I Am No One You Know (8 page)

Wolfie said dubiously, “That’s cool, Me? I don’t think so.”

“That’s Nirvana, baby. You’ll wish for it too, one day.”

Not long afterward, one windy Olcott night Wolfie woke hearing mutterings & soft laughter through the plasterboard wall of his room. He recognized the symptoms. Crept out to see what the hell the woman was doing. Off her meds (that was obvious) & her skin smarting & burning & he dreaded to think that in a mutinous gesture she’d flushed every capsule & pill down the toilet. That shit’s expensive, Me, Wolfie’d tell her. There Me was naked, splendid & naked, skin glittering like mica from the manic sweat, & eyes glaring fierce & scared. Her slender muscled legs covered in filmy blond hairs & the hair of her skull, Wolfie noted, grown now to several inches, floating & blond-filmy in lamplight. Oh, Me was a beauty! Quick, Wolfie ducked back into Me’s bedroom to hunt up something for her to wear, returned to toss a rayon robe at her, his face heated with embarrassment. Saying, “What if somebody’s looking in the window for
Christ’s sake! Always you’re worrying people are looking in our windows!” Wolfie raged & fumed (it pissed him off, the inconsistency of the paranoid) & Me laughed at him. Not that Me’s nakedness, the dazzling milky skin of her breasts, belly & upper thighs in contrast to the tanned skin of shoulders, arms & legs, was a great surprise to Wolfie. Not that the staring breast nipples & the blond swath of pubic hair was a wholly fantastic sight to him. They’d been together, Me & Wolfie, for 13 yrs. Me laughed crudely at the kid’s face. “Wolfie’s a prude, I guess. How’d I give birth to a prude?” But she took the robe & struggled vaguely with the sleeves, got it on partway though un-buttoned & the belt not tied. On the shadowy living room floor—Wolfie’d stumbled against them—were cardboard boxes from their move, only partly unpacked, & on the ratty rattan sofa were a half-dozen of Me’s knives, long gleaming blades & tooled handles, Me’s so-called knife collection she’d inherited from a grandfather who’d been a major in the U.S. Army (Wolfie took this on faith, he’d never encountered grandparents let alone great-grandparents) & her Samurai puppets & aged rag & porcelain dolls she’d collected in a time preceding Wolfie, & old framed lithographs (“The Skaters,” “The Engagement,” “Three Little Kittens”) that revived sharp memories in Wolfie. Those faded & dreamlike drawings Me & Wolfie’d tried to copy in crayons, rainy days, snowbound days & nights, in remote places they’d lived & had one day fled. Wolfie rolled his eyes at this corny old stuff but there’d been a time not too long ago when he was fascinated by the lithographs, like Me. Seeing that in olden times, in the 1880’s, life was different. People were happier then. Their faces were less complicated. Their bodies were like mannequins, carefully dressed. Kittens had a way of smiling with upturned whiskers that brought tears into your eyes, almost. In pictures of families in horse-drawn buggies, even the horses smiled.

Me was smoking her goddamn cigarettes Wolfie hated, so to piss Me off he’d snatch the pack from her & light one himself & take a few drags with a practiced air. Tears in her eyes Me demanded to know if Wolfie was in touch with you-know-who. Wolfie exhaled smoke & smirked. Like a kid with a secret. Me said, touching one of the stainless steel blades with just her fingertips, lightly as if it was burning hot,
“You don’t want to test me, kid. You or that fucker.” Wolfie said, “What fucker? This is news to me.” Me asked if he’d come to the school & that was how he’d traced them? Wolfie registered under that other name. A name Me wouldn’t utter. Wolfie said shrugging, “Think any shit you want to think, Me. You’re gonna think it anyway at 4
A.M.
” At this, Me had to laugh.

Wolfie sat on the floor looking through the boxes he’d helped to pack & Me smoked her cigarette & was drinking from a smudged glass just water from the faucet (Wolfie thought) & there wasn’t going to be much sleeping that night. Tears in her eyes Me asked why she’d lost her illusions so young? She was only 16 when the craziness first began, not so bad as it’d be later, but the start of it was hearing voices, & mostly they were reasonable voices, & the surprise of it wasn’t the voices themselves but the revelation she had at about age 19 that other people didn’t hear them in their heads the way she did, & it was a sign of craziness to answer back.

Me said, pleading, “How the fuck would you know? That everybody else wasn’t hearing them, too?”

Wolfie had to concede, “You wouldn’t, I guess.”

Incensed, Me said, “It’s like a dream. You hear voices in a dream. Why’d you doubt they were real?”

Wolfie was thinking the weirdest voices he heard were real.

“I’m responsible for it, though, huh?” Me said. “For both of us, I guess.” She sounded broody & speculative. Now running a fingertip along the sharp-honed edge of a twelve-inch blade with a carved wooden handle. Steak knife? A cigarette between her lips dropped hot ash, undetected, onto her milky-skinned little belly. “How long am I responsible for you, kid?”

Wolfie said, “Till I’m eighteen, man. That’s the law.”

Me said, “Maybe you won’t live to be eighteen. Wise-ass.”

T
HE CHILD SQUEEZES
out of the mother’s body. How you could get so small & like a fish, was hard to comprehend. Me’d explained in a crayon drawing. A long time ago. She’d drawn a woman with a small head & smiling mouth & mostly the woman was a belly & in the belly was a little thing coiled like a fish, with shut eyes. Me saw his face &
laughed tenderly saying, We were all little fishes once. Don’t be afraid to think it. Some of us stay fish, & some evolve onward into standing upright & being human. It can be fun, darling! Don’t look so glum.

She’d kiss & tickle him till he laughed, & shut his pudgy fingers in her hair. Their happiest time.

O
UTSIDE A
W
AWA MARKET
in Newfane, twelve miles south of Olcott where we’d go for groceries & gas, there’s this tattoo freak sitting on the front steps about 30 yrs old & good-looking in a down-dirty way in sleeveless undershirt to show off his muscles & tattoos, smoking & drinking from a can of Budweiser. This guy with sideburns, long greasy tangled hair, a three-day beard like black spikes & he’s got a crammed duffel bag so I guessed he was a hitch-hiker. Not from around here I guessed. Unless just sprung from prison & on his way home. Taking up space on the Wawa steps so Me had to practically step over him, & Wolfie with her, & in that instant vigilant Wolfie saw
the look
pass between Me & the tattoo freak.

The look.
In theory Wolfie’s too young to know what it meant but practically speaking he knew it meant SEX.

Inside the store Me was breathless & talking fast in her scattered distracted way not seeing where she was headed, & Wolfie said severely, “We came in here to get tomato soup & ice cream & soap & toilet paper don’t forget, Me!” & Me said quickly, “Hell I’m gonna forget.” She was licking her lips like they were dry but she never once glanced toward the door.

Me’s weakness was a certain breed of man. Where the ex-husband at least had a job, selling cars & making good money (at least when not drinking), these others were worse off than Me herself, & a few of them on the wrong side of the law. In her sane state Me knew these guys were losers & bad news for one with her special problems but in her other state Me was what you’d call susceptible. ’Cause she was so fucking lonely, that’s why, she told Wolfie, just a single mom & a 13-yr-old headstrong kid & no friends or relatives to give a God-damn if they lived or died. Wolfie told her with a smirk more like it was a classic death wish.

Me flared up, “Lonely, or death wish, what’s the difference?”

Wolfie had to concede, Me had a point. For a woman, maybe the two went together.

Being lonely was a female sickness for which the cure was the tattoo freak & the tattoo freak was also the sickness.

That Saturday in early October Me drove them in the borrowed van on the lookout for old cemeteries which sometimes they visited, & flea markets & auctions which were places of treasure where Me’s face brightened like a little girl’s & she could squander $5 on an armful of old needlepoint cushions, jars of buttons, bald-headed dolls & cracked china & rusted old jackknives. Evidence of lives lived! Me declared, as if some strangers’ lives, no matter who, were more important than our own.

Wolfie shook his head, all this escaped him. Who gives a damn about such crap?

The open-air flea markets were jammed with customers on Saturdays, mostly women. There was a brisk trade in junk & you could see in certain faces that expression of tenderness & shrewd bargain-hunting combined.

Me poked Wolfie in the ribs. “Where’s your air of romance? wonder?
hope?
Not just you’re a prude, kid, you’re a miser, too.”

It was true, Wolfie obsessed about finances. Wasting even $5 made him cringe. In both Montana & Minnesota, Me’d had to borrow emergency cash & hadn’t been proud of her transactions.

When they left the Wawa, where Wolfie’d kept them as long as he reasonably could, the tattoo freak was gone from the front steps but there he was a half-mile up the road, which was a country highway amid cornfields, squinting in the sunshine & raising his thumb for a ride. Farmers in pickups rattled past. Who’d stop for
him?
You’d have to be crazy Wolfie was thinking, with a sinking heart.

“No, Me, come
on!
”

“Why’re you so uptight, you? Think there’s danger, like on TV, in broad daylight on Route 78?”

Sure enough Me brakes the van to a skidding stop & calls out the window, “Hey, where ya going?” The tattoo freak (who’s possibly a little younger than 30) blinks & grins like he just won a lottery he hadn’t known he was entered in, & says, “Hell, it don’t matter, anywhere
north, closer to the lake.” This guy would’ve climbed into the back with our purchases & accumulated junk except Me said quickly, all urgent & courteous, “Wolfie, hon, you crawl over the seat & let this man sit up front here? He’s got
long legs.
”

Wolfie was so disgusted, he turned speechless. Did what Me said without a single-word commentary.

So the tattoo freak rode to Olcott with us! This stranger who might’ve been carrying knives of his own in that duffel bag, if not guns. This guy who might’ve been just released from prison or worse yet a psychiatric hospital. A Mongol type Me picked up for the hell of it & would claim afterward it was
doing a good deed.
Shit! Wolfie had to listen to Me asking this character questions like a girl TV reporter & this guy saying he used to live right on Olcott Beach where his dad had a concession a while back. Me in her freaky 100-watt mood, Wolfie knew! Her faded-gold hair matted & flattened down by a grimy baseball cap, & she’s wearing a T-shirt of Wolfie’s & her sexy jodhpurs & she’s kicked off her sandals to drive barefoot. What the tattoo freak makes of Me, Wolfie has to wonder. The guy’s got to think, for one thing, she’s this kid’s mom! From the rear the guy’s got a muscled neck the color of grime & his profile shows a melting-away chin & coarse-pored nose & on his knotty left bicep a cobra tattoo quivering with slimy intentions only a few inches from Me’s right, bare bicep. But the more Me talks & the more excited in her 100-watt way telling the guy about our place in Olcott by the lake & the wind at night & the Ferris wheel lights in summer, the quieter the guy is, & subdued, & by the Olcott town limits he wants to get out. “This is great, ma’am. Right here.”

Me says, disappointed, “Don’t you want me to drive you home?”

“Naw, ma’am, thanks, this is great.”

So that’s it. Wolfie doesn’t know whether to be relieved as hell, or let down. He guesses that Me was debating asking the guy to stop in for a drink, or God knows, it’s a sunny autumn day, in the 60’s, a picnic on the beach. A nude swim! But the tattoo freak climbs out of the van hauling his duffel bag & you can see he’s a youngish guy eager to escape & Me’s got no choice but to continue on driving just her & the kid, the kid-that’s-proof-she’s-no-kid-herself, & now Me’s subdued too, like a life-size balloon deflating, & chewing her lower lip,
Wolfie’d like to tease her about “ma’am” but won’t, they’re bumping down the sandy rutted lane to the dead end, to the asphalt-sided bungalow we’d gotten in the habit of calling
home.

This note, printed in green ink in Me’s schoolgirl block letters, Wolfie was once shocked to discover taped to the inside of one of Me’s bureau drawers. He knew it was a message from Me in a state of radiant revelation to Me in a state of despair.

He knew it was the reverse of a suicide note.

He shut the door as if shutting it on a snake. Hid his eyes, & ran to hide. If he was the only reason Me stayed alive, was her life his fault?

T
HERE WERE SECRETS
Wolfie kept from Me.

He’d known from an early age he had to protect her.

True, Wolfie sometimes showed up bruised at school. (Or, bruised, didn’t go to school that morning.) But Me bruised herself, worse. For every hurt dealt to her son she loved, Me dealt herself a dozen.

“Baby, it won’t happen again. I swear!”

Always, Wolfie knew this statement to be true.

Another secret was how in Coldwater, Minnesota, in fifth grade he (Ralph L—) had been called out of class, & in the principal’s office there was a whiskery-cheeked man in a soiled camel’s hair coat who stooped & tried to grab him in his arms, & he backed away, & the man was his ex-father who’d tracked them down across three states as he said excitedly, & more loudly than the principal was accustomed to hearing. Mr. L—, the principal said, you led me to believe this was a
family emergency? Wolfie stood like a stone boy. Even his heartbeat stony. Thinking how
Ralph
was their name & it was not a name Me would utter.
Ralph, Jr.
&
Ralph, Sr.
If Wolfie was surprised & even interested seeing at last
Ralph, Sr.
who was his ex-father he gave no sign for Me’d coached him strenuously, the enemy can appear at any time, don’t allow the enemy to intimidate you & especially don’t allow the enemy to touch you.