Rooms(33)

There was Maggie. But even she might be dead by now. I like to think I would have known, would have felt it, but I know that’s fantasy. Maggie was a stranger to me in her adult life, a stiff-backed, short-haired woman with tastes and habits I hardly recognized. Tofu, she told me, the last time I visited her in San Francisco, when she served me a plate of vegetables and brown rice and some lumpy, milk-white substance that reminded me of curdled fat. I’m a vegan now.

Amazing, isn’t it? That hearts that once beat in sync could be so perfectly and forever separated. That’s the whole process of life, I think: a long, slow process of separation. It can be cured only by the reabsorption into everything, into the single heartbeat of time.

It’s my time to go home.





PART IV

THE GREENHOUSE





TRENTON

Trenton hadn’t been inside the greenhouse in years and was startled by the bird: as soon as Trenton closed the pantry door it rose, flapping, to the sky, so close that Trenton could feel the air shredded beneath its big, black wings.

Several of the glass panes in the roof were missing—shattered, Trenton assumed, or blown away during the last big storm. A rusted ladder was still leaning against the exterior wall, as if someone had abruptly decided the repairs weren’t worth it. There was a covering of fine green grass embedded in the dirt, so his footsteps made a crunching sound.

The greenhouse he remembered was a jungle, a riot of flowers as big as a child’s head, trembling with moisture, humid and exotic and totally off-limits. He remembered the emerald light, the alien-looking orchids, the summer roses climbing trellises all winter long.

There was no longer anything green in the greenhouse, except for a dozen fake plants—squat Christmas trees with plastic bristles, fabric lilies, improbable plastic orchids, and even a miniature palm tree—crammed into one corner of the rectangular space. What plants did remain were dry, brown, and brittle.

It was Saturday, 10 a.m., and Trenton was, for all intents and purposes, alone in the house. Amy was in the den, all the way on the other side of the house. His mom was still sleeping. She’d gotten drunk in her room last night, doing whatever the hell she did, and would probably stay up there until at least noon. And from his bedroom window he’d spotted Minna skirting the edge of the woods, a felt cap pulled low over her ears even though it was already probably sixty degrees, wearing an old pair of waders.

Getting up onto the shelf was difficult; the old wood groaned underneath him as though it might collapse under his weight. But he managed. When he stretched out on his back, he was mostly concealed by the fake planters and the intersection of their manufactured leaves, and thus invisible from both the pantry side and the door that led out toward the lawn.

He had one joint left from the stash he’d bought from an older guy who worked at the Multiplex in Melville, Long Island. He sparked up, took three hits in quick succession, and stamped out the end of the joint so he could save it for later. He lay back, feeling a delicious heaviness in his legs and arms, a sudden wave of calm.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Katie and the party. He was dreading it. He shouldn’t go. He would have an awful time. Most of Katie’s friends probably knew one another. They would stare at him and whisper behind his back.

But a small part of him was eager to see her again. Did that mean he wasn’t ready to die?

No. The plan was the plan, and he would still go through with it.

The sun was weak and the sky above Trenton was full of scudding clouds, breaking apart and re-forming. Like a kaleidoscope. His thoughts, too, broke apart and re-formed.

Light flickered. Shadows skated across the shelves, and Trenton shivered. He thought about the accident. He had memories, fragmented and strange, of a hundred shadowlike hands carrying him down a dark tunnel.

And then he felt it. Or heard it. He didn’t know which but he knew: someone had just entered the greenhouse. He sat up, suddenly alert, his mind sharpening.

Trenton’s throat closed so tight he couldn’t even scream.

She was there. And yet she was not there. A thing, an unmistakable presence. He knew it was a girl—or a woman—because of the way it moved, shifting in the sun, watching him from behind a shadow of hair.

It didn’t occur to him that he was just high, and seeing things. He’d smoked plenty of times before—weed was the only thing that helped him float through his months at Andover—and once had even seen a bathroom wall pulsating in and out.

But never anything like this. She was real. He felt it, too, in the stiff terror that seized him, the desperate desire to cry out, and the dryness of his mouth.

The longer he looked, the more she materialized: shoulder blades cut from shadow and green eyes flashing like dark leaves. Hair teeth mouth, breasts small as two bare flower buds.

Go away, Trenton tried to say, but couldn’t. He felt like he was back in the hospital again, paralyzed, arms and legs useless and unresponsive. Leave me alone.

She spoke. The words came to him, a faint, dry rustle on the wind that lifted and turned the leaves scattered on the greenhouse floor.

“What am I?” she asked. “What happened to me?”

The terror left Trenton at once, replaced by a sadness so cutting and deep he felt like he wanted to cry. It was worse than anything he’d felt in years—worse, so much worse, than the lack of happiness he was used to, a hollow negative space of no feelings at all. This was a dark, black pit of sadness, like staring into a well and seeing a child trapped at its bottom. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that she was scared.