Stranger Things Happen (2 page)

There were a lot of things I wanted to say. I mean, neither of
us was really sure that we wanted a baby and part of me, sure, was
relieved that I wasn't going to have to learn how to be a father
just yet, but there were still things that I wish I'd said to you.
There were a lot of things I wish I'd said to you.

You know who.

#

The dead man sets out across the interior of the island. At
some point after his first expedition, the hotel moved quietly back
to its original location, the dead man in his room, looking into
the mirror, expression intent, hips tilted against the cool tile.
This flesh is dead. It should not rise. It rises. Now the hotel is
back beside the mailbox, which is empty when he walks down to check
it.

The middle of the island is rocky, barren. There are no
trees here, the dead man realizes, feeling relieved. He walks for a
short distance—less than two miles, he calculates, before he stands
on the opposite shore. In front of him is a flat expanse of water,
sky folded down over the horizon. When the dead man turns around,
he can see his hotel, looking forlorn and abandoned. But when he
squints, the shadows on the back veranda waver, becoming a crowd of
people, all looking back at him. He has his hands inside his pants,
he is touching himself. He takes his hands out of his pants. He
turns his back on the shadowy porch.

He walks along the shore. He ducks down behind a sand dune,
and then down a long hill. He is going to circle back. He is going
to sneak up on the hotel if he can, although it is hard to sneak up
on something that always seems to be trying to sneak up on you. He
walks for a while, and what he finds is a ring of glassy stones,
far up on the beach, driftwood piled inside the ring, charred and
black. The ground is trampled all around the fire, as if people
have stood there, waiting and pacing. There is something left in
tatters and skin on a spit in the center of the campfire, about the
size of a cat. The dead man doesn't look too closely at
it.

He walks around the fire. He sees tracks indicating where
the people who stood here, watching a cat roast, went away again.
It would be hard to miss the direction they are taking. The people
leave together, rushing untidily up the dune, barefoot and heavy,
the imprints of the balls of the foot deep, heels hardly touching
the sand at all. They are headed back towards the hotel. He follows
the footprints, sees the single track of his own footprints, coming
down to the fire. Above, in a line parallel to his expedition and
to the sea, the crowd has walked this way, although he did not see
them. They are walking more carefully now, he pictures them walking
more quietly.

His footprints end. There is the mailbox, and this is where
he left the hotel. The hotel itself has left no mark. The other
footprints continue towards the hotel, where it stands now, small
in the distance. When the dead man gets back to the hotel, the
lobby floor is dusted with sand, and the television is on. The
reception is slightly improved. But no one is there, although he
searches every room. When he stands on the back veranda, staring
out over the interior of the island, he imagines he sees a group of
people, down beside the far shore, waving at him. The sky begins to
fall.

#

Dear Araminta? Kiki? Lolita? 
Still doesn't have the right ring to it, does it? Sukie? Ludmilla?
Winifred?

I had that same not-dream about the faculty party again. She was
there, only this time you were the one who recognized her, and I
was trying to guess her name, who she was. Was she the tall blonde
with the nice ass, or the short blonde with the short hair who kept
her mouth a little open, like she was smiling all the time? That
one looked like she knew something I wanted to know, but so did
you. Isn't that funny? I never told you who she was, and now I
can't remember. You probably knew the whole time anyway, even if
you didn't think you did. I'm pretty sure you asked me about that
little blond girl, when you were asking.

I keep thinking about the way you looked, that first night we
slept together. I'd kissed you properly on the doorstep of your
mother's house, and then, before you went inside, you turned around
and looked at me. No one had ever looked at me like that. You
didn't need to say anything at all. I waited until your mother
turned off all the lights downstairs, and then I climbed over the
fence, and up the tree in your backyard, and into your window. You
were leaning out of the window, watching me climb, and you took off
your shirt so that I could see your breasts, I almost fell out of
the tree, and then you took off your jeans and your underwear had a
day of the week embroidered on it, Holiday? and then you took off
your underwear too. You'd bleached the hair on your head yellow,
and then streaked it with red, but the hair on your pubis was black
and soft when I touched it.

We lay down on your bed, and when I was inside you, you gave me
that look again. It wasn't a frown, but it was almost a frown, as
if you had expected something different, or else you were trying to
get something just right. And then you smiled and sighed and
twisted under me. You lifted up smoothly and strongly as if you
were going to levitate right off the bed, and I lifted with you as
if you were carrying me and I almost got you pregnant for the first
time. We never were good about birth control, were we, Eliane?
Rosemary? And then I heard your mother out in the backyard, right
under the elm I'd just climbed, yelling "Tree? Tree?"

I thought she must have seen me climb it. I looked out the
window and saw her directly beneath me, and she had her hands on
her hips, and the first thing I noticed were her breasts, moonlit
and plump, pushed up under her dressing gown, fuller than yours and
almost as nice. That was pretty strange, realizing that I was the
kind of guy who could have fallen in love with someone after not so
much time, really, truly, deeply in love, the forever kind, I
already knew, and still notice this middle-aged woman's tits. Your
mother's tits. That was the second thing I learned. The third thing
was that she wasn't looking back at me. "Tree?" she yelled one last
time, sounding pretty pissed.

So, okay, I thought she was crazy. The last thing, the thing I
didn't learn, was about names. It's taken me a while to figure that
out. I'm still not sure what I didn't learn, Aina? Jewel? Kathleen?
but at least I'm willing. I mean, I'm here still, aren't I?

Wish you were here, You know who.

#

At some point, later, the dead man goes down to the mailbox.
The water is particularly unwaterlike today. It has a velvety nap
to it, like hair. It raises up in almost discernable shapes. It is
still afraid of him, but it hates him, hates him, hates him. It
never liked him, never. "Fraidy cat, fraidy cat," the dead man
taunts the water.

When he goes back to the hotel, the loolies are there. They
are watching television in the lobby. They are a lot bigger than he
remembers.

#

Dear Cindy, Cynthia, Cenfenilla,
There are some people here with me now. I'm not sure if I'm in
their place— if this place is theirs, or if I brought them here,
like luggage. Maybe it's some of one, some of the other. They're
people, or maybe I should say a person I used to know when I was
little. I think they've been watching me for a while, but they're
shy. They don't talk much.

Hard to introduce yourself, when you have forgotten your name.
When I saw them, I was astounded. I sat down on the floor of the
lobby. My legs were like water. A wave of emotion came over me, so
strong I didn't recognize it. It might have been grief. It might
have been relief. I think it was recognition. They came and stood
around me, looking down. "I know you," I said. "You're
loolies."

They nodded. Some of them smiled. They are so pale, so fat! When
they smile, their eyes disappear in folds of flesh. But they have
tiny soft bare feet, like children's feet. "You're the dead man,"
one said. It had a tiny soft voice. Then we talked. Half of what
they said made no sense at all. They don't know how I got here.
They don't remember Looly Bellows. They don't remember dying. They
were afraid of me at first, but also curious.

They wanted to know my name. Since I didn't have one, they tried
to find a name that fit me. Walter was put forward, then rejected.
I was un-Walter-like. Samuel, also Milo, also Rupert. Quite a few
of them liked Alphonse, but I felt no particular leaning towards
Alphonse. "Tree," one of the loolies said.

Tree never liked me very much. I remember your mother standing
under the green leaves that leaned down on bowed branches, dragging
the ground like skirts. Oh, it was such a tree! the most beautiful
tree I'd ever seen. Halfway up the tree, glaring up at me, was a
fat black cat with long white whiskers, and an elegant sheeny bib.
You pulled me away. You'd put a T-shirt on. You stood in the
window. "I'll get him," you said to the woman beneath the tree.
"You go back to bed, mom. Come here, Tree."

Tree walked the branch to the window, the same broad branch that
had lifted me up to you. You, Ariadne? Thomasina? plucked him off
the sill and then closed the window. When you put him down on the
bed, he curled up at the foot, purring. But when I woke up, later,
dreaming that I was drowning, he was crouched on my face, his belly
heavy as silk against my mouth.

I always thought Tree was a silly name for a cat. When he got
old and slept out in the garden, he still didn't look like a tree.
He looked like a cat. He ran out in front of my car, I saw him, you
saw me see him, I realized that it would be the last straw—a
miscarriage, your husband sleeps with a graduate student, then he
runs over your cat—I was trying to swerve, to not hit him.
Something tells me I hit him. I didn't mean to, sweetheart, love,
Pearl? Patsy? Portia?

You know who.

#

The dead man watches television with the loolies. Soap
operas. The loolies know how to get the antenna crooked so that the
reception is decent, although the sound does not come in. One of
them stands beside the TV to hold it just so. The soap opera is
strangely dated, the clothes old-fashioned, the sort the dead man
imagines his grandparents wore. The women wear cloche hats, their
eyes are heavily made up.

There is a wedding. There is a funeral, also, although it is
not clear to the dead man watching, who the dead man is. Then the
characters are walking along a beach. The woman wears a
black-and-white striped bathing costume that covers her modestly,
from neck to mid-thigh. The man's fly is undone. They do not hold
hands. There is a buzz of comment from the loolies. "Too dark," one
says, about the woman. "Still alive," another says.

"Too thin," one says, indicating the man. "Should eat more.
Might blow away in a wind."

"Out to sea."

"Out to Tree." The loolies look at the dead man. The dead
man goes to his room. He locks the door. His penis sticks up, hard
as a tree. It is pulling him across the room, towards the bed. The
man is dead, but his body doesn't know it yet. His body still
thinks that it is alive. He begins to say out loud the names he
knows, beautiful names, silly names, improbable names. The loolies
creep down the hall. They stand outside his door and listen to the
list of names.

#

Dear Bobbie? Billie? 
I wish you would write back.

You know who.

#

When the sky changes, the loolies go outside. The dead man
watches them pick the stuff off the beach. They eat it
methodically, chewing it down to a paste. They swallow, and pick up
more. The dead man goes outside. He picks up some of the stuff.
Angel food cake? Manna? He smells it. It smells like flowers: like
carnations, lilies, like lilies, like roses. He puts some in his
mouth. It tastes like nothing at all. The dead man kicks at the
mailbox.

#

Dear Daphne? Proserpine? Rapunzel?
Isn't there a fairy tale where a little man tries to do this? Guess
a woman's name? I have been making stories up about my death. One
death I've imagined is when I am walking down to the subway, and
then there is a strong wind, and the mobile sculpture by the
subway, the one that spins in the wind, lifts up and falls on me.
Another death is you and I, we are flying to some other country,
Canada? The flight is crowded, and you sit one row ahead of me.
There is a crack! and the plane splits in half, like a cracked
straw. Your half rises up and my half falls down. You turn and look
back at me, I throw out my arms. Wineglasses and newspapers and
ribbons of clothes fall up in the air. The sky catches fire. I
think maybe I stepped in front of a train. I was riding a bike, and
someone opened a car door. I was on a boat and it sank.

This is what I know. I was going somewhere. This is the story
that seems the best to me. We made love, you and I, and afterwards
you got out of bed and stood there looking at me. I thought that
you had forgiven me, that now we were going to go on with our lives
the way they had been before. Bernice? you said. Gloria? Patricia?
Jane? Rosemary? Laura? Laura? Harriet? Jocelyn? Nora? Rowena?
Anthea?

I got out of bed. I put on clothes and left the room. You
followed me. Marly? Genevieve? Karla? Kitty? Soibhan? Marnie?
Lynley? Theresa? You said the names staccato, one after the other,
like stabs. I didn't look at you, I grabbed up my car keys, and
left the house. You stood in the door, watched me get in the car.
Your lips were still moving, but I couldn't hear.

Tree was in front of the car and when I saw him, I swerved. I
was already going too fast, halfway out of the driveway. I pinned
him up against the mailbox, and then the car hit the lilac tree.
White petals were raining down. You screamed. I can't remember what
happened next.