The Interloper (15 page)
The coat hooks on the door were a big wooden C and J. They hung above a crudely installed deadbolt—hallmark of the territorial teenager. I was struck, of course, and this I had noticed upon first walking in, that the room didn’t appear to have changed at all since CJ had lived there.
“I know what it looks like. I’ve heard it all. We need to move on, we should redo the room, put his things away for good. And, you know, I reply that we’ve got plans for the room, or that I can’t bear to change a thing yet, and people turn supportive, Owen, they really do.”
I nodded.
“Much more supportive,” she went on, “than if I told them the truth. How would Nancy So-and-so down the street react if I told her the truth?”
“The truth?”
“We haven’t changed the room because CJ won’t let us—because he’s still among us.”
“Sure,” I said. “Like the baseball. I was afraid to even mention it to you.”
“About six months after he passed away, I came into this room and started to pack his things into boxes. I felt like it had been long enough, that his spirit had moved on. A dozen broken boxes, slamming doors, strange noises, and mysterious chills later, I decided to stop. This was more than a series of coincidences. It was CJ saying—like he always used to—‘Mom! Leave my room alone!’ He’d already been off to college for several years, you see, and we wanted to turn his room into a guest room—Patty’s had already become a home office—but he wouldn’t hear of it. Still won’t. So that’s why it looks like this. Not because we’re having trouble letting go or something common like that. Because CJ wants it that way.”
She was compelling, in the way that anyone can be compelling when they believe what they are saying. And as long as I continued to validate her experience, I could be assured of her cooperation and support. I had learned this lesson while working for software companies. At conventions, you could usually get people to talk about themselves after a few drinks at the hotel bar. A surprising number of very straight-laced, square people could be coerced into talking from that last cluttered corner of their minds, where a confused, underdeveloped, traumatized sense of spirituality had been packed away, and if you were supportive enough, you could get them to talk crazy for the rest of
the night. They had no outlet, no voodoo ceremonies, no Latin Mass. I mention this now to clarify: I did not pity Minerva. I knew full well that most people carried around this kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo. Rather, I was flattered that she would share it with me. It could be argued that CJ brought us closer together.
She sighed. “I’ve got to get back to things downstairs.” Her tone was such that she was not asking me to leave.
“Do you mind if I sit here a moment?” I asked. “This is powerful stuff, and I’d like to collect my thoughts.”
She smiled a warm, motherly smile. “Stay as long as you like. You’ve been invited.”
I watched her leave the room and close the door behind her. I had come here to remind myself that CJ had been a living, breathing human being, and that Raven’s future punishments were the least I could do to avenge CJ’s death. So (I asked myself) who was this young man whose life had been cut short so violently and senselessly?
Aside from the stories I’d heard, I knew very little. I’d learned a few things already: He might have been a baseball thief as a child. Also as a child, he’d enjoyed the destruction of others’ personal property, and appeared to have engaged in it repeatedly, with few consequences. The mysterious “X” baseball was interesting to me not because it was or wasn’t the ball from my made-up story, but because it was the first evidence of something darker in CJ’s personality. He had repeatedly committed petty crimes, purposefully or at least negligently, had left his calling card behind, a baseball with his name and address on it, and had dismissed these crimes as accidents at least six times without incurring any worse punishment than his father’s shaking head. Boys will be boys. Sounded
like a brat to me, especially when one considers this additional detail from his college days: he wanted his room kept his way, whether he was using it or not. This was not the CJ I’d heard about, exactly, unless I’d misconstrued the meanings of “mischievous” and “rambunctious.” Then again, who would call their dead son or brother
asshole?
I stole CJ’s journal. If he had been there, as Minerva believed he was, wouldn’t he have made more of a fuss? I tucked it into my pants, made my escape, and took it directly to the Copy Store. (I later returned the original during a family dinner, after complaining that I had to use the toilet “in a serious way” and disappearing upstairs.) I was dying to examine its contents. At the Stocking house, I had only opened it long enough to ensure that it contained personal thoughts as opposed to a daily tally of events. At the Copy Store, I felt far too paranoid to pay the pages much attention. I looked forward to a leisurely read in the comfort of my home office. Unfortunately, I had Patty’s “weekend” to contend with—she was off for two days. Worse, she had declared this weekend of all weekends as an opportunity to reconnect. Reconnecting seemed to me a difficult task. I was concerned for the moment with lives other than our own. In a mailbox one town away lay, potentially, a response from Raven, and in that potential response, some potential insight
into the murderer and his crime. In my office, hidden in the shallow void of my desk’s frame, below the lowest drawer, lay (again, potentially) the innermost secrets of Calvin Stocking Junior, murder victim, tragic loss. How could I be expected to focus on us? We were mere bench-warmers in this battle between life and death.
“I thought we should go to the Bathroom Store today,” she said. “We can get a new soap pump and hand towels for the guest bathroom. Maybe a floormat. To sort of remodel it without remodeling. That would be fun, don’t you think?”
“I’m on deadline.”
“You told me we could go out together today. This is really important, Owen.”
“Do we have to go to the Bathroom Store? Their parking lot is always such a pain.”
“I’ll drive. And it would be nice to have a project together.”
“I guess.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve just got to get in the mood. Right now I’m thinking that people are falling in love, people are cracking up, people are dying. It makes buying a soap pump seem sort of silly.”
“Buying a soap pump with your wife is not silly. Especially when the two of you have not been spending enough time together. Especially when you’ve been overworked and overstressed.”
“Fair enough.”
That day, Patty dragged me to the Bathroom Store, the Lighting Store, and the Outdoor Furniture Store, the cumulative effect of which was so enervating, my entire identity turned to jelly, then liquid, which then leaked out of me until I became
no one in particular. The rest of the weekend was only slightly more pleasant, but as far as she was concerned, we’d gotten a chance to reconnect.
I felt like a fraud.
If I could go back to that weekend I would set everything aside to talk to Patty about what was going on, about how she had started by changing her clothes and was now changing our bathroom. About how her desire to reconnect with me was akin to treating her symptoms instead of her disease. I would have talked to her about CJ, and her feelings about CJ, and what she was doing with them now, where she was storing them.
No, that isn’t true.
If I could go back to that weekend I would attempt wholeheartedly to reconnect with Patty. I wish I could do so now. But I didn’t, and I can’t. I participated in body but not in soul, focused the whole time on what spoils lay ahead.
CJ kept this journal intermittently from his sophomore year of high school through the summer before he entered college, with a few scattered entries thereafter, all of them written while on break from college. I have reproduced the journal as accurately as possible (≈95%) under the present circumstances. That said, the dating of entries below is entirely speculative.
CJ did not seem interested in capturing the rhythms of daily life. Most of the early entries appear to be borne of crisis, with some of the later ones recording matter-of-fact life changes. It is difficult to tell, especially in some of the later entries, what motivated him to pick up his journal and scribble a few lines. Overall, he wrote with admirable candor, either unconcerned that someone might discover his journal and read
it, or unaware that his words, read by someone else, could have any effect whatsoever.
High School Sophomore Year
Why does fucken Patty think she’s doing me a favor sticking me with her butt-ugly friend’s butt-ugly sister? Patty’s so high and mighty all the time, like an ugly senior should be better than a freshman hottie? DO NOT DO ME ANY MORE FAVORS LIKE CLARISSA “STINKY WINKIE” HYAMS!
Every time I write something in here I want to erase it but Mr. Blatz said not to. Or else it’s useless. The something life is not worth living or whatever.
I stopped writing because I had nothing to say. But now I do: I am in love. A vision of womanhood. Her name is Anastasia Bertano. I don’t know how to tell her or even if I should. I barely know Ana but I know she’s having boyfriend troubles.
Mr. Blatz is always making us use words in sentences we make up. Here’s one: I’m going to exacerbate Ana’s boyfriend problems. Feeling demonic but fuck it. She shouldn’t be with Jeff anyway. Found out from somebody (totally unreliable source) that the problem is he can’t keep his boner hard. Plan A put into motion.
Plan A successful! They totally broke up.
Asked Ana out—she said yes! Oh I’m good.
Recap of 1st date with Ana (I am right now): She talked about how bad it was at the end with Jeff and how her feelings were jumbled and crap like that. We made out for a while but she wouldn’t let me touch her tits. She told me the boner problem thing was a lie and that she was a virgin anyway. Jeff couldn’t handle Plan A, though, which was to have everybody limp when they walked past him at school, and so they broke up.
Ana = frigid. She won’t let me touch her tits unless we’re going steady but she doesn’t want to go steady yet. I’m bored of her crap already so I told a few people (big mouths) that I fucked her and she was a dead fuck. I got Jeff to say it too after I told everyone the limp dick thing was bullshit made up by Marty Gelbart.
Could the waves suck any worse this summer?
High School Junior Year
Ana switched schools—how funny is it that like a year ago I was tying my stomach in knots about her and now I could give a shit? That’s life.
Do your part for the War on Drugs: Kick a stoner’s ass.
I don’t know how it happened but I have a girlfriend already this year, Ana’s ex-best-friend Denise. I saw her at Jeff’s party. She said she was crushing on me all last year and then kissed me. I said if you like me so much show me your tits. We went into the pantry and shut the door and she pulled up her shirt. They were rad. She has already given me two hand jobs and said she would give me a blow job soon when we find a good place. I fingered her and she doesn’t have a stinky winkie.
I HATE MY FUCKEN MOM! I HATE YOU MOM! I HATE YOU! Do not touch my shit any more! Leave me alone! I can’t wait to go to college so you can butt out of my life!
Went to the Club with Dad tonight, got drunk. He went on and on with the “you’re a man now” speech. In my head I was like: What do I get out of it? Anyway, he told me I could get a car now if I decided which ones I liked that were also affordable enough. I can’t stop thinking about which one I want. He said no used cars so the Porsche is out. I think I want a Blazer or a Scirocco. The more I think about it, the cooler the Blazer is. Blazer. Yeah.
Got in a fight with Denise because she wants to follow me everywhere I go. Asked Dad about it—he said
women are like that and you need to make boundaries for them. Talked to Jeff about starting up a poker night—guys only.
High School Senior Year
At the beginning of the summer I told Denise I wanted to play around some more but she just keeps coming back to me, which is fun for a while but gets annoying quick. I never learn. She thinks things will continue after high school but I can see from Patty and her new friends that everything changes. I told Denise today I like having sex with her and that’s it. She started to cry and I told her to leave. I had to tell it like it was. She’ll be back though and we’ll go round and round. It’s fun till I cum.
In deep shit. Rolled the Blazer. Dad said he’d take care of it but I had never seen him so bummed out. I am still pretty fucking drunk. Went to the club in the afternoon, hung out all day, drinking beers and whatever, finally got up the nerve to talk to this college chick who works behind the front desk. Played it cool like I was sober. She said we should go for a drive when she got off, which was half an hour later. We went for a drive and I crashed the car while we were messing around and driving. Luckily I didn’t hit any other cars (we were in the canyons) and so there were no cops until after Dad got there. I asked Dad if the girl was going to get
in trouble and he said not to worry because it wasn’t my problem if she did. Look what she dragged me into, after all. I played “dumb kid” with the cops. Mom as usual overreacted and is trying to get Patty to talk to me on the phone from her job.
Unbelievable winter waves. Gulf of Alaska swells. College applications suck. I want to go to college in Hawaii but Dad says if I really want to surf the rest of my life, I’d better go to a good college so I can afford to someday.
Denise and I are really good, just casual. I’m not in love with her and she knows it so she doesn’t ask. But it’s all good again. She says I need to cool down and tune into the beauty of the universe. Booty of the universe.
I have to write my yearbook page stuff. I can’t believe they want it so early. Patty had an idea for me to do the periodic table but with elements from my life. So far I’ve got: Good Waves, Panchos Tacos, Blazer, Family, Club, Jeff and Phil, Baseball, Mr. Meow, Denise (maybe?)
Haven’t written in here in a while. Don’t know why I picked it up tonight. So many things going on. “The best time of our lives.” So many changes. This time next year I’ll have already finished a semester of college.
Didn’t end up doing periodic table thing. Couldn’t fill all the spaces and the whole thing was way too “Patty”
anyway. She gets all excited about an idea and then tries to make everyone else into another version of her. I think I’m going to major in political science. I told the career counselor I wanted to make a lot of money but I didn’t want to major in economics cuz I hate my econ class so bad right now. Four years of that shit would suck ass.
Reggie Erb is on my shit list. If I kill him and go to jail, look here and see the reason why: At Monroe he hung out with all of us and played baseball. But when we came to Franklin High he got into theater and reading, which is fine. He has a shirt that he made himself: “Shakespeare Saved My Life.” You want to speak a dead language and prance around in tights, okay by me. Live and let live, theater fags included. But today the prickmeister sees me walking down the hall and points at my varsity letter and says: “No way Calvin, you’re a walking cliché,” like he was some high and mighty judge of the school. I look at him and I don’t know what to say because he’s the cliché. So I say: “Sensitive, artistic, outsider, homo: cliché.” He gets all excited and says I’ve proven his point, that I’m a typical varsity bully, etc. I walked away. We used to be friends before he thought he was better than everyone else.
Boulder! Far enough away from parents and Patty but close enough to drive home on breaks. All the
snowboarding I can take. Plus it’s a party school—Honorable Mention on the Playboy list. Killer.
Reggie Erb made fun of my hard-earned varsity letter, and I pointed out how unoriginal his lazy pose was. Who’s the bully?
Patty brought home some guy named Luke to meet Mom and Dad. She says “it’s serious” like he was on life support. I was hoping she would find a new type after college but no dice. Someone told me that chicks always want to date their fathers but that must be BS because in Patty’s case the guys she dates are nothing like Dad. This loser was no exception. She picks the weak-spined ones, the ones she can order around. They can’t get their shit together, so she gets it together for them. Like she wants a pet or something. She wants them to be there all the time so she can ignore them and not worry about them. I don’t get it. She goes through them pretty quick b/c they end up having such boring relationships. She should get an iguana instead of a boyfriend, then she’d be happy. And a terrarium.
Luke the puke tried to chum up with me to gain an ally in the family. He’s obviously afraid of Dad and inept at sweet-talking Mom, so I’m his only option. A typical weasel, looking to stick his nose in any open crack. I would give him a break if I liked him at all.
Patty is majorly pissed that Dad won’t let her and Luke share a room. Luke “agreed” with Dad, which pissed off Patty even more. She stormed off and left me to hang out with her boyfriend. We played catch in the yard to get out of the house. I felt bad for him b/c he couldn’t win either way in that argument. But I still threw the ball hard and he shook out his hand every time he caught it. I hope people at Boulder are cool.