The Voices in Our Heads Read online

  “Hmm,” Ann Marie answered. She hadn’t pulled away from the edge of the table yet. She was standing there, arms folded now.

  “The real question,” she said, “is where we’re going to put Aldo tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  Jordan shook his head. “No,” he said. “He’s not an animal. You don’t hide family away like some dog in a crate.”

  Ann Marie’s hands were on her hips now.

  “You do when that family member rolls his teeth, farts at will, wanders around, and talks about how good his lugers taste! Dottie Johnson Facebooks, and I’m not going to have my family moments broadcast all over the Internet. She’s still pissed that I showed her up at the beef and beer last month, wearing the black jeans and pumps, and she might smile in our faces, but I’m not giving her ammunition.”

  Jordan shrugged and screwed up his face.

  “How the hell do you know she felt showed up?”

  “Everyone felt showed up. She just takes it personally, trust me.”

  “You’re just as bad as Jenna and the Valelly kid.”

  “Yeah, some things never change, get used to it.” She turned to finish what was left in the sink. “We don’t often have company, hon. I don’t want my turn to host to be remembered as the miscarriage, ya know?”

  Jordan stood.

  “OK,” he said, “But I’m staying up there with him.”

  “Jenna will be crushed.”

  “She’ll get over it. Besides, we’re taping. We’ll have more than a few family laughs over it.”

  He heard the laughter and the girls screaming in delight to the pounding music from downstairs, all in a tubular sort of a haunt, all hollow, the way his father heard life nowadays in its order and fanfare, marching away from him over the horizon. Jenna had understood, or maybe she did, it was hard to tell. She was ultimately distracted with Brittany getting to go to cheerleading camp this summer, and Colleen’s current fascination with Christian rock, and Vicky’s younger brothers who were totally rude, and mostly with borrowing Ann Marie’s lady paint and hairspray and rubber bands and clips to make herself look like the bride of Frankenstein.

  Dad was all tied up with a roll of aluminum foil Jordan had offered him, pressing square pieces to his face, making masks. He’d constructed twenty of them and arranged them all around him in a rough circle on the guest bed he slept in. Jordan read a few Sports Illustrated magazines he saved for emergencies, and then moved on to a Sal Palentonio book he’d never finished. Ann Marie stopped up once to check on him, and toward the end of the evening Jenna popped in her head to say she should have won, but Brittany cheated. It was all good, all so normal, especially since Dad had fallen asleep more than an hour ago.

  When Ann Marie came up the second time to let Jordan know the coast was clear, he convinced her that it was OK to clean up in the morning. She gave a half-hearted plea that she’d just gotten everything professionally scoured, and he insisted that a few popcorn bowls and soda glasses wouldn’t hurt anyone. He stood up and stretched. He had polished off a six of Coors Lite himself and he was in no mood for playing housemaid.

  In the bedroom, Ann Marie rubbed her foot on his leg indicating that she wanted it, and he mumbled back that the morning was better. She didn’t press. They fell asleep spooned, and Jordan came awake with a jolt a few hours later.

  The air conditioner was on hum mode, and he thought he’d heard something, maybe in a dream or something. It sounded, or rather it felt like it might have come from Jenna’s room, and it was doubtful he could have actually heard anything over this piece-of-crap air conditioner, but it was best to be sure. He threw off the covers and looked around the floor for his shorts. Ann Marie said something unintelligible in her sleep, and he made sure to close the door behind him once he was dressed.

  Jenna was moaning; he could hear her from all the way down the hall. Her door was open, and there was someone standing over her, a shadow, a hulking figure.

  Jordan limped into a run, passed through the archway, and flipped on the overhead.

  It was Aldo, standing over Jenna, watching her with wide rolling eyes, rocking back and forth, drool coming off his bottom lip in a spindler. And he was a nightmare of makeup, lipstick drawn severe and clown-like over his lips, hot pink and purple blush smeared on his cheeks. There was eye shadow in blue sparkle, and deep lavender and rust painted up over the eyebrows. There were Scrunchies and hair clips hanging off the hair at the edge of his crown.

  “Pop, what the fuck are you doing?” Jordan said, a bit too loud, but he was a bit freaked to say the least. Aldo looked at his own son with wide, unseeing eyes and stammered,

  “Ape . . . ape . . . ape!”

  Jordan reached out and grabbed his father by the shirt. He shook him, shouted in his face,

  “What the fuck are you doing in my daughter’s room?” He shook him harder, the clownish face bobbing on its neck like some lunatic ballpark figurine, and suddenly arms were around him gently pulling him off, and it was Ann Marie, and she was tight-lipped and wide-eyed with concern, but now that it was out in the open, she was on auto-pilot, and Jenna was up rubbing her eyes and crying, and when Jordan told his wife to take Aldo to the bathroom and clean him up, she obeyed. Jordan sat next to Jenna on her bed and she sat up straight. Jordan wasn’t a big man, but he was “wiry strong”—the veins in his biceps always pronounced—and when he got to a certain point you didn’t question him, didn’t hold back, gave him what he wanted.

  “Jenna,” he said. “No bullshit, did your grandpa touch you?”

  She shook her head slowly, her eyes huge silver dollars. “No, Daddy.”

  “Not ever?”

  “Never.”

  He took her hand in his.

  “Look at me,” he said. She already was looking at him, but she appeared to try to focus even harder. Breath came through Jordan’s nose, and it was clear he was controlling his voice to stay even and calm. “Now listen,” he continued. “You’re gonna tell me what I want to know, and you’re not gonna go having a hissy fit, understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me why you cry some mornings. Tell me who’s taking your happy.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Her bottom lip trembled, but she didn’t burst into tears.

  “It’s the bad man,” she said.

  “What do you mean, the bad man? Tell me now, Jenna, it’s important.”

  She scrunched up her face for a moment but somehow managed to hold on.

  “He comes at night,” she said, “when I’m half asleep. He puts his hands on my shoulders and steals my breath.”

  Jordan was seeing nothing but deep, bright red, but he made sure to keep his voice aqua.

  “What do you mean, he steals your breath?”

  “You’re gonna be mad.”

  “I’m already mad, but not at you. Tell me.”

  “Can I whisper it?”

  “Sure.”

  She reached and put her arms around her father’s shoulders, her exhalations hot in his ear.

  “He’s creepy and mean and he wears a hat and a striped tuxedo, like the ones the clowns wear at the circus. He has white gloves with finger bones painted on them, and a tattoo on his face shaped like a pair of glasses cut in half, just over one eye with a black chain going down to his jaw like Germans wear in cartoons. He has bright green eyes, and rotten brown teeth, and his breath stinks like Cheetohs and fish.”

  She pulled off Jordan’s shoulder and looked at him with quiet sincerity.

  “Then he puts his lips over mine and sucks in my breath. Steals my happy. Breathes back into me what’s stinky and sad. After that he leaves doing that tango dance by himself like we see all the time on Dancing with the Stars.”

  Jordan had let her go and had the tip of his thumb in his mouth, biting down on it despite the cliché. It wasn’t all that hard to decipher, at least most of the juicy part
s. Aldo had had a construction site accident back in the seventies, when the abrasive wheel on a chop saw burst apart while he’d been cutting through some steel channel. It opened the right side of his face and left a scar going from the eye to the jaw—hence the monocle tattoo. The Cheetoh breath was actually Nacho Cheese Doritos, those that Jordan had been sneaking to his father for more than a month as a kind of reward treat, and the fish aftertaste came from those disgusting canned sardines he’d grown fond of. The rotted brown teeth were the dentures he kept rolling around in there, and the sound of the straw sucking the milk down at dinner had kicked off the memory, plain and simple. The son of a bitch.

  Jordan took her in his arms and whispered back to her,

  “It’s all right now, hon. Daddy will take care of it.”

  He stayed guard in Aldo’s room all that night, eyes slitted and red in the dark, listening to his father roll around, moan nonsense, and make just about every disgusting gassy sound a body was capable of. Jordan was lucky he didn’t kill him. Ann Marie had been right: they’d have to get Jenna professional help after the weekend. Fuckin’-A, she’d probably be on someone’s couch clear through to her thirties now, and it was all Jordan’s fault. He’d denied what was right out in front of his face all along, for the love of father, for pride. Well, he wasn’t going to just sit around feeling sorry for everybody, least of all himself. Tomorrow he’d get the ball rolling, work day and night to get things right.

  By 11:30 the next morning, they’d moved Aldo and his belongings over to Joey’s place in Ardmore. Hell, what were cousins for, anyway? Ann Marie called in a favor, and Dr. Silverstien pulled some fast strings, getting Aldo admitted to Dunwoody. Both Jordan and Ann Marie spent the weekend soothing their daughter, giving her extra attention, playing every board game in the house, giving her full charge of the TV. She woke up sad both mornings, clamming up, absolutely refusing to discuss it. Wasn’t hard to figure out. She had “Grandpa-hangover.” Made Jordan sick. They decided not to press charges. In a way, this made Jordan sicker, but he didn’t want to drag this thing out, especially for Jenna. Move on, no wallowing.

  Aldo Colella died two weeks later in the rest home lunch center, face down into a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. At the service Jordan refused to give a eulogy and Jenna cried her eyes out, some sort of glorious release or something, yeah, Jordan was psychoanalyzing everything nowadays and he was considering some couch time of his own. Jenna started her sessions a week later and was reported by the analyst to be rather non-communicative. Jordan said who could blame her, and there was almost a scene right there in the lobby.

  Jenna missed her grandpa.

  And she was still waking up each morning in tears.

  Jordan pulled out the video camera. Where was the fucking cord for this thing? Where was the carry case? Where did Ann Marie hide the tripod?

  Dong Night, over at the Johnsons’. Great. Maybe it would cheer Jenna up, break her out of her funk. Lord knew the therapy didn’t do squat. Jordan turned the camera over, their Canon Digital palmcorder. He’d originally wanted to buy the Panasonic, but Ann Marie had convinced him it was too bulky. He flipped open the small screen tab and turned the power knob, hoping the thing still had a charge. The screen came on electric blue, and he hit “Play” to get a point of reference. Nothing. It was at the end of the tape.

  Really? Jordan turned the camera around as if there was a button he’d missed. He sighed. They’d forgotten to monitor it last month after the dancing and had left it recording all night. He hit “Rewind” and watched the little white icons spin. After what seemed a logical amount of time, he hit “Play” and saw an image, slightly tilted, of the open bay closet he was currently standing in front of, the top shelf crammed with book bags, cases of Dr. Pepper, paper towels, and the beach coolers, the main area below occupied by the fall and winter coats, for all but about a foot and a half of empty space to the left.

  He hit “Rewind” without hitting off “Play,” so he could see the closet go backward in time and catch the last moment of dancing.

  Something moved. On the tape. A blur right in front of the camera, and then something in the closet. Jordan stopped the tape and hit “Play.” His spine went cold and beads of sweat burst out on his forehead.

  The coats were now hanging to the left, with the one and a half feet of space to the right. There was no movement, no dancing shadows, just the dull illumination off-camera from the staircase light they always left on so Jenna could easily find her way to the bathroom upstairs. It was still the middle of the night.

  Jordan gasped. There on the tape, the coats moved, all by themselves, from left to right, making the foot and a half of empty space switch places.

  He hit “Rewind,” then “Stop,” and then played it again. No. There was no one in the closet hiding behind the coats playing a trick; the camera had a full view to the floor, and it would have shown his or her feet. He watched the coats start moving again and hit “Stop” abruptly. Backed it up. Hit “Play,” then tried to hit “Pause” at just the right moment. It took him three tries, but he got it. In regular time it appeared that something slipped to the edge of the leather aviator jacket all the way to the left of the bunch. It was a hand, connected to nothing, palming the coats and sliding them to the side like a shower curtain. A hand in a white glove with the finger bones painted in.

  Jordan swallowed hard and let the footage play, back from the initial movement in the closet. There was the sneaky disconnected hand, the slide of the jackets across the coat bar, then nothing.

  Suddenly, there was a burst into the middle of the camera, a face, close up and then gone, as if this “thing” had jumped through the air.

  In live time it was but a blur, a flash, nothing identifiable. Jordan fucked with the “Play” and “Pause” button seven times before he nailed it, there, dead center, a bit grainy, but mostly distinct, like the freeze frame on a bang-bang play at first base, where you see the given figure clearly, just accompanied by streaks and back trails.

  This was not Aldo’s face, though Jordan wasn’t really expecting it to be at this point. This guy was younger, leaner, skull-like cheek to jaw, black tattoo circling the left eye, then drawn down like the dangling chain on the glassware pirates used, or that Colonel Klink character on the old Hogan’s Heroes show. The eyes were bright green, piercing and inhuman.

  And he was smiling, all teeth, all crooked, browned-up and rotten.

  Jordan went shopping. He went to Sears and bought refrigerator magnets, blank photo sheets, construction paper, and a sheaf of loose leaf. He went to the photo department and purchased two digital recorders with tripod set-ups. Then he went to Home Depot and bought a new caulking gun along with three tubes of brick adhesive. At CVS, he purchased twenty containers of aspirin, five bottles of Omega Fatty Acid capsules, and ten boxes of Prilosec.

  He convinced Ann Marie that it was OK he didn’t go to Dong Night over the at Johnsons’. He made arrangements for Jenna to sleep there and told Ann Marie to stay at her mother’s. She didn’t argue. You couldn’t talk to Jordan nowadays, and she was clearly sick to death of fighting with him.

  When mother and daughter finally left for their night away, Jordan set to work, first in the shed, then in the hearth, next in the kitchen trash, and last in the bathroom. The most difficult operation was in the fireplace, of course, not because Jordan had any trouble whatsoever duplicating the patterning his father had originally formed on the walls—after all, he was a Colella and laying brick was in his blood—but more on account of the twisting and positioning of his body in this particular application. How the hell did Aldo do it? I mean, the guy was eighty-three, and before the last tri-wall was fully “papered,” Jordan’s back was screaming.

  It was 11:30 p.m. by the time Jordan had washed up and positioned all the cameras. The first one was placed outside the bathroom, floor speckled with carefully arranged pills, mostly around the toilet, all exploding outward, the flatter ones stacked on top of one
another four or five high, and the oval-shaped capsules in uniform diagonals toward the window. The second camera was down in the living room pointing at the fireplace, magnets and photo papers caulked to the inner brick facing, wet garbage arranged on the floor cement, trash can on its side, pokers leaning across and aiming in. The last camera was aimed as the original had been, at the open bay closet, but now the space was crammed at the bottom with propane tanks, trash can lids, gingerbread men, and coils of garden hose, the recycling drum there on its side, this time crawling with stink bugs.

  Jordan went up to his room, turned on the air conditioner, and waited. All night.

  The next morning he trudged downstairs, cleaned the house, did the rugs with the steam cleaner and wet vac he’d borrowed from the shop, burned seven cans of Raid industrial-duty bug killer, forced himself to be patient. Ann Marie called twice and he didn’t pick up. He showered. Dressed. Gathered the cameras, and then watched the tapes.

  The Breath Vampire first tried to enter through the closet, sliding the coats, yet unable to jump the blockade of outdoor shed paraphernalia. He was too tall, couldn’t get his foot up and over, and he was slippery, only showing up in flashes and blips, covering more space in his patches of invisibility than you accounted for, but when he did sporadically “wink up” the frustration on his thin, mask-like face was more than evident.

  The hearth was horrifying. The monster tried to pull a Santa Claus, but the caulked magnets and papers made him lose his palm pressure and slip down the flue; it seemed even representations of family togetherness defied him. The wet trash at the bottom made him go “whoopsie” on his butt as if coming down off a playground slide, and the pokers propped on the trash can acted like Braveheart spears, impaling the son of a bitch through his inner thighs and privates, worms squirting out of the opened wounds. Then it exercised its own type of “Rewind” ability, and Jordan watched the thing make four fruitless and painful attempts before giving up and trying a bathroom entry.