I went to the kitchen and drew out the rusty blade that fit my palm like a lover's slender hand. It was the same knife that had dealt with Angel Baby. I was fourteen now, not a kid anymore. I was as strong as a weed, as wiry as an oak, as unforgiving as the January wind.
I moved through the wreckage of the living room. With each step, I left Richard Allen Coldiron behind. The closer I got to the man who had given me life, the farther I was from son he had made. By the time I'd crossed the living room, the new thing wearing my flesh had completely sloughed off the inhibitions of Richard Coldiron, packed that weakness away in hidden closets, booked me a room in the Bone House with a window to the world.
The thing-with-the-knife raised its arm.
I could only watch in horrible fascination. I was used to Mister Milktoast taking over, but he was nowhere around. Was this my arm lifting, throwing a sharp shadow on the wall? Was it my bones and muscles that had flexed themselves into revenge? Was it my eyes Mother was looking into, her own eyes as wide as Jesus plates? Was it me plunging the knife into the meat of Father's back with a chicken-soupy sound?
Father was so intent on his artistic toe-tapping that he didn't register the metal intruder that had found a home between his shoulder blades. He froze, his right leg raised in a victory jig, his boot poised for a dramatic climax to his love ballet. It became his swan song, the culmination of years of dedicated practice.
He spun, all grace forgotten, his sewer eyes spinning wildly in his head like slot machine reels trying to line up Lucky Sevens. As he fell, his mouth formed questions that had no answers. Just before he landed, driving the knife completely through his chest to plow through his splintered rib cage, his eyes stopped spinning long enough to lock onto mine, and in his last slippery moments he recognized his executioner.
Or so he thought.
He lay on his back, a crimson gurgle rising from the black depths of his throat as his esophagus sucked madly for air. Mother screeched but had no energy to rise. The thing-with-the-knife that was me watched Father's final discoveries march across his features in a platoon of twitching facial expressions. Father found cold sobriety, he found betrayal, he found agony returning like a karmic boomerang bouncing back threefold. And if he searched for God and salvation and redemption, he must have come up empty.
If indeed the thing-with-the-knife was me, then what happened next was entirely the thing's own actions. As Mother watched, slipping into the feverish cold of shock, the thing-with-the-knife rolled Father over and yanked the slick knife handle out of his ruined flesh. Then the thing hacked at Father's bootlaces, scarring the leather, screaming and frothing in search of socks. Then the boots were off, flopping over, impotent.
And that's where I found myself when the thing gave me back my skin and bones. The thing shambled off to the Bone House where Mister Milktoast lived and where I had been briefly imprisoned.
"Richard," Mother moaned. "Lord, no...no...no..."
Her voice trailed on with her mantra of denial as I looked down at the bloody boot I held in one hand and the butchering steel shaft that I held in the other. The rich crimson sauce coagulated, turning a crusted red brown as it cooled and dried. I blinked in the soft glow of electric light bulbs as if I had just come back from a journey to the blackest corners of night.
And I was standing over my father's corpse.
And Mother was trying to stand and my own legs were gelatin and Father's legs were bloody noodles.
Mother took the knife from my hand and looked into my eyes and held my chin as if she were scolding me for sneaking into the cookie jar. Her eyes shone like stones in a creek bed.
"Listen, Richard. Here's how it happened."
How? I had seen, hadn't I? I was there.
"It was me," she said. Her voice was cold and metallic, like the knife. "I killed him. I...got tired of him beating me...I was scared he was going to kill me..."
No, Father had wanted to kill her slowly, not all at once. Her sudden death would have robbed him of a reason to get up in the morning. Their dance had been scripted from the beginning.
"Listen now, baby," she went on, and sobs crept into her words. "When the police come...you don't know anything, okay? You were in your room and you heard a fight and came out and saw him dead...you got blood on you when you took the knife from me turned him over.”
And the tears broke free, running down her scared face. And fear fed her mind, threw fuel on the flames of panic. I nodded, numbly. I wanted to be gelatin again, to sag back into the dark hollow in my head. Even then, I didn’t want any responsibility for my actions. I was a disciple of the Blame Game and I had learned at the feet of masters.
"And the police will know...self-defense or something... people will understand if it's me. It's the only way."
She made me call the police. A long night of questions followed, and I didn't have to pretend that I was hazy on the sequence of events. Mother sat at the kitchen table talking to the officers as red and blue lights pulsed through the window from the driveway. Her hands, the ones she had rubbed in her husband's blood, were shaking, but her voice was firm. Much later, the police led her out into the cold night through the crowd of neighbors and she sat in the back seat of one of the police cars. I watched from the porch as she was driven away, and she waved at me with one bloody hand.
"Was that you, Mister Milktoast?" I asked later, in the silence of my dark bedroom.
"That wasn't us. That couldn't have been us."
"Who, then?"
"Richard. I think...we've got company."
Of course, what else could he say? After all, we’d learned the Blame Game together.
Never had I been so proud of Mother as when she stood calmly before the court and spun a hundred tales of abuse that were too vivid to be mere imagination. Never had I loved her so as she bravely detailed her imaginary crime. Never had I hated her so as she took the blame that was rightfully mine.
After the testimony of a handful of neighbors, not a jury in the country would have convicted her. Following a finding of not guilty by just cause, she walked down the high-roofed halls of the courthouse as a headline, beset by an army of photographers and news crews and tight-jawed reporters. As she walked down the granite steps, holding her red wool coat closed against the early spring wind, she dropped to page two. Driving away, her story was shunted to the back burner. In a week, she was last week's news.
Except at home.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"No."
"What's done is done."
"It'll never be done."
"I still love you."
"I don't need love." I could lie like that. "What's it ever brought me?"
"We still have each other."
"That's even worse."
"I don't care what people say. I just care about us."
"Do you miss him?" I was afraid to ask, afraid not to ask.
"I just get lonely sometimes. And tired."
"Don't cry. He's not worth it."
"I'm not crying for him."
Crying for us. Always for us. "Shh. It's okay."
"It's not okay."
"Let's not talk anymore. It's time for bed."
THIS CHAPTER HAS NO NUMBER
"You think?" I asked Mister Milktoast.
We were waiting in the hall to see Mrs. Bell, the high school guidance counselor. I had been sent to her because I made it into the ninth grade without ever fitting in. Plus people thought my mother had killed my father. If I didn’t have Mister Milktoast, I probably would have doubted my sanity. But if two people share the same delusion, it’s not really a delusion, is it?
"Sounds a little crazy to me,” he answered. “And you know what I think about you and crazy."
"Yeah. But it sort of makes sense."
"Come on, Richard. Multiple personality disorder? Who are you trying to kid? Nobody falls for that anymore."
"How else can I explain your existence? You're not the result of schizophre
nia. 'Split from reality.' That doesn't quite fit the bill. And I don't think you'll let me write you off as the invisible childhood friend any longer."
"No,” Mister Milktoast said. “And there's the new one to think about. The one who killed Father."
"See? That takes care of the 'multiple' part."
"But how can you call it a 'disorder'? From where I'm sitting, it looks like I'm the one who keeps things in here from falling apart."
"I've got to hand it to you there."
"And don't you ever forget it. United we stand, divided we autumn."
"We'll stick together until the end. You've kind of grown on me, you know?"
Laughter trickled from a classroom down the empty hall. Normal people, normal noise. I sat there having a conversation with myself. Or maybe I’m just making this up, more revisionist history because the truth is too unbearable.
"And there's the fact that most documented cases of MPD occur in women who were sexually abused as children. There are hundreds of psychiatrists who still don't believe it exists. Besides, now they call it ‘dissociative disorder.’ Fancier name."
“Are you going to go Freudian on me?” I said. “Use my traumatic childhood as an excuse for all the terrible things you’ll do later?”
“Your brains are Freud or scrambled, but you’ll always be Jung at heart.”
The door opened beside us. Mrs. Bell poked her head out and said, "Richard Coldiron?"
"Yes, ma'am." I stood and walked into her office.
"Let me handle this," I whispered to Mister Milktoast.
"What's that?" Mrs. Bell said, sitting behind her big wooden desk. Her hair was white, like stuffing that had spilled out of a hole in a pillow.
"Nothing." I slouched into the chair that Mrs. Bell waved me toward.
"Look on the wall," Mister Milktoast said inside my head. "A shrinking certificate. Be careful."
Pipe down, I commanded.
Mrs. Bell shuffled some papers on her desk. "So, what seems to be the trouble, Richard?" she finally said, smiling as she looked into my eyes. Hers was a Grinch smile, one that looked like children's torn flesh was hidden behind the tight lips.
I studied my shoelaces. "No trouble, ma'am."
"That's not what I hear." She rattled her papers.
"Well..."
"We can talk about it. Everything you say stays with me. Our little secret."
Oh, great. Secrets. "There's nothing to talk about."
The Grinch smile slid downward. Her chair squeaked as she leaned back. "When there's family turmoil such as this..." She paused and looked at the pale-green cinder block wall as if she had a window. "...then it's bound to have some kind of negative impact on the innocent."
I shrugged. She obviously didn’t understand the concept of “guilty bystanders.”
"When you lose a loved one, sometimes the grief gets buried,” she said. “It's okay to let it out."
"I'm fine, really. I just like to keep things to myself."
"Hmmm. Just remember that it wasn't your fault."
Mister Milktoast echoed her in my thoughts. Hear that, Richard? It wasn't your fault. How original.
I got a sudden headache. The bad voice came out like acid vomit.
"Oh, yes the fuck, it was," the voice roared inside my head. My veins split, my eyes watered. For a second, I thought I had said it out loud, but Mister Milktoast assured me I hadn’t. Of course, he might have been lying. While you can always trust me, and I’ve found him more or less reliable, everyone has an ulterior motive, and don’t ever forget it. All bets are off in revisionist history.
Mrs. Bell saw me wince. Then I was gone, inside, and all I could do was watch and wait. The Bone House was safe, but like a bomb shelter, it both protected and imprisoned.
"It's okay to feel sad," she said, and her smile was back. Grinch with an appetite for all the sweet little Cindy Lou Whos of the world.
"It was my fault,” the voice told her, using my mouth and lips and vocal chords and lungs. "But I'm not a damn bit sorry."
Mrs. Bell nodded slowly and seriously. "Now we're getting somewhere. Let these feelings out."
She scribbled on a notepad while talking to herself. "'Problems with authority? Possible Oedipus complex? Post-traumatic stress disorder?'"
She had a long conversation with the thing that had taken over my mouth.
And they thought I didn't associate well with others. They hadn’t met Little Hitler yet.
CHAPTER NINE
Ottaqua, Iowa. 1989.
I was in my senior year of high school, filling dreary days as if they were journal entries, the secret dairy of an uninspired life. A miserable memoir written in invisible ink. I wish I had typed it then instead of having to do it now, when memory fails me and I have better things to do. Then I could fake the ending and we could all go on with our lives. But this is a book and you expect me to tell everything just as it really happened, despite all that bullshit about voices in my head.
Think about it a moment.
In writing, you’re supposed to avoid clichés like the plague or else make them obvious like you knew it all along. Wink wink.
But the first time I go and kill somebody, I reach for that convenient excuse of being squirrel-shit nutty. And, even today, I’m not sure whether I really killed my father or if I just freaked out because Mother did it. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference now. It’s not like Mister Milktoast wrote this book, or Little Hitler. Fuck them. My name’s on the cover and that’s that. I am the author.
And if I’m not, they better put my name on the royalty checks anyway.
So, back to 1989 and forget that other stuff. Let’s get real.
I was the kind of teenager that, if I were in high school today, everyone would worry about my walking in on a bad hair day and shooting up the place. The kids at school viewed me as an alien freak, the greasy-haired, wild-eyed boy who clung to the corners. They whispered behind my back about what had happened to my father or sometimes taunted me to my face, especially Brickman, the school thug. My fantasies never moved to mass murder, though. That seems so impersonal. Besides, I had poetry.
Others had sports, student government, clubs, or band instruments to consume their time and energy. I dawdled between the covers of books, fixed in two-dimensional fantasies whose protagonists traveled where I could only go by proxy, who dared to have lives that seemed far more real than mine. Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, John Steinbeck, anybody but Faulkner. I prefer my liars to do it honestly, though I could never manage the trick.
Home life was increasingly torturous and I avoided our apartment whenever I could. Mother was drinking nonstop by then, downing huge tumblers of strong brown bourbon, slowing only to replenish the ice. The misty-eyed mirth of her early experiments with liquid escape had progressed rapidly into a constant haze that was punctuated ever more frequently by fits of anxiety and despair. She was in the final stages of decay, as if the flesh would have given up if not for the preserving quality of the alcohol. Father had taught both of us well, only he’d given us different lessons.
On my rare visits, she became clingy and wept openly. I tried to soothe her and coax her out of the bottle, but she was beyond reach. The horrors of the past were too real, still too fresh because she treasured the memories even as she obliterated them with drink. She collected and savored them just as she had once done the ceramic cats that lined her windowsill. Those knick-knacks now gathered dust while her new hobby of slow self-destruction filled the shelves of her life.
I had quit sleeping there three months before, when she had started crawling into bed with me again. She was only seeking comfort, needing a man in her life, a replacement. There was something blasphemous in that mockery of family closeness, even though the physical contact was limited. What was most horrible was the flicker of arousal I had felt. I tried to tell myself it was a lie, an illusion, but I could never trust myself to stay there again. I didn’t even want to think of my babymaker tilling that f
allow soil.
I spent the nights in the old Plymouth Valiant I had bought with money earned from my summer job bagging groceries at the Food Fair. I had a constant crick in my neck, my breath stank, and my clothes grew crisp from continuous wear. My grades suffered and many times I was on the verge of running away, to start an untainted life in a far city, free of everything but the chains of memory and the people in my head. What kept me in Ottaqua was the hope that I could rescue my mother from her black pit of despair. As if I could be the savior of anything—call me what you will, I never had any messianic delusions.
In the classroom, I was sullen and aloof, and I secretly ridiculed the ambitions of the other students. They were planning to go to college, get married, and have jobs, buy homes and a stake in the American dream. The seeds of envy were ready to sprout into hate. I found myself wallowing in bitterness, just like Father had done. The Coldiron Curse hadn't died with him after all.
Virginia became my savior. She was an outcast, too, but had sought out the role, rehearsed it as a devoted understudy, and slipped into it like stage costume. She was from a wealthy family, both parents members of the local school board. She sat across from me in Biology, and I stole glances of her out of the corner of my eye, watching her with an admiration that bordered on worship. When she caught me looking, she would smile at me with perfect teeth.
Though I had an affinity for Biology, I wasn't a top student because I was afraid of standing out, of being noticed. But I wanted Virginia to notice. With her fine ash-blonde hair and oval face, she became the meat of my dreams, the main course of my unformed fantasies. Her eyes weren't bovine as were those of the cheerleaders and beauty queens. These were cobalt blue and deep, almost painful to look at.
She wasn't squeamish about dissection, and I’ve always admired a girl who had a way with a blade. That semester, as we graduated from worms to frogs to small sharks, her savagery escalated accordingly. When her partner was no longer willing to work with her, repulsed that Virginia was going so far beyond the demands of the assignments, I volunteered my services. I had been working alone, shunned, the twenty-fifth student of a class broken into pairs.
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