Ivyland (19 page)
Authors: Miles Klee
“A little.”
“⦠although ⦠O, good Jesus Horatio Christ.”
The wind builds up to an ornery whine hovering in the octave just below high C, rising and falling a few quarter tones in annoying anti-melodies. Lev is opening my jacket, grabbing a bottle of P from the inside pocket, pretty much drinking from it. He shields his eyes and stands away from the car, the snow less dense now, spaced out eloquently, scoping a blank 360º.
In all this, I'm starting to think, only one person seemed to want to helpâfishnetted hooker in Dallas. Redhead. Name of Rosetta. I know what America's all about, sweetie, she said, and I'll show you. I believed her and liked being called sweetie. Turned out she was talking about freezejobs, but I'm telling you, she knew, and further knew not to spill the secret to me. It was like we'd found my cheerleader again, all grown up and streetwise and tending a grudge that was damn well deserved. It's been long enough now that when someone on the road treats us like shit, I figure they owed us from a time we screwed them, a juncture we failed to mark.
Lev fixes on something, and then I see it too: a slice of air that sharpens in the sky. Snow in front makes the popped-out polygon seem a staticky movie screen, but the flakes diffuse evenly, steadily across.
“Closer than I thought,” Lev says.
There are letters in the colossal, murky rectangle. The vowels are O A E E E. The consonants are W R L D S (then two half-size ones, N and D), L R G S T C H S S S T. There's one apostrophe, and the number 2 also. Lev points out something beyond it, a gazebo with a truncated pyramid on top, and starts in that direction. I follow, wading through white that wetly packs itself into my boots. Parallel streams of red and green glide horizontally past me, and I'm instantly at ease because they are opposites in the color wheel. According to Mom, Dad had the sort of colorblindness that obscures this. Lev set my color fixation out to sea at a lake in the Catskills, towed figuratively by a freed Sullivan, the pet duckling I bought in somewhere's Chinatown for four dollars, which after some market research appeared to be half the retail value and a very good deal. He says no more aesthetic pacifiers. Fine, I told him, who cares about that crap. I don't even miss Ivyland's duck pond.
The grid of red and green gives way to a bloodless one of black and white, sixty-four squares that go light, dark, light, dark. It's hard to see, but the white boxes levitate above the black ones in the ghost-stalked glow of the gazebo. Lev is not surprised by any of it, because he never is.
“Where ⦠are the world's second largest chess
pieces,
one wonders, for the second largest set,” Lev says.
“Who has the first largest?”
“Who gives a shit?” He fingers the point of his top left canine, which is not a good sign. I count eight pills from the auburn P bottle and chew them, hoping the bitterness will de-numb my face. The moon is out again, in its arbitrary stage. Lev, a knight, is walking in L-shaped spurts, more and more frustrated. He puts me in a spot.
“Am I a bishop? I like diagonals.”
“You're a bishop.”
“That's good.”
“You're a bishop that took an oath of silence. Move there.” I do.
And still the board refuses to speak.
*
We try to neutral our truck the thirty yards over to park on the board, under the pyramid roof, so we won't have to get snow off in the morning. Lev stomps the gas with me pushing behind, snow flung into my eyes and nose, the clutch's oily smell burning hard, suffocating. The front wheels go over the lip of the road and bury themselves in a snow bank. Like this was ever going to work. No way I'm pushing anymore. Don't care what he says.
All that's left to do is sleep in the freezing tilted truck, on the so-cold-it's-slimy faux-leather front bench, split open from when Lev extracted the stuffing and analyzed its consistency till he'd been mysteriously satisfied.
The news on the radio is all made up. Just stories. There's President Fullner claiming a time of renewal, vowing a return to the moon after pausing to grieve over another denatured bridge. This one in Oregon. It rained red rain in England, because sand from the Sahara rose into the clouds. How many grains of red in a raindrop? Wish I'd seen all that color lifted, seen it crashing down around me.
I think of my cheerleader, because maybe if she's the last thing I think about, she'll make it into my dreams. I try to fit her in somewhere, but as stupid as this sounds, she floats above it all, not part of the system. I can fill in her past, memories she never would've confidedâher first kiss in seventh grade when their teeth clicked together, trips to the beach and trips through the boardwalk's haunted house. Cutting her foot on broken glass, and the blood like red milk on kitchen tile. Images that drown those of abandonment ⦠her squatting in a ditch as Lev drives off, an understanding terrorized. Can't say I wouldn't have left her behind. But she was mine to leave. I would've told her not to learn from it. I would've said my first romantic thing.
Lev can't sleep either, is just writing page after page of notation, drawing chess boards and ripping them up into equal-sized pieces that he piles in a cup-holder. The little square pieces of paper circumscribed in the cup-holder are nice, somehow. I open the glove compartment and remove the shaving kit bag, shaking it. Some pills rattle inside, but not many.
“Conserve,” Lev says, sketching another grid, “There's no more where that came from. Till the official product launch, of course.”
“Do you remember your dreams?”
“Never.”
“Wonder why that is.”
“It's all in binary.”
He smiles the am-I-kidding? smile. Must be scared of what he's begun to see in sleep, as scared as I am of what I see. I fall from a bright black tower. My heart explodes a thousand times, and I still can't die, and I don't wake up when I reach the ground. I put my chin on a scarred chopping block. A masked executioner swings his axe, but it's not enough, and I can feel sinew and nerve cling stubbornly to my head, gory tears all stung with shame. Lev in the crowd, same expression as anyone else. He's here for the show. The axe comes down again. Again.
I re-count the cigarette butts on the floor of the truck. Thirty-two more than I thought. I would detail this discrepancy in the notebook, but Lev is monopolizing it, jabbing himself repeatedly in the temple with the eraser end of his pencil in a way he's never done before.
“We're stuck, aren't we?”
“We'll just leave tomorrow, walk away,” Lev says. “Truck's dead weight. No worries.”
“Cops'll find it. They'll know where we are.”
“They won't.”
“They
will
,” I'm yelling. “They
will
, bastard fuck! They will, they will, they
will
!” I punch him hard in the chest now, starting to cry.
“Stop! Stop,” he shouts. “We'll take off the plates.”
“It's not enough.” I put my hands on his throat, but I know I can't.
“They aren't looking for us, you ape-shit freak,” he gargles.
“Why not?” I yell, pressing harder. He won't answer, so I make crazy, like I'm really going to. “
Why not
?”
*
Outside, everything is crisp and even, except where the snow has yet to fill our footprints. My fingers slip off him when I realize. To be caught, someone has to care. And Lev doesn't know any better than me why no one seems to notice.
“Done?” he says. Like he was never scared. “I'm passing out. You're not going to bludgeon me?” Of course not. He climbs into the back and sprawls, leaving me alone with the cold. Through the rear glass, Aurora smiles down with inverted rainbows.
I wonder, if we sailed off a cliff tomorrow, what Lev would say in the gut-sick second or two we had. Would he be afraid like a human, or buckle his seatbelt for one last gag? Cover his eyes and apologize? Never. Or, he'd confess no more than the smallest crueltyâsomething petty and dumb we'd meant to forget, made raw all over againâand fade like a bruise before I could laugh.
IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY ///
THIRTEEN YEARS AGO
AIDAN
Dad's New Year's Day Hike through the Res was an openly hated tradition. Cal could be relied on to throw fits, smashing puddles of ice with thick branches and examining the fragments before smashing them further. The world was gray and fallenâthough it must have been sunny once or twice. You couldn't walk far without finding odd islands of junk scattered along the way. Strange things to find out thereâcomputer parts, unused lumber. Crude steps carved in the hills took you to the crest of a frozen waterfall. A turret of dripping bone stalactites that hung from black stone, impossible to picture ignited come spring. Cutting winds discouraged attempts at the summit, but Cal didn't much care, making the climb every year. We'd wave up to him. He'd act like he didn't see. Always more deer than last time. Innocent footfalls sent them dashing into denser forest, but Cal seemed to scare them on purpose. They were regally afraid. Strong cowards. Hikers passing the opposite way nodded greetings but rarely chatted for long, preferring to move aside and let our trail-spanning family pass. Dad would have me on his shoulders when I was smallerâI could take my eyes from the path and look skyward into a web of tree branches like veins and wonder how a tree branch in our own backyard had grown through chain-link fence to become a fused knot of metal and wood. Henri joined us one year, at my insistence. Cal didn't quite register him but never felt circumstance till the moment he chose to erupt. We piled into the minivan, and I talked softly with Henri in the way-back about nothing too memorable or funny. Everyone was sullen and sleepy but Dad. I said to Henri: There's Condensation On The Windows. Henri in a mock-dumb voice said Condensation? You Mean Like When Two People Are Talking? I laughed and drew a smiley face with my finger on the fogged-up window. We reached the Reservation, pulling into a gravel parking area emptier than the moon. Cal hopped out of the car, and I followed. Henri came out last, but Cal slammed the door shut a moment too late or too soon: There was a tripping echo. And the impersonal click of things snapping into place. I saw Henri's head get swept horizontally by the sliding door and nailed against the frame. The door bounced back open; for two seconds Henri stood swaying on the car's rubber foothold, the white toes of red sneakers hanging over the edge. Cal didn't move. Henri fell face first and did not put out his hands. His knees dove into gravel. The gravel bit back. I turned to Cal. He hadn't let go of the door. As our parents rushed to Henri, we stared at each other from a vanishing distance. He oozed the fear of all possible consequence. When the ambulance came, Mom and Cal went home in the van. I can't imagine what was said, though I suspect Cal maintained his stoic silence. Henri had a plastic mask over his face, I think to help his breathing, which left only a pair of almost-closed eyelids. One socket visibly swollen and purpled. A high forehead and moisture collecting in subtle grooves. Dad told me Henri would be fine despite the ambulance's swerving. The paramedics were two women with the same severe haircut, and they spoke to each other in nods. They were in love, weren't they. I sat in the waiting room for a while. Dad called Henri's parents and right as he hung up a doctor came in and told us to go home, saying they'd handle it from here. We asked how he was doing, but the doctor fiddled with his F ring and simply said: Blood Relatives Only. All I saw were Henri's glassed eyes, fake-looking, brimming with trapped tears, a blue spark surfacing in dull brown iris as he briefly floated. The image of Mom picking specks of gravel off Henri's face had wafted in and out of view as the howling ambulance wound its way up the mountain. She fetched us from the hospital and didn't ask. Her reckless driving said it allâafraid but angry, running red lights and once hitting the curb on a sharp turn. We pulled into the driveway to find Cal hurling a basketball at the backstop. I strode soundlessly from the van. Seconds before I placed my hands around his neck, he turned and smiled nervously. His nostrils flared; he toppled backwards on pocked asphalt, writhingâlaughingâas I asked if he'd tried to murder my only friend. Darkness bloomed where I pressed my fingertips to his throat. But my body betrayed me. I slashed a hand across my face to swipe away snot. I was ashamed, and he wasn't. Nothing to say. I was damp with sweat, pale with the rest. It wasn't an accident. He did it on purpose. He left. Dad helped me up and led me inside. I noticed Henri's pain in my own head.
Â
CAL
Dad in his well-meaning way figured the first of January would be a symbolically grand day to drag the family through a forest. All of us tired. Mom justifiably hungover. I livened the trip up any way I could. The sun never shone on any hike and the sky was only ever one color. Dad would tell me not to rip the needles off pine trees; I listened but continued unconsciously. I always found garbage sprinkled on the path, hubcaps, shopping carts, and once even a refrigerator. There was a way to reach a frozen waterfall. Always ghostly white, a proud torrent caged. If I ever saw that waterfall thawed, it did not make an equal impression. I'd stand at the summit of the wind-stabbed cliff. The family stayed below, their words just soundless shades of mouth. Deer moved noiselessly near the trails until Aidan did something clumsy to frighten them off. Their muscles worked under bronzed velvet, rippling or marvelously still. Their ears pricked at frozen leaves whispering along the ground. Dad would stop to shoot the breeze with other hikersâMom crossed her arms while Aidan rudely stared. I'd sit on a rock or rotted log and mope and sigh importantly, scratching figures in frosted mud. My body cold and craving movement but denied. Aidan once brought this sad-sack fat friend of his. Henri was his name. I was enraged. I didn't know what else to be. I loathed him but meant nothing by it, and everyone hates this way. Aidan and his lackey laughing in the van's way-back was almost too much to bear. Not that I planned to do something about it. The kid had slept over and downed most of the sparkling cider that we had when adults drank champagne. He'd snored deeply, too; I felt each labored inhalation through our house's ancient heating ducts. I didn't try to hear what they said now. I could've if I'd cared. We reached the Reservation quickly, jolting to a halt before a gnarled woodscape that jutted out in depressing Gothic proportion. I slid the door open, jumping out first. Aidan came out second. Forgetting there were three of us, I heaved the van door sideways and connected with Henri's emerging head. There was a tripping echo, chased by the laboring crunch of a metal part coming loose, two impacts like one musical slur and a tiny shudder felt in the door handle. I watched Henri float and falter at me as the door rolled back, but I couldn't force myself to move. His hands hung helplessly at his side as he toppled, mouth agape. His enormous stomach hit home. The ground soaked up none of it. Aidan spun toward me. Mom and Dad swooped in on the bloodied idiot and dialed 911 on a cell. I didn't excuse anything. There was no one to hear it. Only Aidan and Dad got in the ambulance with him. I can't imagine what was said as they drove to St. Barnabas. I was calm as I raced through odds, and Mom shook her head saying God My God Please Be Okay, whispering not to me but a space directly in front of her. Maybe she'd forgotten I was there. At home, the first thing she did was make me tomato soup. I accepted and consumed it. She told me to play outside. I sat in icy wind atop the wooden fort Dad built years earlier and looked at the dirty creek our backyard fell away into. Remembering the secret entrance in the chainlink fence farther downstream, I bet myself it could still be pried open. But somebody could've noticed and fixed it. I climbed the tree that'd grown through the fence and listened to the water, thinly sonorous in its rocky rut. The kid was probably dead. I figured the worst was yet to come. I played it over, not knowing how I'd missed him. I'd gone to close the door and the kid was just not there. How could anyone believe he'd turned invisible in my sight? I tried to warm up my body by shooting some baskets. I was making measured free throws when the car turned into the driveway. I imagined they'd leave me to stew in the guilt I planned on faking. But Aidan came straight for me. He tried to choke me, screaming that I'd killed his only friend, but I held him back easily until Dad pulled him off. Dad spoke as I regained my balance and let the first tear go. I covered it instantly. I was ashamed, and he wasn't. We were a frieze, the three of us. Contorted, still, and the picture of strife. Rhythm of three boys with jagged breath. An accident to make me finally unsure of movements, which were mine and which someone else's. Someone who needed to be sure. Don't stick yourself with a needle to discover the dream; a dream needle will seem just as real. I broke away. I went to the garage and got my bike. I saw them together, drifting up the driveway. Then I rode off, around the backyard. I steered into the road without looking, hoping to be hit by a car.