Rag Read online

  I spent more and more time parked outside the school. I didn’t bother with Wendy’s lunches; I put them straight in the trash. Those burgers had cured me. I was never hungry anymore. I slipped in and out of sleep while I waited for Alice. Summer was coming. Such blue skies. And Alice through the window, pulling something from her pencil box. Something raw. Liver? Chicken? She chewed and wrote in her notebook, swallowed and raised her hand to answer a question. I put my cheek on the passenger seat and fell asleep again.

  That evening, while Wendy did the dishes, I took Alice on my lap and felt how much heavier she had become since the day before. I was speechless. How did she do it? My knee trembled. She giggled.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Wendy said that night, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror. There’s no fat gene in my family.

  Hm, I said.

  You don’t seem concerned.

  I think she’s fine, I said.

  You always think that, she said darkly, snapping a piece of floss from its box. I shrugged and stood on the scale. Double digits. I smiled.

  What? she said. I blocked the number with my foot.

  Nothing, I said.

  I dreamt about living on pills, a glass of protein powder. I woke up choking, spitting blood on the pillow, the blood making the shapes of everything I’d ever craved: french fries, apple pies, barbecue. I beheld them with delight, no trace of hunger, my stomach a vat of calm, happy acid. Wendy’s gold head right next to mine, still asleep. I took the pillow, held it above her face, but didn’t press down.

  I drove to Alice’s school that afternoon, even though it was a Saturday. Wendy was with Alice at the doctor’s office, testing her blood for the third time that month. I closed my mouth around the stale air of the car; what would be floating there? Pieces of skin, particles of plastic, flakes of leather from the tan seats, all the dust of this particular moment. I closed my eyes and semen pumped effortlessly from my penis; the last of that liquid. I opened my eyes; there in the dark window of the classroom I saw Alice, standing with her pencil box in one hand, waving with the other. I waved back.

  At dinner I pushed my food away, silverware untouched, the minute scoop of rice and kale pristine on the plate. Wendy shook with rage. How dare I eat less than her, she was thinking. How dare it be so easy for me to refuse what she still needed. She told me I was ill, that Alice was ill, that she, Wendy, was trying her best to keep the family healthy but we never helped her. She stood at the head of the table, pointing her fork at my face. I could see a lot of veins beneath the skin of her arms, pulsing a livid blue. Hate, I knew, was keeping her alive. Her hate was in the food and that’s why I didn’t need it. But I’d kissed the meat that morning; I kissed it every morning. I turned Wendy’s hate into love.

  You’re a sick bastard, Wendy said.

  I turned my face toward the smell of cooling beef. Alice was sitting very still, her knife frozen above her plate, watching us. There just wasn’t enough for everyone. I don’t know why.

  I took my daughter’s hand. Honey, I said, finish your food.

  POOL

  JACOB SAW the splash and the body going down. Slow motion. The girls’ screams, sun, the red cement, everyone crawling over the side of the pool. He swam like a motherfucker to the deep end, panting as he flipped the body over, a sheet of blood over the face, a man’s face, mouth open and reeking chlorine. A tooth missing. A tooth way down in the water. A swollen eye and a huge wound weeping above it, bone winking between gaping lips of skin. With the help of two other junior guards Jacob hauled the body out. His mouth eventually on the body’s mouth. His hands pressing the chest. Blood and air, blood and air, Jacob bent above the body and then finally Mr. Long shoving him aside, a siren slicing through the sudden silence, the girls huddled against the fence, and the boys dripping in a circle around the body and the pool turning to glass beneath the summer sun.

  Jacob stands at the sink, hot water running and running. It had been over in a second. The body taken away. The waistband of Jacob’s swim trunks the same color as the stains on the cement outside. The blood had run from head to chest, tongue to stomach, mouth to mouth. He puts his face to the glass and his breath turns to smoke. Keep breathing, he thinks. Keep breathing.

  Bobby is the name of the body and Bobby is fine. Stitches and a concussion and the lost tooth and shaken up but fine, back at school three days after the accident, walking the hall thinking Is it him or him or him? Imagining a football-type, a senior, though Long had said You know, the skinny blond, my best swimmer. All he has to do is ask someone to point the kid out but he won’t do that, he doesn’t want anyone to know he cares, that he’s thinking about it more or less constantly. When anyone asks What happened he laughs. Fucking klutz, he says, I fell. It’s nothing. But in his classes, while the students are working, heads bent over their papers, he loses time. Staring at the wall. Remembering how hot it was when his body hit the cement, the split-second sensation not of pain but of hardness, immense, unforgiving, against his face. How eager his flesh was to come apart. The bell rings, not breaking the spell.

  The boy finds Bobby in the parking lot after class. Broad shoulders, dark hair, a bandage covering the remains of the terrible wound. The boy’s heart going splash, splash, splash in his chest.

  Hey, Jacob shouts, jogging across the lot. Hey!

  Bobby turns. Knowing at once this boy is the boy. Sandy hair in his face and as tall as Bobby himself, five- eleven, but skinny, all arms and legs. Pants slung low, pale denim slashed at the knee, plaid shirt open over a dirty tank. White-blue eyes bearing down on him and Bobby touches his head, soft cotton and tape; still a headache, stiffness in his neck, a general shitty feeling which could last for a couple of weeks, the doctor said. Be patient. The boy is panting, lips parted, the toe of his sneaker touching Bobby’s shoe.

  Hey, Jacob says.

  Hey, Bobby echoes.

  I was at the pool, the boy says, sniffing into his arm, showing the pale crown of his head. How fragile it looks. Killable. All of them, no matter how young or strong, all these heads in the hallways, on the streets, on his own neck, ready to break.

  Oh, Bobby says. Thanks. For … he gestures toward the bandage. Jacob nods.

  Yeah, no, I’m sorry you fell. It was crazy.

  Right, he says. Well. Long’s doing his job, I guess. Getting you kids in shape.

  Long’s great. He—I mean he did most of the, you know—

  Yeah, yeah, he says. Bobby is aware he’s a bit wide-eyed, not acting quite right. The boy too close.

  You feel okay? I mean they fixed the—?

  Yeah, it’s—just some stitches. Mild concussion. And the, the tooth. Bobby lifts his lip to show the temporary cap. Sheepish. He is vain about his teeth. Should be good as new in a few days or so, he adds. Weak smile. The car against his back. He wonders if he should give the boy money. Or a hug. He needs to figure out the appropriate gesture and then make it so he can go.

  It was really weird, Jacob says, rubbing the toe of his sneaker against the gravel, glancing down and then back up.

  Yeah. Scary.

  The boy nods. Yeah. Staring.

  Well, thanks again, you know, Bobby says. For getting me out of there.

  He has to wait for Jacob to move before he can open the car door. The boy goes on standing there. See you, Bobby says, squeezing past him. The boy watches him start the car. Bobby backs out slowly. Waves.

  One of the junior lifeguards finds the tooth and is holding it like a prize, showing it off in the locker room before swim practice. Jacob freaks.

  You can’t just take something like that, it’s the guy’s fucking tooth, man, you have to give it back, Jacob says.

  Why? the kid says, smirking. He’s got a new one, doesn’t he?

  Jacob’s chest burns. In the end the kid doesn’t give a shit about the tooth, he flicks it at Jacob’s face and says Take it, psycho. But Jacob doesn’t take the tooth to Bobby; it isn’t Bobby’s anymore. Jacob should have found
it first. White on white at the bottom of the pool. People can’t stay away from things like that, he figures, people can’t keep their hands off something sick. Himself included. Himself included most definitely.

  Bobby sees the boy in the halls. Roaming, alone, backpack hitched up onto his shoulder. Funny how he never noticed him before. Hundreds of kids he never notices. And now this one everywhere, never letting himself be looked at without looking back.

  At night, Jacob gets stuck. Rolling the tooth between his fingers. Thinking about it. The water where it wasn’t meant to be, the blood where it wasn’t meant to be, everything mixed together. It’s a mystery how he remembers things, some details lost and others crystal clear; sensations, sounds, not in order but distinct as slaps to the face. The splash, the screams, the kiss. Ms. Dean talked about Macbeth in English class that week. Something about spells. The water was a spell, Jacob thinks. He hasn’t read the play but he knows the body is a witch. The water is a witch. A kiss is a spell, isn’t it? Jacob, he hears someone call, Jacob Jacob Jacob. He must be dreaming, but the sound is far away, on land, and he can’t understand what it means.

  He gets Bobby’s number from Long. He calls it. Bobby answers, says Who’s this?

  Jacob is panting, saliva whistling between his lips.

  You know what it sounded like? he says. Your whole face hitting it, hitting the ground?

  The boy’s hushed voice gets into Bobby’s gut and settles.

  You know? the boy says again.

  I don’t remember, Bobby says. I don’t remember any of it.

  The boy swallows. I do. Let me tell you.

  No, the man says, but the boy goes on talking and Bobby goes on listening.

  Bobby can’t get hard with his girlfriend. When she tries to kiss him he gets this horrible feeling, sick, dizzy, like he can’t breathe. He puts his hand on her chest, pushes her away as gently as he can. Which isn’t good enough for her. She calls him an asshole. He says It’s the painkillers. Her face slips into a frown.

  It’s been two weeks, you’re still taking those?

  He shrugs. He just wants to sit in the bathroom on the toilet seat by himself until she goes to sleep. So he does. He looks at his face, touches the pink marks the stitches left in his head. God, he whispers, so close to the mirror his knuckles brush the glass.

  It’s weird being in Long’s class. The girls give him these looks but he doesn’t see them, he is lost inside the water, how it looks from above, sometimes like glass, sometimes like something else much softer. It shatters and gulps and winks and when Long says Let’s do your drills Jacob just says I can’t.

  School ends. Their names in each other’s phones, innocent, burning. They call, hang up, call again. At night when there is nothing to do but think of it: the moment right before the fall. What was it like, not knowing what would come next? The pool with its bright blue ropes, the black lines on the tile beneath the water. Jacob daydreaming on his ladder, Bobby’s sandals flapping careless to the edge. That moment before the water turned to poison. Finally Jacob calls and stays on the line long enough to say Meet me.

  They’re parked in an empty Dairy Queen lot. It’s dark, but the hot blush of July hasn’t worn off and they are sweating, backs sticking to the seats. Jacob is talking, making the same circling motion with his hand, and Bobby has to remind himself that this isn’t a dream, that he left his house unshaven, in his slippers, that if there is a moment he’s been waiting for this is it.

  Look, I’m sorry about calling you all the time. I don’t mean to, I just—

  Bobby swallows. It’s okay. Everything’s really weird right now.

  Yeah, Jacob sighs, his knee bouncing beneath the hem of his torn shorts. His hair looks dirty, a matted gold shag, and Bobby wonders what his own hair looks like, when he washed it last.

  Does it hurt still? the boy asks.

  Hm?

  Your head.

  Before Bobby can answer the boy’s arm snakes forward, fingers pushing against the thick scar.

  Does it? Jacob asks again. Hurt?

  Bobby nods, wincing, his head pressed against the seat. Jacob’s hand slides to the man’s mouth. The pink plush lips, also scarred by the fall, the stubbled skin above them. The flavor of that mouth so fresh in Jacob’s mind, iron and chlorine and fear. He can’t stop remembering it. Tasting it.

  Stop, Bobby says at last, twisting his head sideways. The boy’s hands hanging in the air.

  Why?

  It’s weird, this is weird. Trying to laugh but Jacob isn’t laughing, he’s rubbing his palm relentlessly against his trembling knee.

  We have to find a pool, do you know where we can do it by a pool? Jacob says.

  Do what?

  Re-create it.

  Bobby laughs, short, angry. You mean break my fucking head open?

  No, not that, just after that. You get in the water and I get you out.

  You couldn’t do it by yourself, Bobby says.

  The boy snorts. What do you mean, that’s my job.

  Do you know how much I weigh?

  The boy’s eyes darken. I don’t give a shit.

  You had help before, didn’t you?

  Yeah, but I didn’t need it, Jacob insists. I could have done it. I could do it.

  The boy looks at him, eyes wide. What’s he like, Bobby wonders, when he isn’t like this, bristling and hyped up and weird? What was he, before? Bobby will never know.

  We could, Jacob says.

  Bobby sighs. It’s like you have a problem.

  Jacob frowns. What problem?

  Not just you. We. We have a problem. He peers out the side window, at the plywood nailed to the Dairy Queen doors. Warm air caresses the glass, slipping its fingers in through the crack.

  It’s midnight, Bobby says. Doesn’t anyone care where you are?

  Nobody, Jacob says firmly.

  Well. That’s also a problem.

  Don’t you want to?

  There isn’t any way we can do it, Bobby says. There’s no point. He knows the boy is hard, he can see his prick pushing at the crotch of his jeans. There’s just nothing they can do about it except tear each other’s nerves to shreds. It’s a dead end.

  They sit there. How’s your tooth? Jacob asks.

  It’s good, Bobby replies, quiet.

  Hey, Jacob says. Do you believe in spells?

  Bobby stares. A dead end.

  He comes home. His girlfriend rolls over and touches his leg, slitting her eyes in the dark.

  Where did you go? she murmurs.

  Just for a drive. Go to sleep, he says, but can’t take his own advice. He gets up and drinks a beer standing in the backyard with no shirt, toeing the silver seam of a snail track on the concrete. At some point you move on. Summer ends. You get through it without making any more phone calls, without leaving the house at midnight. You go to work and you see the boy in the hallway and you just nod and that’s all you need to do. You get back in the pool.

  Jacob calls and calls; Bobby doesn’t answer. I saved you, Jacob says into the silence that follows the beep: I saved you. But the truth is, Bobby doesn’t remember.

  There’s no security. Just a couple of lights glittering over the concrete. Jacob scales the chain link and drops to his feet, ankles humming with pain. He walks around the pool. Water glugs in the drains. The diving boards, pale blue in the day, bleached white in the night, hang like tongues over the water. The chlorine is like perfume, poison gas. He could get drunk on it. There’s a shadow on the pavement where Bobby’s blood had been; nobody would know it was there if they had not first tasted it, touched it. He kneels, puts his face in the pool. Drinks the water. Strokes it. Slips in, no splash, floating. Floating. It’s not a bad way to go, he thinks. If you had to. He lets himself get heavier and heavier. Pushing out all the air. Touching the black line at the bottom. The witches stirring with their sticks. At some point you realize: you were always alone. And then rising, pushing up, a big breath, lifting himself out over the edge at t
he deep end. Curling up on the concrete, on Bobby’s shadow, clothes pasted cold on his flesh, Jacob lies there and lets his love for the drowned man drain away.

  FRANCIS

  ALL THOSE bodies, heaped in the black sacks. Smell of death, lab-death, specific to this place, to these bodies, to me: piss and shit and fur and the bleach I tipped along the steel tables, the tile floor. Vast cloud of death-smell, invisible. I wear a mask but sometimes I take it off. When they arrive. One at a time. Touching their faces to mine. Tenderness. No danger, ever—they’re good dogs. Chopped-down claws. Toothless. I am the man with the gentle hands, lifting them by the ribs from their crates. Setting them onto my lap. Shhh, I say. Hello. Shh.

  No one likes needles. You don’t need special empathy to understand that kind of fear, the rolling eyes, the shrinking. They shiver. Twist. Mm, I say. All over. Stroking their ears. You have to know that by this time they are broken down. Before I ever get my hands on them. Still, I wouldn’t do it if not for the money, if not for the fact that I can’t stand the thought of someone else doing it. Saint Francis is what my bosses call me. Francis, they say. We have two more coming this week. And I say, brightly, into the phone, swiveling in my chair, the plastic gown I wear over my clothes crinkling beneath me: Bring them on down.

  Every month or so a different set of instructions. Doses, frequency. I don’t know what is in the bottles I dip the needles into, what poison they suck into their minuscule metal mouths. I don’t know what it is supposed to do or not do. I know what the result is—those plastic bags. How heavy they become. Once a week someone picks them up, the same man, dark skin, dark eyes. Gloves. Strong enough to carry all the bags at the same time and lift them into a truck. I hear the door slam. The wheels on the road. The lamp outside the only light for miles.

  At home it’s just me and my deaf brother. Who can’t work, who is home all day, watching television, masturbating, doing some kind of schoolwork on the computer. I come home and he looks at me. Waits for me to sign, to ask him what’s up. Hungry for something. Expectant. I don’t mind that look on the animals but I hate it on him. Have always. I can either make the sign or not, look in his eyes or not. If my back is to him he will tap my shoulder so that I’ll turn around, so that I can start listening to him, watch his hands flutter and poke and pinch, inviting me to do the same. But before I turn, when I feel his finger on me, when I feel him waiting, I scream YOU STUPID FUCK. He knows I’ve said something, he can sense it, the vibration. Like a dog hearing something you can’t hear. But he doesn’t know what I’ve said and when I turn around I’m smiling.