Mostly Dead Things

by Kristen Arnett

  “Please don’t do this.” My voice broke and I paused with the brush pressed below her ear. “It makes me feel sick. I can’t stand it.”

  “I’m sorry, Jessa. It’s happening.”

  That was it. She’d left me no choice. I pulled the letter from my pocket and handed it to her over her shoulder, watching her reflection.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Open it.”

  She unfolded it and I stood rooted behind her, wishing I were the one who was dead. That seemed easier. To be gone, no longer dealing with the stress and trauma of managing my parents.

  I read it over her shoulder, watched her eyes follow the cramped text down the page. That single-spaced letter that felt more like a list of demands. Ways I had to behave. Things I had to do to ensure our family’s welfare.

  She reached the end and looked up at me in the mirror. Then she ripped it in half; ripped it again, again. “This is garbage.”

  She’d taken the last memory of my father and destroyed it. “Why did you do that? It wasn’t yours!”

  Pieces littered the floor and the vanity. That last love at the bottom of the page; I’d never see it again. Gone forever.

  “I miss your father, but I’m also very angry with him. He was a control freak. So uptight that he couldn’t ever let things go.” She met my eyes in the mirror. The glass needed to be cleaned. There were streaks filling up the oval, making the two of us look like specters. “Sometimes I wish he were still here so I could have the satisfaction of shooting him myself.”

  “Is this what missing feels like?” I still held the paintbrush, globbed with acid green. “Mutilating memories? Making everyone else participate in them with you?”

  She tilted her head and the brush skimmed the edge of her ear, dripping green down into the shell. I wiped it out with my finger and scraped it against my jeans.

  “Your father was an asshole.” She shook her head, eyes tearing up. “What he did to this family, to you, is inexcusable. That he would kill himself and let his own daughter find him like that. To leave a letter? To force you to bear that kind of burden. It’s monstrous.”

  I was still holding the paintbrush. It dripped on the floor between us. “I just want all of this to stop. No more talking, no more gross art.”

  She slapped the top of the vanity so hard it upset a framed picture of Bastien and Lolee. “We have to deal with this.” She reset the picture and sighed. “When you don’t deal with things, like our family, people hurt themselves. They hurt each other. Look at what your father did. He loved you, and look what he did!”

  “Dad had cancer.” I jabbed the brush at her reflection. More paint flung and hit the mirror, leaving behind bright spatter. “He shot himself because it was too much to bear. And now you’re going to show some strangers a replica of him that makes his whole life seem like a joke. People are going to think that’s my father. And it’s not.”

  Her hand snaked backward between our bodies, gripping my wrist so hard her fingernails broke the skin. “Your father was a lot of things. He was a good dad to you kids and I loved him, but what he did was shitty. And what Brynn did to you and Milo was shitty.”

  When I tried to yank away, she squeezed tighter. I couldn’t feel my fingers. “Stop it,” I said. “Stop talking.” The brush pressed between our bodies, leaving paint smears on my pants and on her dress.

  “This has gone on too long, and part of it’s my fault for not making you deal with it. I had my own things that were hurting and I let your wounds fester. You and your brother.”

  “If you won’t stop this, I will,” I said. “And you won’t like it. And I don’t care. Fuck, I don’t care!”

  Straining backward, I finally broke free. I landed on the side of the bed and rolled downward onto the floor. The paintbrush jabbed into my belly, nearly impaling me. My mother tried to help me up, and I shook her off, half crawling to the door until I was able to pull myself up against the dresser. Bits of my father’s ruined letter stuck to my sweaty palms.

  She called after me as I lurched down the hall, but my head felt too full of static to stay another second. Milo sat on a stool at the counter. There was a napkin tucked into the front of his collar, covering his tie.

  We looked at each other. He stood up and kept staring, the napkin dangling, then falling down onto the table to cover his plate.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked. “You gonna tell me what that was about? Did you just threaten Mom?”

  “Fuck you. I have to go.” I yanked my shirt up over my shoulder. The neck had pulled out wide and it lay strangely askew, as if I’d been attacked.

  “I think you should stay,” he said. “Let’s get it all out in the open, right now.”

  I grabbed my purse and left.

  There were four beers left, and then there were three. I drank each one perfunctorily, not even tasting when it hit my tongue. I’d stopped off at the convenience store before driving out to the lake, buying the cheapest beer they had. Brynn had loved shitty beer. She’d loved sugar cookies and sweet tea and those little red strawberry candies that elderly women always kept in their purse. Shitty candies, for sure. Brynn had been shitty. My brother had been shitty. My parents were shitty. I was the worst one of all, the shittiest one.

  The air was the driest it had been in months. Still humid, but bearable. It was the kind of weather we’d always liked when we were kids, when going outside and staying out was our best option. Away from our families. Me, Milo, and Brynn just riding our bikes, and later driving around in Brynn’s car with the windows down.

  I wedged the can between my legs. Then I closed my eyes and listened to the drone of the cicadas in the oaks. Though the park was secluded, I could hear the steady buzz of the nearby highway. I wondered what life might have been like without Brynn. The decisions we’d made had wrecked us, keeping me here permanently, still attached to her, no matter how hard she’d tried to separate from me.

  The last few sips were lukewarm and tasted like spit. I swallowed them anyway and cracked another, leaning back on my elbows on the wooden picnic table. I’d picked the one closest to the dock, sitting out on the lake like a splinter lodged in a fingertip.

  It had been over an hour since the art show was slated to start. At least an hour, probably longer. I hoped Donna had done something. Stopped it. But who knew what had happened? Probably it’d just gone on as planned. I stared out at the lake and let myself feel real maudlin. I thought about starting everything over again, curling back up in the womb and getting a do-over, a reprieve from every bad decision I’d made in my life.

  Once I drained the last beer, I walked the length of the dock. Stumbling on one of the older planks, I slapped my face a few times to try to sober up. I thought of my mother, of my brother, of the things people would know about my family before the night was over. I thought about Lucinda and hoped she could forgive me. Maybe she and Donna would work out their differences. I could almost imagine it: Donna, who looked so much like me, starting all over again with Lucinda. Making it work. She could use her carpentry skills to build them a giant bed where they could cuddle up together and have a million gay babies. Lucinda could forget she ever even met me.

  “Fuck you, Donna Franklin.”

  Sweat blossomed under my arms and along my back. Staring into the cattails, I wished for a flashlight so I could call up the green glow of the gator eyes again. I knew it wouldn’t be too long before someone showed up, and then I’d have to go back to reality. Taking off my shoes, I sat down at the edge and dangled my feet in the water. They looked fishy white beneath the surface, algae slinking along the tops.

  Red and blue lights flashed out across the water. I looked back at the reeds, hopeful, but no eyes shone back at me.

  CANIS LUPUS FAMILIARIS—DOMESTIC DOG

  In the second-floor women’s room, Brynn yakked up half a strawberry Toaster Strudel. She lay slumped over the toilet seat, the same one that nearly all the girls from our high school had
sat their bare asses on.

  She heaved again, a dry, hiccupping burp that her body seemed to feel more than expel, ribs jutting against the lip of the bowl as her back bowed. I’m dying. I’ve got the super flu.

  No, you don’t.

  What else could this be? I’m so fucking sick. When she heaved again, a tiny bit of drool ran down her chin. There was some jelly from the Toaster Strudel in it; a lick of bright red that looked like blood.

  Behind us, the door squealed open. I turned in the stall so that the heft of my backpack blocked most of Brynn from view. Two underclassmen stood in front of the mirror and poked at their dark, crispy bangs, sharing a tube of pinky-orange lipstick and blotting grease from their foreheads with brown paper towels from the dispenser.

  Brynn’s T-shirt had slipped up high enough that I could see the underside of her old gray sports bra. She usually wore the kind of underwear they sold at Victoria’s Secret during the semiannual sale, stuff full of scratchy lace and underwire and inset mesh that let nipples play peekaboo.

  She held back until the warning bell rang and the girls spilled out into the hallway. Then she heaved again, a desperate, choking sound. I rubbed her back and gathered the sweaty hair away from her mouth, sweeping it behind her ears. When she finally quieted, I yanked a long strip of toilet paper from the dispenser and rubbed the spit and vomit off her chin.

  Have you taken a test yet?

  Tears that had dripped during her dry heaving collected and trailed dark streaks of eyeliner down the side of her nose. Dragging a corner of clean toilet paper beneath her eye, I gathered as much of the runoff as I could. The paper was cheap. When I pressed it a little harder beneath her right eye, she hissed and backed away, knocking into the toilet bowl.

  We can pick one up today. Then you’ll know for sure. I knelt down and smoothed her shirt, which was still rucked over her bra. My butt knocked into my backpack. I felt like a turtle, crouched down on the sticky floor. A scrap of toilet paper was stuck to the bottom of my sneaker, and when I brushed it off, I nearly overturned myself.

  I don’t wanna know. She rubbed at her eyes, which were raw from where I’d scraped them.

  Don’t be stupid. You already know.

  I helped her up and put her back together. She was like a wobbly, limp-limbed doll. I brushed her hair and reapplied her lip gloss, spritzing her body spray on her neck. The drops ran down into her cleavage and dotted the front of her T-shirt.

  There was only one more period before school got out for the day, a trigonometry class that I was failing and Brynn was barely passing with the help of other people’s homework. Instead of walking in late, we went straight to the parking lot. Her shitty car was parked next to the chain-link fence that surrounded the high school.

  I took her keys and helped her into the passenger side, knocking fast food bags onto the floor. We drove directly to the gas station closest to my house, the one where we sometimes got beer when the right cashier was working. There was only one kind of pregnancy test on the shelf. The box was dusty and it wasn’t a brand either of us had heard of, but we bought it along with a couple of Cokes and some Twizzlers. I heated up a decrepit-looking hot dog in the microwave, slathering it with nacho cheese and relish. Brynn bought a pack of Marlboro reds from the bored clerk, a woman so leathery her skin looked like something tanned in the shop.

  We rolled down the car windows to let in the stagnant breeze. I drove slowly through the neighborhood while Brynn steadily consumed everything we’d bought. Biting off either end of a Twizzler, she stuck it in one of the Cokes and held it out to me for a sip.

  It always tastes better with a Twizzler straw.

  Yeah, it’s good. Like Cherry Coke.

  I put my free hand on her bare thigh while she fed me more sips, driving past houses that all looked the same. Repeating yards, carports, pollen-dusted mailboxes. When we got to the lake, we sat in the parking lot with our feet hanging out the windows of the car. It was so hot that most of the moms sat back beneath the trees, ignoring their kids while they splashed around and screamed.

  I drank my Coke until the Twizzler was soggy and couldn’t reach the soda. Then I gave it to Brynn, who’d already finished hers and was slurping away at the hot dog. She sucked the cheese-and-relish mixture from the ends and took bites from the side of the bun, like she didn’t want the meat, just the juice of the thing.

  Casey’s going to be pissed. She picked at the bread, balling up bits of it and throwing them out the window.

  Casey can suck my dick. I turned on the radio and punched in the cigarette lighter. Then I unwrapped the box from its cellophane and lit one for Brynn. Plus you don’t even know yet. Not for sure. There was still hope, even if it was minuscule. Maybe she did have some weird flu.

  Nodding, she tipped the cigarette so ash fell out the window and not onto her legs. Casey and Brynn had been fooling around for the past couple of months. They weren’t really dating, and I couldn’t see him getting mad about a baby. I actually couldn’t see him reacting to anything at all. He was the kind of moonfaced guy who barely spoke more than two words at a time, spending most of his free time playing video games with his friends from the soccer team.

  No way Casey would care either way, but there was something else. The other thing. A memory that floated through my mind whenever I saw Brynn and Milo standing too close together. I’d been sick with mono a few months earlier. I was bored out of my mind, and Brynn came over most nights to watch TV and keep me company. When I fell asleep, it was just her and Milo, hanging out for hours. They had their own inside jokes about movies they’d watched without me. They drew on my face with markers while I was passed out on the couch, oblivious. They went out for pizza and both ordered pineapple on it, which I hated. They drank our father’s beer in the carport and got drunk enough to play tag in the graveyard next door. Later I’d seen something on the floor of his bedroom. A baby-pink polka-dotted bra with lace trim around the cups, poking out from beneath a pile of dirty shirts. Underwear I’d seen a thousand times. Brynn loved polka dots.

  Slurping down the last of the soda, she threw the hot dog end out the window. It hit the car next to us and left a greasy ring, a circle of shine on the same level with the driver’s head.

  I’m gonna pee, she said, picking up the plastic bag and walking off toward the public bathroom.

  It was too hot to stay in the car, so I took the leftover Twizzlers down to the water. Even the little kids had moved out of direct sunlight. They lounged on old bedsheets next to their mothers, sucking Capri Suns and tearing into oranges, eyes dulled flat by the heat.

  I kicked off my sneakers and took off my socks, balling them up and stuffing them into the toes of my shoes. Cracked mussel shells and bits of stick poked into my sweat-softened soles. I focused on that painful feeling and tried not to think about what a baby would mean. A baby, when I was bleeding and maybe already staining the crotch of my too-wide jeans.

  The dock was old and needed new boards in most places. The wood was going soft and mulchy along the edge and there were splinters. I walked down to the bench at the end and sat with the package of candy in my lap. Watched the light shine off the top of the water like slivers of aluminum foil winking in the sun.

  Brynn had already applied for college. Lots of different ones. I’d seen the forms on the kitchenette table in the trailer, plopped down on the Formica, gathering food stains. I had some forms of my own, too, but I wasn’t considering them. Of the two of us, Milo was the one who was actually interested in that shit, even though he was a grade behind us. He was looking at some of the same places as Brynn. I thought of the two of them, packing up their things and moving out of state. Abandoning me while they moved into an apartment together. Made new friends, attended classes. I’d be left with my father in the back of the shop.

  Brynn stomped over to me, boards vibrating down to the end of the dock. I’d chewed a hole in my lip, biting at the dead skin until it was alive with blood, leaking down the pressed seam
of my mouth. She dropped the pregnancy test. It hit the wood with a flat smack that knocked drops of pee onto my forearm. I wiped the mess on my jeans.

  Guess I’m gonna be a mom, she said, and laughed.

  The test had two little pink lines slicing through the center. Looks like it.

  Unless I go somewhere. Take care of it.

  Birds called in the trees near shore. The kids behind us finished their snacks and splashed back into the water. From somewhere out of sight, the humming drone of a boat filled the air with white noise. Brynn held her shoes. They were leather sandals that striped her feet tan and white. Her toes scrunched down into the dock, the nails coated in sparkly blue nail polish. I’d never wanted a baby in my life, but now I stared at Brynn’s stomach and thought about the price of losing it.

  You should keep it, I said, looping my arm around the back of the bench. There was still a droplet of pee on my skin and I left it there; let the sun cook it into my flesh. We’ll work it out.

  Walking to the edge of the dock, she dropped her shoes. One flipped over, sole bright with green gum.

  I’m gonna be the worst mom ever. She took one giant step forward and dropped into the lake. Water splashed up onto the dock, leaving dark wet prints in starburst patterns.

  10

  The cop didn’t arrest me, but he did make me perform all the sobriety tests in the middle of the parking lot. He took my driver’s license and pointed me to the lines, refusing to let me leave until he’d done a full background check. After I listed the alphabet backward, twice, he told me that my truck would be towed and I was responsible for getting another ride. He stood there, flashlight beaming migraine rays into my skull, while I tried to remember how to operate a cell phone. The cab took twenty minutes to arrive.

  When I reached my apartment, I walked inside and crawled onto the couch. My hangover was so intense that my tongue had dried to sandpaper in my mouth. I rolled around on the cushions until the sun came sliding through the window blinds, and then I abandoned the pretext of sleep altogether, trying not to think about what would happen next.