It is because Karena is dreaming, being impractical and unwary, that she doesn’t hear Charles come up the stairs. It’s because she is counting her chickens and singing that she doesn’t register him yelling at Siri. Karena is being stupid, pretending that once she’s gone, everything will just magically be normal. So it’s not until the radio goes to commercial and she turns it down that she hears Charles shouting at their mom.
“. . . just
give
them to me,” he is saying. “God! Why do you have to make everything so difficult all the time?”
“Me?” Siri says. “That’s a laugh. Forget it, kiddo. You’re not taking my car.”
“Why not?” Charles says. “Give me a reason. Come on. Just one good reason.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” says Siri. “No means no.”
“I knew it,” Charles says. “I knew you couldn’t think of a reason. No surprise there. Your whole little life is governed by illogic. But just because you don’t do anything with it doesn’t mean you should stop someone who’s trying to make a difference.”
Karena snaps off the radio, wiping her hands on her shorts. “What’s going on?”
Charles looks at her over his shoulder.
“Mind your own fucking business,” he snarls, and Karena sees she should have left well enough alone, because Charles is gone, and the Stranger is here. The djinn, Dr. Hazan calls it. The wicked genie of her brother’s disorder, a being who comes into Charles when he’s manic, slips in behind his face and changes his expression so that it’s scornful, a sly, malicious intelligence that babbles a hundred miles an hour and whose sole job it is to figure out what’s most hurtful to say, where to stick the knife in.
It’s like demonic possession,
is how Karena described it to Dr. H at the Mayo, and Dr. H had nodded.
Yes, family members often say this,
he said.
Try to remember, it is not Charles saying these things. It is the djinn, his disorder, the synapses misfiring in his brain. What he says may be very hurtful, but it is not Charles saying them. The chemicals are in control. The djinn is driving the car.
The djinn, Karena reminds herself, the Stranger. Not Charles.
“Where are you going?” she asks, since the only thing to do when the djinn is here is try to play along.
“To chase,” says Charles, “duh.”
Karena looks outside. It is a beautiful afternoon, clouds floating in a sunny blue sky. “But there aren’t any storms,” she says.
“ ‘But there aren’t any storms,’ ” Charles mimics. “What the fuck do you know? As it happens there are plenty of storms, firing all along the dryline down in Iowa, but would you know about that? Do you listen to the spotters’ network? No. I didn’t think so. So why don’t you stay the fuck out of it.”
He turns back to Siri, wiping his lips where white spit has gathered at the corners. “Give me the keys,” he says to Siri. “Keys keys keys keys keys.”
“No way,” says Siri.
“Oh my God,” says Charles, his voice rising with indignation. “I cannot believe you are so determined to prevent me from gathering my data—although now that I think about it, Madre, actually I can. Why would you want me to contribute? Why would you want me to succeed? Why would you want anybody to be better than you, some stupid housewife just sitting around watching TV and leeching off everybody? Of course you don’t want me to collect my data. You can’t stand the thought I might succeed because you’re nothing but a fucking parasite.”
“Hey,” says Karena. “Don’t you talk to her that way.”
“Oh, and you,” says Charles. “Here we go, more comments from the Idiot Brigade. I suppose you think you’re all special now you’re going to the U, like, Ooooooo, big whup, you can take gut courses and pledge some sorority and there’ll be a whole new crop of guys for you to blow. I’d tell you again to shut your mouth, but I know that’s hard for you, little Miss Blow-job Queen.”
Instinctively Karena’s hand flies up to cover her mouth. The djinn, she reminds herself, the fucking djinn, although she would dearly love to say to Charles,
That’s enough! What is
wrong
with you? They should lock you up and throw away the key.
But this is one of the worst things about her brother’s illness. He can say anything he wants to Karena or Siri or anyone, and in fact not just awful things but the worst possible things he can think of, the things everyone else thinks but nobody would ever say. And they are not allowed to respond, to defend themselves, because they wouldn’t be fighting him, they’d be fighting an illness. It is such an unfair, slippery thing.
But now it’s Siri who says, “Stop right there, mister. Don’t talk to her like that.”
“Why not?” Charles asks, eyes glittering. “Don’t you want to hear the truth? That K and that fat friend of hers are sucking off everyone in Foss County? Why don’t you ask her? Go ahead, ask! Everyone knows they’re the town sluts, trying so hard to be popular, what a joke. Don’t you know they all laugh at you, K? Don’t you know what they say? That you should get monogrammed kneepads for Christmas!”
Karena shakes her head. “That—is—not—true,” she says, her voice wobbling.
Charles laughs. “Sure it is, and you want to know what else—”
“Charles,” says Siri.
“What!”
“Did you take your medication today?”
Karena sucks in her breath as the room goes still. It is the one question Siri has every right to ask and the one that will most surely bring disaster.
Charles shakes his head as if he has water in his ear. “What?” he says.
“I said, did you—”
“I
heard
you,” says Charles. “I just can’t believe the idiocy of the question. For your information, the answer is no. I didn’t. Why? Do you really think they make a difference? Because I’ll tell you something, they don’t. They’re just tranqs, Madre, they don’t do any fucking thing except make me sick. They’re that bearded quack’s way of thinking he can control me. That’s all.”
“Okay then,” says Siri. She sounds calm, but as she lights another cigarette the flame trembles. “You know the deal. No medication, no car.”
Charles smacks his forehead and throws out his hands.
“Oh. My. Goodness,” he says. “That is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, I’ve come to expect that from you, Madre, but this just takes the cake. First of all, there’s no deal. The word deal implies consent between two parties, and have I consented to anything like this? Would I ever? Of course not. This is some weird rule you’ve made up and expect me to abide by. But okay, let’s try—try, Madre—to look at it logically. Here’s your equation: medication equals car. But even you must be able to see how ridiculous that is. Why would I need lithium to drive the car? Do
you
take lithium? Does
Dad
take lithium?”
“Don’t bully me,” says Siri. “No car. Case closed.”
“Sure, of course, disengage,” Charles says. “I knew you’d do that. You can’t deal with logic, so you pull back in like a little kid going
lalalalalalala
I can’t hear you because I don’t want to hear you, but I know you can hear me, Madre, so let’s keep going. Do
all
drivers in the state of Minnesota have to take lithium? Is it a requirement that responsible drivers take lithium before they get their licenses?
She
doesn’t have to take lithium,” he says, whirling and pointing at Karena, “blowjob queen over there.”
“Hey!” says Karena.
“Oh, right right right right riiiight,” says Charles, holding up his hands. “When you’re in a car you’re in the backseat, not driving, so it’s a moot point.”
He walks closer to Siri and stands over her, arms crossed.
“For the last time,” he says, “give me the keys.”
Siri stares grimly ahead as if Charles weren’t there.
“No,” she says.
“All right,” says Charles. “You’ve forced me into it. I didn’t want to have to do this, but I’ll have to take them from you.”
Siri scoffs.
“Just try it,” she says. “I’m not afraid of you—” and then Charles reaches past her for her purse. Siri smacks his hand aside and jumps up, and for a few seconds they stare at each other. Then Siri slaps Charles neatly across the face and he pushes her shoulder, and the next thing Karena knows they’re tussling as Charles tries to get past Siri and she stands her ground.
“No!” says Karena and suddenly she’s in the sunroom. She doesn’t remember how she got there, doesn’t feel her feet touch the floor. All she knows is that she’s jumping on Charles from behind, throwing her arms around him. It’s like trying to hold a bag of snakes. Charles’s muscles flex and clench, incredibly strong. But Karena is banking on the fact that he won’t hurt her, of all people, and she’s right. He doesn’t. He just shakes her off, and she falls and lands on her tailbone.
“Ow,” she says, more in anger than in pain.
“Oh, honey, did he hurt you?” Siri says. She pushes past Charles to make sure Karena’s all right, then turns on him.
“You listen to me, you little bastard,” she says. She pokes her cigarette at Charles with every word, and Karena can’t help flinching each time the lit ember nears her twin’s skin. “You ever touch her again and I’m calling the sheriff. I’ll have you locked up, don’t think I won’t. I’ll have you taken away. In fact,” she says, “I think I’ll call him anyway. You are out . . . of . . . control.”
“Okay,” says Charles, pushing Siri aside and grabbing her purse from the davenport. “Wow, that’s a good idea, Madre. Did you think of that all by yourself? Go for it. Call him. Tell ol’ Deputy Dawg I borrowed your Jeep for a little while to conduct some perfectly legit scientific research on my perfectly legal license and I’ll bring it back whenever I’m done, maybe tomorrow, maybe by tonight even. I’m sure he’ll love that, I’m sure he’ll thank you for wasting his time, not to mention the taxpayers’ money, but if you really feel you must, Madre, you gotta do what you gotta do. Meanwhile”—and he jingles Siri’s keys triumphantly in the air—“thanks a lot for the ride, catch you on the flip side, see you in the funny pages, bye!”
Then the door to the garage slams behind him and he’s gone.
The air quivers in his wake. Both Siri and Karena are stunned. Siri goes to the phone in the kitchen but stands staring at the dial. “Oh God,” she says. “What am I going to do? What can I do?”
Karena is still sitting with her legs splayed out before her like her old Raggedy Ann doll. She’s ashamed to look at Siri after what Charles said. Instead she stares at her mom’s belongings scattered in the rug. Hair combs. A pack of Marlboros. Several lighters. A nicotine-flecked hand mirror and some lip gloss. Was it just this morning Karena was serving breakfast at the Chat ’n’ Chew? Was it just earlier this afternoon she and Siri were in La Crosse, buying things for Karena’s dorm room?
Then the garage door rumbles up and Karena springs to her feet.
“Be right back,” she says.
“What?” says Siri. Now she is on the phone, calling the sheriff or maybe Frank. She’s on hold. “No, sweetie,” she says, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t go out there. He’s dangerous.”
“Which is exactly why he shouldn’t be driving,” Karena says as she jogs up into the kitchen and snatches her bag from the back of a chair. She doesn’t have time to stand around arguing about this. Of course she has to go. Isn’t Karena the only one who can control Charles?
Hasn’t she proved it time and time again? Did she not talk him down when he climbed the water tower last year? Did she not stop him at the Starlite? True, Karena wasn’t able to save him from the dislocated shoulder, but that wasn’t her fault, and if Charles had succeeded in taking Frank’s car then, things could have been so much worse. It’s common knowledge that Karena is the only one Charles listens to, the only one who can calm him down. She might not like it, but she doesn’t have to. She just has to do her job. “Don’t worry,” Karena calls to Siri, “I’ll go get him and bring him back,” and feeling weary but resolute, she marches toward the door.
32
T
hey drive southwest on Highway 44, which carries them through towns whose order Karena knows as well as a childhood prayer: Norwegian Ridge, Luverne, Clinton, Accord, Creston. Norwegian Ridge is where her great-grandparents met, courted, and married. Luverne is Charles’s favorite because a tornado tore up the golf course in 1967, three years before the twins were born. Right after Clinton there’s a t-junction marked by the abandoned State Line Motel, in whose weedy parking lot the Amish sell quilts and pies. Karena considers asking Charles to stop and let her look at the wares, anything that’ll get him out of the Jeep and onto solid ground. But Charles calls the Amish wagon the Ptomaine Stand, and he’s in a hurry anyway. He swings south onto Highway 52, and within a minute the sign flashes past: WELCOME TO IOWA.
Karena doesn’t know the towns here as well, but she recognizes them a little, because many’s the afternoon Siri dragged her along on antiquing expeditions with her friend Sandy, the two women poking endlessly through bins of junk in cold limestone buildings and holding up a lefse pan or carpet beater and saying,
Remember these? My mom had one just like it!
A lot of these towns have dried up now, their store-fronts closed and streets deserted, their hopes having dead-ended when the railroad passed them by. The next big town is Decorah, where Karena plans to request a pit stop so she can call Dr. H from a pay phone. Because it has occurred to her—why didn’t she or Siri think of this before?—that the Mayo is where Charles should be, and maybe Dr. H or his nurses can give Karena pointers how to best lure Charles in.
Then Charles swings off Highway 52 onto a smaller road, and everything starts to look unfamiliar. The land here is different from around New Heidelburg, more hilly and wooded. The road whips left, then right, then sharply left again. Karena sees a sign for Stillville and breathes a sigh of relief. But to her horror, when the two-lane curves right, Charles sails straight off onto an unpaved road. Gravel ticks and pops and punks under the Jeep. The land grows stranger and stranger. A farm with rotted outbuildings. A creek bed with dense undergrowth, dead twisted trees mixed in with live ones. Karena feels like Gretel without the bread crumbs. She tries desperately to memorize their route while Charles drives and turns and turns and talks. But most of the roads aren’t marked, and when they are the names all sound the same: Amity and Valley and County, 290th Street, 190th Street. The light fades, and everything around them becomes dark and gray, and before Karena knows it, she is lost.