Jeremy

It’s true that after Jeremy died I hadn’t expected to see him again, yet I wasn’t altogether surprised when he showed up at the Woods’ party the day after his family had buried him.  He had always been so cheerfully stubborn, and it was easy to guess that he was just trying to make the best of things.  I stared at him as I sat at the kitchen table finishing off my drink.  He took a beer from the fridge, turned his whole body in my direction since his head wouldn’t move, and then stopped as if unsure whether he should approach me.  I don’t think it had struck me until that moment that he had been interested in me in life. He looked so lost that I waved to him in encouragement. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but it seemed the natural thing to do under the circumstances.

“I’m dead,” he told me sadly, and I turned away to hide a laugh.  I mean, was that the best line he could come up with? 

Then he came on.  Little mounds of earth clung to him, and it was evident he had clawed at his coffin – his hands were a bloody mess, the chewed nails now missing completely.

 “Claudia,” he said, reaching out stiff-armed and prodding me in the shoulder, and I think that was all he could manage, because his throat seized up for a while after that. 

As he greeted me, I looked around to see who had spotted him with me.  It wasn’t that people would be rude – on the contrary, they would smile and nod politely.  It was just that an understanding existed about this sort of thing.  An understanding as with old folks who smelled, or people with large warts, or women who grew beards.  

At times, Jeremy could be charming and a little funny, and in the past I had often accepted his company.  Maybe in my clumsy way I had given off a signal that I was more interested than I actually was. In any case, it was clear that he had come back to finish what we’d failed to ever start. 

That first night at the Woods’ he still looked fresh and was not much different than he had ever been. There was something a little strange in the way he moved, but that was all.  I wandered onto the patio, hoping that he wouldn’t come with me, but of course he did.  His throat unfroze, and we talked about nothing of striking interest – some people we had known in high school, what they were doing now.  The dullness of these subjects made me long to be rid of him. I was worried that he would try to follow me home, but near the end of the party I was relieved when instead he lurched through the garden hedge and out into the night.

#

Later I sat in the safety of my house contemplating what to do about Jeremy. At any other time, it wouldn’t have been so bad for him to be hanging around while I waited for him to rot back into the earth, but for the next few weeks I had plans every night. For many years at the start of each summer all of the couples on Longlane Road had hosted parties. Nearly everyone in the neighborhood attended and many people used the opportunity to look for a partner. It was an elaborate masquerade of slowly aging bodies, and I had always scorned such gatherings. But a few days ago I had received a letter from an admirer who called himself The Invisible Man. He instructed me to attend the parties and said he would manifest himself to me at one of them. I was entranced with the thought of him, but I wondered if he could love me now as I was accompanied everywhere by the slowly rotting Jeremy.

I climbed into bed as the sun came up and though I still held the note from the Invisible Man in my hand, I thought not of him but of Jeremy, and I felt ashamed of my suspicions toward him. Of course he’d had no intentions of following me home. He had always been polite, always a gentleman. Why did I suddenly suppose that he would become a lout or a rapist or a flesh eater?

#

The party the next night at the Chaneys’ passed in much the same way as the one at the Woods’ had. So did the party at the Romeros’ and the party at the Prices’. I would arrive and shortly thereafter I’d hear Jeremy at the door, his once sweet voice becoming thick with zombie phlegm. After the host or hostess let him in, there followed a discreet exodus of all guests within several feet of the entrance hall. Often I imagined that some voice I heard might have been the Invisible Man searching for me, but when I turned to look there was only Jeremy.

Night after night I retreated to secluded alcoves to drink cocktails and choke down hors d’oeuvres.  Night after night I waited in vain for the Invisible Man to show himself.  Jeremy was always by my side, droning on and on, a gargling death groan in my ear, and I tried to sink ever deeper into the alcoves so no one saw me with him.

Like anyone with an ounce of common sense and knowledge on the subject, I knew that I could simply blow Jeremy’s head off and that would be the end of it. After the first signs of rotting had appeared, I had almost been able to consider finishing him off. He seemed more revolting and less human, a creature that it might be appropriate to step on and squash. But I also knew he needed time to rot, just as most people in the midst of trying circumstances need time to heal. It was not his fault that his flesh was failing his will, nor could he be blamed for my inability to defeat my personal prejudices toward him.

On the fifth night after his return from the dead, Jeremy arrived at the Rottbergers’ and made an offhand comment about it being cold and sticky outside. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the weather or if he was making a self-deprecating joke about his own condition; since the previous night he had developed a covering of sticky, rancid film.

  I was becoming impatient with his nightly appearances.  I knew there was no future for us together, and that night at the Rottbergers’ the advanced state of his deterioration had become all too apparent.  A fold of skin hung loose from his arm, he smelled like rotten cat food, and a small section of his cheek was missing.  I felt a wicked urge to ask what kind of worms had eaten his face, what acid had he gargled with to make his voice sound like that, what sort of bacteria was it exactly that had advanced up his legs?  But instead I breathed slowly for a few moments, reminded myself that he meant no harm, and managed to smile.

I found an abandoned part of the garden where I could fantasize about the Invisible Man, Jeremy stalking along behind me. I longed for the companionship of the Invisible Man, the witty exchanges of dialogue I had imagined with him, the deep sharing of intellect and spirit that would take place once we had met. Though I had known from the beginning that I only had to wait until Jeremy decayed, I hadn’t understood how difficult the waiting would be. I told myself that the day couldn’t be too far away when the worms would overtake him completely. In the meantime, all I had to do was try to be kind just a little longer.

#

Several nights later at the Ashers’ house, all the skin sloughed off Jeremy’s right arm and fell to the floor. We looked at each other for a moment and then I pretended not to have noticed. Throughout the evening he had been so cheerful and upbeat, getting me drinks and making jokes. It was as though he thought of his condition as a cancer he might beat. But after the skin had fallen off, he seemed injured, taken aback. He was quiet after that. If there had been enough of him left, he would have cried.

He was like a sick animal with no understanding of what was happening to him, and while I looked forward to the day he would crumble and fall, I also dreaded it.  He was little more than a piece of meat even now, and it tortured me to think about his struggle as the flesh finally failed his will altogether.  After each party, he always told me he’d see me tomorrow. It was clear he would only realize there wouldn’t be a next time of seeing me when his body was so far returned to the earth that it couldn’t move any longer. Yet when I thought of this I had other fears.  Surely whatever was left of him at that point wouldn’t continue to crawl toward me. Would it?  I couldn’t bear to think of arms or fingers chasing after me and gamely trying to carry on conversations, determined to overcome all obstacles including no mouth or vocal apparatus whatsoever.

I tried to be more tolerant of Jeremy at the Ashers’ house because of his dejected mood. I didn’t want him to feel worse than he had to. I listened to his gargling speech, and yet my thoughts turned to my future with the Invisible Man.  I found I had no appetite, and took food off the Ashers’ trays just to be polite, then threw it away when no one was looking except Jeremy. He seemed concerned, and patted my shoulder with a bony, sticky hand.

Four days later at the Dustkills’ party Jeremy’s jaw fell off mid-sentence, and thereafter he was only able to make guttural sounds.  Party guests milled around the Dustkills’ landscaped pool while behind the hedges Jeremy growled and groaned at me lovingly, oblivious that half his face was missing. Still the Invisible Man failed to show himself.

#

When I arrived the next night at the Rippeys’ house Jeremy was not there. I thought perhaps the end had already come, but as I glanced out on the candle-lit terrace, I saw his torso crawling among the sweet peas and petunias.  His head was still attached, but not much else was.   I thought for a moment that I would pretend I hadn’t seen him.  But at least he was real. That was more than I could say for the Invisible Man. I got a drink at the bar and went to him in the chilly night with the forbearance that comes when we know the end is near. There would be no conversation, of course.  I sat there with him as the moon rose.  He seemed so bare. This was his love, laid out naked and rotting for me to see.  I had no jacket or I would have covered him.