Hitchers

CHAPTER 12

The granite steps outside Corinne’s building looked blurry from the tears I’d shed during our session. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, hoping no one would notice.

Digging up these memories is painful, Corinne had said at the end of the session, but it’s like digging up a splinter: you’ll feel better once it’s out. The thing was, I felt like I’d already dug up and reburied Kayleigh’s and Lorena’s deaths a thousand times.

I tried not to set Kayleigh’s and Lorena’s deaths side-by-side and examine the similarities. One at a time was plenty. Sometimes it was hard to resist, though. They were the two most important people in my life, both died on water, and I carried legitimate blame—and terrible guilt—in both cases.

You hear about people who are racked with guilt because they created some benign circumstance that led to the death of a loved one. A woman sends her husband to the store for eggs to finish a batch of brownies, and he’s crushed by a semi on the way home. She finds broken eggshells scattered in the car, and thinks, If only I hadn’t sent him to the store he’d still be alive. I wish I had to go through such a contorted string of logic to assign myself blame for Kayleigh’s and Lorena’s deaths.

I don’t assign myself all the blame. Sometimes I think I’m more to blame for Kayleigh’s death than Lorena’s; at other times I give myself a partial pass on Kayleigh’s because I was only twelve, and then I think I’m more to blame for Lorena’s. Both had to take some of the blame themselves, although they weren’t around to do so. It’s difficult to apportion blame. It’s not an exact science.

Sometimes I wondered what my life would be like if I had backed down from Kayleigh’s dare to jump off that pier. If I hadn’t jumped, Kayleigh wouldn’t have had reason to stay behind on that awful night and try to prove she could do it, too. What would I have done with all of that mental space taken up by guilt?

Lorena’s Toyota unlocked with a cheerful bleep-bleep and I hopped in.

I was beginning to wonder how any of this was connected to the voice. I was blurting more than ever; maybe I was digging up all of these painful memories for nothing. Goodness knows I had enough, more recent painful shit to deal with without digging through my past for more.

I turned on the radio to get an update on suffering that put my petty grievances to shame.

The six hundred thousandth victim had been counted. Anyone who hadn’t known the population of greater Atlanta before the attack certainly knew it by now. Five million. More than one in nine Atlantans had died. Entire families had been wiped out. Entire blocks, almost. With those six hundred thousand victims had gone all laughter, all joy. The people I passed looked grim, tired. All business. On the plus side the traffic was thinner, the other drivers less ruthless. There was the occasional honk, but it was nothing like the incessant hooting and bleating that had been the background Muzak of the city’s downtown both night and day.

“Come here, ya monkey, ya, ” my unwanted voice opined. Jesus, that was vintage Grandpa. I could picture him saying that as he chased a six-year-old Kayleigh around the yard with hedge clippers, pretending he was going to cut off her toes while she giggled and screeched.

There was no mention of the blurting illness on the news. If my neurologist had seen five cases, there must be thousands, but it would be hard for another story to break through when there was the anthrax story to cover 24/7.

As I pulled onto West Marietta I turned off the news. Enough of this dreariness. I should pick up something cheerful for lunch and eat it while watching last night’s episode of The Big Bang Theory on DVR.

Then I remembered that I’d agreed to visit Grandma this afternoon. I let my head slump until my forehead bumped the steering wheel. “Damn it. Damn it.” I needed time to acclimate to the idea of a visit to Grandma’s, and by forgetting, I’d missed my acclimation period.

Moaning in pointless protest I took a left on Howell Mill and headed for Grandma’s house.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Grandma, she was just hard to talk to. Sitting on her couch, time crawled in super slow-mo. There were so many things she didn’t talk about: politics, religion, relatives’ private business, her childhood, sports, feelings, failures, anything bad. The list bordered on infinite. What she liked to discuss was the gruesome but impersonal goings-on depicted on the TV news. She liked to shake her head and tisk. She also liked to talk about how there was nothing on television any more, and about delicious meals from days gone by. I braced myself for two hours of pain.

I’d warned her about the problem I was having with my voice. She suggested I might be coming down with the flu. It hadn’t happened while I was on the phone with her, and there was no way anyone could grasp how utterly freaky it was unless they heard it. And Grandma would hear it. The outbursts were getting worse—I was up to thirty since I’d waked that morning. So that was another concern—I didn’t want to give her a heart attack.

I was even doing it in my sleep now. I’d wake up four or five times a night, jolted from sleep by that voice. I worried they would keep getting worse until my speech was one long nonsensical rant comprised of things my grandfather might say. I’d be forced to communicate like a deaf mute, writing down what I wanted to say, or using sign language while I blathered on about Toy Shop’s superiority over Beetle Bailey.

Corinne suspected that the root of the problem was guilt. More guilt, like I didn’t have enough. I had defied the patriarch, and now the child in me was waiting on wobbly knees to be punished. Forgive me Grandfather, for I have sinned. Only I didn’t feel guilty. Not about that, anyway. Grandpa dragged Toy Shop into the grave with him out of spite; why should I feel bad for digging it up and breathing life back into it? Who did it harm? In a way he owed it to me after all the verbal abuse he’d piled on me when I was a kid. He owed me something; if not an apology, Toy Shop would do.

Besides all that, this was happening to other people, including Mick. It wasn’t about my relationship with Grandpa, it was something in the air I’d inhaled. Or something else.

Grandma greeted me in her singsong Irish warble, entreating me to come in, come in, as she led me into the living room of her spacious but unpretentious home, favoring her bad hip so severely it looked like her right leg was three inches shorter than her left.

She wanted to hear about my accident again, and held her breath through much of my description of drowning as if to share some of my suffering, slapping her cheeks in horror until they were a ruddy pink.

I left out the part about being in a woman’s body while I was dead.

“Oh, Finn, that’s just terrible!” she said when I’d finished. “This whole business is just awful. All those bodies.” She shook her head in dismay as she related some of the more gruesome things she’d witnessed on the news.

To change the subject I asked what she thought of this week’s check, her share of Toy Shop’s meteoric rise.

“I wish we hadn’t waited so long,” she half-joked.

The new Toy Shop kept getting more popular. Fan sites were springing up on the web; Steve was working out some new licensing agreements. People loved Wolfie. I guess it was no more surprising than the popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in their time.

“So you really don’t mind the changes to the strip?” I asked, for maybe the tenth time.

Grandma threw her hands up. “What’s to mind? The point is to make money.”

“Yes it is,” I said, though that wasn’t at all the point to me. “So, Grandma, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, this and that.” She waved at the air as if her activities were nothing but a bad smell that needed to be dispersed. “Staying out of trouble.” She laughed her nervous laugh—a tight-lipped, high-pitched giggle.

“You finding anything good to watch on TV?” I asked. “All I can find worth watching are reruns of Lost.”

“There’s nothing on,” she said, sinking her teeth into the topic. “Half the time I watch the Weather Channel—”

“I wasn’t there. Do you understand?” I blurted.

Grandma started, the cheery smile melting. She pulled her feet under her as if something had just run by on the carpet.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said.

She stared at me, her eyes big and round. Her jaw was trembling. I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to comfort her in some way, but I was afraid she’d recoil from me. Everyone was shocked when they first heard it, but no one had reacted like this. She was pale and shaking, like she had a terrible fever.

I felt like a freak, like I’d pulled open my shirt and exposed a secret twin jutting from my chest. I hated this. I wanted it gone.

“It’s me first drink today, Frenchie, ”I blurted.

“Why are you trying to scare me?” Grandma cried out.

“I’m not,” I said, holding out my hands in supplication. “I swear to you, I can’t help it. It just comes out.”

“Things your Grandfather said just come out of you? You expect me to believe that?”

It was a good thing I was seeing a psychiatrist—I was truly messed up.

“What was that first thing you said? Where did you hear that?” Grandma asked.

“Nowhere. Grandma, I know something is wrong with me, but I’m not in control of it. Do you hear how strange my voice is? Do you think I could make it sound like that even if I wanted to?”

Grandma covered her eyes, struggled to stand. “I have a terrible headache. I have to go lie down.” She staggered from the couch to the bedroom while I stood, weaving.

I’d warned her about how strange the voice was. I should have warned her about the content. “Goodbye Grandma,” I called tentatively. “I’m sorry. I hope you feel better.” No answer.

I let myself out, stunned by my last blurt. I’d said “Me first drink today,” not “My first drink today.” That’s how an Irishman would say it. And I’d swear there was a hint of accent in that croak. I was starting to talk like him.