Seven Deadly Pleasures

by Michael Aronovitz

  "Young man, you had better have a damned good explanation for—"

  She turned at the neck and her voice died off. She looked at me over her shoulder and her eyes went wide.

  "Jimmy?" A long strand of hair fell across her face and she ignored it. She finished her turn in slow motion.

  "Mom," I said.

  "Mom, I just killed a boy."

  9.

  I wanted to burst into tears but I was empty. I wanted my old life back, but it was gone. My mother and I stared at each other like strangers. Jimmy Raybeck didn't live here anymore.

  I wanted something to snap, rip loose, or strike out, but that was not Mother's way. She reached out and set the phone book on the counter. I was wild inside with the sluggishness of it. The air was bright and hot. I looked away and took a dry swallow.

  There were scuff marks on the floor by the kitchen table, black abrasions marred in by the legs of my chair as I had so often pushed back too fast after being excused.

  My chair.

  No longer mine.

  I had a yellow report card displayed on the refrigerator. It was suspended by a magnet shaped like the democratic donkey and labeled with five A's and a C+ in math. In red pen my homeroom monitor (and first-period English teacher) Mrs. Fulviotti, had written, "Jimmy is verbal in class discussions and with more study, shows great promise."

  But I was "Jimmy" no longer. I was the thing in the kitchen.

  "Mom," I said.

  "Who?" she said. "Tell me who."

  "Kyle Skinner." My voice sounded feminine and false. Mom folded her arms as if chasing a chill.

  "Where? Where did it happen?"

  I shifted and tried to find a place for my hands. I had moved a step forward and Mom put her palm up like a stop sign.

  "Where did it happen? Answer me."

  "Through the back woods, at the Route 79 jobsite. By the overpass, but Mom, I—"

  The stop sign flashed up again and she quickly whipped it back into the fold-pattern above her stomach.

  "How did you do it?"

  I wracked my brain in an effort to come up with the right little spell for her, the psychological reasons as to why I killed Kyle, of how on earth I possibly could have done it. Clearly my mother was past the point where lingering pauses were tolerated.

  "How, Jimmy? It's a simple question. Tell me. Knife? Stick?"

  "I pushed him. He banged his head against the metal tooth of a small bulldozer and it went through his neck. Then I was so scared I covered him up with rocks."

  "You pushed him."

  "Yes."

  "You—"

  "He was going to kill Lucy! I had to!" My hands were out in the begging posture, like Oliver asking for more. I snapped them back, but not before my mother had seen them. Her eyes snapped back to mine and for just a moment they locked there as if on a wire. Had she noticed the blisters? I could not be sure. I had not done an inspection lately, yet had a dim recollection of layers and splotches of dirt soiled and spotted all over my palms and fingers. There was another quick second then, during which she looked at me, all of me, not just with a gaze leveled at the eyes, but more, for lack of a better word, comprehensively.

  I could guess that a lot was decided in those two seconds, but I can't be sure anything was actually weighed or decided. As far as implications or accusations or suspicions you might have, I go on official record here stating that my mother, Judith Raybeck, said absolutely nothing in reference to further implications, accusations, or suspicions.

  What she did was spring into action.

  "You can't walk into a government building and speak to an officer of the law looking like this. Take your clothes off and put them in the bag. Do it."

  She had let down her hair and rolled it into a knotted lock between the shoulders. Battle guise. The place was sealed, doors latched, shades pulled, and Mother had not so much as let me twitch during the preparations. She had yanked open drawers to crash around the silverware in their plastic tubs and then rooted through the utility cabinet. By the time she found that old pair of dishwashing gloves her ears had gone an angry red. I tried not to wince when those scum-hardened Johnson & Johnsons imitated big yellow spiders with my mother's fingers wriggling inside. She snapped the rubbery ends down to her wrists. She bent again and reached under the sink, breathing the anger hard through her nose, never pausing until the Hefty bag made its way into the light.

  Double ply. Mother only bought the best.

  Close before me she let the bag unfold and cascade down to its full length. There was a slippery gnawing when she fingered for the opening, a loud whack when she whipped it down to fill it with air, and a look of divine wrath as she loomed above me like a great white shark in a red mommy wig.

  "You can't walk into a government building and speak to an officer of the law looking like this," she said. "Take your clothes off and put them in the bag. Do it."

  I paused. In the past there had always been a tenderness in my mother's face, a kind of long-term sadness etched there as if the things she had wept over as a girl had left traces. Even when she dragged me through the typical lessons that dictated why my judgment had been poor, there had always been an opening for understanding. Acceptance. It would finally show in the softening of her eyes when she let loose the hooks and said,

  "Now we've both grown a bit, Jimmy."

  Not tonight. No softness behind the steel glare, friends and neighbors. That kitchen was closed.

  I fumbled with my pants button and felt my face redden. Mom had not seen me naked for five good years. But the ways of our world had regressed. I was the new Jimmy Raybeck starting from scratch and the clothes were coming off. Mother held the trash bag front and away from her body as if I had lice.

  "Sneakers first, Jimmy."

  Of course. Footwear before pants, shit, everybody knew that. I bent and had trouble with the laces. There was blood caked in them. Blood assumed to be Kyle's. I worked at the hard knotting as best as I could and got nowhere. The double square on my right sneaker was frozen and I risked soiling Mom's shiny floor by crashing to my butt for better positioning. I sat. I hauled up my foot by the heel, rested it on a knee and twisted. My sneaker jumped loose and bounced on the floor. A gravely spray of dirt followed it and I leaned to scoop it into a neater pile.

  "I'll get that later," Mom said. "Put your clothes in the bag."

  Sneakers, socks, and shirt went swishing into the sack. I scrambled up and attempted to work my way out of the pants. It took forever and I almost fell over twice. I smelled of earth, of old sweat, and death.

  "The underwear too," she said. "Move."

  I slipped down my dirty Hanes briefs and stepped out of them. I wanted to hide but there was no escape from my mother's cold stare. I sensed myself swing open before her, and my balls felt like two hard pieces of granite in a pouch with the slip-string pulled tight.

  I dropped the underwear in the bag and felt horribly cold. I stepped back and covered myself with both palms. I started to shiver. My mother was expressionless except for those wide eyes on high beam. Then she dropped her eyes. She pulled the red plastic cords of the trash bag and started tying them.

  "Go shower, Jimmy. Then comb your hair, brush your teeth, and get dressed. We have to go do our duty now."

  When I came back to the kitchen in fresh jeans, my backup Keds, and a nerdy shirt with a yellow smiley face airbrushed on the front of it, I saw that the kitchen floor was clean. The yellow gloves had been put away and the trash can by the sink was empty. Mom was wearing her white summer dress. There were dark, thin clusters of hair laying against her bare shoulders. Combed down, still wet. We only had one shower, so I assumed she'd washed up in the utility sink in the garage.

  We drove to Westville Central and did not speak one word to each other for the entire twenty-six minutes.

  10.

  I don't have a good recollection of the Q-and-A downtown, mostly because the busy things that unfolded all at once, the slamming shut of fi
le drawers, the ringing of incoming lines, the static patch on the two-way radios, and the orders being barked between officers were foreign to me. It was like a science trip to a museum containing exhibits we hadn't yet learned about in class, or better, a visit to a hospital, with orderlies, nurses, doctors, and a number of specialists entering and exiting on an established system of cues amidst machines that beeped at what seemed random intervals. I was also busy playing the boy in shock (I think I still was a bit in shock really) and the insistence that I be attended in some kind of medical facility was shot down by my mother faster than you could say, "The queen bitch is in the house." I do remember that, and the way she signed the waiver so hard it almost ripped the top sheet. The rest is a bunch of grainy flashes.

  I dimly recall that the station was oppressive in a vaguely masculine sort of way, with a lobby floor that had dull rainbow stone in it, and thin chrome dividers making long rectangles of the smooth flat polish. I remember a thin woman with a long face and features that were rather extreme, hawk nose, scars from past acne, and wire frames with lenses that looked too small working the phones from behind a half partition, but I don't remember where the set-up was in reference to the lobby. There was a ceiling fan turning slowly enough to make absolutely no difference in the vague shape of cigarette and cigar smoke hanging beneath it, but I don't recall what room that was in.

  I do remember Mother walking me up to a counter and saying, "Excuse me, officer. My son murdered a boy and we would like to make a full statement." That officer was quickly replaced by another, then yet another, and we were moved away from reception. When I revealed the location of the incident there were wide eyes, buttons pushed on intercoms, and orders barked from hallways around the corner. I heard snatches of conversations that mentioned the mayor, a fear of red tape tying up "that mess out there" for another eight months, the new construction going live at 7:00 A.M. the next morning, a desire to have it all tagged and bagged by 10:30 P.M., and the fact that two black-and-whites and an ambulance would have to do. There were desks, and forms, and a parade of officers of various ages, ranks, and serial numbers. At one point I was in a bright interrogation room with a detective who had combed-back black hair and an avocado blazer. I recall that he was rather dislikable. Snotty and irritating. He sat with his legs crossed, eyes often half lidded, and a slight, soft preference for his "s" sounds in a near lisp. He also used vocabulary in a way that made you think he felt working for the police department was beneath him, but I don't have a good recollection of where in the timeline this occurred as opposed to the questions asked at the desks in more public spaces.

  I remember a coffeemaker on a folding table with a stained, red checkered plastic cloth, a big old kettle of a coffeemaker that smelled as bad and as old as those that cook all day in the waiting rooms of shops that change your tires and do alignments for no extra charge. I remember talking in a monotone, yet the sincere monotone of a boy in shock who has categorically given himself over to clearing the air with the absolute truth. I admitted that I tried at first to hide the body under the rocks because I was in a panic. I told of my immediate confession upon returning home, and claimed that confession came because I could not bear to lie to my mother. When asked over and again in a thousand different ways as to why I killed my best friend, I responded over and again in a consistent voice that he tried to kill my dog. My violent response was prompted by instinct and the result was a horrible accident.

  When asked why he would want to do such a thing to Lucy in the first place, I remember having a bad moment. I was unprepared for the question. Hell, if you knew Kyle you wouldn't have even thought twice about his wanting to do any sort of damage for a thrill. Still, it wasn't my automatic assumption (and miscalculation) that my story-listeners would be as up on the background stuff as their storyteller that bothered me. My mind had been working on two levels, one answering the easy questions being asked out in the live, real world, and the other below the surface calculating the unattended variables that could get me pegged for the murder of the woman.

  I had just been thinking about the pressure on the officers to be done at the site quickly, and the gash in the oak tree. Had it been dark yet when we arrived here at the station? I thought it had been on the cusp. Two black-and-whites meant that there would not be a flood of headlights up there, and whether or not they noticed that gash depended on which direction they approached from and where they decided to park. When the interrogator asked about Kyle's motivation to kill Lucy in the first place, I had just been reassuring myself that I had been at the station for a good while now with no interruptions, so I could only assume everything out at Route 79 was going according to plan, no questions about gashes in the trunks of old oak trees. It was then that I suddenly thought about the body of Kyle and had a premonition of the future question that was bound to be raised by those doing the autopsy. What would they say about Kyle's hands? Sitting there, I knew I would be able to fill in the blanks concerning the current question on the table, but what would I say later about Kyle's blisters? I had kept my hands palm down all night because I didn't think Kyle's initial idea about a dirt fight with the shovels was good enough. I hadn't thought about his wounds being exposed and it froze me.

  Then I actually smiled. When Kyle initially mentioned the dirt fight I had assumed he was covering for both of us, but he must have been talking about my hands alone. He wouldn't have had the same problem. His dad made him hit a hundred balls a night off a tee in the basement. His palms were already calloused as hell.

  I used my smile to my advantage, dipped down the corners of my lips, and made it the predecessor to a wry response. In the driest tone I could manufacture, while still staying respectful, I proceeded to say that Kyle tried to kill my Lucy on a dare he claimed another kid made to him. It was a kid he refused to name. Though we had spent most of the day racing the dirt road from Westville Central to the site on our bikes, there was a good portion of the time devoted to Kyle's mischievous genius.

  Mom raised her eyebrows at me when I told about smoking the Chesterfield, and I think that helped my case all around. Then I spilled "everything." I told about Kyle's pissing on the fifty-gallon drum and his pulling on the gear shafts of the big dozer. I told about the way he stole money from his mother's purse, and how he taught me to light bags of dog shit on people's porches. I revealed how Kyle set off firecrackers in mailboxes down in the Common, I told about the way he greased the doorknobs of churches, and I snitched about how he was the one who snuck the piles of cow shit up in the drop ceilings of the elementary school last year, yes, go check, he still had a piece of the soft tile that he broke off for a trophy hidden under an old box of clothing in his garage. Another Westville mystery solved.

  After an undetermined amount of time, yet a long and drawn-out undetermined amount of time, they let us go home. I got the feeling that most of the officers felt sorry for me, and I had the stronger feeling that the guy in the avocado blazer did not. Whether that translated to his not believing me was another issue altogether, yet either way I was not really worried about him. Sometime during the questioning, somewhere in the middle when there were a lot of interruptions and different representatives posing different versions of the same basic five or six routine queries, I heard him say six key words to a fellow officer in the hallway.

  The dead make for poor witnesses.

  Besides, the guy didn't even really look at me during his part of the inquisition, and this I recall better than all the questions, bright rooms, rattling key rings, standard forms, and long hallways that could very well have led to my destruction.

  Avocado kept staring at my mother.

  I think he liked the way she looked in that low-cut white summer dress.

  The new construction is going live at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow morning.

  I rolled over and set my alarm for 6:30. If anything was going to be found it was to be soon, and for that I was thankful. At least I would know. I would be spared days, weeks, months, wonder
ing when the hardhats would settle in, fire up the engines, and possibly unearth the "mistake" at the base of the rooted path.

  The dead make for poor witnesses.

  Yes, unless the equation added another dead body. Suddenly, the dead started talking loud and clear and people started looking back at the one left standing, wondering how he got that way.

  If she was found it changed everything.

  This line echoed in my head and became a numbing chant of sorts that I whispered out loud. Soon the combinations of the words gave in to the sounds of the letters, accenting the soft shhh in "she," the tender fff in "found," and the smooth exchange of syllables in "chhh . . . ai . . . ngggged" that floated over each other like silk.

  My eyes drooped closed, gently shutting down the sight of my second set of clothes rumpled on the chair in the semi-darkness, next to a light blue Frisbee. The night in my mind spread and I curled down. In a far-off way my stomach ached, and in a further sense I felt myself weeping as I began to drift off. The tears felt distant and cold and I did not understand them because they seemed so disconnected. More familiar was the mild fragrance of cedar woven deep in the pillowcases and the whispery drone of the night bound cars on the overpass coming through my half-open window.

  It all smelled lovely and tasted like tears. The strange flavor in my mouth painted the way. It forged a path, thickened the air, and kept me foggy right up until the dead ones came to visit me in my dream.

  In my nightmare I was sleeping when I heard the strange noise. My eyes blew open and I jolted up in bed.

  It was Kyle Skinner sitting on my chair.

  He was shirtless, his body covered with circles of matted filth that grew outward in succession like rings you would see on the top facing of a sawed-off stump. The stump of an oak tree to be exact. There was a void in the back of his neck gushing sheets of blood against the wall behind him in rhythm with the beat of his heart. The place on the wall being doused was where my crucifix had hung. With the exception of a few splatters that dotted and sprayed up to the ceiling, the stains of fluid made more horizontal patterns that were spreading to the other walls. They looked like a row of mountains, or from another perspective, piles of backfill that were positioned a few feet above eye level from my place on the bed. He was painting my room in a manner that put me back in the pit.