I Regret Everything (14 page)

Reading poems on a smartphone while riding a commuter train surrounded by souses and sleepy prepsters was a far cry from a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou but my insides quivered. As for Mr. Best, his talent shone. Between Larchmont and Stonehaven I read what he sent twenty times. This man bled talent and was completely miscast in the role of lawyer.

As the train swayed through Stamford, I texted,

 

In a bleak cell in Stonehaven a starving prisoner gorges herself on your language.

Yours, The Darkling.

 

Five minutes later I got an email from Mr. Best.

 

A week before Thanksgiving freshman year my Aunt Bren called to tell me that my mother had removed her clothes in the furniture department of Macy's on 34th Street and subsequently been taken to Bellevue where she was being held for observation, did I want to visit her?

 

His mother? Why was he writing me about his mother? I read on.

 

She had spent years trying to be an actress and was now performing her mad scene. In college and beyond parental parameters this awful business crawled from the swamp of my past like some kind of golem and threatened to claim primacy once again. This is why we have survival instincts. And these instincts were adamant: there was nothing to be done. I remained at school.

My divorced father, clued in to the catastrophe courtesy of Aunt Bren despite his
ex officio status
, refused to spring for a private clinic so she languished in Bellevue for three weeks until the medical staff deemed her fit to face the world. At this point the estimable Dr. Gumport had upped the antidepressants to a level appropriate for a mastodon and her affect, such as it was after years of chemical dependency and alcohol, nearly disappeared. Christmas break was a pageant of cheerlessness and I stayed at her apartment for only a few nights, preferring to couch surf at a series of places that didn't feel like my mother's psychotic projection. Caring for her was entirely beyond my ken, as caring for me had been beyond hers. Such a deep fogginess engulfed my mother that she didn't seem to mind.

 

This was not good. Mr. Best was telling me about his family to push me away. Could there possibly be another reason?

 

Spring semester the calls slowed. Because my mother wasn't constantly trying to track me down, when we did actually talk we were able to have several civil and semi-coherent conversations. Asked how she was doing, my mother would tell me that she was following Dr. Gumport's orders and even going for an occasional visit to the Museum of Modern Art to look at her favorite Rothkos or a walk in Central Park. So it was with more than a little surprise that I heard again from Aunt Bren—it was never good news when she called—that my mother had attacked her wrists with a can opener and was going to be locked up again, this time at the Payne-Whitney clinic, where Uncle Barney was picking up the tab. Aunt Bren was convinced that my mother didn't really want to kill herself, first because she used a can opener—not the most efficient means of getting that particular job done—and second because she had called an ambulance as soon as she mangled her veins. It was suggested that I visit her; that maybe seeing me might lift her gloom. I didn't understand why this should be the case since my presence never had a positive effect the entire time we were actually living together but this time guilt (if there is a more useless feeling, it has yet to be discovered) won out.
 

 

Mrs. Best was far worse off than me. She sounded out of her mind. I was only mildly depressed. I didn't know whether to keep reading. Maybe this ended in her being cured.

 

In a locked ward under the watchful eyes of several burly white-clad attendants we had our visit. Her face was slack and she slowly worked her jaw in a way I had never seen, as if there was a piece of gristle in there that refused to dissolve. They had her pretty doped up but she seemed to be listening when I told her how school was going and talked about the summer when a few friends and I were planning a trip to Alaska. There was nodding, some inappropriate laughter, and several unreadable facial expressions that led me to consider whether any of this information was actually being absorbed. After an uncomfortable hour spent wondering if this was some horrible vision of my own genetically predetermined future or if I would ever be in the same room with this person again, we said goodbye.

This time my mother's stay in the mental hospital was for nearly a month. When she was discharged the plan was for Aunt Bren and Uncle Barney to take her to their house in New Jersey for a few weeks. It was thought the surroundings would have a salutary effect and the three girls, my cousins, were all still living at home so she would have a lot of company. Everyone agreed this was an excellent idea.
 

 

Where everyone agrees something is an excellent idea disaster lurks. I didn't like where this was going, which was probably shock treatment. I checked the time. When did the train arrive in Stonehaven?

 

It was an exquisite May afternoon with no humidity and a brilliant blue sky when my aunt and uncle and I picked her up at the clinic and drove her back to the apartment to pack a bag. In her Stygian bedroom my mother folded clothes and placed them in a suitcase that I carried into the foyer. Emerging from her lair, she squeezed Uncle Barney's forearm too tightly, digging her fingernails into his flesh, and thanked him for all his help. While her sister and brother-in-law and her son—her son!—looked on, my mother sailed inexorably across the living room, gazing at the art on the walls, the books on the shelves, the upright piano where she had banged out songs that sold promise by the bushel and where I had endured years of lessons. She rested her hands on the sill overlooking the wide avenue as if to give a speech, then before any of us could move leaped out the window and fell to the sidewalk six stories below.

Never give in, Spaulding.
Never give in.

 

This was not easy to process but it certainly explained the way he grabbed my arm when he told me killing yourself was the cruelest thing you could ever do. I needed to apologize. Immediately. In the few weeks I'd known Mr. Best information about him was hard to come by and now he had thrust the key in my face. It was probably why he wrote poems that rhymed. Why he became a trusts and estates lawyer. Maybe it's even why he wasn't married. When you're an eyewitness to your mother flying out a window it's hard to see the universe as anything other than a place of total madness. Not to say someone who survived that couldn't be a well-adjusted person who had a long and happy life. But don't kid yourself.

There were no cabs at the Stonehaven station and it wasn't like Edward P and Katrina had said to call any time day or night and someone would whisk me home, so I began to walk with all of this churning through my head. Did I remind Mr. Best of his mother? There could be nothing worse.

At night the streets of Stonehaven are as quiet as the insides of the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History that show Native Americans or Eskimos. Not spooky quiet, either, but the quiet of space, of nothing is going to ever happen. During the day people take walks and kids ride their bikes and skateboards, but at night other than the occasional dog walker strolling languidly behind a purebred with a poop bag in one hand and a cell phone in the other there are no pedestrians. So it creeped me out when a figure appeared a few hundred yards behind me on Crooked Brook Lane.

A quick glance over my shoulder to see if he was walking a dog revealed this was not the case. Home was still over a dark mile away. It was hard to know if it was the persistent humidity or the escalating angst but my forehead was damp. I began walking faster. Wakefield Lane T-bones Crooked Brook and if the person continued down Crooked Brook my pulse might have slowed. But he followed me onto Wakefield. He was in my slipstream and had closed half the distance between us. It was after midnight and there were no streetlights. The large houses slept with eyes shut. My pace quickened. To knock at a front door and wake the residents would only produce embarrassment. The person behind me was probably innocent enough but I jogged past another five homes before I looked back. Whoever it was stood in the middle of the street and in the light of the indifferent moon he looked like the guy I had spotted from the taxi the day I arrived.

I started to run.

My Chucks flew. A rivulet of sweat knifed my temple. The guy had started running, too. Not running, actually, more like loping as if he were some kind of animal. Mad energy carried me like I was training for the Olympics but when I turned from Wakefield on to Farragut he was closer.

When I landed in Stonehaven a month earlier I didn't anticipate hiding facedown under a rhododendron in the middle of the night as a maniac sprinted past. The loamy smell of the rich, dark earth filled my nostrils. My forehead pressed the moist ground. A banshee yawp—
SOMEONE PLEASE HELP MEEEEE!
—would alert him to my location and I didn't want to use my phone because he might see the light. Something slimy moved against my hand and I shivered and swatted it away. When a couple of minutes went by and the only sound was a frenzy of cicadas, I tentatively stood up and looked around. The street was deserted. I took off. My feet slapped the pavement, arms pumped. And there he was veering from a lawn like a missile trying to intercept me.

This vio- / lent man / will kill / me if / he can.

The house loomed like an island. Downstairs the hall light blazed. I leaped from the road to the lawn but mistimed my jump and when the toe of my sneaker caught the curb I found myself sprawled on the grass. The footsteps were closer as I limped toward the front door. When I thrust my hand into my pocket it became immediately apparent that my wrist had been jammed when I fell because the pain that shot up my arm caught me completely by surprise. Cursing, I slid my hand into the pocket and extracted my key chain. I jammed a key into the lock but it was the wrong one. I could hear him panting. Nerves flayed, I maneuvered another key in the lock, twisted the knob, and as the door yielded I turned to look back. There was no one. The man had slipped off into the thick trees or privet hedges or to the darkness of a neighbor's yard.

I closed the door as quietly as I could. In the kitchen I checked to make sure the back door was locked. The house was dead quiet. Moonlight streamed through the gauzy curtains. I peered toward the backyard half expecting to see the monster's face in the window. But no one was there. My wrist throbbed. Upstairs I lay down. After a few minutes I began to think about Grendel. It was as if he had sprung from the pages of
Beowulf
and pursued me to my father's door.

—Spall?

My nervous system cartwheeled. Edward P was standing in the middle of the room in his pajamas. His eyes surveyed serene poet faces. I wanted to scream.

—When did you do this?

I considered reporting what just happened. But the man who was chasing me wasn't there at the end. The hallucinations I had experienced last winter after three days of not eating or sleeping threw me into a cyclone of doubt.

—Do you like it?

The question took him some time to answer.

—It's creative, he said. That's a word non-artists use when faced with something they are incapable of understanding. How are you feeling, he wanted to know.

—Fine. Why?

—These pictures are all taped up, right?

—They're glued.

—Does Katrina know?

—She just told me not to paint. And she's seen it. Do you know who any of these people are?

—Should I?

—They're poets, I said, with maybe a little too much emotion. It would have been good if I had inherited a little more of Edward P's lawman affect. It comes in handy when you want to drop to your knees and shriek.

—Okay, Spall, okay.

I thought about my time locked in the police car and the texts I received on the train ride home and being chased through the streets by . . . by . . . What was that? It was hard to concentrate on my father's face while he kept talking and I drifted in and out of the comforting tones. I thought about Mr. Best in the city, sitting at his desk, a glass of whiskey or cup of coffee beside him, music playing on the stereo. What kind of music did he listen to? He was a little old for indie rock. What about classical? He seemed pretty traditional. You can tell a lot about a person from their musical taste. Was there any way I could get him to show me his iTunes? I wanted to make him a mixtape but what if I chose all the wrong bands? In class he had used that phrase
jiving jazz quartet
. Maybe he liked jazz.

—Is something wrong?

—What?

He repeated the question. I told him someone had followed me from the station and was probably lurking outside right now preparing to kill us in our sleep. This must have triggered some kind of caveman response because he told me to wait a second and disappeared. I stared out the window into the darkness wondering if it would devour me until he came back in dad jeans and a golf shirt and told me to follow him.

Not until he was backing his Tesla out of the garage did I, slumped in the passenger seat, ask what we were doing.

—We're going to find this fellow, he said.

—And do what? I said. Shouldn't we call the police?

—By the time they get here he could vanish. And why didn't you tell me this the second you got home?

—I don't know.

Edward P's jaw was clenched, his head searchlighting side to side as he cruised slowly along Farragut Road. A breeze had picked up and twisted branches of old trees aggressively swayed over freshly cut lawns. Late-model cars lurked in driveways. But no humans presented themselves.

—What did he look like?

—Like he grew up around here, but with something wrong in the wiring.