Can I have a sip of your Coke?
Brynn passed it to me over her shoulder. I took a few careful sips and managed to keep it down. It tasted too sweet, like someone had tipped sugar into the bottle.
I can’t focus. Brynn pressed a tissue under her eye, trying to mop up some of the excess liner. Can someone go shut him up?
My mother sprayed a fat sausage curl, so crisp it looked as if it had sprung from a mattress. Can I give him some juice?
Hell, give him the rest of this Coke if it’ll quiet him down.
I’ll find him those animal crackers he likes.
She opened the door and left us there, hallway full of kitchen sounds and the steady hum of the vacuum.
He’s gonna get icing all over his little suit, Brynn said. She rubbed at her neck. I stared at the ring that Milo had given her, barely a chip of diamond. I’d helped him pick it out at Sears. After he proposed, he came home and told me she was so happy she cried. I didn’t really believe that. My brother was so overjoyed that he couldn’t stop smiling. Who was I to tell him that the thing he thought was truth was really just a woman trying to manufacture a normal life for herself?
Do you really care? I lay back on my parents’ bed and rolled onto my side, propping my head up with my fist. Icing? Who gives a shit.
She sighed and her bangs fluttered a little to the side, showing a big red pimple cropping up on her forehead. Oh fuck.
You can barely see it. I was lying; it was huge. White-capped and angry-looking, it could burst at any second. Just put your bangs over it.
I can’t, it feels all weird now. I need to pop it.
That’s a bad idea, I said, but she was already pressing it between her thumbs, biting down hard on her lip until her teeth were stained crimson with lipstick. She yelped and a bright splat of pus and blood hit the vanity mirror. A chunk of waxy buildup sat in the middle of it, an island of gore.
Are you kidding me? I pressed my face into a pillow, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. The love of my life popping her humongous zit in my mother’s vanity mirror while she prepped herself to marry my brother. And here we were, pretending it was normal. Normal for me to feed her shots the night before, licking sweat from her neck. Totally acceptable to dance together at a club with some of her work friends, grinding to the bass notes until I could feel her dampness on my leg. Completely fine for me to fuck her in the back seat of her car later that night, Cheerio crumbs stuck to my ass as we sweat and cried and came, over and over.
What was normal? Normal for Brynn was marrying a man. That was what she wanted; that was what she’d get.
Help me, she said, waving. The blood’s gonna get on my dress.
Grabbing the tissue, I pressed it hard to her forehead to stanch the blood. I told you not to.
Well, it’s too late now.
We didn’t look at each other. I watched my hand where it held the tissue, the cake of her makeup scrubbing off, showing the little line of freckles that dotted her skin, cinnamon-colored. I’d licked those freckles, tasted them to see if they were sweet and thought, yes, they were.
What if I throw up, right in front of everybody?
You won’t.
I look fucking gross. She picked up a tube of lipstick and uncapped it before recapping it.
You look great. Lifting the tissue from her forehead, I waited to see if the blood would well again. It didn’t. You know you always look good.
You’re the only one that thinks that. She grabbed my wrist, fingers trembling. I don’t know if I can do this.
It had been simple enough to set in motion. Like splashing my hand in the lake and watching the ripples spill out, farther and farther, until I had no control over them anymore. Brynn had a kid and needed someone to take care of her. She wanted a husband, stability. Milo loved her, I knew that. He would do anything for her. They’d been dating for only a few months before he told me he was ready to marry her. It was painful, but part of me wanted it too—her to feel secure, to have everything she needed. How could I complain of hurt when I was getting what I’d asked for?
Of course you can do it. Picking up the face powder, I dabbed it over the pimple, which was still red but not as severe as before. She closed her eyes and I lightly trailed the brush over her cheeks and down her nose, across her chin. This will be easy.
Her skin was pasty and damp from the alcohol she was still sweating off. She smelled like her fruity perfume and the very strong odor of her body, which curdled the edges of my heart. Everything inside me cooked at a low boil.
How do you know? She leaned back, and the spiny weight of the flowers in her hair stabbed through my T-shirt. Tell me how you know.
Smoothing gold shadow across her lid, I worked to cover the mess of black liner and tiny veins that had sprouted after her third time puking in my bathroom sink. What’s so hard about it? Just stand up there and repeat the lines. If Milo can do it, you sure as hell can.
Brynn smiled up at me and her dimples deepened into crescents and I loved her, I knew, I loved her more than I’d ever love myself. Uncapping the mascara, I pulled the wand swiftly along her lashes, which were already so long and curled and golden that even a small amount made her look like a doll blinking.
What if he winds up hating me?
I laughed and blew against the mascara, trying to dry it. He loves you. Don’t be dumb.
Yeah, now. Now he loves me.
Her blush was too dark. I dabbed at it with a tissue, tenderly, apples pinkening to a soft glow. I would not say what I felt, which was that we all loved her a little too much. That Milo was a smart choice because he had a job lined up at the dealership and that he was kind, and always giving, and that he would never ask her to be more than what she was. He was something I could never be for her, which was a husband, something her mother would envy. I knew if she stayed with Milo, she’d always be close, that I’d never have to lose her, even if I couldn’t have her in the exact way I wanted. That was what mattered to me. Never losing her. Never losing what I wanted.
The one woman I’d ever loved. The person I’d allowed to see me at my most vulnerable, the only one who’d really known me at my worst and still wanted me around. A person that I found beautiful, even when she was terrible. I looked at her, looked hard, and she looked back at me, and I knew. She didn’t want me to say it. Brynn wanted something else.
There. I closed the powder and leaned back, looking at her face. All done.
I pulled together the sides of the dress and zipped her up. We split what was left of the Coke, me taking the last few sips. She kissed me, leaving lipstick on my tongue that tasted like crayons. I left her there, in my parents’ bedroom, wearing her dress from the mall, with beaded flowers in her hair that looked like they came from someone’s homecoming corsage.
Bastien threw the rings on the floor as he walked in the procession. His little blue suit was stained with the icing from his cookies, white smears on his gold-striped vest. Everyone who wasn’t in the wedding sat perched on folding chairs in the middle of our backyard. Everything was green, as if all the plants had soaked in the moisture and you could have wrung them out like washcloths, if you’d wanted. The overgrowth had been tamed a bit for the event, but there was still a wild amount of vines creeping up the fencing along the back. Our yard was mostly patchy weeds that got mown down to look like a lawn. Leftover pallets lined the left-hand side of the yard. The birdbath to the right had been sprayed out, and a few jays were squawking in the bowl of sun-warmed water. The plants were neon-fluorescent in the light. I wanted to remember everything, exactly as it was in that moment. Never, ever forget it.
There we were: my parents, Brynn’s mother and her brother, who sat on his hands and tried not to bite his fingernails, Vera Leasey and her husband, who gnawed his wad of chew, spitting surreptitiously into a red Solo cup every few minutes, the guys from the cover band, some kids we’d gone to school with, and the pastor from Vera’s church, who was officiating. His white, fl
uffy hair made him look like a stressed-out brood hen.
We held flowers that attracted bugs. Clutching our bouquets, we swatted and let the petals fall in wilted clumps on the grass. It clouded up and threatened rain for over an hour, but the sky refused to break open.
I wished that it would rain. I glowed greasy with oil and thought I’d pass out, hungover, chest aching and hollow. My brother was tall and handsome in his suit, looking suddenly very capable—the kind of person who should be getting married, someone who could handle a job and bills and responsibilities, despite his lackluster past in all those capacities. Brynn was powdered enough that she looked remarkably dry in the smothering humidity, sweet and pink and pretty. They each repeated the vows, holding hands like they’d been doing it for years, not going out on dates with Bastien in tow, like a tiny prefab family.
Their faces met chastely over the dying bouquet. Brynn’s mouth left a pink imprint on my brother’s lips that stayed for the rest of the evening. Their faces kept meeting, over and over again. They kissed while we ate fried chicken, grease coating their fingers, forks quivering with bites of macaroni and cheese with homemade croutons. They kissed while they danced on a makeshift floor that my father had assembled out of plywood in the center of the backyard, slowly swaying to the terrible music. Everyone drank pink champagne out of plastic flutes from the Dollar General. My father made a toast and so did Brynn’s mother, who swayed drunkenly in her heels, crying, until someone helped her into the house.
I’d thought it would be like watching myself with her, but it wasn’t. My brother seemed like a person I’d never met before. Stronger. He was as far away as she was, the both of them clinging to each other while they created something that had no space for me in it.
Milo kept his arm around Brynn’s waist. They laughed together, heads ducked to whisper in each other’s ear. When they left, they did it quietly, sneaking out the side door to his car. They drove off in the orange and purple evening light, heading toward the downtown Marriott where they’d stay for two days and three nights while my parents watched Bastien and they swam in the hotel pool.
I stayed in my folding chair and drank sweaty bottles of beer, ripping off the labels and sticking them to the top of the card table. Reeling from everything I refused to feel and still stuck in the clutches of my hangover, I burrowed down into myself. No one tried to talk with me. People continued dancing on the patio, hanging from each other in the flickering lights of the tiki torches. It was a warm night. Everything smelled like grease and citronella.
My mother, sweaty from serving food and dancing with my father, slipped a hand across my neck. She handed me a piece of cake, marble chocolate and vanilla from the Publix bakery. The bride-and-groom topper had sunk into the top before it was cut, making them look like quicksand victims. Bastien carried the plastic couple around like a trophy, sucking on the bride’s feet.
I dug my fork down into the cake, which was still half-frozen. It bent back the plastic tines until they almost snapped. I took a bite of frosting and it sat slick on my tongue like unsalted butter.
11
I put Bastien in charge of any work up front and spent a week sifting through the detritus of my mother’s art show. We laid out items on newspapers, tender bits of wing and thin, blackened legs, spindly and twisted from the heat. Every countertop was covered with parchment paper, tissue blotting up liquid, continually replaced with fresh sheets.
I felt like the administrator of a burn unit as I made the rounds. I flipped torsos, changed bandages, dabbed at seeping wounds that bled yellow and black liquid from tanned hides. The aftershocks of trauma lined up in pans on my tables. Most of the work was demolished, but I saw promise in the parts I tended, carefully applying fresh dressing to the boar’s neck and snout, bleaching the dank crust off charcoaled bone matter. I reduced the remains by relegating any extraneous material to the garbage can: burnt copper wiring, soaked cotton padding, any foam forms that had twisted to crisp bits, adhered to bone like hot glue.
The smell was overwhelming. I made Lolee wear a mask when she helped, a white medical thing that scooped over her nose and kept sliding down her chin. Like a surgeon’s assistant, she helped with the grisliest work—handing me cotton swabs or changing out linens, turning over pelts and heads on the damp floor.
We brought in fans that stirred the papers, creating breezes heavy with the odor of dead things and smoke. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the smell out of my nose or my hair. My clothes I tucked into garbage bags when I got home, hoping that after a few washes they’d smell normal again, but not placing any bets. When I scrubbed my face in the shower, I tried to focus on the freshness of the soap. I blew my nose often, sinuses so blocked I felt I might suffocate.
Bastien was good on his word. He collected new species for me, sometimes still fresh off the pavement where they’d been struck, others so deeply set in rigor I wondered if I’d be able to save the limbs, solid as statues. We kept them in the freezer while I worked endlessly on the burnt parts, trying to salvage pieces for my mother, who wouldn’t leave the house.
She wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even Vera, who stood perplexed in the driveway, cradling a potato casserole after my mother refused to answer the door. I hadn’t seen her either, but I hadn’t tried to visit. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing and wasn’t sure how to broach the thoughts I had about her work and my feelings. It seemed smarter to wait; to make sure I knew the exact right thing to say before I went to the house. I didn’t want a repeat of my last visit. I didn’t want to hurt her more.
It was hard to leave the shop. I was there before the sun came up and stayed long after it set, subsisting on fast food that Bastien left out for me. I’d sit behind the counter in the moony glow of the front window, eating my cold burgers and fries as I flipped through the day’s receipts, tallying up the money that had come in and the bills left to pay.
For the first time in my life, I considered what it would be like to sell the shop. What freeing up my time would mean. I’d never lived anywhere else. There’d been only one neighborhood, one grocery store. The same gas station beer. Brynn had done it—just taken off without ever looking back. If it was something she could do, then I could do it too. But there were things holding me at home: family, and my memories. Nostalgia carved out my insides, padding my bones until my limbs stuck, splayed. Frozen in time, refusing to live.
Lolee brought in a food dehydrator and we stuffed in bits of hair, tiny rabbits’ feet, birds’ wings. We took turns toasting things with a hair dryer, close enough that the fur started smelling a different kind of burned. I took the bearskin rug to a dry cleaner down the street, the one who used to press my father’s shirts. I kept the skin shrouded in a tarp until the cleaner came out from the back of the store; Mr. Gennaro with his overly white dentures, shorter even than me, skin leathery and wind-chapped.
“I have a special request, if you’re up for it.”
He nodded. “What is it? A sleeping bag?” He pulled out a handkerchief from his back pocket and scrubbed at his nose so hard I worried he’d give himself a nosebleed. “Smells like campfire.”
“Something like that.” I pulled free the head and sat it on the glass countertop. Mr. Gennaro stood there staring at the bear until I cleared my throat and put the plastic back down over its eyes.
“That’s not something I can clean.”
“Could you try?” When he didn’t answer, I nudged the bear’s head forward again until the snout poked under the tarp, a dark, quivering dog nose snuffling for treats.
Mr. Gennaro reached out and touched its cheek. He trailed a fingertip up the bristled fur, scratching at the hair behind its ears, as if trying to soothe it.
“Maybe. Be expensive.”
“Just see what you can do.”
“No guarantees.” But he had that look in his eye that my father always got when he was appraising a really nice piece. I left it there on the counter, Mr. Gennaro fondling it, checking the teeth like a de
ntal hygienist performing a cleaning.
Sitting with a singed piece of squirrel tail in my hands, I looked down at the ratted fur and couldn’t understand what the hell I was doing. What was I trying to save? There were still so many things I didn’t understand about what my mother had done. Things I didn’t understand about myself and my feelings about all of it.
I threw out the animals that were too far gone to save.
“Goodbye,” I told the chipmunk my father had mounted behind the wheel of its own small car. It sat looking up at me from the heap of trash, eyes accusing, legs singed to black lumps. “Sorry I couldn’t do more.”
I was bringing my mother a sampling of the pieces we’d salvaged. An assortment of specimen boxes sat sandwiched between furniture rugs in the bed of my truck. The sky was fairly clear—only a smattering of stringy clouds dotted the tree line near the horizon—but I decided to be cautious and put plastic sheeting down over everything. I pinned that down with bricks, then piled another blanket on for added security.
Bastien thought I’d lost my mind and said so, repeatedly.
“You sure you’re okay?” He pulled another brick from the landscaping near the front walk and dusted it, sweeping free the dirt that clung to the bottom before setting it carefully alongside the others. “You want me to go with you or something?”
“Nah. It’s fine.”
“If that’s true, why are you lining the bed of your truck like a goddamn bird’s nest?”
I grabbed another brick and set it next to the one he’d just placed. “Just shut up and help me.”
Once everything was done, Bastien handed me my keys. “I’m gonna go pick up a shipment. Got some ferrets and guinea pigs, some white mice.”
“Tell me we’re not pilfering dead boxes from pet shops now.”
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