The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic: Stories (14 page)

The queen's air was passing heavily through his teeth. The longer he gazed at the blood-soaked carpeting and the disjointed head of the animal—its teeth exposed along the jowl, its eye open—the
heavier his breathing became. The cook had to look away. The queen said he would need just several more moments before he would be able to speak. And when he did speak, finally, he began swearing. The curses did not come clearly through his affected mouth. “Guck,” he said.

When the queen returned to the living room, he was wearing his tiara and the cape had been restored around his neck, flowing over his shoulders, dragging along the carpet behind his feet. He signaled with a finger to drop the lights.

In one final, glorious act, the servant came forward and placed her infant, the princess, down across an ottoman. The queen commanded her to confess the baby's sin, and when she did in the voice of the infant (“I have an illegitimate bun inside me”), the queen carefully placed his cape down on the coffee table, pulled a curtain rod out of his belt loop, and struck the woman—his teenage cousin—with a snap of the rod across the neck. All flinched, then looked to the ottoman, fully expecting the infant to be struck next.

I just hope you're not waiting at the airport. Anyway, this is almost done here.

The queen's father comforted his son with a hand at the back of his neck. “Well,” the father said gently. “On the farm you can either shoot them or you can teach them.”

To teach them, the queen shoved the dog toward the blood pooled in the carpet. He dragged its head toward the severed throat. But smelling the death, the dog resisted and threw its weight backwards; the collar slid up nearly over its ears and would have slipped off entirely if the queen hadn't adjusted and taken the thing by the scruff, thrusting its nose directly into the flaps of skin at the dead dog's throat.

Able watched.

“Bad girl—Bad, ba-aad girl—”

The Pedersons then rolled the big dead dog into a black garbage bag, spun it, and tied the top.

It occurs to me that this death is both a crappy surprise for everyone and yet long overdue. When they
are among us, those we love are so much among us we pretend we don't need to do anything. And when they are no longer among us, those we love are so much completely gone we pretend we have to do something, everything, to try to bring them back. It occurs to me we probably have this completely backwards.

And of course there, down the hall and around the corner, this is the room Able is taken to on private matters with his cousin. There, this is where they skin hotdogs and stick candies in their mouths and, as it turns out in time, thrust each other's penises into the palm of the other's hand until everything is disgusting, cold, and empty.

Able looked at the ceiling as the queen spoke about the final act of Swedish Castle. “Don't roll your fucking eyes at me,” the queen said. “It's simple. The funeral is the only thing left. A few words by the queen, me, to capitalize on that eulogy—thank you, by the way, real warmhearted—and the cook will be found out to be the father of the illegitimate child of the princess and we'll kill both of them by
throwing them alive into an open grave filled with serpents.”

The cook rubbed his eyes.

“You're a loose end,” the queen explained. “The princess isn't a very good bad guy, being only seven weeks old, et cetera. And neither are you, for that matter, because you just basically stand there with your stupid wooden spoon and do nothing except smirk all night. But the two of you together, and then sealing your grave over, and some heartfelt digressions about love and fidelity by me—that'll be closure.”

PLEASE KEEP SOMETHING OUT OF FOUNTAINS

S
omeone or some group has rubbed or gouged with a sharp or blunt object a critical word from the placard near the fountains. Now no one really knows whom or what to keep out of the fountains. This makes things tricky. It feels very good to fountain. It is very nice to fountain with whatever you want. It is not always nice to fountain with what others want.

So, I hope it's
dogs
.

Dogs fountain regularly. They plunge or charge in like hippopotamuses or typhoons and submerge themselves right beside the babies, the shoes, or the floating empties of gin or beer. For all the fondling or coddling they receive, these dogs often suffer from bad skin irritations or infestations of tiny leaping
insects. This blights the fountains like a moral or social illness. Or, perhaps it is
food products
?

This is when Ingrid comes over to discuss the matter. “It's the literal brink of insanity,” she says, studying the vandalized placard before us. Ingrid is my daughter and flirts openly with exaggeration. She is very intelligent. She is fifteen. She is my only child. She fountains nude.

“Maybe it is
nakedness
,” I say.

“Or maybe it is
institutionalized body bagging
.” She is the only person who fountains without clothing. I wear a thong, red cotton. “Anywho,” she says, “I blame Hillary totally.”