by Jac Jemc
“Julie, what are you talking about? That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, we’re making it up without intending to, not that we’re trying to manipulate one another.”
“You just said you’re the one making this happen. Why won’t I listen? You have control over all of this. It makes sense now. Most times, I don’t even feel like I’m talking to you. I feel like I’m speaking with something you’ve been convinced of. But I don’t know where you are. I can’t trust you.” Only after I’ve said these words do I feel how true they sound, and my breath leaves, my sight disappears, returns.
He swings his head back and forth rapidly, as if he’s trying to get rid of something, erase a thought. I can almost see his train change tracks, avoiding my accusations. “Well, why should I believe you? You’ve acted out as much as I have in the past few months.” He counts on his fingers. “You keep passing out. You started dreaming of bodies covered in fingers. You say you haven’t been doing the drawings, but why should I trust you? And then all of this business with Rolf missing. You probably know where he is!”
“It’s all a joke!” I can’t get the thought out of my mind. “Just kidding!” I laugh. I can feel the cruelty set my mouth in a grin. “How does it feel? Just kidding!”
“Yeah, it’s all a ruse.” James’s eyes go dead as he condescends. “That’s exactly what I was trying to say. So glad you understand me so fully.” He turns as if he’s going to leave the room, but comes back. “Thanks so much for your undying support, Julie. You’ve been so understanding. But, yes, the joke’s on you! Everything I do, I’m just trying to mess with you.” He steps back, throws his hands up, provoking some kind of response. “The jig is up! You’re on Candid Camera! JK! April Fools’! April Fools’ your fucking cervix and April Fools’ this house opening itself to us and April Fools’ whatever it is that’s growing here. April-fucking-Fools’, Julie! Yep, that’s what I meant.”
I sob, terrified now of this man, convinced of his complicity. I’m backed into a corner of the counter while he rails inches from my face. I’m not even fighting back, just taking the verbal punches this moment throws at me, but my body fatigues. I push him away and turn to lean against the counter and quake.
“Just kidding,” James chokes out, and I hear him walk away, hear the basement door open, his steps down the stairs.
“Just kidding!” I scream, and bang my sore fists on the granite countertop.
68
I GO TO bed alone and sleep quickly with vivid dreams of soured lilies and the sick, brown smell of turned hydrangeas, transformed from petals to litter.
I hear steps on the stairs and our bedroom door swings wide and then James slides one foot and then another into bed, but it’s not James, it’s both him and not him. It’s the true him that’s been hidden from me all this time, not the fake him that is familiar to me, and I waste no time in rolling onto him and pushing my face into his. I let his tongue meet mine and I let his mouth find my neck and suck and bite and I drag his hand to where I’m wet. I grasp at the hairs on his head and make promises with the way I press him and I reach a hand down and shove him inside me and I should know it’s too much, but I don’t care. I grind into him recklessly and hear the breaths that I know mean he’s had his fill, but I continue, and his fingers work more quickly to help me make the same decision, because once he’s come, he is sensitive, and he doesn’t need me seeking some arrival on top of him, and knowing that this is for me alone is enough to send my head back and I roll off and remember what happened earlier and who blames whom. I turn from him and snarl and he growls back.
The bed is hotter when he’s in it, and I hate that, but it’s a hate I’d rather not do without. In other words, I love hating his presence when it means a few degrees under a blanket. Even if I don’t recognize him right now, I can recognize the heat coming off his body. Even though I don’t recognize him, I am growing to recognize myself. I say, “Tell me how you’ll hurt me and I’ll tell you how I’ll respond,” but he has gone quiet.
I shut my eyes for a long time without sleep, and when I open them, I see the murky outline of someone, more the deep shade of a figure on the darkness than the lightness of a human form. “James.” I feel for him beside me, but can’t find him in the bed, so I allow my mind to confirm the figure must be him, but still I ask, “James, is that you?” The figure retreats and then I hear a rolling slide and a bump, like a pocket door closing itself and I can’t see the dim cloud anymore and I remember when I was caught in the wall, and I stand and flip the light on, but the wall is as it was after I emerged: solid, unseamed. On the nightstand, though, the journal has been returned, but without the loose pages packed into the front. I open it to find the rolling text, illegible like James’s handwriting on the wall, or could it be that James’s handwriting is like what I’d seen in the book? I hear questions in my mind but have the strange sensation that they are not mine. Could I be tripping on a single burn scar? Skipping around the same groove? A record needle tracing an error? I’m making my way through the same paths of the maze repeatedly. I feel my mind rush in and then disperse. I climb into bed and pull myself back together, like metal filings to a magnet, and by the time I fall asleep, light already sneaks through the windows.
When I wake, I’m sure I’ll be late for work, so I lug myself to the bathroom and splash water on my face and blink the water from my eyes and I see it: the glowing purple of a bruise on my neck. I touch the mirror and remember the night before and remember James’s mouth there and my shoulders sink with relief because a hickey is nothing to worry about. It can’t tell me stories I don’t want to hear, and I return to the bedroom and hunt for a scarf that I can pass off as a choice even in the warm weather.
I feel the sun through the windows, the room already starting to stink with the sneaking spores. I slide a dress down my body and pause, looking at James’s side of the bed, and sit down and run my hand over the sheets and try to imagine the warmth of him still there, a clue about when he left, but no matter how assuredly my hand tries to divine the heat, it turns up nothing, and I worry for only a moment more and head out.
At work, Connie recognizes the scarf for what it is immediately. “Show me.”
“It’s not what you think.” I realize how I sound and lower my voice. “This one’s a hickey.”
“Seriously?” She tries to connect the dots of how the night could end that way.
I bow my head, and when I move, I feel a heavy ache rooting itself in my spine. “We fought. He was saying things that made me think I didn’t even know him, blaming himself, and I just can’t accept that. He stalked down to the basement and I fell asleep, but I woke up when he came to bed and he still seemed like some other person, but I felt this”—I pause and just say it—“this desire, this impulse to seize the chance to sleep with someone new, even though it was still James, and I acted. Hence…” I fan my fingers beside my neck.
“Jesus. If he’s so set on taking the blame, maybe he is to blame? He was the last one in my house before that drawing showed up. I don’t want to call your husband a liar, but something is going on with him. And that is one hell of a hickey, Jules.” She moves in closer to inspect.
My hand involuntarily travels to it, and even that gentle, absentminded touch sends the dull throb spiking higher, but despite this surprising hurt, I say, “It’s a regular old hickey. No big deal. It’s embarrassing, but my dignity has survived worse. How was the rest of your night? I feel like no matter what James’s deal is, we’re to blame somehow. When will you be able to stay at home again?”
Connie keeps her eyes on the hickey. “It’s fine. My cousin’s going to help me paint over the vandalism tonight and then she’s going to stay with me for a night or two until I feel better.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. I can’t help myself.
“Julie.” Connie squints and turns me to the side. “I don’t think this is just a hickey. It stretches from behind your ear and all the way down to below your clavicle.�
�� She points to a spot under the collar of my shirtdress and I angle my head to try to see and there it is. The bruise is pushing at its boundaries, expanding as I watch. I think of the way James grabbed my shoulder on our walk to the restaurant and pull my collar wider to see the bruise on my neck advancing toward the one on my shoulder. They rush for each other at a glacial pace. I feel my eyes well up with fury that I’ve done this to myself. I let the hickey happen and now the bruise can grow from there. Is it harder to begin something or to keep it going? My mind races with examples that make both statements feel true and I think of how it’s easy to keep dating a person but hard to keep the relationship alive once you’ve hit a tough spot. Had I provided a host or would it have found me anyway?
Connie swipes back the hair behind my ear and leans in. “It continues past your hairline, Julie. Jesus.”
I bite my lip to keep from crying. “Get to work. I’ll deal with this later. No use worrying about it now. It’s not like it’s anything new.”
Connie walks away, like I’ve let her down.
I see an email from my boss, and my stomach drops. I’m worried he’ll have read the plan for the product I drew up while I was at home and see all the weaknesses, all the details I should have had time to figure out while I was out of the office, the specifications I took educated guesses on rather than researching. “Looks like a great start. Let’s meet as a team later this week to discuss” is all the email says, and I wonder if I’m working too hard most of the time, if it’s always me inviting trouble.
69
IN MY DARKROOM, I dream of returning to the city. The cool basement air reminds me of the air-conditioned bar. The noon sun muted by the dark plastic sunshade pulled down over the windows. The chilled feeling of the lacquered oak beneath my forearms. The prickle of freshly poured lager down my throat as I examine the names of the horses on the betting sheet. The rush at either win or loss, the extremity of feeling assured, controlled in all but outcome. I long for the comfort of placing my worry on a race rather than this real life crumbling around me.
The doorbell rings and I make my way upstairs. Through the glass I can see the detectives’ car out front. I wonder if they’ve found Rolf.
I swing the door open. “What can I do for you, Detectives?”
“Can we come in?” asks O’Neill.
“Please.” I step aside. I open the door wide. They hover for a moment before I lead them to the dining room.
They eye me. “Did we wake you?”
“No, no. I was working in the basement. What is this about?”
Poremski’s eyes move to the crumpled sheets of paper on the floor, covered in our grievances. O’Neill asks, “What’s all this?”
I curse myself for bringing them into this room. I stumble over myself. “My wife and I … we had a fight. She wanted to do some kind of … writing exercise together to try to work things out.” I laugh, performing the dismissiveness I think is expected of me. “Anything she says so we can move on already, right?”
They nod tentatively. O’Neill says, “And that would have been before or after you visited Connie Abbatacola’s house?”
“After.” Of course this is about Connie. I had nearly forgotten. Obviously Officer Scarface passed the word on that we were at Connie’s.
“Do you mind if we take a look around?” O’Neill asks.
I feel fear at what they might find, what we’ve failed to hide. I don’t see a way around it. “Is something the matter, Officer? Have Julie and I done something wrong?”
“No, no. Where is your wife?”
“At work?” I phrase it like a question. I can’t be sure. It seems like the most likely answer.
I follow the pair of them upstairs. They peek into the guest room briefly before moving on. In our bedroom, they pause. They note the figure drawn on the wall. They can’t help but exchange a glance. Poremski steps out of the room to make a call. O’Neill looks at me. He gestures toward the wall. “What can you tell me about that?”
I panic inside. I know what his mind is telling him. This figure looks like the one in Connie’s entryway. They must be related. It only makes sense that it’s me who’s drawn both. I wonder if Connie told them about this drawing. Could she have asked them to come take a look? “These keep showing up in our house, too. I assumed it was my wife making them. She thought it was me. Neither of us is correct, from what I understand.”
“And you haven’t reported them?” O’Neill appears to be giving me the benefit of the doubt. He wants to hear a good reason why we would keep this information to ourselves.
“Like I said, we both thought the other was playing a trick. We’ve been going through a lot.” I pause and then decide to move in a direction that might discount my reliability, but also take some heat off us. “Honestly, we think this house is haunted. Everyone in town keeps saying as much. We keep looking for another reasonable explanation, though. We don’t really believe in that sort of stuff. We’ve been trying to work through it on our own. We’re not getting very far. We need help.”
O’Neill’s eyes bug out for a moment in frustration. He does not want to hear about our marital problems. He is a logical man. I am talking in riddles. “Mr. Khoury, I’m going to need you to be more explicit. What is it you need help with? Are you in danger? Are you unwell? Is there something more we should know?”
I realize then that the detective thinks we might not have reported the drawings because we have something else that we’re trying to hide. He believes we have evidence of some crime we have or haven’t committed. In that same moment I realize there’s no way to say, believably, without attracting more suspicion, We haven’t done anything. Instead, I say, “My wife and I, I believe we’ve both taken this move rather hard. I don’t know if it’s depression, paranoia, anxiety. We’re not ourselves. It’s been complicated by some strange stuff happening in the house. Sounds we hear. We think we see things. There are all of these hidden storage areas we keep finding. We haven’t settled in like we hoped.”
Poremski returns to the room to take pictures of the drawings. O’Neill watches him for a moment. Then he looks at me. “Mr. Khoury, I think you and your wife need to get ahold of yourselves. If you think you need help doing that, I suggest you talk to a doctor or a social worker who can help you work through your issues. In the meantime, we’re going downstairs, and you’re going to tell me everything you can remember about when this drawing showed up and the circumstances around it.”
I think about whether I should mention that we saw drawings like these in the cave, too. I tell myself that the writing on the walls of the cave is gone now, so sharing this would only make us seem more deluded.
I have the urge to apologize. I have the itch to say, This isn’t enough. I think you’re the one who can help. Instead, I allow the detectives to lead the way out of the room.
70
AT WORK I search a million terms trying to find an answer: bruises; primitive drawings; graphomania; contusions; filth; mold; blooms; infestation; magic tricks; haunting; shallow grave; spying; elder neighbor care; death; resurrection; caves. I search our names and our address but am accustomed to those results.
Nothing compelling turns up. I go to our team meeting to discuss the new product and explain my findings. People volunteer to look into different pieces of the puzzle, and I’m grateful I don’t need to run down the list of assignments I’d drawn up. A good team member can see a bigger picture and figure out his or her place. My coworker in publicity suggests different approaches for marketing the product and my mind wanders back to the search I’d been doing before the meeting. I turn to my laptop screen and enter all of the terms I’d thought of into the search bar at once and what returns shuts up my curiosity. I click into the image search, and the results become even more real. There, in picture after picture, are James and then me and then the house and then Rolf and then the cave and then the walls of the cave flush with scribbles and the documentation shots of my bruises and then the drawi
ngs on the walls of the house and then a picture of me last night in bed with a man I don’t recognize but know must be my husband and then and then and then.
My hearing blacks out, and I close my computer. “I’m sorry, if you’ll excuse me, I have a call I need to run to.” I hope no one will notice that it’s nowhere near the end of the hour. I pray no one will think it’s strange that I scheduled a call to overlap with an internal meeting I set up. If they ask, I will say I’m so busy, I’m running into myself.
71
THE POLICE CAR pulls away. I exit through the back door. I can’t stand to be in the house for another minute. I’m pushed out. The trees are fewer than before. The ones that have lasted are thick and tall like redwoods. I stare up through the undergrowth. The children have returned. They are rumbling now at each other. They sit at the ends of branches that don’t look as if they can hold their weight. They hold hands with the children in the trees beside them. I think of the game KerPlunk, where thin plastic sticks are inserted in a clear tube. Marbles balance on top of the intersections. The goal is to pull out the sticks without letting the marbles drop. Eventually all the orbs will fall, though. There is no way to balance slick glass on pure air.
I imagine the branches giving way. The children scattershot through the forest.
I call up to them. I ask if they need help. Their eyes shift down toward me. Their growls continue.
I go back to the edge of the yard. I look for what Julie thought was a grave. I consider burying myself there. The idea of it sounds secure to me. It would be satisfying to be locked in. I can sense the comfort of being weighed down. I think of a killer putting a victim in a bathtub and filling the bathtub with concrete. I pause on my way to the back door to try to imagine the pain that would arise from not being able to move. I try and try. It’s not there in the memories of my body.