As I Die Lying by Scott Nicholson Page B

her next boyfriend would be like and if she would
French him.
    Mostly I wondered what sort of candy she’d
bought with that dollar—chocolate or caramel.
    And as the sun shone down on me like the
light of heaven, there on the porch, I felt unfamiliar muscles
stretch across my face. I was smiling.
    "All's well that ends swell," said Mister
Milktoast inside my head. “Or swollen.”
    "Who said it's the end?" I answered, not
moving my lips, my own personal ventriloquist’s dummy.
    "I promise I won't leave you again, ever,
Richard."
    "Cross your heart and hope to die?"
    "Cross our heart, my friend," Mister
Milktoast said.
    "Where did you ever come up with the name
'Mister Milktoast'?"
    "I thought you named me," he
said.
    "Gee, I hope this doesn't mean I'm crazy. You
know, talking to the little person in my head."
    "It's not you that's crazy. Blame me. What do
you think I'm here for?"
    I couldn’t argue with that, but probably
other people could. "I guess I better keep you secret, anyway."
    "Might be a good idea. People wouldn't
understand. And some secrets are better if you don't share
them."
    "Okay. Since you promise not to leave me
again, I promise not to tell."
    "Deal."
    The sun was bright and warm on my face. I
felt a strange joy, knowing that I would never again be alone. This
was better than a first kiss. This relationship had potential.
    Father didn't go to work anymore, just sat on
the couch watching TV with the lights off and drinking straight
from his bottles. I hid in my room or in the woods up the street.
Now that the nest was no longer secret, it had lost all its magic.
Plus Sally had poisoned it forever with her love.
    When school started I was able to escape
Father for half a day at a time. I still wasn't "associating well
with others," but it was safe to read there. By the time I got home
in the afternoon, Father was usually snoring on the couch or
drinking across town in the Moose Lodge. Mother got a job at the
Ottaqua Five and Ten, back in the days when “dollar stores” seemed
like a great value, and she worked most nights.
    I was by myself, but not lonely. I had Mister
Milktoast. I had books. The people in books were much better
friends than the people in real life. The people in books never
walked off the pages to love me or kick me. I could close
books.
    Days mixed together like playing cards
shuffled into a deck of months. Father was rotting, his breath an
open sewer and his face a red rash of cracked veins. Mother had
started drinking, too, but they drank silently, joylessly, and with
grim determination, in separate rooms.
    My body was becoming a stranger's. A knot had
grown on the front of my neck at the part where I swallowed and my
voice started cracking and squeaking when I talked. Mysterious hair
sprouted over my lip and on my chin and even between my legs. Most
horrible of all, my pee-pee was beginning to redden and swell,
turning into an alien monster.
    In the midst of this physiological turmoil,
Father returned to his raging old self, as if the years spent in a
drunken, pacific stupor were merely a refreshing vacation from his
true life's work. The walls were apt to bend more often than not,
and Mother was a more willing sparring partner now. Our living room
was a clutter of shattered monuments to marital discord: the coffee
table, propped up on one corner by an old set of encyclopedias;
Mother's big ceramic Siamese cat curled up by the front door, its
ears chipped off; the Jesus plate on the shelf, two strips of duct
tape crossed on its back to hold it together; a glass-speared
wedding photograph; and other assorted war relics.
    Why they never divorced, once I came to see
the possible escape it offered them, was beyond me. Mutual
desperation strengthened their union, as if being needed only as a
punching bag was better than not being needed at all. Occasionally
in the night the bedsprings still squeaked, though they sounded
awkward and rusty. And even less occasionally, laughter filled