The Seventh Mansion Read online

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  In January Peter throws a party in honor of Alias, cofounder of Earth Alliance, fresh from an anti-fracking action in Romania. Late Saturday night and barely thirty degrees outside, snow flurries evaporating in the halo of a bonfire lit in a field far out of town. The crowd clustered on canvas chairs and vegetable crates, Peter manning a table of kegs and pots of lethally hot vegan chili. Alias sits on the dirt near the fire, an arm wrapped around long legs, wary deep-set green eyes in a face so perfectly boned Xie imagines, for a moment, what it would look like stripped of its tanned skin. Xie and FKK sitting with a knot of girls everyone calls the Prima Zapatistas because they sell black knit masks inset with custom designs for exorbitant prices. He tries to drink his chili, sucking chunks of bell pepper from the lip of his cup, as Jo describes the protest at the university lab; someone had tipped off campus security and everyone was rounded up before they even got to the science hall, ordered to stay on the other side of an invisible line between the lab entrance and the street. Same old shit, one of the Zapatistas sneers, Peter’s actions are always super-weak. I heard you got a lot of signatures for the petition, though, Xie says, people didn’t even know what was going on in the labs and now they do. It’s not his fault the cops interfered. The Zapatistas exchanging a glance. Do you even know what’s going on there? Xie frowns, confused. What? The Zapatistas roll their eyes. Silence. Finally Jo scraping the heel of her boot in the dirt. Relax, people. Heavier snow falling outside the circle of the fire. Alias suddenly loping over; the Zapatistas sit up in unison as he tips his beer in Xie’s direction. You Xie? Um. Yeah. Alias nods. Glad to know you. Holding Xie’s gaze for a moment, shoulder cocked beneath his open jacket. Peter passing beer to FKK, Leni downing hers in three big gulps, moon-eyed while Jo fiddles with a stud on her bracelet. You get your license renewed? Alias asks, turning to Peter, who burps into his fist with a self-conscious smile. Yeah. Finally. License for what? Jo asks. Hunting, Peter says. Xie’s startled shoulders. What, Alias says, you’ve never heard of hunt disruption? No. You must not be from around here. Leni says, He’s from California. Then blushes. Ah. West Coast brother. Where out in Cali? L.A., Xie says. Alias stretching his legs toward the fire, nodding. Long sip of beer. Well, if you get a license you can go out wherever the hunters are, fire into the ground or whatever. Lets all the critters know they gotta clear out. You have to be careful, though. Sniffs. Guys find out you’re fucking their shot, your ass is toast. Xie glancing at Peter. You have a gun? I have three, Peter says. Grew up shooting. Jo winces. Jesus. You ever kill anything? Peter looks into his beer. Sure. Lots of things. Deer? Peter nods. Deer, rabbits. Foxes. Ducks. Ate it all, too. Leni shivers. Peter squints at Xie. Any shooting near your place? No. You know who owns those woods? No. I’ve never seen anyone out there. Alias fishes a chunk of tempeh from his cup of chili, chews. Enjoy that while it lasts. Catching Xie’s eye. Xie looks away. What did it feel like? Leni asks, quiet. Peter leans into the fire, elbows on his knees. What did what feel like? Killing something, she says. He scratches his beard. Brief look at the ground. Good, sometimes. A pause. Leni tucks her hands into her coat sleeves; Jo kisses the side of her head. The fire snaps. Alias tilts the lip of his cup into Peter’s. Hey, keep up the good work, brother. And you, farmer. I have high hopes for you. Xie wondering what Peter’s told him: about the mink, obviously, everyone here knows about that, but what else? Nothing else to tell. Xie goes to get more chili, trying to warm his hands around the hot cup. Someone pulls out a guitar; the Zapatistas sing, half-ironic, the lyrics to “Which Side Are You On?” while Peter and Jo march arm in arm. Finish the food, edge away. Up the hill, through the fence. Crawling into the backseat of Jo’s car, smell of pine and smoke, faint scent of french fries from the cooking oil Erik siphoned into the gas tank from the bottles in Xie’s garage. Brush the snow from his hood, then rest his cheek on his knees, sneakers on the lip of the seat. Wait for P. Try not to think about. Peter with a gun. A knock at the window. Alias leaning heavily against the roof, forearms framing his face. Can I come in? Xie opens the door. Scoots aside. Strong smell of beer. You don’t drink? Alias says, when Xie refuses his cup. No. You off yeast or what? No, I just. Don’t. Usually. Alias nodding, so tall his hair grazes the roof, flannel shirt tight around his arms, jeans worn white at the knees, white long johns beneath. This is someone who U-locked his neck to a bulldozer. Who helped bomb a chicken processing plant in Texas. What are you doing here? Xie asks. Me? Just hanging out. No, I mean. Xie gestures, Back here, in the States. Alias shrugs. Just seeing friends. Taking some time off. Am I allowed? Eyebrows. Xie flushes. Yeah, of course. Alias’s slow sigh as he turns in to Xie, hand against the side of his neck, thumb circling his cheek. Xie ducks, shoulder up, understanding too late that look at the fire. Cold out here for you, chickenbones, Alias sings. Little smile, last of the beer, settling his cup on the floor between his spread knees. How old are you. You wanna fuck shit up or what? Save the whales? You should be back there trying to score some pussy. Or are you off that, too? Leaning to brush Xie’s hair from his ear, swift shift onto one knee, pressing Xie against the door, wet mouth catching his. Xie whimpers, arm against Alias’s chest. What? Alias says. Come on. Leaning into him. You got something better waiting for you at home? Hm? Saving up? Reaching to feel Xie’s crotch and Xie gags, hard, Alias jerking away, arm up, The fuck is wrong with you? Xie curling against the door, eyes squeezed shut. The snow gathers on the glass. Alias rubbing his lips on the back of his hand. Bitter smile. Not into it, huh. Too bad. The car as cold inside as it is outside, low whistle of wind as Alias opens the door, unfolding into the dark. Good luck saving the planet, farmer, he says. Xie wiping his mouth on the inside of his hoodie. Tremble all over. Waiting for the girls and then they come at last, jogging half frozen to the car. We saw Alias come out this way, Leni says, panting. Did he follow you? He doesn’t answer. Jo and Leni exchanging a look. Did he? Xie tucks his chin into the neck of his hoodie. No, he says. They turn onto the road. Jo’s eyes in the mirror, her hand on Leni’s thigh. At home, in the attic, your arms around the bones, you know you will never be in another bed, with another body. Living or dead. The smell of smoke in your clothes. Like something burned up for good.

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  Monday morning a little late but Karen not there yet. He waits at their table, eyes on the parking lot. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. Twenty. Tapping his pencil over his notebook. P. in her seat. Boots crossed in Xie’s face. Can almost see. Up his skirt. Where is she. P.’s shrug. How should I know. Greg beckons him from the front desk. Holds the phone. Xie jumping up to take it. Karen saying, Sorry, I’m going to be late. Could you go over your essay for Mead’s class and fix all the comma stuff so I don’t have to do it? Her voice on some sort of edge. He agrees. Back to the table. P. now in Xie’s seat. Xie sits on top of him. Taking a guess at the commas. Erase some, add others. P.’s hands on his hips. Will you. Stop. Karen will be here any minute and. The clock says almost noon. If something is wrong with Karen then it’s like a punishment, for not taking this seriously. P. catching this thought, Now you are thinking like a Christian. Shut up. Scrubbing his eyes. Why don’t I know where the fucking commas go. Come, P. says, walking to the bathroom, huge, cape grazing the carpet. Inside the bathroom full light. Fingers at Xie’s belt, Xie’s back against the filthy wall. Hands on P.’s shoulders, cold metal; remember how it was, when he was behind glass and you could not. Touch him. All this still just a dream. P. drawing him out. Tugging. Xie not breathing. Over in a minute, come sliding down the fold of P.’s skirt, pearl on silver, on gold. Fingers on his neck. There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand and you have kissed every one. P. cleaning himself in the mirror. Xie shivers. Zips up. When Alias does whatever it is he does, with boys or girls or whoever, he must imagine it’s like this, that he is like P., capable of giving pleasure just by existing. All those eyes around the fire, admiring him, wanting him. And yet he followed you. How stupid can a person be. P. gone. Dark inside the bathroom without
him; they hadn’t turned on the light. When he comes out Karen is there, looking at his essay, jacket skewed over her shoulders, as if she put it on in a hurry. Karen, he says, and she turns. Pale. Hi, she says. Come outside with me for a minute. Xie follows her to her car, in the corner of the parking lot, Karen leaning against the hood. Hands in her coat pockets. He offers her a carrot; she refuses. You eat like a horse. Not as much as a horse, but literally like a horse. Xie shrugs. Yeah, well, horses are pretty healthy. Both of them quiet for a while. The muscles in her jaw keep twitching. He gestures with his elbow to her stomach. Shy. Can’t quite say, How is it, how are you. Karen squints. Hard rub of her toe against a piece of gravel. Slow shake of her head. She pulls a pack of cigarettes from her bag, a lighter. He eats his carrots. Karen stubs her cigarette out before it’s half gone, brushing ash from the hood of the car. Offers him the butt; he takes it to the trash. There would have been bones in it, he thinks. The clavicle in its place, spine growing its first spiked knobs. Boy or girl or whatever it was meant to be. He gives her his apple. She takes it. Do you think it’s wrong, she says, quiet. What? She looks at him, brow knit. You care so much about life. I don’t think you’re wrong, he says, and she catches the distinction, between it and you, and nods, head down. Touching her elbow to his, sleeve against sleeve. Hands him back the apple. He finishes it. Core into the hedge. Is it better than putting it in the trash? she says. Something can eat it, he says. Squirrel or something. Yes, she says, pinkie pulling at the corner of her eye. Something. Deep breath. So did you think about what you wanted to do? Yeah, he says. I want you to read this. Pulling Interior Castle from his pocket. She takes it without hesitation. Okay. We’ll talk about it. What else. He thinks. I don’t know. Maybe we can talk about gardening. She laughs. Gardening. Great. He wonders if it happened before Christmas, or after. If she was alone. She has never mentioned a boyfriend, a husband; he can’t remember her mentioning anyone else in her life at all, a friend, parents, siblings, nothing. Back inside, she opens Interior Castle, turning to the pages he marked. But note very carefully, daughters, that the silkworm has of necessity to die; and it is this which will cost you most; for death comes more easily when one can see oneself living a new life, whereas our duty now is to continue living this present life, and yet to die of our own free will. What does this mean, she asks, gesturing with the book. Xie bites his lip. I think the silkworm is supposed to be the, um, the soul, he says. She blinks. The worm is the soul? The, um, the old soul, I think. The one you have before you meet God. She rubs her face with both hands, pale brows wrinkling beneath her fingers. Are you sure you don’t want to just continue with the algebra? Xie opens his mouth. She nudges his knee beneath the table. Just kidding. She keeps reading. He opens his own book, The Golden Legend; Saint Lucy has just torn out her eyes, in the same year when Pancratius lost his head. Light is beautiful to look upon; for it is the nature of light that all grace is in its appearance. Light radiates without being soiled; no matter how unclean may be the places where its beams penetrate, it is still clean. What about the places it doesn’t penetrate, he thinks; inside a body, a mind. Glancing up to watch her read. You would be a really good mother, he says, quietly, and she holds her breath for a moment, wiping her fingers beneath her eye.

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  At home he opens the fridge, shakes a box of rice milk, drinks the last thin slosh from the carton, leaving it on the counter for his father; Xie hasn’t taken out the garbage in years because if he does he will end up immobilized in the driveway with a pile of his own shit. I think Karen had an abortion, Xie says, watching Erik fold the carton in half with the side of his hand. Erik frowns. What? She told you that? Xie shrugs. Sort of, yeah. Why would she talk to you about that? You don’t need to hear about her personal life. Xie slicing a head of cabbage, its leaves shattering crisply on either side of the knife. He puts a piece in his mouth, chews, adds the rest to the soup, carrots, parsnips, sweet potato, corn, no recipe, just what is on hand, not thinking, pinching herbs from their pots: parsley, basil, oregano. Chopping, slow, the tiny dark wet edges clinging to the blade, he hates to cut, to pull the vegetables from the beds, he knows all about chemical terror in plants, their sensitivity to danger, to death, nothing ever. Simply submits. He slides the herbs into the bottom of the bowls. Tip of his finger against the blade. He breaks up a sheet of crackers, puts them on a plate. Did Mom want to have an abortion? he asks. Erik pauses. Did she what? Did she want to have me. Speaking into his soup. The herbs floating in a circle. Why do you say that? I’m not judging her, I was just curious. Erik lowers his spoon, looks directly at his son. We both wanted you very much. But you didn’t plan it? No, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s okay to tell me the truth. I am telling you the truth, Xie, what the hell. Dropping a cracker in his bowl. Didn’t you know it would be hard? Why would it be hard? Because Mom. Had problems. Your mother’s problems aren’t your problems, Xie. I just don’t get why you would take the chance, Xie insists. What chance? She was pregnant and she had you and we were happy with that. We didn’t think of another option. There was no other option. Okay? Erik snapping more crackers between his hands. He knows his father eats meat outside the house, has seen receipts, fast-food cups and burger wrappers in the truck, they had fought about it before and Erik had said, exasperated, I do it your way all the time, every day, I eat what you want, I buy what you want, why isn’t it enough? But it isn’t enough. Erik putting his spoon down, a little too hard, dull thump against the tablecloth. Look, if your teacher has an abortion it’s because she has reasons for not being a mother, and I can’t speak to what those reasons might be, but I can tell you that it’s not a choice I would have made because I don’t think the world is made worse by bringing a life into it. But what if that life is evil? Xie says, thumbing his water glass. Erik’s hard squint. You mean you, or…? I mean life. Shrug. Human life. Xie, I’m losing the thread here. Xie takes a deep breath. Did you talk her out of having an abortion. Erik staring but Xie just sits there, waiting him out, until Erik gives up, face hanging over the awful soup. In the beginning, yes, I did. Silence. Sorry, this is crap, Xie says, reaching for his father’s bowl, but Erik says, Leave it. Chewing the uncooked carrots. Xie goes to the kitchen, gets a bar of chocolate from the panty, eats it square by square in some weird penance; he doesn’t even like chocolate. Erik puts his hand out; Xie passes him the remainder of the bar. How’s the garden doing with the cold? Fine, Xie answers. Looking out the window. Scratching his cheek. Erik leans across the corner of the table. Takes Xie’s face in his hands. Kisses it.

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  Beloved. Wake up. Four in the morning. Still so dark. Reach for the bones but P. says, No. Xie stares. P. not playful, not grim; something in between. What is it. P. turning to the door in the floor. Points of his crown sharp even in the dark. Making their own light. Come, beloved. Dressing in the cold. Down the ladder. Over the fence and across the log and deep into the trees, flesh still asleep. He rubs his eyes, sleeves pulled over his palms. Where are we going. Lightest dusting of snow like glitter in the dark. The ground so hard beneath his feet, cold slicing up his lungs. Fifteen minutes. Silence except for. Sound of P. Then. Look down, P. says. Xie looks. Kneels. Spot of gold against a black carpet of leaves. Digs to pluck it free. Tiny cross on a fine chain. How did it get. Here? P. putting Xie’s back against a tree. Laying the necklace around his throat. Tucks it beneath his collar, frozen kiss against his skin. P.’s hand against his cheek, hard, P.’s thumb against his chin, pulling his mouth open so he can graze teeth and cheek and bone against Xie’s lips. Unzip of jeans to make him come over the ground the snow melting on the tip. Ragged gasp and slap of P.’s hand against his face to make him shout don’t question it. You were afraid when you saw him the first time and you are still afraid. Kneel, P. says. Xie immediately on his knees. Lifting the silver skirt. Tilt of bone to Xie’s tongue. Thumbing the wings of the iliums, which flare out from the spine like the split peel of an orange, revealing the great hole of the pelvi
s, the fruit of the body, of all bodies, which is nothing, which is air. Sneaker against trunk, Xie braced between columns of birch and bone. Licking the tip of the coccyx, angling his head beneath P.’s hips to reach it, the tiny rough knob warm and wet from his breath. Between his own knees he could, if he looked, see the first touch of dawn spreading like frost on the shins of P.’s boots but his eyes are closed, he is half freeze, half fire, cocooned beneath the skirt, knees aching. P.’s sigh and then. Silence. Xie wiping the saliva from his chin, forehead against pelvis, his own crown of bone. Scatter of squirrels through the brush. P. says, Shh. Distant footsteps through the leaves. If someone saw them what would they see. Heart pounding, hand to chest as if to silence it. Two voices. Far but not so far, not far enough. Something hard hitting the trunk of a tree. They’re straight and healthy, good size. Slowly, P. lifts his skirt, like a curtain, the woods a stage. Slap of cold. Bare branches and the air glittering with ice. Two men. One Erik’s age, big belly in a down vest, the other young, not even thirty, old sheepskin coat and dark hair to his shoulders, rolling his boot over a stone. Bright orange eyes of their cigarettes. If they look in Xie’s direction they will see him, hunched over on his knees, brutally exposed; P. can’t or won’t hide you. You stop breathing. Fear and fury pinning you in place. Should have time to do the first batch end of summer, don’t you think. The young one nods. Sucking on his cigarette, eyes narrow, he’s only. Two dozen trees away. Private property. If they find out you are here they can stop you. From ever coming back. The young one takes a step, puts both hands against a tree, tips his head back to look at the crown. Beauties, he says, and you squeeze your eyes shut, shaking all over. When you open them again the men are turning, backs to you. Moving off until. Gone. Branches shivering above them. Why did you let them in here. P. silent, cocking his head and for a split second you see P. as others might: a monster, along with the trees, the men, you, there is no difference, an immense and grotesque disorder at the heart of all things. Xie gags into the dirt, still on his knees. The utter stillness of the birch, of P., watching. Did you know they were coming. Silence. Did you bring me here so I would know, too. Silence. Then the sound of P. kneeling, chest against your back, hand over your eyes. Jaw against your ear. Silence.