White Out (12 page)

“Do you,” he half-whispered, “do you remember those
fucking
people?” I shook my head.

“What people, Charlie?” I was sitting in a lawn chair smoking on Big Five’s spacious lawn. Charlie was about three feet away, crouched on his haunches facing me. He lobstered slowly up, still crouching, one thigh at a time, until he was a foot away from me. This didn’t look easy. He was a big guy, six foot two, maybe 230 pounds. In addition to his many other creative talents, he was a modern dancer. It had given him thighs of steel.

“I really don’t know,” I said. I paused. I was about to say, “I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” but I thought better of it. “I really don’t know who exactly you mean, Charlie. I’m trying to remember.”

He sighed, still looking straight at me, as if deeply disappointed.

“They live in the old white house right behind Harkness.” Harkness was the name of the dorm he’d lived in sophomore year. “Now do you remember?” I shook my head. “Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. Maybe you never met them. Lucky. You’re real lucky, Mike. Just like you’re real lucky to have such good friends. Chip for example. And Eva. She’s such a
nice
friend,” he sneered.

“Mr. and Mrs. Anderson,” he continued. “They’re, I don’t know, maybe fifty. Mid-fifties, something like that. He’s a big, strong man. Like a big bear. Big shaggy eyebrows. Business man. Mr. Business. And he talks…like…this.” Charlie demonstrated, his elastic actor’s face and arms imitating a solid, no-nonsense middle-aged man.

“And she’s a proper housewife. Garden. Church. Everyone loves her. ‘Oh! How
are
you Charlie? Come on in!’” He did a grotesque imitation of a middle-aged woman’s high voice. It might have been funny. But while he was doing it, Charlie’s mouth maintained its horrible grimace, showing through like a hole poked through a mask so the wearer can breathe.

“‘Come on
in
Charlie! Oh don’t sit there; you’ll get it dirty! Let’s go on down to the basement where we can sit down and talk a bit.’ They’re evil people Mike. ‘Come on
in
Charlie! Come on
innnn
!’”

“What—” I began.

“They molested me,” he said. It was warm. The heated air was intimate.

“Do you remember,” he continued, “that year in Harkness, I had John and Dirty Ray staying in my room for like two months?” I did remember. John was a teenage drug dealer whose brother had killed a gas station attendant with a screwdriver the year before. Charlie had done a large painting of a screwdriver and given it to John as a present. John loved it. Two years later, after I graduated, I’d hear from James that John had held up the same gas station, shot someone (not fatally), got caught on tape, and was doing ten to fifteen. Ray was a huge blond hippie.

“Mike, do you remember we used to get in fights all the time? ‘Play’ fights?” I remember sitting on Charlie’s bed. Charlie was painting in the corner. Ray was breaking down a quarter-pound of weed. John leapt in and grabbed the scale. “Give it back John.” “Fuck you Ray.” Ray grabbed John, they stumbled over Charlie, Charlie, grinning, got up and began beating Ray with a broom.

“And you remember that broom?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Well do you remember the time John held me while Dirty Ray pulled down my pants and stuck the broom handle up my ass while James filmed it?”

Strangely enough, I did kind of remember that. It didn’t seem very unusual at the time. I was in and out in those days. Even then Charlie was not an everyday guy. I don’t think I actually saw the broom-handle incident, but I remember people talking about it.

“Well, when you put it like that, Charlie.”

“Put it like what?” he whispered. “It was rape.”

“
Rape
’s kind of an intense word, Charlie. You’d wrecked Ray’s bike or something, and he was mad, and afterward you stole a bunch of acid he had or something. I don’t know,
I
couldn’t have hung out there all the time. But you guys were all friends. Crazy stuff like that was always happening in that room.”

“I know,” Charlie said darkly.

“But now,” I said, trying to be sensitive, “thinking about it, it does seem kind of awful.”

“I know,” Charlie muttered. “It was especially awful for me,” he continued. “Because the Andersons constantly molested me.

“They’d take me downstairs. She would hold both of my hands. Soft at first, but then tight.” He demonstrated, grabbing my wrists.

“She’d have hot chocolate. Mountain Dew. But not too much because I’d have to go to the bathroom.” I had a bad thought. “Mr. Anderson would wave to me if he saw me on the street. ‘Hey how are ya, Charlie!’ “

Granted, the Dirty Ray incident, taken out of the haze and smoke of Charlie’s dorm room two years ago and placed in the strong spring sunlight, didn’t look too good. But it would be insane to believe that big, strong Charlie had been molested two years ago by a middle-aged couple living behind his dorm.

“Only two sips of Mountain Dew. But I’d have to go to the bathroom anyway.”

Could he be talking about something that had really happened to him? Maybe in his childhood? Maybe in another old white house? Had the white of another white house gotten stuck to the house behind Harkness? Or could it be possible that a couple who had molested Charlie when he was a child was now living here in Ohio?

“They said if I ever told anyone they’d kill me. Well you know what, Mike? You know what?” I shook my head. I was very aware of everything that was happening. “Maybe I should kill them. I’ve got everything I need. I’ve been watching their house. I know when they go to sleep.”

“Charlie, I—” He cut me off. His eyes were white all the way around the iris.

“No, why should I go to jail? Let them. I’m going to go to the police. I’ll show them where it is. The basement.” Half a foot from my face, his intense white eyes stared through me.

“Charlie—”

“Because I don’t know if I can take knowing they’re out there anymore, Mike.”

I had another bad thought. More than likely there was no other white house in Charlie’s childhood, no evil older couple anywhere. It would be insane to believe what Charlie was saying. It would be insane to believe what Charlie obviously believed.

This wasn’t the first time. Cash. Andy. Funboy. Dorsom. All my life I’ve been drawn to extrasensory people. People who see through things. Charlie’s too-white eyes kept staring through me. Sweat shone on his cheeks. I was drawn to people who wanted things. “I’ll kill them, Mike.” What did Charlie want? There was some red in his eyes now, and they were full of tears. Andy and Dorsom are dead. Cash is in an institution. I don’t know where Charlie is. There is no end to wanting. When you have senses that go through things like a chainsaw, one day you’ll look around and there will be nothing left.

To write is to study the self. “To study the self is to forget the self.” To forget the self is to be open to all things. As I’m writing this, I occasionally stop to look out the window and remember so I can write a little more. Sometimes, now for instance, the tree outside my window stops my look. Like a raised hand, palm outward.

I convinced Charlie not to go to the cops by telling him I’d help him get the Andersons. My attitude in those days was that if your friend started acting like Charlie was acting, it was your job to keep him out of the asylum. Besides, I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just some kind of bad trip. It was impossible to tell with Charlie. He
came
to college declaring that acid no longer had any effect on him. On the way to the car, we ran into Chip and Eva, who looked like they’d been arguing. Eager for help, I asked if they wanted to go for a ride with us. They did.

Chip in the passenger seat, Charlie and Eva in the back, me driving. Charlie was caught and held in triangular space. Quieted. He stared out the window. We set off through the dusk. Eighty degrees, windows down, “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys on the stereo.

Chip was smiling and tapping his feet. I looked through the rearview mirror. Eva had a soft smile on her lovely face and was swaying gently. Charlie was bone white and looked like he was about to throw up.

“Turn that fucking music off!” he snapped. “God only knows? God only goddamn knows?” I turned off the music.

“Are you carsick?” I asked gently.

It was too late to turn back. (“I don’t want to ruin our little trip,” Charlie said ominously.) I’d been planning to drive to a quiet bar a little way out of town where we could all just relax and talk Charlie down out of whatever he was going through. I now decided that would be inappropriate. There was a forest preserve on the way, and while it technically closed at sunset, no one ever got busted for being there. When I was feeling down, I often took walks by the lake. I had fond memories of the place.

“I absolutely agree that your feelings about this are very valid,” Charlie was telling Eva as we pulled in, “but I just have a tiny question about whether it’s healthy, not for us, but for you.” As the disastrous première of our play approached, Eva had been trying to drop out and get her understudy to take over her role.

“How is it not healthy for me?” she asked.

“Maybe it is, maybe it is,” Charlie smoothly answered. “Maybe it is healthy for you. I just wonder if you are really going to do it. There’s a big difference between wanting to do something and actually going ahead and doing it. I don’t know how you get past that difference. I really don’t. I want to work with you on it.” Charlie was a great director.

I nodded in the rearview mirror, wanting to encourage Charlie’s interest in healthy things.

“You know, what Charlie says makes a lot of sense, Eva,” I said. “And he’s not telling you to do one thing or another. He’s just talking generally about some potential problems with action in general.”

Charlie nodded vigorously. “That’s absolutely right, Mike. You have a clear sense of your options, Eva. Probably a clearer sense than anyone in this car. And you know which one you prefer, which is really very healthy. We’re just trying to clear away some of the things that can come between deciding to do something and doing it. Some of the garbage.”

I was very satisfied with this kind of talk. Confidence building. It built a healthy sense of camaraderie without raising any potentially thorny issues.

“I’m not saying there
are
going to be problems in this particular case,” Charlie continued. “I’m not saying there
are
any problems at all.” I nodded around at everyone. No problems.

“You’re not saying anything at all,” Chip said dryly. “Of course Eva can’t quit the play. It opens in two weeks. She’s the only one who knows the lines. Her ‘understudy’ Allie has never even been to a single rehearsal. I don’t know why you can’t just say what you mean for once, Charlie.” I was extremely disappointed by Chip’s attitude and tone. I parked the car.

“You’re a very superior person, Chip,” Charlie said. “You remind me of Mr. Anderson.”

“Who’s Mr. Anderson?”

“OK let’s get going,” I said loudly. “Chip, do me a favor and get the beer out of the trunk. Charlie, can I bum a cigarette?” As we walked to the picnic benches, Charlie was humming “God Only Knows.”

When we got there, opened the beer, and looked around, we were all suddenly overwhelmed by space. The vastness of space seemed literally to push the words back into our faces. It was a clear spring evening; you could see the stars, the distant hills over the lake, the acres of grass stretching toward the highway. There was even a house in the distance. One of those uncanny middle-Ohio houses. An ordinary suburban house missing a suburb. Sitting in a vast empty field. Folded in on itself like an ear. Focusing all that silence, all that emptiness. The horrible little kitchen windows looked out over acres of dead or living grass. It was easy to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Anderson living in such a house.

CHAPTER 6

C
hip graduated that May. Eva and I would be back the next fall. We’d be living together too. But for the summer, Eva and Chip were living in his apartment in SoHo. I flew in from Chicago to spend a week with them in July. As soon as I walked through the door, Eva hugged me, her face shining. Chip gestured toward the dining room table, where there was a shaving mirror with several white lines on it.

“What’s this, coke? You know I don’t like coke,” I said, dropping my bag.

“No,” Chip said.

“What, the other thing?”

“Yes.” Eva stood in the corner, watching me. Chip was in the doorway, watching her watching me. I stood against the wall. The mirror with the white thing lay on a table in the center of the triangle.

The first time is magic. What does that really mean? Let’s start with another, more familiar kind of first-time magic. I love pop songs, and the first time you hear a really great pop song is magic. For instance, today is Saturday. On Tuesday, I bought a CD by a band called Gnarls Barkley, which several people had recommended to me. And Kellefa Sanneh, my favorite music critic, in his column for the
New York Times
called track two, “Crazy,” the best pop song of the year.