Worse Than Myself

by Adam Golaski

  Suzan steps into the living area and watches for a moment. James finishes his soup and fills a plate with little food. Heather explains what each item is that he’s picked up. He nods and looks out at one of the women on the floor; she’s dressed as some kind of forest pixie, in a long, green dress with green eye make-up and lipstick and leaves in her hair. Standing next to her is a thin guy, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He looks dirty, his hair is matted and disheveled. I can’t tell if he’s in costume or not.

  I see, out of the corner of my eye, the little girl dressed as a princess. The little girl waves to me. I hesitate a moment, but Suzan heads toward the stairs, so I slide off the piano bench and go to where the little girl was, a small ante-room preceded by a screened-in porch. I hear movement, push open the feather-light door and step out onto the porch.

  “Hello?”

  On the floor of the porch is a metal tub. The tub is filled with water and things floating in the water—hard to determine what in the darkness—apples. In the far corner of the porch is a figure; as my eyes adjust I see it’s a straw man. He shivers—the little girl brushes against him.

  “You startled me,” I say. I feel nervous and I feel silly for feeling nervous. I hear the piano from the living area, and laughter. I calm down, a little. “That’s a nice costume. What are you? A princess?”

  The little girl steps a little closer.

  “Why aren’t you in the room with us? We’re all having fun. My boyfriend is—” The music from the piano stops. I strain to hear what’s going on, wait for the music to start again.

  The little girl dashes out a door that leads to a set of steps down into the backyard.

  I run after her, fly down the stairs. At the bottom I hit a patch of wet grass and fall—hard—onto my butt. I slide down the hill a bit, coming to rest flat on my back. Stars through the bare branches of oak trees. I sit up and see that my feet are just inches from a black pool of water. “Holy—” I say aloud. I hear talking, turn and see windows open in the second story.

  I walk carefully around the pool, half looking for the girl, who I’m pretty sure must have been playing a prank—a nasty one at that, I think—and half looking up at the windows, to see what might be going on. Instead of warm, yellow-orange, the windows are flat panels of purple light. I see shapes, the talkers, but they are only black, wavy lines from where I stand.

  “Well this was stupid,” I say. I light a cigarette, which I suddenly realize I sorely need.

  The living area is empty; the party has moved upstairs. I smoke my cigarette and ash on the floor. What a strange house, I think. It occurs to me then that Suzan and Chad are upstairs. I go to the kitchen and fill a water glass with wine and eat a piece of salmon. I throw my cigarette butt down the disposal.

  The first door I pass is closed and I don’t hear any sounds. The next door is slightly ajar and I catch a flash of green—James’ shirt. I stop at the door, hand on the knob, when I hear Heather, who sounds as if she’s in tears.

  “Everything was so nice,” Heather says. “Now he’s so—he looks at me, there’s a way he puts his hands on me. There’s nowhere I can go. I don’t have a car. I rely on him. I don’t even have any money.”

  I don’t want to get involved with Heather histrionics. I move on and into a large, empty master bedroom. There are coats on the bed. Outside of the bedroom is the balcony and a group are out, smoking. I hear Chad’s voice, and smile.

  Chad is not on the balcony. The woman in the fetish French maid costume waves me over.

  “Do you have a cigarette? I don’t feel at all like going in.”

  “Sure.” I squeeze past the forest pixie and a man in a silver space suit. I hand the woman a cigarette and ask, “Have you seen Chad?”

  “Chad?”

  “He played the piano.”

  “Your boyfriend? He’s cute. Very cute. Tiny butt.”

  I grin. Maybe this woman’s okay. I have half a glass of wine left. I didn’t even notice I’d been drinking.

  “There’s a door—” The woman points into the bedroom. “That leads to another hall. At the end of that—”

  I didn’t notice the door when I first walked through the bedroom because it’s blended with the wall. I push on one side, and it gives, a spring mechanism, and then opens inward a little. I pull the door open with my fingertips and step through.

  There’s no decoration in the hall on the other side of the door—no pictures, no carpet, no little tables with flowers. Even the lights seem bare, harsh. At the end of the hall is a room with its door ajar. A triangle of purple light falls like a welcome mat in front of it.

  The room is packed and thick with smoke. There’s a large stereo with a turntable. The crackling record is of some endless guitar and keyboard wash. Something Chad would listen to while stoned—and not all the smoke in the room is cigarette smoke, and the idea of smoking with Chad sounds just about right. The man without a costume from the kitchen table smiles at me, looks me up and down without trying to be subtle about it. Some of the other party-goers are sitting on the floor. The room seems crowded, but there are just a lot of people gathered close to the door and I can’t see past. Then the man without a costume steps aside, to talk with someone else, and I see that the room is quite large, and largely empty.

  I see Chad first, lying on a twin bed. His sneakers look massive compared to the rest of his body. Seated on the floor in front of Chad, leaning with his back against the bed, is the dirty looking guy I saw in the living area. His head is lolling side to side. Something red draws my attention. Suzan in the far right corner of the room. She’s kneeling with her back to me.

  Then I see him—Stephen, the house-designer—standing in that shadowy corner, arms up, hands on the walls. Suzan’s head bobs at his crotch. Instead of an expression of pleasure, he stares at me, a smile, like a pen-knife slit on a pumpkin face. I let out a gasp, a, “Chad,” and turn back to where Chad lies. And now I see the silver tray on the floor next to the dirty guy, and understand what it is. Half on, half off the tray is a compressed syringe. I drop my empty glass. Chad’s been talking about “taking the next step” for weeks now, and I’ve been getting him to promise he wouldn’t.

  “You fuck,” I say aloud, to Chad. I’m furious.

  The dirty guy’s head lolls up to look at me, drifts back down to his chest.

  “You fuck,” I repeat. I’m amazed at how furious I am.

  I see Stephen’s smile grow wide. He tilts his head back as if he’s cumming, and says to Suzan—but to me, too, I think, “No, you’re not done, make it hard again.”

  I shout at Chad “You said you wouldn’t.” He doesn’t move at all.

  A few people in the room stop talking and glance over to see what’s going on; most people ignore me. The French maid slips in.

  “Okay,” I continue. “Ignore me. Fuck you. You’re on your own.” And I mean it. I turn and rush for the door, bumping the guy without a costume. His boney shoulder hurts my arm. The French maid says, “Aw, baby—” and I’m in the hall, trying to find the hidden door, pushing open the hidden door, through the bedroom, back into the first hall. I burst into the room where I saw James and Heather. Heather is in the process of showing James a glass statuette she has on her shelf. James looks up. His mask is hung around his neck.

  “I’m going now,” I say.

  James nods. He says, “I have to go.”

  Heather looks as if she’s going to cry: “You’ll come back soon?”

  James promises that he will. Heather kisses him, holds him and kisses him firmly on the mouth. Everything about Heather pisses me off. I say, “Now.” James breaks off the kiss, touches Heather, just above her left breast, looks her in the eye, and then James and I are jogging down the stairs. “What about Chad?” James asks. I say nothing; we’re out the front door and at the car.

  “You drive,” I say. I’m too angry, probably drunk.

  “What about Chad?”

  “He’s staying.”

  “
Did you fight?”

  “Not now.”

  “Not with Suzan?”

  I glare at James. “Not now.”

  James turns on the car. The music we were listening to blares for a second before I shut off the stereo. James slowly rolls the car down the drive, past the gravestones, past the ghosts in the tree. “Look. Are we just going to be turning around to get him in a minute—”

  “James,” is all I say.

  “Okay then.”

  James drives a little faster than I did, but I want him to. I know he’ll know how to get out of these forests, back home to the city. I know he’ll suggest we go to one of the other parties he was invited to and I’ll go. I know he’ll offer to go up with me to my dorm room, and that I’ll probably accept.

  We turn at the end of the long driveway, high beams swing across trees to the narrow road in front of them—

  and James hits the brakes.

  “Holy fucking shit,” he says.

  Steaming on the road is an enormous red pile of meat and bone. The mess stretches back, out of the circle of light cast by the headlights. My mouth opens wide, goes dry.

  “Someone must of hit it going really fucking fast,” James says.

  I start to gasp, to cry. I whimper, “Get it away. Get it out of my sight. I can’t stand it.”

  “I think there were more than one—”

  I scream, “James!” I pound the leather car door.

  James backs the car up a little, and takes as wide a circle around the carcasses as he can. I can’t help but stare at the heap of wet innards. I recognize a hoof. And I turn to see the carcass made even redder in the light of the car’s taillights. I see in it Chad, lying on that narrow bed, unmoving, arms crossed like a corpse.

  Two days later.

  A pair of lips. A set full, soft-peaked. Fine, transparent hairs, like a mist.

  “Is there enough wine?

  “I mean, for the night? For the both of us?

  “I just bought a new pack so go ahead and—

  “I don’t know.

  “You’re sure you don’t have to go?

  “You’re so good to me, James. You’ve been so good.

  “What do you think about Iraq?

  “No. Me neither.

  “I don’t know.

  “I just heard someone talking about it. Now it’s all over the papers.

  “I don’t know why.

  “Yes. Please.

  “How about the Knights of the Solar Temple?

  “I hadn’t heard of them either. It was one of the last things Chad talked about. Hang on. So. So, I’ve been thinking about them. Anyway—

  “I don’t mean to cry. I just haven’t been able to stop crying. I need another.

  “Okay. I’ve stopped. So. They’re a cult. Or—they were.

  “Something about Jesus Christ, the stars— You know, some cosmic event and the second coming all mashed together.

  “I don’t know I have no idea.

  “You don’t have enough.

  “No. No. Have more. You’re staying, right?

  “So drink, then.

  “Shit, I’m crying again. I just can’t believe—

  “I can’t believe he’s gone.

  “You’re religious, aren’t you?

  “You know. I don’t mean like—

  “Exactly. But you believe in an after life, though, don’t you? You do?

  “Yes. I thought so.

  “Good. I do too.”

  A pair of soft lips. A fleck of ash.

  BACK HOME

  Snow fell heavy; flakes brushed across K[ ]’s car like thick, wet lashes. Several hours ago, when she began her trip back home, the sky was a wall of brushed metal, the sun only a hazy spot, a circular glint like light reflected on a pewter dish. Evening had drawn up quickly—the days were growing longer, she reminded herself—if only by degrees. Now, with the snowfall picking up, the only light was that generated by her high beams—and this light was swallowed up; the night’s blackness a bog for light to be sucked into.

  There were no other cars on the winding stretch of road she had come to—she was now in High Falls, and very near her destination. She was fairly sure she remembered the route, even though several years had passed since she’d last taken it. That was to help her mother move out of the house, just a year after her father’s death. Strangely (it seemed to her), the woman who bought the house had wound up renting the upstairs rooms to a cousin of K[ ]’s—a cousin she did not know. And now he was dead like her father, and the only person left and able (her mother lived on the opposite coast) to claim (or dispose of) his belongings (“There isn’t much,” Mrs. Lawrence had told her) was K[ ].

  She steered left at the end of a stone wall, which she remembered as the landmark for the street where her former home was located. The snow was accumulating so fast, her vision so impaired, that she almost drove past the turn. She drove slow, afraid she’d hit a deer.

  The road dipped significantly—it seemed the ground had dropped out from beneath her—and suddenly she was on an uneven dirt road. This isn’t right, she thought. She stopped the car and briefly thought of getting out, to see if she could get her bearings, to brush off the windshield and just to stretch out her aching legs. But right on top of that thought was another, I’m afraid to step out into this night. So, instead, she backed up to turn the car around. She would locate her tire tracks before they were snowed over, and get back to the road.

  She struck something with her bumper. She adjusted the angle of her car and drove forward until again, she struck something. She assumed she hit a curb, so again adjusted the angle of her car, and backed up. As she did, the narrow beams of light from her headlights, peppered with snowflakes, gradually revealed what it was she had bumped into. She stopped the car dead. “Christ,” she said aloud, the first time she’d said a word since she’d stopped for a burger on the road two hours before. What stood before her was a slab of stone as good as a ghost. “Jesus, I’ve driven into the graveyard.”

  The stone was totally white, utterly, she thought. Snow that passed before it disappeared. She wondered how she could have made this mistake. When she had lived here she would drive the final stretch home without even realizing she had done it. She knew the roads, she had memorized every aspect of the pavement (this type of information, she reminded herself, was transitory, permanence, an illusion. Even as she had lived in this place and watched it, it changed, but those changes were instantly assimilated by her). She shook her head—a gesture for no one, with no real benefit but for her own private melodrama—put the car into reverse, found the tracks her tires had cut in the snow (soft tracks now, fuzzy) and drove back to the road. The mistake had, at least, cleared up in her mind where she was and she was able, without further incident, to get to the house.

  The house (my house) was a warm spot among cold, black trees. K[ ] drove as close to the house as she could, careful not to stray from the driveway—which, unlike the road that circled through the cemetery, was paved (when

  K[ ] had lived there, it was a gravel drive. The sound of stone crunched beneath a car’s tires was once the sound of arriving home).

  As she opened the car door and felt the bitter cold night air, the porch light came on. She grabbed her bag from the back seat and dashed through the snow to the porch. The front door was open, and warmth trickled out into the night. K[ ] let herself into the front room.

  “What a night,” Mrs. Lawrence said, pushing shut and locking the door.

  K[ ] stood for a moment, to get her bearing. “It looks so different,” she said.

  Mrs. Lawrence looked around and tried to remember what the house was like when she bought it from K[ ]’s parents. “It’s been so long, sweetie, that I hardly remember what it was like before.”

  “Of course.”

  For a moment they both looked about themselves, thinking about the house, then a mental tumbler clicked into place in Mrs. Lawrence’s mind. “For Heaven’s sake, put down yo
ur bag and let me hang up your coat. I have water on the boil so you can get some hot tea into yourself before bed.”

  They sat in the kitchen and talked about mundane things: K[ ]’s job, the drive, the weather. The topic shifted briefly to the purpose of K[ ]’s visit when Mrs. Lawrence said, “I assumed you wouldn’t want to sleep in J[ ]’s room. Your old bedroom was his.”

  This bothered K[ ]. That her cousin, a stranger to her, lived and died in her room struck K[ ] as both an invasion and a perversion. She thought herself silly for having such a reaction. “I wouldn’t want to sleep in my old room anyhow, Mrs. Lawrence. It hasn’t been mine for a long time.”

  “That’s good. I cleared off the sofa in the den.” Mrs. Lawrence pointed around the corner.

  “Thank you.”

  “So…” Mrs. Lawrence seemed lost in her head for a moment. “Your former room was the biggest upstairs room. That’s probably why he chose it. The whole upstairs was basically his, though I used some of the closets and the attic for storage. He kept mostly to your old room. We shared the kitchen and sometimes he would come down and watch television with me. The news, mostly. I don’t think he cared what was on, though. I think he was lonely.”

  “He,” K[ ] hesitated. “He was a little unusual, I’m told.”

  Mrs. Lawrence answered by sucking her lower lip into her mouth and shaking her head. Her hair, K[ ] noticed, was terribly flat.

  “Anyhow,” K[ ] said, “the den will be fine. It’s only for tonight. I don’t imagine it’ll take me long to sort through one room’s worth of belongings if I get an early start. Then I can be on my way.”

  “You might be able to leave,” said Mrs. Lawrence. “But you know how it is around here when it snows.”

  K[ ] carried her bag into the den. She spread out the sheets Mrs. Lawrence gave her, changed into pajamas and laid down. She focused on the blankness of the ceiling, and thought about what it meant to be back home. The house certainly wasn’t like home anymore; she had conflicting feelings of comfort and unease. On the drive up, she had tried to prepare herself for the ways her childhood home might be different. When she thought of the house she was in now, and the version of the house that lived in her memory, they were split, as if she were picturing two different homes. She did not fully believe that one could replace the other. Yet—and this realization was the source of her unease—the changes, some quite dramatic, all seemed to her familiar.