Talk, Damn It (98)

PSI-3

Milo noted the kitchen lights were on. This was possible because he had waved out the mage lights in the front room as soon as he peeked out of his door. Because he was hiding. He put out lights and he walked quietly and he never went into the basement anymore. When he came home, he went right upstairs without acknowledging anyone or even looking up and he changed. He existed in darkness and at work. Ann did everything else.

He thought probably Mordecai was doing breakfast, or something about breakfast. Mordecai kept leaving him breakfast and he kept not-eating the breakfast and he thought Mordecai probably didn’t like that. Maybe not mad about it. (Maybe mad. Maybe really, really mad.) Maybe just worried.

Mordecai wanted to talk to him before, about what happened. Ann did that for him too. But Ann was mad at Mordecai and there wasn’t a lot of talking. Mordecai might still want to talk about things.

I’ll just go, he thought. He won’t have seen the lights come on. He won’t catch me. I’ll just go.

But, he couldn’t keep doing this. Not all this. He wasn’t going to die and he wasn’t going to move away and all this hiding and cringing and fear was exhausting. They didn’t hate him…

Not all of them hated him.

He shuddered and closed his eyes. His hands tightened around the banister. Oh, gods, this hurts.

If he asked Ann to help him, she would say to just go. She didn’t like Mordecai.

If he asked Ann to say he was sorry about the breakfasts or give Mordecai a card, she probably wouldn’t do that either.

He could picture, with perfect clarity, Mordecai just getting madder and madder at him about the breakfasts, and then there would be two people in the house that hated him.

I just… I’ll try to explain. I’ll draw how I’m sorry. …I don’t know how to draw that. I’ll draw I love breakfasts. I’ll draw pancakes in a heart. Then I… Then… I don’t know…

If he went up to his room to write something, he didn’t think he’d make it back down, no matter that he had a shift at noon. It was so hard for him to come out of his room in the first place…

He sat down on the stairs and he found a relatively smooth place where he could draw. He took out a card and a pencil and in the faint light from the kitchen, he drew pancakes in a heart, and then a heart split in two jagged pieces. He put a teardrop running out from between the two halves, like he’d cracked an egg and that was inside.

I love breakfast but my heart is broken.

That wasn’t very good, but maybe he could get it across if he looked sorry. Clutching the card and the pencil and shivering, he peered past the kitchen doorway, hoping to figure out what the situation was in the kitchen without being seen. If Mordecai looked mad…

Calliope was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands.

Milo crumpled the card in his hand and snapped the pencil in two.

No. No. No, no, no. Run…

He did not run. He shifted his weight clumsily backwards and fell over the kitchen step. If Calliope hadn’t heard him break the pencil, she had certainly heard that. He was unable to collect himself and scrabble away in the time it took her to get up from the table and check on him.

“Milo…?”

He couldn’t look at her. He shut his eyes and turned his head away.

“You okay?”

He shook his head.

She sighed and sat down on the kitchen step. “Yeah. Me too.” She put her elbows in her lap and her face in her hands.

Milo felt torn down the middle like his drawing of a broken heart.

Help her. She’s hurt./Go away. Don’t hurt her more.

Weakly, nonsensically, he offered her the card he was holding.

She had her glasses hooked over the collar of her T-shirt. She examined the card, both sides. “You don’t like pancakes anymore because you’re too sad?”

He nodded.

“Me too.” She pulled off the glasses and covered her eyes with a hand. She was crying. “I don’t understand what happened. Milo, will you talk to me?” In her other hand, she was holding the temple of her glasses and two pencils. She offered them. “Please?”

He wanted to hold her, but he knew he couldn’t do that. There were a million reasons. Most of them because he was wrong and stupid and broken. With a shaking hand, he reached over and tugged one of the pencils out of her grip.

———

She had the pad of drafting paper from the basement on the kitchen table. She leaned over it with her pencil and drew a hand — with sizzling lines of pain around it so you could see where it had struck. She looked up at him when she was through, but he only looked at the drawing.

“I’m sorry I hit you, Milo.”

He crossed his hands in front of him and shook his head. He sketched a dress, and then a work shirt with suspenders. He put a mouth over the dress where the face would go and an ear over the work shirt.

“I know Ann told you,” Calliope said. “I wanted to tell you.” She shook her head. “It isn’t fair I hit you. You never hurt me that way.” She choked. She was still shaking her head. “It only felt like you did…”

He shut his eyes and he wrapped his arms around his middle. I hit Calliope. Oh, no…

“Milo.” She looked up again, tear-streaked and pained. She didn’t know how to draw this. “Milo, do you even like me?”

His hands flew to the paper, like startled birds. He drew a heart and made it glow. He nodded frantically. Oh, please don’t think I don’t like you. I didn’t hurt you because I don’t like you. I don’t know why I hurt you. I don’t know how!

She shook her head. She asked him the impossible, “Why? Why do you like me?”

He had pencil and paper, but no words, no words at all.

He drew the flowers, like on his wall with the flowers, but just gray and dismal and sad. He had to put the lines through them, like the wallpaper, so she’d know which flowers he meant. He drew the box of chalk pastels she let him steal, with twelve colors in a line like that. And then a plate with sandwiches, and a pitcher with chocolate milk, and a paper towel with a brownie for no reason on it. And a smile with gears, he made it her smile. And he added some more gears and connected it up to another smile… a small, shy one — his smile. And another glowing heart. He drew the empty dress with the flowers and the trench coat dancing together, like she had on her wall, and the scorch mark with the angel wings. He drew the record player with notes coming out of it, and the radio, and…

She put her hand on his hand with the pencil. “Stop.”

He blushed and shivered. The pencil stuttered a little scribble on the page. Oh. Her hand was warm and then it was gone.

She drew a tombstone, and she put two mud-stained shovels leaning up against it. “Then why did you think I wanted you to hurt Ann? Milo, how can you like me and think that?”

Hurt Ann? No! I don’t want to hurt Ann! He circled the tombstone and x-ed it out. He wildly shook his head.

“You brought me roses about it, Milo,” Calliope said tightly. She was drawing them. Half a dozen in a pitcher of water. “You brought me roses and you said ‘Let’s kill Ann and get married,’ and you thought I’d be happy.”

Kill Ann? Kill her?

If he had wanted to stop being him, and that was the same as wanting to die, then what was wanting to stop being Ann?

He paled, and his vision took on a shimmer that he’d only seen when he was very sick and about to throw up. Ann? Did I almost hurt you?

Milo, I don’t know… I think you almost hurt you, but I don’t know what would’ve happened to me…

I didn’t know either. I didn’t think about it and I didn’t know and I didn’t try to find out. Oh, my gods. He looked at the tombstone with the two shovels beside it, and the roses in the pitcher of water. Oh, my gods, I’m a horrible person. What must she think of me?

Milo, that isn’t what she’s saying! That isn’t all she’s saying. There are two shovels there! Do you see what she thinks you think about her?

Oh, my gods. I said ‘Let’s kill Ann’ and I brought flowers to celebrate. Oh, gods, why did I do that? What’s wrong with me? Why am I so broken? Why didn’t I think?

Milo, will you please listen to me! You’ve almost got it right, but that isn’t enough. You need to understand this!

But he wasn’t. He couldn’t. This pain was too loud.

She didn’t want to hate me. She didn’t want to hurt me. I made her.

Oh, I knew it was my fault. It always is. It always is.

He erased the ‘X’ over the tombstone. He added gears interlocking it with the roses, and more gears connecting both to his broken heart. He touched the tip of the pencil to the heart, and then he laid a hand over his chest. He nodded gravely. Calliope, I deserve this.

He tore the sheet from the pad, he crumpled it, and he put it in the kitchen trash. He left via the back door, with his head hanging, and he made no attempt to look back.

Calliope stood in the kitchen, still holding her pencil, and stared at the door Milo had closed behind him.

“What?” she said.

———

Rescuing the drawing from the trash and smoothing it out on the table made little difference. He seemed to be saying that he had broken his own heart, but then why was that the end of it?

Milo, I know it was your fault. Don’t you want to do something to fix it?

Do you like me?

He had drawn a lot of stuff about liking her, but it didn’t seem like it mattered.

Is this all? Does it just end? You throw it away and walk off with a broken heart and that’s it?

This part here with the roses and the grave was so small. The drawings about why he liked her took up most of the page.

(He drew a brownie. She guessed Milo knew she made the brownies, but not about the drugs, and Ann knew about the drugs, but not that she made the brownies.)

Milo, do you know I like you? How awful do you think I am?

Maybe he didn’t think it could be fixed. Maybe he thought she hated him and she was going to hate him forever. Maybe he thought she was a monster.

A monster with chalk pastels who makes sandwiches and chocolate milk?

Well, why not?

All of the things Milo drew were on the outside, things she did. It would be really hard to draw something like ‘you’re a kind person,’ it was easier to draw the things that showed it, but what if that was all he knew? No picture of the person inside, because he couldn’t see that. He couldn’t take her apart and count all the teeth in the gears…

We’re missing the gears, she thought. There were gears over here with the roses and dead Ann because he figured out how all that worked. There were gears with the smiles. (I make him happy. Oh. That’s nice.) Everything else was just hanging out there in midair.

We’re missing the circles too, she thought. He can’t see the magic.

She frowned at the drawing and straightened. Milo, damn it, if you didn’t know how it worked, why did you throw a shoe in it? What did you think was gonna happen?

Was it a test? She touched her fingers against the empty spaces between the drawings. Did you think the only way you could figure it out was if you broke it?

Her expression crumpled. Milo, don’t you know that hurts?

Well, she guessed he knew it now.

She turned from the drawing, folded her arms across her chest and pressed a hand to her cheek. Do I want him to like me? Do I want someone who hurts me because he doesn’t understand me to like me?

What if he does something like that to Lucy?

She hated this. Things were supposed to get better. Crises were supposed to end. It was supposed to stop hurting and everything was supposed to go back to normal. Bad things happened and sometimes everything changed and there was a new normal, but there was supposed to be a normal! Not hurting every day and hiding from each other and new permutations of problems that just got worse and worse and she didn’t know what to do.

She accused the drawing with a pointed finger, I like you! And you liked me back! Why isn’t that enough?

Empty spaces. She couldn’t see the magic or the gears. She just thought she could.

But there was so much here. Most of the page. Even without magic and gears.

It’s not broken forever, she thought, not with love or kindness but with anger, like when the landlady wouldn’t let her go back for her canvases. She didn’t put all that work into something she loved just so she could lose it.

I don’t know what it is or how it works or how it’s going to work now that you’ve screwed it up, but it’s not broken forever. Not just because you did one stupid thing, Milo.

She folded the drawing, and she went back to her room with it. A few minutes later, she went upstairs to Milo’s room with a note.

———

Milo read, in smudged ink on a piece of poster board that had been applied to his door with a line of glue, Milo, don’t change right away. Come visit Lucy, she misses you.

Lucy doesn’t miss me, Milo thought, frowning. Lucy barely saw me.

Ann? Is this to hurt me? He tried to remove the note and examine it, but it was stuck on there pretty good and there wasn’t any magic for him to undo. He quit when the paper tore.

He wasn’t sure if it was teasing. It didn’t make enough sense to be teasing. I don’t hate you anymore, I miss you, yeah, that would be teasing. Calliope couldn’t mean something like that. But this was just weird.

Is it possible Lucy… I don’t know… said something about missing me? Babies don’t work that way, do they?

Ann thought Milo’s hypothetical I don’t hate you anymore, I miss you, was pretty close to the mark, except she wasn’t sure if Calliope had ever really hated him in the first place, but he wouldn’t understand that if she tried to explain it that way. And if she made the suggestion that perhaps Calliope was the one who wanted to see him, it would scare the hell out of him and he might not go. Well, Milo, I think Calliope would probably like you to visit Lucy. You haven’t yet. It would be polite of you. Lucy is new and Calliope is proud of her.

Oh, no. I haven’t been to visit Lucy. I didn’t want to make Calliope mad… Is she mad? The note didn’t seem mad, but it was hard to tell from just that. She drew a flower right there. It didn’t seem like a mad flower. It didn’t have thorns…

No, Milo, I don’t think she’s mad… But maybe you shouldn’t put it off for much longer.

And maybe that would get him to go.

I should… He shrugged out of his coat and opened the door to go hang it in the closet.

No. He stopped. Lucy was new. And Erik and Maggie had put up a bunch of signs and drawings about that in Calliope’s room. And Barnaby clipped out all those coupons and gave them, and Hyacinth and Mordecai brought flowers…

Lucy was supposed to get presents for being new!

Ann, we have to… He shed his coat on the floor and started to undo his shirt. They had to go shopping! Something for Lucy, and not flowers or coupons. Ann would know…

The note said, ‘Milo, don’t change right away.’ If Calliope saw Ann, she’d know he did change right away and she’d think he didn’t care about visiting Lucy.

Oh, no.

Ann looked back at him from the mirror with a hopeful smile. Milo, I’ll help you, okay? We can do this. She clenched one hand into a fist and lifted it.

He cringed. Yes. He did up his buttons and got back into his coat.

Calliope had come into the front room. She had on the green knit sweater with the holes and a pair of loose black trousers that she had done up with a safety pin. “Milo?” she said.

Cotton corduroy, Milo noted absently. Narrow wale. He walked right past her.

Milo… No, damn it. If Ann told him he had just been rude to Calliope, he would fixate on that. He was already scared enough of the shopping. Never mind. We’ll hit up the second hand store on Sabot Street.

———

Second Hand Clothes, the window advised him, in brush-marked white paint. Yellowish light poured past it onto the cobbled street. Books 2/10sc. There was a brass bell over the door that rang and bobbled when he entered and he winced up at it. He held onto the door and shut it very slowly, trying not to engage the noise again.

Clnk, the bell announced, softly.

There was a man behind the counter. He had on a white shirt with suspenders and sleeve garters, and a gray felt vest. He was employing a duster with brown ostrich feathers. Milo walked past him with his head down.

There was a round metal rack over there with dresses, some of them in nice summer colors and fabrics — because this was a second hand shop and they didn’t do seasons like the department stores with everything in the windows drab gray and brown for fall. He really wanted to look at the dresses, and touch the dresses, it was just something comforting, but they were here to get a present for Lucy very fast and go home. Lucy wouldn’t like a dress. Not a big dress. And he didn’t know what size to get a little dress and Ann thought that probably wasn’t a good idea. She had a better one.

He strode rapidly down the aisles, looking.

There were three. Two in with the toys and one part of a display with a record player and a typewriter. He lined all three up on a shelf and examined them. They badly needed cleaning. He could do that. (He wouldn’t until after he bought one because if it looked nice it might be more expensive.)

But he didn’t know which one Lucy would like. Ann was no help. No one knew anything about what Lucy would like. Lucy just got here!

Ann was trying to tell him it didn’t matter, but it did matter! He wanted Lucy to like him!

(He wanted Calliope to like him. Even if she wouldn’t anymore ever.)

He paced back and forth between two bookshelves and stared at three stuffed animals for a good forty-five minutes (the man behind the counter was beginning to consider calling the police) before finally deciding just to buy all three.

There was food at the house. It wasn’t like he needed to buy food. Necessarily. He could walk to work if he had to. And Ann’s work. Probably.

———

“Milo, there you are,” said Hyacinth. “Where…”

He shooed a hand at her.

Dinner appeared to be under construction, but not yet in progress. (It did not occur that they might have been waiting for him.) Calliope was sitting at the kitchen table, with Erik and Maggie flanking her and fussing over Lucy.

Milo clutched his stuffed animals. Oh, no. I didn’t get toys for Erik and Maggie. Should I have got toys for Erik and Maggie? Will they be sad?

Erik had been pretty sad. About the suitcase and stuff.

Milo, you have three, you could just…

No, these are for Lucy. He held tighter and shook his head. I can’t pick.

Erik looked up at him and smiled.

It was okay. Erik didn’t mind about toys. He had a lot of toys. Lucy didn’t have anything yet.

That still left Maggie, though…

“Maggie, you don’t like stuffed animals, do you?” Erik said.

“Huh?” Maggie said.

Erik subtly shook his head at her. “Those are for little kids, right?”

Maggie glanced up at Milo, who was madly hugging three soft toys. “Um… Yeee-ah.” She backed off a pace. There was weird emotional stuff going on here. Milo and Calliope had been tiptoeing around each other like they were both made of glass. Maybe this was something to fix it.

Now Calliope looked up, and she smiled too. “Aw. Are those for Lucy?”

Milo nodded, looking away. A blush was burning in his cheeks, but that could’ve been that it was warm in the kitchen and he’d just come in. His glasses were steamed up too.

“Can I see?” Calliope asked him.

Milo set all three down on the kitchen table, one beside the other, like little supplicants praying at a shrine.

“Look, Lucy.” Calliope tipped up the bundle in her arms. “A duck! And a cat. And is that one a lizard?”

Milo nodded. He thought an iguana. It had a blue ruffled dress with polka-dots and a bonnet. That was a weird one. But maybe Lucy liked weird stuff.

Lucy did not appear too impressed with any of her toys, not even when Calliope walked them up to her and touched her on the nose with them, but she was still really little. She didn’t even know about smiling yet. Milo hadn’t expected much.

She didn’t seem like she was unhappy, though.

Calliope stood, “Look, Lucy. This is Milo.”

Lucy opened her eyes and had a look at Milo. Huh. Okay, she thought, which was pretty much what she thought about everything, unless it was loud or uncomfortable.

Calliope wasn’t sure what to say about Milo. Milo likes us? She didn’t know that. Milo is our friend? She didn’t know about that either. Milo is nice…?

“We like Milo,” she said finally.

Huh, thought Lucy. Okay. She closed her eyes again.

Milo blinked and glanced at Calliope. We…?

He looked down and shook his head. No. That was just how you talked to babies. Calliope wanted Lucy to like him, that was all.

But… that was nice. He looked up again, just briefly, at Calliope smiling. That was nice that Calliope wanted Lucy to like him.

Ann? Does Calliope hate me?

No, Milo. I don’t think Calliope hates you.

She should. He considered that. If she hated him, she wouldn’t want him to visit Lucy. She’d want Lucy to be safe from him, and she’d want him to go away.

What if she doesn’t hate me…?

He straightened, and his expression became set with determination.

Ann, I have to be really careful and not hurt Calliope anymore, okay? Calliope or Lucy. You have to help me. I don’t want to be the bad person who brought her flowers about hurting you. I have to be better than that. If she’s not going to hate me and tell me to go away, I have to be SAFE.

He was picturing himself in the straitjacket that tied in the back so he couldn’t pull out his hair or bite.

Ann was mad. She didn’t want him to think of it that way. Milo, I am not going to tie you up like that. I will help you. I will be with you. But you still need to make your own decisions and try. You need to be you.

He felt helpless. Weak. Ann, will you please stop me if I’m ever going to hurt her like that again? You don’t have to tie me, will you just stop me?

Yes, Milo. I promise I will.

Okay.

Milo, do you understand what she was telling you? It wasn’t just that you were cruel to her, it was what you thought about her that made you act that way. If you want to still be friends with Calliope, if you want to be more than friends with Calliope, I need to know…

“Hey, Milo,” said Calliope, smiling. “You want to hold her?” She shifted Lucy and attempted to deposit the baby in his arms.

Hyacinth and Mordecai immediately intervened.

“Calliope, Milo doesn’t like…”

“Calliope, you can’t just do that to people!”

Milo backed off — fast — and into the kitchen counter, which had the effect of upending a glass pot with a lid.

It was soup. It went everywhere, and the pot itself shattered.

Milo emitted a thin breath that wanted to be a scream and clapped both hands over his open mouth.

Lucy began to cry.

That is why you keep the pot handles turned in, Erik, Cousin Violet noted with a grin.

Erik groaned and put a hand to his head. Violet, don’t you like Milo?

Sure I do! said Violet. He’s great!

Milo attempted to escape the noise and the upset and the awful mess he’d made, and he slipped in the soup and went down on one knee. This had the effect of staining his trousers and lodging an inch-long shard of glass in his leg. He scrabbled to his feet and ran in the opposite direction, down the back stairs and out of the house.

Hyacinth tore after him, “Milo, come back! Let me fix it!”

See? Great! Cousin Violet opined and vanished.

Erik just stood there, staring, with an expression midway between exhaustion and pain.

Then Violet popped back in through the wall, just her head and hand, like she was peeking through a doorway, and Erik fell down.

He doesn’t have any money for new pants either, Violet said.