Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  “Shut up and blow.”

  “Not unless you promise first that you’ll go find that shoe… with someone along who’s got your back.”

  “Or what? You gonna snot me to death?”

  “Damn straight.”

  36

  Three hours later I had a spiffy air cast and sling, seven stitches in a newly shaved oval on the side of my head, a fully realized black eye, and a bellyful of painkillers.

  Skwarecki was gone, and I lay propped up on my gurney back in the ER, waiting for Dean to arrive with Christoph’s Jeep. I couldn’t feel a goddamn thing except for a velvet opiate glow floating around and through my entire body.

  I had on cop-issue sweatpants and a hospital smock. A nurse had tucked a pillow under my damaged arm to help the swelling go down, explaining that I couldn’t have a real cast for at least twenty-four hours.

  My fat, bruise-dark fingers seemed adequate proof of that thesis, sticking straight out from the end of the whole splint shebang like stiff little breakfast links.

  I didn’t care. I was in fact wasted to the point of being awed by the soulful beauty emanating from each person whom fate had contrived into ER with me: Dr. Hairy Hands, all the nurses, the little boy puking into a green plastic pan next bed over—even the homeless-looking dude with blood gushing from his flattened nose.

  One love, Jah guide.

  “Bunny?”

  I looked up at my husband’s stricken face and smiled. “Hey, it’s so great to see you.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got hit by a car,” I said.

  “I know. Your friend Skwarecki told me on the phone. Are you okay?”

  “I’m really, really good. Really.”

  “You’re on really, really good drugs right now.”

  “Mm. Yes! Innnnndubitably.”

  “Not to harsh your buzz,” he said, “but you also look like you got beaten to shit.”

  “I fought the car and the car won. Doobie-do.”

  I closed my eyes, grooving on how the fluorescent lights made the inside of my eyelids glow pretty and scarlet. “ Wow.”

  “I’m going to go see how I sign you out. Then we’ll get you home.”

  “You’re amazing. Thank you so much for being so amazing… all the, like, time.”

  He smoothed a strand of hair off my forehead. “Bunny, have you eaten today?”

  “Food,” I said, “ wow.”

  I dozed off until he came back with a nurse. They put my high-tops back on, then helped me sit up before gently swinging my legs over the side of the gurney.

  They’d parked a wheelchair right next to me, but just leaning a few inches to port so I could reach for the floor with my right sneaker’s toe loosed a retinal cascade of hot, sharp little stars.

  Dean bent down to brace me, his mouth close to my ear. “Bunny?”

  “Can’t,” I said, eyes shut again.

  I felt him wrap one arm around my waist and snake the other beneath my knees. “Okay?”

  I leaned into him. “Feel sick.”

  “I got you,” he said, lifting me gently off the gurney. “Don’t worry.”

  I remember Dean fastening my seat belt, and then the sun glittering on the East River when we drove across a bridge.

  “Look,” I said. “All those girders. All that sky.”

  His hand was light on my knee. “Home soon. Go back to sleep.”

  “Wakey-wakey,” chirped Pagan. “We got you a cheeseburger.”

  I was on the sofa, adrift in a bay of pillows.

  Pagan and Sue and Dean were seated around the coffee table next to me, prising lids off a bunch of crimped-foil take-out containers.

  “You guys rule,” I said, voice croaky. “Anything to drink?”

  Sue slid a tall paper cup across the table. “Pepsi—not diet. Dean figured you could use the sugar.”

  I pulled it closer with my left hand, then tried to lift my head

  toward the straw.

  No luck, and my mouth felt like a coal scuttle.

  “Here.” Sue bent the straw at its crinkled hinge, picked up the whole vessel, and tucked it into my armpit. “Can you reach?”

  “Think so.” I craned my head up a couple of inches and managed to get the straw between my teeth.

  The cup shifted, ice sloshing, and a tide of sweet effervescence flooded my mouth.

  Heaven.

  “Big excitement today, huh?” asked Pagan.

  “I guess.” I sucked down another sip of cola bliss.

  She dipped a french fry in catsup. “What were you, wandering around in the middle of the road?”

  “Sidewalk,” I said. “I heard the tires hit the curb.”

  “Before the actual car hit you?” she asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  Sue took a bite of her own fry, examining my sling and air cast. “Fucked you right the hell up—”

  “But thank you for not dying,” added Pagan.

  “No shit,” I said, grazing the coffee table’s wooden edge with my knuckles in gratitude.

  Dean had a burger in his hand, but he didn’t raise it to his mouth. “Bunny, do you think this had anything to do with the little cemetery kid?”

  “Skwarecki doesn’t think so,” I said. “I mean, maybe in a small town the whole thing would be fishy, but it’s Queens—couple of million people?”

  “Rush hour,” said Sue. “Everybody driving like maniacs?”

  “Exactly. What are the odds, right?” I got the straw in my teeth again.

  Dean took a bite of burger, chewed, and swallowed. “You mentioned two guys, though, when we were coming home from the hospital. And one of them left?”

  “Prospect is off the main drag,” I said. “The front gate’s on this little unpaved lane across from a college, and there were some people walking by. Skwarecki was way late. These two guys came out from the subway—a little walkway under the tracks—and then they were hanging out in the campus gate across from me. Not like they were sharpening machetes or anything, but I figured I should move out to the street. There was a bus stop, more people around.”

  “And then you got run over?” asked Pagan.

  “Run under, really. That car had me airborne like a bull with a rodeo clown.”

  “You landed on your arm?” asked Sue.

  “I don’t know. I hit my head on the roof and then bounced.”

  “That explains the stitches,” said Pagan.

  I shrugged and then winced. “We got any more painkillers? Everything’s starting to throb again.”

  “In the kitchen,” said Dean, taking one more quick bite of his burger before standing up to go get them.

  “You are a young bronzed god,” I called after him.

  “You’re high,” his voice echoed back down the hallway.

  “So what happened with the two guys?” asked Pagan.

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “Just… when I looked back over my shoulder, one of them was gone, and the other one was kind of smiling at me.”

  “Smiling, like ‘creepy grin of foreboding’ or just ‘have a nice day’?” she asked.

  “Pagan,” said Sue, “when’s the last time some strange guy smiled at you without whipping out a box cutter and demanding your wallet?”

  “Last month, on the subway,” answered my sister.

  “You mean the one who whipped out his dick and then barfed on you?” I asked.

  Sue settled back into her chair, arms crossed. “My point exactly.”

  “He didn’t really barf on me,” said Pagan. “His briefcase got the worst of it.”

  Dean came back in, white paper bag in hand. “Want me to unscrew the cap for you?”

  “Please,” I said.

  He shook out a pair of tablets into the palm of my left hand. “Got enough soda left to swallow those?”

  “Sure.” I dumped them into my mouth and washed them down.

  “Now eat some burger,” he said.

  “Fries first, okay?”


  He picked up a few and held them to my lips.

  I bit off half and started chewing, mumbling “Need salt” through my mouthful of potato.

  Dean shook his head. “No they don’t.”

  I started to call him a rat bastard and he shoved the fry-ends into my open mouth.

  “No fair,” I said once I’d swallowed.

  “ Eat,” he said.

  The phone rang and Sue grabbed it.

  I turned away from the piece of cheeseburger Dean was swooping toward my mouth.

  “Actually,” said Sue, “this is her roommate, but she’s right here next to me on the sofa.”

  I looked at her, mouthing, “Who?”

  Dean plucked the Pepsi cup out of my armpit so Sue could hand me the phone.

  “What’s-her-name,” she said. “The cop.”

  I raised the receiver to my ear, straining its piglet-tail of cord.

  “Skwarecki?”

  “The one and only. How’s that shiner?”

  “I’m avoiding mirrors, like a vampire.”

  “Excellent plan.”

  “Hey,” I said, “thank you for taking such good care of me today. I owe your ass, big-time.”

  “Fuck that noise. Least I could do—I mean, if I’d shown up when I was supposed to…?”

  “Not your fault,” I said.

  She sighed. “At least I’m gonna end your day on a better note.”

  I glanced at my blackened fingers, now swollen to the point of being shiny. “That wouldn’t be hard, but do tell.”

  “I got it, Madeline.”

  “Got what?”

  “The fucking shoe,” she said. “Right here in front of me on my fucking desk—ALF’s face on it and everything.”

  I felt light-headed. “The rest of today was worth it, then.”

  “I may have something about that, too,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Partial plate number, and a description of the car. I can’t promise you anything, but my guys’re trying to narrow it down, okay?”

  I gave the coffee table another tap for luck. “God love you,

  Skwarecki—tits and all.”

  Dean coaxed half the burger down me before I started drifting from shore on a riptide of sleep.

  I woke up in the dark when a sanitation crew rolled east up Sixteenth Street, slamming each building’s metal cans empty against the lip of their truck’s hopper.

  The stereo’s green LEDs read 4:02. I still couldn’t open my left eye, and my bones hurt like I was getting crushed and compacted right along with the garbage.

  Two notes of sharp whistle from below and the driver eased off the clutch, lumbering on toward Sixth Avenue. In the streetlight’s orange glow I saw that someone had left me more painkillers laid out on the table beside a coffee mug.

  I fumbled for the pills, so stiff and sore I had to rest the cup on my chest and tip it toward me without lifting my head. Lukewarm rivulets of tap water coursed down both sides of my neck, soaking the back of my collar before I got enough in my mouth for a decent swallow.

  The streetlight snapped off and the brick buildings across from us looked gray in the predawn quiet. The pills were starting to kick in by the time Dean padded out into the living room, around four thirty.

  He yawned, glancing at the empty coffee mug. “You found that smack I left out for you?”

  “Right after the garbage truck woke me up. Thank you—much needed.”

  “Think you can get to Saint Vincent’s by yourself today?”

  “Saint Vinnie’s? For what?”

  “To get your real cast on,” he said. “Sue got the doctor from yesterday to switch your appointment, save you a trip to Queens.”

  “Cool,” I said, grateful for her foresight. St. Vincent’s was just a few blocks down Seventh Avenue.

  He sat down on the sofa’s edge just below my hip. “I have to pick up Christoph this morning, early. Will you really be okay on your own?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Bunny, are you sure this doesn’t have anything to do with the

  cemetery?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “Absolutely.”

  Dean reached for my good hand, weaving his fingers with mine.

  “Bullshit,” he said, giving my digits a squeeze.

  I squeezed back. “You making coffee or what?”

  They’d wanted more X-rays at St. Vincent’s.

  I’d spent most of the morning drifting in and out of sleep on the sofa, then hauled myself up an hour before my two o’clock appointment, not sure how I was going to get dressed. In the end I’d stuck with Skwarecki’s sweats and found an old T-shirt of Dean’s. I drew one sleeve carefully up over my damaged arm before trying to get my head in through the neckhole, but the effort made me so dizzy I had to feel for the edge of our bed and sit down for a minute, the gray cotton still wrapped around my face like a bank robber’s stocking mask.

  After that it took me half an hour to shuffle a mere three blocks down Seventh Avenue.

  I’d been waiting two hours since getting my arm irradiated, cooling my heels on a plastic hallway chair.

  A young Indian guy walked toward me, folder in hand, white coat hanging loose over his green scrubs. He looked exhausted.

  “Miss Dare? Can you come with me?”

  I stood up and followed him down the hall to a small examining room.

  “This is quite a bad break,” he said when I’d scooted up onto the vinyl-upholstered exam table.

  “Are there good ones?”

  He held up an X-ray. “I’m just saying it could have been cleaner.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Well, we’ll get you into a cast today. The swelling’s gone down enough for that. And they did as good a job of setting the bones yesterday as possible. But I’ll want you back here in a week for another look to see if everything’s knitting up properly. Then get those stitches out of your scalp.”

  He checked the X-ray again. I wouldn’t describe him as looking pleased with it.

  “What if it’s not?” I asked.

  “Hm?”

  “What happens if everything doesn’t knit properly?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, then we just have to break the bones again and reset them. Maybe throw a pin in there.”

  Just?

  “Let’s get that cast on, then, shall we?” he said.

  37

  Mom came down again from Maine the following Tuesday, alone this time. Larry was off at some reunion through the weekend—

  college or nuclear, I didn’t quite catch which.

  I’d gone downstairs to the street after she buzzed from the lobby, okay enough to help schlep a load of stuff from the back of her double-parked car despite my cast.

  It was getting cold out. Mid-October and the leaves on our street’s little trees were turning colors and falling into the gutters.

  I stepped outside, over the milk crate of rummage-sale oddments Mom had used to jam the lobby door open.

  She bustled across the courtyard toward me with two brimming brown-paper grocery bags.

  “Can you take this one, you think?” she asked. “It’s just noodles and a bottle of lemon juice.”

  “Sure.”

  “It goes in the kitchen,” she said. “I’m making dinner tonight.”

  She dropped the other bag on the floor and went back out to her car.

  Picking my way blind back over the milk-crate doorstop, I tried to gain some purchase underneath the bag. There was a rip starting down the side.

  A ball of iceberg lettuce sat on top of everything else and I tried to hold it in place with my chin, but it got away from me and bounced across the dirty floor, smack into the door of the elevator.

  I waddled over and gave the lettuce a sharp side kick, hoping it would ricochet into the baby strollers behind the stairs so we wouldn’t be forced to eat it.

  Some people employ a five-second rule to gauge
the edibility of food that’s touched floor. Mom prefers more flexibility, like “November.”

  The errant globe of iceberg banked off the bottom step’s outer corner and rolled right back to the center of the room, just to mock me.

  I heard the click of my mother’s shoes against tile as she entered the lobby.

  Though laden with a trio of canvas ice bags, she swooped to recapture the battered lettuce with a graceful curtsy.

  “Can you press the elevator button for me?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  I waited for the doors to open while she bounded up the stairs like a freaking gazelle.

  I mashed my cast into the floor buttons, not knowing whether I’d managed to press “Two” in there somewhere until the conveyance wheezed to a halt at our level.

  The doors opened and I stepped into the hallway just in time for the grocery bag to blow out.

  A ReaLemon bottle smashed into acidic green shards at my feet, closely followed by a hard rain of pasta boxes, one of which tripped down the stairs, back toward the lobby.

  “This broom is a piece of shit,” said Mom. “You should throw it away.”

  She squatted down and began sweeping broken glass and lemon juice into our dustpan with the edge of her hand.

  “ Stop,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”

  She ignored me.

  I stepped into the puddle. “Do you not recall the time you stuck your hand underwater in the kitchen sink to grab the broken wineglass?”

  Mom looked up. “That was years ago, Madeline.”

  “Nineteen sixty-seven,” I said, “in Jericho.”

  “How do you even remember this shit?” she asked.

  “The kitchen wallpaper was gray, with orange windmills. And you bled all over the fucking place and had to get five stitches.”

  “Four,” she said.

  “Use the dustpan. It’s not like I’m in any shape to apply a tourniquet.”

  “Now I don’t know how I’m going to make dinner,” said Mom.

  We were in the kitchen, with everything stowed away except the remaining ingredients for her meal.

  “What were you planning to cook?” I asked.

  “Angel hair with parsley and smoked mussels and soy sauce and lemon juice, but of course I no longer have lemon juice.”