My Second Death by Lydia Cooper Page A

her teeth. Then Aidan comes in carrying his own and Dave’s used bowls to the sink. I back away and lean against the counter, watching him.
    He turns on the faucet.
    Mom says, “You don’t have to, Aidan.”
    “It’s okay. I kind of like doing dishes.”
    Mom scrapes marinara sauce into a glass bowl. “So you two go to school together,” she says. “Have you been in any classes together?”
    “Oh yes,” I say. “All of them. At recess we plait flowers into each other’s hair.”
    Aidan gives a small cough. “It’s a pretty big place,” he says. “But actually I did meet Michaela — ”
    “Mickey.”
    His eyes flick up at me. “ — Mickey. We met at Dave’s poetry reading, the one on campus a couple weeks ago. You came in at the end.”
    I frown. Because I do remember the night in question. About a week, maybe a week and a half ago, my much-vaunted (in certain select, poetry-reading circles) brother gave a reading at the university. Being my brother, he’s lost his license due to a third DUI. He required the services of a pro bono chauffeur, which inevitably ends up being me. I waited two hours in the parking lot but there were still people clustered around him when I went in to fetch him. He was leaning an elbow on the podium, his hair falling in his eyes, laughing. He may have pointed this wall-eyed stranger out to me. He could have pointed Elijah reincarnated out to me. I was too busy concentrating on dragging him away from his personal paradise of wattle-chinned geriatric poetry fans to notice.
    “Oh, that’s nice,” Mom says. “Michaela, you didn’t tell me you knew him.”
    “How odd,” I say. “He made such a lasting impression.”
    But Aidan is watching me. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away. He’s holding a half-rinsed dish, and soap suds plink into the sink basin.
    I shrug, but it feels more like a squirm. “Sorry.” I don’t even know why I’m apologizing
    He blinks then, and turns back to the sink. “No problem.” He starts rinsing again. Slots the bowl in the dish drainer.
    “I asked your brother about you,” he says. “Earlier. After we met.”
    “Oh, Jesus. You’re not obsessed with me, are you? Do you want to have sex with me or something?”
    “Honey,” Mom says.
    “What? It’s a legitimate question.” To Aidan, I say, “
Are
you?”
    “No.”
    “Michaela, sweetie, that’s not — ”
    “He doesn’t mind,” I say.
    “I don’t mind,” Aidan says. “It’s just part of your condition. Right? Saying things that are offensive?”
    There’s a brief silence.
    Mom says, “Oh, well, that’s not — ”
    “Mom,” I say, “Go away. You’re doing that thing, that
gooey
thing. Everything’s fine.”
    She tosses the towel on the counter and walks out of the kitchen. She makes a wide path around me and she doesn’t look back. Her mouth is so thin it looks like a pink thread stitched across her face and the skin around her eyes is flushed like an overripe peach.
    Aidan says, “Did we offend your mom?”
    I sigh and rub my hand over my mouth. I pick up the towel and wipe off the counter. “I don’t understand why people take offense. If something’s only going to upset them, they could just not care.”
    “Unless their feelings got hurt,” he says. There’s a short pause. He rinses off another dish and puts it on the rack. “Dave said that you don’t really — you don’t really
do
feelings.”
    For a second I don’t know what to say. “I have them. Feelings.” But that seems inadequate, somehow. Untruthful. So I add, “Sometimes.”
    Aidan looks over his shoulder. The left side of his face is toward me and his bad eye dances crazily.
    I’m uncomfortable with his staring but it doesn’t feel as awful as other people’s. He looks like he’s waiting, like he’s a chess player watching for my next move, not like he’s trying to peel my skin back and break open the plates of my skull. For some reason, I find myself talking, the words