The Lonely (5 page)

The next morning, Phyllis knocked on our door.

“Breakfast,” she coughed.

Julia and I looked at each other solemnly.

Day one.

The round breakfast table was covered in a yellow-and-white-checkered tablecloth, pulled tight around the edges and clipped with special pins that looked like mallard ducks. Phyllis's arms were covered in bracelets and she wore a brown linen shirtdress and a gold belt. She had decorated the table in towers of buttered limp toast and every different kind of jam. There was a pot of coffee percolating on the stove. I was too young yet for that to interest me, but only just. Still at an age in which coffee was just another disgusting odor associated with being a withered, wrung-out adult. The jams though, that was a different story. There were as many jams as keys on a piano.

“I hope you like jam.”

“We do.”

Phyllis looked up at me quickly, as though I'd startled her. I took a seat and began inspecting the labels on the jam jars.

“I was wondering, Easter. I want you to do something for me while you're here. Can you do something for me?”

“Probably.”

Phyllis took a long gulp from her glass of tomato juice. She let a dark red moustache attach itself to her top lip for just a second before she lapped it off expertly with her snake tongue.

“There are some items of value down in the basement that I'm ready to part with but I need some help to dig them out of the mess. Do you think you could help?”

I didn't want to be the one to make the decision for us. I'd wait for Julia. A long moment passed. Phyllis fiddled with one of the mallard ducks clamped to the edge of the table and I stared at the checked tablecloth for so long that each square began to dance.

“We've got nothing better to do,” Julia finally agreed.

So I nodded.

And that's how we ended up in Phyllis's basement.

The Cube

When Phyllis first opened the door, the basement looked like a Magic Eye picture in the Saturday paper. Like we were face-to-face with a wall of matter and only with serious concentration could we see it as an actual space to enter. But nothing ever appeared. Because, truly, the room was so absolutely packed with things that they all fused together, shaped like Play-Doh to almost the exact dimensions of the room.

It was a brick of Phyllis's life, tucked away underground, and she wanted us to sever it and save something, work our way through it, a tumor to be biopsied. There was a sliver of space at the very top of the room, about the height of a baseball bat, and sun filtered in from the bits of window that peeked over the top of the mess up there.

“So, can you get in there and find a few things for me? I have a list.”

She held out piece of paper torn from a long, yellow legal pad. It said:

Elizabeth's chloroform mask

Elizabeth's riot gear

Elizabeth's Arabian fly net

Elizabeth's blindfold hood

Elizabeth's spotted body suit

Elizabeth's head protector

Elizabeth's respiratory measurement mask

Elizabeth's equine inhaler

Elizabeth's gas mask

Elizabeth's armor

Elizabeth's bridle

I looked up at Phyllis but she was already in the kitchen, rummaging under the sink for a stepladder.

“You want me to go into this mess?”

“Well, on top of it first,” she replied, wiping some dust off a white vinyl stepping stool and placing it next to my feet. “And then you should probably start digging.”

I looked at Julia. She shrugged, stepped up onto the ladder, and climbed on top of the solid mass of basement that we were meant to rummage through. So I followed.

Once I was up there, Phyllis spoke again:

“I'll leave the door open so you always know how to get out, all right?”

“Okay. Wait, Grandma, who's Elizabeth?”

“Elizabeth is your mother's horse.”

“She has a horse?”

“Had a horse,” Phyllis replied.

Then she walked into the kitchen to prepare a Bloody Mary. Just one, to transition from tomato juice morning into vodka afternoon.

“Named
Elizabeth
… ” grumbled Julia from some-where deeper in the basement.

So Julia and I began our expedition. We felt like a pair of archaeologists going through layers of settled earth, counting the years of growth by the things that we found. We tunneled through the stuff, created pockets, rooms where we could stop for a moment and leave items of interest that we retrieved. We made a tunnel to the door so we could enter and exit fairly easily to use the bathroom or grab something to eat. Phyllis left us trays of toast and jam on the breakfast table that afternoon for lunch, along with two glasses of chocolate milk, four water bottles and a box of granola bars. We brought those with us into the first room that we created, which we were calling The Café.

“I wonder how much money antique horse equip-ment goes for,” Julia said while fingering a whole piece of buttered-limp-toast into her mouth.

“I can't believe Mom never told us she had a horse,” I said.

“I think if she told us that she had a horse, then we'd expect to get horses.”

“I do kind of expect her to buy me a horse now.”

“I told you so.”

“Or at least a dog.”

“Seriously.”

We could always hear Phyllis: slippered feet on the rug, screen door opening and closing, her daily routine kept by a tomato-shaped egg timer that seemed to have limitless settings. A crank first thing in the morning before preparing breakfast, the only time that Phyllis would eat a meal all day. A ding at noon to announce lunch, at which time Phyllis would fetch a piece of celery to place in her drink. Another crank, a ding at 3:00. Time to switch to straight vodka. Another crank and a ding at dinner time. Three dings all together to maintain Phyllis's day, pull her from her stillness on the porch as though from a trance. Three dings we could hear from The Cube, letting us know when our lunch would be placed at the door, when it was safe to leave to use the bathroom, when it was time to clock out for the day.

That first night, once we were safely sealed off in our bedroom, Julia expressed some bitterness about our adventures underground.

“I hate that fucking bitch.”

I was lying on the green carpet, letting myself get sucked under slowly. One of my nostrils was already submerged and my lips were shut tight to keep any of the carpet from getting into my mouth.

“Don't you hate her, Easter?”

“Mmm.”

“I mean, what kind of a terrible grandmother would send kids into that firetrap? We could suffocate in there. Our tunnels could collapse and we could be crushed or starve to death. I can't even imagine what kinds of particles aggravated my lungs today. We're probably going to die now, from some poisonous mold that we inhaled. Our lungs are probably ravaged. Now, if for some reason I wanted to, I could never be an athlete, that stupid fucking bitch. She stole everything from us, do you realize that?”

I hadn't. And I still didn't. Julia could be dramatic.

She'd been lying on the bed all night after dinner, soaking up the moonlight like a cat on a stoop. She got up and leaned two stiff arms onto the radiator, letting them support her body, which she was craning to get a better view of the porch from the window. Phyllis was down there all right. Watching over her lawn, sipping vodka from her teacup.

“We should do something to the lawn, Easter.”

I raised my head out of the carpet to reply:

“No Julia. Absolutely not. We've got a whole week with that woman.”

“So what? What could be worse than what we're already doing? What could she possibly punish us with?”

“No.”

“Please, Easter. Why do you always have to be such a stick in the mud?”

“No Julia.”

“Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please”—

“No! No, no, no, no, no. I won't do it, Julia, so just stop. Why do you always want to make things worse? Why do you always have to make us do these awful things? We wouldn't even be staying here if you'd let us have a friend. We'd be at staying at The Friend's house, like a normal girl.” I wanted to cry again.

Goddammit. I hate when crying just happens to you. Like when you're being yelled at by someone or you're very nervous, there's a hostile takeover of your face and chest and all of a sudden you're a crying baby.

“Easter, you'd never do anything fun if it weren't for me. You'd never stand up for yourself or fight back. You're always so worried about ‘
making
trouble' and ‘acting normal.' We would barely be human if it weren't for me.”

“Julia, that isn't true,” I replied weakly.

“Well, I suppose that's right. You certainly do all of the crying for us.”

“I know you're just mad because I won't let you ruin Phyllis's lawn. You're mad at me so you're trying to hurt my feelings. I know you don't think what you're saying is true.”

“Fine. I hate you. I hate you just as much as I hate Phyllis, maybe even more. I hope you drown in The Cube tomorrow, Easter, I really do.”

I knew she didn't mean it, really I did, but it hurt my feelings anyway. I lay as still as I possibly could, until the carpet sucked me all the way under.

At first it was hard to breathe green carpet because it didn't feel like real air. It felt thick and itchy like wool or bushes but after a few terrifying seconds I got used to it, and after a few seconds more, I loved it. Better than air. It invaded me like water up your nose or campfire smoke in your face, but in a fantastic way. I took full, deep, delicious breaths and did back flips in the green. It moved me around like hands, scooping me up under my arms, passing me along, over and under, sideways, upside down, all the while filling me up and scraping a little bit of me off with it when I exhaled. I wanted to be sucked up by every colorful carpet in this whole house. I wish there was a pair of hands like this to move me through Phyllis's basement cube. Cube, cube, cube. I wondered if the basement was actually the shape of a cube. It might be. There's really no way to tell when you're inside of it.

Crush

My cigar-butt legs felt like they were filled with lead, and they felt like lead to my fingers, too. So stiff that I could knock on them. I guess muscle death had already occurred. Coincidentally I'd just read all about “crush syndrome” in my anatomy book. Your legs grow hard as wood when the muscles die, and your whole body fills with toxins. Toxins that can stop up your organs and put you in a coma if you don't die from blood loss first. Quite nasty. But not nearly as nasty as dying on a forest floor. Much different from dying in a bathtub, for example.

A forest floor like this one is already all filled with bugs and flies and beetles and things looking to feast on rotting flesh and lay eggs in warm orifices like mine. When you die on a forest floor the maggots get started on you right way, fully formed and hatched within a day, moving through your body in a warm, rolling mass, devouring you with their hooked mouths. And then you fill with gasses and bloat so terribly that you deflate with a wheeze and leak from everywhere and within a week you're home to more generations of flies and beetles and maggots and worms than you've got in your whole family.

It's the smell that attracts the bugs. Essence of Cadaverine. Of Methane. Of Hydrogen Sulphide. These smells billow around you like steam, attracting all of the things that will rip you up and make a bountiful home of your corpse.

In a bathtub, though, things would be different. In a bathtub during that first day it's only the bacteria that were already inside you that eat you, from the inside out, starting in the intestines and making their way slowly. A whole body filled with traitors, parasites that you grew yourself and nourished with your own body, just waiting to eat you up. That's what happens when you die in a bathtub.

And even though I didn't like the idea of all those bugs eating me up, I didn't necessarily want Julia to come back for me yet either. It was very nice to lie under the rock and smoke those Red Baron cigarettes and watch the living leaves. I thought of Lev's eyes, donut holes dipped in sugary glaze, suddenly standing over me. He would roll the rock off, blow life back into my legs somehow, and we'd walk off down the path, smoking and talking. I'd ask him why it took him so long to come and get me. He'd tell me that he had to wait until the sun was well blocked by leaves, because it singed his skin like poultry in the oven, bits of it coming off like dried petals. And then he'd invite me to live with him underground, with the rest of the subterranean humanoids. And it would be all dark so none of us would have to look at each other, just feel each other, and I knew I felt better than I looked so I'd enthusiastically agree and we'd live together underground happily ever after; I'd lick the glaze from his eyes as the scene faded to black and then you'd never hear from us again. A perfect rescue.

But of course he didn't really live underground. He just looked that way. Really he lived on Princess Street, in a basement bedroom crawling with bugs, bugs that he sometimes accidentally carried out into the world with him, one that I flicked off his shoulder the second time we met; I flicked it into the same oblivion that nail clippings and boogers and tiny sweater fluffs find themselves lost in. And actually I wouldn't want to suck the glaze off his eyes. I should leave it. Because it might be the glaze over his eyes that makes him think I'm so wonderful.

And the sun started to move higher in the sky. It would be shining on The Terrible Thing from that high window above the towel hooks. It might look like a completely different Terrible Thing in that light. Perhaps it might not even look that terrible. Maybe when Julia found The Terrible Thing it would be all emblazoned by that light and she'd be able to come back and say, “You know what? It's not that terrible after all.”