Biloxi

by Mary Miller

  At home, after everything was put away, I sat in my chair and noted the things in the room that I wouldn’t need anymore: the busy bone she hadn’t much cared for after the first day—Kara had been right about that—the bed I’d moved from room to room, the Kong (should’ve gotten the wobbler), the enormous sack of dog food hardly touched. Ellen’s hairbrush. I shoved my feet into the bed, watched the hair float around as the last of the sun streamed in through the blinds, and cried for a while, humiliated and lost in the crying even though there was no one in the world to see it. People said you felt better afterward, like it was a release, but I didn’t feel better. I didn’t feel worse, either. But that wasn’t true because there was the shame of it, which brought back the shame of other things.

  When I was boy of thirteen, all of my grandparents died in quick succession over the span of a year, as though the four of them had lived together in a house and passed around a disease that had taken them all out. My paternal grandfather—a ship captain, captain of the high seas, which was how I’d thought of him as a boy, though he’d only had one ship and hadn’t been a captain at all but a landowner—was the first to go, and then my grandmother on my mother’s side and then the ship captain’s wife and then my mother’s father. Spending so much time in funeral homes and graveyards, our house filling up with the relics—chairs and tables and glasses and bowls, pictures and books, my parents seemingly unable to get rid of anything—my sleep grew more and more disturbed. I imagined the dead people watching me from the foot of my bed as I masturbated, sat on the toilet. Commenting on my study habits and the way I spoke to my mother. They had been with me for years, disapproving of my behavior as I went about my day.

  I got myself a beer and closed my eyes and fell asleep, woke up to someone knocking with the beer still upright and balanced on my stomach. As I was remembering what day and month it was and all that had happened, I opened the door to find Sasha with an overnight bag in one hand and my briefcase in the other. Layla licked my hands, my pants. I bent down and let her lick my face and she whined as if she hadn’t seen me in weeks.

  “You left your briefcase,” Sasha said. “And along with all those pamphlets, you had a box of business cards in there. I didn’t know people put their actual home addresses on business cards anymore.”

  “I’m sure they don’t. I’m old.”

  “Old school,” she said. “You’re not so old.” She touched my arm, lightly grabbed it, and let go. It made me feel like I’d missed out on so much. Here it was, all I’d been waiting for: a woman could show up at your door, grab your arm, and walk inside without an invitation. It seemed simple and yet nothing like it had ever happened to me before. I’d had some fun times in college—dates and parties, romps in bedrooms that weren’t mine—though those fun times had been the exception rather than the rule.

  “We left him,” she said, tightening her ponytail, walking into my living room. I couldn’t believe she was in my living room. “At least for the night. I felt weird going to my mom’s house right now, though. I’m just not in the mood.”

  “Well, y’all are welcome to stay here. Of course you are.”

  “What a day! We just need somewhere to crash and then we’ll figure things out in the morning.” Somewhere to crash. It was such a violent way to describe sleep. “Do you mind if I take a bath? I usually take one before bed and I feel a mess.”

  “Of course,” I said, wishing I’d had some warning, a chance to get myself and the house together. I took her bag and showed her to Maxine’s old room, Layla trotting along behind us, a visitor now. I never went into this room, kept the door closed. I could feel Maxine in it, all of the hours she’d spent locked away to talk on the phone or stew or do whatever it was teenage girls did. How strange that a room could retain someone’s energy after so many years. There was a queen-sized bed, a table on either side of it with a lamp on each. There was a bookshelf with some books on it, a random assortment of paperbacks and hardcovers that Ellen had purchased at library sales—the kinds of books people had when they only wanted to look like they read.

  Maxine would be coming over tomorrow, I remembered, and the baby would be with her. I felt a jolt of anxiety. I would have to work on having some feelings for the baby, at least. I would hold her for a while, would smile and say things like, “Come to grandpa!” Perhaps I’d brush her hair or fix her a fruit cup. I didn’t have any fruit.

  Sasha sat on the bed, testing it out with a few bounces.

  “It may need some dusting—I could dust it real quick—it’s been pretty closed up in here. Or you could open a window.”

  “It’ll work,” she said. “It’s fine, it’s good.”

  “I’ll light a candle.” I went and got a candle from the cabinet where I kept the emergency supplies in case the electricity went out. It didn’t have much of a smell but it would at least look nice. I turned on the fan, which blew the tiny flame all about. Sasha was still sitting on the bed next to her bag, the dog at her feet. From a certain angle, she looked like Maxine—different hair color and style of clothes but there was something unmistakably Maxine-like about her. I wondered if Maxine would be able to see it and knew that she wouldn’t. Sasha was lower-class. If you dressed her up and put her in a ballroom you’d still be able to see it in her teeth, a coarseness of the skin. The way she moved. Even if they’d looked like twins—they didn’t, but even if they had—Maxine wouldn’t be able to acknowledge any resemblance; it would have challenged her view of herself in a way she couldn’t handle. And then I thought about Sasha answering the door, how Maxine would think I’d relocated without telling her.

  The idea of the two of them meeting was preposterous, and exciting. This is my new life, I would tell her, you thought you had me all figured out but you don’t know me at all. Why would I want my daughter to feel like she didn’t know me? This was the tragedy of families, summed up in its entirety: you wanted to be known and loved for yourself and you also wanted to be someone who might be capable of living another life altogether.

  I showed Sasha the guest bathroom and turned on the faucets: hot, cold. I hadn’t cleaned the tub after bathing Layla, though I’d given it a decent rinse. “The towels are in here and there’s soap and toilet paper. I think I have an extra toothbrush somewhere.”

  “I brought my own toothbrush,” she said.

  I knelt, cursed my popping knees, and sorted through the drawers filled with Ellen’s toiletries. There were more of them than I remembered: deodorant, makeup, various shampoos and body sprays and a lot of small tubes and bottles of things she’d gotten for free. The woman had loved free samples. I picked out what looked like a bottle of fancy shampoo for color-treated hair and a body wash that said Pure Grace.

  “Is your hair color-treated?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Do you like body wash or soap?”

  “Both.” She held out her hands and I gave her the bottles. “Now why don’t you go sit down and relax? Have a beer. I can take care of myself.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “Actually, I think I might like a beer, as well. A beer in the bathtub is always nice.”

  “Bud Light or Coors? I might have a Corona hiding in one of the drawers.” Ellen had liked a Corona every once in a while, with a slice of lime.

  “Corona’s great.”

  “Come on, girl,” I said. “Let’s leave your mama alone.” I wanted to keep calling the dog Layla, though I supposed it wasn’t fair to her. If we were both calling her different names she might very well become confused. It reminded me of a scene from Annie, a movie I hadn’t watched since Maxine was a girl. Annie calling the dog so it wouldn’t get taken to the pound and then bringing him home to the orphanage and hiding him in a basket of laundry. I’d liked that song about what to name him: How about Rover? Why not think it over? It was surprising sometimes, what the brain remembered.

  After I delivered the beer, I sat in my chair. Layla got in her bed and lick
ed my feet. “You may be her Katy but you’re my Layla. How’s that? That okay with you?”

  She stopped licking my feet and sighed. I didn’t know if it was a happy sigh or a depressed sigh. It sounded like a depressed sigh.

  “You should be happier than a pig right now,” I told her. “A pig in shit. You have both of us.” I closed my eyes, listening to the water run and what sounded like humming. I thought about Sasha in the bathtub and whether she was the type to stay in there for a long time like Ellen. It seemed odd to go to a strange man’s house and then stay in the bathtub for an hour and I wondered if that was the difference between men and women. Were women able to sit and relax and not feel any pressure to do anything but enjoy themselves even when a situation was odd or unusual? Men didn’t soak in the tub for a long time and read and light candles and women did, though there were probably young men in this day and age who had decided to do it, too, that they weren’t going to feel emasculated by soaking and having private time for their private thoughts. I turned on the TV, muted it. Then I turned it on low enough to hear both Sasha and the TV. She shut off the water and I could hear her sliding around, the bottle making contact with the porcelain. Beautiful sounds.

  After a while, I knocked on the door. “You hungry? I could put a pizza in the oven, or we could order a pizza.”

  “Do you only eat pizza?” she said, and I heard her ass slide again, and what sounded like water slop over the edge of the tub. I hoped she wasn’t making a mess, but reminded myself that I didn’t care about such things—this was a new life, a new day. If there was a mess, I could clean it. Or it could just stay there.

  “There’s other things,” I said. “I went to the store earlier.”

  “Like what?”

  “Pimento cheese. Crackers and cheese. Lunch meat, bread, stuff for meatloaf . . .”

  “Let’s order a pizza. Pizza’s good.”

  “What kind?” I asked.

  “I like pepperoni and spicy sausage but I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Where do you want me to order from?” I could feel her getting put out with me. I knew I was asking too many questions but I didn’t know how to make decisions for other people.

  “Papa John’s or Pizza Hut—wherever, it doesn’t matter. Not Domino’s, though. I don’t like Domino’s.”

  I stepped away from the door, which I’d been resting my hand against like a weirdo, and the dog and I went to search for a coupon. Most of them were for Domino’s, which was my personal preference—what did she have against Domino’s? I found one for Pizza Hut, but it was expired. I found another, also expired. I called the number and a computer voice asked if I wanted to hear the specials and I ended up ordering two large pizzas plus cheese sticks, which was a ridiculous amount of food for two people but everybody likes cheese sticks and I wanted a Hawaiian pizza, which was the ultimate in festive, if festive was the goal, which I hoped it was. Then Layla and I sat and waited. I petted her with my foot and the TV told me about all of the terrible things that were happening in the world but the terrible things didn’t feel so important.

  The water in the bathtub went on again and stayed on for a while and then it went off and Sasha was calling my name. It was a wonder to hear my name. Louis. Louis. I wondered if she would try to seduce me and I didn’t know if I could handle that, if I’d be able to perform. What if she wanted to have sex and I couldn’t get it up and she looked at me like I’d failed her, same as every other man had failed her. It would be better to disappoint her by rejecting her advances outright—if she planned on making advances—rather than the other.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Could you get me another beer?”

  “Okay, sure. Corona?”

  “Si señor,” she said, ass sliding. Was she doing that on purpose?

  I got the beer and stood outside, knocked.

  “It’s open.”

  “I can just leave it here,” I said, and she said she didn’t want to get everything wet and then she said all of her naughty parts were covered up with washrags, and the word “washrags” seemed sad and awful and I wondered how many towels she was using, not that it mattered, but I was curious.

  I opened the door. Layla hung back—she was the type of dog who didn’t like to see you naked. She didn’t mind me on the toilet but when I took off all my clothes she left the room. It made sense. If she showed up one day wearing pants and a sweater I wouldn’t know what to make of it, either. Sasha had a small towel draped across her chest and a hand covering her other part, though I didn’t look at it directly. I saw the blur of skin, imagining yellow. I turned my head toward the foggy mirror as I handed her the beer and took the empty away.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Today has been a nightmare, but it’s also been kind of amazing. I got my dog back, met you, and now I’m taking a hot bath and drinking cold beer in a stranger’s bathtub. It’s tremendously exciting.”

  I thought she sounded like a TV character or someone in a movie. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Did you order the pizza?”

  “I did, should be here soon.”

  “You know that’s the filthiest mirror I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I can hardly even see myself in it.”

  “It’s fogged up.”

  “I’m talking about before. It’s okay, though. People have a hard time noticing their own filth. I won’t hold it against you.”

  I let myself out and stood in the hall, stunned. Layla licked my hands and I wiped them on my pants. I went back to my chair and pretty soon the doorbell rang and Layla bounded over to it and barked.

  “I see you’re barking all the time now,” I said. “Well, isn’t everybody full of surprises? Now don’t try to bite him.” It was a woman, a hefty older lady, and I wanted the transaction to be over as quickly as possible—I felt as though I was doing something embarrassing or illicit even though nothing was embarrassing or illicit, we were two adults who hadn’t committed any crimes—so I said I didn’t need change and passed her the money and she passed me the pizzas and I said, “thank you,” as I shut the door, tacking on “very much” so I didn’t seem rude.

  Sasha ate on the floor in front of the TV, feeding sausage and pepperoni to Layla, which would probably upset her stomach. Her wet hair was dripping down her back, soaking through her shirt, and she had on tiny stretchy shorts, the likes of which I’d never seen.

  “If that dog has to go to the bathroom at two o’clock in the morning, you’re in charge,” I said.

  “I’m in charge,” she said. “Hand me the remote.”

  We watched a show on the Food Network in which two people competed and the winner got to cook against Bobby Flay; it was called Beat Bobby Flay. She stretched her legs out in front of her, flexing her toes, and told me she’d already seen it but couldn’t remember who’d won. She talked to the Japanese man cooking steaks, the guy she was “rooting for,” as she always rooted for somebody. I liked her, and I liked her in my house, but I was pretty certain she had some sort of mental deficiency, or a drug or alcohol addiction. I knew almost nothing about her except that I had stolen her dog, by accident, and that she was Harry Davidson’s wife but might be anybody’s.

  I decided not to ask questions about who she was or what she did or whether or not she had any kids. Instead I asked how she decided who to root for.

  “That’s a good question,” she said, “but I don’t know. I just pick one without thinking. It’s instinctual, organic.”

  “Interesting.”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say I usually like the foreign ones best.”

  “How come?” She did not seem like the kind of person who would like the foreigners best.

  “It’s all a mystery to me,” she said. “But look how cute this little guy is. I mean, you’re rooting for him, too, right? If you had to pick?”

  “I’m neutral.”

  “You’re Switzerland,” she said, and I told her that was exactly right and spent the next few minutes wo
ndering what other countries were neutral and whether it meant they’d stayed out of all the wars or just some of them. And did they have alliances or only depend on themselves? I was Switzerland. Untouchable, unbiased.

  When we finished eating, she asked for a couch blanket, which I fetched for her, and then a pillow, which I took off my bed, and set herself up in a cocoon situation with Layla belly-up on her lap. We watched a movie called Eddie the Eagle about a ski jumper, which she kept calling a “feel-good movie.” She would lean forward whenever Eddie was trying to land a jump as if she could help him. I wanted to point it out but I didn’t want her to stop doing it because it was the best thing I’d seen in years.

  When it was over, she looked at me and smiled. Her smile was crooked. I wondered if she was like me, if she also found one half of her face doing the thing it was supposed to do and had to remind the other.

  “I loved that so much,” she said. “I usually don’t like movies like that.”

  “Sports movies?”

  “No, happy movies. Movies with positive messages.”

  “How come?”

  “That’s not true, actually,” she said, and thought for a moment. “I do like them. I just don’t think of myself as the kind of person who likes them. I feel like I’m more of a realist.” I wanted to hold her in my lap and put my face in her still-damp hair, breathe it in. Rock her to sleep.

  She said goodnight and started back to her room, the dog following her.

  “Wait,” I said. “Take her bed with you.”

  She walked over and picked it up. “You bought it for her?”

  “I did.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “I’m a nice guy. Can I just ask you one thing?”

  “Okay,” she said. “But I won’t necessarily answer you or tell you the truth or anything.”

  Who was this woman? I didn’t know if I liked her or not, after all. She was mighty sassy. “Does your husband know where you are?”