Before My Eyes (26 page)

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When all the storms clear, the temperature drops thirty degrees and autumn winds rise over Lakeshore. Someone taps on our door. It's as if the person on the other side is unsure we would be home, or maybe hoping we would not be home. On the stoop is Max.

“Hey,” he says. “You okay? I mean, I just came here to make sure you were okay.”

His leg is bandaged. He's leaning on an old man's silver metal cane. He was grazed—the bullet missed his bone.

“Are you?”

“You know, you almost always answer a question with a question.”

“I do?” I say, knowing I'm doing it, wanting to make this less surreal. “Your leg. Are you taking something for the pain?”

“Only over-the-counter stuff. Nothing else. Nothing. I want my head to be clear. I'm done with everything else.”

I step out onto the front stoop in my worn-out gym shorts and flip-flops. My legs are bruised along my knees and thighs, some from nearly drowning, more from the white tent. There's no hiding the purplish-green welts on my knees, the result of throwing myself to the floor in that tent. I breathe in wet autumn leaves, keeping the front door ajar to air out the stuffy house.

“How's your mom?” I ask. “Is she home, too?”

“Nope. She's going to be in the hospital a while. But she's planning her congressional run. She wants to do one better than my father. They've always been competitive with each other, but it seems to work for them.” He seems too upbeat, too unreal, but I play along.

“Congress? Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

“And your dad?”

“He's counting on getting reelected, a sympathy vote, though he's pissed that he's getting criticized for not going public about those crazy e-mails and texts. At the end of the day, I don't care if he gets reelected or if my mom gets elected. I want them home.”

“What do you think is going to happen to him?” I say, hesitantly, not wanting to say his name, the one that I now know is Barkley, not Brent.

“I don't care, do you?” He limps a few steps away from me, to the other side of the stoop.

“My mother agrees with the news that it's highly likely—that's how she phrases it—‘highly likely' that he will be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was hearing voices, or a voice.”

“Wouldn't people have known that?” he says. “Shouldn't somebody have seen something was wrong?” The playfulness drains away; anger and grief fill his mouth and eyes. “Shouldn't there have been some warning? Shouldn't a teacher or his parents have known? Why didn't I see something was wrong with him? Why didn't I know? Tell me that. Why didn't I see something was wrong?”

“Maybe you weren't looking. Maybe you had your own things going on? Maybe I did, too.”

He takes this in, and so do I, weighing the difference between what we know and what we don't, what we see and what we choose not to see.

“But shouldn't there have been some warning? I worked next to him all summer. He was weird, but look who I was working with. Trish and Peter and Barkley and me. Maybe something is wrong with me?” He laughs, harsh and quick.

All I can do is quote my mother again. “She says that he's probably been in serious decline for the past year or two, or more. But sometimes people don't want to see warnings, or more likely, they didn't even know to look.”

He studies the empty street, as if we're on the bow of a little sailboat and that boat is lost at sea.

“According to the police and the news, he's in the hospital under armed guard,” I say. “He's refusing medication.”

“He should be in prison. Does New York execute murderers like him? Sometimes I think I'm never going to sleep again. I keep playing it over and over in my head, don't you? I keep seeing it right before my eyes.”

“More would have been hurt, if it wasn't for you, Max. You were brave.”

“You grabbed the gun.”

“You struck first. You went after him. You're the hero.”

“Don't believe everything you hear on the news.”

Last night from the hospital, Max appeared on all the local newscasts with his mother and father. He's been called a hero. However, he gave full credit to Peter for crushing down on Barkley's arm and me for snatching the gun. Peter and Trish have been interviewed, too. After the event, they helped so many people who were hurt. They were heroes. I couldn't do it. I couldn't help anyone after I handed that gun over, not even myself. I couldn't make sense of it for news reporters and declined to participate in any interviews. Instead, I watched all the reports with my mother. In particular, Peter seemed the happiest at being called a hero, and I hope he's considered one for a long time.

“I wasn't brave. I wasn't anything. I wasn't even thinking. I'm not thinking now, just replaying it in my head. The gun. Who even sold him that gun? Couldn't they tell he was off? Apparently, he tried to enlist in the army, and they turned him down for psychological reasons. Shouldn't that have been on a record somewhere? Why wasn't it? Most of all, why did he feel the need to shoot anybody? To kill anybody?”

“He almost killed more. But you stopped him.”

“Why did he do this? Just tell me why. Why? What was he thinking? And why didn't anyone see this coming? Why didn't I see something was wrong with him, something off, something sick? He was sending my dad e-mails about bottled water and grammar and I didn't know it was him. They didn't tell me it was him until after, until we were at the hospital. He was using another name. If I had known—”

“Grammar? I had heard on the news about the bottled water—”

“None of it makes sense. None of it makes any fuckin' sense, and now Jackson's dad is dead. What if it was my dad, or yours?”

My hand covers my lips. I want to hold it together. I don't want him to see me cry, think I'm that kind of girl who can't be strong enough to talk with the day after the worst day of our lives. His sea blue eyes are keen on me and I don't know what to say except, “You knew one of the men killed?”

“Joe Jacobs. His son and I—well, we play soccer together. We're on varsity together. I don't know if he's going to play this season. But his dad was at every game, even coached us as kids. I'm going to the funeral. The entire team is going. I plan to be there for Jackson. That's my teammate—Jackson Jacobs.”

He raises tearful eyes to mine. Our little sailboat is being pitched into the sea. I'm off the side. I'm drowning.

I can't look at him and break away.

“I mean, bottled water, Claire? We sold hundreds of plastic bottles of water this summer. Thousands. He never said anything. He liked to count them, that's all I knew. He liked to keep stock, he said. Never refused once to sell it. I don't get it. Why didn't I see that something was wrong with him?” He slumps against the railing. “Is something wrong with me?” He lets his cane fall from his hand. He leans over the wrought iron like he's going to throw up, or throw himself over.

“I don't need that thing,” he says as I pick up his cane. “My mom is lying in the hospital, her leg shattered. Others are dead. That little girl. I don't want it. I don't want that. I want to kill him. I want Barkley dead, too. It isn't fair. Why didn't I see what was going on with him? I worked with him all summer. Why didn't I see something was wrong? Why? Tell me that. Why?”

He grabs the cane from me, almost stumbling into me, but backs off as if he doesn't want me anywhere near him. I squeeze my eyes shut. See the white tent. The blood on that little girl's sparkly pink top—the dog barking—the screams—his mother's hand in my hand—blood—the grin—the gun.

After a few seconds of being there in that tent again, the scent of coffee wafts out through the front door. A fresh pot. I open my eyes.

I want to run back in—make sure my mother's okay—that she's sitting or standing—or comfortable—that she's there.

She calls out to us from the kitchen. Obviously, she is also listening to our entire conversation.

“Can we go inside?” I say to Max. “It's chilly out here.”

He shakes his head.

“Please.”

*   *   *

In the kitchen, my mother says, “I found brown bananas. In the fridge.” She nods to the banana bread on the table. “Izzy cracked the eggs. A big girl now. She went to work with her father today.” My mother offers Max a slice but he declines, and I do, too, even as the reassurance of cinnamon fills the kitchen.

“A cup of coffee?” she asks. “It's fresh, too.”

“Barkley was drinking two or three pots of coffee a shift by the end of the summer,” says Max. “I don't think I can ever drink coffee without thinking of him.”

Somehow the smell of coffee isn't so terrible to me anymore. But Max asks for a glass of milk, and I dash between the refrigerator and cabinet, pouring each of us one, not paying enough attention, spilling some, white puddles on the clean countertops.

“This will be a long road for everybody.” She clears her throat. Her speech is surer and steadier every day. “A long road. For that sick, sick young man. For his family. The courts will have to decide if he is fit to stand trial. I looked up what happened to that young man that shot that congresswoman out in Arizona a few years ago. He got seven life terms.” She pauses, and I think she's done, exhausted. “Tragic,” she adds, and sounds like she is falling.

I'm holding on to these facts like a raft.

“Is that why he did it? He's sick? Is that an excuse?” says Max more to himself than to me or my mother. “He chose to have that gun, didn't he? He chose to shoot those people, didn't he?”

“Paranoid schizophrenia is an organic brain disease. Most are not violent. Not at all. But did he ‘choose' in the way you and I ‘choose' to do the right thing or the wrong thing?” My mother pales from the output of so many words.

Max clenches his fists. “He is a murderer.”

My mother's coffee mug trembles as she raises it to her lips. “Yes, and he has a degenerative disease, Max. I don't excuse his actions. In a perfect world, people would have seen signs. Helped him.” She takes a shallow breath. “We live in an imperfect world.”

“He tried to create a world that was dark and ugly as his own,” says Max.

“He failed, didn't he?” I look at him next to me, close enough, but not touching me. I want the answer to come from him. I want him to agree. The blue in his eyes deepens as if he's gone to the dark and ugly.

“Of course he did,” says my mother in a quiet, strained voice. “He failed.”

“I was the one who should have thought twice about him.” I am pleading this to Max. “I got on the phone with him thinking he was this Brent, this guy I never met. I was the one who wanted to believe he was something he wasn't.”

“He wanted you—to believe,” she says.

“I wanted to think that somebody, anybody, understood me.” I can't look at either of them when I say this.

Max strikes the table with his fist. The plate of banana bread wobbles, and I reach out to straighten it, right it, but am not quick enough. The plate spin and crashes to the floor. Shards of glass mix with bread—the scent of cinnamon and banana splayed across the kitchen floor. My heart stops. Everything is broken.

“I'm sorry,” says Max.

“Don't worry. I'll clean,” says my mother.

“No. Don't get up. I'll do it.” I search for the broom and dustpan and a deafening silence descends—and I am alone and Max is alone and my mother is alone and the center cannot hold—and the world is too much with us—and because we could not stop for death—

The broom is in the back of the kitchen utility closet. I sweep across the floor with hard strokes, wanting to forget these past four days, this entire summer, and knowing I never will. I was stupid. I was naive. Never again. Never.

“I'm sorry,” says Max, rising. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Wallace. I'm sorry,” he mumbles, standing up with a push of the kitchen table against the wall.

“Why don't we go into the living room. Continue this conversation in more comfortable chairs?” offers my mother.

“I'm not staying,” Max says.

I nod my head like this was always the plan.
He's not staying.
Not in my life. School starts tomorrow. He's on one side of town, and I'm on the other, and he's not staying—even though all I want him to do is stay—all I want to do is wrap my arms around him and kiss the pain away from his lost-boy blue eyes—but he's not staying.

My mother studies Max and then me. “I'm here. If you need me. I'm here now.”

*   *   *

Outside, leaves float off the maple tree. A blue jay flits from branch to branch, chirping to an unseen mate. Max hobbles down the front steps and I watch him and want to tell him to be careful, but they are only leaves. I sit down on the stoop, tuck my legs under me, hug my knees close to my chest. The blue jay flies off in search of what matters: food or shelter or love.

“I feel like I spent the summer in a fog. I spent the summer worrying about the wrong things,” he says, as if he's talking to himself.

“What things?” I have to call after him.

“Like if I could make the next penalty kick or not—and other stuff. I've got to admit that I've been worrying about all the wrong things, and maybe I have to start trusting myself. I don't know. Does any of this make sense?” He keeps on going.

“You're asking me?”

“And you're answering with a question?”

Sometimes things don't make sense. Like, I don't understand why my mother had to have a stroke. You can explain to me all you want about the science, about the weakness in the neurovascular system, but I don't understand why she had to be the one to have a stroke. Why didn't we see warnings? Why her? Why my mom? And with Barkley, I understand that schizophrenia is a disease, that he heard voices, or a voice, that was speaking to him, telling him to take control, to demand answers, to what? And why that day? Why in that tent? What questions require a gun?