The Day I Killed James Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  PART ONE

  ONE I’m Sorry I Washed Your Car

  TWO Shark Bait

  THREE Bringing Your New Puppy Home

  FOUR Okay, So It’s Weird

  FIVE No More High School. Ever.

  PART TWO

  ONE Disdain Gets Them Every Time

  TWO By Her Fruits Ye Shall Know Her

  THREE On Not Knowing Where

  FOUR The Specter Steals Cigarettes

  FIVE Your Children Are the Short Ones

  PART THREE

  ONE Still More Questions

  TWO Betrayals Large and Small

  THREE Irritating Role Reversals

  FOUR Grace

  FIVE The Best I Can Do

  SIX My Pretending Days Are Over

  SEVEN Sudden Turns

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  PART ONE

  Journal Entry _________________________

  Day I’m writing this: Seventeen days after “The Day”

  Day I’m writing about: Today

  People die of love. I’m one of the few who’ll admit it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

  Take all the people who died yesterday, or last week, or last year. Subtract all the suicides and the so-called accidents of the brokenhearted. Take away the men who got blown away for being in the wrong bed at the wrong moment, the women in abusive marriages who died of cancer because they couldn’t find any other exit from their lives. All the AIDS deaths except from the needles and the transfusions, the ones they call the innocent victims. Like if you have sex, you’re guilty. Deserved just what you got.

  Now tell me who all you’ve got left.

  Without love the world would be overpopulated, except that without love it wouldn’t be populated at all. Love giveth and love taketh away and all that crap. You’ll probably say all those people died from the lack of love, but I say it’s two sides of the same coin. So it’s the same coin.

  Today was my third session with Dr. Grey.

  He said, “I was hoping by now you’d be letting your hair grow out.”

  I said, “I brought in another news clipping.”

  “God, Theresa, must we again? Okay. Fine. If you really still need to do this. Fine.” Or something like that. He said some collection of words that added up to something like that.

  I didn’t read it to him. Not as such. Just sort of paraphrased. Just told him the gist of the article, how this woman in New York turned her back on her three-year-old daughter’s stroller just long enough to buy a newspaper out of a rack. Turned back to find an empty stroller. Six days later they still have no idea. Maybe they never will.

  I felt sorry for this woman, because what the woman did to her daughter was so much less premeditated than what I did to James. But I didn’t say so.

  Dr. Grey sat for a time in silence, as if mentally counting to ten. “I can’t make all the progress on my own, you know.”

  “You’re the professional,” I said. “Do your job.”

  “I am,” he said. “Do yours.”

  I’m not getting on all that well with Dr. Grey. I’ve thought of dumping him and getting somebody else, but that would be the easy way out, which I’m not entirely sure I deserve. And besides, my father is paying for this. And I’m not anxious to explain why it isn’t working out.

  Then I told him about the tattoo. Which is part of why I got it, to show to Dr. Grey. A nice, clean argument, one that wouldn’t take too much out of me. So I showed it to him. Took off my big outer shirt and there it was.

  Carefully planned. Blood-red, so everyone would know what kind of fluid I’m losing. Right over my heart, so they’d know from where. And also shaped like a heart, the tattoo. With a banner across that says JAMES. Because I know James would do as much for me.

  Dr. Grey said, “I’m not going to pretend I don’t consider this backsliding.”

  “I don’t consider it backsliding,” I said. And I was comfortable in that. I was, just at that moment, comfortable in everything but the six-day-old tattoo, which still itched and peeled like a mean sunburn.

  “What do you consider it, Theresa?”

  “A lifelong commitment.”

  “To someone who’s dead.”

  “Absolutely. He hasn’t abandoned his commitment to me just because he’s dead.”

  Then I caught myself on patchy ice, because I wisely had not told Dr. Grey about some of James’s tender manifestations of late, like the songs he plays for me on my car radio. I’ve barred myself from speaking of that in therapy, just as Dr. Grey barred me from referring to that day as “The Day I Killed James.” He says I came here to learn not to say that, so start practicing. Now I have one hour a week, one spot on the planet, where I don’t say that. I call it “The Day.” It’s just an abbreviation, but it seems to make Dr. Grey happy.

  “How do you assess a dead man’s commitment?”

  “Call it a gut feeling.” Then I said—and, mind you, it was probably a big mistake, but that’s me—I said, “The day after I killed James I woke up alive. And that’s a thing for which I can never quite forgive myself.”

  He gave me a slightly tentative look. Maybe he didn’t get what I meant. The part about waking up alive. The part about not forgiving myself is self-explanatory. Maybe he understood perfectly but was deciding whether to call me on saying “the day after I killed James.” I thought I was allowed to say that. I thought only the day itself was off-limits.

  I didn’t go on. But I knew what I meant. About waking up alive.

  The day after I killed James, I woke up, and stood up, and took stock of myself. I had all my arms, and my legs, and my toes, and everything seemed to work, only not quite as readily as before. Not with the same lack of forethought.

  I just woke up, and I was someone I’d never tried on before.

  And I’ll tell you who I was. I was that person who walks away from a deadly rail disaster. Everybody mostly killed on impact, but then there’s always that one person just wandering loose and nobody can figure out how. Just walking around looking lost.

  This person will appear unharmed to you. Do not be fooled.

  Journal Entry _________________________

  Day I’m writing this: Eighteen days after “The Day”

  Day I’m writing about: Today

  Today a guy tried to pick me up in a bookstore. Are you ready for that? I was actually saying that out loud, in fact, later, on the way home: “Are you ready for that?” I shave my head, I’ve lost almost twenty pounds. I wear truckloads of loose clothing. I mean, what do I have to do?

  “Buy you a cappuccino?” he asked when he’d caught my attention.

  I looked at him like a kestrel might. We’re small, kestrels and me, but we can be formidable.

  “Do you love life?” I asked.

  He smiled. Looked confused for a moment. I suppose he thought it was part of a dating questionnaire. Like, Do you enjoy sharing hot chocolate and long walks on the beach at sunset?

  “I do,” he said. “I love life.”

  “Then run.”

  He didn’t, exactly. But he did go away.

  Journal Entry _________________________

  Day I’m writing this: Nineteen days after “The Day”

  Day I’m writing about: Four days after “The Day”

  Not long after I killed James, I did something that’s always been hard for me to do. I asked for help.

  It’s not that I’m proud. I’m not that proud. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me. Maybe because there’s really no one there to ask. My mother is long gone. And my poor father so badly wants me not to need any help. I guess because he doesn’t have any
. I guess it would be like asking for a billion dollars. He’s hoping I won’t. So he won’t have to say, Sorry, but I can’t give you what I don’t have myself.

  Then there are my friends, of which I recently had many. Frieda is my best bud, of course, but there’s also Christie and Johnna and Paulette and Ann. And Harry and Bobby and Heather. And Shanni. Why I couldn’t ask them, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe I just see them as busy with their own lives. Or maybe I didn’t get enough practice at home.

  Anyway, I was desperate. So I asked my dad. I said, “I can’t do this alone. I have no idea how. It’s more than I can hold up, and I have no idea which way to go. I need help.”

  I noticed he was refusing to meet my eyes. Not a real good sign.

  He’s a nice guy, my father. He just needs a little help himself.

  Then, sensing that I wasn’t doing very well, I added a desperate cherry to my cry-for-help sundae. “Please.”

  To make a long story short, he bought me Dr. Grey.

  Hopefully that clarifies why I don’t get along so well with Dr. Grey.

  I mean, does it? Or am I being weird?

  Thing is, when you ask someone for help, it means you want them to help you. It does not mean you hope they’ll purchase help from a total stranger and throw it in your direction, closing the issue.

  I cried all night.

  Then, the first time I went to see Dr. Grey, I told him I was angry about it.

  He said it sounded like I was hurt.

  I said, “No. I’m angry.”

  He said, “Anger tends to cover hurt.”

  I said, “Tendencies are not absolute.”

  He said, “This one pretty much is, though.”

  I said, “Now I’m even angrier.”

  It’s hard to explain why I wouldn’t own it. After all, angry people don’t tend to cry all night. But it has something to do with a decision I made. That night. While I was crying.

  I decided I was in a painful no-man’s-land of emotion and I had to go one way or the other. I either had to pour myself at the feet of my family and friends like a puddle of badly set Jell-O, or I had to put on a suit of armor and face the rest of my life as an army of one.

  I guess it’s pretty obvious what I decided. But I’m not even sure “decided” is the right word. Because one of those options would have been absolutely impossible for me.

  It’s like deciding whether to jump off a cliff or fly. Assuming you’re not a bird, that is. Decide what you want, but really it comes down to one possible option. And once you jump off the cliff, getting back up on it is more or less out of the question, too.

  I keep thinking of those cheesy movies and dime-store novels that start with lines like, “I wasn’t always like this. Once I was young and happy like you.”

  But why dwell on ancient history?

  ONE

  I’m Sorry I Washed Your Car

  Maybe I should have been nicer about it. But it was early. It was so damned early. It was daybreak, damn it to hell. And I didn’t have to get up for school yet. And that’s one of those things it just doesn’t pay to rush.

  I guess I should have been nicer about a lot of things. But that’s hindsight. Isn’t it?

  I couldn’t just roll over and go back to sleep, because there was water running somewhere. And there shouldn’t have been.

  So I rolled out of bed and put on Randy’s red pin-striped shirt. I love that shirt. If we—God forbid—ever break up, he’d better kiss it goodbye. And I went to the window. And there was James in the driveway, washing my car.

  I opened the window. Thought that would get his attention, but not quite. Usually it was not hard for me. To get James’s attention.

  I waved my arms around. Without raising them too high, because, you know, Randy’s shirt only covered just so much. And James was easily encouraged. Pre-encouraged, one might even say. Like one of those computers you buy with the software already installed.

  He saw me then. Snapped off the hose. Smiled. When James smiled at me, it made me a little bit nervous. When he smiled at me, his face lit up with this look that always made me wonder why being loved is not the joy the poets claim.

  James or Randy, either one. It’s just not what they set us up to expect.

  He called out good morning to me.

  “James,” I said, trying to be half-assed quiet to keep my father out of it. My father was not so sure about the whole James phenomenon. “Why are you washing my car?”

  It’s really pathetic, what happened to that poor smile. It reminded me of a dog told to play dead. James had this way of making me feel bad. Life has this way of making me feel bad.

  “Don’t you want me to?” he asked. “I’m sorry.”

  How do I answer a question like that?

  So I just looked up at the sky, which seemed somewhat black and expectant, and I said, “I think maybe it’s going to rain.”

  “If it does,” James said, “it will be all my fault. Because I washed your car. Do you want me to stop now? I’d at least have to rinse off this soap.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted James to wash my car. I’d never really thought about it. It was too early to think about it when I was put on the spot to say. But one thing I did know for sure.

  I said, “I definitely do not want you to wash my car and then apologize for it.”

  “Right,” he said. “Sorry. I mean…you know what I mean.”

  I closed the window. My father stuck his head in through my door. The hose sound kicked in again from the driveway.

  “Who are you talking to?” my father asked. “Why are you making so much noise? You woke me up. Why did you wake me?”

  “You have to get up now anyway,” I said, looking at the clock. “You’ll be late for work.”

  He reached for my alarm clock. Knocked it over onto its back. “Aw, crap. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  I said, “I did wake you, remember? That’s what you were just complaining about.”

  See, it even extends to parents. What I said about love.

  It rained. I can’t entirely claim it’s because James washed my car, because it rained days later. But it felt satisfying, somehow, to blame this and that on James.

  I was sitting at the dining room table paying bills. Because somebody had to do it.

  When I looked out the window it was raining in sheets, and I swore I saw James skate by. Along the driveway toward the garage. It was like a moment of action in bad animation. You know how when they’re really hard up for animation dollars they move a static character across a static scene? Like that.

  His hair was still short from that two-year stint in the Air Force. So the fact of being soaking wet didn’t change his look much. He had a hat, but he wasn’t wearing it. Just holding it by the brim. And then that was it. He just slid out of my field of view.

  A moment later he came by in the other direction. Garage to street. Without his shirt. Hat in hand. Wearing a strappy sleeveless undershirt like the kind my uncle Gerry used to wear. Only, I have to say it, it looked better on James.

  He’d certainly buffed up while he was away.

  I couldn’t decide if this was a fun game or not. Probably not.

  On the third trip by, no noticeable change. Which made me wonder suddenly if he was still wearing his pants. Which made me jump up to see. Which made James laugh and point, like, I got you. I made you look.

  He was wearing his pants. But he made me look.

  What he was not wearing were skates. He was just sliding. Hydroplaning along the fresh concrete of my driveway in a quarter-inch sheet of standing water. Which didn’t seem a good enough explanation until I realized he was sliding down the trail of automatic transmission fluid my crappy old hand-me-down car deposits on its way to and from the garage.

  James was always telling me to get that fixed. He’d even offered to replace my pan gasket, an offer I’d several times refused. If I had been foolish enough to let him in just then, he likely would’ve offered again.
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  Once he had my attention, something happened to his. He failed to cut off the skid in time. He sort of bounced off our garage door. Then he recovered his poise and began to dance. It reminded me of a cat after it loses face. That sort of “I meant to do that” attitude. He looked pretty smooth, actually. Dancing. It was this old-fashioned Gene Kelly sort of a thing. Not half bad.

  Then all of a sudden there was my father. Right at my left shoulder.

  He said, “What in God’s name is he doing?”

  I said, “Apparently a scene from Singin’ in the Rain.”

  He said, “The guy has no shame.”

  I said, “How can you say that, Dad? He’s adorable. He’s just being playful.”

  “You just described a golden retriever puppy. He has no shame because he doesn’t even bother to pretend he’s not in love with you when I’m around.”

  “Yes, he does. He can’t see you from there.”

  “Of course he can.”

  “No, he can’t. Come over here.”

  So he moved over to where James could see him. James slipped on a patch of transmission fluid. His feet came right out from underneath him. He landed on his hip and one elbow, and just lay there. Looking vaguely disoriented.

  My father said, “Ouch.”

  I said, “I told you he didn’t know you were here.”

  He said, “You really ought to get that transmission looked at.”

  Journal Entry _________________________

  Day I’m writing this: Twenty days after “The Day”

  Day I’m writing about: One day after “The Day”

  The morning after I killed James I was sitting in the back of that highway patrol car, with the door open. And the guy had his boot up on the backseat, writing on a clipboard on his knee. Writing out a report.

  I thought he was going to take me in, but he never did.

  I read the report upside down. It listed me as the person who reported him missing. In the space marked RELATIONSHIP it said “Friend.” It said I was James’s friend.