Little Red Riding Hood.” She shook her head. “My face is much as it always was. My beard was almost nonexistent, so very little depilation was needed. Most of my changes were internal, not external. The way I see it, gender is found between your ears, not your legs.”

  “Do you think of yourself as a woman?”

  “I think of myself as a Two-Spirit, neither man nor woman, but something feminine, something in between.”

  “You’ve taken a woman’s name.”

  “Yes. Taking another name is nothing unusual. Lakota winkte used to do naming ceremonies, offering boys sacred names. Sitting Bull and Cra
zy Horse were given winkte names as boys. As men, it is said, they even took winkte wives. I gave myself the name of Lola. Most people think it comes from the Kinks’ song about a transvestite named Lola, but it doesn’t. I took the name from Lola Falana. I wanted to be a stage performer just like her.”

  “So you stayed in San Diego just because of this feeling?”

  “Yes. And I suppose there was a little part of me that kept hoping, without any real hope, that my sailor boy would come back to me. There was another Lakota winkte who fell in love with a military man and lived with him for almost twenty years as his wife. The couple even adopted two children. No one ever suspected the winkte was biologically a male.”

  “Didn’t that winkte live a lie?”

  “The world didn’t, and doesn’t, understand.”

  “That sounds hypocritical. You lectured me that keeping my secrets was all wrong, and yet you sound proud that this winkte fooled the world. Is that what you would have done with your sailor, tried to pass for a woman?”

  “I don’t know. I only know there’s a difference between making choices out of love and out of fear.”

  “That’s a convenient distinction.”

  “No, it’s not. I came to terms with what I am. I was willing to go through that pain to come out on the other side. You still haven’t done that.”

  20

  FROM HER HOTEL room Elizabeth had called her service. What she had imagined would be no more than five minutes of messages had turned into an hour’s worth and counting. She was the media’s flavor of the day. Everyone wanted her comments on the new Shame murders, or if not everyone, at least forty-six of her first forty-nine callers. She wrote down yet another name and number on a page filled with people to call back and imagined her publicist probably had a list twice as long.

  “...Jeremy Levett. You might remember we had you on our show, Good Morning, Omaha, when you were promoting your last book....”

  The unspoken message was, “We scratched your back, now it’s time for you to scratch ours.” They had publicized her books in the past and would in the future, but for that they expected their piece of her now.

  “We’d like to do an on-air spot tomorrow. Call me at my home number, would you? Look forward to talking....”