Empathy Read online

  Emily looked out through the passenger window. “Thought you wanted to talk about mom.”

  “I do,” Andy said. “You… Shit, how do I start this?”

  Emily looked back fast enough for her neck to crack. Her daddy never cussed around her. “Am I in trouble, Dad?”

  “Naw, honey, never. It’s not like that. I’m sorry I cussed, okay?”

  “’Kay.”

  Andy took a breath, turned in his seat to face his daughter full on, and said in a rush, “You can do something that other people can’t do. Your mother could too, but not as strong as you can, I think. I have a thing I can do too, but nowhere near as strong as your mother or you.” He exhaled as if coming up from a long dive. For a moment, he said nothing. Then, “Em, you can feel other people’s emotions. You’re what some folks call an empath.”

  Emily stared down into her vocabulary workbook. She was supposed to read the sentence and use a word from that week’s list to fill in the blank. She was pretty sure the right word was rigamarole.

  “Em, you listening to me?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice small. “It’s just…I guess…I mean I guess I knew that already.” She gave him a shy smile. “I mean, jeez, Dad, duh.”

  The claw in Andy’s chest relaxed. “You knew? You knew about your mother and everything, too?”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I could feel it. After a while I kind of just put it all together. Your thing about lying too.”

  “You know about that?” He smiled in spite of himself.

  “Yeah,” she said with a tiniest whisper of pride. “Like I could feel Mom feeling things, I can always tell when you know someone’s lying. It makes you feel a certain way that you don’t ever feel any other time.”

  “Really? How do I feel to you when that happens?”

  “Kinda…” Concentration crinkled Emily’s face. “Kinda’ like you’re disappointed, but you sort of expected it too? Does that make sense?”

  “That’s just about right.”

  Emily slid her eye sideways. “How good is that, anyway?”

  “My lying trick? How well can I tell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good enough to know that you were B.S.ing me when I caught you and Richie Schermer kissing last year.”

  Emily’s face burned. “You knew about that?”

  “Don’t sweat it, kid. I think any dad worth his salt would’ve known, but when you tried to lay down that line about how all you were doing was studying, that little something in my head lit up and I knew you’re weren’t telling the truth.”

  “Can you always tell?”

  Andy considered for a moment. “I think so. Guess there’d never really be a way to know all the way.” Andy brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “But we’re talking about you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, tell me about this thing of yours. Your mother always had a strong sense of what other people were feeling, but it seems so much bigger with you. Almost like it hurts.”

  “It does sometimes, sort of.” Her little hand bunched into a fist on her knee. “If someone’s close enough? And they’re feeling something really strongly? It’s like I can’t even tell the difference between me and them. And it’s like the older I get? The stronger it is. Like, I used to have to be right next to someone, but now I can feel it when Mr. Lyles from downstreet gets P.O.’d when the Packers loose.”

  Andy waited, listened.

  “Do you know what it’s like,” she said, “to not be able to tell if you feel something because its yours or because you’re standing too close to someone?”

  “Sounds kind of like getting someone else’s perfume all over you and not knowing if you put it on yourself that morning or not.”

  Emily nodded, her little girl face much too serious for her age. “A little bit like that, yeah.” Her clenched fist began to shake. “Like right now, Daddy,” she threw ice bolts, “I fucking hate you.”

  Andy sat back. “What?”

  “I dunno,” she said, biting down on a glowing anger and looking out the window. “I think it might be those ghost-people.”

  Andy followed her gaze. “Shit on toast,” he muttered. “The pillow-heads’re early this year.”

  Thick tears smeared Emily’s deep green eyes and squeezed onto her cheeks. Her baby-fat wasn’t enough to disguise the flex and jump of her jaw muscle as she ground her teeth. Resting on her thighs, her fists clenched in rhythm like twin hearts.

  Through the fogged windshield a column of about thirty figures dressed in white sheets and matching hoods flowed and flapped in lock-step up the strip. Their footfalls were punctuated by a low, coarse chant, but the distance between them and Andy’s prowl car sanded the edges off their words.

  “Honey?” Andy spoke as if he were afraid to wake her from an episode of sleep-walking. “What’s going on with you now?”

  Emily’s mouth parted a finger’s width, a gossamer strand of saliva spanning the gap. Her eyebrows twisted. A squeak that dipped into a low growl escaped her throat. “Dirty,” she said, her fists working, working.

  Andy pulled the mic from the dash and thumbed the talk button. “Frog, this is

  base, you copy?” (Frog was Andy’s pet name for officer French. French loved it. Really.) Andy could see the big cop bend his head toward the radio clipped to his shoulder.

  The CB squawked, “Copy, base.” Andy could hear the rain spattering on French’s mic. “Is this a beautiful morning, or what? Over.”

  “Those jackasses’re early, Frog.” Andy glanced at his daughter. Emily was sweating now. “Everything under control out there? Over.”

  French’s hat pivoted toward the bustling group of protestors. He crackled through the speaker. “The welcoming committee’s getting really pissed off, but so far they’re staying inside their zone. Over.”

  “Fucking kill them.”

  Andy stared at Emily. “What’d you say?”

  Her voice came again, flattened like a late-stage schizophrenic. “Nuh-nigger loving…,” she paused, blinked, “racist, fascist…,” paused, blinked, “string ‘em up with their own guts…”

  Andy Burton could only stare. Emily shook in her seat, an engine of hatred building toward overload. Very slowly, her head revolved toward her father. “I’m gonna’ fucking kill ‘im, Dad.”

  Keeping his eyes locked on his daughter’s, Andy raised the mic to his mouth and spoke slow and even. “Jerry, you and Hal keep your eyes open. I think someone might be packin’. Over.”

  Andy watched with approval as both broad hats swung like slow, radar dishes, scanning the protesters and approaching marchers. Hal Svenson came across the frequency. “Base, this is Svenson. You copy me?”

  “Go, Hal.”

  “Andy, you know somethin’ we don’t? Over.”

  Andy watched his little girl as she faced out the window and spat a glob of phlegm at the glass. It slid down like a sick slug. “Faggots,” she hissed.

  “Maybe,” Andy said into the mic. “You just make sure you…” he trailed off, a blank mask settling across his features.

  “Base? Repeat, please. Over.”

  “Em?” Andy stared into his daughter’s lap, his voice shook. “Oh, God, honey.”

  Emily Burton followed her father’s eyes down to her right hand. It shook so fast she couldn’t see the edges.

  * * *

  EMILY SAT UP in bed and for a long minute didn’t know where she was. A fevered sweat slicked her skin. The bed sheets were tangled around her legs in a moist rope. The inside of her head was blanketed in warm, crackling electricity. So much energy, so many feelings, but at the same time it overloaded and deafened her. She smelled disinfectant, industrial fabrics, old sweat and laundry, ancient cigarettes indelible from the cheap carpet. A heavy curtain was drawn across the window; its outline glowing arc-sodium orange.

  Oh, yeah. New York.

  Emily slumped back into the jungly bedclothes and closed her eyes. A flash of her memo
ry dream was waiting for her: her father’s face. Em? Oh, God, honey. She brushed that away and concentrated on the waves of foreign feeling buffeting around inside her skull. Their edges were still blunt like a bag of shattered glass, the shards grinding together and smoothing over time. Emily wondered if there were one or two pieces rolling around inside her head that still had edges on them. Well, she had a solution for that if she felt the slightest cut.

  “If I can’t make it here,” she sang in the dark, “I can’t make it, blah, blah…bang!”

  She thought about laughing for a second, tried it, and was not at all pleased with the outcome. Healthy people didn’t laugh like that.

  Emily turned her head and checked the clock on the night table. The old-fashioned analog threw an intermittent glow from its stuttering backlight. Em had been asleep for—she squinted, big hand on nine little hand on twelve—only three hours. Man, the drive from Janesville had been something like twenty-five straight hours and she’d only been asleep for three? She didn’t really feel tired anymore. Could that be right? She looked at the clock again. Kitsch, 1960’s revival design, or, quite possibly, this hotel just hadn’t updated. She guessed it could be either one in Manhattan.

  Emily reached over and fumbled with various hard objects on the night table until her efforts were rewarded with a click and a greasy spray of light. There was something on the floor in front of the door. Emily threw her long legs over the side of bed, smirked at the shifting line of bruises that seemed to have tattooed her shins since she was small, and got up. She teetered over and stared down at the two days worth of the New York Post that had been slid under the door.

  “Oops,” she said and put a hand over her little smile.

  She hadn’t been asleep for three hours, she’d been asleep for closer to thirty-six. Emily bent and (“Oh, man!”) her lower back shot a triplet of cracks. She winced and picked up the tabloids. The one from the day before screamed in huge slant type:

  PHOBIA KILLER TAKES THIRD

  FEAR GRIPS CITY

  Emily brought the picture in close to her face. She couldn’t quite make out what she was seeing. It looked like a pile of spiky leaves had blown into a corner of some dark alley. A pair of shoes resolved at the base of the pile and she realized that the leaves had been laid over a corpse. She began to read a little way into the article and almost dropped the paper. “…The body of a young woman is the third in a bizarre series of murders in which the victims appear to have been scared to death. Authorities believe the scores of arachnids used in the killing may be linked to an earlier break-in at the entomology department at the University of…”

  Emily looked closer. Oh, Jesus, those weren’t leaves. They were spiders. A length of her hair tickled her naked shoulder and she screamed. Emily flailed at her shoulder. She caught her own reflection in the closet mirror and yelped again, dissolving into a giggles. The naked chick in the mirror was totally off her rocker. Cute though.

  She turned this way and that, nodding at her old swimmer’s muscles, frowning at the tiny pouch of subcutaneous fat under her belly button. Some people considered that little female belly sexy. Emily even thought it looked nice on some women, just not on her. She missed her six-pack. Maybe she’d join a gym if she allowed herself to live out the week. She flexed, a little “Huh,” escaping over her lower teeth. At least she could still get that vertical line between her abs to show.

  She let her breath out and shook her head. The banality of her thoughts jolted her. This was all so stupid, checking out her birthday suit, thinking about joining a gym. Normal people lived this way, not her. Emily tipped her head to one side, listened. The white noise of New York’s eight-million alien hearts pounded the shore of her skull, insistent but still safely inscrutable. Hell, maybe it would really work and she could finally be bored.

  “Hi,” she flashed a smile at her naked buddy with the tummy. “I’m Emily. There’s absolutely nothing extraordinary about me.” She winked and threw out a hip. “In fact, I’m totally uninteresting. That’s me, boredom city.”

  She glanced again at the paper. Spiders. “For fuck’s sake,” she whispered, and backed up until the bedspread cooled the backs of her knees. Emily sat down with a squeak of springs and opened the tabloid. The exploits of the “Phobia Killer” squirmed across the columns in six point agate. Her eyes followed in a flickering cadence.

  A few minutes later, she put aside the paper and wondered about the problems of other human beings, or, at the very least, the problems of those who might pass for human. Somewhere on the streets of her new city a monster was hunting.

  And eating.

  ~~~~~~~~

  From the Journal of Drummond Fine, MD

  Thursday, March 27th, 9:45pm

  Began treatment of new patient today—George P. Forty-five, white, unmarried, heterosexual. Referred by Simone Whitehead, MD., attending physician Mercy Hospital E.R. GP was admitted with a minor dog bite (He’s a postal carrier. Would be hilarious if not so…scripted.) but when Whitehead attempted to administer the first round of rabies countermeasures GP refused treatment. Whitehead informed GP that rabies countermeasures are legally required and approached the patient. GP became violent (apparently he gave the pushy bitch a nice hard shove) and was restrained by security. Whitehead made another ham-fisted attempt to administer countermeasures while GP was being restrained and GP subsequently lost consciousness. GP shows a severe belonephobia/trypanophobia. Whitehead was aware of my work and contacted me through the hospital list serv.

  GP’s case is interesting. He prickles (couldn’t resist) at the mere mention of needles or giving blood. The usual probes reveal a spike in fear response around a summer spent at sleep-away camp. He claims little or no memory of the experience, but when pushed, his fear spike was intense…delicious. I think I may have been a little off-putting. It’s difficult not to shudder, or dig my fingernails into the armrest of my chair. I’ll have to be more careful; work on my poker-face. There’s a lot of potential here. (Note to Self: get one of those stress squeeze balls.)

  Rest of the day passed without incident. Treated I.R., T.P., and Y.J. Y.J. is showing improvement. She may be ready for a deeper probe. I’ll need to tread lightly here. Worked on the new book for a few hours. Phone call from James Sawyers at McGraw Hill. They’re looking at sections of the first book for reprint in a Psych textbook due out next year.

  Had a dream about mother last night. Unpleasant. Couldn’t feel her at all. It was like I was stabbing a mannequin.

  Experienced twenty-seven distinct emotions from The Cloud today. Up from last count, but manageable. Shouldn’t need another session for at least a month.

  1 bowel movement, deep brown, no blood.

  Urinated 5 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Tuna sandwich on wheat bread, pickle.

  Dinner: Roasted chicken, mixed vegetables, jasmine rice.

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  Monday, April 17th, 9:47pm

  Lovely weather today. High sixties around noon and lots of sun. Decided to take a long lunch and stroll up along 5th Ave. J.C. cancelled her sessions this month. She’s off to lay about in a villa in Nice. Mr. C. is staying home to work. Can’t blame him. J.C. has the plastic surgeon of a movie-star but the personality of spoiled fourteen-year-old girl. Never met Mr. C. Suspect he thinks of his wife a great deal like a favored car that won’t run right. She hasn’t given him intercourse in months. Wonder who he’s driving around while she’s in the shop.

  Walked up 5th along The Park. Lots of children out today. Not a lot of parents. Unless illegal Salvadorans have learned the trick of squirting them out Caucasian. It’s an interesting affect she has, the Salvadoran nanny. It’s this detached blankness from the child in the stroller and designer Baby Gap romper that cost more than she makes in a month. Saw something in the paper the other day about a mother who dropped her precious gift from Gawd into the clothes dryer. Wo
uld it have happened if she’d had the new model Zen Salvadoran Nanny?

  Further along, I found my way past a Salvation Army collector, ringing that migraine on a stick. There ought to be a law restricting that crap to fake Santa Clauses during the holidays. Perhaps, this was the build-up to Easter. They should make them wear bunny costumes.) I stopped and stared for a few seconds, the sound of that bell clanging everything else out of my mind. The blankness of a Salvadoran nanny by way of sonic impulse. I could write a paper. The Cloud found its way past the noise soon enough, of course. I got a taste of the collector. He was your garden-variety charity icon: Caucasian, pudgy, red-cheeked, smiling and seething with hatred for nearly every passer-by. I stuffed a fifty into the can and tipped him a wink. In close Mr. Charity smelled like tequila. The stain from his hatred lingered on me longer than the smell of his breath.

  Had a dream that I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and peeled my own head like an orange. When I’d pulled off almost all the flesh (couldn’t get my nose to come off for some reason) my skull was pure crystal, cut like a multifaceted diamond or one of those antique doorknobs. I leaned in closer and saw myself reflected hundreds of times in each tiny facet. Closer still and those facet-reflections reflected even more reflections, continuing into infinity. I woke up sobbing but refreshed. Sobs might have been from upstairs neighbor. She’s been trying to have a child and keeps loosing them in the second trimester.

  Experienced 41 distinct emotions from The Cloud today. Another session is inevitable.

  1 bowel movement, light brown, no blood.

  Urinated 4 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Tomato and cheese panini, apple.

  Dinner: Chicken ceasar salad, fruit cup, 1 glass Chardonay (French).

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  Saturday, April 22th, 11:39pm

  No office hours today. Spent the morning at the library—emotion trolling. The Cloud reveals itself to me more and more as of late, and it’s time for another session. There’s no putting it off. My focus is jittery and personal boundaries are blurring. I was right about the woman upstairs. She had another miscarriage. Her remorse and feelings of inadequacy have been leaking down through the ceiling like water from a poorly caulked bathtub. I found myself stress eating while watching the Lifetime Channel. The foreign emotion making it past my conscious boundaries is bad enough, the fact that I was unaware of it until halfway through a fucking Jane Austin movie and a tub of Hagendaas was more than a little unsettling. I need to get clean; thus the library.