Consumption (2 page)

Erma lay naked on the motel bed. Beside her, a red transistor radio made in some other country in some other decade bared its scratched surface. She reached out and turned the knob. Static, and then, there, like a gift, a song that was the right one. Maybe the only one that would have let them do what they were about to do. And for a wonder, she'd caught it at its very beginning, the jangling of bells like an alarm, and then the slow, insistent build to music.

“Wilco,” John said, naming the band as he stepped from the bathroom. He stood before her undressed, and she saw that his skin was much too pale to be called “healthy.”

“Yes.” Erma pulled the covers back and knew, even as he slipped in, that they were lost in the same memory, of the two of them with their flesh sticky against the vinyl of John's car, the windows down, air heavy with humidity, and this very song on the radio. She was still dating someone else then, and John was still pretending at a cool that was untouchable, and all of that, all of it would shatter against the weight of their two bodies that night as they came together for the first time and then pulled apart, each leaving a piece in the other like a shard, or a splinter.

“Here,” John said, and he took her hand and guided it between the sheets down to his thigh, to the bare of his leg, and then she was holding him, her eyes closed, about to guide him home.

“The condom,” she said, hating herself for saying it.

He stopped. The song played its chorus,
I am trying to break your heart….

“Are you sure?” he said, and he was asking a different question, but Erma answered it, opening the package, sliding the plastic between them, a barrier against so many things, and it might have ended there, might have been better to end there, but it didn't, and they went on, and above them, the glow-in-the-dark stars that someone had pasted slowly lost their light.

And now the other memory—the black one—found them and caught hold. They bucked together against it, two bodies like twigs on an ocean much too large not to swallow anything that came in its way. Erma cried out, felt the absence bloom there, then disappear. Beside the bed, their dog lifted its head and howled, caught up in the swan song of the two of them.

And then it was over. They closed their eyes and found an ugly sleep.

The tiles of the motel bathroom were cold, and she tried not to look down at them, at the brown stains on the grout between the squares. She pulled the cheap ringed shower curtain closed around her, and turned the rusted knobs to release the spray, lifting her face up to catch the hard drops.

Montana. This, then, was where she'd remember it happening.

Gently, Erma moved her hand to rinse between her legs. A stream of red rushed out, mixing with the water.

The doctor had told her the first time might be painful. He'd also told her that she was perfectly capable of allowing this first time to happen weeks ago, though she'd lied to John and said differently. She watched the blood stream down the drain, mixing with the rust around the silver rim. Carefully, she pulled the tender flesh apart, moving a soapy hand between the folds to ensure that what was left rinsed away.

There was still time.

The doctor had told them both that.

Still plenty of time.

A rumble issued from the room next door, unmistakable through the paper-thin motel walls, and then was followed by the sound of a toilet flushing. The water above Erma's head turned to scalding, jerking her from her unpleasant memories. She jumped out of the water's stream, nearly falling on the slick tub bottom.

“Shit!”

“Everything okay in there?”

John was up, then. He'd be in a hurry, too.

“It's just the water,” she shouted back. It was tepid now, as if the burst of heat had depleted it. Another toilet flush, this time from the room above them, and the water changed temperature again, from tepid to ice. Erma jumped fully out of the tub, deciding to give up the endeavor altogether.

“John?” she called over the noise of the bathroom fan.

She stood dripping, awaiting a response, but there was none. He must have taken Maxie out to pee.

As she toweled off she glanced briefly at the bathtub, at the faint ruddy swirl about the drain that one could mistake for rust, and then quickly she left the bathroom, got dressed, and packed, filling her suitcase in a rush.

John came back in with Maxie, moved past her with only a nod and then, thrown back over his shoulder, a command. “I'll be ready in five minutes.”

Erma waited for him outside, sitting on the curb of the motel's parking lot. To her left, a maid shoved a motel cart, its ship-like girth near to tilting with the stacks of thin motel toilet paper, mini shampoo bottles. She was not surprised to see the woman filling these mini bottles from a large V05 bottle, the bright dollar store sticker still on its front. Erma's hair, wet from the shower, began to dry quickly in the morning sun, the wind sending up its soapy scent to her.

John came out, Maxie close behind him.

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

The motel door to their left opened, and a woman emerged. She held a screaming toddler slung across her hip and a phone pressed to one ear, using her shoulder to keep it there.

“…and I just told him,” Erma heard the woman say, “to fuck off.”

The toddler began to scream, reaching for its mother's face. The woman slapped its hand away in annoyance.

Erma couldn't tell if the child was a boy or a girl. Stringy blond hair lay matted against the baby's head, and a thick, wet-looking diaper drooped down from its bare backside. Behind them, a boy of ten or twelve followed his mother from the bowels of the motel room, his hand buried deep in a bag of Cheetos. The boy looked at John and Erma, smiled, then carried on, wiping orange streaks on his white T-shirt.

Could have been mine,
her mind raced.

“And Jesus wept,” John muttered, under his breath.

Erma inhaled sharply, hoping the kid hadn't heard. He hadn't, apparently; he trundled onward, following his mother across the parking lot and toward the fast food building at its end. The toddler began a high, chuffing kind of whine.

John whistled for Maxie, then opened the door of the moving van to let her jump in.

Erma wanted to say something to him, to chide him for his judgment of the kid. “You didn't have to—” But he cut her off before she could finish.

“See you on the other side,” he said, pulling himself into the moving van after Maxie. Then, without fanfare or even a wave, started the engine, and drove out of the motel parking lot. Erma hurried to her own car, stamping on the gas to catch him.

Above them, a single crow flew from left to right. If John had seen it, he would have reminded Erma that early Romans thought seeing a bird fly in that direction was bad luck.

She felt the tampon swelling slowly inside her, and briefly she shuddered at the memory of what had come out of her, but there in the morning sun, the open road ahead of her, it was easier, somehow, to cast these thoughts aside.

They were on to a new life, after all, and she supposed it was best to leave some things behind.

“Leave it, old man.”

The cop laid a heavy hand on the white hair's shoulder, pulling him out of the glass fridge doors that lined one wall of the convenience store.

“I need another minute. One more minute!” the man protested.

The cop ignored him.

Star Williams was having a bad fucking day. Seeing the cop appear here now, in the exact spot she'd chosen to cut class, was not doing shit all to make it better.

She hunched over, waiting for the scene in front of her to unfold so that she could find an opportunity to slip out without being noticed.

The cop, Sheriff Patrick Riley—a man Star knew well—spun the old man to face him.

“Come on now, Pill,” the sheriff said. “This is the third time this week Nancy's called me to complain about you messing up her product.”

Nancy, the overweight woman behind the counter, emerged, wiping her greasy hands on her work apron.

“I told him, Sheriff. I
told
him that I wasn't gonna stand for it anymore. He comes in here every day. Every goddamned day, and shuffles my milk around, pulling it out, looking at the dates. It's all fresh, that's what I said, but when he does that, pulls 'em out and leaves them, it don't stay that way.”

“Now, Pill,” the sheriff said, “you know Nancy wouldn't sell you any bad milk, don't you?”

“I ain't never sold anybody no bad milk,” Nancy said indignantly.

“Of course you haven't,” the sheriff soothed.

Star eyed the door. If she could just make her way behind this shelf, keep her head low, she could get to the door without them seeing….

“You haven't been selling
any
milk, have you, Nancy?” the old man asked. Star recognized him now. Pill Verrity, the old guy who lived a few miles down the country road from her own house. He was a widower, and she knew him more by reputation than sight. Pill had married Cavus's sole survivor from the big fire of 1937, but Star had never seen him out and about before. Pill Verrity was practically a hermit.

“That ain't none of your business,” Nancy said. Nancy Shaw was another woman Star knew. A fucking wastrel who lived in Cavus with her deadbeat boyfriend, Rick, and two kids. Rumor was that one of the boys was actually Rick's brother's kid.

“I think maybe a good solution for this, Pill, is that you just buy your milk elsewhere,” Sheriff Riley was saying.

Star had made it to the end of the aisle. She hesitated, a low grumble roiling in her belly. Fuck. She'd already passed all the chips and crackers down at the other end. The only thing here was the cheap candy, the off-brand packs that came in the clear plastic with the red cardboard at the top. Star grabbed a bag of orange circus peanuts and one of sour gummy worms, stuffing them into her backpack.

“It isn't right!” Pill's voice rose. “Check the dates on the containers. You'll see. She hasn't sold a one of them in weeks.”

“Let it be, Pill. Why don't you let me give you a ride home.”

“And what about the rest of it? The frozen food? The pizzas, the bags of ice? You sold any of that lately, Nancy?”

“Are you criticizing the way I run my store?”

“Let me ask you something, Sheriff, why do you think that is? Why isn't anybody buying anything?”

The door was just five feet to her right now. Star could see a family approaching outside, their car parked at the gas pumps, where they'd filled up. She'd just wait for them to open the door, and…

The bell announcing their entrance chimed, and Star was out like a shot.

“Hey!” The mom of the family, a blond woman with sparkly pink earrings, shouted as Star bumped past her.

Behind her, Star heard the sheriff, his attention caught by the commotion. “
Star!
Star Williams, is that you?”

She kept running, slinging the backpack onto her shoulders.

“Wait!” The chime above the door sounded again. The sheriff's voice louder now, cupped in the echo of the outdoors. “
Wait,
Star! I need to talk to you about something!”

Sure he did. Star kept running, the pavement lengthening out in front of her, and then she was cutting across it and disappearing behind the store, into the adjoining field, an old junkyard with plenty of places to lose herself.

She knew exactly what the sheriff wanted to talk to her about, and there was no way in hell she was going to have that conversation.

They'd been on the road for the better part of the morning when John looked into his rearview mirror and saw that he'd lost Erma.

He slowed, letting the few cars on the road pass him, waiting for Erma to reappear. When she didn't, he pulled the moving van to the side of the road.

“Goddammit, Erma!”

It was just like her. He turned on his cell phone to call her, but saw that there were no bars. Beside him, Maxi shifted, lifting her head from her nap and tilting it at him in question.

What should he do? Wait for her? Try to drive on until he got reception?

“I don't fucking know,” John said.

John felt a poke against his thumb and looked down, surprised to see that his hand was in his pocket, feeling a familiar protuberance from his wallet.

He always had a hard time remembering when, exactly, he'd first seen Erma. She wasn't somebody you'd remember seeing right off. But he remembered when he'd first spoken to her. She changed after you'd talked to her. Not that she became more beautiful, or more desirable, or anything silly like that. She just became more
there,
more solid. In fact, she took up so much space in your memory that you could not forget her.

They were sophomores, both of them, and Erma had been in his psych class that semester, when, one day, she came up to him after class. He noticed her friend first, he knew that. Most people would. Simmy, a blonde, had the requisite breasts to make her as close to beautiful as most of the boys at Portland State could understand. She also liked to wear short skirts. Very short.

This day, Erma and Simmy walked directly up to him and stopped.

“Would you fuck her?” Erma asked. Erma, the short girl with nondescript brown hair, a pretty freckled nose.

“Excuse me?” John stopped, flustered. The girl had asked him the question as if they'd been in the middle of a conversation and he was just slow to catch up.

“Professor Jones. Would you or wouldn't you? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Jonesy?” John laughed. Unthinking, he'd fallen into step with the two girls. Professor Jones, or “Jonesy” to her class, was eighty and had a snaggletooth. “I think I'll pass,” said John.

“It just goes to show,” said Erma, shaking her head. Simmy nodded. They made a lovely pair there, on that autumnal afternoon on the metro campus, the student art fair bustling behind them. Both girls were wearing matching schoolgirl skirts and sweaters (though Simmy's skirt was a good two inches shorter), as if they went to a private high school instead of the college.

“Show what?”

“Men really do like blondes better,” she said.

“Sorry,” Simmy said. Then the two girls began giggling, wildly.

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” John said, but he was already smiling, a big stupid grin cracking his face.

“You heard her lecture, right, last class, about transference of desires?”

John nodded. He hadn't actually been paying attention.

“Well, this is our experiment for essay four. Simmy and I each ask twenty guys from the class if they'd fuck her. The idea being that whichever one of us is more attractive will get more yeses. Because if the boy wants to fuck us, he'll say yes to whatever we ask him, including the verb.
Capiche?
”

“That's ridiculous.”

“That's the transference of desire,” said Simmy.

“How could you ever prove it?”

“Oh, we didn't tell you? We fuck all the ones who say yes.” Erma grinned at him, and it took John a few seconds to see that she was joking.

“Ask me again.”

“What?” said Simmy, her sweet face crumpling in confusion.

“Not you, her. You,” said John, turning to Erma. “Ask me again.”

“All right,” said Erma, turning to him and not hesitating a second. “Would you fuck her?”

“In a heartbeat,” said John. He could smell her, this close, a smell that still surprised him, made him aroused unexpectedly, even after six years of marriage—grass and something sharp, like ginger or lemongrass.

“Tell you what,” said Erma, grabbing his arm. “Buy me a drink. We'll try another experiment about the transference of desire, this time using me and the Manhattan you're going to buy me as subjects.”

“You like Manhattans?”

“I adore them.”

“Then let's head to Dot's and see how many I can pump into you before the barkeep shuts us down.”

They didn't go to bed together that night, knowing that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, but it didn't take much longer than that. They went to Erma's apartment after the bar, a place she shared with Simmy, and which they would later share when Simmy moved out and back to her native Oklahoma. They were both drunk when they got home, but it didn't make the “everything but sex” any less tender, any less spectacular.

Nevertheless, when John woke the next morning and Erma's side of the bed was empty, he felt an instant relief. He sat up, thinking he could chalk this up to a nice experience and go on with his life, not worrying about any undue attachments. Reaching over to the other side of the bed to search for his jeans, he saw the picture taped to the pillow. It had been cut neatly from the yearbook and then blown up in a copy the size of a real face. It was a picture of their professor, and Erma had colored the mouth a bright red.

John stopped where he was and picked up the life-size face of snaggletooth Jonesy, planting a big one right onto her paper lips. “You just get prettier by the day, Jonesy,” he said, folding the face and sticking it in his back pocket. And he knew right then and there, he didn't want to leave, didn't want to escape this girl with her strange sense of humor and pretty freckled nose. And so, kicking his jeans on, he'd stumbled into the kitchen to find Erma.

The picture was in his wallet now, folded over itself many times. Being so large, a corner peeped out the top, and it was John's habit to feel for it through the outer fabric of his pocket—a nervous tic of his of which he was only dimly aware.

He'd been touching it the last ten miles.

“Dammit!” The yell came from somewhere deep inside him. He realized he had started thinking about things best left unthought. He pounded his fist against the wheel, and Maxie slunk back down to the floor.

Everything was falling apart.

Everything had gone from bad to worse in a matter of months. First, John had lost his job. There'd been cutbacks at the college and, since John didn't have tenure, his was one of the first positions to go. Erma had hung on to hers a little while longer, but then the government cut funding to the nonprofit where she worked, and that was that. They hadn't been able to piece things back together. The fights. The bills. Oh my God, the bills. Who knew that going to a hospital to have a doctor wipe up the bloody leftovers would cost so much.

Then the call from his uncle Frank in Maine. The offer of a job; it wasn't much, just a job on the docks with him, but it was union, and would John maybe like it?

And so, in some half-assed attempt to salvage things, to make it all right, they'd set off across country to try to patch themselves back together again.

It had been a mistake.

He knew that now. They were broken. Completely and totally and beyond any chance of being glued together again, fucked.

John eased the car onto the road, turning it around to head the way he'd come. He'd passed a gas station a couple miles back. If he didn't see her on the way, he'd pull in there, wait.

After a few seconds, the bars on his phone blinked.

He tried Erma, but her phone went immediately to voicemail. She might be on the other line, but probably it was dead. She never remembered to plug it in to charge unless he reminded her.

He was about to put the phone back in his pocket when, thinking better of it, he punched in another number from memory. Waited.

Marika answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

John felt his throat clench up. He could do this.
Come on, John, just talk. Open your mouth and talk.

“Hello?”

He couldn't do it.

“Listen, if this is the same joker who keeps calling and hanging up, I want you to know that I've had just about enough. What gives you the right—”

“Marika?” John cleared his throat. “Marika Peterson?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice sounding skeptical. “Yes, this is she. Who is this?”

“Marika, my name is John Scott. I got your name from a friend who thought you might be able to help me.”

“Okay. What can I do for you?”

“A divorce,” John said, pushing the words through his teeth. “I think I'm interested in a divorce.”

“Oh, that,” said Marika, and now her voice sounded pretty as a picture. “Now,
that
you just leave to me.”

Erma saw John before he could see her, the white moving van the only car on the road.

He was coming back for her, then.

She stepped out into the middle of the highway, waving her arms in large, wide arcs.

He saw her in plenty of time, slowed, and then pulled the van to the side of the highway, in front of her car.

“What happened?”

“Don't know.” She nodded her head at the old Honda. “It just started smoking, so I pulled over. Now it won't start.”

She saw the muscles in John's face tense. “It's not a big deal,” Erma said. “We'll just get it fixed. Push on.”

“We don't have any fucking money to ‘just get it fixed,' ” John said.

“We have enough,” Erma said quietly. “We'll be fine.”

He took a deep breath, and she watched something shift in him. When he faced her again, he was calm. “Sorry. You're right.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I'm just stressed. We should call Triple A.”

“I already did.”

“And?”

“And they told me that none of their responders in this area were answering.”

“What?”

She saw the anger leap back into his face, saw him force it down. He was trying. Dear God, at least she would give him that.

“I know,” she said. “It's ridiculous. There's some kind of festival or something going on here this weekend. The operator said she thought everyone was probably tied up with that.”

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“They told me to call the local police, have them help us find a tow, and they'd reimburse us.”

“Did you?”

Erma nodded. “Dispatch said they'd be sending somebody along shortly. We're supposed to wait here until he shows up. They said it could be a while.”

“Well, that's just fucking great.” John slumped beside her against the car.

“You can go on without me,” Erma said. “Head up to the gas station or something. Cool off. I can wait here. No sense in both of us roasting.”

“No.”

“We could get back in the van,” Erma said. “Crank the A.C.”

“It'll waste gas.” They stood beside each other, the heat beating mercilessly down on them, the black tar of the road making it worse. “I'd better let Maxie out, though,” John said. When he opened the door, Maxie refused to cooperate, hunkering down inside. Finally, John had to lead her out by her collar.

“Careful!” Erma said as Maxie yelped, then wished she could take it back. Maxie was John's dog. Even as a puppy she'd favored him, and he'd rather cut off his own arm than hurt her. But Erma had been like this lately. Quick to snap. Quick to judge. What had once drawn her to her husband—his quick sense of humor, his careless sarcasm—now drove her crazy. Thankfully, John didn't hear her last reprimand, or if he had, chose to ignore it.

“Here, girl,” he said, leading Maxie to the shade on the other side of the car, where he filled a clear Tupperware bowl with water. Maxie drank thirstily, then slumped down onto the dirt, her eyes closing.

“John?”

Erma wanted to say something. She didn't know exactly what, but
something.
Last night, they'd come so close to fixing things, and then, somehow, she didn't know how, it had gone wrong.

“I'm sore,” she said. It hadn't been what she meant to say at all, but there it was.

“From what? Did you get hurt when the car broke down?” He approached her with a concerned look on his face.

“No.” She couldn't stop herself. “From last night.”

“I didn't mean to be rough.” His voice was stiff.

“You weren't. At least, not any more than I wanted you to be.” Fuck. What was she doing? What was she even trying to say? It was all coming out wrong. “I—”

“Maxie!” John barked the animal's name, and Erma heard the panic in his voice. “Erma, help me. Shit! She's going to get hit!”

The usually obedient dog had escaped John's grasp and now raced into the middle of the highway, her back raised. Erma looked down the road. A large semi chugged forward, its weighty outline emerging on the horizon.

“Maxie!” John yelled. The dog didn't move. She was quivering, Erma saw, not just growling but shaking.

The semi pulled closer. Erma could make out its colors now, the cab a bright red.

“Maxie!” She joined in John's yell. And then, before she could stop him, John was darting out into the intersection. He wasn't in time.

The semi's horn blared, and even as John rushed toward her, Maxie disappeared underneath it.

Erma could see it all happening in the thin window formed between the semi's belly and the road. Maxie, cowering, her hackles raised, yet
unflinching—Erma
followed the dog's gaze, used that split second of framed view to train her eyes to where her dog's were, to see what she saw, trying to understand why she'd run.

Nothing, just a field, like all the other fields of high prairie grass along the sides of the Montana roads.

Then, the briefest flash of something else. A yellow, bright and unnatural, some kind of plastic. And a face? Was it a face she'd seen as well?

Then the semi roared past, its horn blaring, its back wheels occluding Erma's vision.

John ran forward, into the road, screaming Maxie's name. Over and over, while Erma watched, unable not to see what was not there, the splash of red against the toilet, John reaching his hands in, pulling the mess out, dripping it past her into the hall and outside, where he'd buried it. And her, going back to the toilet, leaning over to see that gelatinous pink globe of flesh that he'd missed and shutting her eyes as she pulled the toilet's silver handle.

“You never wanted it.”

That was what he told her after they came back from the hospital and she began to wipe away the trail of blood in the bathroom.

“You never even
wanted
it, Erma.”

She shook her head, clearing the memory, and followed John into the road, bracing herself against what she would see.