I'm Not Sam

by Jack Ketchum

  This is what Lily’s seeing.

  I glance at the screen. I know what’s next. The ring. The kiss.

  I don’t watch the kiss but Lily does. She looks puzzled. Her eyes go to me and then back to the screen and her lips seem almost to be forming words or the beginnings of words, her eyes flicker.

  They go to the gown and back to the screen again.

  Come on, I’m thinking, come on.

  And then the silence breaks apart into a million pieces and Kris Kristofferson and Willie are singing LOVING YOU WAS EASIER, our song back then, and I know we’re on the dance floor at the reception, our first dance together as husband and wife, and Lily leans back on the couch more relaxed now while Kris is singing coming close together with a feeling that I’ve never known before in my time and I turn to the screen in time to see that second kiss which is just as public as the first one, with everyone watching us tinkling their knives against their wine glasses but this one’s real, I remember this one all right, I can almost feel it, this one’s just for us, just between us two people so much in love and there’s nobody in the room at all but Sam and me.

  I begin to sob into my hands. Can’t stop it. Can’t stop shaking. It’s like every moment of the past two weeks is flooding through me all at once, pouring out of me, all these moments away from her and it isn’t fair, it isn’t right.

  “Patrick? Patrick, what’s wrong?”

  And the voice is Sam’s voice.

  I feel like a jolt of electricity. It’s almost the same as when I saw that snake. I’ve done it! I can’t fucking believe it!

  “Sam! Jesus, Sam! Sam!”

  I reach for her but she’s up and off the couch so fast I don’t even come close.

  “I! Am! Not! SAM!” she screams, her face a twisted mask of frustration and anger and goddammit it’s suddenly Lily again, Lily in full-bore tantrum mode as she bats my beer bottle off the table, tears away the fireplace screen and flings it across the room, sweeps my John D. McDonald books off the mantle and as I’m standing trying to grab hold of her and talk to her saying god knows what to try to calm her down as she throws the standing lamp so hard against the wall that the light bulb explodes sending Zoey into a panic so that she leaps off the couch landing hard on her arthritic legs, skitters across the floor and races out of the room.

  Lily’s screeching loud and high as she tears my framed Jack Kirby print of HULK COMICS #1 that I’ve had since I was seventeen off the wall and smashes it to the floor and she’s barefoot and glass is everywhere -- I never want to hear that screech again as long as I live, it’s like an animal in pain -- and then I hear another crash coming from the study.

  “Stay there,” I tell her. I’m thinking about the glass. “Don’t move.”

  I know what I’ve got to do. My being here’s no good. My being here’s just making it worse. She’s looking at me like she’d like to strangle me, tear my head from my shoulders so I back off and head for the study. At least I can see if my cat’s all right. So that’s what I do.

  I hear the coffee table go over behind me.

  In the study the first thing I see is my lightpad smashed beside the drafting table and my pages scattered all across the floor. There’s Zoey huddled in the far corner of the room beneath the window. She must have made a leap for the high ground and failed. Glass crunches underfoot as I go to her, reach down. She cringes. But I persist.

  “Hey, girl. It’s all right. It’s okay. It’s all right.”

  It’s not all right at all but in a moment or two she relents and lets me touch her, stroke her back, scratch her head. Her eyes soften.

  I’m hearing nothing from the living room so I’m hoping the worst is over. I figure I’ll give it a little more time just to be sure.

  I crouch beside the drafting table to gather up my pages and the world suddenly tilts on me, nearly sends me down to all fours.

  I’m staring at the pages.

  I’m looking at Doctor Gypsum and Samantha.

  Only I’m not looking at Doctor Gypsum and Samantha.

  I’m looking at myself. Myself and Lily.

  In every frame. I’ve drawn us exactly. Our faces, our bodies. Lily’s and mine.

  Battling the Abominations League. Stepping out of the rubble of an old building, wounded, taking shelter, healing. More battles, more wounds. Whirling through space. Diving deep into the safety of the sea.

  I’ve been doing this every day for weeks now.

  I stare at the pages and feel a weariness I’ve never known.

  I gather them up and place them carefully on the table.

  Then turn and leave the room.

  Lily’s standing where I left her. The table overturned beside her. The living room is a shambles. There’s an acrid electric smell in the air.

  She’s naked. The wedding dress lies torn and crumbled at her feet. And she’s cut herself. On the hem of her dress are three drops and one long bright smear of blood.

  She’s crying softly. Her shoulders trembling.

  “Lily.”

  “I’m not Sam,” she says.

  Only gently this time. Almost, I think, with regret.

  “I know,” I tell her. “I know.”

  And then a moment later, “don’t move. I’ll come to you.”

  I cross the room and sweep her carefully up into my arms. Her face is still wet with tears against my cheek as I carry her into our bedroom. I lay her down on the bed and have a look at the cut on her foot. It’s not too bad. I go to the bathroom for sterile pads and peroxide, bandages and bacitracin. I tend to the wound.

  The night’s warm. She makes no move for the covers.

  I lie down beside her and look into her eyes and she looks into mine. I don’t know what she sees there but she holds my gaze and doesn‘t turn away. I’m not sure what I see in her eyes either. I think of Sam and I think of Lily. But in a little while I reach over.

  It’s perhaps a blessing, this thing I have, and perhaps a curse. I’ve always thought blessing but now I’m not so sure.

  I know exactly how to touch her.

  I know how to touch.

  END

  WHO’S LILY?

  I don’t know what in hell is going on but I’m scared. My body is telling me something frightening and my body doesn’t lie.

  As soon as I’m awake I can feel the wetness inside me -- Patrick last night -- so I roll away from him still asleep beside me, and as I stand his semen starts to ooze and slide along the inside of my left thigh. It’s just barely dawn. It’s still dark inside the house but I’d know my way to the bathroom blind. I use some toilet paper on my leg and labia and then a warm wet facecloth for your basic whore’s bath, thinking I really need to depilate or wax down there, wondering how I’ve let it go this long, and that’s when I notice my legs.

  My legs are unshaven.

  I run the palms of my hands up and down over them and that’s stubble all right. I’d say about two-or-three-weeks’ growth of stubble.

  What the hell?

  I stare at my face in the mirror. My face looks the same. But something about my hair’s wrong. I had it cut and styled just last week but you wouldn’t know it now. It needs a good brushing and it might be my imagination but I could swear it’s longer than it ought to be-- longer than it was just last night.

  I reach up into it to shake it out and stop midway.

  There are light thin tufts of hair growing out of my armpits.

  This is not possible.

  What my eyes are reporting my brain can’t process.

  I feel something drop in the pit of my stomach and it isn’t hunger pangs, it’s nausea.

  I need to talk to Patrick right away.

  But in the hall I glance to my right, and what I see in the living room stops me in my tracks.

  My first thought is that we’ve been vandalized while we were sleeping, but I doubt that even a morphine drip would allow us to sleep this soundly. I step down the hall but not too far. There’s glass all over the liv
ing room floor, presumably from Patrick’s shattered poster art lying there, among other things, and I’m barefoot.

  That’s when I realize the bottom of my foot’s bandaged.

  I don’t remember doing that.

  From where I stand I can see the overturned coffee table, the fireplace screen leaning over against the far wall by the television -- mercifully intact -- Patrick’s mystery books scattered everywhere, a broken Corona bottle, our vintage ’40s standing lamp lying in the middle of the floor, its bulb down to filaments and its painted glass shade in pieces. And beside it lies a pale white dress.

  I inch a little closer, mindful of all the glass, just to make sure that I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.

  It’s my wedding dress, veil and all, crumpled up and torn and stained with what looks like dried blood.

  I’m a medical examiner. I see a good deal of dried blood. And even at this distance I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.

  Connection: foot to blood.

  And while all this is spinning around in my head, while I’m trying to take in and make sense of all this violence to our lives and property not to mention what’s happened to my body, I realize that I’ve missed something so incongruous as to be almost surreal. Lying propped up on the couch, looking undismayed and undisturbed, is a big stuffed dog I’ve never seen before, bright red, a life-sized baby doll, also unfamiliar to me, and Teddy, my very first stuffed animal.

  If this is Oz, I want no goddamn part of it.

  I run shuddering back into the bedroom, sit down beside Patrick on the bed, place my hand on his shoulder and shake him gently. I don’t want to startle him but I need to have him awake. He needs to help me. I need to have someone explain all this.

  “Patrick. Wake up.”

  He squints at me and runs his tongue over dry lips.

  “Lily?”

  “Lily? Who’s Lily?”

  His eyes are open wide now. He rises up on one elbow.

  “Sam? Is that you?”

  “God, Patrick. Of course it’s me. Look at me. I mean really look at me. What the hell’s happening to me? And what’s gone on out there in the living room?”

  It seems at first he can’t say anything. Then he shakes his head. He looks puzzled. Then he smiles. Then he laughs. Then he reaches for me and takes me in his arms, hugs me tight.

  “Oh, jesus, Sam. You’re back! Thank god!”

  I feel like somebody’s taken my head and shaken it, hard. I’ve never been so confused and so scared in my life. I never thought it was possible. Something is so terribly, terribly wrong here.

  “What do you mean, back? Back from where?”

  What I really want to ask him is, have I gone crazy, Patrick? Is that it? Have I?

  I feel his body go rigid suddenly. It’s as though he, too, is scared of something now. And then I feel him start to cry.

  Patrick never cries.

  It starts off slow but soon this is big, deep, whooping crying, like he can’t even get his breath.

  “Patrick, what…?”

  For some reason just the sound of my voice seems to hurt him even more. He’s bawling, unrestrained as a hungry baby. I hold him tight. I notice Zoey, our old arthritic tuxedo cat, watching us wide-eyed from the windowsill.

  “What? What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  His body’s wracked with sobs. He’s scaring me further.

  “Patrick, you have to talk to me!”

  He won’t.

  We must be fifteen, twenty minutes like this. He clutches at me like he’s drowning, like the sea is beating at him and I’m the only rock around. His fingers are digging into my shoulders. His tears are rolling down my collarbone, cooling over my breast. He wipes away snot with the back of his hand. He’ll go quiet and then start all over again. I’ve never seen him like this. I don’t say another thing. I hold him, rock him. I’m calmer somehow. Maybe it’s simple exigencies -- I need to take care of this first. I need to take care of him.

  But he can’t seem to stop. He’s mumbling something into my shoulder, the same thing over and over.

  Finally I make it out. What’ve I done? What the hell have I done?

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about, Patrick?”

  He shakes his head and clutches me even tighter. It’s hurting.

  “Patrick, who’s Lily?”

  Lily. On top of all the rest of this, is he talking about some fucking affair?

  “I…you were…I couldn’t…” That’s all I can make out. The rest is incoherent, muttering, sobbing.

  I’m thinking that no, it’s not an affair. I know my husband. An affair he could admit to. This is something else.

  I can hardly breathe. He’s got to let go of me.

  “Patrick. Patrick listen to me. You need to rest. You need to let go. I’ll make us some coffee and we’ll talk, okay? About…everything. Let me go, Patrick. Please. Let go.”

  He eases up slightly.

  “Okay. Good,” I tell him. “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine. Let me make us some coffee.”

  I have to use both hands to pry us apart.

  His face is bathed in tears, his lips pulled away from his teeth as though frozen in some painful simulation of a smile. For a moment our eyes meet and I can’t say what I see in his, whether it’s pain or relief, joy or grief. It crosses my mind that he looks like some crazy religious penitent in the throes of ecstasy. And I wonder who’s gone mad here, him or I or both of us.

  I get up off the bed and go to the closet for my bathrobe. It’s there all right, but not where I left it. It’s pushed aside, as are my skirts and jackets for work, and for the first time I notice that there are clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor -- my clothes -- my red satin dress, my faux Hermes silk scarf, a pair of mismatched woolen knee-socks, my long white gloves.

  Connection: clothes on the floor, my wedding dress destroyed in the living room.

  I have no idea what this means but I think, leave it go for later. Get the coffee. Patrick needs the coffee and probably so do you. I slip on the bathrobe and knot it around my waist.

  The coffeepot’s in the sink and there are grounds in the bottom so I wash it out and fill it with water to the ten-mark, because this could be a multi-cup morning, and turn to the Krups machine on the counter and at first I don’t register what I’m seeing. It’s bright purple and has a clock and a dial and it’s shaped sort of like an old-fashioned radio. Then I see the Easy-Bake logo.

  Connection: Easy-Bake oven, stuffed toys on the sofa.

  Is there a child here?

  I think, the guest room. Coffee can wait.

  The answer is yes. There is indeed a kid around here somewhere -- or at least there has been.

  It’s a little girl.

  How do I know?

  Forget the oven. There’s a beading set on the dresser and a half-made knotted multicolored quilt on the floor by the bed next to something called a Stablemate Animal Hospital. I see a small bandaged mule out front. On the other side of the bed near the door my entire collection of Barbies are outfitted in bikinis and lying on lounge chairs in front of a plastic pool and slide. There’s a pink convertible waiting out front.

  On the night-table next to the bed is a half-finished glass of milk.

  Tossed on the unmade bed there’s a pink pair of pajamas in a smiling-monkey pattern.

  A little girl’s been here recently all right, but where is she now? Not the living room, kitchen or either bedroom. Maybe the office.

  I check the office. No.

  Possibly outside.

  I take a turn around the house. It’s already unseasonably warm even at this early hour though the grass feels refreshingly cool and damp against my feet. It’s the first remotely pleasant sensation I’ve felt all morning. I walk all the way out to the dock by the river and back again. I walk over to the old slide and swing set.

  No little girl -- though the slide is polished smooth, the rust all gone, the seats on the swing
s have been sanded down and I notice there’s been some soldering work done on the chains and hangers. Patrick? It’s got to be.

  Enough of this, I think. I don’t care what he’s going through. I need to talk to Patrick.

  I march into the bedroom. He’s dead asleep.

  I take his shoulder and shake him. There’s no response.

  “Patrick?”

  I shake him again, a lot less gently this time.

  “Patrick, wake up.”

  I shake him a third time. His eyes flash open and his arm flies up and smacks my hand away, bats it so hard it hurts.

  “Go away!”

  I stand there, stunned.

  This is not my Patrick. My Patrick would never do this. My Patrick would never dismiss me like some huge annoyance and certainly he’d never hit me. The Patrick I know and love is the gentlest man I’ve ever met. After eight years of marriage he still wants to hold my hand in public or drape his arm over my shoulder or around my waist. He still wants that one last kiss before we sleep.

  His eyes are closed again, his breathing regular. I watch him. Not for long but I watch him. And once again I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Because already he’s fled consciousness. He’s not faking. He’s sound asleep.

  This isn’t right. It’s not normal.

  There’s something wrong with him. There’s something wrong with both of us.

  It’s warm in the bedroom but I’m trembling. I very much need to calm down. I’m thinking that maybe that coffee might help after all, so I go back into the kitchen and spoon the French roast into the paper filter, pour the water, turn the machine on and wait.

  Waiting’s hard.

  A shower would help too. I know it would. I should clean myself up inside.

  And I definitely need to shave.

  The sheer fact that I need to shave boggles the mind. Hair doesn’t grow like this overnight.

  Overnight. Good god. What day’s today?

  I could turn on the television to find out but the television’s in the living room and there’s all that glass.

  The computer. That’s in the study.

  I sit down at our desk and boot it up and then I’m waiting again, for Microsoft to do its thing. I type in our password and wait for Windows. Finally there’s our desktop. I run the cursor over to the lower right-hand corner and get the time and then the date.