by Brian Hodge
The winter was cruel that year, and Mr. Cavanaugh spent too much of it coughing. He grew weak enough that it would’ve been dangerous for him to run his errands. I did them for him, a figure growing taller and straighter, leaning into the wind as I moved down the street, hidden in an old coat inherited from my dad, as I picked up groceries or deposited an occasional check in his bank.
From the couch where he lay, Mr. Cavanaugh would give me a dollar bill every time, and I knew he didn’t have it to spare, but he insisted.
“Go on, take the damn thing, where’m I going to spend it?” he would wheeze. “And don’t you say one word to your folks. You hide it and do whatever you want with it.”
Sometimes I suspected he was sending me on extra errands just to give away more dollars, without it seeming like he was raising my rate. But when he started giving them to me for listening to his records with him, then I really felt awful and wanted so badly to admit I’d stolen that jar and whatever it held, even though it seemed to have died, but I couldn’t bring myself to confess.
“Are you going to die?” I asked one day, point blank, because I didn’t know any better.
He was all watery eyes and gray whiskers on wilted cheeks. He didn’t blink. “Don’t worry, it’s not catching.”
“But are you?”
“I suppose I am,” he said, then struggled to sit upright on his couch. When he was up, he gazed across the room at the jars for a long time before shaking his head. “Forty years to put that together. Sure doesn’t look like much now, does it?”
I told him that I really liked it, and had seen things there I’d never seen anywhere else. He tried to smile at this, then said he’d once thought his collection would help him to understand and appreciate life and its diversity, but it hadn’t, really. He said he didn’t understand anything, and asked if I’d put on a record.
Mr. Cavanaugh started coughing halfway through, and it was a bad bout, so bad it got him moving when not much else had. I tried to help, but with a rag over his face and his eyes squinched shut, he furiously shook his head and forced me out the door.
I stood out in the chilly hall, listening for the click of the lock, as usual. But it never came. I waited for a minute, then crept back in, because what if he needed an ambulance this time?
From the bathroom came the sounds of his sickness. I followed them back, taking careful steps while the organ music covered any trace of them, and when I was able to peer around the edge of the doorway, I saw him bent double with his mouth over a jar clutched in both hands, his back heaving in violent spasms until he coughed out a glistening clot of tissue. It sat on the bottom of the jar, stringing threads of sputum. Mr. Cavanaugh drew a ragged breath of relief and cursed before screwing the lid on the jar.
He saw me then, in the doorway, and when he realized I’d been watching, his face turned red again and full of shame. He gritted his teeth and shoved me away with the padded end of his crutch.
“Don’t you ever come back down here again,” he said, then used the crutch to slam the bathroom door in my face.
He didn’t live much longer after that.
More than a week went by, then I realized I hadn’t heard him coughing for at least a couple of days. When I went down to check, my knock went unanswered, but the door wasn’t locked. I’d left it that way.
I found Mr. Cavanaugh on the couch, and spoke to him because I couldn’t tell if he was dead or only sleeping, and then I tried to shake him awake. With one hand I grabbed his shoulder and I braced the other hand against his chest, but with the second good hard shake his whole chest collapsed beneath my palm, skin and bone and shirt buckling in as though I’d broken through a pie crust, and there was hardly any filling left at all.
At least that’s the way I remember it.
Over the next few days everyone learned that his name wasn’t really Cavanaugh and that more than thirty years ago he had killed his wife in a distant state and town, then disappeared. I couldn’t say he didn’t, but all I could think of was the Bactine and the lemonade, and remember how nice he’d been to me, until the end, so I came to the conclusion that whatever he’d done had been done by some other Mr. Cavanaugh, and he’d carried it with him, paying for it a little bit at a time.
Guilt, I have learned, eats like a fiend.
Several years ago, when my daughter was born, I watched her through the nursery window and made more pledges than I could ever keep in one lifetime. How I was going to do everything so right.
It soon seemed that I had turned this into an all-or-nothing proposition. She wouldn’t have any recollection of me now, I don’t think. I look at the picture of the toddler she was the last time I saw her, and wonder if she’ll learn to forgive this inexcusable absence I’ve imposed on her past, present, and future.
We are phantoms to each other, haunted by memories that don’t exist.
In most ways Paulie is more real to me than she is, and not a year goes by that I don’t think of something he would’ve just done had he still been alive. A graduation. A job. A marriage. A kid who’d be a cousin to my own. His first infidelity, maybe, looking for something … more.
Not a month goes by that I don’t wonder how different things would’ve been for everyone if Paulie had never died. Sometimes I believe there used to be some other me who was supposed to have lived, and goddamn, I killed him that day too.
But the rest of the time, I know better.
I feel him deep inside, tearing his way through until there’s a tickle at the back of my throat, as day by day he loosens the ties that bind.
Nesting Instincts
Call it another day he won’t remember by the time the next one gets here, nothing much to commend it even if there’s nothing much to condemn it, either. The whole idea of average is really starting to weigh on him, a kind of giant beige trash bin that the majority of everything gets swept into sooner or later. Average is the standard that special is judged against, which means that most of what anyone does in a day ends up being pretty pointless. It’s like the acres of wallpaper surrounding the framed photo or painting that’s actually all you’re really interested in looking at.
Micah points this out to Charisse four blocks from his house — maybe not the best time to get into heavy conversation, especially not at the speeds she likes to drive, but it sort of slips out anyway.
“You’re probably right,” she says, sounding neither pleased nor displeased about it. “But that’s just the way it is and it’s not like anybody gets any say in the matter, do they?”
Really, he’s not trying to put a damper on the afternoon, only figure a few things out. It’s not like he has actual parents who can be relied upon to pitch in on that endeavor, even though if he did he would be probably be expected to pretend he wouldn’t really welcome their input. There’s Lydia, of course, but even if she were to agree that this was part of her domestic job description, and most likely she would, by all indications she’s still working on figuring things out for herself. And right now he would prefer to think that’s just a fluke instead of the norm.
“You know what we need?” Micah says. “We need a good terminal illness. Or a near-death experience. That always seems to straighten people out. They come out of it and everything’s so clear from then on.”
“Except when they don’t come out of it at all.” She’s laughing now, and when Charisse laughs, he can’t help but join in. Yeah, as if riding with her isn’t enough of a near-death experience in itself at least once a day. “You’re sick,” she tells him then.
“I guess. But not in a good way.”
Another intersection and half a block later, she cuts over to the curb in front of his house. Ranch-style, with two-and-a-half trees in front. Could they have possibly made it any more average? Some days he’ll rotate through a series of imaginary dwellings as long as he’s somewhere else and not being confronted with the real thing. One day it’s a palace to look forward to coming home to, the next day a grass shack on a Tahitian
beach, the day after that a New York subway station where he’ll go deep underground to rejoin the rest of the mole people. And then, on other days, as much as he hates to admit it, average isn’t really all that bad, because at least it’s predictable, it’s there, it’ll always be there.
“I could come in. Want me to come in?” Charisse says. “I’ve got a little time before I have to go to work.”
It hurts to shake his head no. Physically hurts. “Evan’s home.” Not that he can see past the closed garage doors but the main door is standing open on the other side of the screen door, and it’s sure not Lydia, not this early.
“I’ll have to meet him someday, won’t I, if he and Lydia stay together?”
What she really means to say, even if she doesn’t realize it, is if you and I stay together. That’s the scary thing she actually means.
“Just not today, though, okay? It really should be when Lydia’s around too. It’d be too weird with Evan on his own.”
“Want to hear my theory? The only reason you keep stalling is because there’s no way he can live up to what you keep saying he’s like.”
She’s fearless in her way, Charisse is. As if somebody or something stepped down from the sky and with a voice so deep it left no room for doubt told her that nothing could ever go wrong for her. That everyone she would ever meet would like her, that her hair would forever twine effortlessly down around her face in perky loose curls, that she would always score ninety or above on every test, that traffic lights would stay yellow a little longer just for her. Imagine being able to go through life with that kind of assurance.
Although it’s not that Evan is like anything, exactly. More that Micah would rather have him figured out first before Charisse gets to take a crack at him, probably diagnose his every neurosis from a psych class she’s taken that same afternoon.
They kiss, then he grabs his book bag by the straps and hoists it into his lap and levers the door handle.
“You’re beautiful,” she tells him. It’s what she usually says instead of I love you. At first it used to bother him, figuring that it was her easy way out, her escape clause, her subtle declaration of non-commitment — that in her view, he could still go on being beautiful whether she was around to love him or not: I’m off to go live with another guy in a grass shack on the beach in Tahiti … and don’t forget, you’re beautiful. Lately, though, it seems like there’s more wrapped up in it than he first gave it credit for, since he’s never once heard her say this to anyone else. Maybe what she’s telling him is that she could never love anything she found ugly, or leave anything she found ugly’s opposite.
Then he’s out of the car and she’s off, roaring down the street as he stares after her a moment, her arm out the window as she waves while veering around the corner. Charisse. For some of the guys at school, it’s already obvious what they are, the first thing they wrap their drooling senses around. Leg-men, some of them. Ass-men, others. Breast-men. Charisse — Micah tastes the word for the millionth time and has to wonder if he isn’t some sort of freak, a name-man. Sight unseen, he would’ve walked a thousand miles to meet someone named Charisse.
Up by the house, he notices a few spiny dark shapes buzzing lazily under the eaves. He stops a moment at the door to watch them, a few more crawling over an alien grey wad stuck into the angle between the wall and the roof: wasps, and their nest. Why did they always have to built someplace like this, just a few feet from the door, where you couldn’t ignore them? Never in a spot where nobody went, like the side of the house facing the neighbors, so everyone could go about their lives peacefully, whether they walked or buzzed. No, it had to be someplace that was sure to doom them.
Now he’ll have to go buy one of those spray cans that fires a solid chemical stream at them, soaking them with poison. The whole tiny civilization of them, nuked because they’ve got no sense of compromise. It’s the kind of task you’d think that Evan could handle, might even feel was his duty to handle, but no. Evan doesn’t do bugs. Just like Evan doesn’t do rugs. As long as the sun’s up, Evan doesn’t appear to do a whole lot of anything that’s useful.
Micah is conscientious about banging the screen door good and loud when he walks in, make sure that Evan hears him. The worst thing he can think of is coming home some day and finding Evan playing with himself. He’d rather be a wasp in the nest on the day of its annihilation than endure such a trauma. Really, you’d have to leave home after an ordeal like that, and if there’s one thing Micah’s sure about, it’s that he’s fresh out of other homes.
He’s not sure if guys Evan’s age still do that, but it’s safer to assume that the possibility exists. The guy’s forty or forty-one, around there, so on the one hand, ha ha, why should they as long as they have their own women, like Evan has Lydia. But then, on the other, it’s not like Micah can imagine just waking up one day and tossing out the magazines after realizing that, what do you know, he’s had enough of it, guess he won’t be going back to pump that particular well ever again.
After ditching his book bag in the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of guava juice from the fridge, he wanders back into the family room, although it’s always seemed that it should have a reserve name for houses where family room doesn’t quite fit. All he’s had to do is follow the music back here, Evan listening to the stereo like he does during so much of his downtime. Jazz, always jazz. If the man wanted to kill him, all he’d have to do would be kick back with some rap or metal when Micah comes home, and that would do it. Boom — instant coronary.
No chance, though, because it’s like Evan has to steep himself in jazz, the way a teabag steeps in hot water, before he can head to the uptown club where he plays most nights. Where the paper-tearing fits into this routine, Micah can’t begin to guess, Evan just sitting on the edge of the easy chair and tearing paper — junk mail, catalogs, older newspapers, pretty much whatever he gets his hands on.
“How was school?” he asks.
“Ample,” Micah says, just to say something different for a change. Every day he says okay, he has got to start being less predictable.
Except Evan doesn’t appear to have even noticed this break in routine, intent only on tearing paper. He’s not making confetti, either. There’s a deliberate method to it, and quality control — nothing but straight strips, torn slowly to maximize each ripping noise. Only then are they released, to flutter to the floor and join the pile. It’s a new twist in the entity that is Evan, something he took up two or three weeks ago, like he woke up one afternoon and decided from then on he was going to be a human paper shredder.
Micah doesn’t know how he can stand it, listening to that steady tearing sound, it’s enough to drive you bugshit — but then, wouldn’t you have to be a little whacked in the head to make a habit of this to begin with? As far as Micah knows, Lydia has no idea her boyfriend does it.
Maybe it’s some kind of mystical exercise for finger dexterity known only to jazz musicians. Until Evan, Micah had never met anyone whose entire bodily focal point seemed to be his hands. The rest of Evan, from his lanky legs to his narrow shoulders to his severely clipped hair and small round glasses, is only there to provide a context for his hands. Even if you don’t shake, have your attention called to them that way, you’re still going to end up staring at his hands — larger than you would think judging by the rest of him, but not in a thick, clumsy way. What swans are to ducks, Evan’s hands are to everyone else’s.
If there are leg-man and ass-men, surely there must be hand-women, and maybe Lydia is one of them.
“There’s something I’ve wondered about, but never got around to asking,” Evan looks up and says. “Do you mind?” He seems to pause, waiting for Micah to say no, leave the room, puncture his own eardrums, something. “Before I moved in, did Lydia give you a chance to vote on it?”
“Not that I remember, exactly.” How much time were they talking about here? Five or six months, it would be. It’s hot and sticky out now, and when Evan had moved in the d
ay was cold and damp. “More like all she did was tell me it was gonna happen, and that’s all there was to say about it.” After a few moments, he feels compelled to add, “Not that she was mean about it or anything.”
That brings a sort-of grin out of Evan, even though he directs it at the latest careful strip he’s tearing. “No. Mean is the one thing that’s impossible to picture her being. You have to have a good heart if you take in strays the way she has.”
Can’t argue with that, then he knows the question is on its way even before it hits the air, Evan wanting to know, okay, if Lydia had given him the chance to say no, just leave that guy at the jazz club where she found him, what would’ve been the verdict? As if there can be an honest answer to a question like this — Sure, I told Lydia, in fact bring home two or three why don’t you, maybe they can all tear paper together in a disassembly line — when Micah knows he’s under this roof by her good graces every bit as much as Evan is.
In truth, the relationship they’ve had here has been one of benign tolerance. Having Evan move in was like the arrival of a charmless dog. You don’t want to pet him, and he doesn’t show any tendency to bite, so the two of you wind up leaving each other alone most of the time.
He’s blissing on the music now, and with most normal people that’s a good thing, but there’s something about the way Evan does it that gives you reason to worry — three parts appreciation to one part smoldering resentment that comes to the surface at all the wrong times. A flurry of trumpet notes terminates in a single tone held for an inhumanly long time, and the way Evan seems to ride it, it’s so obvious he wishes he’d been around to play in some earlier, smokier, more intoxicated and dangerous era instead of now, when all he’s doing is going to the club every night and furnishing wallpaper that you can barely hear above the clink of martini glasses. Micah’s overheard him complain about it to Lydia.
