Love In Darkness

by E. M. Tippetts

“Murderball?” says his mother. She did not see the video, which is just as well. Better that she see how much her son wants it before she can panic at what “it” actually is.

  “Where do you get the wheelchairs?” Dmitri asks.

  “They have some,” I say. “But if you’re serious about this, there’s an equipment investment.” Fortunately, the Ruskins are rich people with a mansion on the bluffs.

  “Mom! Please,” he says.

  “All right, honey. Okay. You got it.”

  He taps the screen of his smart phone and then stares as more tinny sound comes out. He’s riveted to the little video.

  His mother turns back to me. “Thank you.”

  I shrug.

  “And if I catch anyone in town gossiping about you again-”

  “Mom’ll buy me a wheelchair like this and I’ll check him. This is like hockey, Mom.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Yeah, before you thank me, you should probably watch the video,” I say.

  With a hesitant look at me, she goes to stand behind her son’s wheelchair. “Oh… Oh dear. Sweetie…”

  “Isn’t it awesome?”

  “Honey that looks dangerous.”

  “I’ve already broken my back, Mom. If there was anything to be scared of, I would know. You don’t need to baby me, all right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You’ll fit in with those guys.”

  “Please?” He looks up at her beseechingly.

  “Yes, of course,” his mother says. She pats his shoulder and flashes me a warm smile. “Is there a phone number? Let’s call and find out more.”

  I say goodbye and slip away while she gets her smartphone out and the two tap away, exchanging excited smiles.

  Kailie waits a few paces off. “She promised she wasn’t going to embarrass you. She didn’t, did she?”

  “Nah. She apologized.”

  “Good.”

  “I talked to them-”

  “While you were trying to help Kirsten and they were awful. I know.”

  “It’s all good.” I readjust the armload of clothing I carry.

  “Follow me around while I shop for clothes? Yes, I’m needy.” She turns and starts walking without waiting for my reply. I follow and look for all the world like her boyfriend, I’m sure, as she picks out clothing and stresses over whether or not it makes her narrow, bony butt look big. If I really were her boyfriend, I’d say encouraging things, but I’m not. I don’t bother to say anything and just let her talk to herself.

  Eventually she chooses some outfits, though, and we pay and leave.

  “A-lex!” whoops Dmitri from across the parking lot where I see him being loaded into a wheelchair lift fitted to a minivan. “Dalton Murderball here I come!!!” he punches both fists into the air, and that’s when I see how limited his range of motion is. He can barely raise his hands higher than his shoulders.

  I give him a thumbs up.

  His mother smiles and waves.

  “Awww, you got Dmitri into murdering people for a hobby,” says Kailie. “That’s sweet.”

  “I’m a giver.”

  She laughs. “Okay, how you feeling? You have any issues in the store?”

  I pause and pay attention. I don’t hear anything, but I do have that stared at feeling that seems to accompany me everywhere these days. “I think I’m good. But that doesn’t mean I actually am.”

  “Your fingers aren’t bleeding. I’m hungry. Lunch?”

  “Fine.” It actually doesn’t sound like an uncomfortable, awful thing to do, to grab a bite to eat with Kailie.

  She picks a fast food joint and we sit by the window with her staring at her phone most of the time. The only other time I’ve been anywhere, just me and some girl, it’s always been Madison.

  “You okay?” Kailie asks, looking up from her phone, her burger in one clawlike hand. Seriously, she is so skinny and her nails are long enough to look like talons ending in glitter tips.

  “Yeah.”

  “Spill.”

  “Never mind.”

  “You’re picking at your nails.”

  So I am. I wipe my hands with a napkin, eat some French fries, and direct my gaze out the window to the ever-so-scenic parking lot and the beat up pickup truck parked just outside the window. Its grille is warped from what must be multiple dents and dings over the years.

  “Something stress you out?”

  “I do feel bad about pushing Madison away, all right?”

  I expect a triumphant smirk or a nasty comment, but instead Kailie looks down at her burger as if it’s let her down somehow. “Listen… I don’t get why she likes you so much, but she does. I mean, she’ll do anything for you.”

  “She’s too nice.”

  “Not always. She dated you knowing how I felt about it. In high school, you were totally destined to be mine. Or, that’s what I thought, at least.”

  I raise an eyebrow and remember her “obsession” comment to Dr. Maliki.

  Kailie puts her burger aside. “It was stupid and immature. I mean, it’s scary to think how messed up I was, but I had a massive crush on you for ages and you were, like, the untouchable guy. No girl made any impression on you-”

  “I didn’t have the social skills to interact with girls, you mean.”

  “And then Madison, Miss Goody-Goody Plain Vanilla Sweetness makes a move for you and you just go with it? I’d been trying to get your attention for ages.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Okay… ouch… I used to always say hello to you. I used to flip my hair and wear my nicest outfits. I went to every beach party, hoping you’d be there and I used to tease you and throw rocks.”

  “That doesn’t really distinguish you from anyone else.”

  “You’re conceited.”

  “How’s that conceited? Most girls don’t throw rocks as a sign of affection.”

  “At you they do.”

  “I did not attract that many girls.”

  “You were the heartthrob of Pelican Bluffs. Everyone fantasized about you.”

  “Well, that’s sick. Really. It is.”

  “I completely agree with you. Once I got treatment, I figured out that you were an anti-social, belligerent kind of guy. But in high school I had this idea that I was going to be the one. I was the most beautiful girl at the school – I mean, I know I wasn’t but back then that’s what I actually thought – and I was rich and wild and crazy and you wouldn’t be able to resist me. I felt like no guy could resist me and I just had to pick the one I wanted. So when my Little Miss Nothing friend, whom I’d always thought of as a kind of pathetic sidekick, got you to pay attention to her, I lost it. It was like the whole order of the universe was out of whack and I didn’t know how to cope.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “Yes, it is. I didn’t know I was bipolar back then, though, nobody did. The narcissism, the over-drama, the delusions, those are all symptoms. And when I felt like I wasn’t getting what I deserved, I went into a deep depression and slit my wrists.”

  “And hurt Madison more than you’ll ever know. She had to face down your dad to get the paramedics into your house-”

  “I know. It’s only fair that you were the one to ride in and rescue her.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “She said you came to the hospital and held her and told her it would be all right before driving her home and buying her dinner.”

  “Right. That’s all I did.”

  Kailie rolls her eyes. “What would qualify as a rescue in your book, then? You need a white horse and a good sunset too?”

  “I would have made her problems go away instead of using the situation to selfishly back her against a door and make her kiss me.”

  “What I don’t get is why she was so happy with you.”

  “She was just in a good place in her life.”

  “Yeah… I mean, yes, but that doesn’t completely explain it. I’m inclined to just be like, yeah, it was the rest of her life too, but
you coming home has really spun her. She’s seriously depressed.”

  I look down at the table, at the scattered crumbs and the wreckage of the meal I just ate. Slowly I wad up wrappers and napkins and drop them into the empty kid’s meal box, laying the toy aside. Kailie didn’t say anything when I got a kid’s meal; didn’t even give me a funny look.

  “And that makes you angry,” mutters Kailie.

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Just all in a foul temper. Madison’s bothering you with these inconvenient feelings.”

  “Madison will be fine.”

  “Sure, I know. But right now she really hurts.”

  “This isn’t easy for me either.”

  “Her heart’s broken.”

  “So is mine.”

  Kailie blinks and for a moment stares at me, much the same way she did when I spoke to her in Japanese. “It is?”

  “What do you mean, ‘It is?’ Of course it is.”

  “Look, even when you dated her it was hard to understand your angle. I mean, you were nice to her, but she was so crazy about you and you were impossible to read. She’d give you googly eyed looks and you’d maybe smile.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She looks me in the eye to let me know she’s dead serious. “I’m talking about how you came across.”

  “I walked her to every class, took her to every dance, picked her up every day from work-”

  “Which could have been affection and could have been control. Nobody, knew, Alex, because you never talked to anyone. You were the silent guy with the psycho reputation who used to play with his cigarette lighter and just stare at the flame.”

  That was an old tic of mine. I haven’t done it in years and don’t even know where my lighter is, offhand. The thought of no one knowing how much I love her, though, is unsettling. I thought I was perfectly clear.

  “I gave her my dad’s army jacket,” I say.

  “That was your dad’s?” Kailie’s eyes widen.

  “Yeah. You saw the name on it. ‘Katsumoto.’”

  “I thought your dad was white.”

  “He was. He took my mom’s last name when they got married.”

  “Right, okay… but nobody knew that. Nobody. Everyone assumed you got that jacket at an Army surplus store and had a name made for it.”

  “I wore it all the time.”

  “Which made you seem like a militant psycho. You had this jacket customized with your name that you wore in any weather.”

  “I did not treat Madison like I just wanted to control her.”

  “Nobody knew what you wanted, not even Madison sometimes. Honestly, when you got home from your mission, I thought you really didn’t care. Okay? Because if I don’t know, I’m not going to assume that you’re so madly in love that you don’t know how to express it. That’s not the safe default guess for the best friend to make. So I’ve been telling her this whole time you’re not interested, but she will not believe me.”

  I force myself to take a deep breath and let her words sink in. As someone who often has no idea what other people are thinking, I have to admit, her points are completely valid, which means she probably isn’t the only one who wondered about my obsession with Madison, and that hurts.

  I finish cleaning up my side of the table and return to staring out the window. Kailie finishes her burger and we leave in silence a few minutes later.

  The following day is Wednesday, and I get up, work out, take my shower, dress, and then clean the gutters, scooping disgusting, fetid water and rotten pine needles out of the metal chutes affixed all along the roofline of my house. Fortunately we don’t live near any tall trees, so it takes time for the pine needles to build up. They get blown here by the wind and probably spend a brief time on our roof before the rain washes them down.

  In the afternoon I re-caulk my mom’s shower, which is starting to get some mildew, so again I have the disgusting job of stripping out the old caulking before I carefully apply the new.

  At least I’m not completely worthless. I can do the stereotypical man chores.

  But come evening, I know that sometime during the day I made the decision to go to the movies. It’s a bad idea, but even knowing this, I get dressed and ask Hiroko for a ride.

  The movie turns out to be some romantic comedy with two actors I’ve never heard of. Being away from American mainstream culture for two years will do that to you. Madison is well ahead of me in line and doesn’t seem to know that I’m there and I try to be discreet as I watch her long blond ponytail. Once she’s at the front of the line, her delicate hands count out money from her purse and then she grabs her popcorn and soft drink and heads on into the theater.

  Apparently this place has adopted a new policy in which you buy your tickets from the concessions counter, which is annoying and really slows things down. As soon as that platinum blond ponytail goes around the corner and out of sight, I begin to feel like being here is pointless, but nevertheless I stand in the buttery popcorn saturated air and wait until I reach the front, pay for a very expensive ticket (prices have gone up since I was here last) and turn down an even more expensive soft drink.

  By the time I reach the theater, the lights are already dim, and I immediately realize there’s a problem. One thing about psychosis is that it can get worse in the dark. Dr. Maliki once explained that our brains are used to a certain level of input all day, and the darkness cuts that input. Everything’s shades of the same color, so sometimes our imaginations take over to liven things up for our brains, which is why even non-mentally ill people get scared of the dark. As soon as I step into the theater, I have a sense of a million beady eyes staring at me, and the voices in my head all laugh as if having just overheard a joke. Great. At least I know I’m having an episode.

  Given how much I just spent on that stupid ticket, I decide to tough this out. The evil eyes aren’t real, they’re just a product of my mental disorder, and the voices are the same ones I practice ignoring all the time. I wait for my own eyes to adjust to the dark and then go find a seat. Fortunately there’s one along the aisle about halfway back. I sit down and look up at the screen to find a ten foot high runway model drinking Diet Coke.

  “Ugly,” says one of the voices.

  “Oh really? I like her little swimsuit, there.”

  A third voice, or maybe it’s one of the first two, makes a lewd comment.

  Great. I take a deep breath and focus on the theater, letting the voices become just a dull murmur. It’s easier this time than it’s been before. My meds must be starting to work.

  All I need to do, I reason, is stay lucid through the movie. I can imagine the comments that will fly around town if I have a psychotic meltdown in public. I don’t have to imagine them, actually, because I’ve heard enough of them from all the times my mother’s dealt with this in public. I do my best to relax.

  Except that I now have the sense that there are millions of rodentlike creatures swarming over the floor of the theater, and nobody notices as they crawl over people’s feet and up their legs. I can’t see these creatures, just sense them, the way you sense you’re not alone in a room. I take another deep breath and push them away. They don’t disappear, but they don’t seem as real anymore either. Hope surges in my chest. I’m getting better, not worse.

  A flare of light from the screen lets me spot Madison. She’s at the other end of a row nearer to the front, next to a guy with dark hair that I assume is Carson. They lean with their heads together and she’s laughing.

  Yeah, I have to bail out and call Hiroko. Or at least get some fresh air and see what I think then. I slip out of my seat and make myself walk to the door, even though I want to run. Act sane, I think to myself.

  Once I’m back out in the bright light of the hallway with its garish carpet and line of “Coming Soon” posters down one wall, the tightness in my chest eases. I don’t see or sense little creatures out here, so I wonder if I should stay where it’s bright, or go outside and br
eathe some fresh air too.

  The theater door swings open with a creak behind me and I look back over my shoulder to see Madison step through and stop, waiting for my reaction.

  “Hey.” I try to muster a smile and fail.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. The voices are back to chattering, but I focus all my attention to the here and now, and find that it is possible to do.

  She looks me over, processing this, with those eyes I’ve spent hours gazing into and still can’t get enough of.

  “I don’t want you to miss the movie,” I say. “Especially not at the price you had to pay for a ticket.” And, I think, I need to get away from you. Only, I don’t say this aloud.

  “So how bad is your condition now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just gonna go outside for a minute.” I don’t mean it as an invitation to her, but she falls into step with me and I don’t do anything to stop her. “You didn’t ditch Carson to talk to me this time, did you?”

  “Carson’s working tonight. He’s not here.”

  “Oh.” She must have been sitting with someone else, someone who hasn’t followed her out. We cross the lobby and exit the glass doors into the cool and humid night air that smells like damp earth and mist. I don’t look at her as I head for the sidewalk on the far side of the parking lot. The commercials and previews back in the theater will probably go on for another fifteen minutes, so I’m not robbing her of the chance to see the movie just yet. Neither of us says a word as we reach the sidewalk and head on down the street. This stretch of road runs along the edge of undeveloped forest, so it’s pretty dark in between the pools of light dropped by streetlights along the way.

  We pass one streetlight and she keeps her eyes on the pavement as we head out of the pocket of illumination and into darkness beyond. It’s a stupid thing for me to do, given what just happened. Darkness already proved a problem for me tonight, and now I’m walking into more darkness with my trigger. I’m just asking for a disaster.

  That fair skin and hair Madison always complained about makes her glow a little in the dimness. She hates that, but I think it adds to her ethereal beauty. We reach the outer edge of another pool of light and cross it without saying a word. I know I should say something to her or turn around, but I head on into the darkness beyond and she stays with me.