What We Kill

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What We Kill Page 9

by Howard Odentz


  There is talk on television of a lot of plastic surgery to get from where he was to where he is, and more talk about the fact that he’s now a plastic surgeon specializing in making pretty people out of misshapen clay.

  He’s an avid runner, with a runner’s body, and has often been seen by neighbors with attractive young women and men in his designer sports car with the leather seats and the convertible roof.

  Dr. Viktor Pavlovich is also a passionate gardener. His backyard is a shrine to anything that will grow in our part of the world. Speculation as to the nature of the fertilizer underneath his plantings has been mounting, and the people on the news are appropriately freaking out.

  The worst reaction is from a neighbor of Dr. Pavlovich’s who’s often been gifted with tomatoes and cucumbers by the healthy, good-looking man with the handsome smile and perpetual face-stubble.

  In another town, like East Meadowfield or someplace up the Mohawk Trail, his neighbor would undoubtedly have curlers in her hair and a house coat. Not here, though. In Meadowfield she is perfectly made up for the reporters. Unfortunately her makeup doesn’t matter. Right on screen, right in front of the cameras, when the guy who’s interviewing her starts talking about Pavlovich’s special brand of vegetables and what makes them taste so good, her face goes completely white, and she pukes on his microphone.

  Why does the news keep showing her doing that? It’s disgusting. It’s raw. It makes for great ratings. Still, I have to turn away every time that little snippet appears on screen. That news clip is probably going to sprout into a viral Internet meme about how great our gardens are in Meadowfield.

  The meme will say something like ‘Water with puke to get a great cuke,’ or another equally noxious phrase.

  As first reported, our resident serial-killer-plastic-surgeon-gardener-gigolo works over at Johnstown Memorial in Connecticut. He’s been there for three years now, and hospital staff questioned all act appropriately shocked when asked about their co-worker and what was found inside his house.

  A pretty, young nurse who seems to get a little bit squirmy when she’s questioned about the handsome doctor blushes uncontrollably. The reporter who is interviewing her picks up on her reaction and immediately starts down a very disturbing path about how the two of them, the nurse and Dr. Pavlovich, might be more than friends, which makes her blush that much more.

  “Slut,” whispers Anders under his breath as he slouches and watches, here but not here, in another universe but still sharing the same air that we’re all breathing.

  I can feel the anger bubbling up inside of me. What’s more, I know I can’t control it anymore, and I explode.

  “What the hell is with you, Anders?” I snap at him. Marcy bristles. Myers cringes and stares at his feet. “I mean seriously. We all have crazy shit going on—really crazy shit. But you? You’re like not even you. What the fuck?”

  Anders shifts slightly in his chair and stares at me, dangerously close to how Dr. Viktor Pavlovich probably stared at that makeup-caked neighbor of his when he delivered to her his corpse-fertilized vegetables.

  “I don’t know, Weston,” he hisses like a very scary cat, punctuating his indifference with my name as though he thinks if he uses it, he’ll have some sort of power over me. “What the hell is wrong with ME? What the hell is wrong with HER?” He nods his square chin toward the image on the screen. “Look at the bitch. She probably let him do her right in the middle of his garden. She probably . . . ”

  THWACK.

  Marcy is standing over Anders, her arm raised high. She’s already cracked Anders across the face once, and she’s deciding whether she wants to do it again. Immediately, Anders jumps to his feet and gets right in her face like he’s ready to start a fight in the cafeteria at school because someone happened to look at him the wrong way.

  His cheek grows red. His eyes blaze with fire.

  I’m on the other side of the kitchen counter so I can’t get between them quickly enough, but Myers is there, eyepatch and all, grabbing Marcy’s wrist so she won’t hit Anders again.

  “HIT ME BACK!” she screams at him. “If that’s what it will take to make the real Anders come back instead of you, then hit me back.”

  I watch Anders fists tightly fold into balls, and his knuckles grow from fleshy pink to white, but by then, Myers is struggling to pull Marcy away from Anders. He looks like he’s going to do exactly what she wants him to do.

  “Stop it,” says Anders, but he says it like he doesn’t really want her to stop. He wants her to hit him again, over and over again, so he’ll have a reason to hit her back. What’s more, whatever version of Anders this is, he’s not the Anders that we all grew up with.

  He’s someone else.

  “Anders, enough,” I growl. By then I’m around the granite island and fitting my new, thinner body between the two of them, not wanting to be hit, but not wanting a fight to break out either.

  Anders glares at me with a horrific mixture of hatred and loss in his eyes. All his pent up emotions aren’t even directed at me or Marcy. They’re obviously targeted somewhere else, very far away.

  And right when I think he’s actually going to hit me, the house phone rings again. We all stand motionless, like statues, as though the person on the other end of the line can actually see us in Marcy’s saucer of a house, melting, melting, melting into a bitter, angry gruel.

  Like with all the other calls, an answering machine picks up and instructs the caller to leave a message.

  When the caller does, the blood in my veins turns to ice. I’m sure the same goes for the rest of us.

  “Hiya, Momsicle and Popsicle,” says Tate Cole with a voice that sounds like it’s crept out of the mouth of a spider. “I’m just chillin’ over here in Bellingham with my pudding and a spork, but it sounds like shit finally got real in your neck of the woods. Seriously, what the fuck is going on down there in Meadowfield? It sounds like I’m missing one hell of a party.”

  25

  TATE COLE.

  Tate Benjamin Cole.

  If Meadowfield had a cancer living here prior to Dr. Viktor Pavlovich, malignant Tate Cole was it. Born only eleven minutes before Marcy, but light years away from her, Tate Cole was the curse of Primrose Lane. As a matter of fact, he was the curse of the entire community.

  In Kindergarten at Byberry Elementary, he shoved this short kid named Lane Crocker into a row of coat hooks next to our cubby holes in Mrs. Benson’s class. One of those coat hooks went straight up Lane’s nose, and he had to be sent to the hospital.

  In first grade he broke Myers’ arm. We were playing Twister at the Myers’ house and Tate was having a hard time contorting himself into the pretzel he needed to be to win. I guess he thought stepping on Myers’ outstretched arm until it made a wet snapping sound was the best way to ensure victory.

  He won. Myers lost big time.

  In third grade, Tate stabbed Mr. Scalia, a long-term substitute for Ms. Nichols who was out having another baby, with the pointy end of a protractor. It went clean through Mr. Scalia’s hand, all because Tate messed up his multiplication tables and decided it was the teacher’s fault instead of his own.

  Also that year, right when Marcy was beginning to go through all her own shit, Tate cornered her in the bathroom with a butcher knife. I remember that day clearly. We were playing at the Coles’ house, all of us, and Anders managed to get the pointy end of the knife pointing somewhere else besides Marcy.

  Anders still has a scar on his hand from that day, and the memories of a hospital visit and a dozen stitches to prove it, although his scar has faded to white by now.

  By the end of third grade, which seems like a lifetime ago, Tate began a series of in-house stays at various institutions throughout New England. I don’t remember all their names, but I do remember that Tate slowly but surely disappeared out of the Coles’ live
s, at least as far as the rest of us were concerned. What’s more, we were glad he was gone.

  Although little kids have a pretty high tolerance for crazy, none of us had a tolerance for Tate. He was a rabid dog, and rabid dogs need to be put down. Since Massachusetts doesn’t euthanize crazy-ass kids, the next best thing is to lock them away.

  Marcy never talks about Tate. None of us even think about him. The sole reminder that he ever lived in the Coles’ house to begin with are the pictures hanging on the wall downstairs in the den, and the couch filled with burn holes. Tate sometimes lit cigarettes, took a puff, and burned the leather with the glowing end.

  I remember he always had this sort of demented glee in his eyes when he did it, like he imagined the leather to be skin, and whoever belonged to that skin squealing in terror every time he touched them.

  That was Tate—Tate Cole—the monster of Primrose Lane unseated only this morning by a new monster—Dr. Viktor Pavlovich—the monster of Covington Circle.

  The four of us stare at the phone after Tate hangs up, unable to move and unable to speak. There is only so much shit you can heap on top of a pile of shit before that pile begins to tip.

  Marcy looks hard at the phone, her slapping hand still in Myers’ grip. Slowly, Myers loosens his hold, and Marcy’s arm falls away.

  “Fuck me,” Myers whispers. “That’s all we need.”

  Anders closes his eyes tightly—actually squeezing his lids so hard that wrinkles form around their outer edges. He bites the inside of his lip and bows his head.

  I don’t know what’s happening. Frankly I haven’t understood the littlest bit of my life since I woke up this morning in The Maze. Now, Tate Cole is on the phone, there’s a mass murder being investigated over on Covington Circle, and Anders and Marcy are having some sort of major blowout that seems to have everything to do with them and nothing to do with the weirdness that has enveloped the four of us since our memories disappeared.

  Anders backs up and plops down in the chair again. He’s no longer sitting like he did before with one leg over the arm, ready to scratch his balls at any moment. He’s sitting bent over with his face in his hands, and he’s crying.

  I think I’m the only one who hasn’t cried in front of the others since we woke up this morning, but I’ve had my fair share of waterworks ever since leaving Prince Richard’s Maze to traverse the expanse of Meadowfield in search of essentials for my friends.

  Every few seconds Anders pulls in great gluts of air to fuel his despair, and I feel nothing inside, except some sort of relief that my friend may not be the cold and callous asshole that he’s been play-acting at being all day.

  Marcy bends down next to him and tentatively puts her hand on his knee. A bomb goes off.

  “Get away from me,” Anders bellows and pushes her away so fiercely that she falls back and clunks her head against the edge of the granite counter.

  Then he’s gone, bolting for the spiral staircase in the middle of the Coles’ house and disappearing down the dark hole into the mess below.

  Once again, like this morning, I know I have to go after him. He’s broken in the head somehow, and I have to make sure that no one else finds a broken Anders wandering Primrose Lane. We all now know that a broken Anders can be a dangerous Anders, and a dangerous Anders can hurt someone.

  After all, he’s hurt Marcy—and just like this morning, there’s blood. This time it’s wet and sticky, and on the tips of Marcy’s fingers from where she reaches around to inspect the back of her head where it collided with the hard counter.

  She holds her fingers out in front of her, her hands trembling, her lips quivering, and her eyes like cartoon eyes, several sizes too big for her face.

  “I’m bleeding,” whispers Marcy, so softly that her words are deafening.

  “Shit,” says Myers.

  Shit is right.

  Why does everything with the four of us always have to end in blood?

  26

  TWO YEARS AGO a girl named Annie Berg from up in Apple came to live with her aunt in Springfield. She never talked about her mother, but I got the sense that whatever happened to her, it was nothing good. Her dad, well, her dad was the kind of guy who was a little too handsy for his own good, so ultimately Annie was sent away.

  Apple’s a bad place anyway. It’s the sort of town where kids grow up with no trajectory out, kind of like Guilford or Montgomery Falls. Their high school is rated about the worst in the state, and turning eighteen there means you either work in the orchards, get knocked up, deal heroin, or join the army.

  Annie Berg was lucky. I heard she had a boyfriend back in Apple that ultimately didn’t work out, so she started dating a guy here that she met at FunTowne.

  The guy she met was younger than her, but she was okay with that. I suppose you could say that Annie was a little stunted anyway. I think her life until Springfield was some sort of living hell, so she was allowed a little immaturity.

  Sometimes being immature is the only way to make it through the really horrible stuff.

  I’m not a selfish, self-absorbed kind of guy who thinks the whole world is like Meadowfield. I know that I’ll never really understand the sort of life Annie lived in a place like Apple. I barely understand a town where kids don’t regularly graduate from high school, let alone don’t go off to college and start a bank account on their eighteenth birthday.

  Kids from Annie Berg’s part of the world don’t know what a trust fund is. They don’t know people like me who will probably never really have to worry about money. Sure, they understand single parents. That’s a universal part of our culture, but people with money, even a little bit, are as alien to them as people from Dubai or the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

  The reason I’m bringing Annie Berg up in the first place was that the guy she started dating was a guy we all used to go to high school with. He didn’t go far for college. He went to the University of Massachusetts up in Amherst. It’s only a half hour drive from there down to Springfield, and he thought Annie was worth it.

  That guy, Owen Carter, was a friend of ours. I know he was a little older than us, but not old enough that we wouldn’t all hang out. Before Marcy had her license, Owen had his, and whenever he was visiting Annie in Springfield, he would come and get us all and we’d go out.

  Hanging with Owen made me feel somehow human because two years ago, you could barely make out the human underneath all the fat I was hidden behind. He never said one word about it. He never made a fat crack, which even Myers did every once in a while. He never looked at me differently.

  He was Owen, and I was Weston, and he accepted me for who I was.

  Owen was killed on the Mass Turnpike on his way down to see Annie this past Christmas. Supposedly he wasn’t drunk or stoned, and there weren’t very many cars or trucks on the road. His car slipped, spun around, and went over the guard rail at exactly the right spot where the trees were thin and the fall was far.

  At the funeral, which had a closed casket because all Jewish funerals have a closed casket, I saw Annie. She was sitting next to her aunt with this glazed expression on her face. Part of me thought she didn’t understand the Jewish service or why the coffin wasn’t open. The real reason Jewish caskets are closed is so that we’ll always remember people the way they were in life, not in death.

  However, the bigger reason why Owen’s casket was closed was probably that there was no Owen anymore, except for what was scraped away from the insides of his burnt-out car in the gulley where he ultimately died.

  That day, I waited for the service to end before going up to Annie to tell her I was sorry about what happened to Owen and to see how she was doing.

  Her answer was so weird, so off, that I’ll never forget it.

  “You can’t fix broken,” she said to me before burrowing her face in her aunt’s shoulder and slowly wal
king away. I remember staring after her as she went. I felt like my world had been picked up like a child’s snow globe and shaken hard.

  I was upset about Owen and confused by Annie’s words.

  ‘You can’t fix broken.’

  As I watched her trudge away from me I remember thinking that what she said felt prophetic and true.

  Now, a million miles away from Owen Carter’s death, everything I have come to accept about my world in Meadowfield seems broken without a way for it to be fixed. The fake people and the designer clothing, the façade of perfection that is nothing more than a cardboard cutout covering a darker truth, the single mothers like Beryl or Mrs. Stephenson whose agendas don’t seem to have anything to do with their children, all of it—it’s broken.

  Anders is broken, too.

  I want to rush over to Marcy and squeeze her tight, inspect the back of her head, which I know is probably nothing more than a little cut that doesn’t need stitches, and tell her that everything is going to be okay, but I might be lying.

  As I stand there staring at her, rooted to the spot by an unreal feeling that I really should be in two places at once, by her side and by Anders, something creeps up from out of nowhere and starts laughing.

  I don’t know the voice. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but that laughter is as twisted as if it’s coming out of Tate Cole’s mouth and as brutal as if it’s seeping from the pretty maw of Dr. Viktor Pavlovich.

  Laughing, laughing, laughing inside my head until I think I might go insane.

  27

  ANDERS TAKES Marcy’s car. How messed up is that? He freaks out, pushes her, makes her bleed, and then takes her car. I didn’t even realize he swiped the keys, but somewhere along the way that’s exactly what he’s done. This wasn’t a spur of the moment kind of thing. This was something that he planned, probably even before we got back to the Coles’ house from seeing what was going on across the street from where Sandra Berman used to live.

 

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