The Redeeming Power of Brain Surgery Read online

  In their bedroom, he unsnapped the suitcase and laid it open on the bed. He took out his phone again, scrolled down the touchscreen and found the list he’d created the week before. He studied it for a moment, then opened a drawer of his dresser. One by one, he removed and refolded all of the items before stacking them neatly, squarely in the suitcase, deleting each item on the list before moving to the next drawer. When the dresser was empty, it was on to the closet. Two garment bags were already unzipped and hanging, waiting. These he filled with the same meticulous speed, smoothing each shirt or tie or sport coat before stowing it.

  Packing took fifty minutes, about what he figured. He even remembered to include the shoes he’d left by the door. After that, it was a matter of loading his things in the Mercedes. He was on the road by 10:30 a.m. He didn’t leave a note.

  Chapter Two

  It was the discarded disposable diaper that nearly did him in. Smeared into the wet asphalt next to the Mercedes, it was a pulpy, muddy brown reminder. You’ve come all the way back, it said. Welcome home, doc. He paused, door open, one tassled loafer poised over the mess, a dark image buzzing through his head. The person who’d dropped this thing out of her car, this nothing person, was fat and ugly, someone with a dirty baby on her hip and a baby bottle filled with red Kool Aid in her hand. Right now, no doubt, she was inside the greasy spoon restaurant, feeding her face while the kid squished a french fry in his toothless gums and stuck a dirty finger up his nose.

  The scent of the car’s leather seats, the warmth of the interior, beckoned. It would be so easy to pull his foot into the car and head back to I-94. Slip into his Neil-Young driving mode. Neil would sing, and Jesse would join in. In an hour, they—he and Neil—would be out of Michigan, gliding through the night, sailing around the bottom of the big lake. In two hours he could be back home.

  But if there was anything Jesse Tieter understood, anything he valued, it was an obligation. This one had been around his neck, heavy as stone, for the better part of a lifetime. He had been stupid and wrong to let it hang this long.

  The diaper squished under the weight of his first step. Wind-driven drizzle slapped his face. From the restaurant entrance, a tinny loudspeaker played oldies—Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” segueing to “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” Aretha.

  Jaw set, Jesse Tieter slammed the car door behind him, flipped up his coat’s collar, hunched his shoulders, and started around the back of the car.

  To his right, thirty yards away, ran the crumbling two-lane road into town. An old pickup truck slowed, brakes squawking, then shuddered to a stop. The yellow-gold glare of the parking lot lights illuminated the face of the driver: a heavyset black man, his baby face and chubby cheeks cut by shadows. A knife of recognition twisted in Jesse’s gut.

  The baby-faced driver regarded the oncoming traffic with wide-eyed expectation and a faint smile, as though any one of the vehicles hissing by in the other lane might contain a friend. Simple-minded fool, Jesse thought. Once the last of the traffic had wooshed by, the driver bit his lower lip and palmed the wheel. The truck jounced into the parking lot, the tailgate rattling over a pothole, the headlights washing Jesse. He held his ground, head high, wind blowing his hair, stony-faced, acting as though he’d been left waiting in the elements for far too long. He shot the driver a scowl. The reaction was quick, a flash of wide-eyed surprise, a touch of embarrassment. The guy’s passenger turned to glance at Jesse. Her eyes went wide. Good. Good, the voice inside his head—the long-trusted voice—said. Good.

  They were early. Even though they’d seen him, they were probably too scared to leave the truck and come inside, at least until the appointed time. The idiots probably would have a smoke or two, something to screw up their courage. Jesse turned and trudged toward the truck stop. He would go in and wait for them, take some time to get his thoughts straight.

  The fragrance of greasy food—the bacon and burger and fried onion smells of his mother’s kitchen—rushed to greet him as he opened the door. The memories that pooled in his subconscious spilled into his brain, spattering and hissing like grease on a hot griddle.

  ****

  Jesse numbly, dumbly followed the waitress to a table and took a seat. He stared out the window and, as it had so many times in recent weeks, his mental projector blinked, stuttered, then rolled the film. It was 1967. He was lying in bed, the smells of home and breakfast all around, lying there stewing about The Beatles record and the bike he wanted to buy. And there it was, the truth, solid gold, in the echo of his mother’s voice from just a few days before.

  “You can solve all our problems,” the voice, coming back to him tinny and warbly, said. “You should just kill the man. If you hate him enough, you should. A smart boy like you, a young man like you, you could do it like you was on TV. Just pull the trigger, BWAAM!, then go about your business. No one would ever know.”

  She was right, he’d thought. For once, his mom was absolutely right. As he lay there that hot hot morning, Mom’s voice was so real inside his head that it made Jesse Icabone—that was his name back then, Icabone, not Tieter—feel creepy. It was like instead of being downstairs in the kitchen, she’d shrunk herself into a tiny mom, clawed her way up to the room he had to share with his stupid brother, shinnied to the top bunk, and snuggled into his skull so she could tell him this thing. Jesse had felt like that a lot, like Mom had crawled inside his brain. For a second, he was more worried about her being all shrinked up inside him than he was about her being right.

  It’s not easy being a kid and having your mom in your head, Jesse thought as he lay there. It was not easy at all. Lately she was always there. He’d hear her in the sing-songy whisper—the same one she used when they had their special times alone. She’d get him a cookie from the secret hiding place, the place only he and Mom knew about, behind the Bisquick box in the cupboard over the sink. The cookie was most always an Oreo—his favorite. He’d get started on peeling the Oreo apart and she’d hover over him, yakking in that soft sing-song.

  “You should do it,” she’d say. “Yes, you should. Do it for you and for me.” It was scary and weird having her talk to him that way, but it was kind of cool, too, when you thought about it. Geeze, Mom made him feel like a grownup, like Sheriff Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke on TV—someone who could just kill a man dead if he had to. Someone who knew it was his job to do and didn’t back down.

  It was his job to do. He could do it. He should.

  She was right. And he was stupid stupid stupid for not realizing it until now. He was as stupid as his idiot twin, almost stupider than Dad himself.

  The cough of a lawnmower battered the Saturday-morning quiet. To Jesse it sounded like someone had grabbed the thing by the neck and choked it. He twisted and looked through the rusty screen into the backyard two stories below. It was an ugly yard: shaggy grass that needed mowing, broken toys, a clothesline that hung low like a dirty old noodle between two rusty posts. The man was down there somewhere, trying to get the piece-of-junk mower started. Like always, he wasn’t having any luck. Everything they owned was junk, and that man couldn’t fix any of it. Half the time Mom asked him, Jesse, to try to keep things going. Jesse knew a lot about stuff. Jesse Icabone read books and magazines at the library. He read all the time. He read everything. And he tried to fix stuff the best he could, when he could. Mom said he was the real man of the house. Jesse was responsible, just like every good man should be, Mom said. And she was right. He always felt like he needed to solve things. To take care of things. Mom said it was because he was maybe born old. Like he’d been maybe twenty or twenty-five years old when he was a baby.

  Something felt heavy in his chest, and Jesse Icabone closed his eyes till it passed. He imagined how other kids lived. Other kids didn’t have to take care of stuff. They didn’t feel so responsible. He forced a sigh from his lungs and felt better. It wasn’t his fault, was it? No. It was Dad’s fault they didn’t have anything nic
e and that he, Jesse, had to pick up the slack around the house. Mom had told Jesse Icabone that. She was right.

  “You down there, addle-brained boy?” He shot the question at the bottom bunk.

  Just like he’d figured, his brother was gone. He was out in the woods most likely, playing hide-and-seek or something with the stupidest kids around. Jesse used to play games and stuff with Elvis, but that had been a long time ago, back when they were really little. That was before Jesse noticed how weird Elvis was. Elvis was crazy. He was always acting up, getting Mom mad. He was hyper. He was wild. He was irresponsible, Mom said. Dad laughed it off. Dad said Elvis just marched to the beat of a different drummer, that’s all. Mom said Elvis wasn’t completely right. He’s a little nuts, is what she said. Mom said Elvis was just like his father, so why should Jesse hang around with him?

  At least they weren’t identical twins. People said they looked alike but not alike. Mom said if you stared at one and looked half away, your brain might think the one you were staring at was the other one. But then you’d think, no, because they weren’t totally identical.

  Jesse was gifted. He’d gotten all the brains and Elvis, he’d gotten the butt end of the stick. That’s what Mom said. She was right.

  Mom was right about a lot of things. She said when you lived in a little town people always talked behind your back. Jesse had heard them doing it. Just last week he’d heard some ladies at the grocery store talking. Another time it was some men in the barber shop. He’d heard lots of people talking, talking, talking about Dad and the guys he hung around with—his old army buddies that called themselves the Raiders. Dad had that bad leg from getting shot in the war, but that didn’t give him and those no-account Raiders buddies an excuse to hang around the house, sleeping and staring off, sucking on beers and yak yak yakking. That’s what people said. Lots of men had come back from Korea all weird and lost, but you didn’t hear them giving all those excuses. That war had been over for years, but here they were, going on and on about it, crying over spilled milk.

  Dad was crazy, lazy and stupid; that’s what people said. Sometimes he had a job, but most times he didn’t. A lot of times he yelled at Mom and him and Elvis, too. He yelled awfully loud, mostly after he’d been drinking good and hard with some of his Raider buddies. Afterwards, he’d do what Mom called “sleep it off.” Jesse had seen the man a million zillion times just sleeping on the ratty lawn chair in the yard, Pabst Blue Ribbon cans all over the grass, mouth open like he was catching flies.

  Last week, Jesse Icabone had made a big mistake. He’d tried to wake Dad up from the sleeping off, and Dad had come out of it mumbling and lost, his eyes shiny and wild and bloody-looking. Before he knew what was coming, the man’s big right hand was on his face, covering his eyes and nose and mouth, the long fingers squeezing, squeezing, a funny sound, like a growling animal coming from the man’s throat. It hurt something awful. Jesse couldn’t breathe, and the hand had smelled like beer and sweat and something else Jesse thought was just plain bad. Something hot had twisted in Jesse’s chest. He had broken free, the heat in his chest rising, rising as he ran. He hadn’t stopped, not until he was far away, way back in the woods behind the house. He’d heard his dad’s voice, all jaggedy and thick. I’m sorry, Dad yelled, I’m sorry. But even Dad’s voice hadn’t called him back.

  Now, when he thought of him, Jesse couldn’t feel anything but the hot thing.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” Dad had said at breakfast the next morning. Jesse just frowned. Dad sat there at the table, his hair all clean and combed from the bath he’d taken, looking like a little boy that had just got out of bed from being sick. “Sorry, Charlie. I wasn’t myself yesterday,” he said. “I owe you one, Charlie Tuna.”

  He’ll never amount to nothing. He’ll never be good for you. Or us. You should solve it. You’re the one who can. The only one. You should do it. And walk away.

  She was right.

  Yesterday, Jesse had run outside to catch Dad before he left for work—a dead-end second-shift factory job at this stupid wire factory in town—in his nasty old ‘59 Ford pickup truck. “Hey, Dad? Can I get a new record? The Beatles, they got a new one out.”

  The man just laughed and pushed Jesse away, sending him stumbling. “No way we can afford nothing like that, partner,” he said as he got in that rustbucket of his. The hot thing had swelled inside Jesse Icabone then.

  You should do it, the voice had said. Yes you should. Yes you should.

  Dad had driven off, and Mom sat Jesse Icabone down with an Oreo and milk. She told him how mad Dad made her and how much she hated the way they lived.

  Mom was right. They lived poor because of him. They had nothing because of him. People talked. Because of him. The house was stinky and ugly. Because of him.

  Mom’s voice had gone all cool and brittle inside his head. “I even got a idea of how to explain where he’s run off to,” the voice said. “Not too many people are going to ask. Once you tell one person the story, everyone in town will know it. They’ll believe it too, because they’ll want to.” She laughed softly, way down low in her throat. “People will want to believe he run off and deserted his family. It makes good gossip.”

  For the first time, Jesse Icabone started thinking through all the angles of killing the man. “What about Elvis? What if he starts asking questions or maybe figures something out?”

  “We can take care of your brother,” Mom answered with a little snort. “You can take care of him.”

  She was right. Geeze Marie, Jesse thought. He was the kind of boy who could do it––tell Elvis the same story they told everyone else. He was Jesse Icabone, the smartest kid in town, maybe in all of Van Buren County. And if Elvis asked too many questions, well, Mom would help him take care of Elvis. She would. Wouldn’t she?

  “You should do it,” she said, cupping his face with her icy, knobby-knuckled hands. Jesse frowned and pulled away. Something about Mom—the way her voice was so sweet but a little too sweet—was starting to get on his nerves. She was right, yes. But. Her breath always stunk like bad pickles and cigarettes. She could look a lot nicer if she tried. She was short and skinny, a scarecrow in a dirty blue dress that hung like an old bag on her. Her hair was a dirty reddish color and, like always, messy. Those eyes of hers were like tiny dark marbles bouncing around in a puffy-bag face. Her lips, they were dry and thin, and they twitched sometimes when she was talking. Mom always used lipstick that was red and made her skin look even paler than it was. She ran the lipstick extra-high around her mouth, like she was trying to make her lips seem fatter or something. It ended up just making her look stupid.

  She was right. But there was something about her that wasn’t. There was something that wasn’t right at all.

  The spells, Mom’s spells, had been happening a lot lately. She’d just sit in a chair in the living room or stay in bed like a big fat slug for what seemed like forever, then all of a sudden she’d come out of it, talking all loud, acting nervous and yelling or jabbering on about this and that. The worst times, when she was really, really in the mood for talking, she’d tell him things he didn’t want to know, awful things. One night, when Dad was at work and Elvis was inside watching Gilligan’s Island on TV, Mom scootched up next to Jesse on the front porch and said in her whisper voice, “‘Member when I was gone when you was little?”

  He did remember, but only a little bit; it was like a dream to him. She’d left them all alone with Dad, and Dad had to make the meals; mostly, they’d eaten Chef Boyardee ravioli out of the can. That’s what Jesse remembered, eating the Chef Boyardee.

  “Yes, Mom. I do,” Jesse answered carefully, not sure what she was getting at.

  “I’d had my fill of—of all this. So I went to live someplace nice for awhile. Went to my sister’s in Iowa,” Mom said. “She and her husband, your aunt and uncle—probably you don’t ‘member them since you only seen them but once—they live li
ke people should live. They have a nice place and go to lots of parties and so on. Your Aunt Barb, it was her that talked me into coming back to try and work things out; ‘course she got no idea how hard it is. She’s got it good.”

  Jesse was sitting on the porch railing. He felt like jumping down and going inside. Watching Gilligan’s Island with his dumb brother was sounding like something he wanted to do, after all.

  “When we was little, in Chicago, Barb and me, we had everything we wanted: pretty clothes, nice rooms of our own,” she went on. “Your grandpa was a good man, a man who worked hard and was real successful. He had a job in a meat-packing plant but was management potential; that’s what they told him the year before his heart gave out. He wasn’t going to be a packer forever. He was on the fast track, they told him. ‘You got management potential,’ they said.” She spit out the last word, potential. “But I grew up stubborn and wild and stupid, you know that?” Mom scootched closer to him. Jesse could smell her breath, could feel it on the side of his face, but he didn’t look at her. He stared at her ugly feet in the milky light from the house and the single dirty bulb that hung over the front door. His stomach felt funny.

  “We used to come over here for vacations—over to this two-bit-piece-of-Michigan nothing. The summer I turned nineteen, I had to fall in love with the first dumb local yokel that would pay attention to me. He was older than me and a veteran, so I thought that made him special. He’d seen the world. Should’ve known it just made him screwed up. Should say I thought I’d fell in love. I really didn’t. Never loved him, you understand. Your daddy’s never meant nothing to me.”

  Jesse felt a little sick. Mom turned away, took a deep breath and kept on going, talking like he wasn’t there, her voice soft and raspy. “When Daddy said, ‘Stay away from that young man,’ I just laughed in his face. I got knocked up by your daddy on purpose.” She looked down at the dirty wood floor. “We got married here, and got us this nothing house in the country on account of there was nothing else to do. Suppose it was my punishment, having twins and all. And my daddy had that heart attack right after.”