In Nightmares We're Alone Read online

  Best of all, no STD. I’m as sexually healthy as a twelve-year-old church boy.

  I shut my laptop. Only had one reading today and I canceled it this morning when I woke up paranoid I was turning into a mutant. Now that everything’s okay, I want to go out in the world and be alive.

  I pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts for a lady to call, and for some reason my eye lands on Elaine. The banging forty-year-old with the doll we decided is possessed. Elaine who exudes more love and optimism for a dead fetus than most people do for their living children.

  I’m about to hit TALK and I hit END instead.

  It doesn’t seem right. Too many regulars coming by my house already. I don’t need to jump into anything new.

  I tap my hand on the table a few more times and go through my mental Rolodex. Daphne. Trish. Michelle.

  It’s not what I want. I’m not sure what I want but it’s none of them.

  A quick glance over at the tree and my heart seems to beat harder. I must have someone, someone to make me stop thinking about the tree. The tree in my backyard. The tree in my body.

  I look at the clock. 2:30 on a Sunday. Martin’s probably bored at home. If I promise an adventure, pick him up a gift, I can make up for the awkward lunch yesterday.

  I pick up my cell.

  * * * * *

  “Help! Help!” screams Martin, thrashing around in the pond, splashing water everywhere. “I’m drowning! I can’t swim!”

  There’s a man passing through the park on a jogging trail. A man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase. He’s the only person nearby. The only one other than me, anyway. And I’m a few hundred feet back in the woods.

  “Help!” screams Martin. “I’m gonna die!”

  The man in the suit looks in each direction. That moment people have before doing something heroic but inconvenient. That moment when they think, Somebody has to do something, but does it really have to be me? Can’t I just stand and watch somebody else be a hero and pat him on the back afterward and say, ‘My God, why can’t there be more people like you?’

  But nobody else is here. It’s Armani guy’s time to shine.

  “Hold on!” He shouts to Martin. He runs for the water, throwing down his briefcase and pulling a wallet out of one pocket and a phone out of the other. He tosses them on the shore and slips off his loafers and leaves them in the dirt. He pulls off his jacket and seems for a second to debate removing the expensive pants before deciding against it.

  “I’m coming!” he shouts.

  Martin keeps thrashing and splashing and calling for help as the guy jumps in the water and swims to him. It doesn’t take long for Mr. Hero to get out there and wrap his arm around my son and tread back to the shore with him, but it takes long enough.

  Two hundred forty-three dollars cash in the wallet. That’s a find. And his new, top-of-the-line smartphone will fetch a few bucks. The shoes are loafers, probably bought from Men’s Warehouse or some shit. They won’t fetch much money but I always take the shoes anyway. Otherwise they could end up spotting me or putting two and two together and going after Martin. It’s just easier if they’ve got nothing but wet socks to run in.

  The briefcase I leave. Most of the time they’re full of business papers. Maybe if you took enough of them you’d find the odd laptop, but you’d waste a lot of energy first. Plus, I’m paranoid about finding drugs or money. Guys like that, you knock them over and leave them with their stash, they count their blessings. You take the case, somebody finds you at the bottom of Sunset Pond with a butterfly knife in your throat.

  So it’s a smartphone, a couple hundred bucks, and two credit cards—one Visa, one MasterCard. He hasn’t even signed his name on the back, the dumb bastard. Of course, credit cards are always canceled an hour and a half later, but it buys me a nice dinner with my boy.

  I grab the cash, the cards, the shoes, and the cell phone. I leave his driver’s license and everything because why be a dick?

  * * * * *

  “Check this out,” I say to Martin at dinner. I hand him the little tree I pried out of my foot in the night.

  He rolls it over between his thumb and forefinger, unimpressed. “What is it, a stick?”

  “It’s a sapling. A baby tree. It grew out of my foot last night and I pulled it out with pliers.”

  “Dude, gross.” Martin flicks the stick across the table at me.

  We’re at Nathan’s Steakhouse, which is upscale without being ritzy. The bill will probably come in at ninety bucks for the two of us, so hopefully Mr. Hero won’t have time to cancel his card before they bring the check. It’d be a shame to have to throw down that big a chunk of the cash we pulled in, but if we have to we have to.

  “Remember I was walking with a limp yesterday?” I ask. “Turns out I had a plant growing in my foot. Weird situation. I did some reading and it seems like not many people have had anything like that happen.”

  “You gonna die?” he asks casually. He’s joking, acting cavalier either to hurt my feelings or because it’s decidedly cool for boys not to have emotions.

  When I was fourteen years old two schoolmates were pushing me around in the hall before class. They grabbed by backpack and said they were going to throw it in the toilet so I ran after them. As the three of us went sprinting through the hall. The principle screamed at us for running, gave us detention, called our parents, all that authoritative bullshit.

  I didn’t think it was fair. I started crying.

  Those other two kids told the story and for months I caught hell for it. I was that kid who cries when grown-ups yell at him. I didn’t live it down until a year later when I sent another kid to the hospital on the football field. Just like that I was cool again.

  That’s what I think about when Martin asks that morbid, callous question. There is something beneath the surface of society that shames sentimentality—especially in young boys. There is something that encourages emotional walls. When Martin gets older, he’ll probably be popular with his classmates, but I wonder at what cost.

  If my classmates had hugged me that day I started crying, if hospitalizing that kid hadn’t led directly to the loss of my virginity a week later, I wonder if I’d still be paying for our food today with money I stole. I wonder if I’d still be divorced.

  “Yeah,” I say to Martin, automatically burying my emotions in a joke. “Trees are going to grow out of my body until they kill me and you and your mom will bury a plant. Should make for either a really pretty open casket or the freakiest one ever.”

  He gives a wry laugh and shakes his head. “It’s like the beginning of a superhero movie. Soon you turn into Plant Man or something.”

  “Talk to forests and will them to do my bidding?” I ask. “Like a superhero for environmentalists?”

  “Captain Planet for the new generation,” says Martin.

  We make twisted jokes for a while about relationships with plants and trees growing out of my body, because it’s easier than talking. If I knew what was going on in my body at this moment, I’d probably never laugh again.

  “I got you something,” I say. “A little gift. You’ve got to promise you won’t tell Mom.”

  “What is it?”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. What is it?”

  I place a little box on the table that I grabbed on the way to pick him up. He opens it and for an instant I get to witness the fading of that world-worn jadedness life is teaching him to project. His eyes light up with excitement.

  “For real?” he says, pulling the knife out of the box.

  “It’s not a toy,” I tell him. “You could really hurt yourself with that, or somebody else. So keep it somewhere safe and only use it when you need to cut something. I know it’s cool, but it’s dangerous.”

  “I know. I know.”

  The rest of the meal he spends looking for stuff on the table to cut. Napkins and straws. Even his chicken he cuts with the new knife. That sinking feeling I had a minute ago see
ms to melt away and I feel proud of myself in a way I haven’t in a long time.

  Before long it’s five o’clock and I pay the bill. Mr. Hero’s card works fine. I toss it in the trash on my way out. It won’t work much longer and there’s no sense leaving a trail.

  When we get back to his mom’s house, I tell Martin, “I’ll wash your wet clothes and give them back to you next time.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if Mom asks…”

  “We went bowling and had pizza. I beat you by two in the third game.”

  I laugh. “She’ll never believe you if you tell her that last part.”

  He gives me the finger. I push his hand down, but I can’t help laughing. “Don’t do that, Martin.” I take a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket and hand it to him. “There’s your cut. I’d say that’s fair.”

  He pockets the money.

  For a long time I’ve felt like quick cash and good meals are the only reason Martin will do anything with me. I don’t think he enjoys being home with his mother, or at school, or really anywhere. I have trouble figuring out what he does enjoy anymore other than movies, but I think I’m getting better at speaking his language. A few more days like today and I might just win him back.

  “Hey sport,” I say as he gets out of the car. He gives me a look like he’s asking how dare I call him sport. “I had a lot of fun hanging out today.”

  He stands there for a second, says nothing, and then shuts the door. Still no optimism. That wall of indifference can’t be cracked easily, but I think I poked a hole at lunch and that’s enough to get me through the day.

  And it’s true. Something about being alive, having removed the source of pain from my foot, and being a good father to my son, I feel really good for a second.

  Just for a second.

  * * * * *

  That sycamore.

  Its firm, slender body. Its proud, tall stature. The way its roots penetrate the earth.

  You never think about it, how much of a tree is roots. That’s a huge part of the tree, spread out three times the width of what you see. And all of it is a secret, buried six inches beneath the soil. You see the beauty, the romance. But if you dug down, you’d find the ugliness the tree keeps hidden, you’d see how it stretches wider than the beauty.

  But take away the roots and the tree can’t live. Cut out the ugliness and the beauty dies with it. Vices feed virtues. Our pain fuels our love.

  My imperfections are my own. Without them I am not me.

  Maybe that’s the source of my attraction. Maybe I’m drawn to it because I can relate. That makes sense. It doesn’t explain why I turned the lights off so I could touch myself while I looked at it from the window, but at least it’s a theory on the root of what’s happening.

  Root. Ha.

  Christ this house is lonely. I’m cleaning semen off a sliding glass door in a darkened kitchen and dreaming of being with a tree. I need a woman in my life.

  Not Daphne or Bibi. Not a piece of ass who comes and goes every few days and makes me promise to call even though she knows I won’t. Not nutrients in the soil I can suck up and forget.

  Back when a wife and son were in this house, back when Martin was doing homework in the living room or we were watching cartoons or Rose was sculpting or telling me about a new play we should see, back then I didn’t even know we had a sycamore.

  I reach for the phone and scroll through my contacts.

  For some reason—maybe it’s the fact that my toe is feeling better and my son and I had fun and I feel like I can’t lose today, and maybe it has something to do with growing up, or with the way the sycamore and its roots seem to twist into my soul like it’s leading me to some deep and profound truth—but for some reason I don’t fully understand, I end up calling Elaine after all.

  “Hello?” she says, after the fourth ring.

  “Hi. Hello. Uh… Ms. Giddings? Elaine, I mean?”

  “Yes, this is she. Who’s calling, please?”

  “This is Casey. The, uh, the medium. We had a talk earlier this week about your… daughters?”

  “Oh. Oh, right. Yes. Hi, Casey. What’s up?”

  Yes, Casey. What is up?

  “Um… Well, I was just… You didn’t schedule a follow-up appointment when you were here because you didn’t… um… know what your schedule would be. And I was wondering if you were still interested in having another session.”

  What is this stuttering? Why is this difficult? Since when do I fear talking to people? It’s supposed to be the one thing I’m good at.

  “Yes, I am. I almost called you, actually, but there’s been some drama with my youngest and I’ve just been getting pulled every which way.”

  I force a laugh. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I really need to make an appointment with you as soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow after work? It’s kind of really important. Is there any way you could squeeze me in?”

  Oh Elaine. I’d squeeze you wherever you’d like.

  “Sure. I have an opening at three if that would work.”

  “That’d be perfect.”

  “Okay. Thank you. I… guess I’ll see you then.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Casey?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just want to say… thanks for calling me. I’m really glad you did.”

  What’s this feeling? Guilt? Why am I feeling guilt? Everything I’m telling her is what she wants to hear. She chooses what she wants to believe and this is the means by which she brings light to the darknesses in her life. This is not a crime. If she didn’t want to believe, she would not be coming to me. I have nothing to feel guilty about. White lies. Roots feeding bloomage. Virtue from vice. In the long run, I’m helping the both of us.

  “Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Bye.”

  Tomorrow. Three o’clock. For some reason it feels important with this one. I need to figure out what her unborn daughter is going to say. Make it count, Casey.

  Monday, September 27th

  The question is: Do the dead talk to the living?

  And you think you know the answer, but it’s never as easy as that.

  Elaine sits there in the chair in front of me and I whisper to her in the voice of her unborn daughter as a tree in my backyard whispers to me, and it whispers in the voice of my father.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Haven’t your mother and I taught you anything? Sex out of wedlock, unprotected sex at that, and you’re not even out of high school? Do you know my parents would have disowned me—disowned me!—if I’d turned out like you.”

  I want to have unprotected sex out of wedlock with Elaine. Why? Because it’s in my nature? Because it’s the kind of person I am? Why am I that kind of person? Because I hated my father? Because I wanted nothing less than for him to be proud of me?

  Out the window, a squirrel rushes up the trunk of the sycamore with a nut in its mouth and stows it somewhere in the branches. By no fault of the tree’s, it absorbs the nut. The nut becomes a part of the tree.

  Elaine twists a pinch of her hair around her finger. I lick my lips and she catches me staring and in the dead fetus’ voice I say, “You have really pretty hair, Mommy.”

  Elaine smiles and I reposition my legs to hide my erection. I glance away from her but my eye just lands on the tree again.

  “Damn that punk rock,” Dad is saying to Mom in the past. “Everything is pro-greed and anti-parents-and-teachers. They’ve got all these kids thinking it’s ‘cool’ to be irresponsible and self-serving. Gimme a break. If that’s the answer, how come that Cobain kid shot himself? Tell me that?”

  Fourteen years old, Cobain’s voice on the stereo in my room, Dad’s voice coming through the wall, and I’m sitting there picking sides. Dad vs. Cobain. Who to listen to?

  Now I ask again: Do the dead talk to the living?

  And maybe you’re starting to see my point.

  Fifteen years old, I’m w
ith Lucy Seltzer in the back of her Mom’s car, my first time, and it’s “Fuck you, Dad” going through my head as I make love to her. Because Dad made me make that promise in church, that ring I’m supposed to wear on my finger. I’m supposed to be the good boy Dad and God and everybody decided I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to go against what I want and what I feel.

  This is rebellion. This is an act of resistance against a world set up to make me into something I don’t want to be. This feels… so… fucking… good.

  The lights dimmed, the seance in progress, as I pull my eyes away from the tree and they find their way up Elaine’s body, that desire, that lust, is that something Dad put there a dozen years ago? A nut tucked away in my branches I never had a choice but to absorb? Dad, five years dead now, still prodding me, still making me want to rebel?

  Do the dead talk to the living?

  Come on now. The past speaks louder than the present.

  “Are you mad at me, Mommy?” I ask Elaine in the dead girl’s voice.

  “Of course not, sweetie. Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I made Daddy leave.”

  The phrase ‘Don’t try this at home’ comes to mind. If you’re taking notes on how to make the dead speak, stay away from what I’ve just done. I don’t know that Elaine’s miscarriage factored in any way into her matrimonial conflagration. I know the timelines match up and they wouldn’t be the first couple pulled apart by a toilet baby, but maybe the former Mr. Elaine Giddings was caught cheating with the mailman or yorking his dooder to the Christmas tree two weeks before the miscarriage even happened. But I need Elaine. I need her and I take the gamble.

  She freezes. “What… What makes you say that, Beth?”