The Invaders (14 page)

I walked up to the window now and kicked around looking for any cigarette butts, but the gravel was clean of them, and our small window was tinfoiled over, shutting it all out. I looked around and found a rock. I took it in my palm and hit the windowpane as hard as I could, then watched the glass fall inside the room. I stuck my hand through the broken pane, trying to unlock the window.

I felt the pain flash quick and pulled my hand out. “Damn it.”

I saw the blood seep to the surface and flow out the length of my palm. I had gotten myself good. Running back to the car, I cradled my bleeding hand, trying to apply pressure on the cut. I found a cardigan and wrapped the sleeve around my hand, trying not to get any blood on the seats. The street was empty and I was trying to break into my mother's house like that was something people do.

FUCK THIS FUCKING SHIT.
I decided to have all my hair cut off. All of it. I made Cheryl shave my head and I think my dad was pretty pissed off. She did a crap job with her fucked-up hand. Who comes home covered in blood mumbling about an accident with a grocery cart? My father told her she needed stitches and she looked at him like he was from Mars, then wrapped her hand in gauze and Band-Aids.

My father wanted me to get a proper cut at the barber, but this way it was questionable what injuries I really sustained in the crash. I had a scar on the back of my head from when I was a kid and now it was there for everyone to see and to question. It was an indictment of my father in a way that felt good. He was acting weird even when he was being supportive. It pissed me off that he looked at me as some kind of weakling that he had to prop up and cheerlead. Where was he before?

I met with Richard Shepard and he said that unfortunately they had to fill the position with someone else. The workflow could not stop while I was in recovery. Also, no one wanted a crippled person trying
to sell them health products. He didn't say that, but I knew that's what he meant when he told me spending time on my recovery was the most important thing right now. How would I encourage trust if I was trying to be discreet about my arm? How would I bring anyone into an equation of success when I myself might be a fucked-up gimp forever? I didn't see what the opportunities were anymore. I only saw fucked-up situations and obstacles. My father wasn't hearing me and wanted me to go on other interviews. He wanted me to hit the ground running. He wanted my survival skills to kick in. It was an arm, I still had another one, and he had seen plenty of guys out in the field with malformed hands and other unfortunate body parts. They weren't the best sales guys, but their take-home was pretty okay. I could still do this. Besides, maybe my arm would heal and I could be like new.

I wasn't hired anywhere. My father pretended to be surprised. My doctor told me to focus on physical therapy. I was focused on the fact that I couldn't even grab my cock with my right hand anymore. After the latest sad display of trying to squeeze a rubber ball, I sat on the couch in the living room watching guys and girls my age engage in feats of strength on TV. Rope pulls and muddy scrambles up wood-plank walls and fumbled runs through tire obstacle courses for the hope of winning one hundred thousand dollars. Even the women looked tough with their muscled arms and braided pigtails. They were shouting at the guys to run faster, hand them the flag quicker; they muscled one another out of the way trying to reach the goal. The women had painted stripes on their faces to look savage and their faces contorted with each scream of “GO.”

I had an erection and looked around to see if Cheryl or my dad were around. I stared at the girls on TV, covered in dirt and sweat, as they jumped up and down cheering. I sat on my left hand and waited for the pins and needles and then took out my penis and started to rub. I wanted to feel like it was someone else, not me, tugging. “The Mysterious Stranger,” we called it when we were younger, laughing.

“I'm dying for a drink. What time is it?” I heard Cheryl say from the other room.

I panicked and stopped, slid down on the couch and tucked my penis into my waistband, praying for it to go down.

“I didn't even know you were in here,” Cheryl said, standing over me, smiling. “So, is it too early for a cocktail or not?”

“I don't know.”

I wanted to get up and run upstairs, but I was afraid she'd see my erection. I turned the channel away from the competition and onto cooking and heard her say, “She makes the best quiche,” like she was sad about it.

“JESUS!”

“What's wrong? Are you in pain?”

I didn't know how to get rid of her and her concern, so I said, “Just leave me alone, okay?”

Her face fell and I instantly felt bad. She was the only one who gave a shit about me around here and I tried to be nice when she doted on me.

“Well, I'm going to have a drink with or without you,” she said.

“Are you ever going to take that thing off?” I asked, pointing to her makeshift hand wrapping.

“When it heals,” she said.

I stared down at my hands, one burning with pain and the other blank. It was the first time since the accident that I had gotten an erection and now it was gone.

“I'll have a beer, I guess,” I said.

She smiled at me like she thought we were bonding or something.

I REFUSED TO GO
to the doctor about my hand even after Jeffrey showed me pictures of what tetanus could do to a person. I didn't know what else to say but that I had been grocery shopping and cut my hand on a jagged part of the cart. Teddy asked where the groceries were. Jeffrey wanted to call the store and demand they pay for my doctor's visit. I told him I wasn't going anyway, and for a while the wound festered, but I got it under control. I stared at the length of the cut, how it split the life line in my palm in two.

Teddy said, “I guess we're all fucked up now.” Jeffrey was not amused. The mail had piled up while Teddy was in the hospital, so when workers started erecting a large white fence all around us, I couldn't believe it was happening so soon.

The workers said they were just doing what they were told and the association told me to check the letter they had sent.

I found it in the pile. It didn't mention anything about apprehending a fisherman in front of our house or about his crying child.
Or even mention Teddy's accident directly. I watched the workers build the white picket fence blocking access to the ocean and knew that once they were finished they wouldn't be allowed in, either. They worked furiously. Even from here I could tell it was plastic by its sheen in the sun. Everyone was on high alert and, as the letter requested, being vigilant. The neighborhood had never felt more unsafe and we were all eyeing one another as potential threats.

I looked down and realized I was still holding the letter in my hand and carefully reread it.
Brutal attack on the nature trail.
It felt so far away now, so impossible. I had hardly seen Steven since that day, just momentary glimpses while Fran ushered him off in the family SUV. I couldn't see anything through their tinted windows, but I let Steven see me. When they passed today, I stood in the driveway defiantly. Fran gave a sad, small wave. As if her plight was worse than the rest of ours.

Jeffrey was away on business, somewhere in Omaha, he said. He had been gone for two days and I was alone with Teddy, administering his pain medication, unsure how much was too much. He kept asking for more and I didn't want to deny him. I was the cause, after all. Jeffrey let me know that with his back turned toward me in bed. I was surprised he hadn't moved to the other room. I was waiting to find out how long I had here, or if he had been quietly trying to forgive me.

I walked around the house and toward the ocean and stared out. Storm clouds. Hurricane season was all they were talking about on the news lately. They wanted us to have provisions and go bags and piles of just-in-case sandbags. When black clouds would roll in and the pool would be closed on account of lightning nearby, the harbor master would sound an alarm, something even louder for the boats. A cannon would be shot and we knew it was time to come home. That's what I was waiting for now—a cannon to sound, something to tell us not to leave our homes, but it never came. The sky was too blue.

Jeffrey had told me to take Teddy around to the club. “We can't stop living.”

Teddy had hardly looked up from the television when Jeffrey said it. He'd absently clicked through the channels with his good arm, his other in a black sling.

I had assured Jeffrey that we would go.

“Cheryl?”

I turned around. Teddy was standing in the glass doorway, watching me weed the garden.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

“I think I'm almost finished,” I said.

He stepped out onto the slate walk and closer to the bushes where I was weeding. “What are they doing over there?” he said.

I stared at the workers and said, “Building a fence.”

“Who're they trying to keep out this time?” he asked.

“Everyone,” I said.

He looked out at the islands, at the giant looming Tudors, and sighed. “I miss sailing,” he said.

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Can you? Really? I don't think you know what it's like to not be able to do something.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

I looked up and he was pointing to his arm. He said, “Are you serious?”

“Point taken.”

It was the most we had spoken in years, I think, and it was almost nice. I pulled at the weeds with more fury, trying to keep the peonies from falling over. He sat down on a lawn chair, tapping his fingers on the glass dining table we had out here.

“So I screwed things up for you and my dad, huh?”

“Screwed them up how?”

“I'm the rotting anchor.”

“The rot has been there a long time,” I said.

“You don't have to talk about it,” he said, and I knew he didn't want to be the shoulder.

“How's your arm?” I asked.

“Fucked up.”

I put my hand on my hip, trying to be stern.

“I don't know. It doesn't work,” he said.

“It will,” I said.

“You're always the optimist, Cheryl. How do you do it?”

“I fooled you, too?” I said, smiling.

“No, not at all. I was being sarcastic,” he said.

We looked at each other and I wanted him to know the truth of things before he got any older. Like, one day you will love someone and then it will just go away and you will need to choose to hang on or you won't and you will never know which choice was the better one.

“Do you like birds?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Do you want to take a walk with me on the nature trail?”

“Isn't that where Steven was attacked?” he asked.

I kept wanting to go back, to see my secrets. Just not alone.

“He was alone” is what I said instead.

“I don't know what a middle-aged lady and a kid with a gimp arm are going to do to fend anyone off.”

I'm not middle aged
, I thought.

“Do you know cranes have about ten different ways of showing that they're being threatened?” I asked.

Teddy started laughing. “No, I had no idea.”

“Well, they do,” I said. “So if we have a few less than that we'll still be fine.”

“Maybe the cranes can go after anyone who tries to attack us.”

“No one's going to do anything to us,” I said.

“I'm sick of being in the house, anyway,” he said. “Any other bird facts? Any of those birds out there cannibals?”

“Only when provoked, I think,” I said, smiling, and he smiled, too.

•  •  •

I was careful to avoid the area around the tennis courts, so we walked along the seawall. They were spray-painting private property along the cement as we walked through and I stepped off the seawall to walk on the neighboring lawns instead.

“When is summer going to be over? I want all these people to go away,” he said.

I looked around at the sprawling clubhouse, the pool overlooking the boats. We were walking slowly, listening to the bells on the boats jingle as the waves jostled the hulls. Kids screamed as they jumped in the pool and I looked at Teddy's arm.

“Their fun depresses the shit out of me,” Teddy said.

“They're not really having fun. They just want everyone else to think they are.”

“That's profound, Cheryl.”

I could always count on Teddy to be an asshole.

He had a right to be angry because no one was sure when he'd be able to use his arm again, if ever. Rob Girardi was an orthopedic surgeon and he'd agreed to look at Teddy's arm. He'd said the same thing: “No telling right now.”

I wanted him to get better because he was working so hard. Trying the smallest movements, electric stimuli, massaging the nerves back to life. The changes were imperceptible.

The reeds and marsh grass were bending into the trail, encasing us as we walked. Everything seemed to have grown so much in a short time and it felt so claustrophobic.

“You okay?” Teddy said. He reached out with his good hand and I knew it was awkward for him.

“Fine. I'm fine. I love it here,” I said.

“Yeah, it sucks you've been stuck in the house with me instead of being able to come here.”

“Don't feel bad about it. I needed a break anyway,” I said.

“You probably know all these birds' names, right?” Teddy asked.

“Sometimes there are surprises.”

The reeds swayed in the breeze and it seemed like nothing bad could happen here, even though something already had. I felt like I was recapturing my sanctuary. “So, what's that one called?” he asked.

I looked around, trying to find what he was talking about. Then I thought I picked up the sound of whistling and felt the need to flee.