Riptide

five

As a child, Jennifer occasionally had the sense that her life was a movie and she was watching it. She had the same feeling now, as she climbed out of the cellar-a strange conviction of unreality. She lowered the trapdoor and knelt there, running her palm over the smooth wood, simply to feel something firm and solid.

It was hard to keep her thoughts clear. There were bodies in her cellar. She had to do something about that. There must be some action she could take.…

But first she had to check on Richard.

She called his number, letting the phone ring for over a minute. No answer.

He had to be home. He never went anywhere. He hated walking the streets, and he had neither a driver’s license nor a car. She saw to it that food and other essentials were delivered to his door.

She called twice more with the same result, then tried the building manager. Brusquely he assured her that everything was fine. “The place didn’t fall down, okay? It wasn’t that that big of a quake. Now if you don’t mind, I need to get back to work, okay? And hey, your crazy brother’s late on his rent again. It’s due on the first of the month, every month. Okay?”

Click.

That wasn’t good enough. She needed to know why Richard wasn’t answering his phone.

She dug her keys out of her pants pocket-she never carried a purse, too much of an encumbrance-and left the house through the kitchen door, entering the garage, a 1940s add-on. Raising the garage door, she scanned the street for signs of damage.

The day was bright and cool, the morning fog long gone. Seagulls flocked around an overturned curbside trash can. A For Sale sign stood on the sandy front yard of Mr. Beschel’s house down the street; the owner himself had already moved to an island off the Washington coast. Taggers’ marks and gang intaglios defaced tree trunks and utility poles.

There were no downed utility lines, no fires. Her street had come through unscathed. She heard the Rottweiler howling, disturbed by the event. She hoped the little boy and his mother weren’t too badly shaken up.

Her Toyota Prius was undamaged. She drove north, her radio tuned to KFWB. The newscasters were saying that the quake’s epicenter was in Culver City, on the western end of the Puente Hills Fault. Another segment of the same fault line had ruptured in 1987, damaging ten thousand structures citywide and causing eight fatalities. Today’s event was much smaller. So far there were no reported deaths.

Two blocks north of her address, a crowd of people were holding an impromptu barbecue, using up whatever meat and poultry they had on hand because their power was out. That was the thing about earthquakes-the damage was always scattershot, hopscotching from street to street.

Driving through Venice, she saw additional signs of hard shaking. Though the epicenter was several miles to the east, the coastal areas were particularly vulnerable to seismic waves. The tremors could literally churn the sandy soil into quicksand. Venice, built on swampland, faced the most serious hazard.

She passed the splintered remnants of someone’s deck, which had plunged onto the patio below. Farther down the block, a front gate had been wrenched askew, while across the street a palm tree had canted into the side wall of a two-story Mediterranean home.

All around her there was the same uncanny quiet she remembered from the aftermath of other quakes. Birds did not sing. There was an eerie calm, surreal as the stillness in the eye of a hurricane.

She put these thoughts out of her mind. It was best to be alert. She was entering Dogtown.

In the 1970s, when Venice had been a sprawling seaside ghetto with redevelopment still decades away, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods was the no-man’s-land straddling the district’s border with the city of Santa Monica. Some quirk of the law had left the jurisdiction of the area north of Navy Street and south of Pier Avenue undecided. Since neither the Santa Monica Police Department nor the LAPD could confidently claim authority there, the narrow slice of coastal land had gone largely unpatrolled.

Some of Dogtown had been reclaimed by the developers, but not all. The Oakwood neighborhood, in particular, was a nest of blight where tenacious gangbangers hung on in rent-controlled apartments while new buildings went up around them. The new arrivals lived behind locked doors, protected by security fences and dogs-like her new neighbors, she realized. Maybe Richard’s neighborhood wasn’t so different from hers, after all.

She parked outside the Oakwood Chateau, a ridiculously misnamed Art Deco pile, three stories of peeling paint and rusted fire escapes. The building had a security door and an intercom system, but both were broken, as usual. She entered the sour-smelling lobby and found an out of order sign tacked to the elevator. She didn’t want to ride the elevator, anyway. Being trapped in a confined space wasn’t the safest strategy in the Oakwood Chateau, and not just because of aftershocks.

She took the stairs. In the past she had sometimes encountered people sleeping on the landings, but today the stairwell was empty, any sleepers presumably having been roused by the quake. Weak bulbs screened by wire cages cast a dull yellowish glow over the concrete steps and graffiti-covered walls.

On the third floor she exited into the hallway. Most of the apartments had their doors open for a cross breeze. The screams of crying infants and the blare of television sets in many languages assaulted her.

The door to apartment 32 was closed. She gave the door a single sharp rap.

From inside came a low, suspicious growl. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” she said.

“Who?”

“Jennifer. Your sister.”

“What do you want?”

“Just seeing if you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There was an earthquake, Richard. Open the door, please.”

She wondered if he would just ignore her. Then she heard a tread of footsteps on creaky floorboards.

The door opened, just wide enough to pull the security chain taut. Richard stared at her through the gap. Though he was only five foot eight, he had the lanky build of a taller man-long bones, thin wrists and ankles, a narrow neck perched on coat-hanger shoulders. His chestnut hair was prematurely thinning on top, making him look older than twenty-eight.

“I’m fine. See?”

The door began to close. Jennifer jammed one sneaker against it. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Why?”

“I came over here to see you.”

“You’ve seen me.”

“To visit, Richard.”

Grudgingly he unhooked the chain and walked away, leaving her to push the door open and enter.

His apartment was a sad, dusty hole. No paintings on the walls. Minimal furnishings. An old portable TV on a battered stand. The windows looked out on a rusty fire escape above an alley lined with trash bins. There was a bedroom and a tiny kitchen, but the whole place was scarcely bigger than a closet. At night vagrants gathered in the alley, yelling drunkenly and peeing against the wall.

She felt the familiar ache in her heart. She hated being here. Hated seeing him like this. She couldn’t help remembering how he used to be. It was impossible to make sense of a world where something like this could happen to her baby brother.

At least the place was intact. She saw no cracked plaster, no broken glass.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Hanging in there.”

“Taking your meds?”

“Is that what this is? Checking up? Spying on me? You’re always spying on me.”

“I’m not spying, Richard.”

“Bullshit. You come around all the time, asking questions.”

She often stopped by, just to be sure he was okay. She drove him to the psychiatrist at the clinic for his weekly sessions. She dropped off his prescriptions.

“Goddamned doctor sent you here, didn’t he? Fucker’s never trusted me.”

“No one sent me. I’m just worried about you.”

“I’m taking the damn meds.”

He was on olanzapine, an antidepressant. When taking the drug, he displayed hand tremors and tics of the mouth and eyebrows. She wasn’t seeing those side effects today.

That was the trouble with treating schizophrenia. The patient was his own worst enemy. Richard was too paranoid to dose himself on a regular basis. He got to thinking the meds were poison.

If he were in a supervised environment, he would have to take the pills. But she couldn’t have him committed unless he’d been determined to be a danger to himself or others. Otherwise, he could check himself out of an institution at any time.

Besides, there were times when he was lucid. Those times gave her hope, even though objectively she knew that schizophrenia was cyclical, varying from dormancy to the more dangerous active phases.

He appeared to be in an active phase now.

“It’s important to stay on your dosage, Richard.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I just hope you aren’t — ”

“I said, you don’t have to tell me!”

Nothing would be gained by bullying him. If she came on too strong, he would simply retreat further. The trick was to speak slowly, to be gentle and supportive. And not to let him see how much it hurt her to be here with him.

“The manager says your rent is overdue,” she said.

“Fuck him.”

“It’s March fourth. You’re supposed to pay on the first of the month. We’ve talked about this.”

“Talk, talk, all you ever do is talk.”

“We can set up automatic payments from your bank account, the way we discussed — ”

“I don’t want any damn computers digging around in my money. They’ll steal it. Like you want to.”

“I don’t want your money, Richard.”

“Like hell you don’t.” He jerked away from her, shoulders hunching. “That’s all you care about. It’s the only reason you’re here.”

Richard, still unaffected by the disease when their mother died, had inherited the liquid assets and family papers. By now he should have been ruled incompetent to handle the money, but she knew that if she ever tried, it would only exacerbate his paranoia. Anyway, there wasn’t a lot of money left.

The thought of the family documents in his possession raised a possibility in her mind. “Did you ever look through those old papers? The ones Mom passed down to you?”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

“Was there anything in there about our great-grandfather?”

“Who cares about him? He’s dead, dead as a door nail, dead and buried.”

The word dead reverberated in her, eliciting a series of sympathetic vibrations that brought up images of the skeletons in the crypt. “I know he’s dead, but…did any of the documents say when he moved into the house? Was he the original owner?”

He gave her a shrewd look. “Lots of questions. Why so curious?”

“I found something in the cellar that may have belonged to him.”

“Found what?”

“It’s not important.”

“So it’s a secret.”

“Richard …”

He picked up a pair of scissors from a table. Large scissors with long sharp blades. He worked the handles, snipping at the air.

“You’re always keeping secrets from me,” he said, his voice sliding into a lower register, a dangerous rasp. “Hiding things behind my back.”

She stayed very still, trying not to fixate on the scissors. “Do you remember anything about our great grandfather? Anything at all?”

He kept opening and shutting the scissors, snip snip snip. “If I do, I’m not telling. I can keep secrets, too.”

No help there.

A wordless interval stretched between them. “Are you sleeping okay?” she asked.

“What is this, an interrogation? You want a urine sample? Want to run an ink blot test on me?”

The scissors flashed, catching the light from the window.

She watched him. He was uncomfortably close to her. He could be on top of her in one long stride.

In psychology, a variant of political correctness insisted that schizophrenics were less dangerous than the general population. A comforting thought, except it wasn’t true. Schizophrenics were paranoid, and paranoid people could be violent. They could lash out unpredictably, ripping, biting-stabbing.

She knew the warning signs. Rapid breathing. Loud talk. Restlessness. Richard was showing all those signs now.

“I’m just making conversation.” She held her voice steady.

“Mom sent you here.” He waved the scissors, quick slashing strokes. “I fucking know it. Mom’s always on my case, telling me to get it together, take my meds, be a good little boy.”

“Mom’s dead, Richard. She’s been dead for five years.”

“Oh…right.” He planted the tips of the scissors on the window sill and twirled them. “Right.”

“I called you a little while ago. I called three times. Why didn’t you pick up?”

“Didn’t know who was calling.”

“The only way to know is to pick up. Or get an answering machine.”

“Answering machines record your conversations. Not just conversations on the phone. All your conversations, with everybody. It’s their way of keeping tabs on people.”

She didn’t ask who they were. “If the phone rings, you need to answer it.”

He took a step toward her. “I’ll answer the phone when I want to. Right now I don’t want to. There’s nothing you can do about it. So just back off.”

“I’m concerned about your welfare, Richard. That’s all.”

“Yeah.” He snorted, like an agitated horse. “Real concerned. You care so much.”

“I do care.” She wanted to reach out to him, but she knew physical contact would be a mistake. “You make it hard sometimes.”

“Blame me. Always me.” He switched the scissors from hand to hand, back and forth.

“Maybe you should put those down.”

“I’m not a kid anymore. It’s not like I’m running with scissors.” He clicked the blades like castanets. “You’re dirty,” he added. “All scuffed up, like an old shoe.”

Cobwebs and dust were all over her. “I was in the cellar. There was damage from the quake.”

“Damage to the seller. What was he selling?”

“The basement. Of our house.”

“Yeah, like I don’t know what a cellar is. Like everything has to be explained.” He set down the scissors on a table. “I’m a doctor, you know. I’m an MD. That’s more than you are.” He’d been halfway through his first-year residency when his life went off course. Medication had only slowed-not halted-his decline. “You can’t even stand the sight of blood. That’s why you quit.”

“It wasn’t blood. It was a cadaver. A dead body.”

“Dead body? Where? In the cellar?”

She looked at him, startled. “Why would you say that?”

He ignored the question. “You found something that belonged to our great-grandfather in the cellar. Damage down there. What kind of damage?”

“Part of a wall fell down. Just some old bricks.”

“Bricks. Bridge. London Bridge.” He sang tunelessly. “London Bridge is falling down…”

“Why did you ask about a body in the cellar?” It had to have been one of his quirky associative jumps. He said so many crazy things that sometimes he hit on the truth by chance.

“Belonged to our great-grandfather,” he repeated. “He came over from London. Falling down, falling down …”

“Stop that. Answer me. What do you know about him? What made you say what you said?”

“London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady …!” He fixed her with his stare. “Was it a fair lady in the cellar? Did she fall down?”

“Richard,” she said slowly, “if you know anything about the cellar or our great-grandfather, I want you to tell me. Please.”

“What’ll you give me if I do?”

“Anything, whatever you want.”

“I want the house.”

“You know you can’t live there. You can barely manage this place. Just tell me whatever you know.”

“I know it should have been my house. That’s what I know.”

She decided he had no secret information. He was only free-associating, riffing on her own conversational tacks.

“You know how that worked,” she said. “You got the money, I got the house. You thought it was fair at the time. You didn’t even want the house, remember?”

“Bullshit. Why wouldn’t I want the house? Think I want to live here? Like this? In this shit? You took everything from me. It all worked out pretty good for you, didn’t it?”

She felt a burning pressure behind her eyes. “I’m not happy about-about how things have worked out.”

“Save it. I know you’re lying. You think I’m stupid, but I have news for you. I’m smarter than you think. I know things you don’t.”

“Richard…”

“I’m an MD.”

“I know you are.”

“I was a better doctor than Dad ever was. Him with his walk-in patients with no insurance, and then he puts a gun in his mouth. Right after I was born. Guess he really didn’t want a boy.” He laughed, an awful sound, empty of amusement.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“Sure it is. Everything’s funny. Because we think we’re always going to be the same person. But then you get older, and your brain…it changes. And suddenly you’re somebody else.”

The pressure on the backs of her eyes burned hotter. It pained her to know that he understood this much about himself. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Maybe you’ll change, too. Like Dad. Like me.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“If you were an MD, you’d know about genetics.”

“I do know about genetics, Richard.”

“Then you know it runs in the family. Like father, like son. Maybe like daughter, too.”

“I’m thirty, Richard. The…change typically starts by the mid-twenties. That’s how it was for Dad. And you.”

His face changed. He picked up the scissors again. The cutting blades gleamed with dangerous scintillation. “Numbers? You’re counting on numbers to save you? What we have, the thing that changes us-it’s in our blood.”

“Our father was twenty-five when he began to show symptoms. You were twenty-six. I’m thirty.”

“It’s not too late for you.”

“I think it is.”

“Never too late. It’s in our blood.” He punctuated the last word with a swing of his hand that passed the scissors within two feet of her. She shrank back. She couldn’t help it.

He would never assault her. He was her little brother.

Except he wasn’t so little anymore. He was six inches taller than she was, and he was paranoid, delusional, crazy.

He stepped closer. The hand holding the scissors was tightly clenched, the knuckles squeezed white.

She reached for the door. “I need to be going.”

“You’re afraid. Afraid of me.”

“I just have things to do.”

“Afraid,” he said again, and with his free hand he grabbed her by the wrist.

“Please let go of me,” she said without inflection.

After a long moment he released her. “Don’t let me keep you. I never wanted you here. You’re a nuisance. Get out. Run away.”

She opened the door and stepped into the hall, daring a backward look. “Take care of yourself, Richard, okay?”

“Fuck you.” He filled the doorway, his face distorted. “You took the house from me. You took everything and left me to rot in hell, so fuck you, bitch, fuck you!”

He slammed the scissors into the door frame, planting them in the cheap wood. She recoiled, stumbling. He laughed, a raging idiot laughter that echoed down the hall, pursuing her as she fled.

She didn’t start crying until she was on the stairs.