The Light Years

by Chris Rush

“I do. But he’s not family. I’m just saying, lay off the powder. That’s not what we taught you.”

  I could feel my face turning red, too—not with shame but with anger. But there was no place for it to materialize in this sad little house, my sister in pigtails, her crazy joy used up.

  “Where’s Vinnie?” I asked.

  “In the barn, I guess. Why don’t you say hi on the way out?”

  Was she suggesting it was time I leave?

  “And don’t tell Mom you were here. She’ll think something weird is going on.”

  * * *

  I DID TELL MOM. I thought she should be aware of Donna’s situation. “They can’t even pay their heating bill.”

  Mom was dusting the kitchen ceiling with something that resembled a robotic arm. “I don’t know what on earth has happened to your sister. She was the best of the bunch. Now she lives up some godforsaken road with a farmer.”

  “Why don’t you help her then? Give her some money.”

  “I’m sure Vinnie would just spend it on dirt.”

  “Dirt?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I poured myself a bowl of granola and added some milk Donna had given me at the farm.

  “I don’t want that in the house. You would think your sister would have heard of Louis Pasteur. Oh, that’s right, your sister dropped out of college! You know, my parents didn’t offer me that opportunity. I had to stuff dead animals.” Mom was now scouring the immaculate countertop.

  I went to sit in the backyard, leaving my mother alone in the house. After a while, I could hear the piano. While I was away in Tucson, a baby grand had appeared in the living room. Sometimes, Mother would play old Methodist hymns, belting them out like demented show tunes.

  Pass me not, O gentle Savior.

  Whom have I on Earth but thee?

  Under the apple tree, I snorted more coke, knowing my brothers were probably somewhere in deeper woods, getting wasted. And surely Vinnie and Donna were deep in the Hawaiian by now—and my father deep inside a mistress, drooling drunk.

  Mom was the only sober adult in the house, though she often seemed the one in the most altered state. Sometimes we laughed at her madness, but, one way or another, we were all infected with it.

  * * *

  MY OLD GIRLFRIEND Julie went a bit mad, too, that winter. Like my mother, she was a maniacal house cleaner, and this tendency was exacerbated by cocaine—cocaine she got from me. I assumed her passion for hygiene and cleanliness had to do with her father’s dirty underpants in the freezer, but she said that the evidence was gone—the case settled. Her father had lost. When I asked her why, then, she was always cleaning, she said it made her feel better, that it was her art.

  There was a deep unhappiness in Julie, but she never fessed up to it and I never wanted to pry. I knew her father had done some terrible magic on her, too. I never forgot what she said to me in Idaho—that she needed to go home to protect her sister.

  Julie seemed to have a new boyfriend every few weeks, and though they didn’t treat her particularly well, some of them bought her a fair amount of coke. It gave me pleasure to overcharge them.

  Slowly, cocaine began to turn a profit—enough that when Julie was between boyfriends, I could simply give it to her. Flow Bear had warned me against such behavior, telling me, “In this business, there are no friends.” But when I saw Julie attacking her kitchen in a pair of rubber gloves, I wanted to be kind. And coke was the ultimate kindness.

  If Julie’s house was empty, we’d partake in her gleaming bedroom. On the coldest days, she liked to turn up the heat and put on a bikini—her favorite was scarlet with black polka dots. She’d snort and dance around, her feet touching the ground with no more effect than that of a tiny bird. She was as skinny as I was and, like me, a vegetarian. She never ate much, and it didn’t help that she made herself vomit. “Don’t worry,” she’d say, heading into the bathroom, “I’m good at it.” Once, after a long line, she suggested writing a cookbook for girls like herself—girls who liked to purge.

  “They need to know what food comes up easily and what doesn’t. Pizza is easy, but ice cream, that’s a bit of a problem.”

  I never knew what she’d say next.

  “You know, Chris, I’ve killed a baby.”

  For a moment, I thought she was delusional, but then she said, “Right before I met you,” and I realized she was talking about an abortion. Her eyes flashed and met mine, begging for sympathy or judgment—I couldn’t tell. I just gave her more coke.

  And then I told her I still loved her.

  Eyes closed, she smiled the faintest smile. “I know. But you’re a fag.”

  She was not without a mean streak.

  “You have to go now, St. Granola. I’ve got a date with a man.”

  * * *

  THERE WERE NIGHTS I was so lonely I was almost tempted to stand in the yard and call out to my old friends, the flying saucers. I thought about Gabriel Green and my past lives, about sexy Venusians in see-through jumpsuits.

  Around me, people were falling in love. Michael and Steven both had steady girlfriends. They talked of the future, of marriage. Every night, the couples disappeared into bedrooms and got stoned. For them, the drugs were just dessert. For me, though, they were the entire meal.

  At six in the morning, I smoked the most expensive pot in the U.S.A. For lunch, I had cocaine with one of Dad’s masons. Dinner required something closer to oblivion. Knowing my brothers were fucking in their bedrooms (my parents, too), I needed something more, and I sometimes found my way to a needle. Shooting coke was, I convinced myself, superior to sex.

  But I knew there was an even better high.

  At the mansion in Philly, sometimes I’d catch a small glimpse of Flow Bear’s private life. On my way to the bathroom one day, I saw where he slept: huge mahogany bed, barbells on the floor, steel syringe on the night table. It was the only room with real furniture.

  Flow Bear, I discovered, did not live alone. Now and then his lover would appear in a pale negligee, lavender or blue. She was a limp blonde, tiny, zonked out, floating by like a bit of ectoplasm in the dark. In a whisper, she’d ask Flow Bear a question, and he would always nod. Once she sipped a glass of water and watched us from the doorway as we conducted our business. Her dressing gown was open, and I stared at her breasts.

  Flow Bear was counting my cash. When he saw me watching her, he laughed. “So, what’s up with you? You like boys or girls?”

  The woman in the doorway began to mumble or sing. She was spectacularly high. That night, Flow Bear sold me a gram of heroin—China white. After he warned me how strong it was, how dangerous it was if I did too much, he suggested I shoot up with him.

  When I said “I just wanna watch,” he smiled, as if I were flirting with him.

  After he injected, he began to tell me about a big new deal he was planning—but then, in the middle of a sentence, he nodded off, slipping from his chair onto the floor.

  Somehow I got him to his bedroom, where his lover was lying on the bed, reading, naked. I put Flow beside her.

  She whispered, “Don’t leave. Please.”

  * * *

  BUSINESS WAS BOOMING. I continued to sell my wares from Mom’s old sewing room, which I’d turned into a sort of haunted house. Bolts of blue velvet draped my childhood statue of Mary. Phrenology heads sat on nineteenth-century medical texts. There was driftwood, turquoise, a jeweled candy box. Beneath a Tiffany lamp, quartz crystals were laid out like daggers.

  Everyone called my office the Dungeon.

  Mom thought it was my art studio, though she never asked to see my work. As my customers came and went, she said, “I’m glad you have so many friends. Why don’t you ever introduce me to anyone?”

  When I didn’t answer her, she snapped, “Am I too old? Your father thinks I’m too old. He won’t even look at me.”

  * * *

  ONE MIDNIGHT, I found her in a satin nightgown, polishing silver. A pirate’s hoard w
as stacked on the kitchen table—knives and forks, platters and bowls, coffee urn and butter dish. With pink goo, each piece was polished, then rinsed and laid out to dry. The results were outrageous—an explosion of white light.

  Mom was finishing the demitasse spoons. I asked if she needed help.

  “No. I like the work. It gives me time to think.”

  “About what?”

  “About why on earth we need all this silver. I should just sell it and take off. You were smart to run away, Chris.”

  When I explained that I hadn’t ever run away, that I’d been sent away, she nodded and handed me a spoon. Maybe it was a bid for forgiveness.

  I put the spoon in my pocket.

  37.

  Mysterious Substance

  IT TURNED OUT THAT MONEY wasn’t enough. My mother still wanted the same old thing, the thing she knew was impossible—my father’s love. That was the precious, ineluctable prize. Though, for a while, she’d resigned herself to go without it, suddenly she was mad again for his attention.

  That spring, her hair became increasingly troubled. Michael called it the UFO. In the morning, her frazzled locks were vaguely paranormal, a creeping presence. Later, she’d go in her bedroom and whip it up, emerging with something like a chocolate sundae on her head. She seemed to think it looked fine.

  Then one afternoon, she came home with a shock of orange curls. “I’m going away for a bit,” she told me.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “Maybe a week. Danny’s going to stay with Kathy.”

  When I asked her what had happened to her hair, she said, “Doctor’s orders.”

  I was stoned and my mouth hung open, uncomprehendingly.

  “I guess I can tell you. I’m getting a face-lift.”

  “What does that have to do with your…” I gestured toward her orange head.

  She huffed impatiently. “Dr. Susskind told me to dye it. He said when I get home from the hospital and people mention I look different, I can just say I changed my hair. It’s a diversion!”

  When Mom returned, five days later, she was horrifying: a woman in a yellow turban, fat-faced, with purple bruises and mummy bandages. She looked like she’d been assaulted.

  When my little brother saw her, he started to cry. She tried to hug him but he pushed her away. She said, “Don’t you want Mommy to look pretty?”

  That same week, she hired a private investigator to follow my father around—though I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just follow him herself. She was completely unrecognizable.

  * * *

  ONE LATE AFTERNOON, at the jobsite, my father showed up and said he’d drive me home. This was very odd. I told him I had my bike, and he said, “Throw it in the back.” He was clearly drunk, and as he drove he drifted from lane to lane; I tried not to worry.

  The radio was off and when I went to turn it on he said, “Leave it.”

  “Where are we going?” We were headed in the opposite direction from home, toward the woods.

  Dad lit a Winston and shrugged, said nothing. Now I was frightened.

  After a while, he finally said, “Your mother,” slurring like someone talking in his sleep. He took two pulls on his cigarette. “There’s a few things you should know about that woman. She’s no saint. Shut up,” he barked—though I hadn’t said a word. “I know you take her side on everything. I’m the villain, right? Is that what you think?”

  I wished I weren’t high, so that I could have known what to say.

  “You mother’s done her share of shit.”

  He turned to look at me. The car swerved.

  “Watch the road!” I said.

  “I see the goddamn road. I’m asking you, what kind of woman sleeps with her husband’s brother?”

  At first I assumed he was so drunk that he’d forgotten his brothers were dead—but then he said, “We’d been married two years—two kids at home.”

  Why was he telling me this?

  “Dad, can we just—”

  “I said, shut up! I come home early from a hunting trip, and Burton’s car is in the driveway, three a.m., your mother in the backseat. I parked on the street, turned off my lights. Saw my brother get out and take a leak. Your mother was in that car all night—two babies in the house! When Burton drove off in the morning, he didn’t even see me with a goddamn buck strapped to my car.”

  I didn’t understand. Why would my father just watch such a thing and not try to stop it? And then I remembered the photographs I’d seen of Burton—how big he was.

  “That morning, I had it out with your mother.” Dad’s voice was wavering now. “She tells me she loves him—can you believe that? Oh, but she’s sorry, she wants to stay, she tells me. ‘I want to stay with you, Charlie.’”

  I knew that Burton had died around this time.

  “All started there,” my father mumbled. “Beginning of the end. Long fucking end.”

  He seemed on the verge of tears, and I asked him to take me home. I felt as if he were putting something into my body—some sort of poison, a mysterious substance from the past that had nothing to do with me but that tainted my every breath.

  “By the way,” my father said. “I’m laying you off.”

  When I asked him why, he said, “The church is finished. Your services are no longer needed.”

  * * *

  AT HOME, I went into the basement. I had thirty or forty thousand dollars hidden down there, and nothing to spend it on but more drugs. When I snorted coke with Julie, I was fine, but when I did it alone, I did too much and often descended into paranoia.

  I was sure my parents knew what was going on. Without work, I suddenly had too much free time, and more customers than ever. People came and went constantly, and I wasn’t being careful. Money went missing, and then a couple of my father’s antique guns. My parents were furious, certain the culprit was one of my new friends.

  “I bought those guns in the forties, after the war,” my father growled.

  My mother joined forces with him, happy to share a common enemy. “Chris, you don’t care about anything. Guns are memories!”

  Guns are memories?

  I went to the dungeon and locked the door, worried about guns and money and the mound of cocaine piled on my desk.

  When, early on Sunday morning, my father called a “family meeting,” I knew, by the very civility of the term, that something was seriously amiss.

  Dad got right to the point. “Judge Thompson phoned me last night. It was a courtesy call. There was a search warrant on his desk, which luckily he decided not to sign. He didn’t want detectives getting your mother and I out of bed.”

  “A search warrant for what?” I said stupidly, my pockets filled with drugs.

  “Shut up, Chris.” My father shook his head. “Selling LSD to a narcotics agent! Really, how stupid are you?”

  I went red. When I tried to open my mouth, my father cut me off: “I do not want to know the details! But the judge did mention it was you, Michael, who managed this moronic stunt. No more of this nonsense or your asses go to jail! Do you hear me?”

  I looked at my brothers, incredulous they were doing deals on their own.

  Mom was frantic. “Luckily, no one knows about this besides the judge. Thank God he’s a friend of ours. Can you imagine if people heard about this?”

  “Disgusting,” my father said.

  * * *

  DISGUSTING. THE WORD seemed familiar.

  Walks like he has a cunt. Why don’t you come up here?—I know you can hear me, you little cocksucker! I thought of the recording I’d made of my father.

  One Sunday afternoon, when everyone was outside, I went into my parents’ bedroom and shuffled through my mother’s drawers, and then her closet, slipping my hand in coat pockets, emptying hatboxes onto the floor. I was out of control.

  When Mom found me, I was looking under the mattress.

  “What on God’s earth are you doing?”

  “Where is it?” I said. “Wh
ere is it?”

  “Chris—stop it! What’s wrong with you?”

  When I told her I wanted the tape, I could see by her face she immediately knew what I was referring to.

  “It’s gone,” she said.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Your father found it. He destroyed it.”

  Suddenly I felt defeated, like I’d lost some vital part of my past.

  “What does it matter?” She picked up a hat from the floor and put it back neatly in its box. “Sometimes I think it’s your own fault you have nightmares. You have to forget things, Chris. It’s the only way to survive.”

  * * *

  ERASURE.

  Mom was right. I had to forget.

  I cooked my China white in a silver spoon. Sometimes I’d shoot up with friends—not friends, but whatever they were, the customers who craved a speechless high, who wanted to grow dim with me, become sputtering candles in the dark.

  I never admitted it, but needles scared me. I hated the feeling of the spike slipping, without resistance, an inch into my arm. I worked so hard to believe I existed, that I was a solid being, and the needle always undid me—the ease of its entry, like a hand passing through a ghost.

  But the high was irresistible—the dark bliss, the low note, the sleep cure. In heroin, I found absolution—all my sins were erased. Suddenly, a warm ocean was rolling out to meet me.

  I preferred to smoke or snort it, but there was a beauty to the needle—the ritual and the rush. For a while, there was a pale young man I shot up with. He was a silent, charmless creature, a blond shadow. I thought he was beautiful. We had an unspoken agreement that he would sit there and I would feed him drugs, just for letting me look at him.

  One night after we shot up, he got out his dick and let me blow him. It happened a few times. The last time we did it, I nodded off at his feet. When I woke, drugs were missing, and my precious piece of gold was gone. And, of course, my pale thief never returned.