In Nightmares We're Alone Read online

  Casey. Casey made me say that.

  “I don’t know.”

  The heartbroken look she’s studying me with, I brace myself for an explosion of anger. A sharp pain in the tip of my index finger causes me to ball a fist. I wince and my eyes shift to the sliding glass door, to the sycamore.

  No!

  This is my imagination. I have pried out the sapling and the wound has scabbed over. The fear in my mind is hypochondria, beyond hypochondria. The fear that a head cold might be pneumonia is hypochondria. The fear that a sharp pain in your finger might be Evil Plant Disease is… is…

  “Insanity!” says Dad when I tell him I don’t believe in God anymore. “How did this all happen then, chance? Maybe paint fell on the canvas and the Mona Lisa happened. Maybe everything happened by accident.”

  “Sweetheart,” says Elaine, snapping my eyes away from the tree after so long a pause I’ve nearly forgotten what we’re doing here. “Daddy left because he and Mommy were different people than they were when they met. It was about a lot more things than just you. None of what happened was your fault, okay? Life just changes people and they grow together or they grow apart.

  Elaine gets what Dad didn’t get. Dad, who more or less parted ways with me after that argument on determinism because I was a godless, nihilistic fornicator. We both lost that argument because neither of us would budge, and maybe if one of us had been a different person at the moment, everything would have worked out for me and Rose and Martin.

  Different animals in the tree, different nuts, different winds, different climate, the whole thing grows into something else. Give him my upbringing and maybe Da Vinci would’ve ended up like me. Maybe he wouldn’t have seen anything worth painting in that model. But he did.

  So you see, Dad, paint did just fall on the canvas.

  “It’s okay, Mommy. It wasn’t your fault either. And I know you think of me every day.”

  “I do, honey. I really do.” And just as I gain back my will and I’m about to steer the conversation where I need it to go, to love and romance and togetherness, Elaine says, “Sweetheart, I want to ask you about the doll. You know the one I named after you?”

  Jesus. Again with the goddamn doll. “She’s so beautiful,” I say. “I like it when you hold her and talk to me.”

  She bows her head and a sigh escapes. “I thought you might. I love her too.” She pauses. “Your sister told me she doesn’t want me to keep that doll. She doesn’t like it.”

  My finger aches again. Nerves, probably. A manifestation of frustration. Strictly psychological, my conscious mind insists.

  But I’ve been down this road before. If it still hurts tomorrow, I said, I’ll go to a doctor.

  “Oh…?” I say, not sure what territory we’re in anymore.

  “Do you think… I mean… If we got a new one to name after you or something… Do you think it would… Do you think you would like it as much as this one?”

  I have an image of Elaine standing in a locked room with a hundred dolls, cradling one of them and talking to her dead daughter while her living ones yearn for her attention. Jesus. People and their weird bullshit.

  “You’re one to talk,” the sycamore tells me.

  Too true. We’re all just trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with us.

  I grab the conversational gunwale.

  “I like that doll a lot, but I understand if you need to get rid of it. I like it when you talk to me, but I like when my sister is happy too.”

  “That’s such a sweet thing to say.”

  “I think it’s difficult for her only having one parent, and I think she feels lonely sometimes,” I say, and I wonder if I’m talking to her or to my father. “That’s why she acts out. You should try not to get too angry with her. She just wants your attention.”

  Elaine nods in that way women do when they’re holding back tears. “I know, baby. I will. I’ll be nicer.”

  “Heather too,” I say. The dead kid says. “She acts independent, but I think she still needs her mommy.”

  “I know she does.”

  “You should try not to feel so stressed. I think when you get old and we get to be together, it’s the happy times you’ll remember, so you should try to make lots of them.”

  “Okay.” She smiles. This seems to have quite an impact.

  Self-help book stuff. It’s more useful than you’d think. These hollow sweet-nothings we whisper to ourselves for a burst of euphoria and forget a moment later when the gas bill comes. That endorphin buzz is our addiction. Nothing is missing when we feel it, but it’s so hard a thing to feel. Trigger it in another person more times than a couple, provide that artificial solace, make them feel fulfilled for a second or an hour or a week, and I swear to you, you will become their addiction. They will fall in love.

  I may be one of seven billion, but I am also one in seven billion.

  Catchy, right? That’s one of my favorites.

  “Mommy, are you happy?” Hold tight, mateys. We sail now for stormy waters.

  “Sure I am. Why?”

  “Sometimes when you hold me and we talk, I feel like you’re lonely since I went away.” That touches a nerve, and I hope it’s the one I’m looking for.

  “Life is hard. I don’t know how to explain it to you.”

  “Do you ever wish I never happened and you still had Daddy?”

  “I told you, that’s not how it happened. And you gave me weeks of joy and you still do.”

  Dammit, Elaine. Show me how lonely you are. Show me that love you’re longing to give. Give it to me, Elaine. Let me be your Beth and give it to me.

  “That’s good. I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to feel lonely.”

  “I’m not lonely.”

  I pause. “Sometimes I think you are.”

  Then something that can’t be ignored tears open inside my finger, under the cuticle. My hand spasms, and I jerk it from the armrest and squeeze it. Both our eyes go wide and we stare at each other.

  Bullshit! Fuck guilt. Fuck the whole idea of it. You bind a tree to a fence, it grows at any angle you want. You can build a wall of them. I have seen a photo of a bridge built by roots. Guide their growth slightly and gradually over the course of years, and they will grow across a river. Then if they fall and dam the stream, should they hate themselves?

  All we’re doing is growing. We have no say in where or how, the placement of the nests in our branches, the scars from the lighting. Why can we see it in everything but ourselves and each other? Why can we see how we manipulate the world and miss how it manipulates us?

  It made us. It planted ideas in our hearts and our heads and nurtured them over time. It made us into cynics. It grew our emotional walls. It made us sexists and racists and murderers. We are cogs in a clockwork existence, turning and being turned by each other and never understanding the mechanism.

  We didn’t do it. It is not our fault. There is no fault. Paint fell on a fucking canvas.

  “Are you okay?” Elaine asks me, the real me.

  For a second I don’t know whether to answer as Casey or Beth.

  “I… I’m fine. I’m sorry. I lost her.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. There was a sensation in my hand and then I just… It’s nothing. We can try to contact her again if you want.

  “No. No, that’s okay. That was nice.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, trying to sound genuine but crossing my aching fingers we’re done. “I’m happy to try again.”

  “No,” she says. “Next time.”

  Two of my favorite words.

  A minute later I go to grab my tea and the pain hits again. My finger jumps to my lips.

  “Did you burn yourself?”

  “No. I bite my nails. Old habit I can’t kick. I bit it too short and it’s been hurting me.”

  “My youngest does that. I’ve been trying to get her out of the habit for years.”

  “My mom never cared. You must be
a good one.”

  Flirty gazes are exchanged and my smile remains long after she goes home. If this is worth pursuing, and I think it is, it feels possible now.

  At the risk of tempting fate, the seeds have been sown.

  * * * * *

  When I wake up late that night I’ve been having a dream that I’m tied down on a gurney in Hell and naked women are shoving heated coat hangers under my fingernails. It’s the first time I’ve woken from a nightmare and found myself in a worse one.

  I force the comforter off my body with my knee because I can’t touch it with my hands without sending waves of unbearable pain up and down my body. I roll out of bed and limp to the light switch and pound it with the palm of my hand.

  I basically get what I’m expecting, but somehow it’s so much worse when I actually see it.

  Five of my fingers are sprouting saplings, as well as another three of my toes. Not little slivers of wood like the last one. These are between one and two inches long, with branches and everything. Most of my fingernails are snapped back, looking like pistachios with Halloween decorations shoved into them. The bark of the saplings is bone white, and they’re painted with blood. Specks of flesh are hanging from their branches.

  I shriek when I see them. Three in one hand, two in the other. And all of them accompanied by that monstrous pain. It’s not pain like a scraped knee or an aching tooth or stepping on a nail. It’s closer, I’d imagine, to passing a kidney stone or giving birth. It’s not right. It’s the body forcing itself to evacuate something from an orifice that isn’t big enough. Except there’s no orifice at all, and it’s not evacuating anything. It’s growing.

  There’s no way around it. I can’t sit around and wait to see how bad it gets. I have to force the evacuation myself.

  I go into the bathroom and observe them in the mirror for a minute before I can brace myself. Looking at the reflection of my sullen, sunken face, I take a deep breath and bite down on the twig sticking out of the middle finger on my right hand. I force myself to summon up some courage and I jerk my hand down and my jaws up. A spray of blood splashes the mirror in a line from the upper left corner to the bottom right.

  I squeeze the counter top with my other hand. The plant-sprouting fingers on it surge with pain but I barely notice it within the overwhelming wave of agony that explodes from the one I’ve ripped out.

  I can’t do this. I can’t stand this over and over.

  But that first one. That one in my big toe. It hasn’t grown back. Maybe if I pluck each one as it sprouts. If I could power through it, maybe it would take all ten fingers and all ten toes, but in the end maybe I’d be okay.

  I look down at my hand. Droplets of blood are seeping out and pooling on the white marble of the bathroom counter. I grit my teeth.

  How? How could I power through this?

  Maybe just one each day. Ten fingers, ten toes. If they’re really not coming back, then it’s only three weeks time, two-thirds of a month, and then everything is back to normal. If that’s all it takes, I can handle that.

  I go in the bedroom and find a pair of nail clippers. I don’t have a pair of pruning sheers small enough for fingernails, so these will have to do.

  I sit on the bed and try to calm my heartbeat before I try clipping off the first one. As I snip it off at the stem, my throat tightens and my body stiffens.

  Is it the fact that it’s prying on my finger and my nail? Is it a result of pulling some part of the body in a direction it’s not supposed to go? I want it to be, but it’s not. It’s nerve endings in the plants. I can feel them. I’m not just cutting off bacteria that’s growing from my body, I’m cutting off pieces of my body and the cells inside are making damn sure I know it. This is not something that’s growing out of me. This is me. This is what I am.

  I become a more interesting person with each new experience.

  I grab the whiskey out of the cabinet. One shot. Two shots. Three. Seven.

  Damn it all, I have to pluck them. Snipping them isn’t enough and it hurts almost as badly. They’re going to keep growing, thicker and fuller and stronger and more packed with nerve endings, as long as they’re there. No matter how many times I pass out from the pain, I have to pull out every single one of them right now.

  I pick the pliers up off the bedside table where I left them the other night.

  I can’t make myself do it. There’s no way.

  Yes I can. Man up. Don’t be a pussy.

  What about that climber who got his hand caught under a boulder and cut through his own arm with a pocket knife and busted the bone with a rock so he could get away? When he was looking at his arm there, was his whole mind thinking ‘I can do this’? I’ll bet not. He had to do it, and he did do it, but I bet he didn’t know he could do it until forty-five minutes after it was done. I’ll bet you a million dollars.

  So far my track record for getting through hard days is 100%.

  I clamp the pliers hard around a sapling.

  Fuck it. Feel the burn.

  Rip!

  I lurch back and bite down so hard I’m afraid I’m going to snap a tooth. The stub of the tree shoots across the room and I want to shove my hand into the pillow if not for the other growths I’d only disturb. I drop the pliers, shove my face into my mattress, and scream, literally scream.

  I don’t know what to do. I might as well be cutting off fingers and toes. But I can’t very well leave them in my body, let them grow and turn me into some monster in a circus freak show. Hell, what circus freak show? When was the last time you even heard of a circus freak show? The alternative to amputation is life as nothing more than a plant monster who collects disability and draws stares at the supermarket.

  I pick up the whiskey and stare at the pliers.

  Nine shots.

  Ten.

  Fourteen.

  Tuesday, September 28th

  I’m afraid to look down. It feels like I’ve only been asleep fifteen minutes, but it’s morning now and I’m on blood-stained sheets. Thanks to the alcohol, my head and my stomach feel the same as my fingers.

  What woke me? Pain? Time?

  The doorbell rings.

  Oh.

  I push the blankets off my body without looking. I just lay on the bed with my eyes focused on the fan blades, throwing cool air over my sweat-drenched naked body. I toss my legs over one side of the mattress and force myself into a sitting position. Then, God help me, I look down.

  No saplings for the moment. I’m covered in raw, swollen flesh where the things have been ripped out, but as of now I’m still a hundred percent human and zero percent plant, at least on the outside. Deep down in the roots? That’s anyone’s guess.

  I shout to the door as I dress, “Just a minute! I’ll be right down.”

  I look at my reflection. Hungover, wracked with pain from the drink and the clippers, from lack of sleep and overabundance of thought. Why didn’t I send out texts or emails and cancel my calls for the day? How am I supposed to talk to the dead when I feel this close to being dead?

  I wash my face in cold water, comb my hair, spray on deodorant and cologne. I pull on pants and keep them away from my toes as I pull them up to my waist. I work the shirt even more delicately and decide against trying to put on socks before I slip my feet into my loafers. The disguise complete, you’d practically swear I was a functioning human being.

  Walking down the stairs is more hellish than it should be for anyone with legs, limping on both feet and trying to balance myself with one hand on the bannister and one on the wall, neither of which can stand to touch anything. Even opening the front door is a trick. I have to grip it with the first knuckle of my thumb and three different fingers and I need the assistance of the palm of my other hand to turn it.

  The lion staggered out of his cave, drunk on insomnia and physical pain, walking on three legs and smashing his face periodically into rocks and plants and trees.

  “Where are you?!” he cried to the Lion God. “Show yourself
!”

  It’s Arthur on my front porch. I remember. He called to schedule an appointment because his mother-in-law is dead now. This guy’s obsession with his in-laws. Anyone else would be dancing a goddamn jig.

  “Hello,” I say. “Sorry. I laid down for a little afternoon rest and I guess the time got away from me.”

  “It’s all right,” says Arthur.

  He probably thinks he can see right through me—the hungover kid in his late twenties having trouble accepting that his tolerance is finally slowing down. He doesn’t know the half of it. Guy his age, he’s probably been through some shit, but I doubt he ever looked in the mirror and truly screamed.

  “Come in. Come in.”

  We take a seat in the living room and I skip the formalities this time. I’m not offering tea or water or coffee. The sooner this is over the better. I’m of half a mind to tell him his bitch of a mother-in-law won’t talk to me and refund him for the sitting, but it’d be a bad idea after answering the door this haggard and putting on that lame excuse about the afternoon nap. He’d bail on any future appointments and I’d be out of a client. Mustn’t screw myself out of work. I may be twenty-seven but I’m not twenty-seven.

  I am doing work that is enjoyable and fulfilling.

  No, really.

  “How is Edna?” I ask him. Guys his age, it’s always about their wives. People who’ve been married a little while inherit the blandness present in their partners and cancel out one another’s personalities. By attempting to share a life, each becomes fifty percent of a human. God, let that never happen to me. Again.

  “She’s okay. I guess. I feel like she’s just trying to bury her sorrow in work though. And her job seems to be getting to her.”

  “What kind of work does she do again?”

  The look he gives me. Like a full body eye-roll. “Teacher? Your son’s teacher?”

  Ah. That’s how I met this guy. “Right. I, uh… I’m sorry, I’m… I apologize.”

  My grip tightens around my armrest and pain shoots through my whole arm. I want to wave it and scream and curse but I manage to restrain myself.