The Cult of Rohesia: Mark (1/3)

I don't know why I'm crying. I knew it was coming. I know he's not really dead. I know this is going to happen to Emilie, too. I know. I didn't care when it was Michelle, not like this. I still can't stop.

I can't even go anywhere. Emilie helped Nicolas carry Michael upstairs. Michelle got up and sat next to me in Michael's chair, but she seems to be at a loss as far as any further action goes. Dora is hovering around the dining room door.

This is when she usually leaves, so I don't know why she's staying now. Surely not out of concern. She doesn't seem to like any of us much. Except Michelle, that is. Then again, she let me help her carry Michelle last time when she wouldn't let Nicolas. I don't know if that means she likes me, or just doesn't have a grudge against me (Emilie had some unfortunate things to say about her and her mom living out of their car, Nicolas may or may not be blackmailing her, and as far as I know she simply finds Michael annoying).

“Mark?” Louise asks softly. “You want a napkin? Or maybe a glass of water?”

I can only nod. It feels like I'm five again. I fell out of a tree once when I was five and broke my arm. The bones were sticking out a little. Emilie stared at it like she was in a trance until I told her to go find a grownup. But this time I'm not even injured. This is so embarrassing.

And it's all my fault. Michael wouldn't have gotten sucked into this if it weren't for me. I was the one who looked him up. All I had to do was sift through all the Facebook results for "Michael Bennet" until I found someone who looked like me. His profile was publicly accessible. Our dad hadn't changed his name or anything. He didn't have a bunch of piercings or long hair or makeup or anything else that would make him less recognizable. When I saw his profile picture, I knew it was him immediately. If someone else had shown it to me out of context, I would have assumed it was me.

He wouldn't be here now if I hadn't reached out to him. He wouldn't have met Nicolas and let himself get attached. Or Emilie, for that matter. Or me. So he wouldn't feel obligated to go along with this. I did this to him.

“You were a lot calmer than this when Michelle died,” Dora comments just as I'm starting to cry myself out.

“Come on, Dora,” Michelle says. I bet she's happy to have something to do. “Michael's his brother.”

Dora shrugs. “Just saying.”

Really, I don't know why I'm crying. This isn't a big deal. Dora and Michelle definitely think there's something sinister about all this. Sometimes even Michael seems to agree with Michelle. For all I know, maybe he does that more than he lets on and just contradicts her for the fun of it. I wouldn't put it past him.

I know Nicolas, though. I grew up with him. He was Emilie's cross-dressing uncle (though she always called him her aunt) with the green thumb. Sometimes we'd go to his house down the road and he'd teach us about the plants in his greenhouse. I remember planting seeds once, then taking a thyme seedling home once it had grown enough. The nursery he and his partner Thomas started is still doing good business today, decades later.

He was quiet then, too, but not like recently. It used to be out of thoughtfulness. He was more of a listener than a talker. Now it's more like he's holding back because none of what he has to say is pleasant. Or maybe he's just too overwhelmed with grief still to really talk to us. Either way, he wouldn't do anything to hurt us. And even if I didn't trust him, there's also the fact that we aren't the first people to go through this. Everyone from the last cohort seemed perfectly happy. I remember them, too.

Thomas, always smiling and whispering in Nicolas's ear so Nicolas could translate his English to French for us, since the original point of me coming to Emilie's house was so I could learn French.

Cathy, who could fix anything, no matter how broken it was. She usually found a way to show us how she did it, too, without using English. She'd point at something and Emilie would tell her a word for it even if it was just “le machin” or “le truc.” I guess we were learning from each other.

Ronnie, and the way her words slurred together from misplaced confidence in her French skills. Actually, I think I heard her do it in English sometimes, too.

David would speak English to us if the other adults weren't around but exaggerate his French accent to the point of unintelligibility until we told him to just speak French. He also had a motorcycle, which Jeanne absolutely forbade him from giving Emilie or me rides on.

Jeanne. She was hard to describe. Like a foreigner in her own country, or maybe an elf among humans. Not quite in the way Emilie is. With Emilie, it's mostly introversion and eccentricity. Jeanne was perfectly happy to put herself out there, but you could never tell what she was thinking. Or at least, I couldn't.

It's kind of odd, speaking English here. We have to, for Dora and Michael (I've taken French classes with Michelle—she speaks it at least as well as I do). But the timing of it really puts an exclamation point on the others' deaths, too.

Michael's going to come back. It's going to be fine. There's no reason to cry like this.

“You ready to eat dinner?” Louise asks me when I'm finally dry-eyed.

“Sure,” I say, about half as loudly as I meant to. My voice comes out whispery and hollow.

“Michelle? Why don't you go get Nicolas and Emilie?”

Michelle nods and gets up. Dora leaves.

"He doesn't know what he's getting into," I tell Emilie later that night. We're both sitting in the living room with Michael's body.

"I'm not sure any of us do," she says back.

"Dora and Michelle are at least skeptical. And we grew up with the house. Michael just—jumped into all of this head first and barely questioned anything."

"He questioned plenty until you woke up from the dead," Emilie said.

I guess that makes sense. But it doesn't make me feel better. "So that means it's my fault he's like this twice over."

Emilie takes a minute or so to think that over. "How do you figure?"

"He would never have come here if I hadn't gotten in contact with him."

"Whose idea was it to meet up here? Yours, or his?"

I'm not sure. "His, I think." Yeah. Because if it was mine, I would have tried to find a way to come to him. But I definitely wouldn't have volunteered to go all the way to California. I don't know how I would have even come up with the money for bus tickets.

I wonder how he did it? Did he have a job? Did he quit? Or just leave?

"Then it's not your fault," Emilie says.

"How do you figure?"

She takes another minute, probably to collect her words. "You told me as soon as you found him, right?"

"Right."

"And then within a month, he was here. With no return bus tickets. Or if he had them, he didn't use them. Did he ever say when he planned to go back?"

I shake my head. "You know how tight-lipped he's been. Has he told you anything?"

"Like what?" she asks.

"Like about—I dunno. School. Our dad. Where he lived—"

"He talks about the weather in California, sometimes. And the plants."

"I don't mean that, I mean—all I know is a town. And that was from his profile." I didn't think it bothered me this much, though. Talking to Emilie does that to me, sometimes. Drags feelings out of me I didn't know I had.

"So maybe none of this is making an impression on him because whatever he left behind him was worse. Or at least, weirder," Emilie says.

"That's speculation? He really didn't tell you anything?"

Emilie frowns. "Why would I keep secrets from you? I wouldn't, you know."

"Not even for Michael?"

Her frown turns into a scowl. "Of course not!"

"Okay. Good. You seem pretty smitten with him." Which I'm glad for. I wasn't sure how she'd react to how crude he can get, but if anything, she seems to like it.

"He gets me, Mark. And he laughs at my jokes. Not many people do that, you know."

It's true. It's fun watching them bounce off each other. I can't keep up with Emilie like Michael can. Though I appreciate her sense of humor, I don't share it as much as he does.

"And he always does what I say. That's what I really like about him."

<<>>

“Mark,” Michael whispers.

Did I dream that?

“Maaaaaark.”

I didn't. “Okay, fine, I hear you.”

Normally I'd be annoyed. Today, I'm just relieved. Besides, I figured this was what I would get for sleeping out in the living room with him like I did with Michelle. That time, it was more for her. This time was for me.

Emilie and Nicolas are here, too, but probably still asleep. The sun's rising earlier this time of year, so I don't blame them.

“You weren't kidding. I'm fucking freezing.”

“You want something to drink?”

“Coffee? With milk and sugar?”

“Sure.”

By the time I've made the coffee and come back, Michael's sitting up with his back against his pillow and several blankets wrapped around him, talking animatedly to Nicolas, who's sitting on the other arm of the couch with his ankle on his knee.

“I really don't think that's a good idea, Michael,” he's saying.

“It'll be super funny,” he says, but whatever it is, he won't do it. I can tell from how he's not already getting up and acting on the idea. He's letting Nicolas talk him down.

“What's not a good idea?” I ask, handing Michael the coffee he asked for. Maybe I should go get more for Nicolas. I made a whole pot.

“Going into Emilie's room and waking her up with his cold hands,” Nicolas says dryly.

I can't help but laugh at the thought. “She'd flip.”

“That was just what I was telling Michael, yes.”

“My hands aren't that cold anymore, anyway,” Michael says after sipping his coffee. The warm mug must be helping with that. “Morning, Emilie.”

She was in the hall, but immediately closes the bathroom door behind her. I take a seat, but with room for her between me and Michael.

A few minutes later, she comes back out, grabs him by the collar of his shirt, and kisses him on the lips. “Good morning. How'd you sleep?”

“Like the dead,” Michael tells her with a smirk.

I catch Nicolas looking at me. The corner of his lips twitches sympathetically. It's not that we have a problem with Emilie dating anyone. It's the way she and Michael consciously revel in being just a little bit too much together. Neither of us has the heart to say anything about it, of course. If we did, the two of them would probably only step it up, anyway.

“Are you two hungry yet?” he asks. They can't be gross if they're sitting across the table from each other.

“Depends. What are you making us?” Emilie asks.

Nicolas pretends to be surprised. “What am I making you?”

“We have plenty of bread left from Friday,” she says. “I already sliced it for you.”

“And you'll clean up, too, right?”

“If I must.”

<<>>

“Sorry, I have plans for today. Thanks, though.”

It's July. That was a text from Michelle. The message above it says “u want to go hiking w us tmrw???” I didn't send it. Not that I'm going to tell Michelle that, of course.

Michael's in the guest room. I guess we have to talk about this again. “What did I tell you about using my phone?”

He's still in bed, which I can't blame him for. It's only eight, and it's Saturday. “What? Oh. Mine was charging. She knows it's me.”

I would hope so, given that I actually take the trouble to type out my words. But I can't be sure. “I still want you to tell me before you send messages from my number.”

“Okay.” He does something on his phone, then puts it down. “What, should I not have invited her?”

It's true. He actually shouldn't have. “Emilie would have been pretty weird about it if she'd come with, so it's lucky she had plans.”

“What? Why?” Good. He looks at least a little alarmed, now.

“She doesn't know her very well.”

“She doesn't know me all that well, either.”

Yeah, none of us do, do we? “She likes you, though.”

“Does she not like Michelle?”

I shrug. That's hard to explain. “She doesn't have to actively dislike someone as an individual to not want them around. Normally she prefers to gradually adjust to new people.” Or at least, I can only assume that would be most comfortable. I don't think she's actually had to do that since we were pretty little. She certainly didn't bother when she was in high school.

“Sounds like kind of a production.”

I don't know what to say to that. And I shouldn't have to say anything. “Look, just, if we have plans with Emilie? Don't invite other people without at least asking her first.”

“All right. I thought it was okay because it was Michelle and all, but I'll be more careful next time.” His phone buzzes. He checks it, then hands it to me. “See? She knew it was me.”

<<>>

It's the third Saturday in July. We made pain doré for lunch to distract ourselves. Now the three of us are eating it in Emilie's room. None of us seems to want to go in the dining room.

Honestly, we should go outside. Even if we stay on the property, it'll be an improvement. But I don't think Emilie wants to go too far from Nicolas's corpse. She also doesn't seem to want to be in the same room as it. Hence why we've been mostly cooping ourselves up in her room since he collapsed yesterday.

There's really no reason to be like this. We don't know he won't wake up on Sunday. I suppose we could make contingency plans for if he doesn't, but it feels—I don't know. A little callous. A little wrong. Almost like we would be sabotaging him.

I could text Michelle and see if she's heard anything from Dora. But that could open a floodgate that would be better off shut. She doesn't need us all texting her every five minutes.

After we've cleaned up the dishes, we head back up to Emilie's room so we can spend a few more hours ignoring each other. Michael's watching something on his phone—it had better not be porn, but I'm not willing to risk seeing exactly that by checking (it's happened before). You never know what he's looking at. Emilie's re-reading Lady Chatterley's Lover. I'm trying to make a house with her deck of playing cards.

Then we get hungry again and eat leftover pasta salad for dinner.

“There has to be something we can do,” Emilie says, after eating most of her bowl, poking at a cherry tomato with her fork and failing to spear it on every attempt.

“Emilie, there isn't.” Or rather, we can't possibly know what might help. “I know how you feel, but we have to wait until Sunday.”

“You don't.” She drops her fork in her bowl with a clatter. Won't look at me, either. “You don't know how I feel. You still have your grandparents.” Then she gets up and stalks downstairs.

Michael's getting up, too.

“Don't follow her.”

“Why not?” He's still halfway out of his chair.

“She needs space to think. Or maybe just calm down a little. I don't know. Give her an hour or two, and she'll come back.”

It's going to be fine. Emilie's going to be fine. She's taking this way better than I took Michael dying, and I had no reason to assume he wouldn't wake up. Everything is fine.