Theo (32 page)

It’s hot, and he’s so dizzy he sits, in the middle of the floor, or he collapses, wondering if the police will come for him now. He’ll be by himself, because his dad has Colin, and Theo’s got nobody between him and the world, just like a car with no brakes, he can’t stop. He can’t stop and he’s crying a little, listening to how quiet even an attic full of butterflies is, their wings barely there, and he breathes. He breathes. He hears whispers. It’s wings.

Air flickers here, the room bright from both ends, windows closed at the house’s front but open at the far end from the room door, through which Theo has burst and stopped and torn cocoons hang from branches – pupa cases,
plastic-looking
, peeled and curled back, mostly, still a few like fruit,
waiting to open. But Theo sits in the air, watching and thinking about where he can go. He can’t go any higher.

How is Theo going to take care of Paz. He can’t go back now, they’ll be mad or arrest him. Or send him away. Where would he go. Maybe he could be in jail with Colin. Do police let you have a roommate. He sees white – it’s the page of a book in sun, he remembers from a school window – reading, reading about the world, in the quiet. His teacher laughing, like music. He needs to know about the worlds, one within another like an egg in a nest, or in hands. He wants to learn more. That’s the doors, between the worlds.

Theo stands weird and sad, the air alive as if bright leaves fell up instead of down in fall, came alive and flew away. He’s walking now, and there’s a small one on the slanting wall. He reaches out to touch it and it flickers away: he sees on his finger dust, butterfly yellow dust. He licks it: a taste like nothing.

They need to fly out: Theo tries to herd them out the rear window, over the back lawn, holding his hands in the air and shooing or trying to, but they curl and spin back and sideways and not forward, looping through the air or fluttering up and down. Some go out, some just keep stirring up the attic air. Theo wonders what they see, if they feel scared.

Open the other window, windows: at the front, over the front door. But maybe they’ll see him. He doesn’t care – he moves over the smooth boards, from carpet to wood, and grabs the iron handles and cranks them, flapping open the windows but slowly: maybe no one will notice.

Slowly he goes to the window ledge, one of the side panes; a triangle, a sail, and sits cross-legged, eyes just higher than the edge. Cars scattered all over, and the ambulance and police car sit close, ambulance doors open: Theo hears laughing. Shaking 
his head one of the attendants peels off gloves and one falls, a blue patch on the brown pea gravel. Theo moves closer, sees heads on the steps below. They look back into the house, and more heads come out – Colin with men in suits, Colin in a shirt and shoes. The men in suits laugh, too, pointing back into the house.

What’s funny. Theo never knows.

Birds look down on people. Theo’s above things. Everyone is just a head, carried around on feet and with hands to put things in its mouth. Everything is inside that head. Kids have less to carry around. But everyone wears that skull, everything cooped up in there. And how do you connect to someone else if everything’s inside there. Are words the only way.

He’s above, watching. Things are smaller. The cars and people. Trees still big, but just standing, swaying a little. Theo wonders if he killed the man. The police were laughing. But they haven’t left yet: one stands outside the flapped-open rear of the car talking to Colin. Theo can’t hear words, only the talking, rising and falling. Butterflies drift around him like ash from fire, some flitting out the window. Theo decides to go down. There’s nowhere else to go.

T
heo’s thumping down the stairs, and he’s left his door open so butterflies can ride everywhere – more ways to escape. He wants to help. Something’s wrong with him and he doesn’t know what it is. He floats on a big ocean, watching ships go by. No shore.

Down the back stairs and toward Paz, out the ballroom, people staring at him. The guy he hit is in a chair, with a sweaty plastic bag of ice held to his head, in a circle of others. Now he’s frowning at Theo.

What the hell, little man. You’re lucky you’re Adrian’s kid. Must be nice. I feel a lawsuit coming on, maybe.

You killed my dog.

What are you talking about.

My dog died because you poisoned her like you tried to poison that horse.

Look, I didn’t do anything to your dog. But there’s so much shit lying around here. It’s a good thing there aren’t any toddlers around. It sounds like your dog ate something it shouldn’t have. Tough titty in the city. Sorry, but you shouldn’t go around swinging shovels at people, unless they want you to, of course. That could be a cure for something: the guy laughed. Except for the headache and the hematoma, I think, like, that cleared up a lot of static for me. Like I’m tuned in better.

I hate this place, Theo said.

Theo walks toward the hedge angry and on the way picks up the shovel he dropped, still where he swung it. Theo hits his head with the heel of his other hand as he walks. It feels good and he keeps doing it. Hard, he does it hard, and now he’s talking, low, saying shit shit shit then fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. Then Paz. And he stops talking and hitting and he’s dizzy and he spins to get dizzier, dropping the shovel and whirling. Air and voices and something else – maybe ocean, maybe the roaring’s in Theo. His name means god, people tell him.

What can he live without. What can he not live without. What to give up, if he has to. Does he know any of that. Everything’s free, everything’s floating and spinning, maybe Paz even, he’s trying to stand still and he can’t he’s falling over, tripping on the shovel and banging a shin and the pain is light, he can see it. He’s sprawling on the bristly grass, pony fur, horse hair, wiry and stiff. The big world shifts under him, still sliding even with his eyes closed, the spin continues. For a while he goes away,
he’s just a feeling and everything’s bigger and brighter, and then it slows and slows and then locks. Theo can hear the click. He opens his eyes on his back. Way up high, gulls, almost too far to see.

Voices and music. Nothing changes. Nobody knows about Colin or the lady, or maybe they do. The show must go on, Adrian says, all the time. The show must go on baby, that’s all there is. There’s the show, and everything else is just waiting for the show.

This is his show, Theo thinks, on his back, and he needs to get up and go.

He crawls onto his hands and knees, and stands, and walks to the place where Paz is, and the other dogs, still there, but lifting heads a little, he can see. The assistant is there sitting with a bowl of water.

Thanks, Theo says, for helping them.

The lady’s a teenager, Theo thinks. He’ll be a teenager in three years. She looks up at him – she’s wearing a baseball hat and smiling, and an apron, and she has shorts on, and a watch – it’s six. She’s kind of pretty. He can’t help looking at where the apron swells.

Hey – Leslie said to stay here with them until she could figure out what to do. She’s working right now, but was going to try to talk to your dad, about what to do with the. With the one who’s gone. The other ones are a little better I think. They’re drinking a lot more.

Theo knelt to pet them, and their eyes followed him while he did. They seemed more tired now than anything else, the foam like toothpaste around their mouths now, dried. Theo wondered what they ate: search the house and protect them,
look for bad stuff at dog level and put it away. Maybe tell grownups, make a rule. Some rules he could ask his dad about. Some rules.

Tail, wag. A beat. On the ground. Thump thump thump. Then resting. Just like when they don’t want to go outside for a walk when it’s cold or snowy.

Theo says, thanks. I’m going to bury her now.

Where. She’s pushing hair out of her eyes, and Theo does too, reminded that his hair’s in the way.

In the trees over there, I guess. I don’t know where my dad is.

Theo didn’t want to do it alone, he didn’t know what should happen. He didn’t want to just dump her in a hole.

Um. Can you carry the shovel for me.

The lady looks around and back at the house, her face a little funny. She doesn’t want to. Please.

Yeah, okay. But I have to get back to work.

Okay. Okay, let’s go.

The lady rises off her knees, then leans to brush them off – her brown knees. She’s tanned. Then Theo hands her the shovel, and he drops and scoots and reaches. He feels bad – he has to drag Paz, past the others, her stomach rubs against their noses and they just stare at him. Theo has her out in the sun now and squats to put arms under her – she’s limp. How long does it take to stiffen, he wonders. He wishes really hard that it doesn’t happen until he’s not touching her. She’s still warm. Some people are looking, but not the poison guy. He’s on his back staring straight up. Theo feels a rush of warmth. He walks fast toward the trees, the lady turning with him. Birds scream.

Theo just walks, he’s not sure where, just in, where no one can see. He doesn’t want anyone to see her. She was shy. The lady’s not saying anything.

The lady’s looking around. How about over there. She’s pointing.

No, over there – Theo’s walking to the left and stopping under a spreading tree with a forked trunk, Theo’s tree, a twisted Y, a million years old, wrinkled and swirling. It looks like rock that flowed and froze, or like it’s raising arms. Here.

The ground and trees are dappled with light and dark. ‘Dapple’ was a vocabulary word, when they studied elaboration in school. School. Theo sees desks and kids bent over paper, and playground sounds outside, the younger kids at recess earlier. The lady’s handing him the shovel: I need to be getting back, okay.

Can you wait a minute. Please. Theo doesn’t want to do this alone.

I’m sorry, but I have to get back to work. Sorry – she was a good dog, I bet.

Yeah. Um, thanks.

The lady waves her hand and walks away, fast. She’s wearing sneakers.

Theo’s digging, the soil sandy, with brown mixed in the white. The hole keeps filling back up. He thinks if he does it really fast and gets her in it will work, so he shovels crazily, manically, which makes him laugh, but he feels funny laughing when she’s lying there. He digs on, flinging shovels of chocolate and sugar into the shade. Sound echoes out from the house, laughing. Theo wants them to be quiet.

Theo’s arms turning limp with exertion. The sand creeps back into the hole, which isn’t a hole, more like a cone. He kneels and lays her in the hole, and has to fold her and her back legs rise above the ground. He shivers, pushing hard on her once and then he digs a couple of feet away and scoops sand
over her. Grains not really covering her, just sliding off. He keeps at it, watching the dirt rise around her like water until it begins to lap at her sides and then slowly cover her more and more. Her eyes are half open. He leaves that for last.

Theo stops to rest, breathing hard. The shovel’s tall, so he has to choke up on it, like in baseball the times he’s been able to play. He remembers hearing Adrian say to the bass player, man, you’re holding that thing like you’re choking a woman. Theo’s wearing gloves made of sand, his hands are sticky and the soil’s adhering, and to patches on his legs and stomach. She’s lying there. Her eyes.

Keep shoveling – Theo’s mad to finish, just throws soil at the place until he can make himself look – she’s just an outline now, all of her covered, so he slows a little but keeps shoveling until there’s just a pile. Then he looks around, looking for limbs or rocks to put on top and hide her. He doesn’t know what might come looking but he doesn’t want her dug up. He wonders if the others found her, would they. What would keep them from it. Nothing. She’s just food now. What keeps people off each other. Sometimes nothing. People have canine teeth. Theo’s washed with sadness; he can feel it moving over and through him. He wants to get out.

Theo lays gray driftwood on the pile, but there aren’t rocks here. There is, he sees, a small stack of bricks a little further in. They look old, he sees, taking one in each hand. Maybe from building the house, and they’ve sat since then. Or Colin decided to make something and then forgot. He lays the bricks on top, then piles on more, so she won’t float up. She’s asleep.

No flowers around. He sits cross-legged beside her, not knowing what to do, and a song from school comes into his head. He sings, quietly, you are my sunshine. My only sunshine.

When he’s finished, he gets up to find something to mark her. He combs through the trees, coming out at the dunes, finding nothing. Beer cans, and an old flip-flop. He’ll go back to the house and find something. Bring it later. Bring her some water. He weaves scuffing through the dry sand, squeaking, kicking clouds, kicking harder and harder, around the trees and down the path between the dunes toward the house, the heavy wood trestles of the walkway appearing like signs reminding him. This way to the world. Which world.

Walking, Theo kicks at grass. Frieda and Adrian think they treat him like an adult, and he’s around adults all the time. Frieda and Adrian let him call them by their names and say when he goes to bed and what he eats and what he wears and where he sleeps and curse around him and talk about sex but that’s not treating him like an adult, that’s just doing what kids think being an adult is. He’s on the water, and it’s deep and black and he doesn’t know what’s in it, but things flash, he sees silver and eyes and swirls and there’s huge life down there but he’s floating over it – what else is there. When does he get to see it. Maybe he’s seeing now and doesn’t know it, because he’s a kid. Maybe all you ever see is just the flash.

Theo moves over the lawn among people scattered further apart now, fewer outside, the late afternoon sun hotter, or maybe people have left. He hopes so. Theo’s thinking of what to put on Paz’s grave. Mingus and the Seal and Gina and some other adults have brought chairs into the gazebo, and coolers, and Theo’s sliding up the flaking wood steps: maybe he’ll ask here.

Mingus looms in his costume, sweat pouring down around his helmet and wraparound shades.

You know, you can moan about how this’s ugly and you need
that and you need to be someplace else with other people, but you know, it’s like every day I’m kicking down Avenue A and stepping over the dog shit and garbage and worn-out shit and glue sniffers and toothless fucking winos and crack whores and syringes and ugly this and that and I’m just, you have to find the magic, find the magic, it’s there, it’s everywhere, just find the magic, there’s something shiny, you just never know where it’s going to come from, that’s the magic. I mean there’s no escaping the yin and yang, like if you’re Elizabeth the Second and you never even touch the ground your life is so exalted and everything you touch is beautiful, you still have streaks in your silk knickers, you dig. And of course there’s the oldest story of all, the only one, man, decline and fall, attachment and loss, like every life is a little civilization that has some sun and then is overrun by the Visigoths, you know, sickness and old age and the old rags. Yeah, I’m high, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, and the sooner we all just get over it – like, the most broke-ass sidewalks in Manhattan glitter in the sun, if you look close. Just look at the street and it sparkles, and the rainbows in the oil, man, it’s beautiful, even a slab of asphalt. It doesn’t get any more basic. That’s what I see. Just pay attention, just wake up and pay attention. The world is talking to you. And I am awake. Can I get another bump.

Do you plan to shut up this year, one of the men said.

Pearls before swine as usual.

Above on the gazebo ceiling mildew spots on the white, constellations, black stars in a white sky. Backward. Even outside here like an inside, something backward. It’s not right.

Theo stands and walks away, no one seeming to notice. He’ll look in the house for something, and he runs now, to the side of the house and peeks around the corner, then runs to the
front door, open wide, and in, over the black and white tiles and the disarrayed collection of Colin’s toppled chess pieces. He looks, but nothing seems right for Paz, and he runs down the right hall, and there’s Billy the minder at a door.

Is my dad in there.

Yeah, but we have to leave him alone right now.

I need to see him, Theo knocking and saying dad.

Adrian from inside says, it’s okay, Billy.

Theo and Adrian sit cross-legged facing each other, under a window. The late sun lights up the room, and Theo watches the dust, up and down. An acoustic guitar lies on the floor beside Adrian – Theo can’t tell them apart; his dad buys seats for them on planes. Once he and Adrian and some people flew on a small plane between two islands and Adrian kept his hand on the white guitar case the whole flight. Adrian leans against velvet cushions and a cloth beanbag chair the color of wine. A couple of tape players, too. It feels weird, then Theo realizes it’s because they’re alone.