Macy’s arm was the first thing I ever stole. Before you get all weirded out, she had a prosthetic arm where the real one used to be. Some people said Macy was born that way, but I’d heard a rumor that her father ripped her arm off as a toddler, when he was drunk. I never got a chance to ask Macy what happened to the arm, the missing one.
And I did meet her dad once, and when I did, he wasn’t drinking. He was on the couch watching TV. He didn’t look up when Macy and I walked into the house. But I wasn’t the type of kid anyone noticed. He didn’t look at Macy either. He just pointed the remote at the screen and pressed buttons, like he was searching for something between the channels.
Macy and I went to her house after school to huff paint. We were supposed to be working on our eleventh-grade history project—about how JFK was really killed by the CIA—but I’d suggested we get high and listen to Def Leppard albums. I think Macy would have rather worked on the JFK project; she was into conspiracy theories. And on the bus ride to her house that day she admitted she hadn’t huffed paint before.
Macy’s house was an old wood frame bungalow with the original white paint still clinging to sleepy pine boards. The kitchen was all dark paneling with a lime-green countertop and the house smelled like a nursing home. Like mildew had seeped into the cracks of the faded linoleum and someone tried to cover the smell with Lysol and arthritis medicine. But Macy’s room was different. She had a New Kids on the Block poster taped to the wall and stuffed animals everywhere. Behind the posters, a coat of fresh blue paint covered the paneling and there was a hint of cotton candy when you walked in. Her room was the only room in the house that didn’t seem forgotten.
“Where is your mom?” I asked as Macy pulled an old shoebox full of cassette tapes from her cabinet and sat on the bed.
“She left when I was little,” Macy said, continuing to look through the box. “What about your parents?”
”My parents are horrible people,” I lied. Really, my mom and dad were okay. They had boring jobs and went to church every Sunday. I didn’t know why I was so angry with them. They did their best, with a kid like me.
Macy pulled a plastic case from the box, holding it to the light. “Hysteria?”
“Cool,” I said. I didn’t know Macy well, but we would talk on the bus sometimes about music and how lame it was that we still had to ride with the elementary school kids. No one ever sat with her, and I thought it was because of her arm and all. Like the amputation might be contagious. But no one ever sat with me either. So, after returning to school from Christmas break, I started finding excuses to sit with Macy. I thought she smelled nice, and she had pretty blonde hair. But if I’m honest, I was also curious about her arm. I think initially I wanted a closer look at the artificial limb she kept covered with long sleeves, even during the hot Louisiana summers. But maybe I was making a moral inventory, like I was testing my capacity for compassion or kindness.
“You have a good collection,” I said, eyeing the box of music in her lap.
“I steal most of them,” she said and smiled. The warm hazel of her eyes softened the hard corners of her mouth, betraying the adult she was pretending to be. “People give me the benefit of the doubt. They don’t think a girl with one arm would have such sticky fingers.”
I laughed, surprised she would mention her arm. Then I was embarrassed because I had two arms and had never stolen anything in my life. Not that I had some aversion to stealing, even then. Sometimes I think we are only as honest as our opportunities allow us to be.
“It’s ok,” she said, apologizing for making me uncomfortable. Like she existed in a world where forgiveness wasn’t a transaction. She had this orange and brown Afghan in her lap that she played with as she talked. “My mom made this for me when I was a baby,” she said, showing off the soft stitching of the blanket.
“How long has your mom been gone?” I asked.
“She left when I was three,” she said, “I don’t really remember her.”
Macy’s dad coughed loudly, and my eyes flashed to her closed bedroom door. I wanted the door open, even if it was just a crack. I didn’t care about her dad, but I wanted to prove that we weren’t doing anything scandalous.
“Don’t worry about him,” she said, “he never gets off the couch.”
“My mom doesn’t let me have girls in my room,” I said. “Definitely not with the door closed.”
Macy laughed. “She scared you will make her a grandma?”
“Nah, she’s already old.” I sat down on the bed. “And we only have two bedrooms, no room for grandkids.”
“At least you have a mom,” she said, then bent over and slid the tape into her cassette player. I watched her manipulate the controls on her stereo with her good hand. For some reason I touched my own right arm. Like I needed to see if it was still there.
We listened to music, sitting on the bed, not doing our project. Macy wore a low-cut white blouse with the top button open, and I could almost see cleavage when she swayed to the music. I wondered if she left that button undone for me, so that I would stare at something other than her arm. For a while it worked. After one of the slow songs ended—I don’t remember which one—I reached into my bag and produced a can of spray paint.
“How do you do it?” Macy asked, lifting the can with her good hand, studying the label like it was something she’d never seen before. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, resting her prosthetic arm in her lap. Her nails were painted a smooth, deep red and they shined in contrast to the can. On the end of her other arm, the false one, she had a stainless-steel claw. She normally wore one of those fake hands at school, the kind that looks like it is frozen in time. She’d never worn the hook to school. If she did, I never saw it.
“You use a pillowcase.” I pulled a feather pillow from Macy’s bed and removed the cover. Macy watched me as I did this. She had this strange look, like she was trying to memorize my movements.
I took the can from her and positioned it just inside the pillowcase.
“A couple of sprays,” I said, “then put it up to your mouth, like this.”
I pressed the nozzle on the spray can and released the atomized particles into the makeshift cotton lung. Using my fingers as a seal, I lifted the end of the case to my lips and pulled a deep breath. Within seconds, the toluene hit the sweet spot of my brain. My world spun. I laid back on the bed, my arms splayed out like Jesus nailed to the cross.
“What does it feel like?” she asked.
I’ve been asked that question a dozen times in my life, about all sorts of drugs. But at sixteen, and still three years away from my first stint in rehab, I answered that question about as honestly as I could.
“Like an escape,” I said, and closed my eyes. I was floating, my breath shallow and I could feel a heartbeat in my chest for the first time that day.
“Escape from what?” she asked.
The mattress squeaked as she leaned closer. I opened my eyes to see her fist nestled under her chin, like she was studying me. Like I had replaced the JFK project, and my compulsions were now a new conspiracy for her to solve.
“Everything. Nothing.” My tongue was heavy; the words disconnected from my thoughts. I would learn to love that feeling, to crave it. But I remember, with Macy looking at me, I felt a strange sense of shame. I sank deeper into myself.
Macy scooted closer, placing her hand on my chest. The smell of cotton candy was replaced with a floral scent, like a girls’ shampoo. Something with jasmine or maybe orange blossom. My heart raced. Maybe it was the paint, maybe it was Macy. I found it hard to concentrate.
Macy sat up, her fingers on my chest, and asked, “Are you okay?”
I was dizzy, but the paint high was beginning to float away, daring me to chase after it. I sat in her bed, steadying myself with both arms. Macy rested her head on my shoulder. Her hot breath so close to my neck it was like she was trying to breathe through my lungs. I’d never been so close to a girl before, not in that way.
“I have to pee,” I said, and stood up quickly, hand over a determined and painful erection. She pointed to a door connected to her room, seeming not to notice the denim tent post or my embarrassment.
I closed the door to the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. The mirror reflected a mountain range of red pimples and acne scars. I hated the way I looked. I used a finger to pull down my lower lip, uncovering a row of crooked teeth. I slid a hand into the front of my jeans, pushing my engorged organ into the crotch of my underwear, hoping the stitching would act like a straitjacket. Then I went back into Macy’s room.
She was listening to music, reading the back of one of the cassettes. I sat down next to her, closer this time, and she used the edge of her blanket to wipe the end of her nose. She had a small child-like face, with edges that hadn’t been hardened yet. She looked like the kind of girl that would one day work at a record shop, maybe even finish high school and go on to college.
“You ever think that you are the only person who exists in the universe?” she asked, placing the box on the floor.
“Like the apocalypse?”
“No, not the end of the world,” she said, and leaned close to me. A tuft of yellow curls fell from behind her ear and hung delicately on her cheek as she spoke. “Like only you can know what you experience, so how can you prove that other people exist?”
A harsh fluorescent light fell across her face, and I realized her brown eyes were hazel. With streaks of green exploding into dark pupils. That small, childlike face was only inches from mine. I was lost, maybe I was in love.
She leaned in even closer and closed her eyes. The thought of kissing a girl made me anxious. I felt vulnerable. And maybe that is why what happened, happened.
I leaned in and kissed her, but not in the way you picture your first kiss. Not like in the movies, with angry lips and probing tongues. I pressed my mouth onto hers, her top lip over mine, and we stayed that way. Neither of us wanting to do more, exploring the taste of another person’s lips against your own.
Macy trembled and I pulled her full thighs closer to me on the bed, wrapping my arm on her shoulder. Her artificial arm fell limply into my lap. I pulled my mouth from hers and I lifted the arm deliberately with my hand. I looked down at the prosthetic, fascinated, and asked, “Is this okay?”
Macy looked at me, those exploding hazel eyes squeezed into tight slits, and nodded.
I stroked the arm gently like a baby bird. I was surprised at how light it was, a hollow husk of fiberglass with a weighted metal end. There were scars on the forearm, deep gouges of white juxtaposed with fragile flakes peeling from the artificial wounds. My fingers found their way to the cold steel of the hook, and I drew the metal against my cheek, letting the coldness of the steel penetrate me.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered. I moved the claw to my lips and kissed the end. Then I put the curved artificial finger into my mouth, sliding it across my lips until metal tapped against the back of my bottom front teeth. It tasted sterile, like some surgical instrument, and I was lost in my own fantasy.
With the claw deep in my mouth, I opened my eyes to see terror on Macy’s face. Her eyes wide and her mouth open in a silent gasp. Pulled out of my dream, I jerked my head back and Macy fell away from me, twisting the arm and causing the hook to scrape against the side of my cheek then catch in the soft corner of my mouth. I grabbed the artificial arm with both hands, hoping to keep her from falling but also to keep me from going down with her. Whatever sort of strap connecting Macy’s arm to her shoulder gave, but not before the hook ripped the flesh of my cheek, opening a meaty gash between my upper and lower lips.
Mine is not the normal self-loathing, but the kind that plays out in movie reels of my mind. And the memory of me standing over Macy, full erection and blood draining from an open tear in my face, holding her arm like it was some grotesque carnival prize—it weighs on me. But it was what Macy said as I stood over her, the plastic arm raised in the air like a hammer, that causes the most pain.
“Please, no,” Macy whispered in a small voice. And then she raised her hand in front of her face like I was going to hit her.
I could have done so many things differently at that moment, and I play the scenarios out sometimes when I’m writing lists. What I ended up doing was what I would continue to do the rest of my life.
I ran.
And I took Macy’s arm with me.
***
I can justify my decisions when I need to. Defend the actions of a panicked teenager forced into a situation that he wasn’t emotionally or intellectually ready for. I tell myself that I took Macy’s arm as I ran out of her room by accident, that I’d disassociated, that I was still high from the paint. In another version of the truth, I take her arm in a noble gesture. Like the arm was some amulet of bad luck, an omen that had to be extracted to course correct Macy’s universe. I tell myself it must be one of these reasons because the alternative makes me a monster.
Regardless of how things turned out, Macy’s arm was the first thing that I ever stole. It would not be the last. And I’m not sure if it matters now, but Macy’s arm was the only thing that I ever returned. I went back the next night and left her arm on her front porch, placed it leaning against a dead hibiscus in a cracked plastic pot. I saw Macy’s dad through a window as I left. He was on the sofa watching TV.
I sometimes think about finding Macy; I know that finding people is much easier now with the internet. She is on my list of people I need to make amends to. And if I ever saw Macy again, I could apologize for stealing her arm. I could also show her the scar on my cheek, the one that runs up from the corner of my mouth to my dimple, the thin white line that people in group tell me makes me look like I’m always smiling. At least half of me anyway.
I could tell her that I eventually ended up working at a record store, but that it sold mostly CDs by that time, and only had a small section of forgotten cassettes tucked deep in the back of the sales section. It was a good job, and I never got caught stealing the merchandise. I think Macy would find that funny. Maybe she wouldn’t.
I could ask her if she made it out of Louisiana, tell her that I made it as far as Alabama. But that Mobile wasn’t far enough. Because sometimes we can’t out-run who we are.
I could tell her that my parents are still alive, and that I talk to my mom once a week. I could tell her that I’m not angry with them anymore, but maybe they are a little angry with me. I hear the sadness in my mom’s voice when she calls.
Finding Macy probably wouldn’t be that hard. I have access to a computer and a phone, and I could try to track her down because I sometimes feel like I have a lot to say.
I could ask her any of these things, but most days, I’m not sure what Macy and I would have to talk about.