My Second Death by Lydia Cooper

mother gasped. Her fingers, bony, strong, squeezed my wrist and my childish flesh, soft and yielding, weakened in her grasp. She took the knife away from me. My father reached over and clicked on the bedside lamp. Sweat stained the hair by his temples. His sagging cheeks were dark with prickles of beard. He took the knife in his fingertips and got up. The bed creaked when he left. His bare feet made pat-pats on the linoleum of the bathroom. A cupboard door closed. The tap turned on. He came back into the bedroom with a glass of water.
    My mother pulled me into her lap. Through the fabric of her nightgown I could feel the hard lumps of her nipples, the soft pouch of her belly. She smelled faintly of red wine and fabric softener. She combed my hair away from my forehead with her fingernails.
    I put my hand against the side of my mother’s breast. Through the skin, I could feel the solid thud of a spasming muscle.
    “Tha-thump,” I said. “Tha-thump.”
    My mother’s arms tightened around me.
    “What?” she said against my hair.
    “That’s your heart.”
    “Yes.” She put her palm against my back and rubbed in slow circles. The nightie bunched under her hand. “Yes.”
    “What was she doing?”
    “Shh. I don’t know. A nightmare, maybe.”
    I pushed my mother’s hand away and leaned out from the damp heat of her body. When she tried to gather me against her chest again I got off the bed and scampered back to my room. I lay down in front of the fan and the wind fluttered across my face and neck.
    They came into my room and my mother stayed there until I fell asleep. I woke up with a pillow under my head and a sheet over my body.
    The next afternoon I went into the kitchen but the knife drawer was latched. I rattled the drawer but it wouldn’t budge. Dave was sitting at the island eating a bowl of Lucky Charms and reading a Punisher comic book. He put the book down and watched me trying to claw the knife drawer open. He said, “Did you seriously try to stake Mom and Dad?”
    I turned around and ducked my head.
    He said, “Well, you can’t do that. Okay?”
    He got down from his stool and fixed a bowl of Lucky Charms for me. I dragged a stool over to the island and climbed up, put a spoon in the cereal and began stirring the milk into a pinkish-brown saliva-thick swirl. He leaned his elbows against the countertop next to me. Then he said, “Listen, Mick. You can’t do crap like that. You’ll get put in prison if you do. In prison bad stuff happens and I swear you wouldn’t like it.”
    I sucked on a marshmallow and looked up at him.
    “That guy who staked Dracula was old, remember?” he said. “
Way
old. Because when you’re old, you’re smart about stuff and you don’t get caught.”
    “Okay.” I took a bite of cereal.
    “Promise?”
    “I said yeah.”
    “Okay.” He sat down and opened his comic book.
    I push my plate away and pinch the skin of my forehead between my two clenched fists. I need to get out of here, go somewhere I can breathe. Time for Elvis to leave the building.
    I put my napkin on the table and go into the kitchen. I rinse my hands at the kitchen sink, scrubbing them in water so hot that curtains of steam waft upwards.
    In the dining room, Dad says, “Thank you for a wonderful meal, Cynthia. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go over that FIDC report. Aidan, a pleasure.”
    A chair scrapes. The rustle of wrapping paper.
    Mom says, “Stephen, honey, did you want more dessert?”
    He mumbles a reply, apparently committed to collecting his stash and retreating again to his lair, which is equipped with headphones and an Internet connection to the world beyond his home. I figure he’s earned his retreat.
    Mom calls after him. “Don’t forget that you’re taking the PSAT on Saturday. Are you still planning to ride with the Rosenbergs?”
    Stephen’s voice fades as he moves up the stairs.
    Mom comes back into the kitchen with a stack of used plates, her lower lip pinched between