Alice Hoffman Read online

  Renny looked at me as though I were a total fool. “Don’t you get it? You don’t hide what you think is beautiful. You hide what’s broken. You hide when you’re a monster.”

  We dropped the subject, but it was too late. Certain ideas, once they’re planted, grow in spite of you. I had begun to think about broken things.

  “What do you think moles eat?” Renny asked when I drove him back to the university.

  Of course he was going to keep the mole, turn this blind, wounded creature into a pet. What then? Would the mole speak to him? Would he grant Renny three wishes? Take the gold from my skin, the ring from my fingers, the watch from my wrist?

  “Grubs?” I guessed. “My brother would know, but he’s too busy to talk to me.”

  “Grub stew.” Renny grinned. “Grub cakes.”

  “They probably sell mole food in the pet store. Or try Acres’ Hardware. They seem to have everything.”

  I was thinking of how Ned used to leave out food for the bats that nested in our roof. He’d set a mixture of suet and honey and fruit in the rain gutters. I’d hide my head under my pillow, but he’d watch from the window.

  They can find it without seeing where they’re going, my brother told me. That’s how defined their senses are. They fly blind through the dark.

  At night the quad at Orlon University was quiet. I felt as though I were delivering Renny to the wrong place, though. It was his brokenness. The campus was so groomed, so perfect, and he was falling apart. A true friend would have been able to weave gloves out of reeds and moleskin for Renny; when he wore gloves such as those for three days in a row, he’d be cured. The first girl who passed by him in the cafeteria would fall in love with him, and it would be Iris. Iris McGinnis would truly look at him, she’d look inside him, and when she saw the way he loved her, she’d be so moved she’d begin to weep.

  Renny reached into his pocket for the mole. He was right about me. I probably would have assumed it was beyond help and tossed it into the shoebox with its predecessor to become skin and bones, another curled-up leaf. I wouldn’t have even checked for a heartbeat.

  “Still alive,” Renny said.

  “Can’t ask for more than that. Can we?”

  “Forget what I said about Lazarus. Maybe I was jealous that you’ve found someone.”

  As if I could forget. If there was a negative point, I clung to it. A life raft of doubt and fear.

  “Sure. Don’t worry about it.” I was trying for cheerful ease. “And it’s not like we’re running off to the chapel anytime soon. It’s not love, Renny. It’s nothing like that.”

  “I’m happy for you. Whatever it is. I mean it.”

  He was. He could be brokenhearted and still be happy for someone else.

  “I’m going to forget about Iris. It was a stupid idea to give her the temple. Or to ever think she would want me. What would she want with a monster?”

  “You’re not a monster.”

  I could feel something hot behind my eyes. It was compassion. Something I didn’t want to feel.

  “Look, Renny, even if it’s not Iris, someone will think you’re perfect the way you are.” He looked at me and I could tell, no matter what he might say, he still had hope. He wanted to believe. “Trust me,” I said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “You know it.”

  I had almost convinced myself. Renny got out of the car and walked backward so he could wave to me.

  “Monsters of the world, unite.” He raised his gloved fist in the air.

  “Go study, or something,” I called to him.

  He walked into his dorm. He was gone, but not completely. For there it was, still with me: Renny’s idea, replaying itself, getting bigger. What if Lazarus was hiding something? What if he was indeed a monster? The man I thought I knew could easily be a figment of my imagination, a bear, a snake, a spiny toad. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered. Was it possible to know anyone, truly? Could knowledge hurt, pierce your heart, break your bones?

  Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood. I let myself in the back entranceway with my key, then locked the door behind me. It was hot and damp in the library; no wonder the pages of the older editions were turning brown. I switched on the desk lamp. A small circle of yellow light. Frances left the desk tidy and well organized, so I was careful not to displace anything. There was a peculiar heaviness in the room; during the day we kept the old air conditioner on, now the dust had settled. I coughed and the sound echoed.

  Frances had photographs of nieces and nephews displayed, of a black dog called Harry, of the canals of Venice, where she’d vacationed last year. Beside my desk, nothing. Nothing obvious, at least. Just the invisible picture I always brought with me, the one of myself, the girl who stomped her feet on the porch, breath billowing out like smoke, little beast, long dark hair falling down her back, the stars in the black sky forever set in place, the ice forever shining, brighter than the stars.

  I could hear beetles hitting against the screens in the windows. I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived. Everything else that had happened or would happen was a dream of some sort. Then I heard a thud. I took in my breath. A real live noise. That woke me up. Maybe I wanted to be alive, after all. Maybe I wanted to be in the world. I was afraid that a thief was trying to enter the library. Everything was free here; there was nothing to steal. Whoever was crazy enough to break in might also be crazy enough to do more.

  I shrank back into the dark. There was a clanging then, and I breathed easier. Not a break-in, a return. I realized that someone had slipped a book through the night drop. Nothing more. I pinched myself for being an idiot and went to the door. Nothing to be afraid of. I could see someone dressed in white walking down the path. She was barefoot on the concrete. Her hair was pale and she was in a hurry. There was a car parked in the street, left running. The night was dark, black as beetles. I couldn’t make out any features until the car door opened and there was a flash of light. The woman was my sister-in-law.

  I stood watching until the car disappeared. My heart was pounding. Too fast. Too hard. I had spent my life feeling as though I were an accomplice to a crime. It was nothing new to me. Death-wisher, betrayer, liar, secret-keeper. I was death’s assistant, with no great skill of my own. A lackey, a fool, the helpmate whose every move had resulted in tragedy. One step, one wish, one mistake, one icy night. And now I had seen my sister-in-law, Nina, rushing to her car, driving off into the dark. I realized the white thing she was wearing was her nightgown.

  The book she’d left was in the night-drop bin; when I picked it up it was still warm from her touch. I took the book with me, out the back door, where my car was parked in the shadows. I drove back through the campus, and it was probably no accident that I wound up on my brother’s street. Maybe I wanted to be reassured that it hadn’t been Nina at the library, only someone who looked like her. I could see into some of the houses, filled with yellow light, with life. My brother’s house, however, was dark. Everyone asleep. Everyone safe inside. The car I’d seen at the library was parked in the driveway. Maybe she hadn’t driven it tonight; all the same, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I didn’t dare get out and touch the hood of the car to see if it was still warm.

  There was a streetlight above me; when I flipped over the book that had been returned I saw the title: A Hundred Ways to Die. It was the instruction manual for suicide I’d often referred to in New Jersey when Jack Lyons phoned me for information. I felt something close up in my throat. I’d thought that like always recognized like, but it seemed I’d been completely mistaken about Nina.

  I watched the beetles fly through the dark above their lawn. I wondered if Nina had reached home and had crawled into bed beside my brother, if he hadn’t even noticed she’d been gone, noticed her pale feet were cold. Now I remembered that t
he day before my mother died, my brother had spent all day making her a present. It was a book made of construction paper, bound with shoelaces. When I’d asked him what it was, he’d said it was the story of his life. That’s stupid, I’d said. I didn’t look at his face to see if I’d hurt him. Who cares about that? I was jealous. I knew a book could make something real. In this case, it was his love right there on that paper, tied with laces, given over freely to our mother. That’s why I’d been so mean to Ned. I had nothing. I hadn’t even thought to give her a present. I hadn’t thought at all.

  The house we’d lived in, in New Jersey, could have easily fit into the living room of the house where my brother lived now. It was a beautiful structure, even in the dark. Before tonight I had imagined that Ned and Nina slept well at night, logical sleep, dreamless and sweet. Now I looked through the shadows to see there was a woman on the lawn. My brother’s wife. In her nightgown she was almost invisible. But she was there. It was Nina. She didn’t move at all. I tried to get away quickly, before she could see me. I began to drive away, headlights switched off. Maybe this had never happened, maybe I’d been all wrong, but when I turned to look out the rear window I saw that she had spied me, not that she seemed to care. She looked right through me, as if this world no longer concerned her, as if everything that mattered could no longer be seen with the naked eye.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  True

  I

  People hide their truest natures. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe. My sister-in-law was a perfect example: the sunny, near-perfect mathematician who drove through the quiet streets in her nightgown when most good people were in bed, who studied the hundred ways to die. I had already decided I wouldn’t mention the fact that I’d seen her at the book deposit. A liar like all the rest, ready to pretend I didn’t know about the crack in the reality of her life, the dark hour, the library door, the book of sorrow in her hands.

  Absinthe, that’s how it began — ingested, of course. Anemia caused by refusing all food, anonymity, arsenic, asphyxiation, barbiturates (crumbled into puddings or applesauce to make for speedy digestion), bee stings (see wasps, see nests, see allergies), belladonna, black hellebore (brewed into a tea), cars (accident, asphyxiation), crucial arteries (knives, razors, ballpoint pens), death by drowning, falls from open windows (eighth floor or above), fire, gas ovens, gunshot wounds, hanging, heroin, death by ice, ivy (pulverized and made into soup or tea), jimsonweed, OxyContin, pennyroyal, plastic bag over the head (see double death, see ensuring overdose), poison hemlock, the root of pokeweed, ponds and lakes, death by provoked police incident (see car chase, public drunkenness, public nuisance), public restrooms, renting motel rooms, sedatives, standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, stimulants, death by wishes.

  I had seen Nina in passing since that night at the library, once at the market, another time in the cafeteria while Renny and I ate lunch; both times she’d waved cheerfully to me. I simply waved back, then went about my business as though I hadn’t skimmed through A Hundred Ways to Die before returning it to the shelf, as though my sister-in-law hadn’t been standing on the library steps in her nightgown. Self-help, that’s the section where it belonged.

  The truth was, I didn’t want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone’s life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you made mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where your advice, interest, love, might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop. That was what was happening with Lazarus. I had taken the one bead of doubt Renny had tossed out and strung a necklace, red pearls, invisible to my eye, but tight around my throat, pulling at me.

  Who was he really? That was the question. What did it mean to have a lover who would embrace you only in the dark? Who wanted to conceal not only his deepest self but everything on the surface? Nothing good, that was certain; nothing you could trust. Something unexpected that was sure to bite you and bring you down. How easy it was to be undone by some things. By these things. Red pearls. Truth. What you don’t want to know, need to know, have to keep in the palm of your hand. Grab it, the stinging nettle, the wasp, the shard of glass. Do it. Then live with the consequences.

  Whenever I asked Lazarus what it had been like to be dead, he would laugh. I told you, we’re not talking about that. He had his rules: this, but not that. In the dark, all night long, but never in the light. But I wouldn’t let it go. When did I ever? I whispered and prodded like a nagging wife, a child who wouldn’t give up. Stomp your feet, little girl. Hack off your hair for spite. Get what you want. Don’t give up. Needle, beg, cry.

  Were there welcoming family members? A black hole? Did time stretch out into infinity, or was it a single slam, poof, over, like a magician passing a kerchief over a rabbit, and then gone, gone, gone?

  He laughed at me. It was a hundred degrees at the time and we were in the kitchen, shades drawn. Lazarus was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt. Now I noticed: every button was buttoned.

  “Why don’t you think about right here, right now?”

  Lazarus put his arms around me, pulled me close into his burning chest, had his mouth to my ear. His voice itself was hot, melting me. I felt him against me, thigh to thigh, and at that moment I believed I knew him. In a way. Hot, night, fuck, kiss, skin, muscles, heat. The way his arms felt in the dark. Each rib. Ladder, cage, his, mine. The size and heat of him inside me. The words he said that weren’t words at all. The way he wanted me. Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t that be love? The very science of it was all there: heart racing, the mind willing to believe almost anything; she longs for the dark, wants him when she’s not with him, gets in the car at all hours, drives down dark roads. More symptoms? An elevated pulse rate, the center of the self moves lower, into the abdomen, sex, thighs, the unthinking, the undoing, the you not alone, the you disappeared, the no difference between inside and outside. All the signs. Proof enough of an attachment.

  And yet there it was. The power of a single idea in my head. What was hidden, what was not. It was a tape inside me, one I couldn’t rewind. It was a bird’s voice, a mole’s whisper: Find out.

  Isn’t that the center of every story? The search for the truth. The need to know. Tear off the sealskin, the donkeyskin, the feathers, the shackles. In moonlight, starlight, lanternlight, bluelight. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted: to see and hear. Take the veil from my eyes. The stones from within my ears. Turn me around twice. Tell me. No matter the consequence. No matter the price. At least until it has to be paid. At least until the price blinds you, deafens you, burns you alive.

  When I next went to see Lazarus, I sneaked a look at the bookshelves in the living room while he was working in the study. Paying bills. Having the iced tea I’d made him. Busy. Trusting me. Of all people. The bookshelves were dusty. The whole room was. Bluelight, lanternlight. None of the books had been touched for some time. As a librarian I could gauge such things, what was in use, what wasted away. The layer of dust, the way the book sat on the shelf, unwanted and unused. I went from one bookcase to another. More travel. Guidebooks to France. Museums in New York. Peruvian villages. An entire shelf of Italy. All of it alphabetized, so orderly, so dusty. A museum of books.

  Lazarus came into the room and caught me on my hands and knees.

  “Getting ready for me?” he said.

  He laughed. So did I.

  I should have been embarrassed; there was so much about sex between us. I wondered how it would be if we didn’t need ice, water, all that cold. If given half the chance, we would never stop; maybe we’d grind each other into ashes, into dust, burning hot, bloodred.

  “I’m looking at the books.” I turned away. I always did that when I didn’t trust something or someone. />
  “You don’t see enough of them at the library? Is that it?”

  He was closer, his hands on the waistband of my jeans, fingers dipping close enough to burn my skin.

  “If you’re going to be reading to me, make it a bedtime story.” He grinned, sly. I liked that grin. I liked what he meant. I suppose I flushed. My face was probably red. Rose. Blush. Not embarrassment. Ardor. All of the wanting I had, that much I couldn’t hide. We spent most of our time in the bathtub; we had sex the way fish must, in waves, in the cold, skins shivering into scales. When we were in the bed, we were on top of a blanket of crushed ice. My fingers turned blue; I didn’t care. They were numb anyway, unless I was touching him.

  I waved a book in front of him. It smelled like green fields, red wine, sunlight. The subtle scent of printer’s ink. “You’re interested in Italy?”

  “I’m interested in you.”

  He probably thought that was the answer I wanted.

  It could have been. It might have been. Except it wasn’t.

  “Seriously. You’ve got so many travel books. You’re not about to disappear on me, are you? Go off to Rome or Florence? You could find yourself another woman, someone pretty.”

  He took the book out of my hand. Could anyone be looking at me that way?

  “You’re the one I want.”

  I believed him. I should have stopped. But it had already begun, the plan I had, the need I had, the direction we were stumbling into, the middle of our story, the most dangerous part, when anything at all can happen.

  Lazarus blew the dust off the book and returned it to the shelf. The books were in order, city by city, country by country. He stuck the book into the South American section. He didn’t care about order. All at once I had the sense that he’d never seen this book before. This or any other on the shelf.

  “Maybe we should go somewhere.” I wanted a reaction. The way children poke at dead things with sticks. Alive or not? Vicious or tame? “I’m serious. Someplace we’ve never been before.”