The Lonely (11 page)

“Mothers should really stop doing whatever talk shows tell them to do. Because apparently talk shows don't realize how annoying it makes them.”

My words, all muffled and warm beneath the bandana, smelled sour and angry. The Mother scowled.

“When are you going to throw out that disgusting bandana?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“You shouldn't have it on your face like that, Easter. It will give you pimples.”

“Mmm hmm.”

I agreed in a way that made her think I wasn't listening, but I was listening, and later I'd scrub my face raw.

She lay still, with the shower curtain wide open. After a little while the scowl melted from her face and her breathing became perfectly even. The water moved very slightly back and forth, back and forth, coming slowly to almost a complete stop. The Mother hadn't moved a muscle, even her chest, in minutes, and the only thing bringing life to the water at all was the vibration of her blood pulsing through her heart and body. I looked at her hands, open at her sides, empty, aware, not laden with the heavy nothingness which fills dead or sleeping hands.

I didn't want her to fall asleep in there. At least, that's why I told myself I knocked over The Father's electric shaver so it smashed onto the floor in an explosion of jagged bits of plastic and exposed metal. Really, I wanted to see her cry. The Mother screeched and leapt so high in the air that I thought she might cling to the ceiling like a cat. Her eyes wide open, arms hooked over the lip of the tub; water splashed all over the floor.

“Easter, what the hell was that?”

She was breathing heavily and staring me in the eyes, my face telling her nothing beneath the bandana. I pointed at the shaver in pieces on the floor.

The Mother's jaw dropped, her cheeks grew red.

“Oh Easter, no. No, no, no. Not his razor, honey.”

Her face was the kind that moved to tears slowly, as though a key was turning somewhere in her brain, tightening, grinding.

And I knew that it would make her cry. I knew that she would dread having to give The Father the bad news. I knew that it would reinforce all of the terrible things he already thought about me. Which were all true. And I felt awful about it. But I wasn't going to say that. Easter, you're an evil, fat little bitch.

She rolled back over into the tub. Little waves were moving the water back and forth with her under them, grabbing at her plump cords of wet hair dangling just above the surface.

The water now knew there was something very much alive in it.

That night Julia and I lay in bed, staring out the window. The sky looked like stretched fabric. So dark as to actually be there. I thought of the time she was crushed in The Cube. That I'd been the one who crushed her, really, when I pulled the book from the wall of stuff. I thought about Lev coming by again yesterday, and how he'd brought his cigarettes and we smoked them in the parking lot and I flicked a bug off his shoulder. The first time I'd touched him. And he was real, I could tell. Not something crawled out of the ground, despite the bugs and the filmy eyes. He asked me again if I'd ever had a boyfriend. And for the first time ever, I told the truth and said “No.” And he smiled and said that he'd never had a girlfriend either. I wanted to say that I wasn't surprised because he was a gooey-looking, thin-skinned subterranean humanoid, but I didn't. He'd been coming by a lot since I first took down his particulars, but Julia didn't know that.

“I know what you're thinking,” Julia said.

“No you don't.”

“I do. You're thinking you want to kill me.”

“Julia, I am not.”

“You are, Easter. How come?”

“I don't know.”

“Why don't you want me around anymore? Don't you love me?”

“Julia, I love you more than anything. You're my best and only friend. You know that.”

“Then why won't you let me come to work with you? And why are you thinking about killing me?”

“I don't know. I've gotta get un-lonely, Julia. Un-lonely for real. You make me do and think awful things sometimes. You wanted to cut up Amelia. I knew you meant it, Julia. And you can make me do things. And—”

“You're a psycho.”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you!”

“No, not like that, Easter. You don't want to be special anymore. That's psycho. We could have a different life from everyone else.”

“Is that really better, though?”

She shook her head and looked at me, making a face like she was amazed at my stupidity. I tucked the covers under my chin and snuggled closer to her. I could feel her words move along her body before I heard them.

“Remember when you killed Salty?”

“You killed Salty.”

“You don't really believe that, Easter.”

“I didn't kill him.”

“Then who did?”

“You.”

Salty was a cat that belonged to
Seisyll, our unfriendly neighborhood cat man.
He chewed tobacco and spit into a brown bottle and was always trailed by as many as eight cats at a time, meowing and spitting and stinking. His house sat at the crux of our gaping cul-de-sac, a feast for ivy and weeds and a creeping stench.

One afternoon Salty strayed from Seisyll and sidled his way up to Julia. She'd been making a game of pulling off never-ending strings of ivy stems that had suctioned themselves to the red brick steps of The Tooth House.

He performed a little pre-sit ritual, three full circles, and then plopped his butt down next to her. His tail stuck out straight as an arrow, hiding that nasty balloon end that other cats always seem so eager to show off, and it made him seem more respectable somehow. His modest butthole, coupled with a little piece of frayed grass that hung from his lip like a cigar, made him one of the most distinguished little gentlemen she'd ever met. Then he got up and slid down the steps and smelled her sandaled feet and grated her toes with his rough little tongue. She pulled a red ribbon from her hair, tied it around his neck, and coaxed him easily to the lawn, where she pulled up dandelions and bopped his nose with them, sending him into a tizzy of jumping and batting. By the time she decided it was time to take him home, his nose was almost completely yellow.

When night came and it was time to go inside, she felt awful to leave him all alone. She wanted to return him to Seisyll's house but didn't want to walk up and knock on Seisyll's door. So instead she lifted the plastic lid of Seisyll's garbage can at the end of his long driveway, which lolled like a tongue from his open garage, and poured Salty in. He hit the bottom with two gentle thuds, looked up at her, the ribbon still in a perfect bow. The shadow of the lid in her hand sliced little Salty in half vertically and one of his eyes flashed like a crystal ball.

“You left him in that garbage pail, Easter.”

“No.”

“You let him bake like a turkey in that August heat wave.”

“
I did NOT!” I screamed, and imagined pulling the pillow out from beneath her head, shoving it over her face, and feeling the life spill in violent glugs from her body like a tipped bottl
e.

Easter Story

Through two doors, The Mother sat and the girls watched. Easter's door was pushed open just a sliver, peeled from the frame as quietly as an eyelid opens. Light broke into their room and the burnt orange of a heavy lampshade painted their faces, stacked one on the other like a totem pole.

Easter was trying very hard to make herself invisible. Not only from The Mother, who couldn't see them from where she sat anyway, but also from Julia. She wanted to be as inconspicuous to Julia as a mint in her pocket. An accessory hanging from her ear or neck or wrist. A ghost. So that Julia would invite her to tag along again on another of these most secret excursions. Excursions she usually took alone, leaving Easter to mope in silent pretend sleep in their cold bed.

The pulled-back hairs on Julia's head felt as thick as wire along Easter's pulsating throat; nervous warmth billowed between them. Julia was as anxious as Easter was, to be spying so seriously in the dark.

Through two doors and across the width of the hall, The Mother looked stiff. Her legs were stuck together at the knees and she'd burrowed her hands flat beneath her thighs against the wood chair, which sat without any real use against the wall of The Parents' bedroom. Her feet hung by their heels on a round rung between the legs of the chair and her long, gray nightshirt looked damp and pulled around the neck. She stared at the spot where the girls knew that the bed was but couldn't quite see because the staggered placement of the two door frames only gave them that chair. But they knew she was looking at the bed. And they knew that the source of the dim, orange light was a ceramic table lamp with a woman's face painted onto it. Created by The Mother when she took up painting, then put the hobby in a box and shoved it under the bed with the rest of her neatly compartmentalized, barely realized interests.

On her face a Lonely expression was lacquered.

Through two doors, everything was silent except for the sound of The Mother's finger joints nervously bending and flattening with a thud against wood, trapped between the chair and her enveloping thighs. It was hard to tell whether or not The Father was on the bed; hard because on her face that Lonely expression was lacquered and because Julia said she sat like this most nights whether he was there or not. Quietly in the chair, legs as stiff as bent drinking straws, back as straight as she could make it, looking at the bed, her eyes cavernous: like two empty rooms, side by side, made up for viewing and not living. Vacant suites and dinette sets prepared for “The Price is Right” showcase showdowns.

Just as Julia began to indicate that they should head back to bed, The Mother stood up, smoothed the gray nightshirt down over her underwear, and walked to where the girls knew a dresser existed. The faint squeal of a drawer pulled out. Shuffling through things worn soft. Then The Mother returned to the chair with a cigarette and a holographic hula girl lighter in her hand. She opened the window, a fraction of which was visible to the girls across the hall and between the door frames; sat down again; and proceeded to operate the lighter very strangely: the holographic hula girl standing up straight in her cupped hand, wedged into her palm with the wheel under her middle finger. Then she pulled down and ignited it, and it looked as though the flame was coming straight from her first two fingers like magic.

As far as the girls knew, The Mother didn't smoke. Perhaps they'd seen her once or twice with a cigarette in her hand, at a party or some other function where it might look interesting to be the kind of person who sometimes smoked, but in real life never. This must have been a cigarette from one of The Father's secret stashes.

The Mother took two purposeful-looking drags from it, just to get the thing going, not really enjoying it. She pulled a leg up onto the chair and rested her arm over her knee, soft side up. One foot remained clipped to the chair rung beneath and the white underwear she'd made an effort to hide when she'd first stood up was now fully exposed to us. The warmed, private part of the underwear, scooped into with leg holes. A small embroidered bell in front.

She took another hungry drag and let the smoke slip from between her lips slowly, crawling up her face toward the ceiling, obscuring it for a second almost completely. Another drag she blew out gently against the inside of her arm. It moved along the soft inner parts like gentle, tickling fingers. Her skin must have rippled, hairs standing on end, because when she proceeded to move the burning end of the cigarette as close as she could along her arm, just barely above the skin along the pit of her elbow, the girls could smell burning hair.

Easter became frantic. What if she put the cigarette too close, buried the burning orange end into her most tender flesh, let herself eat up and put out the straight white cigarette with her doughy insides? The Mother's head rolled back, her throat as exposed as a fish on land, not looking at where she was moving the cigarette, just letting it hover above her skin. Easter began to tremble and Julia, who could feel the tremble ripple through her own body, shot an angry look up at her. This angry look made Easter shake even more. Julia wasn't going to stop her. Julia was just going to let her burn. And Julia wasn't going to let Easter stop her, either. A whimper escaped from Easter's until-now-vigilantly-monitored throat and Julia stood up like a shot, knocking Easter backward. She grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her back to bed without a word.

Easter secretly hoped that The Mother had heard them and that it knocked her out of it. She hoped that The Mother would throw the cigarette out the window and go to sleep whether The Father was there or not. Regardless of what The Mother did with that cigarette, Easter would never be invited on a secret excursion again.

In their room, Julia paced.

“Easter,” she said, “do you mind telling me what's wrong with you? What makes you so, so annoying?”

Easter sat on the bed, looking at a section of Care Bear sheet through her crossed legs. Numb fingers, dry throat, fear and sadness and strangeness all vibrating through her, just beneath the skin. The small light in the room reflected a slick of tears across her cheeks.

“Hello?” Julia waved a hand in her face.

“I can't believe we just left her there,” Easter said quietly.

“We didn't just leave her there, Easter, you made a noise. Now she knows we were watching. She's stopped.”

“Do you think so?”

“I do.”

“I hope so.”

“And that's why you're not coming out with me again.”

“Why?”

“Because you can't handle it, Easter. It's not right for you to see. Only I can, got it? From now on, you've got to never leave your room at night, all right? Even if you hear the bells or you wake up and see that I'm not there.”

“Okay.”

“Do you promise me?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“I'll protect you from them.”

“I know.”