When My Heart Joins the Thousand

by A. J. Steiger

  My gaze lingers on his lips. I think about the night I spent in his bed, the warmth of those lips against mine. And for a moment, I want to.

  Then his earlier words echo in my head: Leave me alone. A dull ache fills my chest. Why would Stanley want a kiss from the person who betrayed him?

  “Is there anything else you need,” I ask. “I could get us some takeout.” I’d offer to cook him dinner, but putting bread in the toaster is about the closest I ever get to cooking.

  He chews his lower lip. “Thanks, but I’m pretty tired. Can you help me into bed?”

  I maneuver him into the chair and wheel him into the bedroom. Once he’s settled in bed with the covers pulled up to his chest and a glass of water on the nightstand, I start to walk out.

  “Where are you going?” he calls.

  “To the couch. That’s where I’ve been sleeping.” Using his bed would have felt presumptuous, even if he wasn’t there.

  “Oh.” I have the sense he’s about to say something else—or maybe he expects me to say something. But what, I’m not sure. He looks away. “Good night, Alvie.”

  “Good night.” I walk out, closing the door behind me. I lean against the wall.

  The only reason I’m here now is because I have no other place to go, and because Stanley’s still too badly hurt to function on his own. I can’t let myself forget that. But I’m glad he let me wash him—that I was able to do something for him, that he trusted me at least that much. Even if he still refuses to let me see him naked.

  He’s self-conscious about the scars; I know that’s part of it. But I can’t shake the feeling there’s something more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The next morning, I brew a pot of coffee and make some scrambled eggs with toast. Or at least, I try. I end up burning the first batch of eggs and have to start over. The second attempt is too runny, but it’s edible.

  Stanley sits in his wheelchair, holding a cup of coffee, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a button-down white shirt. I helped him into his chair that morning, but he insisted on getting dressed by himself. It took him an hour. I have no idea how he managed it, with his limited mobility. But then, he’s had a lot of practice.

  “What are you going to do about college,” I ask.

  “I called the school. Sent them a note from my doctor. They’re going to email me the assignments I missed.” He picks a bit of shell from his eggs. “I should be able to attend classes again, starting today. If you can drive me.”

  I nod and pour myself some more coffee. “When.”

  “Two thirty. I just have one programming class this afternoon.”

  I wonder, not for the first time, how he affords college on top of everything else. I know he gets some money from his father, but is it enough? Even if his house is paid off—and I’m not sure it is—there’s still the electricity, the water bill, the gas, the property taxes . . . not to mention the hospital bills. Maybe his mother had a life insurance policy. Regardless, he probably doesn’t have a lot of spare cash.

  “If I’m going to be living in your house for the foreseeable future,” I say through a mouthful of toast, “I should help with the bills.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Alvie.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ll get another job soon. Anyway, I don’t do well with idleness.” Already, I miss the animals. And while Stanley will still require some care for a while, he probably doesn’t want me hovering around him twenty-four hours a day.

  “Well, if that’s what you want. . . . Any particular place in mind?”

  “Anyplace that will have me. I’ve been sending in applications. It’s just . . .” I poke at the blobby, whitish-yellow eggs with my fork. “I have difficulty with some of the questions.”

  “I can help you with them, if you want.”

  I hesitate. “I can’t ask you for that.”

  “I don’t mind. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. Job hunting is stressful for lots of people.”

  “I don’t think many people have panic attacks while filling out personality questionnaires,” I mutter.

  “You might be surprised.” His voice softens. “Let me help you.”

  He sounds so gentle that, for a moment, I wonder. Maybe . . .

  No. I can’t let myself start to hope again. He probably just wants me out of the house, even if he’s too kind to say so.

  “All right,” I say.

  Shortly after, the kitchen table is covered with a sprawl of papers that I printed out from the latest batch of online applications. Stanley picks up one for a burger restaurant. “So which parts are you having trouble with?”

  “Everything.” My face burns. “The questions don’t make sense to me. I left a lot blank, and I don’t know if the answers I gave are any good. But I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Let’s see. Um—there’s this . . . under ‘Describe your greatest flaw,’ you wrote bad at talking to people.” He shuffles through the applications. “And under ‘Are you a team player?’ you wrote no.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “I think that’s the sort of question you should just answer yes.”

  I start to rock back and forth, pulling sharply on one braid. “In what sense can I be described as ‘a team player.’”

  “They’re just asking if you’re willing to work with others.”

  “Well, then that’s what they should say.” I rock faster.

  He sets down the paper. “Alvie, it’s okay.”

  I shut my eyes tight. My whole head feels hot. My hand drifts up to my braid and starts tugging again. I stop and sit on both my hands, because I don’t know how else to still them.

  “You don’t have to hide that, you know. Not from me.”

  I look up, surprised.

  “Do that if it helps,” he says. “But listen to me. This”—he gestures toward the pile of applications—“is just a mind game invented by corporate bigwigs. These questions don’t mean anything. Your ability to fill them out has nothing to do with your worth as a worker or a person. This is just something you have to get through. I guess what I’m saying is, you don’t have to be completely honest. They don’t expect you to be. It’s not lying, per se. It’s finding the right words to present yourself in a good light. Everyone does it.”

  I squint. It still sounds like lying to me. “These people are insane.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone. All these so-called normal people.”

  “What about me?” He smiles. “I’m so-called normal, right?”

  I consider. “You’re an atypical neurotypical. I’ve never liked that word, though. Neurotypical. It implies that there’s such a thing as a normal human brain, and I don’t think there really is.”

  “Oh?”

  I take a slow sip of my coffee. “The corpus callosum—the stalk of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres—is thicker in musicians, particularly those who’ve studied music from an early age. Certain areas of the hippocampus are smaller in men, and also in people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some people have a dominant left hemisphere; others have a dominant right hemisphere. Some people have language centers all throughout their brains, and some have them all clustered on one side. There are even neurological differences associated with different political and religious beliefs. Everyone’s brain is measurably different from everyone else’s. What does a ‘normal’ brain even look like. How do you recognize one. How do you create an objective standard by which to judge how normal someone’s brain is.”

  “Well, in that case, you’re no more or less normal than anyone else, right?”

  “Maybe.” The world doesn’t see it that way, though.

  “Let’s keep going,” Stanley says. He picks up the sheet of paper in front of him and reads: “‘If you were a type of beverage, what would you be and why?’”

  I wince. “You see what I mean. These questions are ridiculous. How am I supposed to answer something like
that.”

  “Absinthe,” he says.

  I turn my head toward him. “What.”

  “I tried absinthe once,” he says. “I was about fifteen. My mom and I were at a dinner party with a bunch of people, and I snuck some. One of my few acts of rebellion.” He smiles with one corner of his mouth. “It’s very strong alcohol. Cloudy green, like jade. It tastes sharp, almost bitter, so some people like to dilute it with water and sugar before they drink it, but I had it plain. It burned all the way down, but it made me feel giddy. Strong and completely weightless at the same time. Like I could fly.”

  “Wait. So you’re saying you’d be absinthe.”

  “No, I mean—” He clears his throat, ears reddening. “Never mind.”

  Oh. I’m absinthe?

  I’m still trying to puzzle out the meaning of this when he continues, distracting me: “Let’s see. ‘List your five best attributes.’ Well, that one’s easy. You’re smart, dependable, kind . . .”

  I want to protest that I’m not kind, but I close my mouth, knowing he’ll just argue the point, like he always does. Instead, I listen to his voice as he reads.

  I’m astounded at how easily he navigates his way through these baffling mazes of questions. It’s like some form of psychological jujitsu that he’s mastered without even trying. I try to focus on what he’s saying, but I find myself daydreaming and just letting his voice wash over me like warm water. I wonder what the inside of his brain would look like, if I could swim through it like a tadpole—if it’s filled with complex neurological structures designed for processing questions like What kind of beverage are you?

  He says that I am absinthe. I still don’t know what this means, exactly. But I like the word and I like the way it sounds when he says it.

  “Thank you,” I say. “For this. It helps a lot.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.”

  Even now, when I should be taking care of him, Stanley’s the one guiding me and easing my fears. There seems to be so little I can do for him.

  He hardly ever talks about his own pain. But I know it’s there. Every day, in the hospital, I heard it in his voice and saw it in the flat, glassy sheen on his eyes, in the tightness around his smile. Sometimes he cries out in his sleep. He hurts more than most people could ever comprehend, yet still he smiles. And it’s not just physical pain he deals with. From what little he’s said about his childhood, I know the past still clings to him. Another way we’re alike.

  I find myself thinking about that first night I spent at his house—the things he said to me. Things he never brought up again.

  “So let’s see,” Stanley says. “This question, ‘Where do you see yourself in ten years?’ Ugh, I never like answering this one. How is anyone supposed to know that? But they’re basically just looking to see if you have goals—”

  “You told me once before that your father physically abused you.”

  He freezes. His expression goes blank, and the color drains from his face. “Jesus,” he mutters.

  I know, immediately, that I’ve made a mistake. But it’s too late to take the words back.

  He takes a deep breath and slowly sets the papers down. “He didn’t abuse me. It wasn’t like that. He just got carried away sometimes, and—why are we talking about this now?”

  I pick at the edge of one thumbnail. “The night after Draco—I mean TJ—after he hit you that first time and broke your arm, I stayed overnight at your house. You said certain things about yourself—that you believed your parents would have been better off without you, that your existence was a mistake. I want to know who put that idea in your head.”

  He closes his eyes briefly and rubs his forehead. “I was in a bad place that night. I was exhausted and doped up on pain medication. I barely knew what I was saying.”

  “You seemed pretty lucid.”

  “Christ, can we just—” He breaks off and lets out a short sigh. “Look . . . I know I have lousy self-esteem, but that’s my own problem. I’m not going to blame anyone else for it. He might be a coward, and God knows he’s not going to win any Father of the Year awards, but he’s not an abuser. Now, can we drop the subject?”

  I lower my gaze. “Okay.”

  We keep going through applications. I shuffle through the papers, my gaze sliding over the different questions without really seeing them. Stanley tries to sound cheerful when he gives me advice, but I can detect a difference in his tone. I’ve crossed a line.

  For a few minutes, when we were talking about neurology and absinthe, things felt almost normal between us. But now he’s withdrawn into himself again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  That afternoon, I drop Stanley off at Westerly College and watch him wheel across the parking lot, up the ramp to the automatic door. I wait until he’s inside before I pull out of the lot.

  As I drive, I spot a red-tailed hawk perched atop a telephone pole. He takes flight, wings silhouetted against the pale sky, and I think about Chance.

  The last time I saw him was when I dropped him off at the wildlife rehabilitation center. I’ve had a lot on my mind since then. But it’s been too long. I need to make sure he’s all right, at least.

  The drive to Elmbrooke Wildlife Center takes about fifteen minutes. The receptionist’s gaze flits over me without recognition. I wander through the building, which has a comfortable air about it, like a library. I look at the aquariums full of turtles and frogs, the terrariums of birds and lizards.

  Outside, in a small wooded area behind the center, there are enclosures with coyotes and foxes and raccoons and a pair of golden eagles. In front of each one is a sign with the animal’s name and personal story. Most of them were brought in injured, and for various reasons were unable to be returned to the wild. A cobblestone path winds in gentle curves, dappled with leaf shadows and glints of sunlight.

  Near the end of the path, I see a large cage, and in it, a one-winged, red-tailed hawk drinking from a dish of water. He looks up, fixing his bright copper gaze on me. Then he leaps to the floor of the cage and attacks the bloody remains of a rat amid the cedar chips.

  I look at the sign next to his enclosure. It’s poster board—maybe they haven’t had time to make an official one yet—with big letters written in marker. CHANCE, it reads.

  I stare at it for a few minutes. Then I turn and walk away, back toward the main building.

  Inside, on the counter up front, is a stack of applications. I start to reach out, but something stops me, and I pull my hand back.

  The receptionist looks up, arching her eyebrows. She’s an older woman, shoulder-length graying hair, small spectacles. “Looking for something?”

  My mouth opens, then closes. I clutch one arm. “Those.” I point at the applications. “You’re hiring.” My voice comes out stiff and jerky.

  “We’re always looking for help. Though I should tell you now, we only hire people who have hands-on experience working with animals.”

  Before I can lose my nerve, I grab an application and sit down in one of the plastic lobby chairs. The application is one page, double-sided. Sections for basic information, education, and experience. No long, intrusive, nonsensical personality questionnaires.

  I quickly fill out the application, then shuffle to the front desk and hand it to the receptionist without looking at her. She could chuck it into the trash as soon as I leave, but I can at least say I’ve tried.

  I expect her to give me a polite smile and say they’ll keep me on file. Instead, she adjusts her glasses and says, “Well, you’ve got the experience. Why don’t you come in for an interview on Friday?”

  I sit at the table in Stanley’s kitchen, poking at a crab Rangoon with a single chopstick. We ordered some Chinese takeout after I picked him up from class.

  “You’ve been quiet,” he says. “Is everything okay?”

  I roll a bit of sweet-and-sour chicken around on my plate. “I have an interview. At the wildlife rehabilitation center.”

  �
��That’s great!” He smiles broadly. “It sounds like the perfect place for you.”

  “It would be.” He’s right. I should be excited.

  His smile fades. “What’s wrong?”

  “I probably won’t get past the interview.” My fingers tighten on the chopstick. “Interviews don’t go well for me.”

  “We can practice, if you want. I’ll ask questions and you answer.”

  Still, I don’t look up from my plate. No matter how much I practice, I don’t know if I’ll ever come across as normal. During interviews, people always ask about my interests, but if I talk about my real interests, they think it’s weird. And if I start pulling my braid or rocking back and forth, they’ll immediately dismiss me.

  “Alvie?”

  “I just wish I didn’t have to hide who I am.”

  “You know, it might help if you tell them.”

  The chopstick snaps in my hand. “What.”

  “I mean . . . it’s worth a try, at least.”

  I drop the broken halves onto my plate and push it away. “How am I even supposed to say it. ‘Oh, by the way, I have Asperger’s.’”

  “That sounds okay to me.”

  “I shouldn’t have to tell them. Other people aren’t expected to disclose personal medical information in an interview. Would someone say, ‘Oh, before you hire me, I should mention I have a terrible case of hemorrhoids.’”

  “It’s not like that. This isn’t something you need to be embarrassed about.”

  I stare at the mostly untouched food on my plate. My throat feels swollen. How can he say that, after everything I’ve done? How can he still insist there’s nothing wrong with me?

  “You know,” he says, “I wouldn’t be pushing you like this if you didn’t want the job. There’s no rush. You can stay here as long as you need to.”

  “But . . .” The words catch in my throat. Is he saying that because he wants me around? Or because he feels obligated?

  I’m afraid to ask, but I don’t know which answer would scare me more.