“I swear to you,” I said, my mouth dry and crinkled, “I swear to you I had nothing to do with all this.”
Bad Cop turned to me, furious. The white-coated mutterers stopped. “You just happened to move to his town,” he said, “you just happened to live almost across the street from where he worked. He just happens to die in the exact same circumstances as the ones his sister just happened to die. And when we find you, you just happen to be holding a book written by his fucking father. Sure, you have nothing to do with it.”
It was true. The book was muddied, like everything in the room, but I could see it on the back cover. “A former orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Glass now lives in the Pacific Northwest where he explores issues relating to both our personal and political psyches.” And next to it, the muddied and smiling face of Ben Glass: the fucking father.
“God,” I said.
“Only He can help you now,” Bad Cop snarled in perfect character. “Why don’t you tell me again that you have nothing to do with this, you shit? Why don’t you tell me who else did? Why don’t you tell me, if it wasn’t you, what kind of monster could have done such a thing?
“What kind of monster?” I repeated, and to my raw and dim horror I heard I was laughing. “What kind of monster?” A cartoon pantheon marched in front of my eyes like a Halloween parade, all the monsters: “Wolfman?” I said, and howled like one. My eyes were tearing up, my shoulders shaking. “The Mummy?” I guessed again. “What kind of monster? How about Frankenstein?”
Bad Cop uttered one loud syllable and slapped me on the face just as my tongue was finding the D in “Dracula.” My fangs snapped down and I felt my mouth burst into something wet like a red and copper orgasm. I uttered some syllable myself, and spat blood onto Ben’s smile. “What?” I said, as Bad Cop stopped his second slap midflight. “What?”
“You’re under arrest!” he said, all biblical thunder. I was still laughing when the sobs came. I had loved Cyn; loved her, and now everything was wrecked, raw, wrong. Where could I go?
“Let’s go down to the station,” Good Cop said, gently, and held out his hand to me. I felt my mind splinter at all wrong angles, like a stuck drawer, or a shattered jaw. What was happening here? Could I skip this part, too? What plot twists were encircling me, wringing me out like a rag? The sheet fell back on Stephen’s corpse and I felt, all in a red rush, that I had done these things and then cast myself in an opera where everything was different. How could it be otherwise, with just me, a blot in this perfect universe, like a Christmas decoration up at the wrong time, and another muddy death? What else could have happened? When I opened my eyes Good Cop’s hand was still waiting for me and I took it after all, grasping his fingers in mine and the book—the one from the bookstore near where Stephen worked, the one written by Stephen’s father, this book which had been there all along, lurking on the horizon like a well-placed prop—in the other. I had nothing else. I let him take me back down the grungy hallways into the squinty day. I got back in the dirty car because there was nowhere else to go. I let the cops take me to the station like it’d been circled on the map all along. And it had. It was the second step: I had come to believe that only a power greater than me could restore me to sanity. I knew there were only two things in the world, and I was going with the book. If you didn’t choose semantics there was only nothing. If you didn’t choose semantics there was nothing left.
Step 3
They’d locked me, I think, in a room with a mirror I was pretty sure was one-way. I tried to frame myself in the glass, unconcerned and ready to help. Name: Joseph Last Name Changed. Age: Too old to be living in suburbia as a kid and too young to live there as an adult. Address: Stopped chewing on the pen as I wrote it in. Eyes: brown, and untrustworthy. Hair: just brown. Official Statement: state in your own words what happened, officially. This is for the official record. Already redundant, already, and I hadn’t started.
The last time I had written an Official Statement it was for the Mather Undergraduate Application, earnest and extracurricular so I could get there and have sex without any parents walking in. I couldn’t imagine what they wanted now. I met Cynthia Glass in the fall of several years ago. We had a relationship for the duration of the school year . In June we drove to Pittsburgh—I went back and added in Pennsylvania—where we were both to work at Camp Shalom, a Jewish day camp. We both lived at her parents’ house on Byron Circle. I had only been there a few days when I began to suspect
What next? I paused and locked eyes with my reflection, probably with a growling Bad Cop, too, sipping from a Styrofoam cup all frayed at the rim with his impatience. How come I could imagine each tiny piece, sprinkled on a worn wooden table like stage snow, and not finish the sentence in front of me?
—that the family was having a lot of problems. I tried to tell myself it was all in my imagination, and maybe it was. Then Mimi, Cynthia’s mother , got very sick, and that only added to the troubles between everybody. Then she died. At her funeral,
At her funeral what? Breaking the SPELL had taught me that regardless of how I felt about myself, I was a strong, creative individual. But if the figure lumbering out of the riverbank was my creativity, that meant that Stephen’s gaping jaw, accordioned arms—that was my strength. What had happened at the funeral? What was happening now?
“How we coming?” Good Cop said, opening the door and leaning in. Wasn’t locked.
I looked down at the Statement. Rows of blank lines lay there like bleachers, waiting for me to finish. “I’m having difficulty.”
Good Cop sat down beside me, plunking his Styrofoam cup down next to the empty ashtray that would soon be brimming with butts, lit by the interrogating bulb, if this had been written by the man who invented two guys coming through the door with guns. “Then why don’t you just talk to me, instead of writing all this out?” he asked. “Just tell me the story any way you feel like it.”
“I don’t,” I said quietly, “feel like telling it at all.”
He sighed, and his eyes flickered from me to the mirror, behind which I could picture Bad Cop draining his coffee in frustration: “He doesn’t feel like telling it!”
“I know you don’t,” he said, “but you gotta understand, Joseph. Pittsburg’s pretty quiet. We don’t usually have murders here at all. Somebody holds up a gas station maybe, or kids and graffiti. Somebody gets drunk and kills their husband. I’ve never seen anything like this, though. A guy with his body all twisted and covered with mud in the middle of some science lab—nobody has. Nobody except, guess who, the police in the other Pittsburgh. And that turns out to be the sister. Now nobody saw what happened to your girlfriend except a rabbi who seems—well, a rabbi, and her father, who’s holed up in the Eureka woods somewhere, we’re trying to find out. And you. And look at you—you’re living in the same town as the brother and you’re reading the father’s book, now you can understand that we need to ask you some questions.”
“I know how it looks,” I said, “but I—”
“And I know you have an alibi with the bookstore and everything, but from what we hear this Lauren girl is also your girlfriend, so it’s not exactly an airtight alibi, all right? She might be covering for you.”
“But I swear to you I—”
“—was doing inventory, I know, but look. I have to tell you that anything you say may be used in a court of law, you know, but you have to help me here. I look at you and I can’t picture you barging into the Morrison Lab, late at night, with a ton of clay, and ripping that boy apart, even if your girlfriend would agree to swear, by penalty of perjury, that you were really doing inventory. It doesn’t make sense. And a big college boy like you could get a lawyer who would make everybody see it doesn’t make sense. That’s why you’re not in jail, and why you’re technically free to leave whenever you want. But tell me what’s—what’s going on. What is this?”
“What did the rabbi say it was?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“A monster, right
?” I said quietly. I looked down at the Official Statement and saw that it had blurred, the ink smearing beneath my palms. “Isn’t that what he said?”
“He said he wasn’t sure.”
“But a monster, right?”
“He said he wasn’t sure.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Of course not. You can’t be sure about—”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened that summer? From the beginning. Or however you want.”
“I met Cynthia Glass,” I read, “in the fall of—”
“Just tell me about the summer ,” he said, “when you were living there. What happened? I mean, she died, the mother, right, but what happened?”
“An opera,” I said, “a melodrama.” And now, I didn’t add, it was a monster movie: You gotta believe me, Sheriff! Big and clay and coming this way! “The Glasses—they—everybody was sleeping together. I think. I’m pretty sure. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Whether they were or I just thought they were—”
“It matters a lot,” Good Cop said. “Where’d you get the idea it doesn’t matter , for chrissakes?”
“A book,” I said, and then I remembered. Sheepishly. “From the father. Dr. Glass. Ben.”
“That book you’re carrying around wherever you go?”
“It’s helping me,” I said. “I’m trying to—I’m in recovery from all these things that happened.” I looked down at the Statement again; it was blurrier, but not, I realized, from sweat at all. I was crying all over it. “I consider myself sick. It’s difficult for me to—”
“What do you mean, everybody was sleeping together? They were all having affairs?”
I took a breath and remembered the second step: I had to believe that a power greater than me could restore me to sanity. If I wanted a Styrofoam cup of coffee, I had to throw my change in the coffee can decorated with Bindings giftwrap stickers, contributing to the Employee Coffee Fund. But the government was paying for Good Cop’s coffee. That was power. Faith. The second step. “With each other ,” I said. My reflection wiped its nose. “With each other .”
I caught Good Cop mid-sip and he grimaced and swallowed, reluctantly. Mimi had done that when she stood up, retying her nightgown. “You mean—? You can’t be—?” His reflection wiped its eyes. “No.”
“It’s true.”
“All of—I can’t believe you.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes. And then Mimi—that’s the mom—was so upset about it that I think she, I don’t know, dabbled in voodoo or something. Jewish voodoo—she built a—you’re not going to believe this part, but she would sneak down to the basement and perform, I don’t really—some kind of experiment, no, some kind of ritual I guess. I know it’s hard to believe, but she was sneaking downstairs and—”
“She couldn’t,” Good Cop said darkly, “even bend her knees. Listen to you. The rabbi told me, O.K.? She was very sick. She wasn’t sneaking around doing whatever you think she was sneaking around doing.”
“I saw her,” I said. “I saw her bending her knees. I don’t think—look, I know how it sounds—”
Good Cop glared at me, his reflection, I could see, shimmering in the one-way glass. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I’m not sure she’s dead.”
Not shimmering. He was trembling.
“They all,” I said, “slept together. I know this. And she made a monster and now it’s killed Stephen. Probably me next, or maybe Ben.”
“You are sick,” he said. “Talking about a family that way. A family with so much—the rabbi told me all about it, all this tragedy—and then at the funeral, the daughter being—and now look at you, telling these sick stories. Who are you? What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m trying,” I said, but when I looked at my reflection I saw it was useless. I heard, suddenly, what it all sounded like, all this ranting and opera and voodoo. Nothing. All these half-remembered details forced into a myth, like a foot in a glass slipper—these were just nothing and semantics. My faith was crumbling like the rim of a cheap cup and I couldn’t think of anything, anything to say. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Nothing,” Good Cop barked. “We can’t do anything. Any lawyer could get you out of here in five minutes anyway, we don’t have anything against you except you seem like you’ve lost your fucking mind.” He stood up and put his hand firmly on the back of my neck, the way a lover might in order to kiss you harder or to keep your tongue in that very spot, because you were so close. A fucking mind indeed. But he was just escorting me out.
Bad Cop was sitting behind grimy glass in the lobby, giving me a manila envelope with my keys, my wallet and Breaking the SPELL, and a dirty look. To have been behind the mirror he would’ve had to sprint, unless there was a network of hallways I couldn’t see, a whole way of getting around that was denied me. I’d believe that, too. Anything.
“We’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Good Cop said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t leave town,” Bad Cop said, a stock exit line if there ever was one.
Out in the parking lot I realized blankly that the Cops had driven me there, leaving my car outside my apartment. I was only a few squares away but I didn’t know how I’d get there. I believed that a power greater than me could restore me to sanity, still, but I wasn’t sure it would get me a ride. Until I saw Lauren in the parking lot. Leaning against her car, shielding her eyes with those angular sunglasses only Gentiles can pull off. Without a word, her face unreadable behind the UV protection, she opened the passenger door and left it gaping as she strolled around to drive me home. We hadn’t been going out very long, hadn’t met her family yet even though they were just a couple of towns over. Lauren was Assistant Manager, which meant she didn’t have to sign in and out when she took breaks. Her change stayed in the tidy pocket of her wallet because she was welcome to have a cup from the Manager’s espresso machine in his office. She was, it occurred to me as I buckled up, a power greater than me. I let her drive me home any route she wanted, having reached the third step: I made a decision to turn my will and life over to a higher power.
“I don’t,” she said, breaking the silence, “like lying to the police,” and I knew I had to answer her.
Step 4
My bed wasn’t made and I was pretty sure that wouldn’t turn out to be an opportunity to lie in it. Lauren put down her purse on the same little prefab table where she always put her purse down; behind it a subscription card from some magazine I’d swiped from Bindings leaned up against the wall like a white picket fence.
“Everyone at work is talking about it,” she said, sitting down in one of the chairs still in tableau from Step 1.
“Am I going to get fired?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I covered for you, but everybody knows about”—she gestured at the unmade bed—“us. Even the cops know.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today,” I said.
“It’s O.K. Slow day. Those new Charlotte’s Web Syndromes came in, but the world can wait until tomorrow for that.”
“Right,” I said. I sat down on the bed but it sagged beneath me, untrustworthy and loose, and I moved to the floor, dropping the manila envelope beside me. Lauren’s eyes followed me like I was curtsying to her.
“What is going on?” she said, finally.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Well, I—I guess I do know. Sort of, anyway.”
“The police asked where you were last night,” she said. “I told them you were doing inventory at the store, because that’s where you were supposed to be. I wish you would stop doing that, by the way. George—well, everybody thinks I let you get away with it because you’re my—whatever-you-are.”
“Boyfriend. What?”
“A boyfriend,” she said carefully, as if learning a new word, “wouldn’t keep blowing off work when he knows that his girlfriend won’t fire him. What do you do, when you disappear like that? Where do you go
?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, wherever you go, now you’re in trouble with the police. And I am, because I lied. Shit! How’d you even—what in the world—some murder , is that right? At the Morrison Lab?”
“My”—can’t say girlfriend—“brother.”
She blinked, softened like a crumbling cake. “Your brother? Your brother has been killed? Jesus, Joseph!” She said it again. “Jesus, Joseph.” All that was missing was Mary. “I didn’t even know you had a brother.”
I sighed. “He’s not my brother,” I said. “He’s someone else’s. He’s the brother of—”
The cake re-iced. “Joseph,” she said, “what are you talking about?”
I felt myself sink in, drawing weight. “You matter,” Breaking the SPELL said in what I now would hear as Ben’s voice. I was matter. I felt my whole weight and volume sink into the rug, all angst and Archimedes’s Principle. “It’s a long story,” I said.
“I took the day off.” Behind her, the pale sun filtered through the screen and Santa’s head, bending the light all wrong and mangled, the wrong way. The day was off, all right.
“I met Cyn Glass,” I said, “in the fall of several years ago.”
I met Lauren the day I got my job, and she was the one who recommended the converted motel to me when I mentioned I needed a place to live. She tried to draw a map on the back of a promotional flyer for a lowfat cookbook with recipes in it she actually cooked for me later, in her identical apartment eight doors down. The map came out all wrong and she decided to show me instead, giving me the job and letting me follow her down the highway past the cheap restaurants we’d later treat each other to. She parked gently and accurately, shrugging her car neatly between the lines so I could glide right in next to her, and I knew then, like the other girls in the other towns in the part I skipped over, that she’d let me into her body with the same tidy consideration. After two of the restaurants and three of the twelve screens at the multiplex down the way it was true. She had golden hair, long and dry like the hills of the drought, eyes so simple and clear they might have been biological models and breasts I would caress underneath her nametag when we’d take a break together. It shocked her. She was so noncommittal I couldn’t tell if she was struck dumb by my voraciousness or if there was just nothing else to do in the suburbs. She said she loved me and bought me a sweater which I removed, telling her I loved her, in order to bring her to quiet orgasm with my tongue while the stir-fry overcooked. She placed her hand on the back of my neck, like a police escort, to keep me in the right place. I hoped she always would. She was a healthy choice, like the reduced-fat yogurt instead of the full creamy richness at Get Your Licks. Lauren was promoted to assistant manager when I was promoted to the floor. Aside from the store we rarely saw each other more than twice a week, maintaining an equal fiction of busy lives even though I just moped at home with Breaking the SPELL and my own dirty mind, and she just printed mass mailings from her computer with all her high-school essays still saved on it. She was hoping to become a professional organizer. I was hoping to be professionally organized.
Watch Your Mouth Page 15
