Eight

"It's not what I wanted!" Tommy shouted.

"Poor old coot." That would be Jimmy, sitting there in the hallways, clucking his tongue and trying to catch the attention of a nurse, any nurse. Maybe that's why he was even there in the first place. Did Jimmy have a thing for nurses? Was he lonely? Was he dying for a little attention, a little affection? There in the hospital were all those nurses, a captive audience almost, nearly all female and having to work to get out of the way, stay out of the way of unwanted attempts at conversation. They were plenty good at it, though, and down at the nursing section they'd already talked about Jimmy, best to ignore him, keep moving, move along. Jimmy straightened himself up in his seat and thought that maybe he should have brought a magazine or even a book but now it was too late because if he got up for even a moment, he knew that they would seize the moment, and seize the chair, and then what would he do? Maybe the old man would just die already.

"I knew you were watching me," Margaret said, "how could I not know? All I had to do was turn around, look over my shoulder, and there you were. That one year, you were even outside my apartment building half the time where you didn't belong, pretending like you were going somewhere, or visiting someone else, or had something to do on the block but you didn't. You were staking me out. Gaping at me in the cafeteria. Poor little Tommy. Poor little Tommy Turtle, because even though you weren't so little anymore like you'd used to be, you were still kind of little inside of your head. Am I right? You still felt small, and weak, and maybe even invisible, like no one could see that you were standing right there, walking over there, doing this and doing that. You got tall but only on the outside, and you were still pretty damn ugly. Not me. I was right there. I was perfect, and everybody knew it."

"You were perfect," Tommy repeated. "Every time you noticed me I pretended you didn't. I kept up believing it was all in my head. A whole lot of stuff was all in my head at the time, so why not you seeing me too? I could have told a billion stories about you, and I did and they were all in my head. I made up your life story a hundred thousand times, about the college you went to, or never did go to, about the children you had, or never did have, about your lovers and husbands and friends and enemies, about the people you met, the jobs you had or never did have, the lifetimes you lived and all your regrets. If I couldn't have you, and I couldn't, then what chance did you have? You see? If you were all mine, then the story would work out all right. We'd get married and then we'd have a boy and a girl. The boy would be first, because then he could protect the girl as she needed him to later on. He'd be a really good boy, a boy boy, big enough and strong enough and smart, really smart, but not so brainy that he wouldn't have friends. The girl, now she would grow up to be exactly like you. Perfect in every way but maybe not as sexy. Beautiful but wholesome, right? You know what I mean. Everyone would want her, but only the right guy could get her. Like me getting you. That's how it went in the one version that could never be real."

"Instead, you turned out all wrong because you didn't choose me. Junkie and whore. I don't know where that skater guy came from. Why'd I ever think of a skater dude?"

"Because you never could do that?" Margaret suggested.

"I was never any good at any of that stuff," Tommy agreed.

"You especially sucked at baseball," Margaret added.

"God, don't I know it," Tommy said. "The only thing I ever wanted to be good at, too. How I loved it! I saw myself, standing up there at the plate, taking my time and aiming my bat at deep center field, right where I was going to knock that ball right over everyone's head, and then I was going to run, run like you wouldn't believe, an inside the park home run every time. Every time! I didn't want the easy glory or bashing it over the fence. No, and anyway I knew that I wasn't that strong. A nice, sweet line drive right over their heads and then running, all me making it happen, all around the bags, in the bottom of the ninth of course, a tie game and two outs and two strikes and all that. Inside the park all the way."

"You didn't even make the team," she helpfully reminded him.

"I never even made any team," he corrected. "Because somehow the bat never wanted to come close to touching the ball. I was too small, and too weak."

"Even when you weren't anymore," she said again, "you still thought that you were."

"All my life," Tommy said. "I kept thinking that way. It's crazy how strong your self-image gets stamped in your head. You can go around believing for yours that this is how you are, and you're not."

"I didn't like that version," Margaret said. "The one I just told you. The one you made up in your mind. Or the earlier one either. Why couldn't I have a normal, boring life? Why couldn't I be a chemist, or a pharmacist, or a university professor? Why couldn't I have a house in the suburbs and take the train in to work every day? Why couldn't I be like your niece, with a book full of appointments and things I like doing, too busy to check in on the dying old uncle that none of us really liked anyway? I did have a brother named Jimmy, you know."

"I know," Tommy said. "That's where this one came from. I never liked your little brother. He was a weasel, always whining and wanting more. More of everything and more all the time. He'd come up to you in the school cafeteria and if you offered him half of your cookie he'd take the whole thing. And nothing was ever good enough either. He'd be munching that whole cookie and complain that it tasted like crap."

"I loved my little brother," Margaret said.

"No, you didn't," Tommy told her.

"Now you're telling me how I felt, how I feel."

"Why not?" he nearly shouted. "Why shouldn't I? I'm making it all up, aren't I? Don't I even get to choose what you're like? In my story you're mine, and you'll be what I want you to be. You'll feel what I want you to feel. If I say you're a slut, you're a slut. If I tell you to bend over, you do that. If I say that you hate your own brother, then you hate him. That's the whole point of it, isn't it?"

"Is that how it ends?" she asked. "Is that your idea of love?"

"No," he replied, after he thought for a minute. "I just want you so bad."

"We're only still kids," Margaret said.

"I know," Tommy said. "I guess I've been watching too much TV. All the drama, you know. Their idea of love is conflict resolution. People get passionate, like they ate too much chocolate. They're buzzing around all intense. You look at your own life and it seems nothing happens, it's too slow and not at all like a show, where emotions run high and violence is the path and the way and the truth. There's this dark side we're all required to have! If you don't have a dark side, then hell, you're a joke."

"Most of our dark sides aren't really that dark."

"No, they're not," he agreed. "They're pretty much beige, like the buildings we live in. Predictable, arranged, all part of a plan, designed by leading experts and affordable too!"

"Ghosts do not live in mold," Margaret said.

"As if there even are ghosts," he said to himself. As if hospitals even have mold on the walls. As if they even let people lie out in the hallway to die. Well, maybe they do. I know that they do. I've seen it myself. That's where I got the idea."