Every Shallow Cut Read online

  I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t have a woman. When he was twenty-one, with biceps the size of cannonballs, he always had a girl around. They never lasted long but I always figured that was because he was playing the field. Maybe I’d been wrong. For all I knew he was gay or asexual. I should’ve had the nerve, curiosity, or the concern to ask, but I just didn’t.

  “Have you been to the cemetery lately?” I asked.

  His lips smoothed into a bloodless line. “Every week.”

  “Why so often?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. I thought with shoulders like that I’d be able to rule the world. “It relaxes me. I go out there and walk the little paths through the place. Bring a few flowers, say some prayers. The ritual of it helps me to meditate.”

  “I didn’t know you meditated.”

  “I don’t except when I’m there.”

  Exhaustion hit me heavily. I glanced at the window and saw it was dark outside. I’d lost another day to the haze. I went to the back door and called Church. He pranced inside, his muzzle covered with marrow. I sat again and Church flopped at my feet and immediately went to sleep. His snores soon began to rattle the copper pots.

  My brother kept scrutinizing Church. He was already worried about the dog. His eyes flashed with visions of shit-stained carpets, pee-soaked couch cushions, shredded throw pillows, having his throat torn out in his sleep. His breathing grew more rapid. I wondered if he was going to suddenly grab up a frying pan and attack my sleeping dog. I glanced around for a weapon. I spotted a ladle. In a clutch it might still prove useful. I imagined my brother and I in a death match involving kitchen utensils. I saw us wrestling and bleeding across his immensely clean floor, me whacking him over the head trying to crush his skull with the ladle. I could hear the ka-bong of the frying pan smashing my jaw, could almost feel my teeth rattling loose in my head. I don’t know why I didn’t see myself drawing the gun. I seemed to keep forgetting there was a gun.

  “You’re always welcome here,” he said, “but the dog stays in the garage. He stinks.”

  I heard the hanging implication in his voice. He meant, The dog stinks even worse than you.

  “I’ll give him a bath,” I said.

  “That’s not good enough. Then the house will just smell like wet dog, and that’s even worse.”

  “I’ll dry him.”

  “Don’t argue, right?” he said.

  I looked deep into my brother’s face. As usual, there was no give there, no mercy. He always held his chin high, his shoulders squared. It was a good tactic that made him more imposing. He was still tall and muscular and cut a real swath. His eyes were hard as shale.

  I got up, shook his hand and said, “Good seeing you,” then started for the door. “Thanks for dinner.” Churchill grumbled as he climbed to his feet and followed me.

  “You’re leaving?” my brother asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Because of a dog?”

  There was no way to explain it to him so I just said, “Yes, because of a dog.”

  “What the hell has happened to you?”

  “Is that the question you’re really asking?”

  He gave me the sad long once-over and shook his head sorrowfully. He couldn’t meet my gaze. “All right, the dog can stay in the house. But give him a fucking bath now. And he doesn’t roam the house until he’s completely dry. And if he pisses or shits inside even once, he’s in the garage for good.”

  That sounded fair. And all I was looking for was fair.

  I stood under the shower with the spray coming down, the bathtub about half full, water coming halfway up my calves. Church sat at the other end of the tub with two-in-one shampoo and conditioner worked into his fur and a pile of bubbles on top of his head. He didn’t look amused. My brother wasn’t going to be either.

  I still thought it would make a funny scene in the movie version of my memoirs, with some B-grade beefcake actor playing the loose cannon dude in the shower with the trained dog barking on command. There would be witty dialogue because I wouldn’t be the screenwriter. The guy would say something cute to the dog, and the dog would make funny faces and groan and belch, and the audience would laugh. On the daytime talk shows the screenwriter could say he wrote the script in a divine cathartic expulsion. God moved through his body and into his fingers. The host would have tears in her eyes.

  I got out and towelled off. Then I drained the tub and rinsed Churchill and dried him too. My brother had a lot of aftershave, colognes, and body powders on his bathroom counter. Too many, I thought, but who was I to judge.

  My brother was sitting in his den with his feet up on an ottoman, reading a celebrity magazine. It surprised me more than anything else we’d talked about all day. I’d never have imagined him reading that kind of thing. Then again, he was squinting so badly that maybe he thought he was reading the Wall Street Journal.

  He looked up and said, “You’re tired. Go get some sleep.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I turned to go and he said, “So what are your plans?”

  “To go to bed.”

  “After that.”

  My shoulders tensed and my stomach tightened. “Dream the dreams of the righteous.”

  It made him toss his magazine aside. He couldn’t quite hit me with his usual glare, but a dark light filled his eyes. There was sadness in there, and even some humility, but still no mercy. My brother liked to educate and advise and nail down matters of large import, especially if they weren’t his own.

  I cocked my head at him and wondered which topic he was going to tackle right now. What he was going to tell me to do first thing in the morning? Shave my beard? Find a job? Hit the gym? Check in with the collection agencies and start the long process of cleaning up my credit score? Meditate at the cemetery? I waited expectantly. He wet his lips. He stared at my dog. He sniffed the air and could only smell his own body powder. Church had a dab of it on his ass still.

  But the light in his eyes dimmed and he sat back in his chair. He reached for the magazine again. He nodded to himself once more. I wish I could hear the conversations he had with himself in his head. His inner voice seemed to always be agreeing with him, he was always nodding along. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  He turned back to me and said, “See you in the morning.”

  “Right.”

  The guest room was larger than the master bedroom in my former house. It was freshly painted in sky blue and decorated in a country style, with lots of natural wood and wicker. I was thankful there wasn’t a butter churn or wagon wheel in the corner. I’d been right about the fruity air freshener. It spritzed the air on a timer and made the place smell like a funeral parlour.

  Folded up neatly at the foot of the bed was a blanket my mother had nearly finished crocheting during her final days in the hospital, waiting for the docs to fix her varicose veins. I was surprised and glad to see it again.

  On a perfectly dusted shelf smelling of pine oil stood all of my novels. I’d sent him a copy of each one of my books through some irrepressible sense of pride. The spines had never been cracked. I hadn’t expected them to be. But shit, to discover that he chose the celebrity weekly gossip mags over me, that hurt a bit.

  I wondered why he kept my novels in the guest room. Was it merely as decoration? The books, taken as a whole, had nice colourful covers. Or was he actually offering them up as entertainment to his guests, whoever and however many of them there might be? I got absolutely no sense that anyone had ever stayed in this room before me.

  Had he left my books here because he knew that one day I’d lose everything and be forced to come stay with him? So I could see, packed into thirty inches of shelf space, all the fruits of my labor and my life? Did he want me to ask myself, Was it worth it? Look at how small my accomplishments are. A child could carry them all away in a tiny red wagon.

  On another shelf I found all of my mother’s photo albums. At least two dozen of them. My brother once said he would send some to me,
but he never did and I never reminded him. I took the first one down. It wasn’t full of baby pictures. My mother used to keep free photos going back decades in a big box and decided one weekend to put them all into albums, in no discernible order. I flipped through the pages.

  My old man watering the lawn, washing the car, sweeping the patio, reshingling the roof. His Navy tattoos could barely be seen on his forearms beneath the thick black hair. His muscles bulged and he smiled with all his hipness, a real sharp joy. My mother cooking, sitting around the table smoking at parties, wearing funny birthday hats, standing at waterfalls, on beaches, in front of Broadway theatres. My brother as a youth, on a bicycle, on a motorcycle, in a Mustang. With a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, another blonde, another brunette, even a black girl as my father stood in the background looking uncomfortably aware of his own inherent old-school racism. Me with my childhood love, at the prom, holding my diploma, at college orientation. My mother holding up my first novel with a wide smile, her eyes lit with delight. My mother holding up my second novel, looking less interested, not so happy. My mother holding up my third book, bored, faking a smile and doing a poor job of it. I remembered what she said next. “I read the bestseller lists every week, and your name is never on it.” My wedding. My wife. My lips pressed to her temple, eyes closed, mouth caught in some kind of half-whisper, but I couldn’t remember what I was saying. Her eyes closed too, lips tugged into the smallest of grins. We had a huge print of that picture hanging over our fireplace. When she left, I took it down and kicked it to pieces and chucked it in. Let the next family use it as kindling.

  My brother opened the door and said, “What is it?”

  “What?”

  “I thought you called me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I heard you say something.”

  “I don’t think I said anything.”

  “I heard you.”

  “I was ruminating.”

  “It was loud.”

  “I ruminate loudly.”

  Finally, that seemed to appease him. “Oh.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “You didn’t. Good night.”

  “Night.”

  “Don’t let the dog sleep on the bed.”

  He vanished down the hall. I closed the door. I turned and Church was trying his best to leap onto the bed but his stubby legs couldn’t make it. I hefted him up. We crawled under my mother’s half-finished blanket. He let out a low sigh of contentment as I stroked his meaty back. I shut my eyes.

  Church’s snoring woke me at around dawn. I walked my brother’s house in the rosy morning light trying to get a better sense of him, but it didn’t help. I turned the knob on his bedroom door and stood there watching him sleep. He was a mess, strewn across the dishevelled sheets. He snored nearly as loud as Church did. The blankets were in a ball at his feet and one pillow was on the floor. He looked like he’d gone fifteen rounds with his nightmares. I wondered if he slept this way every night or only because I’d invaded his home, and probably his dreams.

  I circled town falling back into the same Saturday night roaming pattern I’d established twenty-five years ago. North up the strip down 357, then coming around and passing the high school, the rec centre, the local community college, east to the ice cream parlour and movie theatre. I expected to be assailed by memories but only a few of them came. The places had changed too much, or maybe I’d just forgotten. Buildings had been torn down, parking lots expanded, a new science building added to the college and a security gate around the front of the high school. Two guards were posted in a small booth. I drove up to a semaphore arm and wondered how many other members of my class had come home to stare at the buses and kids and visit our old teachers in a befuddled effort to rediscover themselves.

  Holding a clipboard, one of the guards poked his head out of a tiny window and asked for my ID.

  “I’m just looking,” I told him.

  “Looking? Looking at what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does your child attend this school?”

  “I’m revisiting the scene of the crime.”

  “What crime?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure. I felt like I’d been lied to, or that somehow it was me who’d told the lies that had become my life.

  “Are you reporting a crime?” he said.

  Yes, I almost told him. One against me. Against all of mankind. Against God and nature. Against the splintered remnants of my generation. Against you, you dumbass fuck. You work inside a three-by-three teeny booth. You’re wearing a badge on your shirt but you’re not a cop. You’ve got a nice thick leather utility belt packed with pepper spray, a nightstick, maybe a taser. When they really let you dress up they might even give you a sidearm to chase the drug-dealing tykes down the halls, just so you can practise your diving and rolling across the gym room floor.

  I craned my neck and saw they had a little television in there hooked to a DVD player. They were watching an Asian action picture about a Japanese girl in her little school uniform who was actually an assassin with a machine gun in her cooch. I used to have a copy before I turned it over to the nameless pawnshop. The other security guard turned his head to glance at me. I was surprised they were watching the movie with subtitles, the only way you should ever watch a foreign flick.

  “I need your ID, sir.”

  You always knew you’d gotten under someone’s skin when they hit you with the “sir” that came across nastier than “you piece of shit.” Even Churchill picked up on it. He let out a low groan. He angled his chin back and forth like he couldn’t shake a buzzing insect out of his ear. I was doing the same thing. I snapped on the radio and air conditioner taking deep breaths. The music was loud and angry and aggressive. I liked it. I couldn’t make out the lyrics but I could sense what the song was about. The guard kept talking at me. He put his hand on his hip like he had a holster there. He didn’t. I put my hand in my pocket like I had a gun there. I did.

  Yes, Officer High School Security Guard, I’d like to report a crime. Go inside and find my guidance counsellor, grab him by the collar and shake him until his back molars crack to pieces. Rap him upside the head with a dictionary. Tell him he shouldn’t perpetuate the fallacy that we can all be whatever we want to be. That all we have to do to achieve it is want something badly enough and work diligently enough. Spray his eyes and watch him flail screaming across his desk. Tell him to find a new line of work. Tell him there are a lot of others coming up behind me who’ll be visiting him soon. Tell him an army of his former victims is marching across the face of the earth at this very moment. Tell him I’ll soon be back with a different face and a different dog in a different car, but it will be me, and I’ll still have a gun in my pocket. And the next time I might just draw it, and the next time I might just pull the trigger. Yes, I want to report a crime. Someone is being murdered.

  I drove by the childhood home of my first love. She’d never friended me on Facebook. I didn’t blame her. Not all of us need our pasts as urgently as I apparently needed mine.

  Her mother was a librarian who enjoyed recommending volumes of classic literature to me when I was a kid. Most afternoons after school I’d read there seated at a shadowed back table away from chattering students busy writing term papers or figuring out how to cheat at English exams. She’d just gotten her daughter a job at the library and the three of us would sometimes discuss novels at length, drawn together to form our own little book club. When they worked late I’d help them clear the carts and put magazines and newspapers back on the racks. They sometimes invited me out to dinner.

  My childhood love and I would share ice cream sodas and platters of french fries. Her father was dead and she didn’t have any siblings. I had somehow wormed my way into her life and she seemed to consider it both an amusing interlude and a slight imposition.

  We shared our first kiss together, in her back yard, at fifteen. I took her to my first R-rated movie later that
same year, sneaking in through a fire exit door. During the sex scenes I was horny, scared, and more than a little angry. I reached out to pet her breast and she took my wrist in a death-grip and held it in her lap. That was even worse. The heat from her belly, the nearness to her crotch, the occasional quiver whenever she laughed distracted me even worse than if I’d gotten hold of her tit.

  I parked down the street and watched the house for about an hour. The area was empty of any activity. No children played in their yards. No one tended to their lawns or gardens. I thought about how that would’ve gone against my old man’s grain. He was always doing something for the house—sweeping the patio, weeding the flowerbeds, washing the siding. I’d felt the same way later on. I’d swept the front porch the morning the bank took my house.

  I saw her mother come home and pull into the driveway. The woman had gone completely grey but somehow it looked good on her. She climbed out of the car and went around to the hatchback. She popped it open and glowered at the dozen or so bags of groceries jammed in tightly around boxes of paperbacks. She’d been slim when I’d known her twenty-five years ago but now she was stocky, thick, but with a real presence and power to her. Still, there was no way she was eating all of that food by herself. It took her four trips to carry all the groceries in. No one helped her. Then she slammed the hatchback, got back in the car, and drove away down the street.

  I decided what the hell. I climbed out, crossed the lawn, knocked, and my childhood love opened the door.

  She was still incredibly pretty, cute in the way you always describe the girl next door. The crows’ feet and parentheses around her mouth added real character to her face. She’d kept in shape. She was trim and well-muscled, dressed nicely in tight jeans and a sleeveless blouse. There were subtle striations of colour in her brown hair, a weaving of red and blonde hues with dashes of silver. She still had a boldness in her eyes. She’d tell me to fuck off but she wouldn’t lie to me.