Cartilage and Skin (14 page)

“Careful,” he said.

At first, I assumed he was warning me about the slick steps, but I glanced down and saw a bag of salt at my feet.

“Thanks,” I said.

As I didn't descend the steps, he continued to look up at me, relaxing his hold on the shovel.

“I was just looking for you,” I said.

“Oh. What about?”

“I wrote you a note.”

“You wrote me a note?”

“Yes. I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Where's the note?” He watched me, expectantly, as if I might have the note upon me.

“I don't have it. I put it on your door.”

“Okay,” he said. He made a gesture with the shovel, which seemed to imply that he was busy right now and he would read my note a little later.

“It's nothing,” I said.

“Oh,” he said again and then started to shovel the snow off the bottom step. I knew the man didn't like or trust me. I was an object of suspicion to him, a pet annoyance. I always suspected that he secretly enjoyed grumbling bitterly and stewing in his own rancor; he was the kind of person who needed to complain. After all, it was an easy way to deal with life: to nurture social barriers and thus protect himself. By turning away from me to clean the step, he was presupposing that a conversational gap existed between us and that my silly little note acted as our intermediary.

“I just have a question to ask,” I said.

Stooped over, he paused for a second and turned his head to fix me in his gaze.

“Claudia Jones,” I began to say, and he straightened up, his eyes more intense. I added, “I was just curious about what she does.”

“Are you still bothering her?”

“No. I just want to know about her work. You called her gross before.”

“Yes,” he said. “And, Dr. Parker, that's perhaps a good reason to leave her alone. Stop bothering her.”

“Did she say that?”

“I know she likes to keep to herself.”

“But she told you that?”

“She doesn't have to tell me.”

“I'm not bothering her. Listen—”

“No, you listen,” he retorted. He seemed anxious to argue with me, as if his insides were seething with contempt. He knitted his brows, pursed his bluish lips, and then repeated, “You listen.” He was angry and commanding. “You hear me. You listen.”

But he didn't say anything else. He simply glared at me with incipient rage.

After a moment, I asked, “What?”

“Stick to yourself. That's all.”

“I do,” I said quickly, pitifully aware of the enormity of this truth: I was always alone. Sometimes, after several days, I would suddenly realize that I hadn't heard the sound of my own voice because there was no one to talk to, even though all around me a whole city heaved and sighed.

“Should I remind you—?” he began to ask.

“No.”

“Dr. Parker.”

“Don't remind me. Whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is,” he echoed, aghast. “Whatever it is. I had—”

“I know. I know.”

But he desperately wanted to remind me.

Yes, he had paramedics carting a little boy on a gurney through the hallway and down the front steps of his apartment building, and he had the police asking him questions, and in the aftermath, he had all the nosey people in the vicinity of his home whispering to one another as well as annoying him with questions daily.

“Don't,” I said.

“Then listen to me. Stick to yourself.”

“I just wanted to ask a simple question.”

“Keep it to yourself.”

“You called her gross.”

“Yes.” He was holding the shovel with one hand, and he was becoming so agitated that he actually shook it at me.

“Tell me,” I said, unwilling to cower or back down.

“You've got a computer. Go see for yourself.”

“What?”

He was bristling. He wanted to tell me. He was aching to tell me.

“What?” I repeated, my voice louder, sterner.

“Her website.”

“What is it?”

“I wouldn't bother to remember,” he said, his words tinged with contempt. It must have been something lurid, something pornographic.

I opened my notebook and fished a pen out of the inner pocket of my overcoat.

“Come on now. What is it?” I had my pen poised, ready to write down the web address.

“I don't remember it,” he responded curtly, as if defending himself against a charge of outlandish perversity.

“Well, can you get it for me later then?” I asked, with a sly suggestion in my tone, as if I knew that he had the address memorized and, moreover, I understood the reason for his denial. “Just get it for me later,” I said, aware that I was provoking him.

I wanted to end this conversation. I felt amazingly calm and somewhat amused.

“Dr. Parker,” he snarled, brandishing the shovel.

Ready to leave, I no sooner closed the notebook and returned the pen to my pocket than I found myself suddenly tumbling spastically over the side railing and landing on the sidewalk. Sprawled face down on the cold, wet concrete, I felt as though my head was shattered. I tasted blood in my mouth, and I knew that it was welling up in my eyes. Terrified, I tried to push myself up, and supporting myself on one forearm, I looked at the dizzying ground several inches before my face, where a crimson spot swirled in a patch of snow. My entire head throbbed with blood, as I started to sink back to the ground, which was now heaving beneath me, as if I were floating on the surface of rough waters, swirling away toward some dismal void. Before the darkness completely swallowed me up, I was frightfully convinced that splinters of bone were piercing the gray pulp of my brain, and what was worse was that I needed to get away, but I couldn't. I was losing consciousness. Fading and throbbing, I was anxious for the petty, bitter little man—straddled above me in a posture of outraged morality—to bring his shovel down upon my head for a second, a third, and then a final time.

The boy's story came out of him in pieces. I learned most of it secondhand and a little bit directly. The elapsed years have granted me the objective distance needed to consider his story calmly. I have rounded it out, given it flesh, and filled its darkest places with my imagination. I have labored under the aegis of past masters, in search of an appropriate prose style, and discovered that maybe “this is the saddest story I ever heard.” It belongs to “the record of humanity,” which, indeed, “is a record of sorrows.” But how can I begin to put these people on paper, when, in elegant English, one of my masters inquires, “Who in this world knows anything of any other heart—or of his own?” In fluid French, another one remarks that “our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people… We pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him…, that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is these notions which we recognize and to which we listen.” Even so, perhaps out of a repudiation of the tree-shaped social worker, I seem to be primarily influenced by a concise, imperative German voice. “Never again psychology.” In search of a style, I have “packed” myself with voices, and for the boy's story I would like to choose one that is fair and calm, as indifferent as the night sky, into which I now gracefully fade, so the boy may increase all the more, which is a Johannine doctrine, appropriate for a love story.

Suppose for a moment that a tall man, bundled against the cold, began to fill his car with boxes of books. Or, better yet, a different man stirred sleepily in his bed and reached over for his wife who was no longer there. But wait. Perhaps it's better to begin with a picture of the boy. But no, wait a moment: not the boy, but a boy. Yes. Now suppose the cold again. Now the picture; it begins to take shape. It is all picture, all image. It is, yes. Suppose this:

It was a high country, as cold as iron, still and gray. The road was lined with sheer black rock on one side, and overlooked a pitched landscape, blanketed with snow and cluttered with evergreens, on the other. A silver colored sedan appeared out of the dawn. In the backseat, a boy leaned his head against the window, staring out at the rock or maybe at the streams of ice that clung to its face, as though flowing water had been caught by surprise by the cold, even though the cold seemed as if it had always been there, and it would always be there, so there never could have been water in the first place, only ice.

The car's tires made a steady, whispering sound.

A thin girl sat cross-legged in the front seat, with her long fingers laced between her naked toes. She had directed all the heater vents toward herself. She was biting her bottom lip and slightly bobbing her head; she was in control of the radio. Every once in a while, she turned around in the seat and watched a baby who seemed to be not only sedated but also strapped and bound in a car seat. The girl leaned forward and rested the tip of her finger on the baby's lips, but the baby didn't respond. The girl grinned as if the child had just communicated something that only she understood.

“Why are you always trying to upset her?” the mother asked. She had both of her hands on the steering wheel and the seat so forward that she appeared cramped.

“I'm not,” the girl said. She lightly ran her finger down the bridge of the sleeping baby's nose, then turned around, and gave her attention back to the radio. She adjusted the volume but left the station alone.

The boy watched the road whispering beneath them. Mildly entranced by the endless stretch of guardrail, he looked as though he were ready to fall asleep. He had dark pupils and long lashes. His cheekbones and jaw would have been sharp and angular if not softened by his smooth, almost feminine skin. His thick, red lips were somewhat ludicrous for a young boy, making him appear at once oddly sensual and apathetic. Although his face hinted that he would one day possess an exotic beauty, now he seemed to be in a constant state of pouting and languishing.

When it began to snow, the mother pulled herself up in the seat. An elastic band held her hair back from her face. Without makeup, her face looked blotched, worn, and tired. She was dressed in dark blue sweat-clothes and a pair of sneakers. At first, the snow vanished as soon it hit the windshield, but eventually she had to put on the wipers. Despite the radio and the gentle sound of the tires, everything was hushed: the baby sleeping, the boy gazing out the window, and the girl in the front seat abstractedly occupying herself with her own fingers and toes.

The road wound downward; its surface gleamed black and wet, with an occasional dirty patch of churned snow. From the right, a river came out of the mountains and began to follow the road for a while. Thick ice lined its banks, and the water seemed as motionless as the road itself. Farther ahead, as if at the very base of the desolate landscape, the road and the river crossed and went their separate ways at a stout, dull green, metal bridge. It was here that the car abandoned the road and seemed to ease itself into the water without making a sound. The car submerged, and bubbles burst to the surface as air rushed out of the vehicle.

Then everything was very quiet and undisturbed.

Inside the car, however, it became darker and darker as it sank, sealing within itself a wild, savage flutter of limbs and bodies that beat at the windows and tore at the seats, hysterical voices mingled with cries—a convoluted mess of fear, panic, and desperation—until the rising waters seeped in and drowned it all, first with silence, then with darkness.

About fifty yards from the bridge, an object, as dark and indistinct as a piece of driftwood, broke the surface of the water. It floated with the slow current, dragged against the icy bank for a ways, and was finally caught in a tangle of pale, yellow weeds. The flowing water made a trickling sound as it passed the body. Only a clump of wet hair was visible, like that of a lifeless beaver or rat washed ashore. Then maybe because of the steady force of the current or an abrupt weakest in the yellow weeds, the body rolled over and a sliver of face appeared in the open air. In time, the falling snow would have covered it, but all of a sudden, as if startled from a violent dream, the head and torso rose upright. Without looking around, with a strange, silent calmness, the boy turned over and crawled up the bank. He crawled until he came to the road; then he got to his feet and walked along the black pavement. He limped because one sneaker was missing. He seemed to be heading toward the bridge, but then he crossed the road and sat down with his back against the guardrail. He drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his shins, and stared forward, neither at the falling snow nor at the nearest mountainside. He stared blankly, calmly, with an attitude as detached as a corpse's. After a while, he let his chin rest on his knee, and his head sunk so forward that in all appearances he was probably dead.

A barebacked man stood in front of a full-length mirror on a closet door. He was middle-aged, with a big build that was covered with a layer of soft flesh. His hair was still wet from a shower, still uncombed. He stared at himself intently, almost as if he were waiting for, or perhaps daring, his own image to make a quick, unexpected gesture. He let his eyes inspect his body. He lowered his underwear down to his ankles and continued to stare at himself. After a moment, his piercing gaze and his rigid expression—as if his face had been carelessly hewn from wood—began to slacken, and his eyes became glazed, perhaps from staring too hard for too long. He touched himself, running his fingers gently across the spot where his testicles should have been. He exhaled audibly and, with abrupt deftness, pulled up his underwear and walked away from the mirror.

He dressed himself in a pair of black dungarees and a matching shirt and jacket; it was a uniform for a commercial refrigeration company. He seemed oblivious to his surroundings, moving by blind routine. The room was bright and clean, with knickknacks displayed on the dresser and pictures hung on the walls; his family smiled inside their frames. The man straightened the bedcovers and paused for a moment in the center of the hardwood floor. He seemed to be shutting down, turning into wood, his face drained of expression. This wasn't struggle, but surrender and defeat. But then, as suddenly as a switch thrown on inside of him, he came alive again; he stuffed his hat into his back pocket and turned toward the door. However, instead of leaving, he strode over to a mahogany crib against the wall. He picked up a small blanket, unfolded it, refolded it, and then draped it over the side of the crib. He lifted his head and looked around as if he were only now realizing where he was. When he left the room, he had a faint smile on his face.