Things That Lead To The Other World

This is a sequel to a story I previously posted -- "The Difference Between Pluto and Goofy." The novella follows Josette and Josh through another fun-filled year on the border of Detroit. I'm going to post the second half tomorrow and the third installment for Sunday. Enjoy!


Things That Lead To The Other World

We have our routines, of course. I’d like to say that my brother Josh crawled out of my bed into his own, that we weren’t hell bent on repeating the damage of our youth. What’s your first impulse when something isn’t working – if it’s to hit it hard, well, that’s ours too. Josh fell asleep next to me last night, talking to me about his accident, which was anything but.

My brother does not look like a well man, what with a knife scar from ear to ear that he’d done himself, a visible before and after, a fuck you to our parents, years after the fact. This summer, the summer of Josh turning thirty-one, me twenty-nine, had undone us. I had my own story, no ghoulish carved smile, but I haven’t heard from my married boyfriend Kevin since I stood mute in front of his wife, having shown up at his house in the Detroit suburbs right after a July thunderstorm, the kind that knocked out the power for hours.

Kevin, if you’re listening, I have no idea why I did what I did. It didn’t, as people say, even seem like a good idea at the time. When Josh drove me home from your house, and it is your house as your wife has not worked in many years and you do not own what you have not paid for, I felt nothing except the pleasant buzz of adrenaline through my veins while I thought, Josette, you dumbass, he’s never going to forgive you. Which was right, at least so far.

Today, Josh returns to school. He’s had a week of in-service days, but most of the other teachers knew what he had done to his once beautiful face, certainly a new answer to the inevitable summer vacation chitchat. The ambitious teachers scrimp to go to Europe on cut-rate deals. The lonely ones or financially overextended fearing empty hours and little money volunteer to teach, and all the rest tend to drink every night and buy too many cds. I, Josh could say, took a kitchen knife to my face and carved the shit out of it, or to quote his latest shrink, externalized his pain, as if such a thing were possible.

“You look nice,” I say. Josh shoots me a go to hell look, to which I say, already there, and he laughs. After a few years of living alone, I like living with Josh again, even if it is as his legal guardian. His shrink realized that I was the only option, much to her horror. She’s smarter than most, having figured out that I have a wee bit of a substance abuse problem, my having come to her office fucked up on more than one occasion. As if someone could be expected to deal with such things sober. Our parents exist a thousand miles away, never having made good on their perpetual threat to come back to live in Detroit . They have been gone almost a decade, not long enough. They have bought two adjacent cemetery plots not far from where Josh and I live, ostensibly for them, maybe for us, it's anybody's guess.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Domestic squalor is dark and serious. It leaves behind guilt and sadness." Ann Roiphe

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Burnin' Hell John Lee Hooker

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday!