House of Heroes

by Mary LaChapelle

  I started to cry before he even said it. “I can’t quit my job,” I said. “I’ll never have another one like it, where I can come in at night and cook, and go to sleep, and have the time to do what I want during the day. It would change my whole life to quit that job!”

  “You’d feel differently after you worked somewhere else for a while.”

  “I’d be kidding myself,” I said, not really sure what I meant. “I mean, at the Gateway at least I don’t have to pretend that things aren’t crazy. All I have to do is look at one newspaper a month to see what a common thing craziness can be, and yet we all have to go around as if everything is fine. Peter only draws pictures of missiles. The guys on the hill are tossing around the real things. And group homes aren’t the only places that women get hurt.

  “At least at the Gateway I can talk to Peter. I can get through to him. If I’d just seen it coming, maybe I could have changed the thing with David.”

  Hank was looking at me and shaking his head.

  I felt embarrassed. “I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is, I can’t look at this Gilgamesh story anymore. Every woman who got married had to sleep with him first. He ran around like a crybaby because he found out he didn’t have everlasting life.… You know what troubles me?” I said.

  “What?” Hank was sitting back patiently, giving me all kinds of time.

  “If you were to cast me in this epic, what part would I get to play?”

  “Well, there’s the high priestess part when she seduces Gilgamesh’s brother out of the forest. And there’s the goddess part—that’s a big one.” He’s only half serious.

  “Right,” I say. “Gilgamesh hated her. He was so pissed at her for being powerful. He would have done away with her in a minute, if he had the chance. Why aren’t there any parts that would be everyday parts? A part that would fit me?”

  I wonder if, as you get older, you have closer and closer run-ins with danger. It seems that has happened with me. What’s next? That’s one of the reasons Ajax makes me so anxious, because he can seem like the next one.

  Ajax has started going to a sex education group on Monday nights. It’s one of those cases where a little knowledge might be too much. Their first group was about masturbation and fantasy: how it was okay; how this was a way to relieve their tension. Good, that’s good, but now Ajax feels comfortable enough to tell me he has fantasies about me. “It’s natural for you to fantasize about people you know,” I say, hoping this is a cast of thousands for him. “You just have to remember that it’s happening in your imagination and not in real life. You do that, don’t you, Ajax?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” he says. “It’s just like when I tell you I love you, I only tell you in my head.”

  But he’s had slips. Once, while I was packing the lunches, he came up from behind and pressed himself against me. I stiffened and said, “That’s absolutely out of bounds, Ajax!” Then he just disappeared, slipped out of the room, like he’d never been there. And until I said something, I think, in his own way, he hadn’t been there. He’d been in his head.

  If things get too weird with him, what happens? Will I have to leave? Will he? Either way, it would be too bad. Too bad for him because we’re finally getting to understand him better. He’d have to start all over again somewhere else. Too bad for me because this is my job, this is how I live.

  I think I kid myself as much as Ajax. I tell myself, “He just needs to know me a little better. He would never want to hurt me then.”

  While he’s thinking, “She’s going to want me someday. She has to, she just has to.”

  They found pieces of a woman’s body two weeks ago. Terry, who stutters and loves to read the newspaper out loud, especially the gruesome stories, read it off the front page at breakfast. “It, it, it says here, ‘A, a man—who was walking his dog—found the torso of a woman’s body on a frozen swamp east of St. Paul…’ What’s a torso?” he asked. I reached over and ran my finger along his arm socket and then along his hip where his legs hook in. I didn’t have to touch him, but it was a way of making it personal, so he could feel how it could be his body. “Oh,” Terry said.

  “Gross.” Both Chip and Trevor started laughing.

  “Don’t laugh!” Terry said, knowing it would put him in my good graces.

  Ajax jumped up excitedly to look over Terry’s shoulder. “Man!” he said too loudly, because he had his earphones on. “The guy must have used a saw or something.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Jackie sat back in his chair and threw his toast down. “Now I can’t eat.” But half a second later he leaned forward and put his spoon back into his oatmeal.

  Peter wasn’t even there. He was upstairs in his room with his pictures or his radio or both.

  In the next few days they found some of the rest of her body. She was identified as a clerk in a grocery store who had never made it home after her shift. Never made it to her car, which was still parked in the parking lot. Gail was especially troubled by it because it had happened in Rosedale, where she lives. “You always think these things won’t happen in the really cold weather,” she said. She was keeping track of the story, and every night, when I came in, I’d ask her if they’d found him yet.

  They finally picked him up. His wife suspected him because of the green shower curtain they had found around the body, the fact that theirs had disappeared. “He had a little daughter,” Gail told me when I came in last night. She’d brought the article with his confession in it, but I still haven’t read it.

  It’s 1:15 A.M., and I finally called Peter’s restaurant to find out why he hasn’t come home. I half-hoped that I would hear everything was fine, that he had just decided to stay on and finish his shift. But when the hostess answered, she was very flustered, saying they were having trouble with him, and that the manager would want to talk to me.

  “You’ve got that right!” the manager said, when I told him I understood there had been some problems. “This kid can’t seem to get through his head that he’s fired. I mean out of here, caput, finished!”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know where to start,” he says. “First he has a fit, swearing at my cooks and throwing dishes. We tell him he has to leave, but he won’t. He says, ‘This is my job, I have to keep it, you can’t take it away from me.’ Something about how he has to keep it for six months, or he’ll never get an apartment and be normal. I tell him maybe if he leaves right now without any other trouble, we can talk about it next week. ‘Next week!’ he shrieks. And I say, ‘Yeah.’ But that’s not good enough. He doesn’t trust me, he says. So he goes back to the sink and starts washing dishes, only he’s all upset and clumsy and not really doing the job. I say, ‘Come on, we’ll talk about it next week.’ ‘My crocodile, you will!’ he says. Whatever is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just an expression he has.”

  “Right,” the manager says. “One of the least of his problems. Two of my bussers and one of my cooks escort him to the door. He’s not a fighter. He left. But then he comes back in, says, please can he just go to work. I say no, and he needs to leave, or we’ll have to call the cops. So it seems like he leaves, but apparently he hid in the back hall by the store room for a long time. He threw lit matches in the storeroom.”

  “Oh, no!” I’m surprised about this.

  “It could have been a bad fire. If one of my cooks hadn’t gone back there when he did, it could have gotten out of hand. We had five hundred people in this restaurant tonight. And still he’s acting like we are in the wrong. He wouldn’t give me your number. I’m glad you called because he had about thirty seconds before I called the police. I didn’t want a lot of commotion with my customers still here. But it’s the end of the night now.”

  “Can I talk to him?” I say.

  “I can’t lose my job!” Peter says when he gets on.

  “Let’s start from the beginning. What happened?”

  “Org, that cook kind of guy, was here when I cam
e in to work tonight.”

  “Org is not his real name, though,” I say.

  “Well, Lard Ass, then.”

  “Peter.”

  “Well, Don, then, or whatever. I suppose I’m in deep trouble now, and you want me to use real names.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  Then he starts to cry. “I’m in such deep trouble,” he says.

  “I know, sweetheart.” And it sounds like something an older woman would say.

  “Well, I came in tonight, and that Don guy was here. We don’t get along really well. And some of the other cooks, and Ramone, who’s a dishwasher, were there too. He and I have a lot in common. He’s always been a cool, you know, sort of a communist and stuff, and on my side. So we’re horsing around…”

  “Were you talking about some of your sillier topics?”

  “Well, Ramone seemed to like it. It wasn’t super-unacceptable stuff. Just politics, just a little joking about crocodiles.”

  “And then what?”

  “My dishwasher hat, you know, it has a cardboard band and then cloth. Well, the band had gotten all soggy and loose, and it was making me uncomfortable. So I got my Russian hat out of my backpack and wore that instead.”

  “Was it the visor hat or the big, furry one?”

  “Big furry,” he says.

  “I bet that wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Ramone didn’t like it. He said I was being too weird. The cook told him I was a mental. Then it was like Ramone was on their side. Then they were saying, ‘You retard! You faggot!’”

  While I’m on the phone, Ajax has come down and is leaning against the doorjamb, waiting for me to get off. He doesn’t like it when I’m on the phone. “It’s going to be a few minutes,” I say to him. He rolls back around the doorjamb and is gone.

  “Tell me about the fire,” I say to Peter.

  “They say I started a fire in the storeroom.”

  “Why do they say that?”

  “Because I was back there, and then there was a fire.”

  “What about lighting matches?”

  “I was in the back hallway. They thought they’d kicked me out, but I came back. I was smoking a cigarette, and I started lighting matches and throwing them. They say I started the fire, but I wasn’t trying to. I was just throwing matches. Must have been one of the cartons of trash caught on fire.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because there was a little ball of fire in it.”

  “This is very serious, Peter.”

  “What are my consequences going to be?” He meant at the Gateway, that he was going to be in trouble with us too. “Will I be able to take a shower when I get home, even if it’s late?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “The water pressure wasn’t very good yesterday. Do you think it’s fixed yet, Laura?”

  “No, I don’t, Peter, and I think you’re starting to worry about the wrong things here. There were five hundred people in that restaurant tonight.”

  “Now I’m kicked out,” he says.

  “I’m afraid so, Peter. Now you need to try to be very calm and come home.”

  I talk the manager into calling Peter a cab. While I wait for him, I read the newspaper article Gail had left me. They had recorded the statement of the man who had killed and dismembered the girl in Rosedale. He never used the words I or she.

  Some sexual advances were made. The advances were rejected. Some hitting took place. This went on for a while. The sexual advances were then accepted. Emergency medical services were not called, then death occurred.

  I watch a few minutes of an old John Wayne Western on television. I play Predict the Dialogue. An old pastime from college. John Wayne is the easiest. You just try to guess the exact thing he is going to say and then say it at the same time he does. “Why, thankya, ma’am,” you say along with him, or “I oughta…,” or “Maybe this town isn’t big enough.…” But you have to do it just exactly with the same sway he does.

  “Who are you talking to?” Ajax is down again.

  “Why, I’m talk’n to John Wayne.” I do my best imitation. I don’t care if he gets it or not. And I realize I’m angry at John Wayne. I’m angry at Ajax. And I’m angry at those dead, gray, remorseless words I just finished reading in the newspaper. What would it have taken for him to see her as human, for him to see himself as the same?

  I turn the television off and get off the couch, because I don’t want him to sit next to me. I go in the kitchen, wrap the pie, and put it in the refrigerator.

  “You’re in a bad mood,” he says. He sets himself up against the counter, like he’s planning on having a long conversation.

  “I’m tired,” I say, “and Peter is in trouble, and I have to wait for him to come home.” It’s not the whole truth.

  “You worry too much.”

  I might as well play Predict the Dialogue with Ajax now. “You’re too sensitive.” I’m hearing him say it before it’s even said.

  “It takes all kinds.” I have my own predictable response.

  “It’s better to be strong. I’d like to see you get hit in the face six times and not flinch.”

  “I was sorry to hear that Trevor hit you, Ajax. I was hoping you’d want to talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about!” he booms, setting up a rattle in the silent house and reminding me of how late it has gotten.

  I go around with the sponge, wiping off the counter, the fridge, anywhere I can. All I hear is the scratching sounds coming out of his earphones. He’s stonewalling me. I can’t predict what he’ll say next, or whether he’ll say anything at all. Maybe he’ll say, “We’re never going to make it, are we?” like he said last week, and about two weeks before. I can’t say, “Yes, we will,” because I know he’s still talking about being boyfriend and girlfriend. And I can’t say no, because we should at least be able to understand each other, because it’s when we don’t that it gets so dangerous.

  He’s giggling a little. I imagine it’s about something he hears on his radio, or it’s about something he’s thinking. But he says, “Laura World, I’m giving you a new name.” He’s teasing me. But I’m behind my door, and there’s a porch in front of me and I don’t react.

  “Laura World.” He sets it on the porch, and I’m looking at it. I’m quiet, and I have the time to think about what he means. Is that what I stand for to him? The world? Coming into this house every day, bringing it in with me, as if it’s a secret I’m keeping from him. That’s a lot of responsibility, I think. He’s the hero and I’m the world. And he thinks that he’s locked outside and has to get in, be completely in. And I decide right here and now that just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I have to be the world to him. And I decide that everyone is a hero, including me. And then, I’m ready to say something back.

  I say, “My name is Laura Wold. I’ll never answer to the other.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “What if I call you that tomorrow?”

  “I’ll tell you my real name again,” I say.

  “And the day after?”

  “I’ll tell you again.”

  “And after that?”

  “Every day after,” I say, “until you get it right.”

  ACCIDENTS

  It was the third Saturday in October, and all the leaves in Minneapolis had been brought down in a storm two nights before. Every weather report was saying clear skies through the weekend, and Friday’s sun had already baked the dampness away. This was the day to rake. Anyone could have started the day the leaves began to drop, but being experienced home owners, we knew it was the big fall one waited for. It seemed the whole neighborhood was out in their yards, and if you listened, you could hear a unison of strokes as the leaves were slowly pushed down toward the street.

  I say pushed down, because our street actually furrows down the middle of a hill, and the lawns on each side of it, including our own, slope up and away from it. This means that there are many steps t
o shovel in the winter and grass mowing is an almost perpendicular task, some of us using ropes to pull our mowers up the incline. Despite these disadvantages, we enjoy this hamletlike quality and a satisfying view of Minnehaha Creek curling through the park at the end of our road.

  I had just rolled a pile of leaves onto the sidewalk when I heard my nine-year-old, Neil, calling me. His voice was faint in the distance. I watched him gliding his bike over the soft grass of the park, his sandy hair lifting into wings on each side of his head.

  All my children are beautiful, but Neil has a physical grace and confidence that has caused even some of the other fathers in the neighborhood to comment. “A natural athlete,” someone will say. Or watching him descend the wooded hill behind our houses, one foot following another, no concern for weight, or gravity, or loose ground, I remember Dave Ferber from next door, turning away from our conversation, removing the pipe from his mouth, saying, “He’s really something, isn’t he?”

  Something. None of us can name it, but we watch him with a mixture of joy and humility and loss. It’s as though the bike under his body, or the tree he climbs, or the water accepting his dive have never been things separate from himself—no more troublesome to him than the opening and closing of his eyes. He intimidates us, his ease and certainty reproaching our own daily fears. And yet we root him on, paradoxically: though his is an impossible magic that cannot last, we persist in believing that it should last and should have lasted in us.

  When I waved to Neil now, as he rode from the park, it seemed to prod him into leaning forward and riding faster. He went over the curb and across the road with barely a glance for traffic. “That was careless,” I would tell him. But as I watched him come up the sidewalk toward me, I could see he wasn’t riding easily at all. He pumped awkwardly up the incline, his feet straining on the pedals each time they revolved. His tires clattered through the leaves on the walk, and he was winded. I could see that the cuffs of his sweatshirt were wet.