The Book of Michael Read online

  What happened to all those childhood friends anyhow?

  What had happened was that I inched away from them. Or pushed them away. I had lost interest in sports and games and got serious. I worked at proving how tough I could be. And bad. Where did that come from? Who put it in my head?

  I was pretty certain I did it to myself. I did it because I was bored with the old me. Wasn’t that what kids complained about all the time? How freaking boring everything is. School.Teachers. Books. Life. I wanted to make life more interesting.

  And then Miranda came along.

  A shudder went through me. I held my arms around myself to stop it. I looked at my reflection in the glass. And just then realized how much I hated my life and hated myself.

  “Yo,” someone said. I ignored the voice.

  “Yo,” he said again. I turned. Across the aisle and back sat a black man in some kind of uniform. At first, it made me think of the guards, but then I realized it was something a mechanic wore. He had his name stitched over the pocket: Louis. I guess I was staring at him now. “You all right?” Louis asked.

  I unhugged myself and shook my head.“No. I’m not all right. But thanks for asking.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Fix my life.Take me back in time.”

  He didn’t blink. “Right now or later?” He seemed dead serious.

  I laughed. “Right now would be just fine.”

  Louis moved up one seat but stayed on the other side of the aisle. “I know who you are now.You’re that kid who…” He let the words trail off.

  “Yeah, I’m that kid.”

  “And you didn’t do it?”

  “I’m not sure it matters much. My life is pretty well ruined.”

  He nodded. “Been there. Done that.”

  “No, man. Not this version, you haven’t.You maybe watched something like it on TV.You didn’t live it.”

  He scratched his cheek. “Okay. Maybe I didn’t get the full meal deal you did. I read the papers. I know what I thought to be true like everybody else. And then, wham, that girl comes clean. Anybody say they were sorry?”

  “Not really. Everybody thinks they were just doing their job.”

  “You gonna sue their asses?”

  “Lawyers and judges and courtrooms again? I don’t think so.”

  Louis rubbed his fingers together. “Somebody should pay.”

  “I can’t think about that. Not now.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I lost someone I loved,” Louis said. “My wife. It’s been a while.”

  “Does the hurt go away?”

  “Shit, no. It fades a little. It hides for a time and then it ambushes you all over again.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  “You got anyone to talk to?”

  “My parents think I should go back to the shrink that helped convict me.”

  “Screw the shrinks. Like you said, they just do their job.”

  I was trying to figure out something about the way he was looking at me. At first I thought maybe he was gay and trying to pick me up. Inside, I figured out that everyone had a motive. If someone was kind, they were doing it to get something. If they were mean, it was to get power. If they were trying to be invisible like me, they were trying to protect themselves.What was it with this guy? Then it clicked.“You ever been arrested?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Spend some time?”

  “Bingo.”

  “But you didn’t kill your wife?”

  “Thought about it once or twice but I loved her. After the accident, though, I went crazy.”

  “How many different shades of crazy are there?” I asked.

  It was an odd thing to say. He cracked a smile. “This is my stop coming up. Listen, I’m probably no help at all to you. But I’m Louis, like my label says. I always wanted a shirt with my name on it, as you might guess.Work at the muffler shop there on the corner. Come check out my shade of crazy sometime if you want to talk.”

  He nodded and walked down the aisle. I wondered if I looked him up in the newspaper archives, what his story would be.What version of crazy put him behind bars?

  I continued to stare out the window at the once familiar landscape that now seemed like it was alien territory.At the corner, I looked down Engel Street. The high school was down there two blocks away. And it suddenly occurred to me that it was a school day. My old friends and classmates were in school. Life had gone on without me.Without Lisa.That’s how it worked. Once you were removed from the picture, everyone was shocked but, after a while, things just picked up where they left off.Without you.

  ***

  My grandmother did not come to the door when I rang. I could hear music and I thought I heard a voice say something, but it didn’t sound like her. I opened the door and poked my head in. “Phyllis? It’s me,” I said.

  “In the living room,” she said. Her voice sounded weak. I walked into the living room. Phyllis was sitting in a La–Z–Boy tilt back chair with a small mask over her face. Alongside her was an oxygen bottle and a tube was attached to the mask. Phyllis was clicking a remote aimed at the stereo but it wasn’t working. I recognized the music–old Neil Young. Finally, the sound of the music diminished and Phyllis got up out of her chair. She took off the mask and pulled me to her. “Michael. Good to have you back. I missed you so.”

  I hugged her back and felt how frail she’d become. She’d changed while I’d been gone. No one had told me she needed to live with an oxygen tank and a mask. I had to try really hard to keep from crying. Once again I realized how terribly my life had been interrupted, never to be the same again. “I missed you too, Phyllis,” I said.

  She sat back down and I sat on a footstool in front of her. She saw the concern in my eyes.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.The only real problem is I can’t smoke.They say that if I light up near this thing, I’ll blow up the house. I haven’t decided if it would be worth a try but I’m thinking about it.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes.This is nothing. It’s like a holiday vacation. Me sitting here sucking pure oxygen listening to Crazy Horse.”

  “Some of Neil’s best work.”

  “Damn straight.‘Cowgirl in the Sand.’‘Down by the River.’ ‘Last Trip to Tulsa.’ All classics. They don’t write songs like that anymore.”

  I knew all my grandmother’s old favorite music. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Buffalo Springfield, Frank Zappa, early Jefferson Airplane. I looked up at the stereo on the shelf.“You have an MP3 player?” I asked incredulously.

  “Just trying to keep up with things.”Then she let out a big sigh, took a hit of the oxygen from the mask, but then set it on her lap.“Michael, I never gave up on you.”

  “I know.”

  “Neither did your parents.”

  “I know that too.”

  “I kept thinking there must be something I could do to help you. But there wasn’t.”

  “You sent letters.”

  “Words. Mere words. What was it like?”

  “Well, I stopped smoking.”

  She looked a little embarrassed. “Jesus. I guess the thing about smoking two–thirds didn’t work. Look at me. I still got cravings. Want some gum?”

  “No thanks. I went cold turkey. On everything. Thanks for the I Ching stuff.”

  “Did it help?”

  “Nothing much helped but I memorized some of the lines. Here’s my favorite: Misfortune can no longer be avoided. It has to be endured.”

  “Hexagram 23. Not one of my favorites, for sure.

  What else went with it? Splitting apart results in the growth of new fruit from the disintegration of the old. Speaking of the disintegration of the old. Look at me.”

  “You look great.” But she didn’t. Phyllis looked pale and tired. But I felt a little better in her presence.

  “Bag of bones. They think I’ll get my lungs back, though. I’ve got som
e medication and pretty soon I’m going to start going back to the casino. If the meds don’t work, I guess I’ll just sit here and work on my Darth Vader imitations.”

  I laughed just then. Leave it to Phyllis to cut through my gloom. The very sound of my laughter seemed so strange.When was the last time I laughed?

  “What are you going to do now?” Phyllis asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need to go back to school.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “So what’s the alternative?”

  “Leave,” I blurted out. “Just disappear from here. Go some place.”

  “I know that feeling. But you can’t do that to me. Or your parents.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier on everyone?”

  “No. We all feel like we failed you already.”

  “None of this was your fault.”

  She had to take a breath from the oxygen mask then. “Well, somehow it feels like it was our fault. We let the law, the system, punish you for something you didn’t do.”

  I shook my head and felt my eyes stinging again. “I don’t know what to do with the way I feel. I hate it.”

  “How do you feel?”

  I shook my head and did not look up. “I feel like killing someone.”

  “As you should. Who? The girl?”

  “Strangely enough, no. I hate her for what she did. But I know it had something to do with me. I was attracted to Miranda first. Before Lisa. I’m in there. I’m part of this.”

  “But you didn’t want any harm to come to anyone.”

  “I loved Lisa. I really did. That’s what is destroying me. I’ll never have her again.”

  Phyllis kept the mask on. “And now you have to get on with your life. Going forward with caution will produce good results.”

  “Thirty–four, right? Ta Chuang.”

  “You did have a lot of time on your hands, didn’t you? What was it like in there?”

  “Lonely. I got over the fear. In fact, I felt strangely protected. I’m not saying bad stuff didn’t happen, but I worked hard at my isolation. And it helped protect me. I didn’t allow myself to get drawn into other people’s dramas.”

  “You survived.You’re tough.”

  “Out here, I don’t think isolation and being tough are going to be enough. I feel like I have more enemies out here than back in there.”

  “And so you need allies. I’m one. And your parents.”

  “I know. But first I think I need a place to hide.”

  “Hide here,” she said.“But you have to do me a favor first.”

  “Sure.”

  “Take some money off the table in the kitchen. Go to the corner store and buy me some lottery tickets. Adversity creates a playing field for good luck.”

  I gave her a goofy smile. “I don’t remember that one.”

  “That’s ’cause I just made it up. From The Wisdom According to Phyllis."

  Chapter 8

  I blew ten dollars on lottery tickets for my grandmother. The man behind the counter at the store didn’t recognize me.And that was comforting. He had a little TV on behind the counter and was watching a rerun of Friends. Despite the laugh track, he was taking the show very seriously.

  Aside from winning a few more free tickets, Phyllis had never won anything from all her lottery investments. She called it her “losing streak.” It had lasted for well over ten years and that’s why she was confident that the odds were good that she would win any day now.

  Odds. Chance. Luck. If I thought too long and hard about it, I’d say I was up there with being one of the unluckiest people on the planet. But at least I was alive. Walking back to my grandmother’s house, I couldn’t envision what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.Or even the rest of my day.

  It had been almost a year and a half now since Lisa’s death. The months leading up to the trial were excruciating. And before the trial was over, I knew they were going to convict me. Everyone knew. It became clear to everyone how things appeared.

  How do you plead?

  Not guilty.

  And then, after all the agony, the trial came to an end. And the jury found me guilty.There were no other suspects. The prosecutor’s words. No one else could have possibly done this. The jury’s vote was unanimous. And at that moment which I had already prepared myself for, all I could think about was Lisa. How much I loved her and how much I wanted her back.

  ***

  My grandmother had changed clothes and was seated at the kitchen table when I returned.There were two beers on the table. One was open and she was sipping from it. She’d put on makeup and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the words, Fools Rush In. I’d seen her wearing it before and never really understood it.“You buy me any winners?”

  I placed the lottery tickets on the table in front of her. “If I did we have to split it.” It was an old routine. Half of zip is almost always zip.

  “Sixty–forty,” she said.

  “Okay. But only because you’re my grandmother.”

  “Sit.”

  I sat and stared at the beer. She reached over and cracked the pop top. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Mr. Clean and Sober.What the hell. I reached for the can and took a slug. It tasted good.Too good. Good old Phyllis.

  “Tell me about Miranda,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I dunno. I want to understand this. I want it to make sense.”

  “Nothing makes sense.”

  “Yes. Strangely enough, events have meanings. They may not be meanings that are good or ones we like, but we need to try to understand.”

  “I told you once about Miranda–way back, remember?”

  My grandmother had picked up a pencil, not to write with or anything, just to hold between the index and middle finger of her right hand like a cigarette. I noticed that she even took a breath like she had just inhaled smoke and then slowly breathed out pursing her lips together like smokers do. “I remember you being all excited about her. She was sexy and she was smart–or at least you thought so. And you were horny.”

  I almost blushed. “Jesus, other kids’ grandmothers don’t talk like that.”

  “Well, that’s them. This is me. So, tell me more.”

  “She was the first one I’d had sex with. That was a big deal for me.”

  “Always is. First time. A girl like that would have some real power over you.”

  I took another sip of beer and remembered. No, I wasn’t going to paint all the lurid details for Granny Phyllis. I wouldn’t let it get that weird. But I couldn’t help remembering. It was in Miranda’s bedroom. Her parents were gone for the weekend again. We’d been making out, I’d been lying on top of her, clothes on, grinding.Then she sat up and said,“Take your pants off.”

  Phyllis must have noticed I was drifting. “They don’t make beer as good as what your grandfather made. He made his own beer–dark. It would knock your socks off.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Now back to your story. I can tell you’re going to bypass all the steamy sex stuff because I’m your sweet old grandmother.That’s understandable. So I’ll just assume you two went at it like rabbits when you could. But there was more.”

  “I knew I was kind of in over my head with her. She was unpredictable, and she could be cruel. But to be perfectly honest, I was attracted to that too. I wanted to be like that.”

  “I always told your parents that you’d rebel against all that Sunday school and Boy Scout crap. So this was it. And drugs, right?”

  “That’s where it got messy.” I paused and didn’t know if I should go on. Phyllis saw the guilty look on my face.

  “Michael. Like I said, I want to understand. And maybe, just maybe, I can help you understand. It’s either me or that asshole psychiatrist.”

  I had been afraid to say too much out loud. Afraid to confront the chain of events that was so shadowy in my mind, but so persistent.“Okay,” I said, looking down at the kitchen tabl
e.“It went something like this.We’d both toked often. Seemed we almost always had good weed. Money wasn’t an issue. Then she got me to try coke. I think she stole it from her father.We’d do some coke and then…”

  “And then… sex… right?”

  “Yeah… well.There was that.And she’d come up with some kind of pills. Half the time she didn’t know what they were. Some did nothing, some were way too weird for me and I started to back off.When I started to back off, she’d get mad. Sometimes she’d hang out with other friends of hers. Creeps I didn’t like. I didn’t really know them.They didn’t go to our school. I mean, they weren’t like Satan worshippers or anything, just creepy not nice people.”

  Phyllis let out a small laugh. “Sorry… it was the ‘not nice’ phrase. Go on.”

  “I’d heard about crystal meth but never tried it. When Miranda told me it was the best stuff yet, I tried it but pretty soon I had to draw the line.”

  “I read about the stuff. Seems to me you did the right thing.”

  “She took it as a kind of betrayal, I think. I kept seeing her and sometimes she was on the stuff.You’d never know what she was going to do next. I was thinking I was in too deep over my head but…”

  “I know. But the sex was too good.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to come out and say it. But that was a pretty big part of it.And I thought I was in love with her.”

  “Love takes many forms. Maybe you were. Don’t deny yourself that. But something changed the way you felt… despite the great sex, right?”

  “Do you remember the demonstration?”

  “The one where you spit at a cop?”

  “In his face, actually. Totally, totally stupid on my part. I got carried away.”

  “I’ve been in demonstrations. People tend to get carried away.”

  “Lisa was there in the crowd. I barely knew her before that. She was sincere about the issue. I was just along for the ride. But when I found myself face to face with that cop, I felt this power.”