by Halle Butler
She had keys, but out of the appearance of politeness, she rapped curtly on the door several times and heard, “Oh, hey, I unlocked it, come on in!” from the other side of the threshold.
“Are you about ready, Jillian?” asked Elena.
“Oh, I’m running a little late, but Adam’s ready. I still have to take the dog out.”
“Hmm, okay. Adam!” Adam walked to her like he was walking to the gallows. If he were her son, she would tell him to stand up and show some respect or some grace or dignity, but he was Jillian’s son, so his behavior was meaningless. He was a way for her to bond with Barb from Sunnyside Up. Their banter had been solidifying into a friendship, and she looked forward to seeing Barb again. So, there you go. That was another reason to like helping Jillian.
“When will your car be out of the impound?” Elena asked.
“Oh, uh, I have a court date next week, so I’ll get it out when I have my court date next week.”
“Okay, good,” said Elena. “What day?”
“My date is on . . . Tuesday.”
“All right,” said Elena. “I’ve been planning on going out of town for a while, but I haven’t been able to since I’ve been helping you out.” Elena was just riffing. “So I’m going to plan to be out of town on Wednesday, then, that’s great news for me, Jillian.” Elena ushered Adam to the door, but slowly. She was waiting for it.
“Um, okay,” said Jillian. That tension in her voice was so rewarding, that little bit of attitude, that little bit of aggression, but the absolute understanding that there was no way to give it vent and that she, Elena, was essentially impervious.
“I guess if you don’t have your car by then, you’ll have to find someone else to drop him off,” she said. Then she left.
Jillian, for the fourth or fifth time in her life, realized she was capable of murder.
“Can we listen to something else?” asked Adam.
“No,” said Elena. “I’m doing you a favor, and you’ll listen to my radio.”
“I get to listen to my music, usually,” said Adam.
“Well, I don’t have any of your music,” said Elena.
“Can we get some breakfast?” asked Adam.
“Didn’t your mother give you breakfast?”
“No, we didn’t have time,” said Adam.
Elena felt like a kidnapper. She could imagine herself driving Adam out to the woods and drowning him in a creek or knocking him unconscious and burying him alive (even if he did dig himself out, what would he do then?) and then driving home. Who would people believe? She would tell her husband that Jillian wasn’t at home, no one was, wasn’t that weird? so she just came home. Then she would say hateful things about Jillian, just to not seem suspicious. And who would they believe? Why would Elena murder the child? Jillian was like a frightened hamster, with every reason to snuff out her own youth. It would be an easy setup.
She pulled up to the day-care center after that thought and remarked to herself that the drive had seemed faster than usual.
Gosh, was it Friday already?
3
Randy got back from Kelly’s late that night and was giddy about the website, which they had just “launched” or whatever. Randy showed it to Megan and it looked like any old shit and, god, what was wrong with her, she couldn’t even fake it anymore. She couldn’t even say some stupid shit like “I’m so proud of you” or even “Good work, baby” with a fucking kiss or something. She gave the web page a tight-lipped, condescending smile (eyebrows raised) and said, “Wow, you got that finished quickly.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Randy, who definitely thought she was being bitchy, but he didn’t really care that much anymore (because it was too much worry to care, you know, he hadn’t even looked to see if she had some kind of massive, sexy scar on her asscheek; that was how much he really just didn’t give a shit anymore). “You excited for the party tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Oooh, right,” she said. “The inaugural BBQ.”
“Are you going to comb your hair for it?”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Why did she want to stab him in the face so badly and so suddenly, too? He misunderstood her. That was the insult. He thought he understood her, but the way he understood her was so simple and condescending, and that made him an idiot. If she were hearing about this, she would obviously side with herself, and then anyone who acted contrarily would become the object of her scorn, her dismissal, whatever.
She wanted to say “Fuck the police” because yeah, she didn’t need anybody. Fuck the police. She looked at him contemptuously. Fuck the police, fuck the motherfucking po-lice, motherfucker.
* * *
• • •
Jillian was feeling nervous about the coming week. She kept pacing around and eating handfuls of cereal. She did not have any money. She would not be able to get her car. If she got her car, she would not be able to pay for Adam’s day care. If she got Adam’s day care, she wouldn’t be able to get him there. She was going to have to rob a bank or sell her couch or something. Pacing. She kept pacing. That’s it, maybe. Adam and Crispy were watching TV. She brought her laptop into the living room to be with them and started looking at craigslist to see what kinds of prices she could get for her stuff. She would take pictures of all of her stuff and put them on the internet and have people come over and pay her for it. She had too much shit, anyway.
She spent a few hours on craigslist and then almost started crying because it seemed like it wasn’t going to work. And plus, how was she supposed to live like a normal person without a couch or a table or clothes? Anyway, her stuff was so fucked up and junky, and half the people on this website were giving their stuff away. Free for pickup? What was that shit? She saw more stuff on there that she thought she might like to grab (if she had a car) than stuff that looked like hers selling at an encouraging price.
Her kid and dog were passed out because it was, like, two in the morning. She was agitated. Oh my god, so agitated.
* * *
• • •
The first thing Megan noticed when she woke up on Saturday was that she was covered in a film of sweat. She had beads of sweat on the bridge of her nose. When she reached up to touch her face, her fingers slipped. The leaves that had been growing on the trees in the background (in the background, I guess, of the events of her life) were suddenly very apparent. The light in her bedroom (which she shared with Randy, who was still asleep and probably too dull in the head to appreciate this strange new change) was green. It was green because it was coming in through the leaves on the trees. She was more than happy to get up and away from Randy, who she now currently hated.
It was like all of a sudden the change had happened. She wasn’t even aware of spring. And she was surprised, the way she was surprised last year, that she was surprised that it was hot again. Oh, right, heat, she thought. She was wearing flannel pajama pants. She thought about taking them off, but she didn’t want to take her pants off in front of Randy. She put shoes on, poured herself a glass of water, and left the apartment. Fuck you, Randy.
It looked like it was going to storm. There was that light that comes from electricity in the air. How did she know that? Probably wasn’t even true, she was just pretending to know the causes of things, bullshitting even in the privacy of her own mind. What a weird walk, but a great idea, because it was summer now, and that meant an increase in personal freedom. She would probably be back before Randy was awake, and maybe she wouldn’t even tell him she’d gone on a walk. It was, like, eight in the morning. Usually she slept until ten-thirty on Saturdays, so these couple of hours were extras. Everything was so green. She drank the water and saw a fully clothed woman walking on the opposite side of the street.
* * *
• • •
Jillian woke up drenched in sweat. I’m disoriented, she thought. She walked out into the a
partment, which had stopped being clean awhile back. There was a look to the air that was familiar, holy shit it was summer. Jillian went around and shut all the windows and turned on the AC. She was drenched. She got into the shower. While in the shower, she thought she might as well pick up a little bit today. Her body ached, but she wouldn’t feel the full force of her predicament until after noon, and she would take that as a blessing from the lord.
* * *
• • •
It was really, like, eighty-five degrees outside already. Megan wasn’t wearing underpants and her asscrack was sweaty. She stopped feeling liberated and started feeling exposed out in the world in her pajamas. Slime under her tits, too. The light outside was so beautiful. When she thought about going back inside to clean up and get dressed, she wanted to die! Oh, yes, to die! She laughed. It was dark in that apartment and dirty and it was small, it was incredibly small, and she wasn’t in the mood to be so close to someone like Randy.
She thought about “walking forever” in an abstract way, but she’d tried stuff like that before. About two hours was as much as she could take before getting depressed.
It was a weird feeling, this feeling. It was a dead-end feeling, but the dead-end feeling came from, like, the possibility of eternity. She knew she would give up everything in her life to exist in the first twenty minutes of this walk, but that was impossible, and at some point she would have to go back inside, and then the grips of her crappy mood would start in again. She wanted to do one more thing before she went in, though.
* * *
• • •
Jillian got dressed in jeans and put all of the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, all the trash in the trash, and all the dirty clothes in the hamper. She woke her kid up and they walked the dog to the Starbucks.
* * *
• • •
Megan couldn’t think of anything to do. She thought about eating a leaf, but that seemed stupid. She decided to lie down in a median for a minute. If she happened to fall asleep, then maybe that would be amazing.
Pretty much, she wanted to be gone so long that Randy would worry about her. She wished she could go away and be completely alone for five years. Or she wished she would die.
* * *
• • •
“No dogs in Starbucks, ma’am.”
“Well, could I use the drive-through?”
* * *
• • •
What would be the most just vehicle to wrest me from this mortal coil? A Vespa? Yes, I want to be hit in the neck with the front tire of a Vespa, that way my face won’t be covered by a car when I die. I’ll be able to see this beautiful sky and this weird green light, which I have decided I want to be the last things I see.
* * *
• • •
By the time Jillian, Adam, and Crispy were almost back home, Jillian felt nasty. Her entire shower was undone. It was really, really hot out.
* * *
• • •
Eventually, Megan got up. When she sat up in the median, the head rush felt similar to crying. She was depressed. She said “I’m depressed” and sat there for a minute longer, but then she had to stand up and walk back home. It was weird walking home, because she partly wanted to go home, but why? What is there for me? I hate it there so much I want to murder someone.
She held out her hands and looked at the mulch imprints on her palms.
These hands. These hands! I am capable of it, with these hands. She made gripping claw shapes with her hands. “I fucking hate myself and my liiiiiife,” she said, there on the sidewalk in her flannel jammy pants, looking at her hands, sweating, walking, and talking to herself like a fucking asshole. She had abandoned her water cup.
I would so much rather cry. I would so much prefer this if I could just start bawling and screaming here in the street. Maybe I could pretend to be so fucking crazy that someone would call someone else and then that second person would come with an ambulance and I could act so crazy that they’d have to take me somewhere with a green lawn and give me a shower and put me in a straitjacket (which actually sometimes seems like it might be comforting, if a person had a little bit of choice in the matter) and I don’t have a wallet or even underpants on, so no one would be able to tell me to go home, and then eventually someone would see me on the news and be like “Isn’t that Megan?” and then Randy would feel like an asshole and I would get to go live with my parents for a while and it would be a judgment-free zone because everyone would be a little bit afraid of me, but they would finally see that I was a person worthy of their sympathy. If I threw myself down on the street and started screaming like a freak in my jammies then people would see, and then it would be all right, you know? You know? You know?
“You know?” she whispered. “You know?” She whispered it while she looked at the palms of her hands and walked back to her apartment in the apocalyptic green light, wondering what she could do to convince people that she was crazy (therefore a victim) and not an asshole (therefore just an asshole).
“Where were you?” asked Randy.
“It’s so fucking dark in this shithole,” said Megan.
“Where were you?”
“What a dump. Hey what’s that from?”
“What?”
“What a dump,” she said.
“Okay, fine, don’t tell me where you were.”
“I was just outside, okay? Sorry if I don’t feel completely comfortable treating you like my mommy and reporting to you about everywhere I’ve fucking been, okay?”
“Oh, is that you treating me like your mommy? Because I just thought that was being a courteous normal fucking person. I mean, you walk out of the fucking house in your underwear, of course I’m going to wonder, Oh, where is she?”
“I’m in my jammies, not my underwear.”
She got a beer out of the fridge and drank it.
“Are you serious?” asked Randy.
“I guess that really depends on what you mean, doesn’t it? Do you think it’s a sign of a serious person to drink a beer at eight forty-five in the morning? Because I guess I think that makes it seem like I’m not really taking this very seriously.”
“What do you mean, this?”
“You know,” said Megan. She gestured vaguely to the apartment with her beer can.
“Oh my god, you’re being so dramatic and corny right now I could shoot you,” said Randy. Megan stood at the window with her back to him and finished the can of beer. “If someone else did this and I told you about it, you would make fun of that person.”
Megan felt like her guts and bowels and all of that stuff were dangling over a pit. She needed someone to help her, obviously, but instead here she was, staring out of the window with her guts and anus dangling and swaying back and forth over a pit like a big pair of balls. Vulnerable as balls, too, and potent as balls, too, she thought, and then felt like a pretentious baby and started crying there in the glowing green spot near the window of her otherwise dank and dark and depressing apartment and she said “I hate you” in a way that would maybe be difficult to decipher, and since Randy was already fed up and practically over it, he didn’t take the time to figure out what she’d said, which was ultimately maybe for the best.
“I’m going to take a shower,” said Randy. “Help yourself to some coffee.”
She turned and put her back against the window and, yeah, she definitely felt like an overdramatic idiot, but at least well, whatever. “Fucking asshole,” she whispered. Fucking asshole.
She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror to determine whether or not a shower was necessary and decided it was not. She took off her jammies and used them to wipe the sweat from her asscrack and armpits, then she put on clean underpants and dug out her shorts which were, alas, too small, but would still button. She looked at that silly fuck in the mirror, did a royal bow, and said, “Fuck
you, too.”
She cleaned the apartment. It was a way to divert her nervous energy. She went on a walk. She waited for it to be night.
4
Jillian was either going to throw up or have diarrhea, her body hadn’t decided which yet. It was nerves. Although, maybe nothing would happen. That was possible. She thought about it while she paced around her apartment. She had four T3s left, she could take them and then maybe they would help her calm down long enough (though they were the last, the very last) to come up with a plan.
“God, I wish I were hit by a deer,” she said.
I would break my arms, Jesus, if I thought it would deliver me from this situation. Jesus, what can I do, what do you want me to do? You’ve kept me safe before and I trust that you will keep me safe now, or if you punish me, then it’s for all the right reasons and things will be better after the punishment than they are now. But I also know you won’t ever, you would not ever hurt a kid, and that’s all I’m trying to do is to not hurt my kid and I would do anything, you know, I would really I would break my arms if you would just tell me how to get out of this.
Jillian dug her small fingers into the flesh of her arms and shuddered the word “fuck.”
“Fuck,” she said.
She resumed pacing. Her mouth became dry. After a few rounds of her apartment, she began to feel some kind of a release, which she interpreted as the beginnings of a divine intervention, but it was really an adrenaline crash and some dizziness from walking circles.
* * *
• • •