Raveling

by Peter Moore Smith

  So I stepped back out. So I stepped out of the water and onto the beach. I found Selena behind one of the refreshment stands, by the trash cans. She was sober for a change. “Where have you been?” she said.

  “I was in the water.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I remembered something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I remembered that it was my brother who killed my sister.”

  She was nonplussed. “He did?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think happened to her?”

  “Everyone thought… we all thought she was abducted.”

  “By aliens?”

  “By a man named Bryce Telliman.”

  “A girlfriend of mine was abducted by aliens,” Selena said. “She remembered it, too. She had been abused by them.”

  “Are you saying I’m crazy?”

  “I’m saying you have to believe what’s in your own head,” Selena said, “and more than that you cannot do.”

  “I’m going to call my brother,” I said. “Selena, I’m going to call my brother.”

  “Will he come and get you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t belong out here, anyway,” Selena told me. “You’re a little bit delicate, if you know what I mean.”

  I nodded. I knew what she meant. I loved her suddenly. I wanted to marry her.

  “Come sit by me for a while,” she said. “And then we’ll go and make your phone call.”

  When I sat down, Selena put her head against my wet shoulder. And together we watched the last light coming through the trash cans behind this refreshment stand. I would get up with her later and she would lead me to a telephone, where I would call Eric collect. Two days later, I would be on a plane, flying business class, being treated like royalty, as far as I was concerned, way up there above the American plains, sitting next to him.

  But right now I said, “You should do something about that.” I indicated the gash on her left leg, right along her calf.

  “Do what?”

  “Go to a hospital?”

  Selena made air come through her nose in a way that meant something like forget it, what’s the point. And when Eric found me, when I left her, she would squeeze me in the way that meant something about regret, about not wanting to be let go. “Hospital,” she said. “Right.”

  This is what Eric said the day he found me: “Pilot.”

  Just that word in that voice, and immediately I knew it was time to go. Immediately I knew everything.

  “Eric,” I said back. I tried to smile. I was looking up through the bright yellow sunlight at him. It was early in the after-noon, and Selena and I had been sitting on the curb by the bike path that ran along the edge of the beach. Selena had been tending to her wound. I had been scratching myself, my skin so dry from the sand and saltwater that it felt like canvas, peeling away.

  “What are you doing?”

  Selena rose up and stretched like a cat. “Time for me to head out.”

  “Eric, this is Selena.”

  Eric looked at me in bewilderment.

  “Bye,” Selena said, clutching me for that quick moment, and then disappearing, falling in behind a group of roller-bladers.

  I’d never see her again.

  “Pilot,” Eric said, “it’s time to go, all right?”

  I got up, too. “Where?”

  “Home.” My brother put his hand on my arm, escorting me like a prisoner. “I’ve got a car around here somewhere,” he said. “And I’ve got a hotel room at the airport Hilton.”

  “I’ll help you find it.”

  “It’s red,” he told me. “It’s a red Mustang convertible. I rented it at the airport. It costs seven dollars to park here, you know.”

  “Isn’t it ridiculous?”

  “I couldn’t believe it.”

  I waited a moment, and then I said, “Thank you for coming.” I meant it, too. I hadn’t known how I would’ve gotten back without him.

  My brother stopped for a moment and rubbed his eyes against the California sun, saying, “I didn’t tell Mom.” He had grown older, I thought, and more handsome. He had grown completely into his doctorhood, his air of authority having traveled with him all the way out here.

  “Whatever.”

  “But I want you to tell her when we get back.”

  “Tell her what?” I really didn’t know what he meant. I was so hungry, so bleary, I really didn’t know what there was to tell.

  “Pilot.” He shook his head. “You’ve got to get it together. Jesus Christ, you are all fucked up. If you need help, I’ll get it for you, okay? Whatever it is, whatever you need. But, please,” he said, “please, just let me know what’s going on, will you?”

  “Okay,” I said. “All right.”

  “There it is.” He indicated a red Mustang convertible at the far end of the Santa Monica beach parking lot. And on our walk across, he was silent, so I started pointing to various things of interest.

  “That’s where they shoot Baywatch,” I told him. “And at that refreshment stand you can get weed, if you know the right thing to say.”

  On the plane, the following day, high above America, Eric said, “Pilot,” and he shook his head in stern disappointment.

  I almost laughed. “Come on.”

  “Pilot,” he said. “Why?”

  I slid the shade down over the window. I looked at my brother. I offered my face to him. “I wanted to, wanted to get out of where I was, Eric, to get away from things. I thought I could sell a screenplay or something. I don’t know.” I could never talk to Eric. I could never explain myself to him. “I thought I could get somewhere.”

  “Did you try?”

  “Try what?”

  “Try to sell a screenplay?”

  I slid the shade up now. Outside, the clouds rolled beneath us. It is a sensation, no matter how much I’ve flown, that has always amazed me. We were actually in the air, actually flying. “I left them in a bag,” I said. “When I first got out there, to the beach, I left them in a bag, and they were stolen.”

  “Were they your only copies?”

  “I had them on disk,” I said. I slid the shade up again.

  “Do you have the disk at home somewhere?”

  “The disk was in the bag, too.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He shook his head again. “What the hell are we going to tell Mom?”

  I could hear the jet engines in the airplane turning, the huge turbines screaming. “I thought of something,” I told him then. “While I was out on the beach. It was just a couple of days ago, really. It was the day I called you.”

  “What?”

  “Where I put the other shoe.”

  He didn’t hesitate. I believed he had been preparing all his life for this moment. “What other shoe?”

  “Fiona’s.”

  “Pilot,” my brother said through his teeth, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

  We were sitting in the business-class section, cold drinks on the little pull-down trays in front of us. A movie was playing on the screen, but we had declined the complimentary headphones. No one was listening, I thought, so I spoke aloud.

  “The other shoe,” I said. I pulled the shade down again. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted it up or down. “I found it, you know, under your desk, all those years ago.”

  “Pilot.” He was rolling his eyes, practicing every gesture of denial.

  “And I told everyone that I had found the one shoe in the woods somewhere, but I hid the bag, the Wonderbread bag with the other shoe and the knife in it.”

  “Pilot,” Eric said, “you are really losing it this time.”

  “For some reason, I’ve never let myself think about it until now.” I sipped my orange juice. “But what did you do with her? Where is she? Where’s Fiona?” My voice was calm, I thought, reasonable, despite the screaming content of what I was saying, despite the insane loudness of this accusation.

  “Pi
lot,” Eric said, “that’s all, okay? No more of this.” He looked at the gray leather of the chair in front of him. Oddly, he reached out and touched it. Then he sipped his ginger ale and rubbed his hands together.

  “I hid the other shoe and the knife, the whole bag, where no one could possibly find it, where no one in the world could ever think of looking.”

  He waited a moment. “When we get back I think you should, you should try some counseling, all right?” He was trying hard to be nice, I could tell. “I know someone who I think can help you.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “And maybe you could try to find a job or something.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

  “Pilot,” he said, and he faced me, “I’m your brother. I’m trying to help you. I really am. But I can’t if you’re accusing me of… of… of weird shit. There’s no other shoe, Pilot. The police looked everywhere. Whoever took Fiona took her with the one shoe on. Do you understand me? And there was no knife.”

  “But I know where it is. And whatever happened to that hunting knife, Eric? The one you cut Halley’s leg off with?”

  “You’re having some kind of hallucination, Pilot. You’re having a paranoid delusion, is what you’re having. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “You were out on the beach for how long? Were you eating? Were you sleeping? You had some strange dream and you’re thinking now that it was a memory. For Christ’s sake, you were staring into the sun too fucking long.”

  “It’s very clear.”

  “Memories aren’t clear, little brother. Dreams are clear. Hallucinations are clear. Memories are like—”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Can I give you a sleeping pill? Something to relax you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Go on,” my brother told me, “please take one.”

  What difference did it make? “All right.”

  He reached down to get his briefcase, and from it he pulled out a bottle of pills. He handed me the whole thing. I didn’t know what the hell they were—the bottle was unlabeled—but I have never questioned an offer of free drugs. I put one into my mouth, crunching the sour, dusty tablet against my molars.

  “Take two,” Eric said.

  I chewed another.

  “I can’t believe you,” he was shaking his head, even laughing. “I really can’t believe you.”

  And then I asked, “What are these, anyway?”

  Some of the medications reported to evoke psychotic symptoms include anesthetics and analgesics, anticholinergic agents, anticonvulsants, antihistamines, antihypertensive and cardiovascular medications, antimicrobial medications, antiparkinsonian medications, chemotherapeutic agents (e.g., cyclosporine and procarbazine), corticosteroids, gastrointestinal medications, muscle relaxants, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications, other over-the-counter medications (e.g., phenylephrine, pseudoephedrine), antidepressant medication, and disulfiram. Toxins reported to induce psychotic symptoms include anticholinesterase, organophosphate insecticides, nerve gases, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and volatile substances such as fuel or paint.

  Katherine leaned forward in our father’s old wing chair. “And you believe your brother gave you, that he gave you drugs to make you experience hallucinations, psychotic hallucinations?”

  I looked at her directly. My face was made of metal. My eyes were glass. “There’s no other way to explain it, is there?”

  Katherine cleared her throat. “When did Eric give you the drugs? When could he have—”

  “The pills on the plane, maybe.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s very clever.”

  “And he did it because—”

  “Because he wanted everyone to believe I was crazy, because I was finally telling the truth about what happened to Fiona, because he has everything to lose if—”

  “Is it possible,” Katherine said, “even remotely possible that all this business about the shoe and knife was a hallucination? Memories are tricky, Pilot. Sometimes they seem real, but they’re not.”

  I untwisted the shoelace from my middle finger. “If I hallucinated the shoe, why would I have this?” I held it out, dangling it in front of her like a hypnotist’s watch.

  Katherine took it in her open palm, and without looking up, said, very matter-of-factly, “You have the shoe.” It was a question.

  “And the knife.”

  She looked at the shoelace. It was completely black, frayed at the ends. “You’ve had this since—”

  “Since they found me in the woods,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed it?”

  “It’s out there?” Katherine looked at me with a sudden realization. “The other shoe, the knife—these things are out there in the woods somewhere, where you hid them? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  They gained material, then. Somewhere out in the woods, even though I couldn’t remember exactly where, these items came into being, particles forming around the nucleus of an idea like the cancer cells forming around my mother’s optical nerve.

  “Yes.” I exhaled heavily. “I know they’re somewhere out there, inside an old Wonderbread bag.”

  “You don’t remember what you did with it?”

  “There’s a lot I don’t remember, obviously.”

  “Pilot,” Katherine said, “I think we should end our session early today.” She still had the shoelace in her open palm, as if it were a small animal, something wounded. “Can I keep this?” she asked me. “Do you mind?”

  At the clinic, Dr. Lennox leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyelids until they were pink. “I guess,” he said sadly, “I guess the question is this.” He put his hands on the desk in front of him. He seemed tired. His smile, though permanent, was wearing thin. “If Pilot Airie is handing you evidence, Kate, actual evidence from a crime, or at least what he believes is actual, should you investigate?” He paused now, looking out the window behind her. “And I don’t know the answer. I mean, we’re not the police here, are we?”

  She was standing in the door, leaning against the jamb, arms folded. “Pilot’s still making delusional, paranoiac accusations about his brother,” she said. “Not much of it makes any sense, but it’s deeply entrenched. I mean, he will not let go. But the thing is, it’s not bizarre.”

  “Not bizarre.”

  “It’s not—” she searched for a word “—crazy.”

  “You’re saying it’s possible.”

  “I’m not saying Pilot isn’t delusional, but he’s not talking about having his brain removed by invisible little men or a secret cave inside his body where pink elephants live. He’s talking about something that is… well, at least it’s based in reality.” She stepped forward. “Which is not psychotic. It may be wrong, but it doesn’t indicate schizo—”

  “True.” The doctor nodded, his fingers to his lips.

  “So I think we should, I mean, I should—”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he exhibiting any other symptoms of schizoid-affective disorder or schizophrenia, anything at all?”

  “Not really. He seems a bit sluggish still, that’s all.”

  “That’s not much for the diagnosis, is it? Exactly what are his accusations?”

  “Primarily, that Eric had something to do with their little sister’s abduction twenty years ago.”

  “What else?”

  “Pilot’s suggesting that Eric gave him drugs to, to make him psychotic, to make him seem crazy, so no one would believe his accusations.”

  “Dr. Airie is a neurosurgeon.” This was as if to say brain doctors are incapable of wrongdoing.

  This was my brother’s advantage. He’d used it for years. He was Eric Airie, floating like air through the advancing defense to score the touchdown, untouched.

  Katherine nodded. “Yes, he is.”

  “I’m wondering,” Dr. Lennox said, “if we’re dealing with a simple case of a broth
er’s jealousy.”

  “Cain and Abel?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And they’re fighting over—”

  “Their mother.”

  “It’s so Freudian.” Katherine laughed. “I guess it’s possible.”

  “Sometimes Freud’s okay.” Dr. Lennox smiled. “Sometimes.” He looked at his desk, which was a mosaic of pink and yellow sticky notes. “Anyway, Pilot’s not a patient of the clinic anymore, Kate. He’s your client, and it’s your decision about what to do with him. You don’t think he’s a danger to anyone, do you?”

  “He’s perfectly sane,” Katherine said. “I mean, otherwise, he’s totally rational, taking care of his mother and the house. It’s weird.” She was shaking her head.

  The doctor shrugged. “Try the library,” he said. “Look up all the old articles about the case, see what really happened to Pilot’s sister, or at least what the police think happened.”

  “I might do that.”

  “Something could turn up that can help you.” Dr. Lennox leaned back again, hands behind his head. “I have to ask, though, Kate, what is your aim here? How are you helping Pilot with this?”

  “Sudden psychotic episodes like his are usually brought about by extreme trauma or stress, right? And Pilot experienced nothing like that, not according to him or his family, anyway. Nor do they report noticing any gradual symptoms, except maybe that trip he took to California.” Katherine walked forward into Dr. Lennox’s office, approaching his desk. “I want to know what caused his psychosis. I think if I knew,” she said, “I could help him, I could help his whole family.”

  “And you want to know,” Dr. Lennox said matter-of-factly, “what happened to Fiona.”

  Katherine could not help but admit it. “Yes.”

  “That’s not necessarily going to help the family, though, is it?”