Things You Should Know Read online

  Henry and I made up. We didn’t talk about anything. He just came over to my house with new Ping-Pong paddles and said, “My mother bought me these, wanna play?” and I said, “Why not.”

  Two weeks to the day after the accident, while Mrs., Henry, and I were eating lunch—reheated tuna noodle casserole, with fresh chips crumbled on top, and green Gatorade—someone rang the doorbell and, without waiting for an answer, tried the knob.

  Mrs. went to the kitchen door, cracked it open, and called, “Can I help you?” around the corner of the house.

  “I’ve come about my son,” the woman said. She stepped into the kitchen, opened her purse, pulled out a stack of papers, and with the palm of her hand spread them out into a messy fan on the kitchen table. Henry and I moved our plates back to give her more room. We held our napkins up to our mouths to hide our expressions.

  “These are his report cards. He mostly got straight As except in spelling and music; he wasn’t very good at music, couldn’t carry a tune. This is his first school picture,” she said, digging out a photo with three rows of kids, twenty-six young scrubbed faces, one kid holding a black sign with white lettering, HITHER HILLS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, KINDERGARTEN. “We didn’t buy his school picture this year. He said he didn’t like it. He thought his hair looked funny. Why didn’t I just buy it anyway?” She was talking to herself. “Maybe if I’d taken the photo this wouldn’t have happened. Why do I have these?” she asked, looking at Mrs. “What are they for? The insurance company wants me to calculate what he would have been worth if he’d had a life. I have to give them a figure. It’s like playing The Price Is Right.” She stopped for a minute, drew in a breath, and pressed the back of her hand against her eyes, blotting them. “You want to see how it feels, you want me to take one of yours?” She put her hand on Henry. “Christmas is coming,” she said, even though it was July. “What will I do?”

  The dead boy’s mother stood crying in the Henrys’ kitchen and when Henry’s mother tried again to touch her, to comfort her, she wailed. Then, without a word, without a sound other than the swallowing of great gulps of air, she turned and walked out the kitchen door.

  Henry’s mother scooped up all the dead boy’s report cards, prize certificates, letters from the governor for being on the honor roll, and handed them to me. “Go on, get her before she goes,” she said.

  I charged out the door, got to the lady before she got into her car, and said, “You forgot these.”

  “I didn’t forget them,” she said, again blotting her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Well, I’ll put them in your car,” I said. I went over to the passenger side, opened the door, and left them there on the seat.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said.

  I fought the urge to tell her, I’m not one of them. I’m not his son. I’m just the boy who lives next door, part-time. I’m no one, nothing. Instead I said, “I hope you feel better soon,” and walked back toward the house.

  Henry came out and on the ground where the lady’s car had been, there was a photo, it must have fallen out of her purse, my hands, the car. It must have just slipped away and landed face up next to an oil stain.

  “That’s him,” Henry said, picking up the photo, wiping it against his shirt, rubbing the boy’s face over his heart.

  “We should give it back to her.”

  “No,” Henry said. “He’s mine.”

  One afternoon while Mrs., baby June, and Henry were somewhere else, I watched Mr. digging a shallow trough through the yard. He was bent over a shovel, flipping clods of grass and dirt off to the side. He pulled a wilted piece of notebook paper from the back pocket of his shorts and consulted a diagram. Then, with his fingers as rulers, his feet as yardsticks, he began measuring his work. By the time I got from my bedroom window, across the tumor-o’-land, and into the Henrys’ backyard, Mr. was sprinkling the floor of the trough with lima beans.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as he opened a third bag of beans and dropped them one at a time into the trough. He didn’t answer. “Planting?”

  As soon as the beans were gone, he hauled over two large bags of charcoal briquettes and started laying the charcoal out over the beans.

  “It looks like something out of Gourmet magazine,” I said. “A new kind of barbecue recipe.”

  When he finished laying out all the charcoal, he sat down on a deck chair, took off his shoes and socks, pulled his shirt over his head, wiped his face and chest, dropped it down in a ball, and sighed a big one.

  “They’re not home yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Mr. got up off the deck chair, picked up a can of starter fluid and went down the length of the trough, holding the can at crotch level, squeezing it so the fluid arced up like piss then softly splashed down onto the coals. In seconds the coals went from matte black to shiny wet and then back to matte black, as the stuff soaked in. He put down the can and picked up a box of those long fireplace matches.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” I asked. I thought it was probably another one of those things some people did that I just didn’t know anything about.

  Mr. Henry stood at the end of his trough, his runway of coal, lit three matches at once, held them in a tight fist, bowed his head, then dropped them in one by one. A line of flame spread the length of the ditch, sometimes golden, sometimes blue, sometimes spitting on itself. The coals shifted. Mr. stood at the end of the line looking down at his feet. He stepped out off the grass into the fire. In a split second he had both feet in the fire and was doing his best not to run. You could see it in his legs, in the muscles twitching.

  “Don’t,” I shouted, going toward him.

  He put both arms up in front of him, like someone sleepwalking, and the fluid that had splashed back on his hands ignited and his hands turned into ten fingers of flame, like a special effect, like something that would happen to a cartoon character. I stepped back and watched the flames jump three feet high, the hair on his arms and legs melt away, the edges of his shorts turn black, the flames at first just kissing him then starting to eat him alive. Mr. was silent until halfway down when he began to howl, to cry, and wail.

  Mrs. came flying out the kitchen door, her purse over her arm, bag of groceries still in hand, screaming, “Don’t just stand there, do something.” She dropped the groceries and charged toward Mr. I ran into the Henrys’ house and called the fire department. From the kitchen window, I could see Mrs. chasing Mr. around the yard, tackling him at the edge of the woods. The fire had reached out of the trough, chewed through the empty briquette bags, and was gnawing on the porch. I saw Henry and baby June standing off to the side, watching their mother in her Bermuda shorts lying on top of their father.

  I went to the front door and waited for help.

  Two days later, while Mr., all red and black, charred, swollen, bandaged, blotchy, with his arms and legs tied down, was still in intensive care, two men came and took away the remains of the new deck.

  “He wants to be punished,” Mrs. told the men. “Even though this was an accident, he’s convinced it was his fault.”

  When they were gone Mrs. took the garden hose, a ladder, her trusty Playtex gloves and scrub brush, and with an industrial-sized bottle of lemon-lime Palmolive she washed the side of the house, the patio, and even the grass. “Go on down to the basement and bring up the beach things,” she told Henry and me when she finished. “We’re taking a few days off.”

  Henry and I plunged into the clammy cool of the basement, into the history packed away on deep wooden shelves Mr. had put up a few summers before. We took out all of Henry’s old toys, played with them again, and lived our lives over. We did the memory quiz—do you remember when?—testing to see if we agreed on history, making sure we’d gotten everything right. We pulled out the beach chairs, inflatable rafts, and the Styrofoam cooler, and loaded them all into the back of Mrs.’s station wagon.

  While Mrs. and baby June stayed at the foamy edge of the
ocean, Henry and I danced in the waves, hurling ourselves toward them, daring the ocean to knock us out, to carry us away.

  Despite our being coated with layers and layers of thick white sunblock, by the time the lifeguard pulled his station far back on the sand and walked off with the life preserver, we were red-hot like steamed lobsters.

  We walked back to the motel dragging the beach chairs, the Styrofoam cooler, and all the extra sand our bathing suits would hold. To save time and hot water, Henry and I showered together and then turned the bathroom over to Mrs. and baby June. On our way out of the bathroom, Mrs. grabbed Henry by the head and recombed his hair the normal Henry way. He didn’t stop her. He didn’t rearrange it Stanton style.

  Scrubbed and desalted, we sat at the four stations of the dinette set, eating two large and wonderful pizzas, drinking orange soda from cans, and simultaneously watching television. After dinner we all walked down the boardwalk watching seagulls plucking free food out of the sand and the sky and disappearing into darkness. Mrs. bought each of us a warm puffy ball of fried dough dipped in powdered sugar, and as we walked, baby June fell asleep in her mother’s arms.

  It was eight-thirty when we got back to the room. Mrs. lay down on the bed with baby June. Henry and I writhed around, pillow fighting, changing TV channels, and generally spinning on the edge until finally Mrs. had enough, took a twenty-dollar bill out of the nightstand, and told us to put on sweatshirts and long pants, to go out, and blow off some steam. “Be careful and have fun.”

  We raced out of the motel and back onto the boardwalk. Immediately, Henry bought a bucket of french fries and a Coke. We ate our way down the wooden planks, stopping to play darts and balloons, frog flip, and Skee-Ball, stuffing our pockets with cheap plush prizes. We bought vanilla-and-chocolate soft-swirl ice-cream cones, and fresh-made caramel corn. We sat on a bench eating while a summer’s night parade of all human possibility swept by: deformed people, big families, small families, orphans, kids on first dates, guys in sawed-off leather jackets, old people. My skin was so hot from the sunburn that it felt cold. Shivery goose bumps covered my arms, legs, and the back of my neck. I was sugar-intoxicated. Music came out of every store, arcade, and refreshment stand, a thousand radios all tuned to a different station.

  As we got closer to the amusement park at the end of the boardwalk, the music got louder, each little radio competing with the next, and all of them competing with the mechanical oom pah pah of the giant carousel that cut through the night. At the gates where the boardwalk met the park, everything melted into a multicolored, multiflavored, sensomatic, dizzying, swirly whirl. We had to run one way or the other, but couldn’t stay there in the black hole of sensation. We charged toward the amusement park, toward the ticket booth. Henry slammed down what was left of the twenty and got two fistfuls of tickets. We ran from ride to ride watching each one for a few seconds, deciding which were the best investments: Roller Coaster, Haunted House, Swiss Avalanche.

  “That one definitely,” Henry said, pointing across the park to spaceships taking off into the sky, trailing red-and-white afterglow. “Come on.” We ran to the far edge of the park, to this last ride, sandwiched in the corner that touched the ocean. Rockets Round the Moon. There was a plot of grass, a metal chain-link fence and then barnacle-covered rocks, railroad tie shoring, and the water evenly slapping against the edge of the world.

  Henry gave the man our tickets and we slid past him and ran toward the space octopus, climbing into our own personal rocket ship, pulling the chrome safety bar down in front of us. We took off smoothly, the giant mechanical arms swinging us high into the air, shifting, then throwing us out toward the sea, where we hung over the water for a second before being snapped back. We were pitching and swaying, more like a bucking bronco or something with transmission trouble than your typical flying machine. Henry threw himself to the left and then to the right, slamming against me, getting the ship rocking in a rhythm all its own. The huge groaning arms flew us up, down, round and round. When we landed, Henry was absolutely sparkling. He pounded the side of our rocket, the hollow metal echoed. “Again, again,” he shouted. The ride emptied and refilled. The ticket taker came by and Henry dropped too many tickets into his hand. The man counted them but didn’t give any back. “More,” Henry screamed. “More.”

  The ride started again and we were up, up, and away. Whirling, twirling. I closed my eyes and held on. I was being pulled in a thousand different directions. I was struggling to stay in one place. I could feel the force of being whipped through the air again and again starting to bend my face. I saw the picture from Life magazine of a man in a wind tunnel, his mouth stretched out, blown back, teeth and gums exposed. I was that man.

  We landed smooth and safe, two feet above the ground. All there was to do was push the safety bar forward and step down and out.

  “Once more, just once more,” Henry said, digging into his pockets, dropping the last of the tickets into the man’s hands.

  We were airborne, we were flying, Rockets Round the Moon. I focused on the taillights of the ship in front of us, up and down, it went before us, side to side. Looking at it, I knew what would come next, I had a second to prepare. Up and away. Pushing off my knee, Henry stood. He rose up, steadied himself, then raised his arms up and open. His legs pressed against the safety bar. All of his weight was there. I pulled back on the bar hoping it would hold. I pulled back hoping Henry wouldn’t take flight, fall free, roll out over the nose and into the sea. He stood in a trance, face taut, hair blowing, arms extended, scarecrow of the universe. Then his face dissolved into a colorless puddle of flesh. His jaw fell open, raw sewage spilled out and was whipped into the wind behind us. I slid down under the safety bar, onto the floor. I wrapped my arms around his legs, pressed my cheek to his knee, and pulled down. I looked up to see Henry still standing, his face covered with his own chunky blue. From the floor I could smell the noxiousness of its mixture, hot and rich, like some hearty soup a grandmother would serve on a winter night.

  When we landed, the ticket man came running over with a bucket I thought was for Henry, but instead he flipped the safety bar back, pulled us out, and dumped a bucketful of sudsy water into the belly of our ship. “You fool,” he yelled at Henry, who was unsteady on his feet, searching his pockets for more ride tickets, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Go back where you belong. Go home.”

  PLEASE REMAIN CALM

  I wish I were dead. I have tried to keep it a secret, but it leaks out: “I wish I were dead,” I blurted to the woman who is now my wife, the first morning we woke up together, the sheets still hot, stinking of sex.

  “Should I take it personally?” she asked, covering herself.

  “No,” I said and began to cry.

  “It’s not so easy to die,” she says. And she should know, she’s a woman whose milieu is disaster—a specialist in emergency medicine. All day she is at work, putting the pieces back together and then she comes home to me. She tells me about the man run over by a train, how they carried in each of his legs in separate canvas bags. She tells me about the little boy doused in oil and deep-fried.

  “Hi honey, I’m home,” she says.

  I hold my breath.

  “I know you’re here, your briefcase is in the front hall. Where are you?”

  I wait to answer.

  “Honey?”

  I am sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Today’s the day,” I tell her.

  “What’s different today?” she asks.

  “Nothing. Nothing is different about today—that’s the point. I feel the same today as I did yesterday and the day before. It’s insufferable. Today,” I repeat.

  “Not today,” she says.

  “Now’s the time,” I say.

  “Not the time.”

  “The moment has come.”

  “The moment has passed.”

  Every day I wish I didn’t have to live a minute more, I wish I were someplace else, someplace ne
w, someplace that never existed before. Death is a place without history, it’s not like people have been there and then come back to tell you what a great time they had, that they highly recommend it, the food is wonderful and there’s an incredible hotel right on the water.

  “You think death is like Bali,” my wife says.

  We have been married for almost two years; she doesn’t believe me anymore. It is as if I’ve cried wolf, screamed wolf, been a wolf, too many times.

  “Did you stop at the store?”

  I nod. I am in charge of the perishables, the things that must be consumed immediately. Every day on my way home I shop. Before I was married I would buy only one of each thing, a bottle of beer, a can of soup, a single roll of toilet paper—that sounds fine on a Monday when you think there will be no Tuesday, but what about late on Friday night when the corner store is closed?

  My wife buys in bulk, she is forever stocking up, she is prepared in perpetuity.

  “Did you remember milk?”

  “I bought a quart.”

  “Not a half gallon?”

  “You’re lucky it’s not a pint.”

  We are vigilant people, equally determined. The ongoing potential for things to go wrong is our bond—a fascination with crisis, with control. She likes to prevent, to repair, and I to wallow, to roll obsessively in the possibilities like some perverted pig. Our closets are packed with emergency supplies: freeze-dried food, a back-up generator, his and hers cans of Mace.

  She opens a beer and flips through a catalog for emergency management specialists. This is how she relaxes—“What about gas masks? What if something happens, what if there’s an event?”