The Illusionist (23 page)

“Stay still. Can't you say anything but ‘fuck'?”

“Fuck! Fuckin' hurts!”

Bobby stands at my elbow, studying the operation. He keeps getting his head in the way so I can't see. “Honey, can you move? Mommy can't see.”

“Where'd you learn this?” Dean asks.

“Watching the nurses at work at the Home.” I love being so close to his face in the light. Usually, when we are close together it's dark. He always wants the light out when we make love.

Now, under the light, I can see he has long blond hairs on his cheeks, especially under the cheekbones and above his upper lip and along the jawline. Like a teenage boy's before he shaves, golden hairs, lighter than the hair on his head. His eyes glow, almost feverish with health. I have the power to hurt him, I think, he is under my hands.

His flannel shirt gives off its distinctive clean fragrance of cotton. There's always the smell of fresh air on Dean, his breath is like sweet apples. He trusts me. If I tore at those stitches, I could hurt him.

“You'll have a scar,” I say. “They should've called a plastic surgeon in for a face wound.”

And suddenly, he smiles. “Good! I
want
a scar! Right under my eye! A scar'll look good.”

What did I know about him? What did I know except that he could betray me?

Dean was like water, always changing to fit the form around it, moving faster than you could grasp, forever out of reach. The more you reached for Dean, the further away he slipped from you. Love goes beyond betrayal, I think. Love is a burden, love is a curse.

When Dean got arrested for the check-cashing charge with Terry, and I bailed him out, Mommy went berserk. “You used the hairdresser money—I can't believe it! Two hundred dollars!”

And she wouldn't let Dean come back and live with us—because of AIDS, she said, and I said we aren't even having sex, how could he give me AIDS, but she said, she's gay isn't she, gay people carry AIDS. I said “But Dean isn't gay!” “She's gay,” Mommy said.

And then, for the first time after the check-cashing arrest, I saw him at the Wooden Nickel, and I was like a person in the desert dying of thirst coming upon a pool of water.

Later I read in the paper about what happened in the parking lot of the Wooden Nickel after Chrissie and I drove away that night. I knew the victim was Dean, it was him they raped, knew it was my love, and those animals had done it to him.

He had gone, gone from my life. I didn't know where he was, if he had returned to his parents' house up in St. Pierre, or if he was hiding out somewhere in the county. I called Chrissie Peck and she didn't know where he was either.

I could only think of him, of seeing him again. During the day, when my mom went to work, I would watch TV, hoping the phone would ring and it would be him.

I prayed hard as I could, my jaw clenched. “Please Jesus, make
him come back to me. I'll do whatever you want. Please Jesus.” If I prayed hard enough I could bring him back to me through sheer will and effort.

I didn't care about anything. Eating. Getting dressed in the morning. It was like I was in mourning for him, one of those Indian widows who when their husbands die, burn themselves to death on his funeral pyre.

Sometimes I'd walk into town and just wander through the streets, hoping to catch sight of him. I had no car, but I'd walk along the road through snow and rain, my coat flapping open around me, hoping that we would find one another, I didn't care. I couldn't feel anything, the cold and the rain meant nothing to me. And the cars would slow down next to me, their headlights on because it was so dark out, and the drivers would stare at me, this weird girl walking alone along the highway.

I didn't care about the snow and cold. I was desperate, searching for him, wanting my sweet guy.

I'd started smoking, and I'd make that the point of my walk, going to the CVS in Sparta every day to buy my cigarettes.

One afternoon, the snow was coming down hard, but I went out anyway. I pushed my way along Route 7, through waves of whiteness. It seemed like I was the only person outside in the whole of Sparta. But I didn't feel cold even though it was storming all around me. Somehow it was warmer when the snow fell like this, the snow was like a blanket. I'd be freezing when I went inside and thawed out, but for now I was okay, and so I kept on going.

The whole city had shut down. Ahead of me on the road the snow was piling up, soft and white and clean where there was usually gray slush.

Turning down Washington Street, I saw ahead of me the lights from CVS, which was always open no matter what the weather.

I went inside, a lone clerk stood behind the counter, a young woman. I was the only customer in the place. I bought my Marlboros, and I stepped outside again, back into the snow.

As I began walking up Washington Street through the blur of air I saw this vague, red shape, ahead of me, emerging through the white.

As I drew closer, the shape became more distinct and I saw that it was his truck parked on the curb. I drew nearer and I saw, through the snow melting on the windshield, the outline of his head, the flesh of his face. He had been waiting for me.

I ran to the truck and hammered on the window, and he rolled it down.

“Dean! I've been looking everywhere for you! Are you all right? Tell me you're not hurt!”

“Baby . . .” he said softly.

I clutched at the glass, wanted to tear it away, the barrier between us.

Inside the truck, next to him, strapped to the seat, was the little boy,
her
boy, bundled up in a blue snowsuit, blue wool cap on his head, scarf wound round his neck, staring at me.

“Where've you been! Oh God! Oh I've been so worried. I read in the paper what happened. I knew it was you. Those animals!” I spat out the words. “Those pigs!”

“I've been driving around looking for you,” he said.

“Did they hurt you? Did they hurt you bad?”

I couldn't imagine what they had done. I couldn't bear it.

“I'm okay,” he said, and there was something noble about the way he said it, and that he didn't want to tell me any more.

I looked at the boy. “Where's its mother?” I couldn't bear to give the kid a name, to refer to him directly. To give
her
that. I was punishing the child too, by not saying his name, though he couldn't understand.

“She's working,” he said. “A lot of people didn't come in today because of the snow.”

“You're staying with her?”

“I got nowhere else to go,” he said.

He saw the pack of cigarettes in my hand. “You smoking?”

“I got no reason to live now,” I said. “Are you okay?” I asked again. We had to talk loud over the throb of the truck engine. I could feel my feet burning in the snow now that I was standing still, like I had frostbite.

“I'm fine,” he said. “Right, Bobby?” He glanced at the boy. He was being brave. But the little boy just kept staring up at me silently, like I was an alien or something.

“How's your mom?” Dean asked. “I'm sorry she's pissed at me.”

“She's not pissed. Just ignorant.”

“I can't give you AIDS,” he said. “We never did anything.”

“I know.” He said it as if it were all right with him, that we never “did anything,” when with me it was not all right. Which was something I couldn't figure out because at the same time I respected him so much for not coming on to me, for not just loving me for sex.

“He's getting cold in there,” I said of the boy. “You shouldn't keep the window open.”

“You look bad, Mellie,” he said.

“I don't care.” He had said it almost as a criticism, that I wasn't beautiful anymore, though I knew he meant I looked sick.

“You eating right?”

“I can't eat. I don't care. I don't care if I die.”

“Don't say that,” he said.

“Do you love her?” I asked, through the snow. That was all I could care about now, since I couldn't give him shelter, just the words, just let him say the right words.

“I love her,” he said. “But not the way I love you. You're soaked,” he said. “I could take you home in the truck. . . .” He looked guilty, uneasy. “But I'm scared. Brian said he'd kill me. I can't let him see me with you.”

“Please,” I begged. “Say you love me again.”

“I love you,” he said.

The snow was falling down around us harder now, completely enveloping us. “You having sex with her?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He looked me straight in the eye. “No. It's not like that.”

And I believed him. Once words are spoken, they hang there in the air, hard as diamonds.

He rose up from the seat toward me, touched his lips to mine. For a moment, I could feel his warm breath fanning my face. He touched his lips to mine. Then, “I better go,” he said. “I don't want them to see me.” The boy's lips were trembling. “He's getting cold.”

“I love you,” he said. And he reached up again and touched my lips. He looked at me intently. “Nothing else matters. No matter what happens, Mellie, you'll always feel it inside you, the love. Once it's there, it stays forever. Even if I die, it stays there.”

“Don't say that!” I cried. “Don't say ‘die'!”

But he rolled the window up now, and then I heard the grinding sound of the gears and he was pulling away from the curb. I still touched the window with both hands, walking alongside the moving truck as if to keep him there.

I let my hands drop. He was moving up the street. I could just make out, in the rear window, his face turned back toward me, looking at me.

I watched the truck move up Washington, and within seconds, the red shape disappeared, blending into the whirling snow.

Four
P.M.
at the Nightingale Home, when work ended, I said good-bye to Chrissie and I went outside. I could hear the sound of the cement plant filling the valley, echoing against the cliffs as usual. Down below, the river was the color of liquid steel, the sky above it pale, yellowish in the cold, the mountains beyond like gray shadows in the air. A strong wind swept in off the water, and I wrapped my wool scarf tight and pulled on my mittens.

Across the parking lot, a figure leaned against a car, watching the entrance to the Home. At first I couldn't make out who it was. The person was forlorn-looking. I could see the fuzzy, long, pale blond hair. His parka was unbuttoned, his shoulders were hunched over, he was smoking a cigarette. There was something broken about him. He didn't have a hat on in the cold, or gloves. Brian Perez. I wondered how long he'd been there waiting.

He caught sight of me, threw his cigarette to the ground, walked across the lot toward me. “Terry.” His voice echoed in the cold. No one but us here.

I stopped. “Yeah?”

“I'm looking for Lily Dean.”

His eyes had big black pupils, looked almost as big as the iris itself. I wondered if the holes in his eyes went all the way back into his brain.

“I don't know who you're talking about,” I said.

“I mean Lily Dean.”

“I don't know Lily Dean.” I was carrying my car keys in my hand in readiness and now I brushed past him and leaned down to unlock the door.

“You know who I mean.”

I stood up straight and faced him. I was his height, maybe an inch taller. I was pulling my schoolmarm bit.

“No. I don't know Lily Dean.” Best loyalty I could give Dean—call him what he wanted to be called, respect that. Define him as he wanted to be defined. That was the most profound loyalty you could give someone.

I unlocked the car door, and I slid down into the front seat. But he put his hand on the door and I slammed it shut quick so he had to pull his hand away or it would've chopped his fingers off.

I backed the car back out of the parking space, wheels spinning in the slush, and made a U-turn. And then I slid down the driveway of the Home, leaving him there, looking after me, his parka unbuttoned in the cold.

*  *  *

When I got home that night to West Taponac, I told Dean, “Brian Perez was in the parking lot at work.”

“Now he knows I'm with you. He knows how to find me. He's gonna follow you here. You can't go to work anymore.”

Bobby was sitting up at the round oak table, crayoning something, a project that Dean had started. He seemed absorbed but I wondered how much he understood. “I got to work,” I said. “How're we going to eat?”

Dean paced about the room, punching his fist into the palm of his hand, peering into the corners as if searching for something. “He's gonna kill me. He'll kill you too—and Bobby. He's capable of that. He set fire to his landlord's apartment building.”

It's the mention of Bobby that does it to me. I look at Bobby, sitting up at the table, his feet not even touching the floor yet, the tendrils of dark hair against his pale skin. Bobby's been quieter lately,
watchful, as if he knows something is up, as if he's afraid and trying to understand. He doesn't look at us, but I know he hears everything.

I say to Dean, “I've got sick days coming. I'll take a few days off. Till it dies down.”

*  *  *

Later that night something wakes me. I climb out of bed, walk into the bathroom. Through the little rectangular window, I can see only wave after wave of white fields, and silence. I see the ridge in the distance, and a faint light behind the trees, beginning to blend through the sky. No sign of animal tracks on the icy surface of the snow. I study the contours of the fields, so smooth and white, as if they are bathed in all the reflected light of the universe. This inhospitable land.

Mr. Jukowski's barn is down the road, out of sight. That big brown bear they talked about in the
Ledger-Republican,
it must still be somewhere out there. If bears get hungry enough in winter, if the snow is deep enough, they'll approach your house, they'll forage. Hunger makes them unafraid.