The Illusionist (25 page)

At last I fell into a shallow sleep. Then, somewhere in the middle of the night, I heard it—a barking sound coming from the other room.

“Bobby.” I was out of bed like a shot, Dean right behind me.

Bobby hadn't even woken up, but I knew the signs of trouble,
as surely as I knew my own breathing. His face was flushed. I unzipped the sleeper pajamas as he lay there and studied his rib cage. There was no retraction in his rib cage. Dr. Vakil said always look and see if there's retraction, like the stomach's sticking to the back of the ribs. That means he's having trouble getting air. I waited a few minutes, watching him. He wasn't waking up. After a while I decided he was okay, and we returned to our bed.

But at dawn, I heard the sound once more, an inhuman cry, like an animal's.

“When did I give him the last mask?” I asked Dean. My head was all fogged up, I couldn't remember.

“About eight,” Dean said.

“That's nearly twelve hours. I can give him another.”

I took Bobby into our bed, and I held him against me while he dozed and breathed in though the mask and Dean sat at the end of the bed watching us.

“Maybe I can handle it myself,” I said. “We got it early. Dr. Vakil said if you catch it before it really starts you can prevent it sometimes.”

Bobby finished the medicine and lay back against my breast, fast asleep. He was exhausted from the effort of trying to breathe.

Outside the window, the snow had stopped. The sky was growing lighter, it was a flat gray color, the world out there empty seeming. You could only see white now, miles and miles of white. I lay back against the headboard, holding Bobby, and closed my eyes. “Yesterday was my last sick day,” I told Dean. “If I don't go in today, they're gonna fire me.”

There's no difference between night and day now in our overheated house. Mommy comes and goes to her job at the travel agency and I can feel her worried eyes on me all the time. And I'm just lying there on the couch with the TV going and a blanket over me. If I can't actually die, this is the closest I can get to it, hardly ever going out except to buy my cigarettes—maybe the cigarettes'll kill me—I don't care—not talking to anyone, seeing anyone, eating only candy, Skittles, and Mountain Dew to survive, sleeping all day.

On Sunday morning, she stands there all beautiful and ready in her camel hair coat, her little boots with the fur trim, fresh lipstick, sweet-scented, holding her keys, ready for church.

“You better get dressed. It's quarter of.”

“I'm not going.”

“Why!”

She already knows I'm not going. I told her that after what happened to Dean. But she won't believe me.

“Why should I go?” I say. “I prayed and prayed. It didn't do me any good.”

“C'mon, it'll make you feel better.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, turning my eyes back to the TV.

“Come. We still have a few minutes. I'll wait for you. Just come with me.”

“If you'd let him stay with us it wouldn't have happened.”

“I did it out of love for you, Mellie.” She is beseeching me. She knows what she has done. “I'm your mother. My job is to protect you. Besides, he was a criminal, a thief. I couldn't have him here.” She waits, watching me. “Why don't you just get dressed? Come with me.”

But I refuse to take my eyes off the TV.

“God did this. God let him go away from me.”

“Come on, Mellie. God didn't take him from you. God's got better things to do.” She hesitates. “You can't stay like this.”

I say nothing. Just keep my eyes on the TV, and the documentary about people who are a hundred years old and how they've managed to live so long, and one man is saying he ate lots of fatty foods and he lived a long time anyway.

“It'll help you get over it,” she says.

“What does ‘get over it' mean? I'll never get over it. I'm not going.”

I hear the jangle of her keys, the signal she's given up. I hear her open the front door, feel her hesitate, hoping I'll change my mind. But I don't.

*  *  *

One day during this time the doorbell rings. It's the middle of the day. I get up from the couch, my worn nylon blanket draped around my shoulders, wearing my bathrobe and my big socks for warmth. I look through the glass and I see that it's Brian. He's right there at eye level, just a few inches between us, his face peering in at me. “Go away! Get out of here!” I cry.

I turn away. He sees me walking away, and he starts banging on the front door and I can hear his voice muffled through the wood. “Melanie! I gotta talk to you! Open up!”

I lie back down on the couch and pull my blanket over me, and ostentatiously I turn my eyes to the TV so he can see through the glass that I'm going to ignore him, but he keeps on banging and banging until finally I get up and I unlock the door. But I keep the chain on.

“Go away.” I practically spit the words out. “Get out of here or I'm going to call the cops.”

“Please, Mellie.” He jams his foot in the space between the door and the house, keeping it open. “Please, lemme talk to you.”

“You make me sick.”

“Just talk to me. Please.” Now he's banging his body against the door, pounding it.

“I know what you did and you make sick.”

“I didn't, Mellie. I didn't.”

“No!” And I try to slam the door closed, but he stops me with the full force of his body.

He rams his shoulder against the door and I can feel the chain straining and I know he's going to snap it. It's a cheapo door, not even solid wood. “Stop it. You're going to break it. Okay,” I say. “I hate you.”

He steps back, and I unhook the chain, and I let him in.

His face is pale, his skin all rough and dry with the cold, I see, his hair wild and curly, hanging around his face like a white cloud. “I hate what you did,” I tell him. “I hope they put you in jail forever,” and I walk away back to the couch.

He follows me. Brian towers over me. Everyone else is afraid of Brian. But I am not.

I sit down on the couch, and suddenly he's on bended knees in front of me. “I can explain it! I can. Listen to me,” he says.

“You can't explain it.”

“I was wrong, Mellie. I was real crazy.” And now his wiry hands with their chapped knuckles are actually clasped together, as if he's praying or something. I refuse to answer him.

“You know about Cecil?” he asks.

“Cecil? Who's that?”

“Remember Cecil? My mom's boyfriend?”

I remember now. The one who used to beat him, and then locked him in the room without food.

“That fire down on River Street,” he says. “The two firemen
killed. One of them was Cecil.” He looks at me for a response. Like I should be sorry for him or something, like that was going to justify what he'd done to Dean.

His mother had still let that bully live in the house, even after what he did to Brian when he was a little boy, never could get rid of him. Let him live with her even after what he did to her own son.

“That doesn't make what you did right,” I say.

He backs up onto his haunches, and sits on the recliner in front of me. He hangs his head down between his knees, his long hair falling like a curtain over his face. “I was fucking crazy, man,” he says.

“You are sick, you are evil, Brian.”

“I know,” he says. “I know.” He raises his head, looks at me. And now I see that his face is covered with tears, gleaming like a sheet of glass. I see he is actually suffering, and for a moment I remember the kid in the yard blinking blinking like he'd just been struck. The little boy with the blank angel face not showing anything, any pain or awareness.

“Then turn yourself in,” I tell him.

“I was—” he begins. “Couldn't look at him.” I hear his voice break. He swallows. “I love you, Mellie. Since we were kids. When the others kids—”

“That's a great way to pay me back.”

“Just the sight of him. Knowing you liked him . . .” He squinches his eyes shut, like he can just see Dean in his mind, and the thought of it is unbearable. “Couldn't take it, man.” He opens his eyes, looks at me again. “Forgive me, Mellie.”

“Ask
Dean
to forgive you. Not me.”

“Dean's not here,” he says. “Jimmy's turning on me, he's talking to them.”

“Good. Tell them you did it.”

“Jimmy's my buddy. . . . He's the only other one. . . .” He stops. “Except you.”

“Jimmy!” I say. “That animal.”

“I don't know if I can take it again, Mellie, back in the can. You don't know what it's like in there. I can't do it again.”

“I wish I'd never been nice to you, Brian. I should've known. . . .”

At this, I see his eyes widen with surprise and hurt, like I've just hit him. “But I did it because I love you, Mellie,” he says. “ 'Cause you're the only one who's ever been good to me. I couldn't take his lies anymore. I wanted you to know the truth about him. You won't believe it, Mellie.”

“I know the truth. I love him, every little thing about him I love.” And suddenly I feel this rage boiling up inside me, consuming me. “Get out of my house! There's no way I'm gonna love you now, Brian. Ever.”

And I get up and I start pushing him toward the door, and though he's bigger than me, against the full force of my will, he is pushed back, like he's nothing and I have all the strength. “Just get the hell out,” I tell him. “I can never love you now, Brian. Never. Ever!”

I had broken Bobby's asthma. Done it myself. His breathing was even, calm, his eyes had lost their glassy look, his face was less red. But I was irresponsible, I hadn't taken him to the doctor, even though I could see the attack coming on. I could've gotten through the snow, though maybe the cold would've been worse for him. If I'd gotten stuck . . . still. It was my child's life, and I didn't take him to the Emergency. Dean didn't want me to because he was fixated on the idea Brian was hunting for him. I had to choose between my child and Dean, and I was choosing Dean. I was willing to lose my job because of him, just to stay with him. To give up the money we needed to eat. That was what love could do to you.

Late afternoon, and there was still a blizzard out. I had Bobby on the floor, sheets of newspaper spread out, doing Play-Doh. I'd found some old stuff, all dried up and crumbly in the bottom of his toy chest. But I was slowly running out of ways to keep him occupied. “Tomorrow,” I said to Dean, “one of us is going to have to walk to the store.”

Dean said nothing. Just sat at the table smoking his cigarette.

I'd lost track of all time, the days were one long, airless white tunnel now, merging into night into day again.

Through the window I saw the black sky, snowflakes illuminated by the light from the house coming down steadily like a curtain of lace.

He stood up, walked over to the kitchen window, and looked out through the snow toward the ridge.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“It's New Year's,” I said. “I gotta write in my diary. I've missed days.” My diary was in the top drawer of my bureau in the bedroom. The key was attached to it by the little chain, the brass rusted now because a full year had passed.

I carried the diary back into the living room. Dean was still standing at the window over the sink, his back to me. “You read my diary, don't you?” I said.

“What?” he asked, his eyes still on the horizon beyond the house.

“My diary,” I said.

He didn't answer. Seemed transfixed by the falling snow, by the wild ridge beyond, the dark shapes of the trees.

He didn't care what I knew. He wasn't even there with me anymore.

“Love me?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” He didn't look around, he was concentrating.

I unlocked my little book. Pale blue leather, with a gilded line around the edge. I flipped through the pages. There was an entry for almost every day, though lately I'd missed a few, I was so distracted because of Dean. But when I did miss an entry, I caught up the next day, recapitulating the events that came before.

I began to write:

We're together now for good, I think. I think he'll stay with me because he's got nowhere else to go. I think he loves me. . . . I know he will read this! Are you reading this, baby? When you read this, know that I love you and hope you love me. I have had happiness with you, Dean. . . . Happiness comes in strange forms—

“Terry—See that?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Up there, on that ridge?”

I got up, went over to the window, stood beside him. I looked out. But I saw nothing.

“I don't see it.”

“Thought I saw something. . . .”

“Probably just a deer.” I turned back to my diary, continued writing:

Who is to say how we will be happy? I don't care what you are. You have made my life better I found part of myself I didn't know about You are like a father to Bobby, the father he never had. And I know you really love him. Maybe you see yourself in him and you can do it right. Dear diary, everything will be okay I know it. Oops . . . gotta go Dean wants me. . . . He's calling to me. . . . I will just finish this please do not leave me again baby I can't help it I can't help it. Please do not—

After the holidays, Terry didn't return to work. Mr. Hanley said she'd called in sick with flu and was taking sick days.

But after a few days when she still hadn't shown up, Mr. Hanley phoned her house and there was no answer.

So, Wednesday, lunchtime, I drove over to West Taponac.