Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

by Patty Yumi Cottrell

  That brand makes me break out in hives, I said.

  It’s what we have, she said, I’m doing the best I can, considering the circumstances.

  The circumstances, I repeated. Dreadful, wretched circumstances.

  It’s a difficult time for everyone, she said, but it will all be fine eventually.

  Before I said, Yes, but he killed himself, she said, Everything will work out.

  She said it less to me, and more as if she were talking to herself. It was then I realized the bandages on my hands were oozing blood.

  36

  Last night I dreamt I murdered someone. I was a European man. I didn’t directly experience killing someone, but I knew it had happened. I was hiding in a room from the police, under a desk, and I knew they were about to arrest me. Jacques, come out, they said. We know you’re under the desk. In my dream, I considered killing myself, as a simple way to solve the matter instead of going to jail, but now that he killed himself, I thought in my dream, I wouldn’t be able to. Even in my dream, I had an adoptive brother who killed himself. Suicide was off the table for me. I would never be able to commit suicide, because everyone would say that I had copied him.

  I went into the first-floor bathroom. There was no mirror, everyone in my adoptive family hated to look in the mirror. Inside the toilet room was a plastic basket with expired medical supplies. I took off my bandages and replaced them. There was blood on my face, I felt its sticky texture on my chin, and I was forced to wash my face, even though I prefer to wash only once a day, if at all. I left the toilet room, and before I reached the staircase, a relative accosted me and drove me into the kitchen, where the neighbors and other relatives were sitting at a table, drinking coffee, admiring the Japanese coffee grinder, and putting foil-covered dishes into the freezer. It was like when my adoptive mother was sick and all the neighbors brought dinner over for a month. When I came into the kitchen, everyone stood up and approached me, even Zachary Moon tried to give me a hug, everyone made sad faces and said how sorry for my loss they were, and they asked what they could do to help, it felt like being swarmed by insects. A grieving assemblage.

  At the table not only was there coffee and tea and the grinder but also an uncorked bottle of wine. I was offered a glass by a young man with a red beard, and even though as a general rule I prefer marijuana because I lack an enzyme to properly metabolize alcohol, as I was the center of everyone’s attention and care, and the situation was so awkward, as the passive-observer, I accepted the glass, drank it down like water, and accepted immediately a second.

  Then the father of the red beard, one of the uncles, stepped out of the swarm and said, Helen, come here.

  He pulled me aside and thrust forward his hand.

  Uncle Walt, he said.

  He said it was strange to be gathered here in suburban Milwaukee and for my adoptive brother not to be present.

  It’s like he’s playing a trick on us, he said, he was a very sly and crafty person. He loved practical jokes. I know I shouldn’t have favorite nieces and nephews, but of course he was my favorite. He was everyone’s favorite.

  All of the relatives and neighbors formed a circle around. They nodded in agreement.

  He was my favorite neighbor, said a neighbor, it was always so nice to see him walking the dog. He was so polite. He was friendly, or, well, maybe not exactly friendly, but if you said hi to him, he would say hi back.

  And in a very nice way, said the neighbor.

  If you needed help with anything, chimed in another, he was there. He was a very reliable and helpful person.

  Your brother, said Uncle Walt as he looked at me directly, was a very easy person to get along with. He must have been such a good little brother. It’s terrible, what happened to him. If he was experiencing pain or having trouble, he was very skilled at hiding it and covering it up.

  My face was flushed; I had no idea what Uncle Walt was saying or from where he received his information.

  Did my adoptive father tell you that? I said. Did he tell you that he was hiding things from them?

  Oh no, he said, it’s just something I’m hypothesizing, based on the last time we saw him. You see, Helen, a few months ago he came out to visit us in Colorado, which was very unexpected. I think he reached out to us through your mom. He had an interest in fly-fishing, so we, my son and I, took him fly-fishing. I showed him how to tie lures, we went to the sporting-goods store and bought him some boots and a vest and a hat. We outfitted him expertly. He told us that he had always been interested in fly-fishing, in fact I remember he said that he thought it seemed like a very meditative thing to do, that was exactly what he said, he was such a perceptive person. He’s right, it is a very meditative and calming activity. We had a really good day fly-fishing.

  Tears came to his eyes.

  So naturally, he said, we were very sad when we heard the news.

  Did fucking Uncle Geoff call you? I said.

  No one heard me.

  Does anyone know Uncle Geoff? I said.

  Is he on your dad’s side? said the young man with a red beard. The red beard stood behind Uncle Walt, who was seated at the table, and it looked like he might cry, too.

  Jonathan has never lost anyone close, said Uncle Walt, until now.

  It astonished me that my adoptive brother had flown out to Colorado to go fly-fishing, which he never told me about, he never even told me he had an interest in fly-fishing. Where did that come from? I wondered. It was very strange, the image of him standing in a stream waving around a bamboo rod puzzled me and seemed at odds with who I thought he was. I pictured my adoptive brother, the fly-fisherman, in rubber boots and canvas clothing, like a character out of A River Runs Through It, a pointless book I was forced to read in high school for no particular reason whatsoever, except that there was a film tied to it, and then I was forced to watch the film. It was an image, the fly-fisherman, impossible to reconcile with what I knew about him. The more I tried to picture it, the more I started laughing! People shifted in their chairs and looked at me uncomfortably.

  He was certainly a special person, said a neighbor.

  I listened to a few more reminisces of my adoptive brother’s virtuous nature and wonderful personality, and it became clear to me that the entire conversation would be focused entirely on him for the next hour or so.

  So he became a fly-fisherman, I said to myself, and what am I supposed to do with that information?

  No one asked me how I was doing or what I had been up to.

  No one said, Helen, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen you, what have you been doing with your life?

  No one said, Helen, what’s it like living in New York City? No one even asked me if I had a boyfriend! Perhaps they thought I was too ugly to attract a man. Little did they know, in my experience, even the most repulsive women will attract someone!

  The entire situation irritated me and I also knew if my adoptive brother were alive, he would hate it, he would hate all of these people talking about him behind his back. I decided to leave, and headed toward the toilet again. Zachary Moon followed behind me. I said hello, and tried to keep myself from vomiting.

  Is it okay if I go first? I said.

  I was looking for you, he said.

  He pulled me into the second living room, where it was empty. When he pulled my arm, I tumbled to the floor and almost threw up on the carpet in front of the piano.

  Helen, he said as he helped me up, don’t you think it’s strange that his suicide seemed to come out of nowhere? How well do you think you knew your brother?

  I burped, some vomit rose up in my throat, and I employed the Swiss mountain stream technique to swallow it down. Then I told him about the time my adoptive brother visited me in New York, about the status of my investigation, and I went over the six reasons people commit suicide.

  He looked at me with a strange and intense emotion, it seemed like he wanted to shake me, or to kiss me. I swerved my head away, in case. He pretended he did
n’t notice anything, and told me that the article I cited missed a reason, the reason he believed my adoptive brother killed himself: a philosophical reason, but I didn’t get to hear his explanation; I had to pull myself away from him, so I would be able to throw up alone, comfortably and quietly.

  37

  When I was a freshman in high school, everyone called me spinster from a book, because of how ugly I was, and the state of my generic, off-brand clothing and shoes. At that time I had not discovered clothes from the dumpster. I wore beige caftans from Kmart in the summer, and during the school year, a beige shirt and pants uniform. From far away, it probably looked like I was nude. If I walked past a boy in the hallway, he shrieked and made screeching sounds. IT’S THE SPINSTER FROM A BOOK! Then he would stick his finger in his mouth. The truth was, I didn’t mind the quaint and old-fashioned insult; I thought spinsters were interesting because of the books I read, Jane Austen and George Eliot. Of course, even in their novels, the spinsters were married off eventually. Perhaps the book that left the greatest impression on me from that time was Kafka’s diaries, I admired his entries of despair and complaint, I tried to absorb them as a way to perceive and understand the world because I too had despair and complaints. And I’ll never forget how he ended them: You too have weapons.8 END.

  Who, exactly, has weapons? Did he mean me? My adoptive brother?

  At the age of sixteen, I was obsessed with a person I didn’t know, and I used this obsession to get out of the house and see the world outside of suburban Milwaukee. I followed Fiona Apple around on tour across the country one summer by myself, I bought bus and plane tickets, after saving up every paycheck from a seasonal mall job at the incense store. Instead of staying at motels, I tried to befriend innocent-looking people at the shows and hint that I needed a place to spend the night, it worked mostly with young unattractive men who were alone, young men with canes, etc. The other nights I spent in hostels or even in 24-hour diners, I went to as many shows as possible, I would arrive early, and perch myself by the backstage door, usually with a pathetic stuffed animal, and I can only imagine the intense pity she must have felt for me as she came upon me standing by myself with a stuffed animal, waiting by the door like some poor orphan out of Dickens, it probably ruined her day. One time I gave her a notebook with poetry, not my poetry, of course, but poetry by Sylvia Plath, I tore out my favorite poems and glued them into the notebook, I myself didn’t write poetry, I had no interest in writing anything, I thought poetry was boring but cool, and she asked me why I liked Sylvia Plath, she seemed genuinely interested to know why, and I told her I liked the poem about shoes that rhymed, and Fiona Apple sort of smiled, she told me to read Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, then her tour manager pulled her away from me, wait, she’s trying to tell me something, no wait, but she was easy to pull away because she was small, meanwhile the security guards were assholes, and they made fun of me, some of them called me chink, but I didn’t care, my heart lifted when she came out onstage to perform, because she waved the stuffed animal around and put it on top of her piano, where it remained until the end of the show, and when she left the stage, she took it with her. What did she do with all of them? I wondered. She probably has a room in her house filled with stuffed animals from starving once-orphans like myself, I thought, or maybe she donated them to a children’s hospital or a preschool in need.

  As I remember that time and how colorless everything was, everything except Fiona Apple, I realize it’s possible I was as miserable as my adoptive brother, and I understood how this misery and depression would lead to suicide. Until I returned home, I forgot that for a brief moment, I myself considered suicide, I thought about cutting my wrists with plastic razors when I was in high school, and I considered it again before I escaped Milwaukee. My adoptive mother was correct, I was very dramatic. But I didn’t kill myself for some reason or another. Inside me was a force that wanted to stay alive.

  38

  Like most normal people, my life force ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed. At times I felt euphoric for no reason, perhaps a troubled person gave me a high five and told me I was cool, and then, an hour later, I started to feel depressed, like nothing was worth it, everything I did was a waste. I was currently on the tile floor of the upstairs bathroom, a bathroom connected to my adoptive brother’s bedroom in a house full of relatives and neighbors, where I was resting after an hour spent violently throwing up and retching and then forcing myself to gag by sticking a finger down my throat in a desperate attempt to end the spell of nausea that had seized my body.

  We can get sidetracked, I said to no one, and off the track completely, if we only pay attention to certain things, the same things over and over. If we don’t widen our scope and look at the broader picture, we may find ourselves repeating and looping endlessly, pointlessly. You have to continually see the world in new ways or else you get stuck, I said to no one. So perhaps one day, when you wake up, you pretend to be Fiona Apple, imagine what your daily life would be like.

  It was a unique perspective, on the floor, and I began to notice pieces of dried-up mucous stuck to the wall along the baseboards, crusty pieces of snot attached to the wall. It was my adoptive brother’s mucous; no one else in the house used this bathroom, as it was attached to his bedroom. Perhaps this was part of the cruel plan Chad Lambo talked about. He left the snot for us to discover and bring back to life. When I tried to peel it off, it broke into pieces, sharp pieces of dried-up mucous cut through the bandages and sliced into my fingers and made them bleed all over again. Some of the wallpaper ripped off.

  I stood up, went to the sink, washed the blood off my hands, splashed my face with water and rinsed out my mouth, and replaced my bandages. When I was little, I used to say bad things and tell lies, like all little children. Especially when I lied, my adoptive mother picked me up and carried me to the sink and rubbed my mouth with a bar of white soap, probably Dove. There was always a bar of white soap by the sink. I wondered what the soap would taste like now. As a thirty-two-year-old woman, I picked up the soap, which had bubbles on top from my previous washing, and I placed a bit of the end inside my mouth. I gagged immediately, it was disgusting, more disgusting than the taste of sperm. I’d rather swallow sperm, I said to no one, I’d rather eat a tray of pubic hair. My adoptive mother’s punishment came back to me clearly and I pictured how frenzied she became as she wiped the bar of soap all over my mouth, and I saw her throwing down the bar of soap in disgust and dropping me to the floor. I was seven years old. It actually made me feel a little better to gag again, to get the alcohol out of my body.

  A person knocked at the door.

  Is someone in there? a relative asked.

  Yes, Helen’s in here, I said. To be honest, I’m not doing well.

  Should I get your father?

  Please don’t do that, anything but that!

  The relative didn’t hear me, because after a minute of silence, my adoptive father knocked at the door.

  Helen, what’s going on in there? Other people need to use the bathroom. You can’t just stay in there all night. Don’t be so selfish.

  I know there are other people out there and it’s very selfish of me to hog the bathroom, I said, but there are other bathrooms. Can’t they use those?

  Your aunt’s pill container is in that bathroom, and her things, he said. Open the door.

  I pictured the other people in the hallway. They hovered around the door and waited anxiously. I picked up a towel from the closet, maybe the same one I had masturbated with, and wrapped it around my head. I opened the door and, without a word, stepped out.

  My face was covered with the towel, but I knew if I walked approximately twenty steps and turned to the left, I would come to the door of a never-used guest room that functioned mostly as storage for my adoptive father’s hoarding tendencies. No one even tried to stop me.

  It’s all yours, I heard my adoptive father say to a relative.

  The bathroom door shut.<
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  39

  Two steps forward, one step back. One step forward, two back. I was very far away from where my adoptive parents wanted to put me: my adoptive brother’s bedroom. Thirty steps, fifty steps away, who could say? I was in a room that no one paid attention to. It was drab and filthy. A pullout couch covered in cigarette burns took up most of the room. No one in the house smoked, the smoker must have been the previous owner, the couch must have been owned by someone else and purchased from Goodwill. The rest of the room had been taken over by stacks of books, papers, files, documents. The room was nothing more than a paper landscape, with one single window that looked out onto nothing, the panes of glass covered in thousands of fly carcasses and spiderwebs, impossible to see out of. I sat on the couch. I felt like I was sitting in the most depressing and disgusting waiting room, worse than the Milwaukee DMV. The room always smelled like body odor, even though no one ever spent any time in it unless one was forced to. Sometimes, when we were little, my adoptive father locked us up in this room. It was a real and serious punishment worse than being spanked. Go to the smelly room, he would say, and think about what you did. To get out, we would have to beg. To be put in a begging position as a child sickened me even more than the bar of soap in my mouth.

  For the first time in my life, I realized I disagreed with Kafka. My adoptive brother and I had no weapons, not even metaphorical ones. We were too dumb to figure out how to climb out of the window and onto the roof to escape. We were too dumb to do anything except beg.

  I looked down at my phone. There was a text from Steve. How are you doing? he wrote. My roommate Julie must have told him what happened. FINALLY, someone asked me how I was doing! I almost burst into tears. The kindness, the humanity of the question shocked me. No one had ever asked me that before. Or at least it had been a long time. I didn’t write anything back to Steve, I thought it would be more mysterious that way, he would be forced to interpret my silence. When I looked up, I noticed the paper landscape was covered in a fine film of dust, and I was compelled to use my masturbation towel as a duster. As I went about the room and began to wipe things down, I started to feel sick. I could hardly breathe, all of the fucking dust molecules flew into my lungs, poisoning me, making me feel nauseated all over again.