Oh-Oh City Page 6

  "Come on, Dipwad! Five minutes left to class!"

  "Right!'" He zipped up quickly and reached behind me to open the door. "Seeya, Freebie. Thanks for the Freebie."

  His friend outside tipped his head around the door, checked me out, and said in a loud, long falsetto, "FREEEEEEEEBIE!' The two of them snickered and were gone. I knew I should return to class, too, but, with five minutes left, what was the point? I'd use paper towels to clean off my legs, check my makeup in the mirror, and be looking O.K. again before the bell rang and anyone might see me walking out of the men's room.

  I did that once when I was in high school. But the guy didn't come. We were both too scared."

  Because my eyes were closed, I only heard Annette's voice and felt when she pulled the notebook out of my hands.

  "Hey, don't worry, be happy! That's all you get. You can open your eyes – you're back home."

  She was squatting down in front of me, close by. Unsmiling, but I could tell she was pleased.

  "Was that really Freya? Did she do that?"

  "Frequently. Touch this notebook again, and you'll see many things she did. She had two nicknames in high school. 'Freebie,' as in, it's free for anyone who wants it. And 'Tunnel.' 'The Silver Tunnel.' I have something else for you that I found."

  "I don't want it! Go away!"

  "Oh no, you have to have it, Perlesser. There's the rules. You told me the truth; now I tell you. Why do you think she brought me back? I'm your Medusa! I tell you nothin' but the truth, and the whole truth about your life. Remember how Beenie started finding things here? I found more."

  "Beenie's not evil!"

  "This isn't evil; this is the facts. I'm showing you your truth. What others thought of you, what really happened when you weren't looking …. You like telling it to other people. Here's some for you. Remember what Norah said: "You don't have to approve of me, Dad."

  "You don't know Norah!"

  "No, but I know the truth. Here's treasure number two, Dad. Remember this? He loved these."

  She held something out, but I was so confused that I didn't realize what it was at first.

  "It's a bagel! Don't you remember how Gerald loved them? Used to walk around the house with one in his mouth? In the good old days, that is. Before you so thoughtfully shipped him away to the loony bin."

  When I didn't take it, she tossed it into my lap. I didn't want it. It felt heavy. A piece of bread.

  The moment it touched me, I saw the world through his eyes. Through the eyes of Gerald/child/man/madman/animal. Colors roared and whispered. They had voices. Loud – everything was screamingly louder. Chairs weren't chairs anymore, because I didn't understand what they were. Smells – the smallest nothing smell was an explosion a hundred times what I knew, good and bad. Chemicals, flowers, the bugs in the ground, breakfast dishes stewing in the sink. Things. I smelled them all.

  My mouth. There was something in my mouth, and I liked it. I hummed around it. It was nice against my teeth. Soft.

  I walked around wherever I could go. There were people sometimes. They smelled good too. Sometimes they touched me or said things at me or pushed me to be in a place or not in a place. If I didn't like the place, I'd yell. O.K., O.K., OK., they'd say. O.K.

  Everything was O.K. and tasted good, and I smelled the world and heard the people making noise. And then there was a BANG, and he came in, and I fell on the floor and yelled because here he was. He hurts me. He yells at me. He takes my arm and pulls it and yells at me. I hate him. I hate him. I hit him. I will hit and hit. That big thing will hurt. Pick it up and hit him, and he'll fall down. He is bad. Sometimes he's soft and puts me under his arm, but he's bad. The others say things to him, but they are scared, too. He yells at them, too. He goes into the room and BAMS! the door. When he's gone, people talk again and are nice. He is bad. I hate. Bad. Hate. Bad. BAM.

  "Stop it!"

  I don't understand.

  "Stop it, Annette! Take it away from him this minute."

  They yell. I don't understand. The white one comes to me and takes away my mouth thing.

  I came to again in my study and understood. For the last minutes, I knew the world through my son's hideously shattered perception. The world through broken glass, fragments of beauty and terror and mystery that exceed all bounds. Disturbing beyond any bounds, truly Hell on earth, was one simple realization: my retarded son hated me. Of all the bizarre bits, scraps, slivers, pieces of our world he could grasp, the only thing he consciously knew was that he hated me. His only truth, the only genuine clearness he knew. I was bad. He wanted me dead.

  "Get out of here. Go back to my place and wait for me."

  "You told me to clean their house!"

  "Annette, go back!"

  I sat on the floor blinking, a survivor of my own life. I watched the two of them bellow at each other. The gray woman and the young one who might have been her daughter.

  "Why don't you let me finish? Let me have him! He deserves it!"

  "Get out, Annette. I am not going to tell you again!"

  My son. His mind of stone, or air, clouds you would fall right through to the ground, but he knew how to despise me. Wanted me dead. Was I that bad? Had I been that evil?

  "To him, you were, but he doesn't understand things too good, Scott. Come on; let me help you up."

  I had no energy. It was fine to be sitting on the floor. I must have fallen there. I wouldn't let her pull me. Annette left the room, screaming 'ASSHOLE!' And I was an asshole. I was a miserable beast.

  "He hates me. He's capable of doing that. It's astonishing. We thought he had no clear idea of anything. But he's clear enough to hate me."

  "I know the feeling kid. When I told my daughter I had cancer, first thing she said, the very first, was had I made a will or not." Beenie left the room and returned with two glasses of grapefruit juice. Handing one to me, she said drink first and we'll talk in a minute. I was so empty and burned out of feeling that I'd have bitten the glass if she'd told me. I sipped, and the bitter, fresh taste of cold juice slid down my throat.

  "Hey, don't you remember?" She raised her eyebrows.

  "Remember what? Beenie, have I really been so bad? Such a total failure?"

  "I'm not talking about that. Don't you remember your glass?" I looked at it and saw a glass. So what? "So what?'

  "Don't you remember these glasses?"

  I looked again. "No."

  "Christmas 1975. Norah wanted to be special and have cocktails before dinner, so you told her to fill up these glasses with fruit juice for all of you."

  "And we threw them in the fireplace after we were finished. I did it first. Even Gerald. He watched what we did, and threw his, too. They were expensive glasses. Roberta was furious, but ended up throwing hers, too. That was lovely. We felt Russian."

  "There's been a lot of nice in your life. Ho, you're not such a bad man. You've been bad, but you're not bad. Annette just picked moments. It's easy to do that when you're talking about fifty years of moments. She's very bad. Very angry and messed up."

  "What do I do now, Beenie? How do I win with her?

  "You can't. That's the problem. I thought-"

  The study door crashed open, and Annette stood there, a hand out in front of her, pointing. "I don't care what you say. I've waited years for this." She started across the room for me. I didn't even have a chance to wonder what would happen, much less get up and run away, because behind her were things. Not ogres and monsters, grave things, but my things. Things I would know only because she had brought my life with her. Only, they came as vapors, colors, smells, sounds, lights, darks, forms, hints …. My life stood seething behind her, ready to pounce, ready to kill me with its fatal truth. Life through Gerald's eyes, my daughter in a toilet stall, things I already knew and hated or ignored. Things I didn't know, but people knew about me. Lies others had believed. Truths people said, but no one believed. Things I'd longed for, but knew would never happen. Lies I'd told myself, truths that cut deep, realizations
sharp and bitter or fresh as air across ice. All of them, all of their energy and force. We think these things go away with time, like mist on an early-morning field; the sun comes up, and it burns the mist away.

  But it doesn't. Because I caught a glimpse of it, alive and full of power, I tell you it does not go away. Like any sound ever made, the truth of our lives remains. It is still there somewhere, forever, no matter what our memory tries to do to it.

  If I'd been exposed to it longer, I'd've died. As it was, I saw enough in seconds to scald my soul the rest of my life. If I'm not mistaken, in there amongst the other facts and certainties was how long the rest of my life would be.

  "Annette!" Beenie whipped an arm down as though she were pitching a baseball. The girl and what was behind her disappeared at once. Beenie made fists, held them up, and shook them at the ceiling. "Again, again, again. Why again? What is going on?"

  It was not my place to ask questions at that point, so I kept quiet. Quiet and shaken. Beenie shook her fists a long time, then slowly let them fall. "I'm sorry, Scott."

  "Sorry? You saved me!"

  "No, I used you." She came over and sat down next to me on the floor. Before she spoke, she balled her hands again and asked, '"Why is this happening?"

  "Scott, remember when I told you about the thirty-six people who make up God? At least that part is true. And the other part is, I really am one of them, dumb as I am. The lying begins with you and Annette. Remember when I said I've been watching you for years? Well, that's true, too, but not for the reasons I said.

  "Years ago, when she was a senior in college, I saw Annette and knew she was the one to replace me in the thirty-six. I'm sorry I said it was you; I lied." She reached over and took my hand, gave it a squeeze, and let go. "It was never you – it was Annette. I knew it the minute I saw her, and have been following her ever since. Just like when Nolan saw me.

  "So I told her, and, amazingly enough, she seemed to understand. In the beginning everything was fine, and the first test she had, she went right through with no problem. Then she went to graduate school and took your class. She wrote that novel, asked you to read it, and you know the rest."

  "She killed herself."

  It took an instant to crystallize in my mind. "Killed herself? One of the thirty-six killed themselves! How is that possible! God doesn't –"

  "No, He doesn't, and that's our problem. We don't understand, either. What's worse, it's happening more than you would think. Once in a while in the past, there'd be a mistake, and something like this would happen – but it was so rare, we paid no attention. But now something's gone very wrong and it's happening more than ever. We have to find out why. So me and a couple of others were told to get these people and bring them back. Try to find out either why they did it, or at least make peace with what caused them to do it. Maybe that way we'll begin to figure out …. " She grimaced, sighed. "Because, you see, they can't be replaced if they do this to themselves-"

  "People chosen to be God, people who know that and understand what that means still kill themselves.?!"

  "Yup.'"

  That's all – "Yup? What does it mean? What does it say about the future! There's got to be someone to replace Anette."

  No one. She didn't choose anyone. She hadn't even finished taking the tests. That's why I'm here. That's why I brought her back to see you. We don't know."

  "What do you mean? You know everything, damn it! You're IT! And if God is diminished, if there are fewer of you, then good is diminished, too!"

  "That's right. That's why more and more is falling apart. That's why it's so bad here."

  "And Beenie, what am I supposed to do now? I'm not one of your chosen, O.K. I don't deserve to be, but what do I do with all this knowledge? What am I supposed to do now that I know it? Please take it away. Just do that – move a hand like you did and clear it out of my head. Just do that one thing for me."

  "You don't want that, Scott. You're the only one who owns your experiences. Now that you know the truth about them, use it to try and make yourself better. That's the best thing to do with it. Sure, I can wave it away, abracadabra, but you have the potential to be a much better person now that you know who you really are."

  "Fate's not determined? But I saw when I was going to die!"

  "That's only time on the clock. I'm talking human time. How long does it take to write a book? For some, it's fast; for others, slow. However long it takes to get down those sentences of the heart, eh? I can't show you the book you'll write, Scott. I can only help you do research and verify your sources."

  Despite everything a smile popped onto my face. "Verify?"

  "Yeah, I've been studying my vocabulary to keep up with you."

  "You … and your people haven't decided the future already?"

  She shook her head no. God shook no. It was as simple as that.

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