by Sherri Smith
“I need to get into my … into Lucas Haas’s apartment. I’m his sister, Mia Haas.”
She flicked her T-shirt, sticky with sweat, and jutted her chin out at me. “You got ID?”
“I do.” I pulled my driver’s license from my wallet. She stared at it with the intense scrutiny of a traffic cop before handing it back. “I’ll get the key.”
“Thanks.” I followed her down the hallway to a door with a plate that read PROPERTY MANAGER.
As she opened the door to the caretaker suite, I caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and saw the caretaker sprawled on the couch, shirtless, his belly large enough to block his face. An empty six-pack of tall boys was scattered over the coffee table. I looked away. The door closed.
I stood there for what seemed far too long just to get a key. I overheard the girl trying to wake her dad. Then she was back. I expected the key, but instead she said she had to open his place up. “Policy. Only the leasing agency can give you a key.”
“That’s fine.”
The ring of keys jingled as she led me to the elevator and pushed the Up button several times in quick succession, as if an elevator’s speed was based on some equation dependent on button presses. It took a couple of uneasy minutes to arrive; stairs would have been much faster. The doors opened to an abandoned dolly. She rolled the dolly out and pushed it into the lobby, where it came to a slow stop in front of the floor-to-ceiling marbled mirrors. Once on the elevator, she pressed 4 three times. She looked over at me, then away quick as peekaboo, her low voice shy and quiet. “I’m Bailey, by the way.” I couldn’t tell how old she was. Eighteen? At least eighteen.
The elevator was painfully slow. “Thanks, Bailey, for getting the key.”
She nodded. “No problem. Mr. Haas was my English teacher. I’m in grade nine.”
Never would have guessed fourteen or fifteen years old, but now I was interested. “He is?” I emphasized the present tense.
“I hate the sub we have now. I really miss Mr. Haas. He was hilarious.” She snorted, as if at the onslaught of fond memories his name conjured up.
It wasn’t exactly the reaction of a pupil who was worried her teacher was a murderer. “I’m sure he’ll be back teaching your class soon.”
She turned and looked at me with a doubtful expression. “You really think so?”
“Of course. Yeah.” The doors opened slowly, and I squeezed through them at first chance. Suddenly, I wanted to get away from her, from any student of Lucas’s. “I’m glad to hear my brother is so well-liked by his students.”
“Yeah, totally. Once he had a rule that anyone who was late because they were buying a coffee had to buy him one too. It was just really funny—once he had, like, four coffees on his desk.”
There was one Starbucks in the Target near the school. It had opened after I left, but I could imagine the girls at Westfield running around feeling so metro with low-foam triple grande skinny hazelnut macchiatos, the white and green accessory of their celebrity idols.
“That’s funny. Sounds like Lucas.” It didn’t sound like him at all. Lucas didn’t even like coffee.
“Yeah, he was, like, all jittery for the rest of the day.” She did a quick, jerky body roll like she was being electrocuted to demonstrate. The shyness was slipping, and her voice was suddenly too loud, too cheerful; it was jarring. She was about to say something else, some other anecdote, and I couldn’t bear to listen to it, so I complimented her bracelet. Bailey nodded, as if the compliment had been expected, and looked down at the chevron twiney bracelet tied snug around her wrist. Friendship bracelets must be so retro now; they were retro when I was fourteen.
She slipped the key into apartment 44, and I sucked in a hopeful breath that Lucas would come lumbering toward the door, looking like he’d just woken up from an epic five-day nap, wanting to know who the hell was coming in uninvited.
Bailey pushed the door open. “So where is Mr. Haas, anyway? I haven’t seen him around.”
I ignored her question. Thanked her again for letting me in and went around her as she stood with her back to the door to hold it open.
Of course he wasn’t there. Blinds drawn, the apartment had the lonely, silent feeling of a sealed tomb. The first thing I noticed was the smell, the rotten stench of something decaying. The living room was full of cardboard pizza boxes and unwashed glasses with amber adhered to the bottom. A mostly empty bottle of Canadian whisky sat in the middle of the table. Fingerprint dust was everywhere, on every light switch, the doorknobs, the glasses on the table.
The furniture—what I could see of it, his clothes were all over the place—was all bachelor pad. An overstuffed leather couch and a ratty-looking brown recliner with a well-stocked IKEA liquor cart wheeled up next to it. Such variety within arm’s reach. A flat screen on a stand, thrift-store brass and smoky glass coffee table. A faux cowhide in the middle of the room like a cow had dropped and spattered. A poster with different brands of beer.
Lucas had always been a slob, even as an adult, but then he’d never had to pick up after himself. Our mother’s fault. She made his bed right through high school, lovingly drawing the sheets, plumping up his pillow. She was obsessive about it, so he never learned to do it. It would not occur to him that whatever spill or mess he was responsible for wouldn’t just disappear on its own after he left the room. But this was beyond that. This place was a total disaster. I could see him sitting there on the couch slowly getting drunk as the sun crept across the sky behind tightly drawn curtains. Shut out from his job, coaching, from his long-standing status as the good guy.
A loud sniff. Bailey was still there, poking her head inside, her ankle anchoring the door, her face scrunched with curiosity like she was finally getting a good peek into the teachers’ staff room.
I shooed her out and bolted the door.
* * *
I opened the front closet door first. From wire hangers dangled Lucas’s leather jackets, a Michelin-man parka, a few Windbreakers with the Bulldogs sports logo on the back and the chest and COACH written on the arm. Found an extra set of keys hanging on a nail. Here too was his sneaker collection, a lingering phase from his early twenties and the only thing he kept tidy. There were about nine pairs of pristine sneakers, carefully arranged on two wire shelves. Still in the box on the top shelf were his most prized “kicks,” flashy red LeBrons. He’d bought them for a ludicrous amount of money when he lived with me in Chicago, off a very sketchy guy he found on the Internet.
Aren’t you going to try them on at least? I had asked in the cab afterward.
Are you kidding? You can’t wear these! He clutched the box, opened it, and looked in at those bright cherry-red high-tops like he was glaring into a SAD light box.
I pulled the box out. It was empty. So what? He finally donned them for his fast getaway?
Back in the living room, I flicked open one of the pizza boxes and saw crusts peppered with mold gathered on wax paper that had turned to a plasmic consistency. In a corner of the room was a stack of Mimi’s water paintings. Mainly setting suns, loons on lakes, and swirly flowers on cheap canvas. I could imagine Lucas’s face each time our mother gave him a new one, his locked-jaw grimace followed by a thank-you through clenched teeth. There was one, though, he had made a point to hang. The painting was of a sunset. A pink-yellow sun disappearing behind the trees across a greenish body of water. What made this one special enough to hang, I couldn’t tell.
The kitchen was a small alcove with a stubby breakfast bar. His school bag was on top of the counter. An old leather satchel of the kind associated with college professors with patches sewn on their elbows. It looked like the police had already rummaged through it. There were several granola bar wrappers, his keys, and a red folder with “Late” written in permanent marker on the front. The file had a few unmarked essays on The Great Gatsby. His school planner was also there; I flipped through it. A blur of reminders for hockey practice and assignment due dates. A phone number, with the name Tom next
to it.
At the back of the planner, on a few blank pages, were a series of numbers written like he was trying to work out some elaborate math problem. I wondered if he’d started gambling again. For a while, after college, Lucas got into sports betting. I’d had to lend him money a few times, to help him pay off losses. He was guarded about the amounts he lost. He swore off it after that, psychoanalyzed himself, said something like maybe he was just living vicariously and the gambling rush was as close as he was going to get again to the rush on the ice. He’d ended up paying me back only half of what he owed me, but a few years had passed, and I’d sort of written it off, unless we were having some kind of disagreement—then I’d bring it up. I kind of liked that I had that to hang over him.
In the corner, next to Lucas’s geometric doodling (always a bunch of stacked squares like a perfect game of Tetris) something was written and partially scratched out. I could only make out the first part, “Gent.” Did the rest spell “gentleman”? Was that what he was trying to be, with whom? I looked back at the numbers, wondered again if he was in debt. A gentleman always pays his debts?
I called the number, got a voice mail that simply stated I had reached Tom. I left an awkward message explaining that I was Lucas’s sister and I had come across his number and wanted to talk.
* * *
On Lucas’s fridge door was a clipped stack of bills, minimum payments up to date, and a picture of us at Christmas. My mother’s arm was draped around both our necks, pulling Lucas in a little tighter than me. Lucas and my mother were smiling, and I looked like I usually do in childhood photos, gazing slightly off to one side as if constantly devising an exit plan. Behind us was a Christmas tree. I could not think of what would have made this Christmas memorable enough for Lucas to put it on his fridge. There was probably some joke that went with it, something that Mimi bought us that was so off base it ended up being hilarious, like the year she bought a pair of goldfish that were floating belly-up by Christmas morning or the bottle of hair mousse, wrapped up candy-wrapper style, for Lucas when his head was shaved.
Lucas was already showing signs of how annoyingly good-looking he was going to be. He took after Mimi. Blond, startling blue eyes, and movie-star bone structure. He inherited her supposed Scandinavian ancestry, so much that Lucas only ever needed a giant Styrofoam hammer to go as Thor on Halloween. We had to take her word on that one, since there was no one else to ask. I had no idea where I got my dark hair.
As an adult, I’d actually witnessed women going slack-jawed over him, like, unable to speak for a few seconds as they took him in. I wished I could say I had the female version of my brother’s face, but I didn’t. For twins, we didn’t look much alike at all. Lucas was still GQ prettier than me. I was dark and broody. My eyes a steely gray. Not plain. Maybe even striking at times. But a face you had to look at a bit longer to see its appeal. The one thing we shared was tough skin. Mimi had to stay out of the sun, or else she would burn up, her chest a freckly mess of peeling skin, her shoulders scorching hot, while Lucas and I turned golden brown, sun-kissed.
Suddenly a loud, ugly belching noise shot through the apartment and made my bones jump. The Polaroid fluttered from my hand and landed on the kitchen floor. There was an old-school Mirtone wall intercom, the shade of nicotine, across from the front closet. Someone was there. I pressed the Talk button. “Hello? Hello?” Thrust my finger on Listen. Waited for someone to speak, but all I could hear was whistly white noise.
I sprinted out of the apartment, didn’t even consider the sluggish elevator, and ran down the stairs. Skipping every second step while hanging hard on to the copper-smelling, chipped-paint railing. Beelined across the lobby and into the front vestibule. No one was there. I stepped farther out, keeping my hand on the door because I’d forgotten the keys. Wanting so desperately to see my brother strolling across the parking lot. Instead there was just a plastic bag skittering around like tumbleweed. Downtrodden, I made my way back upstairs. Feeling victim to the intercom equivalent of knock-knock ginger. Probably the wrong number.
* * *
Back inside, I picked up the photo and slid it back under the palm tree magnet. Opened my brother’s fridge. It was nearly empty. A carton of eggs, the usual condiments, and three cans of beer still yoked by the plastic rings, a small pile of six-pack rings next to it. I took one of the cans, opened it, took long swallows, then pressed it to my cheek and wandered down the hallway.
The bathroom light was on. The door half closed. I wanted to hear a shower running, an electric razor buzzing, but nothing. I pushed the door open. There was his toothbrush, fully pasted and ready to go, sitting on the side of the sink. It was like he was standing over the sink, looking into the mirror, about to brush his teeth when he decided, fuck it, and walked out on his life. But that didn’t make sense. Wouldn’t he at least brush his teeth before becoming a fugitive on the run? Wouldn’t he take his toothbrush with him? Or his expensive electric razor so he could maintain his neatly edged two-day beard and the look of a European soccer player? Or his hair gel or his cologne? Lucas was vain; he would still want to look good.
Even if, and I couldn’t believe he’d risk such a very public fall from grace, but even if he were to have become sexually involved with one of his students who, just through sheer bad luck, happened to be murdered, he would stay and fight the charges. He wouldn’t be able to stand that people thought he did it. His need to be known as a good guy was almost pathological. We were the approval-seeking by-products of our histrionic alcoholic mother; we just went about it differently. I cared less about being likable than being considered impressive, whereas Lucas really wanted to be liked, the guy everyone wanted around, and that was who he’d always been.
Unless.
Unless he’s dead too. I wasn’t just posturing for Pruden. This was a real fear. Some yahoo, maybe the same yahoo who lit his truck on fire, went after him. The kind of red-necked guy who’d want bragging rights at every bar that he took care of that sicko teacher preying on teenage girls. I could come up with half a dozen names right now, on the spot. Guys who’d at least claim that if they were alone in a room with Haas they’d cut his dick off, but not necessarily go through with it. Guys who’d trash his truck, go after him online, but only grumble something under their breath to him in person.
I couldn’t think this. It was too hard. If some vigilante spent the last few days bragging about giving Lucas the beating of his life (that ended his life), wouldn’t Pruden have heard about it by now? I wouldn’t put it past Pruden to cover it up, but would he really keep up with a bogus hunt for Lucas? Would he have even called me here?
Fuck. Stop.
Lucas called me Friday. Pocket dial or not, he called me and that meant he was alive. I knew this was some loose reasoning, but what else could I do? Thinking my brother was dead was last-resort thinking.
I went into his bedroom. Again it was a mess, but I knew there was a method to his madness. The last time we lived together was only five years ago. Lucas came to stay with me with big plans to live in Chicago. He was dabbling in acting and modeling. It was his first attempt at something after accepting he was not going to be a professional hockey player. After the initial excitement of getting some extra work playing a firefighter on a soapy TV drama wore off, he mostly loitered around my tiny apartment between sporadic shifts as a waiter, charming my off-limits roommates, watching SportsCenter, and eating cereal from a mixing bowl. With no real direction, he claimed to be having a serious quarter-life crisis while I’d just finished my pharmacy degree and was leafing through MBA programs at different Ivy Leagues. I had dazzling visions of myself in a top hat and tails, twirling a gratuitous walking stick as I climbed the pharma corporate ladder. I’d have nicknames like Conglomerate or Powerhouse or just Moneybags.
Then, just like that, Lucas decided to move back to Wayoata and get a teaching certificate.
I pressured him to stay, pointed out he had given the whole acting thing only eight months, and
even if he decided to do something different with his life, there were more and better opportunities in Chicago, but I couldn’t convince him. He invoked our mother as an excuse to run home, tail firmly between legs. She’s all alone. No one goes to visit her most of the year.
There was nothing I could say to that, even if we both knew he was bullshitting. He hadn’t been that worried about Mimi before things got a little hard and aimless, so I backed off, thinking he’d quickly get bored in Wayoata anyway. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
I opened drawers, came across a leather glove at the back of his sock drawer that I guessed was the one from Mimi’s car. The sight of it gave way to the skin-crawly seasickness I always got when I thought of Mimi, her “accident.” I slammed the drawer shut. Sunk down, hugged my knees. I couldn’t decide why he would have kept it all these years. I took a few nausea-battling breaths, then reminded myself it wouldn’t be the first time we were on the receiving end of the Wayoata police department’s incompetence.
We were seventeen when our mother had her car accident. Her injuries were severe (her sodden brain hit the inside of her skull like wet toilet paper on ceiling tiles, splot). But when Lucas and I were given the go-ahead to clean out her beige-gold LeSabre (Lucas insisted we do this ourselves, like it was some kind of pseudo funeral rite), he noticed that our mother’s change was still stacked in its holder, her sunglasses still clipped to the visor. The dent on the front of the bumper where she’d smacked into a tree was underwhelming. There was even a man’s leather glove. Just one. It didn’t add up. At least not in Lucas’s opinion. I knew better. I’d tried to point out Mimi’s car was a total sty and it wasn’t really that odd that we’d find a stray glove under the heap of store receipts, flattened cigarette packets, torn panty hose, stubby lipsticks. Lucas wanted to pursue it anyway. He was fixated on the glove.