Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  He’d hated me, I guess. His asshole big-brother always teasing, poking him. Why’d you do that, Kevin? That hurts.

  Because you’re shit-for-brains, that’s why. Got it?

  Teddy has brought new, laminated copies of some of the photos posted at the shrine, that were damaged or lost. Teddy helps Mom tack them in place, on the tree trunk. And Teddy ties the single sneaker back up onto the cross.

  Mom is saying in a bitter drunk voice Kevie didn’t deserve to die. They took their time getting out here—“Jaws of Life.” The other boys, they were taken to the ER at Atlantic City and they were saved, they didn’t deserve to be saved any more than my son. God-damn them leaving him to bleed to death in the wreck like a dog.

  It’s a relief when Mom leaves. Jesus!—I wish I never had to see any of them again.

  OK Mom I am sorrier than hell, what I did. Things I did, you don’t even know about. OK Mom?—it was my fucking fault. I’m fucking sorry, OK? So let it go.

  MAYBE IT WAS A MISTAKE, I was born. Maybe my mother didn’t really want me, that was Mom’s secret. They say a baby doesn’t want to be born, a baby is “at home” in the mother’s body and you remember all your life being “torn from the womb.” On crystal meth these visions come so fast you can’t deal with them, can’t process them, it’s like driving really really fast, all the windows lowered so your hair is whipping around your face, you’re sweaty and oily-skinned and there’s a burnt sensation like you’ve been out in the sun. Your brain is fucked and fried but it’s OK. It’s good!!! Too much!!! Flying at you like crazed comets like at the end of that movie—2001. Flying into Jupiter or something like that—wild.

  DAYS PASS, no one comes to the shrine.

  Then, there’s a carload. Younger girls, not known to me. Not their names. At school, I’d see them—plain girls, you didn’t look twice at. Girls with their cell phones to take pictures of themselves at Kevie Orr’s shrine off the Forked River Road, Lenape Point.

  One of them,

  One of them, Janey Bishop it looks like. Feels these thoughts coming off me and looks up like she’s been kicked.

  Kevie? Kevie are you—here?

  Where the fuck do you think I am, here is where my brains splattered in the SUV and drained out into the riverbed. All over the scrub trees, the rocks is where the medics had to scrape me together and shovel me onto the fucking stretcher, maybe you didn’t know that.

  The girls are shivering saying Kevie doesn’t seem so nice now, does he? It’s like he has—changed. . . .

  He has crossed over to some other place, maybe. He can see us and hear us but we can’t see or hear him.

  I can feel his thoughts! I think his thoughts are hostile.

  Why’d Kevie be hostile to us?

  It’s just a feeling I have.

  NOBODY KNOWS, Teddy bicycles out to Lenape Point.

  My kid brother Teddy, alone.

  It’d be God-damn embarrassing, if we had to see each other. If we had to talk.

  Teddy is taller and skinnier than I remember. Baseball cap pulled down over his forehead. Like any kid you’d see on an ordinary bike, hanging out at a 7-Eleven, or a school yard. You’d think A loser. Glue-sniffer. It scares me to think that Teddy might turn out like that—like it’s my fault.

  The fact is, I’d treated my brother kind of bad, I guess. Once, pushed him into the fresh tar on our road. Made fun of him in front of the guys. He’d said kind of plaintive Why do you hate me, Kev?—and it was embarrassing as hell. I don’t hate you, fuck’s sake! Just get out of my face.

  Long as I can remember Teddy was always hanging on to me, following me around. Video games, TV. Whatever Kevin was doing, Teddy wanted to do, too. When my father moved out and was living across town he’d come to pick Teddy and me up, to take us out to eat like every Friday, it was a good time for me but not so great for Teddy who was always, like When are you gonna come back home, Dad?—kind of thing. Dad liked us to laugh, Dad likes people to be laughing not bellyaching, we’d laugh at our mother which was what Dad wanted, stupid woman, bitch, cunt, we’d sip Dad’s beer and laugh, these were mostly great times except if Dad was in a shitty mood, and it didn’t make any difference what you said to him, or how you acted. OK maybe—for a while—I was jealous of my brother, skinny Teddy snot-nosed Teddy whining and whimpering and because I didn’t cry, no fucking way I was going to cry, or beg Dad to come back and live with us, Dad got it into his head that I didn’t care about him so much—not like Teddy did. So, the quieter I got, the more Dad thought this. Some of the times, Dad got shitfaced drunk and I thought Why don’t you die. Right now. But he never did.

  It was just a few months ago, Teddy was sniffling and hanging out in my shithole room like he wanted to ask me something. I got pissed with him, I said the side of his face was going to get slammed inside the door, he just blinked at me like it was some kind of joke and didn’t move fast enough and that’s exactly what happened—his face got more or less slammed inside the door when I pushed it shut—Teddy screamed like he was being killed and I opened the door and, Christ, don’t know why I pushed it shut again, harder—Teddy was screaming, blood running down his face, and Mom was downstairs, and called up to us—I grabbed him and said You little cunt come off it, that doesn’t hurt, you cocksucker little cunt I’ll break your face into more pieces you don’t shut up. Why I was so angry, I don’t know. I pushed them both out of my room—Teddy and Mom. I slammed the door and screamed at them I’d kill them if they didn’t get out of my face. It’s like a hot flame running through my veins. My hair on fire. Girls were scared of me, these moods. Chloe said it kind of turned her on but she was scared, too. Jesus Kevie you should see yourself!

  I never did, though. I guess not.

  The Indian dream chant, you smoke jimsonweed and dance. You wore special charms to stimulate special dreams. The smell in the night. Dream charms. There’s a dream you sing when you are in battle facing death. Your special song, your Death Song.

  On the radio in the SUV was (heavy metal) rap music, when the SUV went into the skid, hit the guardrail and overturned, and all of us guys screaming, like Teddy screaming, it was like God reached down and snatched up the SUV and threw it You asshole kids see how you like this. My justice and My mercy see how you like this.

  It was a new morning. It was like debris from the dried riverbed. Forked River, that went shallow, dried out in the late summer. Stank of rotted fish, clams. Broken shells. Buzzing insects. Butterflies. A quarter-mile away, Lenape Point. The ocean, hard blue sky, tall waves.

  Sand like a bad dream you are trying to run in, and can’t make your legs move. I always loved running. I loved playing football, the guys grabbing at me, laughing and shouting, we were the same guy essentially, passing the ball among us. Roland Chermierz knocked me down, face-first, his knee in the small of my back, and there’s dirt in my mouth. Roland is hooting and yelling like a crazy asshole, coach runs over and slaps him hard. The guys are running down the field. I’m trying to get up to run with them, there’s sand pulling my legs down, I can’t get balanced.

  The shrine at Forked River they will call it. Through the fall months, through the winter and into the spring it’s unbelievable how they loved me, and I never knew. Not just Mom and Chloe and my brothers and relatives but kids I don’t know all that well. And the tall grasses growing up wild at the base of the tree. The holy shrine. There’s votive candles they light—(though they don’t burn long, the wind blows them out)—there are plastic flowers, geraniums, lilies, lilacs, the living flowers have died, a tangle of dried and desiccated things, flower pots, geraniums died over the winter. Beer bottles toppled over, bags of tacos blown in the wind, broken open by wild animals. Going to seed in the fall so beautiful. And beyond, the first wet snowflakes.

  Shit I wanted Dad to come here, but Dad has not come here, ever. Not that I know, Dad has not come here. In Dad’s eyes I am his shithead son, he’s washed his hands of me he’d said. Before the accident this was. He’d tried to g
et me a summer job at the quarry and it was a misunderstanding, I hadn’t understood that I was supposed to drive out and meet the foreman, I guess I fucked up and Dad said he’d had it with me, fuck you Kevin he said and I thought Fuck you too, you God-damn old asshole. Like I give a shit if I work at the crappy quarry. Like I give a shit I’d wanted to tell him, but I didn’t tell him. He’d cracked my face with the back of his hand once, I’d been five or six years old. You don’t make that mistake twice.

  Well it’s a fact—I wanted Dad to like me better. Maybe love me, I don’t know. It’s what you can’t have, you want. Want so bad you can taste it. My mom and my grandma—they love me, but I don’t care so much about them. Your mom always loves you, big deal! It’s like reaching in your pocket and there’s a tissue you can blow your nose in—you do it, and you don’t think about it. And you don’t think Hey I’m lucky for this tissue, else I’d have to blow my nose in my God-damn fingers.

  The thing is, my dad is ashamed of me. He’s seen the photos in the newspaper about the shrine out at Forked River, it’s a shrine in honor of Kevin Orr, seventeen when he died. Dad looks away, Dad doesn’t want to see this. Dad didn’t come to the funeral, Dad doesn’t know where my body is buried. Dad would never drive out to the shrine for Dad does not want to speak with me. He sees his own death coming in me. I think that’s it. I think that is it. He would never admit that, though. He gets drunk and says That stupid kid. Didn’t wear a seat belt either, he’s seriously fucked now. There’s a wrong-ness in it, Dad perceives. Why Dad gets drunk four nights a week. The wrongness of a son going first. This is wrong. This is a violation of nature.

  It’s like he did it deliberately. Threw his life away.

  It’s like he did it to spite me. The asshole!

  He was young, he was only seventeen. He was just seventeen—his birthday had been in the late summer.

  Kevie was just a kid, an American kid. He was going to enlist in the army that’d shaken him up some, that’d mature him, unless it killed him. But he killed himself first.

  GROPPEL DROVE OUT with three girls. He’d given them a ride out Forked River Road. Three girls, their hair blowing in the wind. Straight hair, dirty-blond, red-blond, and streaked brown. Janey Bishop, Melanie Trahern, Maggie Jones. Groppel wasn’t a friend of mine he’d thought he was superior to me I guess. In tenth grade we got along OK then some of the guys came between us. Coach made us compete. I don’t know what it was. Seeing Groppel out here in his nylon parka, his hands jammed in his pockets and the hood of his parka up, so he’s trying not to show the tears in his eyes, I felt this sensation of—I guess—it’s like love . . . I wanted to punch him in the arm, just for the hell of it, a good feeling, I wanted to pummel and kick, hey Groppel shithead, what’re you doing here. He was bringing something for me, a plastic figure, superhero, Spider-Man, we’d traded Spider-Man comics when we were little kids. At school he was in another crowd. He’d taken college prep. He’d taken algebra. He’d sort of pretend not to see me on the stairs at school. Once, I sort of pretended not to see him and gave him a good hard shove, he’d have fallen on his face and broke his rabbit teeth if he hadn’t been prepared, grabbed at the railing and stopped himself from falling. And he half-fell down the stairs, and people were watching us staring and excited and Groppel just kept going, walked quickly away with just this glance over his shoulder at me halfway up the stairs OK Kevie. You go your way, and I will go my way. It was like that a lot—a guy I’d been friends with sort of turned away from me, like he was scared of me—which makes me really pissed. Sometimes I saw, but I didn’t let on.

  One of my teachers drove out. Mr. Cranden, social studies. He took pictures of the shrine. Knelt, examined the laminated photos. The feathers, mirrors, girls’ compact mirrors, hand mirrors edged with mother-of-pearl. Valentines, big cards from the drugstore, satin red hearts, faded from the wet and the sun, torn now, almost without color. Paper lace, ribbons, crosses, pictures of Jesus Christ, hiking boots (you were supposed to think were mine? They weren’t, but resembled mine), gloves, pictures of U.S. Army soldiers marching. The wind blows some of the stuff away, that isn’t secured to the tree. There’s a lot of litter out here by the side of the road. Kids come here, and take down other pictures, and leave their own. Chloe comes out once a week at least, leaves letters for me. The girls are writing letters to me, in little coils tied with ribbons. Hanging from threads.

  KEVIE? ARE YOU HERE? Hey Kevie. . .

  Hey we miss you, Kevie. We miss you a lot.

  YOU CAN THINK OF your life as the mistakes you made that catch up with you finally. Ending in this. The shrine on Forked River Road. In the wind, there’s the danger that most of the shrine will blow away. Hurricane-force gusts. The sky all twisted dark and clouds twisted. There was a sickening skid, a sound of tires on the pavement. Deafening crash, but already I was gone, I think. Shattered glass and twisted metal and the steering wheel column piercing my gut, my spine, crushing the vertebrae. A seat belt would’ve made no difference, seventy-three miles an hour going into the skid. Hitting the guardrail, and then the trees. And over and over, into the dried riverbed. It was like a video you can see over and over like on YouTube. A million hits. You can see it now. It’s always now. The SUV collapses like something made of cheap tin. The doors fly open, my friends are thrown out. If we hadn’t been hurt it would’ve been God-damn funny like the Jackass movies—Don’t try this at home.

  I WAS BLEEDING, a thousand wounds. I wasn’t able to cry God I don’t want this, this is not what I want, help me God. I wasn’t able to speak, my mouth was filled with dirt and blood.

  My brain was filled with blood. Seeping out my ears, my eyes. My mouth that would never speak again.

  NOW IT’S A WINDY sunny-cold day. People feel good about coming here. Not so many are coming as came in the beginning but that’s OK. It’s a sign, Kevie was loved. The girls still come, and bring friends who didn’t know me. My dad has not ever come here, my dad has moved to north Jersey. My mom and grandma still come out. In church they pray for me—it’s something for them to pray for. But people feel good seeing the nice things on the tree, the plastic flowers, the ribbons and hearts. Tinfoil heart, with plastic lace. Kevie we love you. Rest in peace Kevie God be with you. Lifting their faces to the higher branches of the tree. Some of the girls will wipe away bird shit from the shrine. Rain keeps it pretty clean. Like they are seeing their best selves here. In the mirrors, people peek at their faces. Sometimes there’s a weird little scare—it’s like Kevie is peeking back at them.

  FORGETTING I WAS THE KID who fucked up big-time. Every serious thing I tried to do, I fucked up. They don’t remember that now. (Most of them don’t remember.) It’s over now. It don’t matter now. They are forgetting me now, who I was exactly. They are remembering the boy-who-died. They are remembering the boy-people-have-a-shrine-for. It’s been on TV and in newspapers. Forked River Maintains Roadside Shrine for Teen Driver Killed in Crash. Forked River High Teens Maintain Shrine for Kevin Class of ’09.

  IN ACTUAL LOVE like in sex there’s always one who gets more of it than the other and you could say is using the other, because he doesn’t care as much. I was always that kid, which was why the girls liked me I guess—each girl thought she’d be the one to make Kevie Orr grow up. I feel that I am growing up now I am “gone.” I know that’s weird as hell but I feel that my spirit is being refined. Like in the quarry, the marble is removed from the rock surrounding it. My bones are pulverized returning to dust in the church cemetery. My skull, that has holes for eyes, and a Hallowe’en mouth. Not where I am which is here.

  Your body is not where you are, after you are gone. Your special place is where you died—“passed over.” How long I will be here depends upon you, how long your love keeps this shrine.

  MY CRAPPY-KID’S LIFE. It was mostly a shitty life wasn’t it, OK but I miss it. I’d spend time with my dad at the pancake house, at Friday’s, just laughing and relaxed, watching the games on TV. Why’d I have to want
more than that from him, that was the mistake. And Teddy, why’d I have to be jealous of my kid brother. He’ll walk kind of crooked all his life, the orthopedic doctor said, the way his knee got twisted and he fell with all his weight on it, and some of mine.

  TEDDY FORGIVES ME, I guess. Teddy has never gotten over his big brother dying. He’s taking drugs, smokes joints, hangs out with losers, serious losers.

  DEER BROWSE HERE. In the early dusk they approach the tree. They’ve eaten the tacos, the potato chips. They nose around looking for food. Their eyes are large, beautiful. Calmly they seem to see me. Their white tails flick, nervously. Flick away flies. They are not frightened of me. They are aware of me because I am so still, I am transparent as vapor, I have no smell any longer, I am not their enemy. They approach me without fear. There is such happiness in this. I’d have wanted to shoot them, just a year ago. Now, I feel peace with them. I was never still for long, restless in my seat in school, always had to gun the motor of any vehicle, itchy, needing to move. My baby pictures are tacked on the tree, laminated. Affixed to the tree with tacks. Glow-in-the-dark Sacred Heart of Jesus.

  I am happy now, I think.

  I love and bless you all.

  THE JESTERS

  HE SAID, “DO YOU HEAR—?”

  She listened. She’d just come to join him on the terrace at the rear of the house.

  It was dusk: the calls of birds close about the house were subsiding. A flock of glossy-black-winged birds had taken over a hilly section of the lawn for much of that day, but had now departed. At the lake a quarter-mile away, not visible from their terrace, Canada geese and other waterfowl were emitting the random querulous cries associated with nighttime.

  At first, she heard nothing except the waterfowl. Then, she began to hear what sounded like voices, at a distance.