A Density of Souls (15 page)

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look away from her. He turned to Melanie, who was staring at him distantly. He had mentioned his younger brother only a couple of times.

Melanie was surprised he was bringing him up now.

“Now there’s a story . . .” Jordan began. “Did I tell you about all that stuff that went down at my old high school?”

Melanie shook her head. Roger picked up his fork and began running the prongs along the edge of the tablecloth.

“Okay, my brother, Brandon . . . well, his best friend’s little brother was hit by a ear on the way to this football game. Killed instantly. It was nasty.”

“That would be an understatement,” Roger mumbled. Elise’s gaze remained locked on Jordan.

“So anyway, the kid’s mother—”

“The kid’s name was Alex. His mother’s name is Angela Darby,”

Elise interrupted.

Melanie’s eyes widened slightly at the ice in Elise’s voice. Jordan shot his mother a glance.

“Right,” he continued. “So anyway. At the funeral, Angela Darby, like, freaks out. See the football game was in your standard hick, bayou town—Thibodaux. And that day at the pep rally they’d done this skit satirizing the Thibodaux Mothers’ Club. Angela Darby had been the star. So because Alex happened to get run down by a local garbage truck, Angela convinced herself that her son had actually been murdered. That it was, like, some conspiracy—”

“That’s what we heard. She was very upset,” Roger said, without looking up.

“Understandably,” Melanie said.

“Right, so it gets better,” Jordan continued. He felt like an excited child recounting one of his favorite ghost stories. “That night, after his brother’s funeral, Greg, Brandon’s friend, climbs to the top of the Bishop Polk bell tower—the very same church where he went to grammar school and where his brother’s funeral was. And he . . . he killed himself. You heard the gunshot, didn’t you, Mom?”

It took Jordan a second to understand the look on his mother’s face—contempt. He thought she was about to speak. When she kept silent, he felt flushed and lightheaded.

“Are you going to finish, or should I?” Elise said quietly, but with a low note of fury. Roger bowed his head into his chest. Melanie whispered something that Jordan thought might have been, “Jesus Christ.”

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“So following the suicide of his closest friend in the world, Brandon—Jordan’s younger brother—undergoes what you might call a mental collapse,” Elise stated. “He doesn’t show up at the house until after one in the morning every night. Cannon finally calls us and tells us he’s exceeded the maximum absence days for an entire year over the course of four weeks. When Roger confronts him about it, Brandon hurls a chair across the living room at him. It misses Roger, but it bangs me in the shoulder.”

Elise paused, took a sip of wine, and proceeded with the ease of a seasoned storyteller. “So Roger and I lie to ourselves. It’s just grief.

It’s just a phase. It could be worse. Brandon could be in Bayou Terrace right along with Angela Darby. But about a week later, the police find Brandon smoking pot inside a car he’d stolen only three hours earlier—”

“Elise!” Roger hissed.

“I’m telling a story, Roger. Do you mind?” Elise swallowed, looked at Jordan. “Of course, Brandon didn’t just decide to steal a car at random. No, see, the reason he needed a car is because he’d totaled our Mercedes a week earlier. Drove it right into a fence three blocks from our house.

“So what do we do?” Elise asked rhetorically. “We do what any parents do when they see their son turning into someone entirely different before their eyes. We sent Brandon away. To some place where his little phase could come to an end.”

“You what?” Jordan asked, stunned.

“It’s a place called Camp Davis. Across the lake . . .” Roger tried to intercede. “Jordan, it’s not as bad as it sounds . . .”

“A military camp?” Jordan looked from Roger to his mother. “You never told me . . .”

“I think you were in New York at the time,” Elise said before taking a slug of wine.

Anger and humiliation kept Jordan from reacting.

“Meanwhile,” Elise continued, “miles away, Jordan finds the sad story of his less-than-perfect younger brother to be perfect dinner conversation. Sordid, entertaining, and tragic. Isn’t that right, Jordan?”

“That’s uncalled for, Elise,” Roger said.

Elise let out a torrent of laughter that chilled them all. Melanie winced. “Oh, Roger, it was all pretty uncalled for, don’t you think?”

Elise said to the ceiling.

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Jordan waited several stunned seconds before rising slowly from his chair. He excused himself and made a beeline for the bathroom.

He threw cold water over his face. Camp Davis. The name alone made his stomach tighten.

When he returned to the table, Elise’s eyes had wandered back into space. Melanie had stepped up to the task and engaged Roger in conversation about Princeton, about France, about the food. They were the only two who spoke for the rest of the meal.

Outside, they gathered to say their goodbyes.

“We’ll see you at the ceremony tomorrow,” Roger said, shaking his son’s hand weakly. Jordan moved to his mother and embraced her as if she were glass.

“It’s all right. Don’t let it touch you,” Elise whispered into his ear.

Jordan was too confused to look at her as she slipped out of his embrace.

Melanie slid out from under the sheet and pulled a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand. They had driven back to campus with Melanie respectful of Jordan’s silence. Back in Melanie’s apartment they immediately fell into her bed. As Jordan’s graduation day had grown closer, their sex had become more desperate and immediate.

“What did she say to you outside the restaurant?” Melanie asked, standing over him to light the cigarette.

“Don’t let it touch you.”

“A mother’s irony, I guess,” Melanie mumbled before exhaling a long stream of smoke.

“What do you mean?” Jordan asked, sitting up.

Melanie shook her head. Her face remained fixed. He knew the look.

“You know, I thought you were all for me getting rid of that Southern hospitality bullshit,” he said. “That smile-and-have-a-drink-and-everything’s-all-right . . .”

Melanie cocked her head, eyes flaring with angry surprise. “Jordan, what are you . . .”

“I can’t pretend to ignore what happened to my own family!”

“Oh, really? Then how come you never told me about it?” she asked evenly.

Jordan fell back against the pillow.

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“It was just embarrassing, Jordan. I mean, to bring all that stuff up.

They don’t even know me . . .”

Jordan sat up. “Why do women always think they shoulder more of the burden than men do?”

Melanie’s eyes widened. A sarcastic smile stretched her face. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’m serious. How come my mother gets to own the story of Brandon now?”

“Because it isn’t a story, Jordan! You turned it into one tonight!”

Jordan shook his head. He knew he was pouting, but he was help-less to prevent it.

Melanie approached the bed tentatively. “Look, I think you should reconsider,” she began haltingly.

“Reconsider?”

“There’s so much distance between you and them, I mean . . .”

“Melanie, what are you talking about?”

“Jordan, I don’t think you should go back to New Orleans.”

Jordan went rigid. “France, then?”

“Fuck it,” Melanie hissed, withdrawing to the bathroom.

“I was still born there. I don’t care what happened. It’s still where I came from.” His voice was rising with each word.

“Then why haven’t you gone home once in five years?” Melanie asked, returning.

Jordan felt flushed again. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“Brandon . . . He’s your own brother and you didn’t even know they’d sent him away to a military camp.”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“Did you ask?”

Jordan shook his head, slowly sinking back into the bed again. A silence fell before he felt Melanie slide into the bed next to him. She slid one arm around his chest. He felt as if he were about to cry, but the feeling was too unfamiliar to know for sure.

“No, I didn’t ask,” he finally managed.

Melanie rested her head against his shoulder. “It’s all right . . .” she whispered.

Jordan waited before he told her about the nightmare he had several weeks ago. About four kids on bikes, his own brother in the lead.

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Melanie listened, trying to keep her cool. He waited and watched her, but she couldn’t summon a response.

“I want to go home,” he whispered.

Jordan awoke to the sticky feel of the plane’s window against his cheek.

He had slept for almost the entire flight and now the engines of the 737 droned as the plane began its steep descent toward Moisant Field Airport. Below, the Mississippi River looked like a water-filled path left by a giant snake that had crawled its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The refineries lining its banks looked like miniature gas vents—white tufts of smoke sprouting from the carpet of green swamp. Somewhere down there was a city he used to call home. For a moment, he panicked. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to land down there. Just black water and patches of floating green. Who would put a city in the middle of all that? How did such a city stay afloat?

2

T
rish Ducote awoke at four in the morning with the phone pressed to her ear, listening to a young woman who was not her daughter and who had obviously been crying for some time. Trish fumbled for the lamp, switched it on, and almost reached for the husband she had divorced ten years ago.

“Mrs. Dueote? I’m sorry. I know it’s so late . . .” the voice was saying.

“Meredith?” Trish asked with sudden alertness. She sat up in bed.

For no reason, she grabbed a pen from the nightstand.

“No, Mrs. Ducote. This is Meredith’s roommate, Trin. Do you remember me?”

Trish Ducote had no memory of Trin. “Yes, of course . . . Is something wrong, Lynne?” she asked.

“Well,” Trin began, “Meredith’s in the hospital.”

Thirty minutes later, Trish Ducote was driving eighty-five miles an hour down a freeway bound for Oxford, Mississippi, where Meredith had been a student at Ole Miss for almost two years. She had not bothered to call Meredith’s father.

She arrived at Oxford General just after noon, where she was met by a doctor who looked young enough to date her daughter. Trish listened to the details before interrupting young Dr. Lupin. “Is she going to be all right?”

“Yes . . . It was touch and go for a while, but we’re out of the woods now,” Dr. Lupin told her.

“Can I see her?”

“Yes. We just moved her out of ICU. I can have a nurse . . .”

“No. I don’t . . .” Trish brought a hand to her forehead to muffle her headache. “I have something to do first.”

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Trish recalled the way to Meredith’s dorm; she herself had attended Ole Miss and her sophomore dorm had been next to Meredith’s. She sneaked through the front door, grabbing it before it glided shut behind a student who opened it with a slide of his ID card through the electronic reader. Sudents sitting in the hallways stopped their conversations as the older woman marched past them. Trin Hong, Meredith’s roommate, was in their room talking on the phone, which she almost dropped when Trish Ducote barreled through the door.

“I need to use that phone.”

“Are you—” Trin managed.

“I’m Meredith’s mother. I need to use that phone if you don’t mind.”

“Sure . . .” Trin agreed. “I have to go,” she said into the receiver, then clicked it off and handed it obediently to Trish.

“Thanks, Lynne,” Trish said before the girl hustled out of the room.

Trish Ducote’s first call was to the local Ship ’n’ Pack. She needed a number of cardboard boxes and she needed them fast. She then called Federal Express. She had a large pickup for around six that evening—

could they accommodate her? Yes, they could. Trish’s third and final call was long distance. The message she left was brief. “Ronald, it’s Trish. I just thought you should know that your daughter almost drank herself to death last night.”

Meredith awoke to the sight of her mother at the foot of her hospital bed flipping through a copy of Cosmopolitan. When Trish looked up she closed the magazine and set it on her lap, as if Meredith had something to say.

Meredith said nothing. Her throat was enflamed from the respirator tube in her throat. As Trish glared at her daughter, the IVs in Meredith’s right arm came to life in fiery pinpricks.

“I called your father. I left a message,” Trish said, as if offering her something.

Meredith just kept her eyes open.

“I packed up your room. Everything’s been FedExed back to New Orleans. You’re coming home,” Trish said, before taking a seat beside her.

“And if I don’t want to?” Meredith rasped.

“Well . . .” Trish began, her voice quavering with anger, “consider-112

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ing that you apparently wanted to drink until you changed color and your heart stopped beating, I think what you want is going on the back burner.”

Meredith rolled her head away from her mother to the window and the view of the parking lot across the street.

“They’ve given you a little Dilaudid, so don’t try to explain yourself because everything you say right now is going to be a little . . . kooky,”

Trish said as she plucked up the Cosmo.

“Was I dead?” Meredith asked.

“For a little while, yes,” Trish replied.

Meredith saw the Cosmo start to tremble in her mother’s hands.

“How come I didn’t see anything then?” Meredith asked. “Don’t people see things when they die?”

Trish did not answer. She just peered at her, as if her daughter might exist amid the swirl of her medication.

Meredith began whispering. Trish could barely make it out.

“Fear cannot touch me, it can only taunt me. It cannot take me, just tell me where to go . . .” When she finished the rhyme, she said,