Entropy (15 page)

***

The rain started to fall more heavily. It felt like it would never end and that the river would burst, the streets would flood, and all the people would suffocate and drown, immersed in a landscape of death and barrenness. The clouds above the horizon blackened. I would bring the darkness with me to him and everywhere I moved. I would be a harbinger of sickness and rot. The incarnation of entropy. However even at this point of destruction and retribution, I doubted that my brother would understand the things that he had done, or possess any form of contrition for his indescribable acts of barbarity and disillusioned hate.

The tape continued.

The sounds of the car accident gave way to the recordings of the tools of industry: a drill; a motorboat engine; a forklift; a printing press; a heart monitor. The tape then moved past the soothing, repetitive sounds of machines to a baby wailing. My hand trembled and I stopped the tape momentarily, not knowing what to expect next. I tightened my hand around the gun. I wanted to pull it out from underneath of my jacket and toss it out of the open window. But I couldn't do it. It would be easier to kill my brother than to continue to witness Augustina's praise and love wither away on the vine of hopelessness in which I was enmeshed. I depressed the play button again. The unending cries of the newborn child abruptly ended as if the appearance of Augustina's voice had soothed the child. She spoke faintly this time, but she was more deliberate and calmer than before.

I watched you try to play once.

It was nearly a year after the accident. Torn bandages still covered the area around your left shoulder. The pale color of them had begun to rust. You wouldn't let me change them. You said they reminded you of who you really were. There was no way that you could hear me from inside the sound room. You probably thought I was still out. I saw how you agonized about even whether to go into the studio as you stood outside the door, pressing your fingertips tightly against the glass window. I watched you open it cautiously, as if you were afraid of what might be waiting on the other side.

I wondered if you would have covered up your body if you had seen me there watching you. But the injuries you had attained made you all the more beautiful to me. However, I was never able to make you understand or believe it. And that, more than anything, has led us here.

You walked into the room slowly, as if you hadn't been inside its walls for a decade. At first, you paused, reaching out, like a sightless man determining what objects laid in front of him. I stepped into the place where you had just been outside the room, the shapes of your feet mirrored in the small puddles of water on the floor. Had you showered after I had tried to touch you earlier? Did you feel the need to rinse your flesh of the touch of my fingertips? It felt that way. It might seem trivial to you, but nothing you had ever done to me before had made me feel so unattractive.

The cello appeared asleep against its cradle. You awoke it hesitantly, wrapped the fingers of your right arm around its neck, and sat it between your legs on the floor. It had taken you a few minutes to find a way to brace yourself with the instrument. The bow was next to you, underneath the chair. It had fallen to the floor weeks ago, but until then you had not bothered to have picked it up.

After a few introspective minutes, you laid the bow down awkwardly against the strings of the cello. I couldn't hear anything. But it didn't matter what sounds were given birth. And it didn't matter that your body couldn't adjust to its changes. What mattered was that you were trying to communicate in some way. But did either one of us understand that at the time, the importance of what was being spoken? I wanted to place my head between your shoulder blades and feel the notes vibrating through your back, the sounds interpreted for me through your bones, your body; a dictionary of words and purpose.

However it did not last long. The last thing I remembered was watching your body lean in against the cello and surround its frame. Your shoulders rose quickly and then fell. The bow dropped to the floor. It looked as if you were crying. I wanted so much to be there for you, to feel the warmth of your despair crashing against the reckless wanton of my body.

Later that night in bed, I rolled over and saw the dress that I had worn only a few hours before heaped on the bedroom floor. I loved the color of that dress. It reminded me of autumn. My body initially tensed when your fingertips pressed the cold metal of the zipper against my spine and lower back. I let the dress fall from shoulders, where it collapsed along my hips before falling to the floor. I could smell your scent in the fibers. As I stepped out of the dress, my toes got caught on the thin shoulder strap. I had leaned against your body to steady mine.

Your heart was pounding through your chest.

The wine that accompanied dinner was still present on my lips. The desire that I had to taste you was intense and disturbing. It pulled at me, beckoned. I didn't know what to do. My body glistened with anticipation and sweat. I had never remembered feeling so sexually aggressive towards you.

I watched you take a step back. That surprised me. I wanted so much to assure you that I still desired you, and wanted you to explore my dark places. Tenderly, I took your hand and held it, pressed it against my face and closed my eyes. There were so many things that I wanted to tell you, but I didn't want to make a sound. Instead, I lowered your hand and started to unbutton your shirt. I ran my fingertips inside the collar and pulled it away from your shoulders, touching your warm skin as much as I could. Slowly, you raised your arm and pressed my hand flat against your chest.

Your heart was still pounding.

I tried to continue undressing you, but you stopped me and lowered your head. Using tender reaffirmation, I raised your chin and kissed your lips, allowing mine to linger along their definition before falling down across your throat. I could taste the saltiness of your nervousness.

Uncertain, your hand reached up. I unhooked my bra and guided your fingertips across my shoulders, directing them to the barren places of my skin that longed to be discovered again. My breasts became exposed to the silver moonlight that filtered through the window. I leaned closer while you caressed my nipples. I shuddered. I enjoyed being like this, joined, aroused and weakened by one another's imperfections and thirst.

I lay down on our bed and guided you inside me, the skin on your back and chest glistening, shimmering. It dripped across the plane of my stomach. I said things I never believed I could. They made me another woman, and for a minute, I understood how you felt, wanting to be someone else. I told you that I loved you. You took me twice, never anxious or impulsive. Several times you asked me if I was okay when my hands quivered against the small of your back. My body was only shaking uncontrollably in response to how you made me feel. For a few beautiful hours we were lovers again, unburdened by who we actually were, or by the failure of knowing that we could never be anything else. I watched you as you rested, your body intertwined with mine. When you moved, your hand ended up resting across my stomach.

It was then I knew that I had to tell you that I was pregnant …

I paused the tape.

I remembered slipping out from underneath her body and just standing in the doorway looking at Augustina for almost an hour after she told me. God she was so beautiful. She rolled over on her side and I thought of all the things I had never done for her that I should have done. It was clear to me watching her sleep, with her hair pulled aside exposing the tender slope of her neck and shoulder, that it would be the last time that I would feel so calm and composed.

***

I knew that nothing would ever be the same after this, even if I couldn't follow through with what I believed that I had to do; murder him. I just couldn't understand how to subsist with the mistakes that I had made, with the guilt and culpability of my past constantly washing over me while I raised a child. I was not fit to be a father.

An ambulance rushed past the bus, the startling sound echoing into the distance. The local hospital was located a couple of blocks up on the left, set atop a hill where an elementary school had once been built. Parts of the playground were still intact around the back, remnants of innocence now overshadowed by decay, suffering and remorse. The chain link fence that surrounded it was rusted, and overgrown grass protruded around the metal wire.

The brakes of the bus ground to a halt, spilling the contents of a file across to the edge of the seat. I didn't want to look at the files anymore. However one of the crime scene photographs of a murdered child had slipped out and I glanced over at it. Half of his face below the nose was gone. Jesus Christ! I gasped for air. But seeing the reminder of what my brother had done reassured me of my course of action. Nothing else mattered. My actions would be for the greater good and would preserve what decency there was left in the community.

The driver shifted the bus into gear, still putting slight pressure on the clutch, and straightened out the wheel. The only people who remained on the bus besides the driver were two men and one woman. All of the things that I had been running from would be over soon. All of the recollections of missteps and indecision left behind.

In the window, I noticed the broken reflection of the woman behind me. Through the grime and the rain clinging to the outside of the glass, she briefly resembled my brother's wife. I wondered how much she knew about him that no one else did: his demons; the weaknesses that simultaneously made him both vulnerable and depraved. If there was only some way to get her out of the house before I got there. There were so many things that she wouldn't understand about his death.

However I couldn't let such thoughts get to me.

I resumed the tape.

… It was then I knew that I had to tell you that I was pregnant.

What are we supposed to do now that you know, and that our lives will be changing again? The two of us have been through so much in our marriage. In that time, I have trusted you, admired your emotional sensitivity, and cherished how rare I believe this is in a man. I have never used that against you, and although I shouldn't, because it's expected of me as your partner, I am proud of that.

There are times when I want to blame myself for what has happened, and for the level of distrust and hate that you have for yourself. Did I make you to feel this way? Did I cause you to loathe so much of what you have become as a man and as a husband? Was I not there for you when you needed me? I am left to question so much of what had once been certain. I am still certain though that I love you, perhaps even more than ever before. Part of me should be angry at you for shutting me out, but that emotion wavers depending upon how I choose to look at it.

It's the same way when I regard your face. At times, when the sun is streaming through the front window of our house, I see a beautiful man, proud and resolute despite the misguided view you have of yourself. But at other times, such as when I watch you trying to compose music, I see in your desperate eyes a man who is scared of being who he once was; passionate, strong-willed and moreover, brilliant. However you never directed any of that contempt you felt towards me. You never once raised your voice or challenged me. But I struck you once, and it makes me feel ashamed. Although you never talked about it, I desperately wanted to.

And now I have that chance.

Maybe it was my fault all of this happened because I kept pushing you to play your music again. And that morning I was so irritated with you because you had been given an opportunity to rediscover your passion. I had always expected that you would have had the strength to have overcome your new challenges and to want to move forward. However you had changed after the accident and I'm not just talking about your physical injury. I personally thought that your injury would have heightened that intensity that so many people always admired in you. I guess that I had failed to appreciate the full emotional impacts of the accident upon you. Perhaps I didn't see it because I never fully understood just how emotionally sensitive and fragile you were even before the accident.

I should have noticed.

I should have noticed the times that you wanted to be held and listened to after the weeks you spent alone when I was traveling with the company. Did I give you a reason to feel so insecure? Was there someone in your past that had scarred you and caused you to have so much doubt? I always thought your art—the music you created—was enough to comfort you while I was away. Who damaged you so much in your past for you to question your self-worth so intensely?

I can still feel the place on my hand where I first struck you as I rub my palm now.

Someone from your old quartet, the pianist, sent you a beautiful new cello that morning, with an invitation to play at a theater close to where we first met in New York. The cello was a custom-designed instrument, made by a specialist in Europe, which allowed you to press both areas of the strings, the neck and the breast simultaneously, with a unique bow. There was also a note enclosed. It was meant to offer you encouragement, not to pity you. He said at the end of the note that although you always saw the world as a desolate forest of apathy and affliction, he hoped you would lessen your cynicism, accept his gift and continue with your music.

Not long after you removed the cello from its case, we argued. I wanted to help you become the person that you could again be, and to finally rid us of the insecurities that had led to the steady decay of our relationship. I was certain that music would aid us. You kept telling me that I didn't understand. You said that music would not tame the beast that existed underneath the surface of your skin. But I never saw that in you. But is that how you really viewed yourself, as an animal? Never could someone as noble and caring as you be considered anything but a man.