No One Belongs Here More Than You (8 page)

The Boy from Lam Kien

I took twenty-seven steps and then I stopped. Next to the juniper bush. Lam Kien Beauty Salon was before me, and my front door was behind me. It’s not agoraphobia, because I am not actually afraid of leaving the house. The fear hits about twenty-seven steps away from the house, right around the juniper bush. I have studied it and determined that it is not a real bush, and I have reversed this theory, and I have done everything I can not to turn around and go home, even if it means standing there forever. I was eating some of the inedible juniper berries when the door of Lam Kien opened and a little boy stepped out. Perhaps Lam Kien’s son, Billy Kien. Or maybe Lam Kien was not a name at all but a translation of the words “beauty salon,” or “nails ’n’ such.” Young Kien remained by the door, and I stayed in my twenty-seventh step. He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren’t we all. When it became clear that this was never going to happen, he yelled out to me.

I have a dog!

I nodded. What’s his name?

The boy looked sad for a moment, and I realized he did not actually have a dog. I felt honored to be chosen as the person who believed he had a dog. I was the right woman for this job; he had chosen well to choose me. Finally, he yelled out, Paul!, and I dutifully imagined Paul: running with the boy, loving the boy, the boy feeding Paul.

Do you have a dog? Paul’s owner asked, walking toward me and stopping in a place where he might get hit by a car.

Don’t stand in the street.

He walked over to me, stood before me, did not judge me.

Do you have any pets? he asked.

No.

Not even a cat?

No.

Why not?

I’m not sure I could care for a pet. I travel a lot.

But you could get a very little pet that wasn’t very hungry.

I knew all about those things that weren’t very hungry; my life was full of them. I didn’t want any more weaklings who were activated by water and heat but had no waste and were so small that when they died, I buried them only with forgetfulness. If I was going to bring something new into my home, it would be a big starving thing. But I could not do this. I didn’t tell the boy, because I was just his dog-believer.

What kind of pet do you suggest for me?

A tadpole.

But this will grow up to be a frog. I can’t have a frog in my house, hopping all over the place.

Oh, no, it won’t, it’s little! But you’ll need an aquarium.

But it will become a frog.

No, it won’t! That’s another kind of fish.

What kind?

A minnow.

I let it go. Inside me, next to the place where the boy played with his dog, there was now an aquarium holding one tiny tadpole with no appetite. It swam back and forth, feeling perpetually ready to hop, ready for the air on its back, ready for tremendous, fantastic change. It swam forever and Paul never died, but the boy and I were changing even as we stood together. The boy was growing bored and this was a form of growing up. I was getting depressed and this was my own fault. It was a beautiful day and someone was talking to me of his own free will. But I could see the end in sight: the boy’s shirt had cartoon characters on it and the cartoon characters were leaning away from me, they were taking a step back as the boy stepped forward. He stood right in front of me and pinched my arm and said, Can I see your room?

Such relief. Even the pinch was good. I understood completely about needing to hurt someone at the same time that you are giving them something. It was wonderful to have an excuse to go home so quickly. As I shut the door behind us, I took a moment to wonder about the law. Laws about showing children your room when you don’t know their names. But I did know the name of his imaginary dog. I felt I could say the name Paul without admitting I knew he wasn’t real. When the judge told me the boy didn’t have a dog, I would act very surprised, disappointed, even hurt. I would cry a little. Perhaps the boy would be sent to jail for lying to me. I looked at his amazing tennis shoes and knew he would be able to handle it. I, on the other hand, have never been able to convincingly wear athletic gear, and prison life would kill me.

He walked around my living room, touching things that had once meant a lot to me but now seemed beside the point. I own many pieces of abstract art. He touched the art with his fingernails. He picked up a book that was lying on the floor and held it in the air between his two fingers. The subtitle of the book was
Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed
Relationships
. I was working through it, word by word. So far I had done Keeping and was just starting on Love. I worried that by the time I got to Committed and Relationships, I would have forgotten Keeping. Not to mention Alive and all the other words. He carried the book like this, between two fingers, into the kitchen. He carefully laid it on the corner of the kitchen floor, and I said thank you and he nodded.

Do you have any eggplant Parmesan?

I said I did not. We moved into the bedroom. He sat on the queen-size bed and kicked off his shoes and then lay back with his arms and legs spread out like a star. I straightened my brush on the dressing table and quietly slid my hair gel in a drawer. I didn’t want him to see I was the kind of person who wore hair gel, because I’m not, really. A friend left it here. Wouldn’t that be nice? If I had a friend and she brought her hair gel over and she left it here? This is what I would say if I was asked. If he opened the drawer.

You should get bunk beds, then you would have more room, he said while pretending to be sucked down into the narrow space between the bed and the wall.

What would I do with more room?

He now stood, impossibly, between the bed and the wall. A place I had never thought to clean.

You don’t want bunk beds?

Well, I just don’t see the need for them.

You can have a friend spend the night.

But this bed is so big, they can sleep in here with me.

He gave me a long, strange stare, and my mind bent like a spoon. Why would anyone want to sleep in the bed with me when they could have their own bunk, like on a ship? I asked him if he thought they had bunk beds at Mervyns and he said he thought they did but that I should call first. While I was on hold with Mervyns, he opened the drawer on my dressing table. I blushed. He took out the hair gel and squirted a large amount into his hands and quickly pushed all his shiny black hair straight back and looked in the mirror. He looked like he was standing in a strong wind. We smiled at each other because it was such an incredible look. Mervyns said the bunk beds were only $499. The boy said he thought this was a very reasonable price. He said he would pay a million dollars for bunk beds if he had a million dollars.

We walked back to the front door because he said it was time for him to go. He said this apologetically, as if I would not be able to live without him. I said this was for the best because I had a lot of work to do. When I said “a lot of work,” I moved my hands apart to represent all the work. He stared at the space between my palms and asked if I played the accordion. I could feel the accordion between my hands and how impressed he would be if I said yes. I said no, and a pillow fell off the couch by itself. This happens sometimes and I try to ignore it. The boy raised his eyebrows a little and I saw that I was saved. I do not play the accordion or have bunk beds, but I have these pillows. They move by themselves. I opened the door and he left without saying goodbye. I watched him walk across the street to Lam Kien Beauty Salon. He shut the door behind him. I shut my door and listened to the sucking sound. It was the sound of Earth hurtling away from the apartment at a speed too fast to imagine. And as all of creation pulled away in this tornado-like vortex, it laughed—the sarcastic laugh of something that has never had to
try
. I peeked out the window. Beyond the juniper bush, there was just gray smoke swirling in every direction. I shut the curtains so that they overlapped. I walked around the apartment. I stared at the book in the corner of the kitchen floor. I put the cap back on the hair gel. The covers on my bed were all messed up. I ran my hand over the topography of the bedspread. There were river valleys and mountain communities. There was smooth desert tundra. There was a city, and in that city, there was a beauty salon. I took off my shoes and got under the covers. I whispered, Shut your eyes, and I shut my eyes and pretended it was night and that the world was all around me, sleeping. I told myself that the sound of my breathing was really the sound of all the animals in the world breathing, even the humans, even the boy, even his dog, all together, all breathing, all on Earth, at night.

Making Love in 2003

She had a needlepoint pillow that read:
MAKING LOVE IN
2002. On the other side of the couch there was
MAKING LOVE IN
1997, in blue, with a ruffle around the edge. I guessed there were more, but I tried not to look for them. I didn’t want to see the one with the current year on it. Or if there wasn’t one, I didn’t want to know why. She asked me polite questions, and we waited for her husband.

He says you’re very talented, are you self-taught?

Yes, I’m really just beginning, though. I have so much to learn.

Well, it sounds like you’re off to a good start.

Thank you.

After a while it seemed she was growing a little angry, with him for not being there and with me for being there. It occurred to me that if he didn’t appear soon, I would have to leave. My heart fell because I hadn’t planned anything for my future beyond this meeting. I had written every day for a year with his business card taped to my computer, and now I was done and he had said to call him when I was done and I had, I had called, and now the ball was in his court. It was his job to do with me what he would. What would he do? What do the men do with the very talented young women who have finished writing their books? Would he kiss me? Would he invite me to be his daughter or wife or babysitter? Would he send me and my book to the place where the next thing would happen? Would he rub my legs and let me cry? His wife and I waited to find out. She had less patience than me. I was willing to wait forever, and she was giving him five more minutes. We waited out the five minutes in silence, and then she stood and said, Well. I looked up at her and smiled. I pretended I was from another country and couldn’t read her body language. She pressed her lips together and looked down at her hands.

He probably already called your house to reschedule.

I nodded, but I knew that he hadn’t called my house because I had moved everything out of my house and put it in my car, which was parked out in front of his house. I was all ready to go. There was no point in rescheduling. I could wait in the car or wait in the house, but I had nothing else to do. I preferred to wait in the house.

You can just do whatever you would normally do if I wasn’t here, I said.

She looked at me, wondering if she had ever met anyone as stupid. I didn’t care. It wasn’t her card taped to my computer, sitting in the backseat of my car.

I would normally be writing, she said. I doubted this, but maybe it was true. Maybe she would be writing a letter to her sister or writing the word “sweaters” on a big box of sweaters before putting it in the attic for the summer.

What are you writing?

It’s a sequel to a book I wrote a few years ago.

Oh. What was the first book called?

A Swiftly Tilting Planet
.

She said this gently, politely, knowing I would have heard of it. I stood and felt pains in my legs. I hadn’t planned on standing again until he got here, but now here I was, standing beside Madeleine L’Engle, the famous author. I looked around the living room. This was Madeleine L’Engle’s living room.
MAKING LOVE IN
2002.
MAKING LOVE IN
1997. There were probably piles of these pillows in every room of the house, dating back to the sixties. I looked at her tailored brown pants and realized he was probably making love to her right this second. When you reach a certain saturation point, lovemaking becomes one endless vibration. He was running late, and this was a way of making love to her, and she wanted to write but had to entertain me instead, and this was her way of making love to him. I was just a part of the lovemaking between Madeleine L’Engle and her husband. A tiny part of
MAKING LOVE IN
2003. My plans were not well thought out, this was suddenly very clear. I told her I had really enjoyed
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
and looked forward to the sequel. She thanked me and said she was sure he would call if he hadn’t already. She walked me out to the porch. There was my car. We looked at my car. It had many things in it, and some of them were sticking out of the trunk. She shook my hand, and I walked toward the car and wished that I could walk toward the car forever, with this confidence about where I was headed. I was headed to the car.

It doesn’t really feel like driving when you don’t know where you’re going. There should be an option on the car for driving in place, like treading water. Or at least a light that shines between the brake lights that you can turn on to indicate that you have no destination. I felt like I was fooling the other drivers and I just wanted to come clean. But the more I drove, the more I felt like I had somewhere to go. I was making difficult left turns that no one would ever do unless they had to. Sometimes I would make left turns all the way around a block, and when I returned to the original intersection, I would feel disappointed to find all the drivers were new. It wasn’t like a square dance, where you miraculously end up with your original partner, laughing and feeling giddily relieved to find him after dancing with everyone else in the world. Instead, they swung around and kept on going, some people were at work by now, or halfway to the airport. In fact, driving might be the thing most opposite of dancing. I wondered if I would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself, now that I had finished my book and gone to meet the man who said I had promise a year ago but wasn’t home today.

What most people would do in my situation is go to their boyfriend’s house. They would go there and cry and be handed tissues and cry some more and never stop to think that they should really be laughing and smiling joyfully because their boyfriend is an actual physical being on the same plane of reality as them. I know what I’m talking about here, I wrote a whole book on this subject that Madeleine L’Engle’s husband once said had promise. Now it is the last thing I want to write about, so I will give you the short version here.

When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. It was dark, but it glowed, which is the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination. It wasn’t in the shape of a person, but right away I knew it was like a person in every way except for how it looked. As it turns out, our looks are not the main thing that makes us human.

I knew right away it was a sexual predator because it was vibing me and I felt self-conscious in my nightgown, which was really just a big T-shirt. This is why you should wear underwear to bed. I was scared, but not in the way where you decide you would rather die than move or breathe. I kept my eyes on the shape and made a plan to jump out of bed and grab my jeans, which were on the floor. This was before I knew anything about anything, for instance that all human movement is in slow motion compared to how fast you can move if you are just a glowing darkness. I had only lifted my hand a little bit when the darkness was upon me. This is the part I stretched out over a whole chapter because I knew Madeleine L’Engle’s husband would get off on it. Basically, what happened was that it fucked me. It did this by entering my body with its whole self. All of the darkness was inside me, and I could feel it glowing, like the volume of music when it shows you how to move. Just the weekend before, I had danced in a sexy way for the first time; my butt and the beat had connected in a way that portended great things in my future. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon, and like this. Later, I realized my dance moves were probably so powerful, they had called it from its corner of the universe. I’m not saying I asked for it, only that there are moments when we are sending signals not just to the boys in the room but to all of creation.

It has been suggested that I invented the story of the dark shape to cope with the pain of a more earthly rapist. If that theory interests you, I can recommend some great case studies about girls who did that, lied. If I was scared the first time, it was because I didn’t know I could survive such pleasure. I thought maybe I was trading my life for this. To feel my teenage desire escalate to inhuman proportions. To look down on my own body and know that falling would mean dying not just once but many times. To fall for a million years like a flute falls, musically, played by the air it is passing through. And to land with no mind, but with a heart that was breaking. We cuddled afterward, and I was coy and shy. I passed my hand through its densities, asking if that hurt but knowing nothing I did could hurt it, I could only drive it crazy. Occasionally, it would seep back into me, and then I would sleep a bit and awaken with fear that it was gone. But there it was, cloaked around me, healing my appendectomy scar more completely than I could manage myself.

What else can you do?

Love you.

But can you do any more tricks?

No.

But I’m the only one, right?

You are the sweetest thing in the universe.

I am?

Yeah, by a long shot.

My disposition was that of all the girls who dated boys from other high schools. We were barely there. Our feelings could not be hurt because they lay elsewhere, off-campus, aurora borealis. I drew pictures of it on my binder, a smudge in a heart. A smudge and me in interconnecting hearts. Me and the smudge and a half-human/half-smudge baby. Before I went to bed, I put on makeup, and in the early years, I wore cute nightgowns, but by the end of high school, I just threw myself down on my bed, naked, waiting. Our conversations happened in my blood, or if I wanted to hear its voice, I could hold down F-sharp and middle C on my plastic Casio, and from underneath these notes came a far-off staticky voice, like a truck driver on CB, just out of range. There was a horrible longing inside this love. It would suck on my nipples, and my mouth would swell with thirst, I wanted to suck, too. I became convinced that having me was better than what I got. Now I know this wasn’t true, but you have to remember I was still technically a virgin. I had never even kissed anyone.

This story ends in college, when I became angry and dismissive and wanted a real boyfriend. The dark shape wept in the incredibly sad way that only air can cry, and I had tremendous empathy, but only for myself. I was pretty sure the relationship was committing crimes against my brand-new feminism, and underneath that was a determined curiosity about this thing called cock. The shape did the only thing it could do: it promised to come to me in human form. It would be a man named Steve.

Will you date me when I ask you out? it asked.

Yes.

Even if I’m ugly and you don’t like my personality?

Yes.

No, you won’t.

I will!

You’re just saying that because you’re in a hurry.

Well, it won’t be my fault if I miss the bus.

Goodbye, sweetness.

Bye! Where’s my backpack?

It’s on the counter.

Oh. Bye!

About a year later, I did meet a man named Steve. He was the dad of a friend of mine, and he was dying of cancer. I helped her minister to him for two months. Sometimes, when she left the room, I would lean against his bed and whisper hi and he would whisper hi and I would hold his hand and we would stay like this for a little while. He wasn’t my dark shape. But when I rubbed his dying arms, I felt something tremendously fast in them, a gathering of speed. So much of him was already quick, and yet he still had to die in obscenely slow motion because this is what humans do. In his last days, I held vigil with my friend, both of us lost in despair, playing records we thought he might like, but who really knew for sure. What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real. After Steve died, I stopped being friends with his daughter and moved out of the dorms. When I began to write, it was out of fear. I thought I might forget, or pretend to forget, or pretend to pretend, or grow up. What my college adviser, Madeleine L’Engle’s husband, eventually called a promising piece of fiction had started out as evidence. One day I would hand this manuscript over, and Steve would nod and say yes, F-sharp, yes, middle C, yes, you have found me at last, come sit on my lap, sweetness.

I thought maybe I would swing by Madeleine’s house and see if his car was out front. It was either this or begin a career as something other than a writer. If I thought of another career before I got to the house, I would turn around and pursue that. I made the car go slowly so that everyone could see it was thinking. It was considering careers for me. I looked out the windows and tried to see who the pedestrians thought I was when they looked at my car. But they didn’t look at my car; they looked inward. They considered themselves and their own cars; they made love with their hurrying. They took each step as if it would not be their last, and it wasn’t. They did not look up and stare into my headlights and whisper, “special-needs assistant,” and thus, when I rounded the corner of Madeleine’s block, I was still planning on being a writer.

There was his car. But it came early; it was parked in front of a house at the other end of the block from his own. Maybe everybody else knows what this means. My first thought was Alzheimer’s disease, and I worried for myself and my career in the hands of this man who couldn’t remember where his own house was. It had been a year since I’d graduated, obviously long enough for his life to go to pieces. Madeleine must have to do everything for him. Oh, Madeleine. And he was sitting in the car. I had heard of this, Alzheimer’s patients who return to their pre–combustion-engine minds and cannot remember how to open the door. As I walked toward him, I could feel my new career take hold. I was the nurse of Madeleine L’Engle’s husband. With my help, she would have enough time to write the sequel. I was everything a good daughter should be, except I was paid. It was wonderful to be needed; I was headed toward the car.

At first I thought he had a cat in his lap, and then I saw it was Theresa Lodeski. We were both in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts junior year. She hadn’t graduated, but now I could see that, in a way, she had. Theresa Lodeski was very, very pretty, but she had an identical twin sister, Pauline, who was somehow infinitely prettier than her. If you lined up their faces and tried to locate the difference, feature by feature, you couldn’t find it. But everybody knew. The only reason to look at Theresa was to check to see if she was Pauline. When she wasn’t, you looked away; when she was, you looked a little longer. This was definitely Theresa; she had come into her own.