Thirsty (6 page)

And I lie in bed, turning this way and that. I think about how I got the curse. And when Chet will come. And what I should do.

Sometimes I can’t stand the thirst and go to the bathroom and have a glass of water. But the water is too thin. I scoop it into my mouth, suck hard as I can, but I can’t take in enough. I snap my teeth in midair. I clasp them and grind them and close my eyes. I want to hit something and feel flesh.

But I am standing still, my knees twitching in my pajamas. The thirst is upon me, so I am not in the mirror.

I sit on the bathroom floor, curled up in a ball. My arms are around my head as if someone were kicking me.

I can’t wait to have burned out of me this stupid thirst, this hunger that lies coiled and miserable in my throat and stomach like a tapeworm.

After a wakeful night, I am thankful for my reflection in silverware. It’s like silverware is what I’ve been waiting for all my life.

I walk downstairs and take real pride in the flash of my arm I see in the window in the front hall. I stop by the dining room table to check my face in the gloss of the table wax.

And I’m thankful for the little normal morning things my family says to one another. Like the way my father says, “I’m going to play golf with Dan this afternoon.”

And the way my mother says, “Oh.”

And the way my brother always pours a bowl of cereal for me really, really early so it gets soggy, then says in a voice like he’s the patron saint of Fruity Pebbles, “Chris, look, I already poured a bowl of cereal for you.”

Then I say, “This is all mush.”

And my mother says, “Chris, your brother was doing you a favor making you breakfast. You are not going to throw away a perfectly good bowl of cereal just because you happen to be feeling finicky. Thank Paul. Sit down. Chew. Swallow.”

I might argue, but I am so happy to see them all, and to see everything so normal, that I slurp up the mush and let it roll and slobber down my throat. “Mmmm! Mmm, mmm, mmm! Mmmm-
hmmmm!
” I exclaim, enjoying that wholesome American goodness.

I’m halfway through my bowl when I look down at my spoon. My reflection is still there. I’m obsessed with my reflection nowadays. I pick up the spoon and lick off all the milk.

My reflection stands out clearly, inverted. I turn from one side to the other. My nose swells and dances like the chorus line in a big Broadway Nose Revue. I move my head from one side to the other, and my nose kicks left, then right. One side, then the other. The nostrils are open so wide they must be belting out the finale from the end of act 3.

For a moment, I’m proud of my reflection. Then I look closer, and I’m not so happy. My hair is lanky and hangs down, from what I can see in the spoon. My eyes look sunken and dark and my features look haggard and ugly.

I hope nobody asks me why I look so tired.

My father and Paul get up from the table and leave.

I wonder whether anyone will notice how bad I look. People might start to guess why I haven’t been sleeping well. They might start to notice before Chet comes back from his mysterious Arm errand and cures me of my curse.

“Chris,” says my mother. “Earth to Chris.”

I will have to wait to really talk to Rebecca Schwartz until Chet has healed me. I can’t talk to her right now when it would be like a greasy lizard monster shambling up to her. I’ll wait until after I’m back to normal, and sleeping. Then I’ll buy some new clothes, too.

My mother is leaning against the table, looking at me with interest. “What do you think about when you start daydreaming like that?” she asks me. “You daydream all the time.”

“Sorry,” I say and put down the spoon.

“I really worry about you, Chris. Sometimes you are a complete space case. Someday you’re going to have to stop daydreaming and do something,” she says.

“Hey,” I grumble. “I was just looking at the spoon.”

“What?”

“I was just looking at a spoon. Okay? Looking at the flatware. That was all. Any other questions about me looking at the flatware?”

She shrugs and tosses out her coffee in the sink. She has a scowl on her face. “You’re beyond me. You really are beyond me. I hope your father manages to understand you someday, because you really make no sense to me.”

I don’t mind that she says this. At least everything is normal, and there it is, my ugly reflection in my spoon.

I catch myself in the mirror when I go to the bathroom after breakfast. There is my uneven hair and my pasty face, and I don’t even know if it’s as ugly as sin or as beautiful as a reward for deeds well done.

After three sleepless nights in a row, it really starts to show. I lie there at night worrying because I’ll be so bashed-up looking and stupid at school the next day. And in fact I am bashed-up looking and stupid at school. I’m sleepy and I can hardly eat. I sit there at lunchtime, hunched over my black cracked Fenway Frank, wishing it were liquid. It’s pasted to the inside of my mouth. I keep gagging on the pieces of ash. Tom is across from me, watching me. He sees that I’m not eating much anymore, that I have not eaten much for days. I think he wonders why.

I fail a test. I sit in class not taking notes while my teachers lecture and write things with chalk. After a few minutes of staring into space, I focus on the blackboard and realize that all this geometry and these words have just appeared in the last few minutes without any meaning to me, as if they were a natural phenomenon like frost scrawls on a window.

Tom hardly talks to me when we’re at school now. I know the only way I can win him back is to be wide awake. I have to be extra funny to keep his interest. He is starting to hang out with other kids at school, like Chuck O’Hara and Andy Green. He hangs out with Jerk and me after school still, because he doesn’t know the others well enough yet. Yet.

I want to tell him about Chet the Celestial Being, about my vampirism, and about the Vampire Lord in the lake. But I can’t, not yet.

He still hasn’t forgiven me for getting his lower left leg in the mud at the reservoir. Every time I speak to him, especially at school, I can tell that that lower left leg is hovering there between us, always making him angry, accusing me like a vengeful dismembered piece of Edgar Allan Poe ghost, dripping duckweed.

I don’t want anyone to notice anything different about me — the sleepiness or how I’m starting to get cranky and a little afraid of mirrors. I have to just keep smiling, that’s the thing. Keep smiling for another few weeks, until the curse is lifted. Keep smiling, I think, while my teeth are still square.

One day my father keeps looking at me nervously, as if he’s about to say, “Son, you know you have three eyes and a horn on your head?” But he doesn’t say anything.

Then I hear my mother talking to him. “It’s getting embarrassing,” says my mother. “Just go up and tell him. What is so . . . ?”

“It’s a turning point, Jennifer,” says my father.

“A turning point?” says my mother.

“It was just yesterday he was in diapers. That’s all I’m saying.”

“For his sake, Norm,” says Mom.

My father comes trudging up the stairs. I can hear his footsteps on the powder blue carpet. He picks up the stack of science magazines and
National Geographic
s that are sitting three steps up. He brings them up and sees me.

“Hey, Chris,” he says.

“Aloha, Father,” I say.

He is looking at me with the three eyes/horn look again.

“Chris.” In his hands he flexes the magazines first one way, then the other. “Your mother and I were just thinking.”

“I hope it didn’t disturb your daily routine much,” I joke.

He laughs a very little. “It’s about time you shaved,” he says. He coaxes the magazines into the shape of a tube — first, one that is a science magazine tube, then backward, so it’s a
National Geographic
tube. “You’re getting a little, you know. A little.” He points at his upper lip. “You’re a late bloomer, I know,” he says.

I reach up and feel, and it is a little bit mossy on my upper lip.

“I can show you how,” he says. “In the bathroom.”

“I was just going to go watch television,” I say.

“Your mother really would prefer if you got this over with.”

“Please!” my mother contributes from the bottom of the stairs.

My father walks to the bathroom door (down the hall, first door on the right) and opens it. He turns on the light. I follow him in. He closes the door.

We are crowded together in the bathroom, my father and I, surrounded by mirrors and the mylar wallpaper’s loud-beaked cockatoos. There is silver bamboo all around us on the walls. It’s a jungle in there.

“You’ll find there’s nothing much to this,” he says. “Soon you’ll be doing it every day.” Brief nostalgic pause. “My son.”

“Paul already shaves,” I say. “It’s like no big deal.”

My father says in a very professional way, “I think it’s probably better that you learn to use a safety razor. The electric razor doesn’t give you as smooth a shave.”

“No? Well, I want a smooth shave,” I say.

He shows me how to put on the shaving cream and wets the razor with hot water for me.

My mother says from the other side of the door, as if she’s concerned, “How’s it going in there, Chris?”

“Just fine, Mom,” I say. “I’ve just learned about the foam. All systems go.”

“Now take the razor,” my dad says, “and put it just under your nose. Very carefully.”

His fingers grab just below my wrist and guide my hand down. “Okay, you can let go now,” I say, slightly annoyed. He pulls away, and the razor slips just a fraction. I say, “Ow.”

He’s saying, “There, now you’ve cut yourself.” But what I’m noticing is the obvious thing. I can smell the steely tang of my blood.

I dive to the floor. I cry, “Blood!” I can feel my thirst rising. In a few seconds, I won’t be visible in the mirror.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asks.

“I dropped the razor,” I say. “Can I do this alone? I think I need to learn to do this alone.”

“Why? This is just the first time. You’re bound to cut yourself once the first time.”

I rise up halfway and start pushing him to the door, but I’m hunched over, below the level of the counter. “Get out,” I whine. “Could you get out, Dad? I want to do this alone.”

“Hey, okay, okay,” he says, backing out. “What’s the problem?”

“I’d rather do this myself,” I say. “That’s enough bonding for now.”

He steps out and I slam the door behind him and press the lock in with my thumb.

When I am alone, I recite five times, “Shit shit shit shit shit.”

I step over to the mirror, where of course my reflection no longer appears.

“What’s the matter with him?” my mother asks.

“I don’t know,” my father answers, sounding weary. “It was only a little cut.”

I consider what to do. My face is slithering with shaving cream. But not in the mirror. The foam is dropping on my shirt. I hold up my hand right next to the mirror and press it against the cool glass. It leaves a baby’s breath trace of mist. Otherwise, nothing.

I’ll have to fly this thing blind. It’s like one of those airplane disaster movies.

“Just remember,” my father is saying through the door, “up and down, but never sideways.”

“Are you okay, Chris?” my mother pleads.

“What’s his problem?” I hear Paul ask.

My hand is shaking; I raise my razor to my face again. I am surrounded by the accusatory stares of the wall cockatoos.

Carefully, I drag the razor down my lip again.

I touch it with my finger.

More red. I start licking. The shaving cream is not as sweet as it smells. The blood is good and salty. There isn’t much from just two wounds.

So I take another couple of exploratory scrapes with the razor. Without the mirror this is just a joke. I am cutting the hell out of my face.

And I’m loving it. I’m licking and licking like I am one big happy Fudgsicle; and pretty soon, I’m laughing, and the jazzy cockatoos and cockatrices are laughing with me.

Mom and Dad and Paul are still calling in to me, “Chris, are you okay?” “Chris, is it going all right?” “Hey, Chris, you done? I gotta whizz.” But I can barely contain myself. I’ve dropped the razor in the sink, and I’m standing there, as light as invisibility, and licking, and laughing, and licking.

I laugh and laugh.

“This is . . . I mean! Oh! Can you . . . ?” I hoot, and no one understands.

I need to wait for the bleeding to die down before I can unlock the door. I have to wait for the blood to clot.

“What’s taking you so long, Chris?” asks my mother.

Paul snorts, “Like it’s shaving he’s doing for the first time in there.”

“Paul!” says my mother. “You apologize to Chris! When he comes out.”

When the blood clots, which is quickly, and I reappear, I have a couple of small triangular cuts that don’t amount to much. I have three thin red lines on my upper lip, like a mustache drawn with a ruler in red pen.

That is the story of my first shave.

The day after my first shave Rebecca Schwartz and I talk. I am feeling very sleepy because I didn’t sleep much the night before.

She says, “Oh, Chris, what happened to your face?”

I instinctively flip my tongue up to feel the three crusted lines.

I shrug and look at the metal leg of a desk. “I, you know. I had this shaving accident,” I say.

She winces. “Looks like it hurt,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. We stare at each other.

She suggests, “Next time leave the rototiller outside.”

Then someone calls for her, and she excuses herself and walks away.

She floats above the tiles, wearing a Laura Ashley dress. At least, I think it’s a Laura Ashley dress. I mean, I haven’t gone up behind her and flipped the tag or anything.

A few seconds later, I think what I should have said was “Lion taming.”

Damn.

Then, in gym I am doing pushups, and suddenly I realize I could have said, “It was a duel. Sabers. You know, defending your honor.”

Then she’d say slyly, “Oh, yes, Tom told me you get very fierce when my honor’s at stake.”

And I’d say, “Of course. It was at dawn out back of the A&P.”