The Janus Tree: And Other Stories Page 7

  “Ryan,” she said, and started to stand, and then she was just too tired. She watched him and offered nothing reassuring, just leaned her head into the side of the La-Z-Boy and let her hair droop almost to the floor. She didn’t cry, didn’t even want to. Mostly, she realized, she wanted to be alone. When was the last time she’d been alone, for any length of time? A month ago? Three?

  Ryan kept crying, kept saying, “Sorry.” Not until he was at the door did he say he’d be back. She couldn’t even rouse herself to nod or wave.

  Then she was by herself. She closed her eyes and listened. For a moment, she panicked. Even the wind outside seemed to have stilled, and nothing anywhere near her seemed to be breathing, not even her. Then, very low, she heard the rumble of Briney’s purr, and after that a sudden, rattling gasp from Joe, followed by another in no rhythm. Then silence again. She couldn’t even hear the air entering or leaving her own body. Maybe Mrs. Thiel was right, and she was more bonsai tree than wife. Decorative and silent.

  And she never had anything to say.

  Kagome. Even the name was meaningless, her mother had taken it from some childhood chant.

  Opening her eyes, Kagome sat up. She considered dialing her parents in Sendai. But talking to them from this house was like shouting across a mountain canyon. Her mother’s health—and, maybe, her father’s unexpressed sense of betrayal or just loss that she’d decided to settle here—had prevented them ever from coming. And Joe’s health had prevented his going. And years had piled up, like snow in the Snow Country, so deep and so quickly. Kagome didn’t have the strength to traverse them tonight.

  I know you, she was thinking, nonsensically. She sat.

  At some point, she considered calling Ryan. Telling him he had nothing to be sorry for, that it was her fault. If there was fault. That she loved his coming to the house, and knew his presence was at least as crucial to keeping Joe alive as her own. But then she decided she didn’t need to say this. Ryan was so bright, so intuitive despite his awkwardness. Like Joe was. Had been.

  To Kagome’s astonishment, Mrs. Thiel came home raving drunk. She stood swaying a while over her son, glared at Kagome, and Kagome wrapped her in a blanket and took her up to bed. The woman’s hands were rigid with cold, as though she’d shoved them in an ice-bucket for the past few hours. As Kagome flicked out the bedroom light, she heard Mrs. Thiel murmur, “Thank you, Kagome. You are, without question, the easiest person in the world to go through this with.”

  Kagome almost threw herself back across the room, shrieked in Mrs. Thiel’s face. I tried to fuck his friend, she almost said. Wished she’d said. Easiest?

  Instead, she shut the door and stood a few silent seconds on her balcony, in her silent house. That would soon be empty for real. Silent for good. She didn’t open her eyes until she was halfway down the staircase.

  The hospital bed was empty.

  At first, the sight made so little sense that Kagome couldn’t process it, couldn’t begin to think what to do. Then she was flying downstairs, all but crashing onto her face as she leapt the last five steps into the living room and stared around at the kitchen, the deck—Shit and God, had he thrown himself from the deck?—and saw nothing, and no one.

  “Joe?” she said. Spun back to the stairs, to the deck again, expecting the trilby man to materialize out there, he’d said he was coming, warned them he was.

  “Joe?”

  Then she heard it. One single sob. From the bathroom. Skidding across the hardwood, she rattled the knob, which was locked, beat with her palm against the door. “Joe? It’s me.”

  “I killed Briney.”

  In mid-beat, with her arm still raised, Kagome froze. “What?”

  Sob. Then a sawing, rattling gasp of a breath.

  “Joe, please.”

  “It wasn’t me. I couldn’t help it.” His voice so clear. As though, right at the end, he’d swallowed the tumor whole, or ripped it off in one last savage spasm of defiance.

  “Joe.”

  Sobbing.

  Cautiously, squeamishly—which was hilarious, in a way, given what she’d seen and done and immersed herself in ever since she’d married her husband—Kagome glanced around for the cat. Briney was so much Joe’s, she’d never developed a deep-seated attachment to it. But she’d loved the way it loved him.

  God, did he have it in there with him?

  Sinking to her knees, Kagome leaned her forehead into the door and closed her eyes, willing herself through the wood. “Joe. Please.”

  “It’s like I had no control over my hands. Like they weren’t my hands, anymore, I wasn’t even part of it.” Rasp. Rattle. Long silence. Sob.

  “I think I pulled her head completely off.”

  Kagome stifled a sob of her own, felt her fingers curl into claws, as though she could scratch her way through, opened her eyes and saw the cat. It lay curled sleepily in the impression Joe had left in the hospital bed when he’d somehow dragged himself off it, licking a forepaw, watching her through one half-open eye.

  “Joe? Joe, Briney’s fine. She’s right here.”

  Silence. So long that Kagome caught herself making loud, bellows-like sounds with her breath, as though she could blow air through the wood, around the tumor and into Joe’s desperate, deflating lungs. She knew what was happening, now. It had happened so many times. One of the new drugs—who even kept track anymore—had reacted with one of the old drugs. Or had built up in his system, or triggered some unexpected reaction. And now he was having an episode. And there was nothing to do about it except talk him through.

  “Kagome?” Joe said, and his voice sounded different yet again, so small, like a seven- year-old’s. “Kagome, I don’t want to die dumb. Please, I don’t want to be—”

  “What? What are you talking—”

  “What time is it?”

  “Huh? 1:15 or some—”

  “Date? What date? How long have I been like this?”

  Sick? Sad? Dying? She could hear in his wheeze that he was dying. The rattle had changed, gone heavy in his throat, like a motor shutting down. She started to weep, glanced sideways. The trilby man stood at the top of the stairs.

  All she could see of him, really, was his galoshes, the bottom of his coat, his legs up to his knees. No, she thought, shrinking back, looking frantically around for anything heavy. Something she could swing.

  I am coming to live in your mouth.

  “Won’t,” she heard Joe grunt, his breath bubbling. “Oh, God, not this way. How long? I killed the…I won’t. HOW LONG?”

  Thumping, as though Joe was pounding his own chest. Or driving his head into the wall. “Joe,” Kagome said, starting to weep.

  “I don’t want to be dumb.”

  “Dumb?”

  “I want to be me.”

  “Joe, You’ve been you since the day I—”

  “Date? What date? How long have I just been lying there? I killed the—”

  “Never,” she hissed. “Never, for one second, my husband, have you just been lying there.” She blinked, and the trilby man was closer. Three steps down from the balcony, visible to the waist now. Without even moving. I know you. Even as Kagome thought that, he was five steps down. Absolutely still, with his long arms at his sides. Like she was watching a spliced film.

  Because you never have anything to say.

  Trilby. Trilllll…

  She was panicking, frantic, wanting to flee the house and unable to move, rolling that word on her tongue. Over and over. Trilby. Useless name, for a hat no one wore. No one she’d ever known. Where had she even learned it?

  “I killed Briney. Kagome, WHAT TIME IS IT?!”

  “Constantinople,” she said abruptly, heard her husband gasp and go still.

  On the stairs, the trilby man winked closer. Still not moving, hands at his sides. She could see the top of the hat now, the head bent down on the chest, obscuring the face.

  “Come on,” Kagome muttered. Which of them did she mean? She didn’t know, wasn’t
sure it mattered.

  “Calcutta,” Joe whispered, voice catching hard, ripping on the teeth of his cough, and Kagome threw her head back, almost smiling. Almost.

  “Cheating,” she said, as tears erupted down her cheeks. “Hasn’t officially changed its name yet.”

  “Just because…” Ripping, ravaging cough. Then the rattle, low and long. “…the west hasn’t acknowledged, doesn’t mean…”

  “Fine. Chennai.” The trilby man’s rubber soles reached the hardwood floor. Kagome watched him come. I will not move, she was chanting, deep inside herself. I will not move.

  Trilby.

  “That’s cheating,” Joe said.

  Through her tears, Kagome watched the trilby man twitch closer, and gripped the doorframe to keep from collapsing. The grin that broke over her face was different than any she’d ever felt there.

  “How so?” she whispered. Knowing the answer. Wanting him to tell her. To have the pleasure. To play, once more. Fight, a little longer.

  “It’s…the name changed. Not the name…it was.”

  “Madras,” she said.

  “Madras,” said Joe. “I’m sorry, Kagome.”

  The trilby man was five feet away; next time he moved they’d be touching. There was nothing to swing at him. Nowhere to run, and even if there was.

  Mulliner. Coming to live…

  “Sorry?” Kagome said, staring at the hat tipped down, the hidden face. I KNOW you. “Joe, you have nothing—”

  “For not staying. I can’t stay.”

  “Joe. Let me in.”

  “Can’t…reach the door. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

  Weeping, glaring her defiance, Kagome turned her back on the trilby man, put her mouth to the crack between the door and the wall, and began to whisper. “I love you, Joe. I love you, Joe. I love you, Joe.”

  Then she remembered.

  Where else would she have heard such a nothing word but from her husband? Tall things, he’d called them, in the year of his interferon dreams. Whisperers, in trilby hats.

  Angels of death? Walking tumors, whispering in the blood?

  Or…What had that doctor said?

  From the top of the stairs, there was a new sound, now. A whimper, climbing towards keening.

  In her ears, Kagome could still hear the slow song Ryan had sung. Sworn he hadn’t sung. On her shoulders, she could feel his hands, the way they’d moved, and hadn’t moved. And in her mouth, she could taste his tongue. The sweat on his cheek that had tasted so sweet. So sweetly familiar.

  Mulliner. Never before, not even once…

  “Kagome?” Mrs. Thiel sobbed.

  ‘It’s a myth, you know. That we can’t kill cancer. We can kill anything. Just…not selectively.’ That’s what that doctor had said. ‘Now, if your husband could oblige by stepping aside, figure a way to climb out of there, just for a month or two…’

  Had he?

  Kagome whirled, heart hurtling up her chest, borne on a boil of grief and nausea and loneliness and terror and hope?

  Joe?

  Mrs. Thiel had reached the bottom of the stairs, was staring at Kagome, at the closed door behind her. The rattling in the bathroom had stopped. Had been stopped for too long now. Kagome glared back, across the empty room, past her mother-in-law toward the pine trees outside. All that empty, useless wind.

  “No,” Mrs. Thiel said, and Kagome felt her mouth curl once more, into a snarl she’d never known she had in her. Because it had never been there. She’d seen it before, though. In those rare moments Joe didn’t think she was looking, and the pain came for him, and he somehow roused that fury in there and fought it back one more time.

  Whatever was coming, she thought. It was here.

  * * *

  With special thanks to Norman Partridge for the loan of the nightmare…

  You Become The Neighborhood

  “How’d it start?” Mom asks, taking a step back toward the curb. Her long-fingered hands have curled up at her sides like smacked daddy longlegs, and her braid has come loose and swings back and forth, gray and heavy, across her back. “How’d it start? How do I know?”

  She tears her eyes away from the little triplex, just for a moment, and looks at me. I flinch, start to take her hand, but I’m afraid to. For so many years, after we left here, I’d see that expression bubble up, triggered by nothing: a bus sighing on a nearby street corner, or the sight of a tent-sukka billowing off the side of someone’s porch, or a flying beetle landing on her hand, or a summer wind. Then she’d start screaming at me, or whoever was near. Even then, I knew it wasn’t really me, and that did help, some.

  Behind her, the sunset has ignited the smog, and the evening redness rises on the horizon behind the hazy towers of Century City, barely visible less than a mile from here. The traffic on Olympic is Sunday-evening sparse, the noise and the heat of it lapping around us rather than crashing down, the way it mostly did when we lived here. Low tide.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, starting back around the corner toward the side-street where we parked. “I didn’t mean to bring you here. I actually forgot this place was so near. I just thought you’d want to see the building where Danny and I are going to be liv—”

  “Do you remember the turtle?” my mother asks. And then she just folds her legs under her and sits down in the square of grass in front of the triplex. The angry expression has vanished. But there are tears. “Ry? Do you remember?”

  She pats the grass. My legs are bare under my skirt, and if I sit there, they’re going to itch. I do it anyway. For a moment, I wonder what whoever currently lives in the front apartment will think, two women camped on their lawn with their backs to the traffic and their eyes riveted to those bay windows like paparazzi. But if the existing tenants are anything like we were, they’ll never open those curtains—too many cars passing, too stark a reminder of the carbon monoxide seeping through every little gap in the walls and window frames—so they’ll never see us.

  All at once, I do remember. And I find myself glancing toward the hedge, then the back alley where the dumpster is, half-expecting to see that little, darker-green hump in the grass. That tiny, wrinkled head turned slightly sideways. “So it can see the sky.” That’s what Evie used to tell me.

  “A hundred years after we die,” I say.

  “What?” snaps my mother.

  “Sorry. It’s what she used to say. Evie. She said that turtle of hers could live 250 years. She’d already had it for like 20. She said we could come back here a hundred years after we die and there it would be. Just being.”

  “Evie,” my mother says, and for the first time all night—in a long while, really, at least around me—she offers up her gentle, close-lipped smile. Her softest one, that I loved so much when I was little, and lost when we left here. “Oh, God, Ry, you should have seen her.”

  “Mom, you used to make me call her Adopted Grandma. Didn’t she walk me home from nursery school when you were at work? I saw her all the time.”

  “Not this time, you didn’t. Oh, wow.” To my amazement, my mother starts to laugh. Right on cue, from all the way down Olympic, comes a whiff of ocean breeze, just strong enough to blow out the laughter like a candle. Her shoulders tremble, though she can’t possibly be cold. My shins have begun to itch.

  I put my palms in the grass and make to stand, saying, “Well, I guess we should go.”

  But my mother is still smiling. At least, I think she is. “You asked how it started.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Maybe this is it. I mean, obviously, it’s not the beginning, it had to have been in full swing by then, but this is the first one I really remember. This is as close to the beginning as I can get.”

  Her shoulders tremble again. “Leyton,” she says. “Mr. Busby, I mean…”

  “I know who you meant, Mom.”

  “I actually don’t know why he didn’t blame me. Because it was kind of my fault.”

  I sigh, roll my head back on my neck to watch the rib
bons of orange run the rim of the sky like a brush fire along a ridge. My mother follows my eyes up, and she goes rigid. She says something, too, but I can’t make it out. I sigh again. “I’m not sure this qualifies as starting at the beginning.”

  “Mr. Busby’d moved in…I don’t know…six months before? Fall of ‘95. I think.”

  “Did Evie always hate him?”

  “I don’t think she ever hated him, Ry.”

  “What are you talking about? Why else would—”

  “She hated his being here. Totally different, in this case.”

  “Okay. Why did she hate him being here?”

  My mom looks at me, and I want to weep. I’ve never actually seen the expression I unleash on her every fifteen minutes or so during our Sunday-night outings. But I suspect it looks like that. If that’s true, at least my mother can’t be as fragile as she generally appears.

  “Why do you think?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Okay. I just meant that that always surprised me about Evie. She seemed so open about everything, and everyone. Always talking about the Clintons, and propositions, and Greenpeace. I’m pretty sure she taught me all those words.”

  My mother nods. I’m still surprised she’s let us sit here this long. “I think the riots really spooked her. Remember, she was eighty-four years old. She’d lived here a long, long time. For most of that, this neighborhood was one hundred percent Jews.”

  “A lulav in every window,” I say, and my mother laughs.

  “An etrog on every plate. Where’d she even get that? I’ve never seen an etrog on anyone’s plate. Have you?”

  I laugh, too. And my surprise tilts toward amazement. I am sitting with my mother in front of our childhood home—the one we left for the last time in an ambulance, with my mother in restraints and screaming—and we’re laughing.

  “So anyway,” my mother says. “Here’s our coal-skinned new retiree neighbor Mr. Busby, walking around the yard all the time in his half-buttoned, purple satin shirts—”

  “That’s right, those shirts!”

  “—with his barrel chest stuck out. And there’s little Evie, trapped upstairs tending to Stan—that was her husband—who was pretty much just a pool to pour morphine in by then. So mostly, she just stared out the window.”