Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

by Patty Yumi Cottrell

  My coworker Michele from the first day of training showed me no respect, she treated me as if I were the least important member of the team, the one who isn’t a right fit, the one who always scrubs out the toilets the incorrect way, a way they’ve never been scrubbed and never should be scrubbed; I was a blight on humanity, and somehow she must have inferred that my blight-on-humanity self was once a barista for minimum wage and cash tips at a punk café when I was in college with nothing better to do, because out of the twenty people standing in the oval, she singled me out.

  I left the filthy room and went into the employee kitchen. It had been a long time since I had been a barista; fortunately, I remembered exactly how to brew a carafe of French Roast. As the coffee dripped down into the carafe I wondered what exactly had triggered an internal investigation in the first place, I imagined someone violating all of the employee handbook’s precepts, all of the rules and procedures we went over in great detail during a two-week unpaid professional development session, and I was certain I myself would never be under investigation, because my infractions were so minor, for example sometimes I took too many bathroom breaks so I could check my phone in peace, or occasionally when I cleaned the bathrooms I shoved the stack of paper towels up through the slit in the dispenser instead of getting the key and opening the loading door and inserting the stack properly. When I returned to the filthy room with two carafes of French roast, I noticed everyone had dispersed, the meeting was over, and someone had thoughtfully opened the window to air out the odor of too many humans in one room. I left the carafes and returned to my desk deeply embarrassed I had been left out of the meeting. No one bothered to update me, no one sought out my presence or decided to tell me what was discussed. No one even thanked me for making coffee.

  Look at what’s in front of you, I said to calm myself, that’s what matters.

  Above my work desk I had pinned several photos of my favorite troubled young people: most of them were gone, some of them went on to community college or for-profit technical schools, some of them went into menial labor and customer service but sometimes all of my troubled young people’s faces blurred into one gigantic face of sadness and despair, so I asked the ones I liked for photos, even though I hated photography, simply to be able to remember their individual names and faces, otherwise I would forget. As I sat in silence and reflection, my period began unexpectedly, and bled through my khaki work-pants. I stood up. A giant splotch of dark brown had formed. Michele pointed out the splotch, infuriating me, and she offered to wipe it with a moist towelette. I told her no, and she went ahead and wiped it anyway. After her senseless violation, I could feel the splotch had doubled in size. Michele and the towelette had brought it back to life, and the towelette’s scented moisture had soaked through the khakis to my underwear so that I was shivering at my desk, which was situated directly under an air-conditioning vent.

  I kept forcing my anger down below my passive surface. The night before, I went to a party with my roommate Julie in Bush-wick, that shitbox of a neighborhood, where a drunk man tried to hold me down and kiss me at three in the morning. I was left with no choice but to bite down on his tongue as brutally as possible. I drew blood, and I felt a piece of his tongue come off into my mouth, a small flap the texture of a gumdrop that I spit out.

  She bit me! he screamed, shoving me away. She bit me!

  As if he were talking about a rabid dog! There was blood everywhere! I was so angry!

  You’re not going to put a baby in me, I told anyone who would listen. Sister Reliability doesn’t fuck!

  I was fine with genitalia in my face and blow jobs and spitting out their sperm, I was fine with rimming, I made my peace with it, and I was so angry. Underneath my peace there was anger, an ugly anger, the force of it was formidable, and I was the one who had to live with it. Everything was bitter.

  I had no more interest in sexual relations than I have in the mating habits of cockroaches! I’d rather study flowers for the rest of my life than have sex! I’d rather have my nose in tulips and roses! When my roommate Julie suggested that I might be a closeted lesbian, after she discovered my preference for LGBT novels, I snorted.

  A woman on top of a woman is just as disgusting as a man on top of a woman, I said to her, it’s all the same to me!

  I had a huge stain on my pants. Michele and the moist towelette made the stain worse, she forced the stain to set into the fabric, causing it to look even larger and darker, I saw for myself in the bathroom. If I stood up or walked around the facility, my coworkers would see I had no control over what came out of my body.

  I decided to go home early, I told everyone I was sick, then I made plans to meet my roommate Julie’s friend Steve for lunch. He wrote novels and short stories about virgin bachelors from Switzerland who liked to look up women’s skirts. I felt a tenderness toward him for his mousy grayish hair, the small, adorable pink pimples above his lip, etc. Perhaps I wasn’t gay or straight, perhaps I was perverse.

  Do you want to get lunch? I would text Steve.

  The next thing I knew, he would appear on the sidewalk below my shared studio apartment with a bag of deli sandwiches and pink lemonades with pulp, which we would take to the park and sometimes I would throw my leftover sandwich at the ducks and swans. One time I killed a baby duck, by accident. The heel of bread was harder than I thought. At the time I didn’t know my own strength. That early afternoon my shared studio apartment’s buzzer would not stop buzzing, and I assumed it was Steve with a sandwich. It was insistent and upsetting. I changed out of my pants and into red Umbros. I tried to buzz the person in, but it didn’t work, and the buzzer kept ringing. I ran down the stairs in an agitated mood, only to be shocked by my adoptive brother’s appearance out of the blue. It took me a moment to register that it wasn’t Steve. I almost said, You’re not Steve! To my adoptive brother! I apprehended his figure, slightly hunched and embarrassed. I saw that his brown Korean eyes were like the light reflecting off warm toad-ridden ponds in a dark ecology.

  Hello, I said. What are you doing here?

  That day something bad happened, then something good. His appearance was like when a character out of a fairy tale appears magically for no reason but to possibly improve the situation. His clothes were wet from the rain, and they smelled slightly worse than typical New York City pollution. He was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, and I never understood why he liked them, I didn’t ask, I assumed there was a terrible reason behind it, and now I’ll never know.

  I tried to call you, he said as he stood in the vestibule. I called and called and you didn’t answer. Your phone kept ringing. It didn’t go to voicemail and my text messages were bounced back.

  My phone must have died, I apologized, it must have died in the rain.

  That’s okay, he said.

  Does this sound like someone impulsive, psychotic, and crying out for help? Does this sound like a person who made a mistake?

  The next day, I said to Thomas, I received an email from my supervisor informing me that I was being placed under an internal investigation…

  18

  Thomas looked down at the floor. He no longer looked sad and allergic, in fact, he looked upset, and I recognized immediately a face of disgust. It was almost like looking into a mirror: the brow furrowed, the eyebrows knit closely together, the lips curled up.

  Is something bothering you? I said.

  Well. I just don’t understand why you felt like you had to tell me all of that. What did any of that have to do with… anything. What did that have to do with anything?

  Wait a second. I’m not done. I didn’t even get to the good part. There’s more.

  I should get going. I’m not feeling very well.

  He stood up from the chair. I followed his polo shirt out of the den and into the foyer.

  Can I still call you if I think of any more questions? I said.

  I guess, he said as he put his headset on, but it would be better for me if you didn’t.
r />   Why’s that? What do you mean by that?

  Never mind, said Thomas.

  Before he left, he turned around.

  It’s so dark in your house. Why don’t you turn on some lights? It’s like you’re sitting on top of a pile of darkness. It’s not normal. It’s really fucking weird.

  Then he ran out the front door and down the evenly paved driveway until he reached his car, a small hatchback.

  I went around to each room and switched on as many lights as possible. The house did not get sun exposure. Everything inside it died.

  In some of the rooms, I pulled open the curtains and a filthy gray light entered. When the light entered, I shut the curtains. Then opened them. Then shut them. Then opened. Then shut. Then opened. Then shut. Then opened. I was finally in a good place, I thought, mentally and emotionally. At one point early in my investigation, I had told myself I needed to inspect my adoptive brother’s bedroom with a magnifying glass. Now every time I approached his bedroom door, something repelled me and pushed me back. I finally realized that my attempt to theorize his suicide was a lapse in judgment, and suddenly it disgusted me. There are six reasons, I said to no one. Of course there were more; there were thousands of reasons to commit suicide, six reasons was shorthand for the abyss. And I realized there was a material reality to his death that I had refused to wrestle with. Was his room a crime scene? I wondered. Did he kill himself in his own room?

  If he committed suicide in his room, my adoptive parents would have to sell the house as soon as possible. In no time I exhausted myself as I pictured my adoptive parents putting the house on the market, selling the medieval fortress, which did not come cheaply built. They would put that in the ad, that it did not come cheaply built, and then they would have to show the house to house-hunting strangers, but before that they would have to empty all the knickknacks out of the rooms and pack them into boxes. No, they would have to hire someone to do that type of work, someone cheap, someone foreign with a good work ethic. There’s dignity in work, my adoptive father liked to tell us, when there was an us.

  I returned to my adoptive father’s study where I examined what I had written down when I spoke with Thomas. MISSING TOOTH and DOCTORS, my second clue. I couldn’t help but picture him talking with his lips covering his gums and I almost laughed out loud. My near-laughter caused my right temple to pulse and I took out my traveler kit and swallowed a pill for sinus-pressure relief. My adoptive brother always had perfectly shaped, straight white teeth; I was the one burdened with cavities, crooked teeth, loose gums, extra wisdom teeth, teeth growing upside down and to the side, etc. I had never felt at peace with my mouth. And my thoughts returned to the receipt that the balding European man had pointed out to me. Where had I put that?

  I tried to picture where I left it when the doorbell rang, disrupting my picturing! I wondered if it would be a deliveryman with my sweater. I was looking forward to wearing the black turtleneck sweater to his funeral. I have always preferred to be in the background, an extra in the movie of my own life, but if people had to look at me at the funeral ceremony, at least I would be wearing a black turtleneck, which would convey a sense of mystery of the abyss. I went into the foyer and before I opened the door, I tried to compose my face, I relaxed my facial muscles so it would look as if I were at peace, I felt my skin loosen, and when everything relaxed into an expression of neutrality, I opened the door. I was astonished to see a person holding not a cardboard box with my sweater, but a basket of flowers and underneath the basket a clipboard. The basket of flowers obscured the person’s face. There was a body and a basket of flowers for a head. Sign here, said the creature, and it handed me a clipboard. I scrawled my name and then it gave me the basket. After it gave me the basket, and I set it down in the foyer, it gave me another. There were three more baskets in a row behind the man. It took me a while to bring all the baskets into the house, and some of the flowers of mourning spilled out onto the floor, peace lilies and palm fronds and baby’s breath. I thanked the now-human, a very short man with the clipboard, and closed the door with my foot. The baskets were in a row near the grandfather clock and I looked at the tiny cards attached to each of the baskets. From the Grants, one said, your neighbors with deepest sympathy. From the Slothers, all of our regrets. I hoped that the hall filled up with even more flowers, which would be a beautiful thing for my adoptive parents, especially my adoptive mother who loved flowers and every living thing. That would be the silver lining of this catastrophe. I gathered up all of the flowers from the baskets and dumped them into the mop bucket to keep them fresh. Pleased with myself for thinking ahead, I went into the kitchen.

  Look for the receipt, I said to no one. Look for the medical bill, I said to the air. I stared blankly at my adoptive mother’s desk for a long time, almost as if I had stepped outside of time itself, until I opened the desk drawer and finally saw the receipt or perhaps I should say my brain registered the image of the receipt, as if it were some kind of holy and miraculous object, either way the receipt materialized. It was a page-long hospital bill with a name, DR JONATHAN ABE, address, and phone number in the upper-right-hand corner along with a list of charges for various examinations in some kind of billing code. The date was May 3, 2013. It seemed all of the charges were covered by the insurance. In my hands was a harmless medical bill, which a few months ago meant nothing to anyone, and now it’s full of possibility. Meaning accumulates over time, I thought, who could say why?

  I picked up the household phone and called the number: a pleasant, automated voice message instructed me to choose from five different options, I pressed “0,” hoping to reach a human operator, and the system sent me back to the original message, I pressed “1,” which took me to an outgoing message for the pharmacy, I pressed “0” and returned to the original menu. I kept looping back and forth until I had exhausted all five options. No human answered the phone even after pressing “0” multiple times. I hung up the phone. Everything in the house was silent. I stared at the medical bill with its alien code and useless phone number; I wanted to rip it up with great precision because it told me nothing about how he lived, it told me nothing about why he died.

  19

  I left the house for a walk. It was brighter outside. No one rushed about with errands. The houses were empty. I liked to utilize walking as a head-clearing apparatus. I wore a large man’s Carhartt sweatshirt with the hood up, jeans, and a pair of Adidas Sambas I found two years ago in Central Park next to a garbage can; each shoe was a different size. I continued past a lawn with a black lawn jockey set out like a warning. For a block I stared at the sidewalk, and almost got hit by a car. I looked up when I heard an SUV honking, the honk stretched out for ten angry seconds. Through the windshield, a woman’s face flashed, outraged and terrified. I waved to let the woman know I was okay.

  I told myself I would try to literally follow in his footsteps, to see if he had left any clues. I was searching, searching, searching. I went up the hill to the pharmacy. Above the pharmacy was the former home of a child pornographer, right in the middle of town.

  I took a picture of it on my phone. My phone pinged. It was a message from my supervisor. He asked me a few questions about particular dates and what I did with the troubled young people. He apologized for asking, he knew I was in the middle of a difficult time.

  Down the tree-shaded railroad tracks there was a gourmet grocery store that used to sell a tiny can of tomato paste for ten dollars. He walked the dog along the tracks, when he and the dog were alive, I thought. I tried to see the path through his eyes; I tried to imagine what he thought about. The last time he came here, was he covering his mouth? What did that detail mean?

  There were no traces of him or the dog, except perhaps the dog’s shit absorbed into the dirt. I crunched across the grass covered over with leaves next to the tracks and pursued the railroad as it snaked past the church parking lot, which made me shiver with disgust. I remembered immediately how I had refused to wear the veil for m
y First Communion. I wore a bejeweled headband whereas all of the girls in my class put on their veils; none of them had had the courage or strength then to refuse or question what we were constantly forced to do. Stupid white bitches getting married to God!

  Most of my childhood memories were situated around acts of refusal, I thought as I walked along the railroad, first refusing the veil, then refusing to go to church and do confession, then refusing to stay in Milwaukee. After refusing to be in Milwaukee, I refused to stay away from Milwaukee and came back, only to go away again. Each act of refusal led me further away from my adoptive family, yet somehow increased my communication with my adoptive brother. As an adult I spoke less to my adoptive parents and more to my adoptive brother. As an adult I learned to accept things as they were, this was another great talent of mine. Some people might call it resignation, but that’s not the way I saw it. I understood that it was a very humble and ethical position, perfect for receiving bad news or being deeply disappointed.

  I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, because I was in the middle of an unfamiliar neighborhood. The houses were the size of three houses. I walked on the sidewalk, freshly swept, leaf-free. This street would have made him very uncomfortable. He never said anything about wanting to move out of our childhood home, for him the goal of home ownership would have been impossible since he never had a job or credit. He took a career aptitude test in high school, he told me, and the result was manager. Manager of what? When the guidance counselor asked him what kind of occupation he envisioned for himself, he said lifeguard. At times, he had a sense of humor.