I Am No One You Know (9 page)

This dialogue, like TV:

“Hey, little fellow, y’know me, eh? Your dad.”

(Not a glimmer of recognition. Wolfie’s mouth shut tight.)

“You know your dad, Ralphie, don’t you? C’mon!”

(Wolfie was backing up, though. Against the woman-principal’s knees.)

“He knows me, ma’am. Sure he does. Ralphie, you’re getting to be a
big boy.
How old?—ten? Oh Jesus.”

(Stony Wolfie like a graveyard angel. Unsmiling & staring.)

The principal was saying to the ex-father that she was afraid he’d have to leave. The child didn’t appear to know him.

The ex-father exploded, “Fuck he doesn’t know me! His bitch of a mother who’s a certified nut has poisoned him against me.”

At this cue Wolfie spoke. In a small-boy earnest voice as Me’d coached him to remain calm in the presence of the enemy. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t know him. I want to go back to class.”

The ex-father was getting excitable. Others entered the office to subdue him. In that flushed face emerged the rage that had been hidden. Wire glasses with smudged lenses & behind these the eyes glistened bloodshot. If somebody hadn’t prevented this desperate man from stooping & lunging he’d have grabbed the child in his arms & run with him. It might’ve been like TV, cops shooting rounds of ammunition.

Wolfie laughed to think how mean a kid he was, not to know his own father. & before witnesses! It was of a meanness you couldn’t explain, like grinding a tiny featherless fallen bird on the sidewalk beneath your heel, or smashing a window with your fist just to smash it & instead of crying because it hurt, laughing like a hyena.

Such were the secrets Wolfie kept from Me.

T
HAT
S
ATURDAY NIGHT
in Olcott there was a strong wind & pelting rain & Wolfie was awakened at about 2
A.M.
by a sound of broken glass & his mother screaming. “Get away! God damn you! Get out of here! You fucker!” Wolfie thought: It’s a man. The tattoo freak. There’d been a signal between them Wolfie hadn’t comprehended, the guy must’ve come after Wolfie was in bed & Me had let him inside, in secret, as sometimes Me did with guys, & Wolfie stumbled in pajamas into the hall outside his room, already he was smelling whiskey, spilled whiskey, this was a smell he knew though he hadn’t smelled it yet in Olcott. Wolfie heard a sound of struggle, another scream of Me’s, & a deeper angry voice he believed he heard, & heavy footsteps, & more breaking glass, & standing in the doorway of her dim-lighted bedroom there was Me naked holding a sheet against her sweat-gleaming body. Me’s hair was disheveled & her mouth appeared to be bleeding. Seeing Wolfie she screamed, “No! Don’t come in here! It isn’t safe in here.” Wolfie was so scared the hairs lifted at the nape of his neck & his bladder pinched but he couldn’t see any figure other than Me, unless the guy was hiding in the closet or bathroom? In Me’s room lamplight spilled strangely against the ceiling & walls, the lampshade was knocked askew & still trembling. It looked as if a wind had blown through the room churning bedclothes & dragging the mattress partway off the box springs. There was an overturned whiskey bottle amid the sheets, & the smell of whiskey was sickening to Wolfie’s nostrils, it had associations of which he didn’t want to think & would not. He saw that the closet door was wide open, & nobody inside. Me’s clothes on the floor looking as if they’d been yanked off hangers. Where was the guy?
Was there a guy?
He might’ve escaped by the broken window, maybe he’d climbed into Me’s room through the window? (But why wouldn’t Wolfie have heard anything until now?) Me was sobbing angrily & bleeding from cut fingers & cuts on her face & her eyes were so dilated Wolfie thought she must be blind. Staring at him & stammering words he couldn’t comprehend. He saw, on the floor by the bed, a long-bladed knife glistening with blood. Me’d been stabbed! Wolfie tasted panic. Me was furious & not seemingly in pain & when he approached her she screamed at him to stay away, it was dangerous to touch her. “Call an ambulance! Call the cops! I’ve been attacked for Christ’s sake! The fucker tried to kill me!”
Me tripped in the bedclothes & threw the sheet down in a rage & Wolfie saw to his horror that she’d been cut, stabbed, in her breasts, her belly, her thighs, & narrow rivulets of blood were running swiftly down her body. Wolfie was in terror that Me would die, & ran to the telephone to dial 911 but Me changed her mind & rushed at him & knocked the phone from him saying it was nobody’s business but her own, she didn’t want fucking cops barging into her home, rather bleed to death than invite cops into her home. Wolfie managed to walk Me into the bathroom & with badly shaking fingers dabbed at her wounds with a damp bath towel & Me sobbed quieter now, breathing swiftly & shallowly as if she’d been running, & her hair dark with sweat. Seeing that Wolfie was scared, his face pinched & dead-white, Me grabbed the bloody towel from him & tended to her own wounds, impatient, cursing. Wolfie tried to ask was it the guy they’d given a ride to? the guy with the tattoos? & Me said, “Who the fuck d’you think it was? That bastard, I’m gonna get a warrant for his arrest. I saw his face. I can describe him to a T. I can sketch his likeness.” But Wolfie had to wonder: had there been a guy? Any guy? An intruder? The knife on the bedroom floor was one of Me’s knives from her collection, & how’d a stranger get hold of it? Unless Me flashed it, first? & he got it away from her?

Wolfie wasn’t going to ask.

Me was bleeding from a dozen knife wounds. Most were just surface cuts, though they bled a lot. The deepest were in the fingers of both hands as if she’d shut her fists hard around the blade and squeezed. By this time, now the worst was over, Wolfie’d begun to cry, nervous & scared, for if there’d been a man in Me’s bedroom, & a man who’d beaten & cut her, & Me wouldn’t call the police, what was to stop this from happening again?—& if there hadn’t been a man, that was worse, Wolfie’d have to wonder if Me would be hospitalized to prevent harm to herself & others, & where would that hospital be? & where’d Wolfie be, then?

Even beyond 18, he could foresee he’d be responsible.

O
R, MAYBE, NO:
he’d hitch-hike West. Soon as Me was stable again. He’d seen photos of the Rockies, the Grand Canyon & Zion National Park & Yosemite. He’d get a job with the National Park
Service he’d been reading about, maybe as a fire ranger. Emergencies that had nothing to do with
him.

A
T AGE 13
Wolfie was too young for even a driver’s permit in New York State but he could drive any reasonable vehicle, & had driven, spelling Me in the Chevy van on their long, mostly nighttime drive from Minnesota, & so that morning, a few hours later, Wolfie drove Me to a hospital in Newfane where in the emergency room, nearly deserted at 6
A.M.,
a young doctor treated her wounds & stitched the deep cuts in her fingers. The doctor was shocked & suspicious asking what had caused these cuts? & Me shrugged & murmured what sounded to Wolfie, some feet away, like “Life.” Wolfie came quickly to join Me. He was anxious, protective. He’d talked Me into coming to Newfane for medical treatment (he knew about infections) & now he was worried that even in her moderately subdued state, not exuding the actual stink of mania, Me yet gave off an odor any professional could detect, as dogs are trained to sniff out illegal drugs. Wolfie said, “My mom’s a sculptor, she carves things & cuts things up, like drift-wood & metal & stuff like that. Sometimes she hurts her hands.” This was such an inspired answer, & even proud, & that word
mom
at the core, Me brightened & smiled at Wolfie, & Wolfie saw that it would be O.K. The dice were being tossed again, & it would be O.K. “What about these other lacerations, on your body & face?” the doctor asked, & Me said with her most winning smile, like even with her stitched & bandaged fingers she was stroking this guy’s thigh, “These’re the hazards of being an artist, doctor. But I could use some painkiller.” A nurse completed Me’s treatment, putting gauze & bandages on Me’s wounds, four on her face alone, & giving Me a tetanus shot, & Me insisted that her son be given a shot, too—“There’s so much danger for kids these days. Even good, normal kids.”

The hitch-hiker from the Wawa store was never mentioned again between them. Calling the police, or not-calling, was never mentioned again. Though in one day in November they’d see a motorcyclist on Route 78 who resembled the guy, straggly hair & sideburns, but it wasn’t him, & both Me & Wolfie would glance away, wordless.

A
FTER THE EMERGENCY
room & the stitches & bandages that made Me laugh when she looked at herself in the mirror, it was a double 100-watt mood, Me & Wolfie both. Now she doesn’t have to hurt herself for a while, Wolfie reasoned, & not me, either. A few days later driving along the windy lakeshore they discovered an old cemetery behind a stone church, in a place called Heartwellville, & as usual at such times Me was interested only in the more neglected graves, some of them covered in tall grasses & weeds & if there were flowerpots set before them, the flowers were long dead & the pots were cracked. Me could work herself up to actual tears at such sights amid rows of well-tended graves. “You never think of it. How you die twice. Once when you’re dead, & then when nobody remembers.” Wolfie laughed & said, “Oh, how d’ya know, Me? Some dead person told you?” Me said,
“I
wouldn’t want to be forgotten.” So Me knelt in the tall grass & stuck herself with prickles, clipping weeds with a rusty shears at the gravesite of Sarah Eliza Burd born 1891 & died 1946,& the grave overgrown & the pink marble marker badly cracked, a melancholy sight Me said. Wolfie got drawn into it, too, tearing out handfuls of weeds, & seeing that no one else was in the cemetery he prowled about the rows of gravestones & came back with a pot of real-looking pink geraniums to place by Sarah Eliza Burd’s grave. There was justice to this: you had to figure that the tended graves would go on being tended for a while at least, but the untended, no. Their time was past. Me’d get worked up at such labor & would come almost to think that the dead knew of our effort & were grateful & who’s to say they were not? Wolfie sneered, but that was Wolfie’s way, Me expected it of him. “Of us two, I’m the idealist. That’s ’cause I look oblivion in the face & make a choice: to persevere.” Me & Wolfie were intrigued that in cemeteries there are family gatherings, sections of the cemetery like little neighborhoods, as in Heartwellville there were numerous Blackhulls, Dykemanns, Lindemanns, Epps. Yet, after a certain date, no more, as if the family’d died out, or the young ones moved away. This was sad, huh? Or was it? Me, wiping her forehead with her baseball cap, smiled at Wolfie, struck by a revelation. Despite her face-bandages that made her look like a car-crash victim. No matter that what she said now contradicted what she’d been saying a few minutes
before. “God, Wolfie, doesn’t it make you feel good, that we don’t have some massive ‘extended family’ spying on us? All these people! Every one of them with their idea of
you.
Thanksgiving & Christmas & goddamn presents to wrap & unwrap. Just you & me, Wolfie! We travel light.” This sounded good to Wolfie, too. The other was unimaginable, like being forced to wear layers of heavy clothing on a warm day, or eating ten times as much food as you wanted.

It was part of cemetery-visiting to bring lunch, & we had peanut butter on whole grain bread, hardboiled eggs, yogurt & wheat germ & McIntosh apples & Cokes, sitting amid the Heartwellville Lutheran dead, eating like pigs, especially Wolfie, for cemeteries whetted the appetite & it was a bright damp-sunny October day. Me’s idea, Wolfie hadn’t gone to school that morning, for what (Me would explain in her note to the school principal) were family-religious reasons. Later we stood on a crumbling stone wall behind the church looking out toward the lake, & what more beautiful sight, how happy we were we got to laughing, seeing the lake that, though we’d been living by it for weeks, was nameless to us, not a lake but an inland sea, stretching out west & east beyond our eyesight, & a hazy floating horizon, said to be the Canadian shore, where we’d never yet traveled, just visible to the north.