Hollow

by Owen Egerton

  “Lyle, I need to ask a favor,” I say as Janet walks off, frowning. “My friend Martin needs a ride to chemotherapy today.”

  “Shit,” Lyle says, lowering the headlamp he’d been admiring. “Kind of freaky.”

  “I’ll owe you, Lyle.”

  “You already do.”

  I let Martin take the front seat and I squeeze into the back of Lyle’s car. Lyle has given in to the warmth and removed his neon green coat, but the polarized glasses never leave his face.

  “Hey Ollie,” Martin says. “Sorry again for Sam the other day. That was uncalled for.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I had a long talk with him. Told him how it is. How a house has rules. So it won’t happen again. I can promise that,” he says. “I don’t want you to feel you can’t come by. I’d hate that.”

  “I’ll keep coming.”

  “Good, good.” He nods. “Sam helps me out more than you know. Other day I was walking, I was just walking out to the Caddy. And my legs went jelly. Sam picked me up like a baby. Scary as shit. Just picked me up like I was a little baby and there was nothing I could do. If Sam hadn’t been there, I’d have spent all night on the driveway.”

  “You’ve got a Cadillac?” Lyle asks.

  “A sweet ’88. Work on it every day,” Martin says, grinning. “By the time I get it running I won’t be able to drive it.”

  Both he and Lyle smoke. I can feel my teeth yellow with every breath.

  It doesn’t take long to get there and Martin leads us to oncology.

  The hospital waiting room is white and beige. The plants are green and healthy. The floor is clean and shining. The art is pastel and calm. Only the patients are ragged.

  Martin struts in and the nurse behind the counter smiles. “Mr. Dale,” she says. “You made it. Now that’s more like it.” She’s in her fifties and has a southern twang, smiling like a politician’s wife. “Now take a seat and we’ll get you back there fast.”

  “The nurses love me,” Martin says. “Always flirting. I hate doctors. But nurses are all right.”

  We wait for nearly an hour before the nurse calls Martin, and he struts back into the treatment rooms. Lyle stands, too.

  “Let’s check out the gift store.”

  It feels good to leave that waiting room. Even a hospital hallway is more cheerful.

  The gift store is a small, cluttered affair. Happy new baby dolls and balloons, rows of condolence and get-well cards, boxes of candy and chocolates fill the room. Lyle digs through a bucket of discounted beanbag animals.

  Miles was born here.

  You’d think the It’s a Boy! balloons and cards would get me. You’d think maybe I’d break down. But it’s never when I expect it. I don’t weep when “Cat’s in the Cradle” plays on the radio or a public service billboard shows a father with his son on his lap. My guard is up and I can clearly see the threat. It’s the surprises that get me. Fingernail clippings and the smell of applesauce.

  “Your friend,” Lyle says, digging through a bucket of beanbag animals. “Does he have any money?”

  “Does he look like he has any money?”

  “He’s got a Cadillac.” Lyle picks out a beanbag turkey. “Maybe ask him.”

  The sky has turned gray by the time we leave. Martin is gray, too.

  “How’d it go?” I ask as we walk to the car, his steps slow and unsure.

  “They hook me up and give me the shit and tell me to leave.”

  “How do you feel?” I ask.

  “I feel like I’ve freebased a can of bug killer.”

  “Here, Marty.” Lyle hands him the beanbag turkey as we reach the car. “A little pick-me-upper. If you hold on to it, it can catch a sweet price on eBay.”

  Martin nods.

  Driving down I-35, a few dirty raindrops hit the windshield.

  “I don’t have wipers, so we’re just going to let this one ride,” Lyle says as he lights a cigarette. I’m in the back again.

  “Thanks for the turkey, Lyle. I got a nephew who’s gonna love it.”

  “My pleasure, Marty,” Lyle says. “Want a smoke?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Cancer is a real bitch, huh, Marty?” Lyle says.

  “Never truer words.”

  “Don’t let this cancer call the shots. You know?” Lyle says.

  There’s a shift in his tone I don’t like.

  “Sure. I’m going to beat it.”

  “I’m saying, you call the shots, not the cancer. Get me?” Lyle says, pulling in smoke. “Check out on your own accord.”

  “Lyle,” I say.

  “I’m in no rush to die,” Martin says.

  “I hear that, brother. I hear that,” Lyle says. “But the time is coming and you’re either going to walk out with your head held high or get carried out in a box.”

  “Lyle,” I say. “I want you to shut up.”

  “I’m doing fine,” Martin says. “I can beat this.”

  “No one beats death,” Lyle says.

  “Jesus did.”

  “Maybe,” Lyle says. “He had to die first. I call that a tie.”

  “Lyle, you need to shut up right now,” I say.

  “Hey, my car,” he says. “Show some respect.” He offers the open cigarette package to Martin. “I say make it your call. Get a friend to help. Tell cancer to fuck itself.” Lyle nods at me. I stare back at him, my anger moving in my stomach like a crab.

  “I hear what you’re saying, Lyle,” Martin says, taking a cigarette. “But I don’t want to die yet.”

  “No rush,” Lyle says, handing over his lighter. “See how you feel in a month.”

  We say nothing for the rest of the drive. Lyle flips through radio channels, hopping between a libertarian pundit and hip-hop.

  He pulls to the curb in front of Martin’s. I climb out and face Lyle.

  “You stay here,” I say.

  He raises his palms. “Fine.” Then leans back in his seat.

  I help Martin from the car and up the drive to his door. He’s like a worn-out luggage bag, shoulder bones sticking out like wire hangers, skin loose and thin. He fumbles with his keys at the door, finally managing it open.

  He makes it through the house on his own and I help him lower into his recliner.

  “I am tired,” he says. “Just wiped out tired.”

  “I’m sorry about Lyle,” I say.

  “Don’t be,” he says. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about it.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Truth is, Ollie, sometimes I feel like the delivery man’s standing at the door, but he won’t hand the damn package over.”

  “I can understand that,” I say.

  He closes his eyes, leaning his head back. “I don’t think the cancer is going to kill me.”

  “You don’t, huh?”

  “I’m not going to die in some godforsaken hospital room. No, if I have to die, I’ll die on the road,” he says, smiling with eyes closed. “Going west. West is always beautiful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “On the road in my Cadillac, windows open. That’s how I’d like to go,” he says in almost a whisper.

  “It’d be hell for your passengers.”

  He gives a raspy chuckle. “Maybe I’ll let you take the wheel.”

  “I don’t drive.”

  “Still up for lunch this week?”

  “Always,” I say.

  Lyle is waiting, I know. But I stay until Martin falls asleep.

  I find Laika on the step in front of Martin’s house, facing the black street and piles of uncollected trash, a wet couch rotting in the hot sun. Lyle sits in his car, his head back. I presume his eyes are closed, though the polarized glasses make it hard to say.

  She’s sm
oking, her left eye bruised purple and yellow.

  “You stayed away,” she says.

  “I was told to.”

  “You chose to.”

  “What did he do?” I ask.

  “He left me.”

  I pause, confused. “Sam?”

  “My husband,” she says. “He wrote. He divorced me.”

  I sit on the cement facing her, bending my legs like a pretzel.

  “He waited, too,” she says. “The date on the paper. The date is last month. But he waits until I send another check. One last check from my great, wonderful computer job. And then he sends the divorce. They will not come here. Not him, not my daughter.”

  “He’s a prick.”

  “I’ve had worse.” She drags her cigarette and squints her bruised eye at the sun. “I have no plan now. Just do what I’m doing. And I owe Sam money and he won’t . . .”

  She trails off. I look at her. I look at her eyes, her bruised face. I look for a long time without looking away. She turns to me and I still don’t look away. She seems to study my gaze, trying to interpret it. Then she frowns and flicks her cigarette away.

  “Your son died, yes.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “That is very horrible,” she says.

  Her face softens, just for moment, but she won’t allow it. She looks out to the street and closes her eyes. Then she stands, her waist even with my face. I can see the silhouette of her legs through the thin fabric of her dress.

  She looks down at me, the sun behind her. She touches my head.

  I want this.

  I want to bury my face in her dress. I want to raise her dress and pull her crotch to me.

  “There is nothing I do not hate about my life,” she says.

  I look up. She’s studying something far away.

  “In half an hour another customer comes. I know him. He has come before. And he does not smell good and his skin feels wrong. And he mumbles the whole time. Mumbles in my face. And I will hold my breath. And I cannot even say I am doing this for my daughter or my husband. I have no reason.”

  “Then—”

  “I will do it. This I already know. I will do it. But I have no reason.”

  “You’re a self-centered dickhead,” I say as we drive down North Lamar away from Martin’s neighborhood.

  “Self-centered?” Lyle is genuinely shocked. “I just spent a whole day driving your sick-ass friend around town.”

  “You also suggested he take his own life. Or more specifically, that I take his life.”

  “I’d help,” he says, running a stale yellow. “The guy is rotting. Sometimes it’s just time to check out. You can ruin a good party by staying past your welcome.”

  “Oh my God, Lyle, staying past your welcome is what you’re best at.”

  “Now you’re just being mean,” he says, swerving through lanes. “This is a gift. I was offering a gift.”

  “For a price.”

  “Look, Marty has a need, a way out of a shitty death sentence. We need twenty thousand dollars this week and my guess is he has some money he can’t spend. I’m trying to think outside the box.”

  “Jesus, Lyle. His name isn’t Marty. It’s Martin.” I punch the dash. “Do you ever, ever, ever think about other people?”

  Lyle yanks the car into a Stop & Shop parking lot and slams to a halt. The seat belt strains against my body. He turns his bulk to me.

  “Fuck you, Ollie. Fuck you,” he says, poking a finger into my chest. “I’ve been busting my ass being your friend. Trying to save your fucking life. I’m trying everything I know to get you to do something. To do anything. Get you laid or get you out of town and all I get from you is whining and crying. I mean, Marty’s more alive than you and he’s half dead. You’re afraid of everything.” He faces forward, breathing hard. “I need some cigarettes.”

  He kills the engine, climbs from the car, and slams the door.

  And here I am, alone in the car. The air is still and hot, singed with flat cigarette smoke and carbon monoxide. The plastic and metal expands, clicks, and pops in the new quiet. Minutes pass and the air tightens. Another car pulls away, muffled and distant. I see Lyle, inside sorting through the top of the magazine rack.

  I know why I hate him. It’s not because he’s wrong. He’s asking the right question. Why don’t I die? Everything has been taken, but this last bit I can still snatch. Why not steal that privilege from the universe? To not be. To not feel this or be this.

  Sun through the windshield and hot unmoving air. Sweat beads on my forehead. The seat belt holds me to the hot plastic. Sweat rolls into my eyes. I blink, I blink, and my eyes burn. I will not remove my seat belt. I will not open my door. I blink, mouth and head watering. Blink.

  I open the door and the car inhales. I’m breathing, my eyes wet with sweat, and my relief proves Lyle to be a truth-teller. I am afraid of everything. I unclick my seat belt and climb from the car. Lyle walks from the store saying something, but I’m too far gone.

  After the arrest came the press with cameras and questions. There were articles and emails and online comments blurry with hate. Carrie and I locked the door, unplugged the computers, and silenced the phones. We barricaded ourselves in.

  We tried to live. But Carrie and I could hardly move in our home without a reminder. Our house was infested with memories. Unused diapers, the crib cushions, the plastic giraffe Miles refused to release from his tiny grip for months, the breast milk frozen in the freezer—yellow and stone—the stereo flipped on three weeks after and playing music box Mozart. Every corner held artifacts of Miles’s life and our life as parents. Our house was haunted.

  We drove to see his grave, the only time since his burial. The stone and the grass—the place had no connection to my son; I hope to never see it again.

  While Carrie and I were away, her sister, with sinister kindness, cleaned. She scrubbed and gathered and removed all trace of Miles’s life with us. We arrived home as she was finishing. She had left pictures on the wall—decorations. But the detritus—pacifiers, plastic spoons, and mobiles—were gone. The house smelled of air freshener and bleach. She had scrubbed the smell of my son from my home and there she stood in our living room with a half smile asking not to be thanked, proud and teary. I hated her. I told her I hated her.

  “Ollie,” Carrie said, shaking her head.

  “How did we let them wash his body?” I asked Carrie. “They didn’t even know him, Carrie. How did we let them have his body? We should have dressed him. We should have put him in jammies and sang to him, Carrie. We should have hummed to him when they closed it up. His smell, Carrie. His smell should still be with us.”

  For a time we had grieved together, crying into each other, each protecting the other’s silence. Without words we agreed to not talk about Miles or the case or anything, like two burn victims agreeing not to touch.

  Carrie and I had a healthy, good love. Solid, that’s how you would have described us. Oh, Oliver and Carrie. They’ve got a solid marriage. Solid as a rock.

  For a time the other was comforter and protector. But the air in our home soured.

  She boiled water though she didn’t want tea. I picked up the remote and put it back down again without clicking a button. She said she was going to take a shower, but did not. I lay out on the couch and closed my eyes, but did not sleep.

  It was worse than being alone. The other was an audience. And now it was clear the other had always been only an audience, that for the last seven years we had paced on separate, opposing stages simultaneously performing and reacting to the other’s performance. Then came the wonderful outcome of our performance. The baby.

  We paused and watched. And without discussion we both directed our own performances toward him. His laugh was the finest sound this world has ever made. His first laugh was inspired by one of Carrie’s n
ew nursing bras fresh from the laundry and dangling over his head. He chuckled, high-pitched and full of gurgles.

  “Evolution worked for a billion years just to produce that sound,” I said to Carrie. “Once you hear that, you’ll do anything to protect him.”

  All this time, as we mourned and clung and waited as affidavits were filed, there was a secret growing in my wife. When she first told me, I didn’t hear.

  “Pregnant,” she said again, trying to smile. “The doctor said I’m pregnant.”

  I stayed very still. We were in our kitchen. I sat, she stood, her hands behind her gripping the countertop.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I don’t see how that is possible.” Which was a lie. I remembered the scream. It was the one time we’d made love since his death. Even without that I knew the impossible was all very possible.

  “I’m four weeks in.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t want to do anything.”

  The refrigerator hummed and every surface still glowed with bleach from my sister-in-law’s housekeeping.

  “It’s not right,” I said.

  “What’s not right?”

  “It’s not fair to Miles.”

  “Not fair to Miles?” She released the countertop and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “There’s a baby growing in me Ollie, a little baby. I mean, it’s kind of a miracle. It is a miracle.”

  I shook my head. “Miles . . .”

  “This isn’t Miles, Ollie.”

  We couldn’t say a thing.

  Her body changed as the weeks progressed. A slight bulge, morning nausea, and she smiled. She grinned. With all her energy, she urged her grief to transmute into something new. I could not touch her. Whatever it was growing in her was unreal. Miles’s usurper. And something as heavy, as demanding, was growing in me. Carrie saw hers as an answer. Mine was a question.

  So we shared our house, both growing a sickness inside.

  She slept nights. I walked the house, finally dozing for an hour or two in my study. I’d wake just before dawn and climb the stairs to our room. She’d be rising, preparing to leave for Big Stacy Pool or prenatal yoga. The day was hers, the night mine. We shared only those gray, voiceless moments in between.