Excerpt from the novel-in-progress Desire Without Expectation

.



I go into the kitchen to find some lunch and am surprised to find a teenage boy sitting alone at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. He asks me who I am, and I explain that I won’t be staying long, probably no more than a week, that I’m just here renting a room. To say that his response confuses me would be an understatement, since right away he replies: “That’s probably my old room. I used to live here.”

It is completely tactless of me, and perhaps even dangerous, but without thinking I blurt out: “Did you murder your brother?”

He doesn’t seem at all disturbed by my tactlessness, has clearly heard it all before. His voice is extremely calm as he explains: “No, I didn’t murder my brother. Very sadly, my brother killed himself. He wasn’t well. My parents know this but pretend they don’t. I suppose they think there’s something shameful about suicide, something shameful about mental illness. So they pretend something happened that didn’t. My mother even told the press she’s going to write a book about it. For some reason they find it less shameful to have a son who’s a famous murderer. This aspect of their worldview makes absolutely no sense to me. I mostly live in the forest nearby, sometimes I hide here in the basement when it rains. I still have the key so when I’m hungry I come and take some food. My parents know all this but pretend they don’t. They prefer to think of me somewhere out there in the big wide world, on the lam, to think of our life like some Hollywood movie. They’ve told the police I ran far away so, for now, it seems the police aren’t looking for me around here. But I assume sooner or later they’re going to figure it out.”

I tried to understand whether or not he was lying to me and, if so, to what end. It certainly didn’t feel like a lie, as improbable as it all might sound.

I say: “Your parents just decided you murdered your brother?”

Son says: “No, the police told them I murdered my brother. And they decided to go with the official account.”

Just then we hear a key in the front door and the son says he better be going, slipping out the back before I can stop him.




.