JOEY, THE UPSTAIRS BOY by Karen Heuler
I’m almost 40 years older than he is; I’m old enough to notice things – how some people don’t connect, how others connect too much. He’s the former kind; he’s alien and ill-fitting. I know this because I don’t like him, and I like most people.
Why should I like him? I know how he lives.
Once, he came down because his cat was sick and he had no money. He said that outright. Not much of an introduction. “My cat, Jesse, is crouching all the time. Trying to use the litter box.”
“Bladder infection,” I said; I had a cat once, my son’s cat. “You have to take it to the vet right away.”
He nodded. His eyes had that intensity; they locked on and held. It made me smooth my face out; no smiles from me, no indication of any thought from me. “I don’t have the money. My folks won’t send me money for a while.”
I considered this. I said, “You think I’m rich?”
Most people move their eyes: drop them, look away, at least look up or to the side before coming back. It allows the other person some kind of privacy. His eyes never budged. “Not rich. Just I think you have some money, enough to save my cat.”
He’s not the kind of society I would choose, though I have no real problem, in theory, with helping him out. I’ve helped out people before. I’ve noticed that they get embarrassed and start to avoid you, those who once had an intention of paying you back and now realize they never will. The only ones that stick around are the ones who think they’ll get some more from you, sooner or later. I can tell myself, in theory, that I should give just a little to anyone who asks, that having to ask is an indication of need. Of course there are scams; but if I treat everyone as if they’re lying, I’ll penalize the ones who aren’t.
Still, ultimately, I have no illusions; I can’t help them.
I considered all this, then told him, finally, that I would take the cat to the vet. That guaranteed that the money would go where he said it would. If there was no cat, then he’d be on the spot.
He grinned. Those obscene eyes of his bored into me. I am not influenced by eyes – by anything, really. I am a harsh realist. Yes, harsh.
“I’ll call a vet and make an appointment,” I said. “And I’ll come up later and get the cat.”
“Cool,” he said, and turned away.
I called around until I found a vet who could take the cat immediately. I went upstairs and knocked on his door. He was barefoot. His toes were large and splayed. His jeans were thick and fit him fairly well. His tee shirt was clean enough. Once again, all the oddity was in his face: the too-hot eyes, the slightly opened mouth, the lank hair.
“Where is he? I assume it’s a he?” I asked.
He nodded, then turned. He had a habit of just turning like that, as if there were no need of niceties. I had asked where the cat was; he was going where the cat was; naturally I would follow.
There was a loft bed built in the small room off the kitchen; it took up most of the room and I wasn’t sure what he gained from it; he didn’t gain enough space below it, which was cramped and dark. He climbed up the ladder and I heard a scrambling and hissing.
“Come down,” I said sharply. “I’ll get him.”
He climbed down without a word. I climbed up.
Next to the bed, pinned to the wall, was a large poster of a naked woman with her legs opened. Her back was arched, so you couldn’t see her head, and of course the head hardly mattered.
I stopped, staring at it, a flush rising to my face.
He could have taken it down, of course. It was only loosely pinned. He wanted me to see it. But which did he want: that I react or that I not react? I paused, considering; I could feel him below me, feeling my reaction. Did I object? I objected. Did he want me to object? Of course. Did he want me to be offended, repulsed, perhaps even frightened? I would expect so. I wanted to come up with a way of surprising him, but the best I could do was ignore it, since he had left that poster there to make me uncomfortable. Let him think what he would.
The cat was crouched in the corner; it was easy to get him. He was small and frightened, but cowering rather than fighting. Joey could have gotten him easily; further proof that he wanted me to come up the loft bed and see the exposed genitals, his little pink lair.
“Joey,” I said, scooting as best I could on his mattress, which I realized smelled of him.
“Yes,” he said, his voice coming up through the mattress and of course the wood of the platform itself, sounding muffled, very private, almost breathless.
“I have the cat.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Do you have a carrier?”
There was a silence from below me. I didn’t hear him move; that must mean there was no carrier.
“I have a carrier,” I said finally. “I’ll hand you the cat and you hold him until I go down and get the carrier.”
“Sure.”
I scooted back, thinking I probably carried his scent now, crawling as I was on my stomach on his bed, which hadn’t been made and wasn’t too fresh. It was distasteful. But I didn’t want to show him that; I firmly believed that that would please him. Carefully, the cat in my arms, I edged down the short ladder. He moved only slightly aside as I handed him the cat.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t let him go.”
He nodded, and I went down to my apartment, got the carrier from the closet, and went back upstairs. I hadn’t heard him lock the door, and I decided not to knock; I didn’t want to appear hesitant. I opened the door and nearly banged into him; he was standing right there, stroking his cat. His left arm was hooked around the creature; his right hand patted it, his fingers touching each other as if picking up a glass eye.
I opened the door to the carrier, and he placed it inside and it began to mewl sadly.
“Do you want to come to the vet?”
He shook his head.
“Yes you do,” I said sharply. “Your cat. You have to take care of it.”
He shrugged, loped off to the back room, put on some shoes, and without a word held the door open for me. Though he did this, he looked away, to the wall, as if it would be too personal to look at me. I wondered if I had gained some sort of power.
It was a bladder infection, as I suspected, and the cat had pills and was to be put on a special diet. Joey had no money for the special food, so I got some. I walked him back home, as if I didn’t trust him to get that straight. And I didn’t. He might be the sort who left a cat carrier on the corner, with the cat in it, having decided to end it.
“You’re able to give him pills?” I asked as I watched him turn the key in his lock. He shrugged. “Is that a yes?” I asked. “I mean, after all, I’ve paid for the cat, and I expect you to take care of him.”
“You can have him if you like,” he said. “I don’t really like cats.” His eyes held mine. I hesitated; I didn’t want a cat; I had ended up with my son’s cat, after his death, and every day I saw it I thought of him. I took time to gaze at the rest of Joey’s apartment: sloppy, but not too sloppy. Bare. Posters as art work. Futon as sofa. An area rug with no nap. A TV. A paperback book on the windowsill. An apartment that would make a cat feel hopeless.
“I’ll take him,” I said finally. “But you can’t get another one.”
“Why would I get another one,” he said flatly.
About a month later a girl knocked on my door early in the morning. “Joey asked me to ask you if we could borrow some milk,” she said tentatively. She was very young and was trying to look comfortable, but she wasn’t comfortable at all. I was sure she’d said she wouldn’t go, why didn’t he go, she didn’t know me at all, and besides it was embarrassing. I could almost hear her saying it, but I didn’t pity her for it. After all, she had let him make her do it.
“I have a little milk,” I said finally, and I closed the door, not all the way, and went to the kitchen, got a glass, poured out some milk, and went back to her.
She looked at it, bit her lip a little, took a breath and said, “Could it be a little more please? For his cereal?”
I looked at her. I lifted the glass up and drank it, all of it, while she watched. “I’m all out,” I said. “Sorry.” Then I closed the door. I heard her light steps going up, the door opening and closing; I heard her walk across the floor upstairs, and I imagined I heard her little voice reporting on me. Then I stopped bothering to listen.
A little while later, when I went out, I found a carton of milk in front of my door. Not even a note. I assumed it was the girl.
The girl didn’t last. They never did. I had heard them, from time to time, lumbering up above me (that thin rug of his did nothing). I heard their tussles, feminine squeals of half-hearted protest, even thrashing around on the floor. (I suppose the loft bed was sometimes too far away.) It amazed me, that he caught as many as he did. His forehead was alarming, high and broad, his eyes deepset and penetrating. He looked mad, to my mind – or looked like he might have been mad, or might, at some unspecified point, become mad.
Didn’t the girls see his eyes? How could they take the chance?
Well, they must have eventually seen something, because they didn’t last. This one, however, the milk girl: I saw her going up or coming down the stairs off and on for the next month. It was interesting to think someone might stick with him, that he might not be as dramatic as I thought he was. I disliked him, but it made life interesting, to think about him and his odd behavior. I talked to my neighbor, once, about him. Mr. Johns had lived in the building almost as long as I had. He was thin, brown, had married and then divorced, now lived alone and wore a yarmulke although as far as I knew he wasn’t Jewish, a gentle, fading man. We met outside the building, one of the first true spring days, and that boy came rushing down the stoop, brushing past us, a kind of grunt in lieu of a greeting, his shoelaces flying around his sneakers. His pants were torn; that was fashion; but they were also deeply stained around the calf. Dark, but not blood. Not dirt, either. Not anything I could think about immediately.
“That boy’s a little off,” Mr. Johns offered.
“I think so myself,” I agreed. It seemed rude to say more, so we merely nodded at that and went about our ways.
A month passed. I began to hear the sounds of wrestling bodies on the floor above me again. So there was another girl. The noises continued for a week, then stopped.
The weather turned warmer.
There’s a little park near me, a pocket park, only large enough for nine trees and a scattering of benches. One bench is near the side of a building, along the narrowest leg of the park. I was coming back with groceries when I saw him, sitting on that bench, busy with something.
I took a seat off to the side, where I could see him. He was leaned over, intent on something. I thought at first he was tearing his jeans, or sewing them, or writing something on them – it had that kind of narrow focus. He wore a tee shirt, the sleeves ripped off, and brown jeans that were so wrinkled I could see it even from a distance.
He took something from his pocket, shifted, leaned over his arm again. I got the rhythm, and I eventually saw that he was doing something to his arm, his naked left arm. He had worked his way up from the wrist, which had rested in his lap, but now each time he took something from the side, he moved farther up his arm, until he had the arm out almost straight. I studied him, trying to decode what he was doing, and I began to have an idea, and the idea repulsed me.
I got up and then walked slowly in his direction. I tried not to stare, because I didn’t want to get his attention. I wanted to stroll by and confirm my suspicions.
I must have cast a shadow; he looked up, but in that moment, with his arm still straightened, I saw that I had been right.
He had stuck a row of safety pins from his wrist up to the inside of his elbow, spaced an inch or so apart, very neatly lined up, almost as if his arm now had a seam. I stopped and he blinked at me.
“Art,” he said. He looked down at his arm and wiped away a stray spot of blood with the tip of his finger.
It annoyed me that he thought I would accept that. “No it isn’t,” I said sharply. I wanted to be very sharp; I wanted him to hear that he couldn’t bluff me. “That’s self-mutilation.” He looked at me with indifference. “Girls do that sort of thing,” I said.
He moved his arm in closer to his stomach, and I could see just the smallest smidgeon of pink on his cheek; or maybe I imagined that. But I could tell that he had heard me. He grinned. He had a way of just pulling his lips back from his teeth so that it was technically a grin, but I never once got the idea that it contained any humor or pleasure in it.
“It’s art,” he repeated. “And I’ve never seen anyone, girl or boy, do this. It’s my art. I’m the first.”
“You should read more,” I insisted. “Girls use safety pins all the time.” It annoyed me, this way he had of justifying self-destruction, pretending it was something other than what it was. I lifted my chin and went home.
I couldn’t get the image of those pins out of my mind. The way he had been bent over, so intent on sticking one more thing through his skin, right over those prominent veins – he was testing himself, I was sure of it. This time, he stayed above the veins but there might come a time when he wouldn’t. I didn’t buy the whole “art” thing.
But I didn’t want to get too involved; I wasn’t his mother; I wasn’t anything to him and he wasn’t anything to me. It was probably true that he was testing himself, but that didn’t necessarily mean he would act. Lots of people teased themselves with the thought of death, young people especially. Not many actually did it. Not many.
I would hear him galoomping around upstairs and I would pause to decipher: was it a staggering walk, a normal walk, a walk with finality in it? Then I would scold myself. I had nothing to do with him. I already had his cat. What else was I supposed to do, based on nothing but suspicions?
My great-aunt’s husband, after their divorce, jumped off the back of their house. He did it in the back so she would find him when she got home, not in the front where someone else might see. “You pushed me too far,” his note said. There must have been immense satisfaction in that for him. I have often pictured it, the hesitation on the top of the roof, looking down, wondering, Will I really do it? And then I’m sure he imagined my aunt’s face – her mouth in that frightful O of horror – and knew he would ruin her life. He jumped.
And a coworker of mine killed herself. An overdose. I barely knew her, but everyone spoke about her afterwards. She had been very tidy on her last day, relaxed, better than she’d seemed in a while. She had come to terms with it all, had bid it all goodbye in a friendly way. Like going on a trip, an overdue trip, a restful trip. “I’ve really been feeling good lately,” she’d told her closest office friend.
My son never seemed to come to a decision about death; never one decision, perhaps, but a series of them. Nothing straightforward. I’ve often wondered if there was something in the family makeup, if there’s a kind of tendency that gets inherited – that great-aunt comes to mind. That’s probably my own self-defense working. It would be much easier to think that he was helpless against this tendency; that I wasn’t capable of saving him, either, because there was a gene inside me too that loved that tendency. But I carry with me the knowledge that I didn’t save him.
Those pins on Joey’s arm – I do know that the fashion now is to pierce and mark the body. I know that it doesn’t always mean a morbid fascination; I know that. But he has that look about him, that strange ill-fitting look. He might be marked for death; I might be alone in seeing it. And what am I to do? I’m a neighbor, that’s all; no more than that. Do neighbors really affect each other’s lives that way, I mean by interpreting what they see and acting on it? Act on it how?
His apartment was noisy for a while, and then quiet. I guess that was his routine: some tussle with a girl didn’t work out and he would get exhausted by it. I tried putting safety pins through my arm one day, idly. His cat was sitting in my lap. There was a pinch as the pin went through, then a tug as you clipped it together. If you lifted the skin up, pulled it and tented it a little, it was pretty easy. Getting them out was harder. I didn’t think that the safety pins were much more than a symbol to him, a mild flirtation.
When I heard noises above me, or saw him in the hallway, I felt a kind of relief: still alive.
He came down again a few weeks later and asked if he could run an extension cord from my apartment to his.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “They turned off my electricity. My parents stopped sending me money.”
“Why?”
He shrugged again, slowly and languorously, but his eyes and his face were impassive. “They want me to get a job or come home,” he said.
“What kind of job would you get?”
He looked at me. “I don’t really do anything in particular. Just my art.”
My eyes flicked down to his arm, which had faint signs of scarring, but no safety pins. “I don’t think anyone would pay you for that,” I said.
“That’s pure art, isn’t it? Not for money.”
It was my turn to shrug. “You need someone else to see it as art,” I said. “Otherwise it’s just self-referential. Like masturbation.”
That elicited a faint smile. “The extension cord? Could you get it? I need to, like, type up some resumes and print them out.”
I doubted it. “Okay. But I’ll plug you in for one hour a day, that’s all. And I only have one extension cord. You have to get another one, a long one, to go from my floor up to yours. I guess we could go out the back window and straight up the fire escape? Still, you need another cord.”
He nodded and left. I hunted through my cabinet and found the one I had, which was 12 feet long. He could get by on one more, but I was curious to see what he’d do.
He was gone for a few hours, and he came back with some well-used cords, obviously borrowed or scrounged. “Okay,” I said, “let’s plug them together and you lower them down to me out your window.”
We did that, and I plugged him in. “You have an hour,” I said.
“Wait. I haven’t written out a resume or anything yet. Let me write it down first.”
“One hour,” I repeated. It felt good to have him pay attention and bolt back upstairs. Good to see his interest. I don’t know what kind of resume he would come up with – he said he didn’t do anything – but I also liked how the tables were turned. I wasn’t looking at his damn poster while he tried to catch my reaction; instead I was watching him jump through hoops and seeing how he felt about it. I was his connection, I thought; his lifeline.
Maybe I should offer him a little money, to pay his bill. But this way, I thought, this way I would be able to keep an eye on him. I had to smile at myself for a moment: the mothering instinct was kicking in. I saw us growing close, as I had once thought I was close to my own son.
It’s not that I don’t think of my son any more; I do. I just don’t stay there when I think of him. I remember him as a boy – that great big delighted smile of his – and then I remember him as a young man – dirty, dazed, indolent. I didn’t know it was drugs, though I should have. I just didn’t think he would do that. He never belonged to a band, he never hung out with the wrong sort.
But he did get away from me. I hated to see him move out, but he had a job and he found a very small apartment at what was then a decent rent. For the first year, he called me and came to visit. The second year, he called less often and only came over when he needed money. He said he had a girl, and he wanted to take her out. I wanted to meet her. He always said he would bring her. Once, I even made dinner for the two of them, but they never showed.
Then he said they’d broken up, and he looked awful. I gave him a check for a thousand dollars. It was a lot for me – I was a secretary, now retired – but I hoped it would give him a boost. Then I stopped hearing from him.
When his birthday came around I made a cake, bought a shirt, and went over to see him. I hadn’t heard from him in over two weeks.
It’s odd. It’s very odd. How things collide. I could have gone the day before, or the day after. But when I got there, there were flashing lights: police, an ambulance arriving, a News One truck. I wasn’t allowed to go in. “I live here,” I said. Lying, of course, but I didn’t want an argument. After a brief consultation, I was allowed inside.
His door was open, there were police going in and out. I stood paralyzed. I could see in. He was sitting sprawled in a chair, his head fallen back in what would have been a painful position, one leg bent, the other straight out. There was a smell, I could see people avert their mouths to avoid it. I stood there until I told them who I was, and they let me in.
I gave Joey an hour and then I pulled the extension cord. I looked up at the ceiling, hoping to catch a mumbled exclamation, but there was nothing I could hear. I stood there, staring, still holding the cord. I imagined him holding it at the other end. I could almost feel a tentative tug as he tested it. After a while, I put it back in.
I made dinner later and brought him up a plate. “I left the cord plugged in,” I said. “Did you get the resume done?”
“Almost,” he said. His eyes flicked to the plate in my hand.
“For you.” I gave it to him. He lifted the foil and sniffed.
“Great,” he said, giving me a toothy grin. He was a little more relaxed with me. I think I must have made him uncomfortable. Funny, that. I kept thinking he was so odd, and I was always on guard, but he must have felt the same about me. We might end up being friends, I thought.
“I might be finished by tomorrow,” he said. “I thought of a few other leads. And I’m gonna hit the library tonight for some addresses and things.”
“Great.”
“I should get some envelopes, though. And I need a cover letter.” He looked at me.
“I could help you with that.”
“Yeah, that would be good.” He nodded. “I’ll get organized today, get a rough draft of the letter and resume, and you could, like, edit it or something.”
“Sounds reasonable.” I nodded back at him. “That’s the kind of thing I’m good at. I’ll be out tomorrow morning – a dentist appointment – but I’ll be back by one o’clock. I’ll come up then and check with you. Or, wait,” I said, catching myself. “Is that good for you?”
He grinned then, a true grin, not that animal baring-of-the-teeth I hated. “That’s great,” he said.
I got envelopes, good paper, some stamps, the phone directory and the daily newspaper’s job listings together. I was prepared to offer suggestions (start modestly in a place where you can rise to supervisor in a year or so) and emphasize the importance of appearance.
I took out a little money in case he needed to buy some clothes.
On the way back from the dentist the next day I stopped at the store and bought ice cream and cookies. I didn’t know his tastes. I would play it by ear. I didn’t want to get beer or wine – maybe he had tendencies there. I didn’t think I was particularly good at figuring out tendencies. I was beginning to look forward to helping him, and reminding myself to stay back and not be intrusive. This is where I felt I could make a mistake, by rushing things and assuming things.
I didn’t notice anything unusual when I opened the door to my apartment, but I was alert as soon as I got in. Then I noticed that the back window was open. I could see that from the hallway. I put the groceries down and closed a cabinet door that was open, and went to the living room.
I put things together slowly, in steps. The window (which was where the extension cord ran) was completely open. Various things were missing: Not the TV, that was too large, but the radio, a very nice small clock on the coffee table, my jewelry box in the bedroom. He had found where I kept an emergency supply of money – not much, a few hundred dollars. In the kitchen he had found some silver tea things that had belonged to my grandparents. I didn’t have much to take.
I went around and around, checking things. I told myself that Joey had done it, and then I told myself it was unfair to think so.
At last I went upstairs to confront him.
I knocked and knocked, and then I tried the door. It opened an inch and I stood there, irresolute.
I didn’t want to see him sitting in a chair by the window.
I went to get the super. I told him I had been burglarized, and that my upstairs neighbor might have been as well.
“Him?” he said, shrugging. “He’s evicted. I saw him leave this morning. He’s not there.”
I felt a slowness coming over me. “Are you sure?” I asked.
The super shrugged and went past me. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
I followed him upstairs again, and he brushed open Joey’s door and walked straight in. I trailed behind him. The apartment was empty, except for the extension cord.
“This is the only thing he left,” the super said. “Not that he had much to begin with.” He unplugged it and followed it to the window. “I wonder where it goes.”
“To my place.”
“Oh,” he said. “And he robbed you?”
“His electricity was shut off.”
The super looked at me then leaned over and turned on the light switch. The overhead lights came on immediately. “He robbed you,” he said. “Call the cops.”
“Yes,” I said. “I see that.”
“Well, it’s up to you,” the super said.
I went back downstairs, and I began to tidy up. There wasn’t all that much to do. Move things around a bit, unplug the cord, close the window and lock it; not much. I had my credit cards and bank cards; he hadn’t gotten those. He had taken my ready cash, that was all. My grandmother’s silver – well, I’d never used it and I really could never envision a time when I would have.
I sat down, finally, with the phone in my hand. I could call the police. I should already have called the police. But I was stuck on that moment when I had gone up and knocked on his door and he didn’t answer. I had felt, then, that he was on the other side, waiting for me, as my son had been. I had told myself to open the door and find out, but I couldn’t. Instead I stood there and saw him, his eyes open, his mad eyes silenced, his vulpine face slack, his ugly hands limp. That instant – beginning to open the door, then stopping – lanced through me. I couldn’t bear to face him so I had gone to get someone else to do it.
But I no longer had that picture in my mind about him. Instead I saw him stealthily walking among my things, barefoot again just to avoid making a noise. I saw him standing at my bedroom door, noticing the bedspread, the color of the walls. I saw him handling my modest objects, debating their value and putting them back, unsure. His fingerprints were probably everywhere by now. Some of the air in the room might still contain his breath. I had the cord that he had touched. He was alive and safe and we were joined by history, and it was enough.
I put the phone down.
Karen Heuler is the author of Journey to Bom Goody, and The Soft Room, both from Livingston Press, and The Other Door (University of Missouri Press). Her stories have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Ms. Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, TriQuarterly and in The O. Henry Prize Stories. This is her third appearance in Alaska Quarterly Review.