Living Dead Girl (14 page)

“That’s fine,” I say.

“I should have called the sheriff the first day Molly didn’t come across,” Bruce says.

“You had no way of knowing,” I say. “You did the right thing by calling me.”

Ginny comes to the top of the stairs, a towel wrapped around her. “Bruce,” she says, “I can’t get the hot water to work. Is there some kind of trick?”

“I’ll be right up there,” he says, his face all sweetness. When Ginny disappears back into the bathroom,
Bruce’s face collapses. “You’re ruining that poor girl and you don’t even care. You think all of us are just here to serve you. I’ll tell you something, Paul, I won’t let you ruin Ginny like you did Molly.”

“You don’t know the first thing about Molly and me,” I say.

Bruce steps close to my face and for a moment I think he might hit me. “I know something about love and about people,” he says. “It’s something you might want to learn about, Paul. There are limits, you know. A person can only be pressed so far until they crumble.”

I want to tell Bruce that he is right. I want to tell him that the only thing I really know about love is that I can’t quantify it. I have no scientific data that supports it. The truth about love is that I only know what I learned from Molly and Katrina, and both of them are gone because of me.

I FIND LEO
in the living room sitting beside a roaring fire. His expensive loafers are off and he’s got his feet propped close to the flames.

“Bruce wants me out of here in the morning,” I say. Leo nods his head like he’s been expecting this. He probably has. “I guess he thinks I killed Molly. What do you think?”

Leo leans forward and tugs his socks off. He wiggles his toes free and tries to make himself busy getting the lint out from between them. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “You’re not the same person you used to be.”

“I’m beginning to understand that,” I say.

“When we were roommates in college I got used to seeing you dissecting baby pigs and crap like that,” Leo says. “It didn’t bother me. That was your gig. And when you had to bring home bags of fingers and toes to study, that was fine, too. But you never had an emotional investment in the bodies. They were just homework, right?”

“I’ve always been invested in my work,” I say. “No one has ever understood that.”

“I’m a lawyer, Paul, and probably not a very good one,” Leo says, “but I know this: I’m not defined by my profession. I’m not consumed with torts. You used to have a life outside of human history. You used to be
normal
, for Christ’s sake.”

“What are you saying, Leo?”

“You scare me. And I’m worried that you might hurt Ginny.”

“I’d never hurt her.”

“You scare me,” Leo says again, “and I don’t like to feel that way. I don’t know what happened to Molly and I’m not sure I want to. But Sheriff Drew told us
about what happened to Katrina, and it was different from what you told me at the time.”

“She was sick,” I say.

“You let her die, Paul,” Leo’s voice rises an octave. “Did you and Molly think you could just play God out here? Is that what it was? You think you can make choices about who lives and dies? You can’t. You’re not allowed that, Paul. You were supposed to be a father to that child. If you’d been in any other town you’d both be in jail for child neglect.”

“Don’t tell me what I’ve done wrong,” I say. “I know what causes life and death better than you ever will. You can’t come up here and tell me that I’ve made mistakes.
I know what I’ve done
. I know a little something about cause and effect. I know a little something about genetic mutations. I know how to fix things, Leo. Do you know that? I’ve made it better for the next child I have. I know how to do things properly now.”

“And you believe this?” Leo says. “You actually believe this crap you’re spouting?”

“It’s the truth,” I say, but before Leo can reply his cell phone rings and he starts screaming at the person on the other end.

Here’s the truth: I let Katrina die. I let her wither away until I barely recognized her. It didn’t matter how many times I looked at her skin, her blood, her
hair, I could never figure out how to fix her. Molly and I were genetic mistakes—we never should have tried to breed. We should have recognized that neither one of us were mentally stable or physically able.

But what can you do when there is nothing left to do? When you see your child has no chance to live a long, normal life? That despite her great ability to suck information into her tiny head, she couldn’t stop tumors from attacking her organs. Do you subject her to doctors who want to make a name for themselves by “curing” her? Do you convince her that spending every day in a hospital, with all of her activities monitored by a machine, is the best way to live? Do you tell her that Mommy and Daddy love her, but, sorry, we need to leave you here while we go back to our comfortable jobs, homes, friends?

We made a choice. We let her live as she wanted to live.

I am not a doctor, despite my best efforts. But I know this: no doctor was ever able to save me. No doctor ever saved Molly from aborting our children. No doctor was going to save Katrina.

She could have lived another five years, I think, had we lived somewhere besides Granite Lake during that broiling summer. Everything died that summer—Katrina was only the beginning.

It was like I was seventeen again. Nothing seemed to make sense to me anymore: My wife was crazy, my daughter was dead, and I was the only one still standing. I needed to get to the roots of my life. Molly was the only person who ever understood that my obsession with humanity was fixed in my need to understand death. I’d come to believe that every child we’d ever conceived was just another experiment in grief and sadness, another reason to believe that nothing was worth loving.

I needed to understand why I was the only one left.

I needed to bring them back to me.

Katrina died in the morning. I dressed her in red OshKosh overalls. I placed hemlock cones and pine needles in her pockets, a strawberry lollipop in her shrunken hand, her favorite stuffed bear beneath her right arm.

“I don’t believe in God,” Molly said. She was kneeling beside me, shivering. “It’s nature,” I said. “God had nothing to do with this.”

“Can you make her come back?” Molly said.

“I don’t know how,” I said.

“That’s bullshit,” Molly said softly, like she believed it. Like she thought I was holding back on her. “You can do it, I know you can,” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said and started pounding on my back and shoulders with her balled fists. “Yes you can. I know you can. You told me scientists could bring back dormant cells from the Ice Age! They’re raising that mammoth, aren’t they? They can do it. They can bring her back.”

“This is our daughter,” I said and then grabbed Molly’s arms. She slumped against me, her body folding like a hand puppet.

“She has cells just like anything,” Molly said. “We can keep her. We can hold onto her until it’s possible. We can do that. We can do that.”

“She was wrecked from the start,” I said. “It would be just the same.”

I stood there for hours watching Molly fuss over Katrina’s body. She brushed Katrina’s hair with long, slow strokes, making sure each hair was smooth and soft to the touch; all the while whispering softly into Katrina’s tiny ears. Molly touched Katrina’s face gently, as though she were afraid she might break her, and placed small kisses over her closed eyes. She did all of the things she never did when our child was alive.

“I can’t remember loving her,” Molly said. “I can’t remember her first words. I can’t remember talking to her. When did I forget everything?”

“She’s dead,” I said.

“What happened to me?” Molly stopped brushing Katrina’s hair and stared at me, like I knew all the right things to say. Like I knew how to tell her that she had gone crazy. “What happened to us?”

“I can bring her back,” I said. “I can do it. It will take time. But we have plenty of that now. We have all the time in the world. We’ll do it just like man started. We can simulate everything. We can take her to the Galapagos Islands. They have animals there that don’t exist anywhere else. Evolution is just starting there. We could take her cells there and put them in the water. Just let them grow. We could do that. We can do it, Molly. I can bring her back.”

The awful truth is that I believed all of this. Now, sitting with Leo beside the fire, it seems preposterous. Leo is talking to someone about an insurance settlement, like he’s forgotten everything that I represent is still only inches from him.

I stare into the fire and watch the flames lick at the stack of wood—as though they know exactly what they are doing, what they were born to do. The logs burn orange and yellow, and plumes of dark gray smoke are wafting into the air. I think that the colors are pleasing and warm and that they know something. They have a purpose. A direction. They climb higher and higher in the fireplace, crackling and hissing pleasantly. I lean
forward to warm my hands, to see if I can feel anything anymore.

My mind is unfolding, smoothing out the creases in my memory, lining things back up.

I can’t feel anything. I close my eyes and lean closer.

It was impossible. It would have taken millions of years. It would have required too many elements, too many degrees of difficulty.

I am beginning to feel something again.

“What the fuck’s that smell?” Leo says. His back is to mine.

I would have needed to harness everything I’d ever learned, plus powers I’ve never had. It was impossible.

“Oh shit,” Leo says and then he’s on top of me, pounding his hands on my shirt, my face, my hair.

Chapter 12

“W
ere you trying to hurt yourself?” the EMT asks me. He’s on the floor of Bruce Duper’s living room wrapping my hands with gauze.

“No,” I say, “I fell asleep.”

“In front of the fire?” the EMT says. “You just fell asleep sitting in front of the fire with your hands outstretched?”

“I guess so,” I say. “I’ve been under quite a bit of stress.” The EMT shakes his head like he can’t believe someone as stupid as myself exists and then continues wrapping me. I’ve sustained some minor burns, nothing requiring hospitalization. My eyebrows are gone, however, and my bangs are scorched. My hands are bubbled with blisters and they ache, but the EMT says the damage is nothing compared to what would have happened had Leo not been here.

“All right,” the EMT says, “you’re going to want to keep your hands moisturized with aloe vera and vitamin E. Change the gauze every six to eight hours.”

“Will he scar?” Ginny asks.

“Only mentally,” the EMT says and starts packing up his supplies.

There’s a knock at the front door so Bruce excuses himself; when he comes back a few moments later, Sheriff Drew is beside him.

“Heard the nine-one-one call,” Sheriff Drew says, “wanted to make sure everything was okay out here.”

“Just dandy,” Leo says, immediately going into lawyer mode. “Nothing for you to see here, Officer.”

“I’m not an officer,” Sheriff Drew says. “I’m a sheriff, and I’d appreciate it if you took pains to remember that.”

Leo doesn’t say anything; instead he just salutes Sheriff Drew. “Okay, Leo,” I say. “Sheriff Drew is just doing his job.”

“You’re right, Paul,” Sheriff Drew says, but there is nothing friendly in his voice. His time for caring and compassion has long since passed.

“Unless you’ve got another warrant,” Leo says, “I’d like you to leave my client alone. Your behavior is bordering on harassment and I’m not opposed to suing you, believe me.”

“No need for that, I’ll just make my way on out of here,” Sheriff Drew says and then turns to leave. Before he’s walked three steps, though, he stops and turns back around. “You’re an anthropologist, right, Paul?”

“Don’t answer him.” Leo says.

“I am,” I say.

“Then maybe you can help me out here,” the sheriff says. “I’ve been having a debate with the forensics guy upstate. He says luminol can show blood evidence from, gosh, fifty years ago if conditions are right. He says that even if someone spilled pools of blood and cleaned them up with bleach and soap and, God, just about any kind of cleanser, the luminol would still be able to detect the blood. I say there’s no way that’s true. What’s your take?”

“Don’t answer that,” Leo says.

“He’s right,” I say.

“Goddamn it, Paul,” Leo shouts. “You’re going to be hearing from my office, Officer Drew. We’ll take you for every goddamn penny you’re worth! Do you hear me?”

“I’ll save you some time.” Sheriff Drew reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of coins and tosses them onto the floor. “You can call me when you have a license to practice in this state.”

Before Sheriff Drew has even walked out the front door, my hands are already bleeding again. The EMT, who’s been watching the proceedings as though it were network TV, just starts rewrapping my hands without saying a word. Before he goes, he tells me not to clench my fists so tightly for the next two weeks or so.

THE FOUR OF
us eat dinner in near silence. Leo is so angry with me, however, that every few minutes he says, “Damn,” under his breath and then shakes his head. The only other sounds come from outside, where the wind is howling and a fierce rain is pounding the lake. My hands throb with a dull ache that I am certain will turn into sharp pain once the six Advil I have taken begin to wear off.

The truth is that luminol can show traces of blood evidence for as long as the evidence remains visible through infrared light. Forensic anthropologists have used luminol on the Shroud of Turin, inside Egyptian tombs, and have even used it with some success on ancient burials found in Africa that date back to the Neanderthal era.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Leo.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, “be smart.”

“Give him a break, Leo,” Ginny says. “Hasn’t he been through enough today?”

“You’re right,” Leo says, standing up. He takes his napkin and crumples it up into a ball and tosses onto his plate. “You are absolutely right, Ginny. Paul has been through enough to last a lifetime. All of our lifetimes. And you know what? I say, God bless Paul! I say, give the guy a hand for setting himself on fire and then for allowing the local law to harass him and prod him and then provide expert testimony.”