Some Hell

by Patrick Nathan

  At the bookstore she bought three guidebooks and a new road atlas. “We’ll drive,” she said as she handed it over. “Flying misses the point. You don’t see anything.” By the time they pulled into the driveway it was nine thirty and beginning to snow. A new sheet of clouds had blindfolded the stars. He’d barely taken his bags to his room when the phone rang.

  How they’d done this for weeks was to pause. No Hello, no Anyone there? After they recognized each other’s silence, Victor sighed and leaned back in whatever same, squeaky chair he liked to sit in. Colin pictured all the lights around him dark except for a computer screen.

  “I had a dream about you the other night.”

  He sat on the edge of his bed. That he was already hard made him want to cut it off, to take the largest knife from the kitchen and get it over with.

  “It wasn’t that kind of dream,” Victor said, and he laughed. “No. You were running. It was cold. I had to find you.” Colin heard a pen tap against a hard surface as if Victor were ready to transcribe whatever Colin said. “There was something I needed to tell you, to show you. I kept finding these little drops of ice in the grass. I knew they were important. I picked them up and tasted them, and then I knew.”

  Colin gripped the phone. How Victor was breathing, how he was so sure of every word—how could you just hang up? “You knew what?”

  “I knew they were yours. Your tears. You were so sad.”

  The bed creaked as Colin lay back. He glanced behind him at the angel above his lamp.

  “Then I found you,” Victor was saying. “You were so tired. Your legs had given out. You were huddled under a willow tree.” He laughed a small laugh, if even a laugh—just a breath of air with a current of electric, undisguised joy. “You had strips of ice on your cheeks. Tears frozen under your eyes. What had they done to you? That’s what I asked as I bent down.”

  Colin dropped the phone into the crook of his neck and fumbled it back to his ear. He pressed it close so he could hear everything, so Victor was everything.

  “I reached for your hand,” he was saying. “You pulled away. But I didn’t give up. I took your hand and touched it to my chest. I don’t know if it was the touch of warmth or the feel of someone’s pulse, but your tears melted. You could smile again. You were happy.”

  Colin’s blood surged in his fingertips like it wanted out. Who was he supposed to tell?

  “Anyway, it was only a dream.”

  He closed his eyes. The room had begun to throb as if the walls were made of flesh. He wanted to see Victor at school, walking up and down the aisles of desks like this was only a lecture. Andy would be there snickering. Victor was Mr. Miller then, someone you made faces at every time he turned around.

  “So how’s your girlfriend?” Victor asked—the real Victor, who knew his phone number, who knew everything Colin was hiding. “I’ve seen you together. To be honest, I’m surprised.” Victor wasn’t surprised. There was no reason to believe he was that stupid.

  “We’ve been together for, like, two months,” Colin lied.

  “Very surprising. I really didn’t think…well, you know. I remember you, Colin.”

  Victor said his name like a holiday, or a favorite film. It stood out from all the other words, and not just because it was his name. It was like hearing emergency from the guy who interrupted songs on the radio. “Mr. Miller—” He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “Mr. Miller, I don’t think you should call anymore.”

  Why not? he expected to hear. Colin don’t be silly. Colin you know I’m only kidding. Colin sometimes you’re so sweet. Colin, Colin. Don’t you love me, Colin?

  But Victor knew when silence was the sharpest reply. Colin heard a pen stroke’s quick scratch, a soft, bored sigh that might’ve only been a breath. “I—I mean—”

  “Colin,” Victor said. That laugh again. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

  He sat up in bed, wincing at the sudden rush of blood. “What way? Be what way?”

  “I’ll talk to you again soon, Colin.”

  All his life he’d hated the sound of a disconnected phone call. Now it felt like the earth itself had vanished. If he opened his door right then, there’d be no hallway, no house beyond that, no family at all. If he looked out the window there’d be no streetlights and no darkened houses. The only thing left was his bedroom, and his ears began to ring before the dial tone clicked over and droned on like a siren.

  It had been months since he’d dreamt of hell. He thought he’d outgrown them, his dreams, waking up with a startled No! in protest of a calloused hand, the shuddering beat of wings. But that night he dreamt of ice, of running until it no longer mattered. He saw the willow and knew he shouldn’t stop, knew he shouldn’t crawl into its shadow. The demon’s heart was not warm. It did not beat. It only hung like black fruit in that open ribcage. Colin felt his tears thaw against his will. They froze again before they hit the ground, thudding into the grass—someone’s wet, thrown-away stars scintillating in the sky beneath their feet.

  When he woke he tried to wipe the dream’s tears out of his eyes, only to feel like part of him was still there, holding that heart. His throat felt glued shut, too dry to swallow, and even though the room felt as though it would grab him if he dared move, he got out of bed. His hand was still numb as he made for the kitchen.

  The hallway was empty. The bedroom doors were closed. The kitchen was dark if you didn’t count the barcodes of moonlight stamped on the floor. He moved in his old silent way, light on his bare feet, and drank orange juice from the carton so he wouldn’t wake his mother in the next room. He wondered if her therapist knew she slept on the couch. He wondered if she told him the truth or if she said the same mindless, stupid stuff she said at home. Colin looked out the window as he drank. It was still snowing, but calmly, no wind at all and every flake moving together like the light from a tipped-over disco ball. The last time it snowed in San Francisco, he remembered reading in the guidebook, was 1976.

  Before he went back to his room he went to check on her, like he used to. What he expected to find was her zigzagged way of sleeping, her knees bent and her back kind of arched, one hand under her pillow. Instead his mother was awake, sitting on the edge of the couch with a notebook open in front of her. It lay flat on the table and he squinted through the pale blue dark at the curlicues of his father’s handwriting. Colin backed into the hallway where he knew you couldn’t see past the shadows. She was holding the gun and was petting its grip with her thumb.

  Why did life have to happen this way? What had they done to deserve this? When his mother took a deep breath and put the gun under her chin you’d think he’d be less sensitive to it, you’d think it wouldn’t make his lungs seize up as if they’d filled with blood. You’d think that when she pulled the trigger and he heard that impotent click it would be no more of a surprise than her way of crying whenever she spent time in her bedroom. But you had to understand it. You had to see how perfectly she did it, how exact her imitation, as though she’d seen her husband do it not once but many times, a dozen times. Enough to study it. Enough to remember it.

  When she began going to therapy, Diane swore it wouldn’t be permanent. It was supposed to be a ritual she could quit at any time without feeling a thing, not become something she needed. She’d said the same, years before, about the chiropractor.

  All those magazines whose headlines never changed, whose articles she never read—she felt helplessly giddy to be there. Being at ease in Tim’s waiting room was like laughing when the person with whom you’re furious tickles you under the ribs. She tried to compose herself into someone annoyed, someone anxious, someone horrified to be alive. Instead her skin had that tight feeling, as though she’d caught the scent of lemons or a soft, sun-bleached breeze. She looked into her purse but couldn’t deceive herself into stepping outside for a cigarette. It was too lovely to be trapped, to have to enjoy.

  Spring has saved me, she decided she would say—her witty opening line, b
ecause it wasn’t yet spring. Tim would point this out. Yes, but it’s the thought of spring, she’d say, and she’d explain how it helped to imagine the weather she wanted. The sun was higher every day, something the leafless trees couldn’t hide. Every time it gets above thirty I want to go for a walk. She pictured herself in his office, legs crossed, hands clasped together as she spoke at the ceiling and said um or uh like a girl. Anyway, she’d say, much later. The sex thing is all about, um, self-destruction. It’s all about ruining whatever’s good in my life, I guess, haha. I think I understand it. I think it’s over. She heard the door right then, at the end of the hall. Spring, she thought. Think about spring.

  Tim eased into their time, smoothing out a new page, his pen perfectly parallel to the pad’s top binding. There was a new calendar behind him—this one full of national parks instead of distant nebulae and constellations. She’d never seen a picture of the Grand Canyon with a dusting of snow. Was the Grand Canyon on the way to San Francisco? She couldn’t believe, in nine or ten weeks, she would pack up the car and cross half the country. Of all things, she thought of what she’d wear. It would be June. It would be hot. Start with fabrics, she thought, and tried to picture everything silk in her closet, everything jersey. When Tim shuffled in his seat she flinched and sat up straight.

  “Did I scare you?” He was smiling, hands folded together in his lap.

  What you need is something familiar, Shannon had said over coffee, only a week after driving Paul to Michigan. Something routine. So much has changed for you.

  “Not at all. I don’t spook that easy.”

  “I’ve noticed. I’m sorry about canceling. Back in January.”

  “I didn’t know you had a son.” It came out like a reprimand and she forced herself to smile. Tim looked down at his lap. “What’s his name?”

  “His name is Kale,” Tim said. “Yes, like the vegetable. He’s in fourth grade. Just turned ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “I know,” he said. “How does an old guy like me have such a young son?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It’s okay. I get it a lot.” He shrugged his shoulders. It was the longest he’d ever gone without making eye contact. That was his weapon, eye contact. It was why people gave him money. “I had a relationship with a younger woman. We had a son. Now I take care of him.”

  Diane set a hand on the table, ready to reach out. “Did she…is she…” She wet her lips and coughed out a little sound—mmm—as she assuaged the tickle in her throat. They could have so much in common. “Did she die?”

  “What? No. No, she’s still alive.”

  “Oh.”

  The room’s white noise came back as she looked down at her hands. She could feel the joints in her fingers grinding but she didn’t want to sit there like she was nervous. She heard Tim scratch his cheek and it made her think of all the men she’d kissed, how every touch was different. Alan’s cheek was always rough, even in the morning when he’d just shaved. Daniel felt like a high school boy. An image of his chest, streetlit via the uncovered windows in his apartment. She crossed her legs and fanned out her fingers, touching the wrinkled circle of skin around each knuckle.

  Blouses, blue jeans, open-toed shoes, capris, jackets instead of coats, cotton socks instead of wool. Spring has brought me back to life, she thought she should say, but it was a lie. “What school does Kale go to?”

  “Edina.”

  “Do you live by Southdale?”

  “Diane, let’s talk about you.” He turned back to her and smiled without warmth. “How were the last few weeks—well, months? The last few months?”

  Another Diane, she could be for him. “I keep thinking about spring,” she said, and winced at how wrong it came out, bland and obvious and not at all clever.

  “It is that time of the year.” Tim glanced at the wall as if there were a window showing them the last days of winter, the sun melting the snakes of snow resting on staircase railings and the broken-up fences lining the parking lot.

  “It is.” Already, she’d lost interest. But she felt committed. “It’s exciting to think of all the stuff I can wear again, all the clothes waiting in my closet?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said with a laugh. “This is boring the shit out of you.”

  “No, no it’s not,” he said, in that way that meant yes but don’t worry. “It’s actually nice to hear you say it. To hear you so excited about something. If you want to know the truth—”

  “You mean everything until now hasn’t been the truth?”

  “If you want to know the truth I was worried about you.” His eyes fell to his notepad. He tapped the pen against the page but didn’t click it open. “After our last session, in December. I felt like we left on a downer. And then we didn’t see—I didn’t see you for three months.”

  Diane felt touched. She felt ashamed for everything she’d thought about him, every time she’d labeled him uncaring or obtuse. “Thank you,” she said. She pictured Tim at his house in Edina, likely someplace large and far away from whatever quiet street he lived on, worrying. He would tell Kale to get ready for bed, and he’d worry about her, she imagined. She moved forward in her chair, perched on the edge of her seat. “But you shouldn’t have worried. The whole sex thing—I was way off with that one. It wasn’t what I wanted at all.”

  “What do you…” Tim coughed and flipped back a page, then forward again without reading a word. “What would you say has changed?”

  “What would I say hasn’t? It’s been a crazy winter. I even slept with someone, for fuck’s sake. A coworker. His place, after a happy hour. It was so terrible. I mean it was nice at first but when we got down to it I just wasn’t into it.” She reached for a tissue but she wasn’t crying. It felt greasy in her hand, pretreated with lotion. She laid it flat on the table. “I don’t think I’ll ever be with a man again. It just doesn’t make any sense anymore.”

  Tim said nothing. Wanting him to speak made her feel childish.

  “I’ve thought about it all, though. I’ve always been kind of self-destructive. I’m thinking that wanting to go out and fool around, you know, get laid, was just me wanting to fuck up my life. Meet the wrong person, get in trouble, get found out, have my kids—have Colin—hate me.”

  “Why would he hate you?”

  “He’d think I abandoned him, wouldn’t he?” She thought of Colin, waiting up for her the night she was out with Daniel. For the last few weeks they’d felt like roommates. “He’s gay.”

  “He told you?”

  “He’d never tell me. I just know. I haven’t told him I know. I don’t know that I can. He looks, all the time, like he’s about to fall apart. Like one little push and he’ll just fall over. He’s getting so tall. His voice more and more like his dad’s. But I feel like he’ll just shatter if I tell him. He’ll never talk to me again.”

  Tim had written nothing down. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. About your relationships.”

  “They’re not relationships,” Diane said. “I don’t have relationships.”

  “Any interaction with another person is a relationship,” Tim said. “You’ve interacted with Daniel”—here he blushed—“therefore it’s a relationship.”

  “But I only went after it to hurt myself, or someone else. It’s my youth all over again.”

  Youth, she thought. A strange word that upset her.

  Youth is an island. Where had she heard this?

  “What do you mean, your youth?”

  She frowned. “When I was young—a teenager, a girl, into my twenties, whatever—I asked God for horrible things to happen to me. I prayed once for cancer. When you started to hear about AIDS, how even straight people were getting it, I prayed for that. I asked God to run me over with a bus, to knock me out of an airplane.”

  Youth is an island seen through a telescope, stranded at sea without a sail.

  Alan, she thought. You couldn’t get rid of him.

 
; “I prayed for natural disasters. Tornadoes. Meteors. For a nuclear bomb. I’d step off the school bus one day—I was maybe fourteen when I started fantasizing about this one—and everything would flash white. That would be it for me. I prayed for that. Then I had kids.” And then my husband cuts ahead of me in line. She picked up the tissue she’d left on the table and began tearing it into little strips, letting the stray fibers and shreds pill on her slacks. “It’s been a long time since I prayed for stuff like that. I mean, it had been a long time.”

  She thought of a family she’d read about who had lived in Phoenix. There were three of them living together, all siblings, all over fifty. When the firefighters arrived at their house the upper floors had already caved in, throwing themselves into the flames below. You could hear, reports said, the explosions of ammunition coming from the basement. By then, nothing could be done, and when they picked through the mud and wet ashes they found the remains of assault rifles, handguns, sawed-off shotguns, and a stock of homemade bombs. Neighbors reported no initial explosion, no sudden burst of flames. Two dogs had been tied to the bedpost in one of the upstairs rooms, where the brother and his two sisters, authorities calculated, had waited. So much of what Diane encountered she’d rather not know, but this, over the last several weeks, had been a strange, dangerous comfort. Before she knew what she was doing she’d underlined it in Alan’s journal, his old handwriting with a bright blue streak from her own pen.

  Tim had been watching her now for almost a minute, as if she’d pray, right there, for something she wasn’t even sure she wanted. “I don’t know what to say.”