The Perfume Burned His Eyes

by Michael Imperioli

  It was right after the 3:10 dismissal bell and Mr. Gorman was rushing out the front entrance. My question took him off guard but he didn’t break stride or even look me in the eye. He seemed very uncomfortable with what I asked him.

  “I’m sorry, Matthew . . . ummmm . . . I don’t . . . I don’t have anything to tell you.” He patted my shoulder and darted into the street like he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

  A little orange car was double parked at the corner. Mr. Gorman’s wife got out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the passenger side as Mr. Gorman replaced her behind the wheel. He looked at me through the window and after a strange wave, he drove off.

  This did not bode well.

  * * *

  I never figured out how my mother knew before I did. I assumed it was through the school but I am not 100 percent certain. She broke the news to me very gently, with a lot of compassion. I can’t say I went into immediate sorrow or grief or horror or shock.

  The first feeling I remember was revulsion: a sickness . . . disgust. There was something obscene, something profane about the act itself. I felt it would have been better left a secret or an ambiguous “natural causes,” even if it was a lie and there was nothing at all natural about a seventeen-year-old girl being dead.

  Then I realized that the disgust I felt was toward my mother. Her knowledge of what Veronica chose to do to herself was an invasion of privacy. Both Veronica’s and mine. I didn’t want to share that space with anyone, least of all my mother. It was mine, and mine alone, because she was dead and the dead have no right to privacy. The dead have nothing. They are nothing. They’re gone.

  My mother of course did not go into any detail about the actual method my love had chosen. Knowing Veronica the way I did, I narrowed it down to three possibilities:

  1) Slit wrists in the bathtub. The two of us once spoke about the ancient Roman way, which was said to be peaceful and painless, although the slashing part couldn’t possibly be painless and the peace would only come after enduring the violence of the slicing. We also discussed how this method was not very peaceful to the person finding the bloody mess of a corpse submerged in all the sickly pink water and the tiles and shower curtains splattered in garish red. Suicide is always an act between two people, isn’t it? The one committing it and the one who discovers it. I wondered how much she had considered that before doing what she did.

  2) Pill overdose. A more likely choice for Veronica. Far more peaceful and painless than wrist-slitting but a long waiting period between the ingestion of the agents and the onset of the incapacitating effects needed to shut down one’s life-sustaining systems. The gap of time was a stumbling block for me because it required a high degree of patience, a virtue I would not under normal circumstances attribute to Veronica. So unless she was in some inspired state of beatific grace, I find it hard to imagine she’d summon enough forbearance to sit tight until the drugs were digested and assimilated into her veins and organs. Yet in blatant disregard of the above argument, I have made the choice to acknowledge this mode of self-destruction as her final act of will. I have convinced myself this is how it happened because I do not want to accept the abominable reality of what she most likely did to herself. Which not coincidently leads us to:

  3) Hanging by the neck until she’s dead, dead, dead. Veronica once commented that the second-floor fire escape behind her building would make an excellent and effective gallows.

  The day after I received the news I went down to her building, rang all the bells (except for hers), and was buzzed in. I walked past the trash bins, through the rear door, and into the backyard. There was no evidence of a crime scene. (It was technically a crime, wasn’t it?) I sat down on a rotted old picnic table and started to write her a letter. I didn’t look up.

  thirty-six

  My mother thought it might be a good idea for us to get out of town for a while. She first suggested buying plane tickets and heading off to Paris or Rome but I talked her out of going anywhere too far. So we settled on a tour of New England. My mother wasn’t up for driving and she felt a train or bus would be inconvenient, so she hired an older cousin of mine to drive us in his ’68 Charger.

  Connie (short for Constantin) was five years older than me and we weren’t close at all. He was a short, squat fellow with thick-framed eyeglasses and long, poorly cut black hair. And he had terrible skin, pockmarked and pimpled.

  I thought it was a bad idea to have Connie join us on the trip. He certainly wasn’t the brightest bulb on the family tree and he had a reputation for being clumsy, lazy, and dishonest; a winning combination for sure. Connie’s own mother fired him from the family restaurant in Astoria for stealing fish and cheese and selling it to other restaurants in the neighborhood. One of which was owned by another relative. Yes, we were in great hands for sure.

  The plan was to head straight to Boston. Connie was excited because he had always wanted to see the Liberty Bell. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was three hundred miles in the opposite direction.

  We left Manhattan at five thirty in the morning on a Friday. My mother asked Connie’s permission to sit with me in the backseat. He was fine with it. She was really worried about me and held my hand for most of the trip. Connie’s saving grace was that he didn’t talk much, so after about two hours on the road, Mom and I fell asleep for a long time. Long enough for Connie to reach Boston, where his keen navigational skills failed him. He couldn’t figure out what exit to get off the freeway and he missed the city entirely. When my mother and I woke up we were thirty miles north of Boston in Salem, Massachusetts.

  I took this as a very bad sign but didn’t want to say anything to my mother. It would have been useless to say anything to Connie, who wanted to find the factory where they made the cigarettes. He was hoping for free samples, once again astounding me with his peerless geographic knowledge.

  We went into a little restaurant for breakfast. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the ride up (Connie had three) so I wasn’t hungry and ordered just a cup of tea. Connie was a little hungry so he ordered three fried eggs with bacon, sausage, ham, potatoes, toast, and a chocolate milkshake. My mother asked for coffee and cinnamon toast.

  “We don’t serve it,” said our waitress Molly, who wore a name tag in the shape of a conical witch hat.

  My mother tried to politely explain what cinnamon toast was, but Molly the Witch cut her off: “I know what it is, lady, we just don’t serve it.”

  My mother gave up: “I guess I’ll just have some corn flakes then.”

  “It’s bread, cinnamon, sugar, and butter. You don’t have those four things?” I spoke up in my mother’s defense.

  My mother turned toward me surprised.

  “It’s not a matter of whether or not we have the ingredients, it’s a matter of what’s on the menu and what the chef—”

  “Are you fucking stupid or just a nasty bitch?” I really let her have it.

  “Matthew!!” My mother was mortified.

  “I think it’s best if you people leave,” Molly said. She scooped up the menus and walked into the kitchen. My mother gave me a look that was more confused than angry. Then she got up and followed Molly into the kitchen.

  “She deserved it, Matt. Good for you,” Connie said as he nodded his head and searched his pockets. “Want a Seconal?”

  I shook my head.

  My mother returned and didn’t say a word to me. It was like it never happened. A few minutes later Molly brought the tea, coffee, and milkshake. She didn’t say a word either.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” I meant it too.

  “We all have our days,” Molly replied without looking at me.

  My mother’s breakfast was a disaster. Way too much sugar, not enough cinnamon, and saturated in butter. She ate it without a complaint. Connie (short for connoisseur) ate his morning meal in giant gulps and slurps. I began feeling sick to my stomach and went to the bathroom. Not to throw up but to get as far away from my
dear cousin as I could without leaving my mother abandoned.

  After breakfast my mother got directions to the only standing structure left in Salem with a direct link to the witchcraft trials. In a display of great originality and imagination, the building is called “The Witch House.” Which would be dumb enough except for the fact that no witch ever lived there.

  The Witch House had been the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, who resided there from 1675 until his death in 1718. Judge Corwin had the distinct honor of sending nineteen innocent people accused of practicing witchcraft to the gallows. He also condemned the lucky Giles Corey to “death by pressing.” This involved Mr. Corey being placed under a board which was weighted down with heavy stones added one at a time. It took the poor soul two whole days to die.

  After accomplishing the heroic feat of ridding Salem of its witches, the Honorable Judge Corwin was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. We were granted the distinct privilege of visiting the home of this paragon of justice and virtue.

  The house was made of a sinister-looking gray-black wood and stood three stories tall. There were only three windows on the entire side of the house that faced the street. They were abnormally small like teeth and eyes. They unsettled me. I didn’t want to go inside but my mother had her arm inside mine and I was reluctant to break away from her. Connie was doing a bad impression of the Wicked Witch of the West, cackling “Heh-heh-heh, my pretty” as we entered through the gift shop.

  The house was dark inside, the small windows didn’t allow much light. The floorboards creaked and the air was thick with the scent of old wood, mildew, and wet paper. Karol, our tour guide, wore a black seventeenth-century getup with breeches, stockings, garters, and a Pilgrim hat. His Polish-accented English completed the period costume. Karol showed us a glass case that displayed an amulet containing skull moss (actual moss that grew on a dead human skull) that was used to ward off witchcraft. The amulet did not belong to the Corwin family but was found in the basement of a demolished church. Also in the case was a small, white cloth doll, crudely made in the image of a little girl. There were two stitched X’s where its eyes should have been and it wore no specific articles of clothing. No genitalia were represented, thank god, but it was obscene just the same. Karol said it was a poppet and was used by witches to cast spells. It, too, had come from somewhere other than this house.

  I was sure that some evil energy drove me to this place, leading me into the presence of dark forces. Was I to be forever damned, cursed, and doomed? I was dizzy and couldn’t think straight. Karol began leading us up a narrow set of stairs and I felt the walls closing in. I knew this trip was a stupid fucking idea. Vomit churned in my gut, my mouth salivating, my heart pounding. I needed to get out or I was going to puke and pass out. I pulled on my mother’s arm and everything went black.

  Next thing I remember is sitting on a patch of grass outside the Witch House. Connie was standing above me with his head cocked at a weird angle. “Are you back, Dorothy?” He thought he was very funny.

  Karol was next to Connie, his big black hat in his hands, a cigarette in his mouth. My mother kneeled down and gave me sips of water from a black Salem, Mass mug. I told her I wanted to get in the car and drive the hell away from there.

  I wanted to go home.

  I wanted to see Lou.

  thirty-seven

  I stood at his doorway wearing the clothes he gave me. I thought he would get a kick out of that. I knocked. Nothing. I tried knocking three more times. On the fourth there was still no answer and I started to worry. In my pocket was his key and the foot of the poor blue rabbit. Now that I think about it, it must have been Rachel’s key. I let myself into the apartment.

  The living room was empty. There was never a lot of stuff in the place before but now there was none: Lou had moved out. And I know it wasn’t him who packed up the joint and hauled everything out. There was no way he would have done such a thorough job. Besides being empty, the place was also spotless. And that just wasn’t in his nature.

  Even the kitchen was empty. The cupboards, the drawers, the refrigerator: nothing. The bathroom too. I was sure that something had to have been left behind somewhere. It just seemed too strange that not even the smallest trace of the man remained.

  In the bedroom my suspicions were proven correct. On the wall between the two windows were about twenty lines of lyrics or poetry scrawled in red ink. At the foot of the wall a thick red marker sat quiet on the floor.

  I read his words carefully and silently. They were frightening and beautiful at the same time. I know they came from a place of deep pain, because that was how I left him. Even with his tale of mulligan stew and the game he played with my name, I knew he was suffering. That’s why I was worried for him.

  Maybe this was it. The last words the world would ever get from the man.

  I started to recite the lines out loud. The first run-through I was quiet and slow but then I started over from the beginning. I picked up the volume and the pace and the second reading was much better. The third time was even louder and faster and I tried to put myself in his shoes (I was already wearing his pants and shirt) and feel whatever it was that he’d been feeling at the time.

  By the fifth recitation I was screaming, scraping my throat raw, trying to put every ounce of what I was feeling (what he was feeling) into the performance. I was punching and kicking the air for punctuation and it felt like my body was doing these things independent of any commands from my brain. On the last word I kicked the air so hard and so high, I landed flat on my back and my head smashed against the hardwood floor.

  * * *

  It was dark when I woke up and I didn’t know where I was. My head was throbbing and my back ached. Slowly it all came back to me and I remembered I was in Lou’s empty bedroom. As I got to my feet, the room swayed a little. I didn’t feel well. I wasn’t sure if there was still electricity in the place so I flipped the switch. The bare bulb in the ceiling fixture lit up the room so bright it was brutal.

  I felt that it was my duty to transcribe what was on the wall for posterity. I figured that no copy of the piece existed anywhere and it was sure to be whitewashed in a day or so. I searched the apartment again. There had to be something, a book, a menu, a bill, a piece of cardboard, something I could use to preserve what may have been Lou’s last words. The task had fallen upon me; I was to be keeper of those final words.

  There was a small cupboard in the kitchen, high above the refrigerator. I had missed it on first inspection. I had to climb on top of the stove to reach it. There was no paper inside, nothing to write on, nothing at all except a half-empty bottle of gin. I reached for it cautiously, climbed off the stove with care, and took the bottle back to the bedroom. I toasted the scripture on the wall, bid Lou farewell, and took a big swig. This I knew was stupid because I needed to go up to my apartment and find some paper. Gin really stinks up the breath and my mother would smell it and get upset and scared for me. And I was already feeling sick and still a little dizzy.

  I took an even bigger swig. It burned but it made me happy. I sat on the floor, another big swallow. I thought about the time he took me to the bar and officially dubbed me Tim. I hated the name but accepted it because I felt neither of us had any choice in the matter. I underestimated you. Cheers. One more pull from your bottle.

  I started on my left forearm. That would be the most logical place since I’m right-handed. It tickled at first but became more and more pleasurable as my skin got used to the sensations. The first line read: They tied his arms behind his back to teach him how to swim.

  I rotated my arm slightly and continued on the soft underside of the arm with the second line.

  I remember thinking how beautiful the words looked on my skin. Whorish for sure, a slutty lipstick red, but bold and honest at the same time; unashamed. Artistic and painterly. It was a color I had seen on a canvas at the Met or the Modern or maybe only in a book. Veronica turned me on to it, that I’m sure of. Big slabs of m
eat hanging at the butcher shop. I don’t remember the artist’s name. He passed away very young from what I can recall. After he died, his wife jumped out the window pregnant with his baby. His red was called vermilion and it had been banned by the dictator so he fled to Paris. Maybe his name was Chaim? I think he was an Italian Jew.

  I kept on drinking and writing and at some point took my (his) pants off. I started on my legs and feet. When I had gotten through all twenty or so of the lyrics, I started from the beginning on my chest and stomach. I used big letters at first but when an area would get too crowded I would make the words very small. In some places where there was no room for an entire word, I would only write a letter or two. I covered my skin with as many words as was possible. I went into the bathroom and began to write on my face. I couldn’t tell if the letters were backward or forward.

  I stared at my face in the mirror.

  I had succeeded beyond all expectations!

  I realized it didn’t matter if anyone could read the words because I had become the words. I was the song. The lyrics now incarnate: flesh, bones, and blood. I thought the transformation would have pleased Lou.

  Back in the bedroom I took off my underwear and wrote the words mask and stained on and around my private parts. His words, not mine. I killed the gin. Then I stretched out flat on the floor, spit into my palm, and masturbated. I tried to think of Veronica’s beautiful pale-white body. Small, thin, and naked. I kept seeing the rope around her neck so I imagined one rope with two loops. One for her and one for me. The more excited she got, the louder she screamed. The louder she screamed, the tighter the nooses got. The tighter the nooses got, the more excited she got.

  It took a long time and a lot of effort but I finally made myself come. The words down there were a smudged-up mess; it looked like my dick was cut and bleeding. But I was too tired to clean myself and too drunk to care.