The Last House on Needless Street(85)

‘I thought you might need a ride,’ he says.

I smell the forest as we approach. It is such a relief to see my street, the dented sign, trees crowding the horizon.

But I don’t want the man to see my sad house; the plywood over the windows, the dusty dark rooms where I live alone with all my others. I want him to go. Instead he helps me out of the car and indoors. He does it quickly and efficiently, not asking me to acknowledge it.

Even when we’re inside, he still hovers in the hall, not seeming to notice the cobwebs and the brokenness of it all. So now I have to offer him something. The refrigerator yields the sour stench of old milk. I feel a twinge of despair.

‘Beer,’ he suggests, looking at the contents.

‘Sure,’ I say, feeling immediately more cheerful. I take a look in the cupboards. ‘I bet you’ve never had a pickle with peanut butter.’

‘You would win that bet,’ he says.

We sit in the broken lawn chairs out back. It is a beautiful day. Dandelion clocks dance in the low sun. The trees whisper in the slight breeze. I turn my face up to it. For a moment I feel almost normal – sitting in my yard in the late summer heat, just like anyone might, having a beer with a friend.

‘Hospital,’ he says. ‘You must have missed being outside. You like the woods.’

‘I did,’ I say.

‘Hey,’ he says, but not to me. The tabby cat steps out of the undergrowth. She looks even thinner than usual. ‘What’s up?’ She slides and curves around the rusty chair legs. He puts some peanut butter on the ground for her and she licks it, purring. ‘Poor girl,’ he says. ‘She belonged to someone, once. They took her claws out then they abandoned her. People.’ The cat lies down at his feet. The sun shows up the dust in her fur.

I try to think of a question a normal person would ask. ‘What’s it like, being a park ranger?’

‘It’s good,’ he says. ‘I always wanted to work outdoors, ever since I was a kid. I grew up in the city.’ I can’t imagine him among tall buildings, on busy sidewalks. He seems designed for great distances and solitude.

‘You and I have talked before,’ he says. ‘At the bar we say hi sometimes.’

‘Oh,’ I say. I am too embarrassed to tell him that I don’t remember much about the times at the bar. I think Little Teddy took over towards the end. He’s not good at talking to grown-ups. Or maybe I was just drunk. ‘I picked that bar to take women to,’ I say. ‘How dumb is that?’ I tell him about my date with the woman in blue.

‘But you kept going there, on your own. Even after you realised what kind of place it was.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah, to drink.’

Something is happening to the air between us where we sit. Time seems to stretch out somewhat. I can’t stop looking at his forearm, where it rests on the rusty chair. Pale skin, covered in fine hair that glows in the sun like burning wire.

Fear ripples through me. ‘I’m not like a regular person,’ I say. ‘It’s hard being me. Maybe even harder being around me.’

‘What’s a regular person?’ he says. ‘We do what we can.’

I think of Mommy’s narrowed mouth and her disgust. I think of the bug man, who wants to write a book about how messed up I am. ‘Right now,’ I say, ‘what you can do is go.’

I reach the car, limping, as he puts on his seatbelt.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ I say. ‘Sorry. It’s been a bad month. Year. Life, even.’

He raises his eyebrows.

‘Please, come back. Have another beer,’ I say. ‘Let’s talk about you, now.’

‘You just got out of hospital. Probably need to rest.’

‘Don’t make me chase your car down the street,’ I say. ‘I just got out of hospital.’

He thinks and then he turns off the engine. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I got some weird stories, too.’

His name is Rob and he has a twin brother. Growing up, they did all the usual twin stuff. They confused their mother and pretended to be one another, even went to each other’s classes in high school sometimes. Rob was better at sciences and Eddie was better at artsy stuff, English Lit and so forth. So they both got good grades. They stopped swapping around on their parents, though, when they got older, and they never did it to girlfriends. It was a mean trick, they agreed, not to be practised on those you love. Then Rob stopped having girlfriends. He didn’t tell Eddie, even when he met a man who worked in a restaurant in town who made his heart beat fast. They started seeing one another.

One evening the man from the restaurant saw Rob across the street. He was filled with love so he crossed the street and took Rob in his arms. As soon as he touched him, he knew it wasn’t Rob. But it was too late. Eddie beat him until he couldn’t see out of either eye.

The man from the restaurant moved away. His brother won’t speak to him, and Rob says he wouldn’t want him to, anyway. ‘Even so,’ he says, ‘it’s like a missing leg. I had to learn how to walk again without him. I stopped seeing people for a time. Only wanted my dog and the woods. I like early mornings best, when no one is around.’

I think about the story for a time.

I say, ‘If all that hadn’t happened to you, I would be dead.’