Disintegration

by Scott Nicholson

  Joshua wiped at his mouth where a thin line of blood had collected in one corner. "They lose and you win, huh? A Wells never fails."

  "I never asked for any of it."

  "But you got it all, don't you? And every time somebody dies, you get a little more."

  "I'll wring your goddamned neck if you don't shut up."

  "Jake, Jake, Jake." Joshua wheezed a laugh. "You looked in a mirror lately? We're not kids anymore."

  "I don't have to put up with your shit. I put up with plenty of it when we were kids, but you're right. Those days are over. And you can add one more person to my list of dead people." Jacob started for the door, then whirled and jabbed out with his finger. " You."

  Joshua rose, the poker in his hand. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

  Jacob kept walking, entered the foyer with its high ceiling and haunted walls. The front door was locked. The shiny, key-operated deadbolt was new, its bright glint out of place in that dim room.

  "You're home, Jacob," Joshua said, tapping the poker on the floor as if it were a cane. "Get used to it."

  Jacob yanked on the door. One of his parents' favorite punishments was to lock naughty children in their rooms, and many of the doors in the house could be locked from either side. "I'll bust a window if I have to. Or your head."

  "Such anger. I thought the doctors taught you to deal with it. But it's handy to claim you don't remember what happened."

  "What do you want?"

  "What have I always wanted? To be you, hotshot. I had the bad luck of sliding into the world after you did. And you beat me to everything else, too."

  "Look, I didn't want Dad's blessing, I didn't want the inheritance, and I sure as hell didn't want any Wells birthright. I fought against that with every breath, same as you."

  "Until just before he died. Funny how that happened. How you got in good when it counted."

  Jacob pressed his hands over his ears. If only he could shut off that taunting, accusing voice. Or maybe squeeze hard enough for the memories to squirt from his brain like pus from a festering boil. He hadn't gone to Warren Wells' deathbed and begged for forgiveness, had he? But he couldn't shake the image of that pale wrinkled hand reaching to pat his head, and those watery blue eyes staring in pride and victory.

  Joshua approached, the poker raised before him like a fencer's foil, his lips curled in triumph. Jacob had nowhere to run. Even if the door were open, there was no place in the world to escape the past. He stared into the face that looked like a savage mirror, a reminder of all those dark secrets and sick, hidden things.

  Joshua stood close enough for Jacob to smell the stale cigarette tar on his lips. "Take it easy, brother. You're acting like you're here against your will. As if you haven't thought of this house every single day of your adult life."

  Joshua put a hand on Jacob's shoulder. The hand was as cold as a lizard tucked under a creek rock. "Come on. Let me show you to your room."

  Jacob let himself be led across the foyer to the polished stairs with their worn runners. They paused as if both were admiring the splintered baluster, an awesome relic that had resisted repair. Then Joshua nudged him up the stairs. Each riser took Jacob closer to the past, though memory seemed to elude him. Instead of clear and prolonged reels, he saw the events of their childhood in flashes of blurred and fractured images.

  Step. On the floor, the sun shining through the window, making a yellow river between them, Joshua bringing a wooden train caboose down hard on Jacob's knee. Step. Jacob's fingers caught in the corner of the crib, his screams filling the world, Joshua grinning while yanking the covers away.

  Step. In the dark behind the curtain, holding his breath, something terrible scratching at the door.

  Step. Mother entering their room, smiling, bearing a silver tray with China teapot and mugs.

  Step. Father smirking around his pipe, holding out a dollar bill and seeing which of his sons could leap the highest and be the first to snatch it.

  Step. The window broken, the jagged glass smeared with the dark blood of the bird that had flown into its own reflection.

  Step. In the night, Joshua giggling from his bed across the room. A separate giggle echoing from the closet. Jacob with his head under the suffocating safety of the pillow.

  Step. Mother at the head of the stairs, her legs trembling, eyes gone wild toward the ceiling.

  Step. Jacob's comic book collection scattered across the floor, the crotches of the cartoon women neatly clipped out.

  Step. An arm reaching up from beneath the bed, fingers pale in the moonlight.

  Step. Father locking the closet door, threatening to leave the boys in there until they turned to skeletons if they didn't learn to behave.

  Step. A fleeting stench of sulfur, then a small flame crawling up the sheets.

  Step. Joshua making him promise to never tell, cross his heart and hope to die.

  Step. The doctor bending over, smelling of sweet decay, his round face bright with kindness.

  Step. Mother with the silver tray, this time bearing pills and a glass of water.

  Step. A scattering of coins on the walnut dresser. Joshua with three whole dollars because he was Father's favorite.

  Step. Rummaging through Joshua's laundry, trying on his brother's favorite red shirt. It fit perfectly, better than any of Jacob's own clothes.

  Step. Jacob with his head under the pillow. The closet door creaking open.

  Step. The doctor telling him it was just a dream, and dreams could be scary, couldn't they? But, see, there's nothing here now.

  Step. Mother at the head of the stairs.

  Step. Father at the head of the stairs.

  Step. A crashing sound, bone softer than wood, meat with little give.

  Step. Promise not to tell ever.

  Step. Jacob at the head of the stairs.

  He blinked and looked around. The dust was like a fine silver-gray carpet, the threads shimmering and almost ethereal in the dying daylight. The hall was paneled with cherry. The closed doors stood like solid slabs of unforgiving darkness. Cracks as crooked as the legs of spiders stretched across the ceiling.

  The last door on the right led to the room he and Joshua had shared as young children. Despite the expansiveness of the house, Mother had insisted the boys be together as much as possible. Their parents' bedroom was two doors down, the neighboring room serving first as a nursery, then as a guest room after the boys had been weaned from the crib. It wasn't until Jacob and Joshua were twelve that they each were allowed their own rooms. But when Jacob thought of the house, he didn't think of "his" room. He thought of "their" room. To him, the room on the corner with the view of the barn and the field beside the river was where he had grown up.

  That's where his feet carried him now. The floorboards creaked with damp age, though he still unconsciously avoided the weak spot that had first alerted his parents to his sleepwalking. How many times had he walked this strip of faded carpet? Probably more times than he remembered.

  "Attaboy," Joshua said. "Don't fight it no more."

  Jacob must have entered a brief fugue state, because the next thing he knew, he was standing between the twin bunks that stood against opposite walls. Jacob's childhood bed now seemed too impossibly small to have held all those terrors and shivers. The closet door at the foot of the bed was ajar and he studied the harsh angle of blackness for any signs of movement.

  Joshua sat on his own bed and made an awkward attempt to stretch out. "Brings back a lot of memories, don't it?"

  "Not really," he lied. "My childhood is just sort of one long blur. Why would I want to remember it?"

  Joshua sat up with a hard groan of bedsprings. "Because I want you to, dear brother. Those were best days of my life, and I'd like to have them back."

  Jacob shook off the malaise that had engulfed him. "Is that why you hate me? Because I finally had some happiness? Because I succeeded while you ended up in a slave-wage job in Tennessee? Because I had a loving wife and
kids while you were shacking up with some trailer-trash slut? Because I left all this behind and you had to live in it day after day because it's all you ever had? Is that why you hate me?"

  Joshua smiled, his lips like those of the zombie-doll heads hanging from his car mirror. "I don't hate you. I love you. Why else would I go to all this trouble?"

  "It's not trouble. It's luck. You happen to show up here just when I hit bottom."

  "You got a nice, soft pile of green to catch your fall."

  Jacob stared into Joshua's eyes, those deep, soulless, hazel-ringed holes that swallowed any light that struck them. He wondered how closely his own eyes matched Joshua's. In the mirror, he never saw himself as merciless. But he wondered how others saw him. Could anyone really escape the corrupt taint of their genes?

  "I'm not like you, Joshua. I don't feed on the pain of others."

  "Like hell. You turned into the old man. A chip off the fucking block. As much as we used to despise him, looks like he had the last laugh after all."

  "You didn't even know him. At least he had enough of a soul left at the end that he could face his sins and apologize. But you don't even think about making amends. You just keep on digging a deeper hole, getting closer to hell with every shovelful."

  "Mighty fancy words for a make-believe poet. But at least I'm not burying my kids."

  Joshua reached to the shelf above his bed. The shelf was built into the wall and held the artifacts of a lost childhood. A ragged teddy bear flopped against a baseball glove, and an amputee G.I. Joe doll stood sentry over a stack of baseball cards crimped by a rubber band. Without looking, Joshua ran his hand over a Rubik's cube and a dented Tonka dump truck. He pushed the toys aside and pulled a dusty book from the recesses of the shelf.

  Jacob recognized it instantly, though he hadn't seen it in more than a decade. "My diary. How did you get that?"

  "It's my story, too, Jakie. Hell, I coulda wrote it for you if I wasn't so lazy."

  Jacob stood. The past was sealed in its vault, yesterdays were the stuff that filled coffins, memories were for those who lacked the strength to bury them. Skeletons weren't meant for closets, they were to be hammered into a thousand bone fragments and scattered to the far corners of the world. Driven to dust. No evidence must ever remain.

  No evidence…

  "Give me that." Jacob's blood was frigid lava.

  Joshua leaned back against a faded pillow, cracked the book to somewhere in the middle, and began reading, all trace of his rural accent gone.

  "'January 17: Cold and gray. Looks like snow. Joshua got me in trouble in school today. He marked over part of my homework and drew pictures of naked girls. He made an A and I got sent to the principal's office.'"

  Joshua looked past the diary, his grin that of a devilish boy's. "Hey, I'd forgotten all about that. Good thing you wrote it down, or it might never have happened. What else did you say about me?"

  "That's none of your business. Give me that."

  Joshua flipped through a couple of pages, the paper rustling like the lungs of a dying man. "Oooh, here's a good one. 'February 3: Cynthia Chaney sat with me at lunch today. I had peanut butter and jelly. She gets free lunch because her family is so poor. Cynthia said she's scared of Joshua because he spies on girls going into the restroom.' Hell, brother, you ought to give up real estate and go to Hollywood. With some of this stuff you make up, you're bound to be a hit."

  "That really happened. It's all true."

  "Bullshit. I was the one who ate lunch with Cynthia Chaney. Walked her home. Screwed her in the bushes behind the trailer park. She had this crazy idea that I was gonna marry her and rescue her from her pathetic excuse for a life. Dumb bitch."

  "Cynthia was a nice girl. She couldn't help it that you ruined her."

  "Cry me a goddamned river. Any girl that spreads her legs when you whisper the word 'love' deserves everything she gets."

  "She had to move to Florida after the abortion."

  "If you believe all the other stupid sluts. I'd bet money she was looking for an excuse to drop out of school and came up with that one because nobody would blame her. People are real good at arranging the truth to fit their needs. And I wasn't the only one to ride that little pony, anyway."

  "The next day…" Jacob looked out the window, the anger seeping out of him along with his strength. "Cynthia thought I was you. She came up to me behind the gym and kissed me on the mouth, said meet her at lunch and make plans for running away together."

  Joshua laughed. "Told you she was a dumb bitch. You probably felt sorry for her. Shows how messed up you were back then. Hell, I knew it two years before the doctors did. Didn't take a college degree to hear those loose screws rattling around inside your skull."

  "Give me the diary."

  "Wait. We're about to get to the good part. 'March 3: I wonder what it's like to be Joshua. They say twins often share a psychic bond that goes beyond anything that DNA can explain. This book I read said that's why twins separated at birth will often lead lives that seem amazingly parallel.' Hey, that's a good one. 'Psychic bond.' Do you really believe that crap, or is it some screwy shit the doctors told you?"

  "We're alike in a lot of ways. In ways that make me ashamed. But Dad thought I was the troubled one. I guess you're right about people seeing what they want to see."

  The sun was slanting through the window at a low angle, illuminating the dusty clutter under Joshua's bed. That thing about monsters under the bed, the hand rising up to snatch children away to that dark land beneath, had been nothing but a story. Yet as the shadows of the room grew deeper, Jacob sat on his childhood bed and had to fight an urge to pull his feet up from the floor and tuck them under his knees. The monsters were long gone, their power to scare sealed away in the dead hollows of closets and empty toy boxes.

  Joshua turned a few more pages and a piece of crinkled celluloid fell out of the diary. Joshua picked it up, glanced at it then spun it over to Jacob as if it were a square Frisbee. Jacob caught it. The Polaroid portrayed him and Joshua in matching blue sailor suits, aged about seven. It must have been early summer, because neither wore shoes. It took Jacob a moment to recognize himself as the one on the right, the one who held a small sailboat. Jacob had loved that sailboat and had slept with it on the windowsill at the head of his bed.

  Then one day Joshua had torn it from his hands and set it loose in the river, where it plunged over the tumbling, rocky currents and headed for a plunging froth of falls. Jacob had raced after the boat, almost jumping in the river to save it, but he couldn't swim and the water was fat and brown from recent rains. He ran along the riverbank as the briars and scrub locusts ripped jagged red lines across his arms and legs. He finally watched, helplessly tangled, as the sailboat careened against a protruding monolith of granite and shattered into bright scraps of painted wood and cloth.

  "'April 11,'" Joshua read. "'Mother is sick again. She stayed in bed all day and I had to bring her soup. She wouldn't eat any solid food. Medicine and wine. Her face is pale and her hair somehow turned gray over these past few weeks. Father stays downstairs in his study. Joshua hides when it's time to take food to Mother. We should get a nurse for her.'"

  Joshua slammed the diary closed. "Mommy's little pet, weren't you?"

  "It was an accident," Jacob said, looking out the window, seeing the broken sailboat in his mind, splinters in the foam.

  "Nothing's an accident. We get everything we deserve."

  "No." The river rose up, dark waters rimmed with white teeth.

  "You pushed her, Jacob."

  "No." The river opened like a large mouth, the cold current inviting him inside.

  "You killed your own fucking mother."

  Jacob rubbed the bottoms of his fists against his eyes, trying to wipe the sight of that broken sailboat out of his mind. Somewhere, far from here, its wreckage must have reached the bottom of a calm sea.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  R enee drove by the remains of their house Wednesday jus
t as the sun hit the far tops of the Blue Ridge. She had meant to keep going, but found herself turning into the driveway as if she were back from a run to the grocery store. The block footprint of the building lay like a lidless coffin. Yellow plastic tape still stretched around the charred wreckage, though it was ripped in places, the pieces fluttering like the tails of tangled kites.

  At the rear of the backyard, a small storage shed had been blackened but otherwise undamaged. The branches of the oaks and maples nearest the house were stunted and bare, crippled fingers among the vibrant spring foliage. A split-rail fence along the western side of the property had been knocked down, probably by one of the tanker trucks. The front yard was crisscrossed with ruts, the sidewalk cracked, mail-box leaning like a penitent drunken priest.

  A few blackened timbers poked up from the sunken pit of debris. Twisted metal and smoky stones were scattered in the dead embers. The refrigerator had once held pictures of Mattie in her soccer uniform, foolproof recipes, wrinkled tests with red letter A's circled at the top, all stuck to the door with colorful magnets. Now the rusty appliance lay on its side, adorned with nothing but shards of gray glass.

  She shouldn't have come. The fire chief, Davidson, had told her the scene investigation was complete, though some evidence was being tested in the state lab. She and Jacob were welcome to salvage anything they wanted. Davidson said they could even come in with a front end loader and dump truck and clear the remains, get a fresh start on the existing foundation.

  Remains.

  Easy for Davidson to say, a woman who was married to her work and whose only responsibility was to duty. Maybe Davidson, in the privacy of her lonely bed, could cry over firefighters killed in televised tragedies or mourn victims of distant wars. But Davidson didn't have some of the flesh of her own flesh seared into these ruins. Renee did. She wore the smoke like a burial shroud, and the loss was a hot bed of eternal coals in her chest.

  She sat in her car for a moment, looking up the street at the perfect houses with bright lights, television, and laughter behind the drawn curtains. She hated those people. They had no right to fortune and happiness. Renee had built her life from the ground up, driven each nail carefully, caulked every opening to prevent hard winds from penetrating. Yet she had failed somewhere. You could worry all you wanted about locks and safety lights, take every precaution, but tragedy still kicked in the front door, walked up the stairs, and whispered, "Nice to see you again."