Page 2 of A Long Con

A Fat Boy, a Dyna, and a Softail were all parked at the curb. A Road King like mine was even in the driveway, only older, maybe a ’94. Guys in leather vests laughed like goons at things that probably weren’t even funny, and outrageous chicks with ‘80s mullets and fat butts guffawed along with them. Tunes of the heavy metal Saviors from the real town of Oakland were blaring from the backyard, up against the cliffs like my house was.

Maybe I was jealous. But were those guys ruining the neighborhood?

No. I was.

A deep, existential feeling of doom filled my stomach as I pulled up to our house. Oh, it looked OK from the front. Elaine made sure of that. Strangely, keeping up appearances was of top concern to her.

Was it even worth locking this place? I took my helmet—lid as the bikers would say—inside with me. Oh, fuck me raw. I’d been there a week already, driving crap to the dumps every day with a rental truck, and the smell still hit me like a wet fucking fish. I’d basically only really cleaned out my old bedroom—yes, that had taken a week—that Elaine had hoarded up. I’d left the door to the house closed and the window open. That was my first destination, after grabbing a Mickey’s Big Mouth beer from the disgusting fridge.

Not too bad. The plywood walls weren’t rotting like in the rest of the house because Elaine hadn’t stacked crap directly against the wall here. I was still afraid to sit down on the bed, though. I’d stripped the bed, thrown the cat shit-encrusted sheets into the pit at the dumps, and tossed everything from the Home Shopping Network that had been originally piled there, unopened. Elaine worked part-time as a substitute teacher so I never knew where she got the money for all of that—the hair dryers, air purifiers, and makeup. Holy mother, there was enough makeup for a grade schoolgirl’s bathroom.

Dutch ovens, bars of soap, vitamins, I had to get rid of it all except the globe and some wrestling action figures, because Elaine was never coming back. She was dying of heart disease complicated by COPD, caused, no doubt, by all the dust and black mold in the house. She never would have let me toss the smallest blackened can of sardines if she was still there. She had a brain disorder like me, but hers wasn’t caused by a fall.

The more boxes I’d removed, the more of my wall painting was revealed. It was charming and quaint to view my original inspirations. My methods and techniques were as sound as they were to that day, my instincts right on the money, although of course some images were a bit sloppy. Of course they were! I’d had to paint with glue, ground cinnamon, hair conditioner, my fingers. I took photos and sent them back to my sub Ash in Queens. He’d never believe it.

In New York, I’d tried to live differently. I’d felt nostalgia for Elaine as I’d painted on an easel in my clean and spare Queens attic, but I couldn’t return under any circumstances.

Except for now. She needed me, and there was no one else to help.

I chugged the entire beer before I left my old bedroom, closing the door behind me. I stood with the empty green barrel-shaped bottle in my hand, utterly motionless. I don’t think I even breathed.

Someone’s waiting for me back at home.

Yes. Someone was.

I walked slowly, tentatively, a dog stalking a squirrel. The kitchen was the train station bathroom in Kampala, Uganda with only one overhead hanging lamp operative, a dark vortex into a netherworld. I needed a flamethrower to go in there. Crusty dishes hadn’t been washed in years. Maggots swarmed in Tupperwares full of—well, not sure what. In the corners, spiders scurried to trap gnats. And thank God the stove didn’t work, or the entire house would’ve gone up in flames a long time ago. I peeked around the corner like a frightened Alice wondering what awaited her.

Elaine had told me it was the top of a wedding cake sitting in a box in the back of the freezer. I kind of thought it might be a secret hoard of money, some crispy bills. I’m twenty-eight, and that thing has been sitting in the back of our freezer that long.

I’m telling you, the main secret to survival involves accepting the reality we see. Learning how to abide by its rules. If you really look at it, all religions and philosophies point us this way. Traumatic brain injuries, though, screw this basic algorithm. It ruins all of your intuitive reasoning until you can’t trust what you see. You realize that your life is worthless, so you tend to invent alternative worlds in your head, worlds where you’re important. Worlds where you’re the end all and be all of existence. Of course some tiny crack in the wall of reality ruins your fantasy, intrudes upon your dreamworld.

I realized I panted so shallowly that air was denied my brain. Tiny clear bubbles floated before my eyes. I shook my head, blinking fast like Elmer Fudd.

Did I have to look? I didn’t have to look.

Did I have to look? I should look.

I was so dizzy I had to grip the filthy lower door of the fridge as my hand shimmied toward the freezer handle. I have to get rid of this thing. I couldn’t sleep one more night in the house with that thing in the fucking freezer.

Tonight is garbage night.I’d seen all the neighbors roll their cans to the curb. Was there anything wrong with throwing something like this into the trash?

Breathing deeply before opening the freezer door, I saw the Salisbury pot pie, among other nukeable items crammed in there. Behind the pot pie was the box where I’d chipped away ice the other day.

I grabbed it. I rattled it to get more ice off.

I finally had to exhale. I breathed in through my nose.

The box came away surprisingly easy. Creeped out, I let it drop on what used to be the kitchen table, now a depository for every half-eaten burrito and cat skull known to man.

Indeed, what could be worse than cat skulls? Well, when I put the icy box lid between forefinger and thumb and lifted, the pink blanket had given me a clue the other day. But I’d had to reach in and feel a foot, see the head with hair still attached, before a disturbing realization slowly sunk into my brain.

This is a dead baby. She has got to be my twin.

What else could it be? I had only recently found out from my aunt in Phoenix that I’d even had a twin sister. She’d lived a week before dying of SIDS—or so my aunt thought. Because I didn’t know that my sister had been converted into a wedding cake topper, I hadn’t thought to ask if there was any funny business.

Now I knew. I had to confront Elaine.

But if she hadn’t been able to throw away a chock-full cat litter box, how could I convince her to give my sister a proper burial—if she even admitted keeping her in the freezer?