Use Me

by Elissa Schappell

  I feel queasy. Where is Sunny? Two aisles over I spot what looks like the pug ghetto. A superbly snooty-looking man with a pencil-thin mustache presses a paisley handkerchief to a pug’s snout like it’s a child he is imploring to blow its nose. On the next table is another pug who could be Mr. Jeffrey, but to be honest, all those dogs look completely alike to me. Sometimes when I see a picture of my family it’s like this, each of us looking like the other, snub-nosed, gray-eyed, and square-jawed, and I think we resemble a subspecies of man: Upper East Side Preppus erectus. Overbred and inbred. Linked by our infirmities. One day we’ll be just like the pugs, whose noses and eyes constantly leak mucus because years of overbreeding have made their nasal cavities collapse.

  “You should be home in bed,” I say to myself, and I am right. It is just too bad if Sunny does not believe that I came, not to mention that I came sick! Maybe if Mr. Jeffrey wins, she will forget she even asked me. She would never even miss me. There really is no point in staying.

  I make my way toward the exit, past the poodles, the Afghan hounds, the corgis, and the Pekingese. I wonder if I am pale, if I am walking funny, if anyone can tell what I’ve just done. Hail Mary, I pray.

  I am about to leave when I hear “Mary Beth!” and for a moment I freeze, like Mary has actually heard my plea. I turn and see my mother running toward me. She is hunched over, taking mincing little steps, her pink lips pursed in anger. She is furious. She knows exactly where I have been and what I have done. My God, did someone from the clinic call her? Or can she just tell by looking at me? Imagine. Run, I think, run. But I don’t move, I close my eyes, and an eerie sense of relief wells up inside me. I never expected this connection from her, and I am surprised that it pleases me. I wait for her to hit me, or start yelling, but when I open my eyes she is just standing in front of me glaring. There is a dog, a pug, Mr. Jeffrey, I presume, tucked inside her blue blazer, secured under her arm like a hairy football.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she says, her whole body trembling; even her perfectly lacquered up-do is shaking a little, like a tiny yellow volcano. I half expect to see steam rise out of it. Throw a virgin into the volcano! Appease the gods, save yourself!

  “What?” I am confused. Was she worried about me? I feel something in me give way, get soft.

  “You won’t believe this animal,” my mother hisses, and gives the pug a squeeze that makes his already bulbous eyes seem to bulge. I stare at my mother, who is glowering at Mr. Jeffrey, oblivious to me. I do not know which one of them is uglier to me right now. My mother does not know what I have done. She doesn’t know shit. How stupid can I be?

  “Come with me,” she says, and grabs me by the wrist. Before I can protest, she drags me into the women’s bathroom. I have no say. What can I say? I have absolutely no idea what is going on. What I do know is that taking a contestant off the floor and into a restricted area, like the women’s bathroom, is completely against the rules and could get my mother disqualified. I smile just at the thought of my mother getting nailed. I follow her into the wheelchair stall. She locks the door. She flips down the toilet lid and puts Mr. Jeffrey down. His glossy black marble eyes are bugging out of his head. He is snorting and sniffling like mad. Mr. Jeffrey knows something is up.

  “Can you believe it?” Sunny says, like I have any clue as to what is going on. She puts her hands on her hips and stares down at Mr. Jeffrey in her alpha-male power pose. He starts to whine, stamps his little feet, and halfheartedly tries to leap off the toilet, but my mother catches him midflight.

  “No way, buster,” she says. He squirms in her arms and tries to bolt again, but my mother will not be deterred. I have never seen my mother like this, so take-charge. She presses her hand down on the back of his head. “I need your help, Mary Beth, now. This is serious. I really need you to help me with this,” she says, working her hand down his little barrel chest and back to his potbelly, then back to his thumb-sized penis. She begins to palpate his groin, which just seems to increase Mr. Jeffrey’s sniffling, his cold dog snot spraying my face.

  “I don’t think so,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. My heart is slamming against my rib cage. “That puny dog is beyond revolting.”

  “We have to do this fast. Lord help us,” my mother prays. “I know what you did, Mr. Jeffrey,” she says in a kind of scary singsong. “I know what you did, you sick little dirty underwear–loving dog, and I’m not going to have you ruin this day for me. Not when we have come so far, Mr. Jeffrey, so far.”

  “What did he do?” I ask. I am feeling weak and light-headed. What I really want to do is go home and sleep for a week.

  “I’ll show you,” she says, and turns Mr. Jeffrey around so his butt is facing me. His tail is curled up in a tight curlicue, his puckered and pink little anus quivering. She wedges his head between her legs, then closes her knees on his shoulders so he is held in the vise of her thighs. She starts massaging his belly again, pushing on his sides.

  “All right, do you see anything yet?”

  “See what? What do you mean?” Mr. Jeffrey is whining and shaking as he lowers his rump down onto the toilet seat. My mother hoists his hips back up.

  “Do you see the sock?” she says, her voice starting to break, her tortoiseshell half glasses slipping down her nose.

  “You’re joking!”

  “No, I am not joking. I most certainly am not joking.”

  She squeezes Mr. Jeffrey again, and he grunts and snuffles, like he is enjoying it. Then he emits a short gusty fart and I see a little something white poke out of his butt. Then the door to the women’s room opens and my mother shoots upright, clamping her hand over my mouth. I want to scream, Hey lady, we’ve got a pug in here! but I do not. I am so weak. Once my mother is sure I’ve got the message, she takes her hand away and starts to pet Mr. Jeffrey, leaving her other hand firmly over his muzzle.

  We hear the unbelting of pants, the unzipping, the press of flesh to toilet seat (no paper down, no crouch) which makes my mother wince. Finally there is the sigh, the stream, and the rezipping, the rebelting. Mr. Jeffrey starts to whine. It is time to change my pad; it feels heavy and cold. My mother looks at me, she looks like she could just cry. I could too.

  “Are you all right down there?” someone with a pleasantly clipped British accent inquires.

  “Oh yes, I’m fine, just a little, you know—female trouble,” my mother says, smiling as though the woman can see us. I smile too. Female trouble? That is pretty hilarious.

  “Oh right,” the woman replies with restrained empathy.

  Thank God the woman does not check under the stall. She does, however, take a damnably long time washing her hands, but finally she leaves.

  “All right, that’s it,” my mother says. “Let’s do it.”

  “I can’t believe it. This is unreal,” I say.

  “No, dear, it’s very real. Look,” she says.

  She resecures Mr. Jeffrey between her knees, and there it is. I step back and bang into the stainless steel sanitary-napkin dispenser. My mother raises her head, she actually looks concerned, and in that instant Mr. Jeffrey pulls his head out from between her legs and sinks his teeth right into her forearm.

  “Bad dog!” my mother shrieks, and clamps her knees tight on his head. I can see the angry imprint in her skin. Mr. Jeffrey is subdued now, but I am furious. What the hell is wrong with him?

  “Grab it, just grab it and pull,” my mother hisses, but all I can do is watch tiny beads of blood welling up on my mother’s arm. My stomach is singing with hunger pains. My head is in a fog that seems to be creeping into my ears. I can’t stand up much longer. All I want to do is to put my head down on the toilet seat and rest, but I don’t. Instead I lean down and pinch the slick bit of cloth between my thumb and forefinger and I start to tug. It makes a disgusting sound, like a wet cork being pulled slowly out of a bottle.

  “Careful, careful, for heaven’s sake, you don’t want to pull out his entire large intestine,” Sunny says, trying
to peer around to monitor the state of Mr. Jeffrey’s asshole. “Oh Lord, please don’t let there be bleeding of any sort, none. That would be the end of me.”

  I pause and close my eyes for a second. Little white fireballs explode behind my eyes. My mother’s French twist has come undone; strands of hair stick to her pink lips. She needs me.

  I take a deep breath and continue to gently tug on the shit-stained fabric in earnest. It soon becomes clear that what I am extracting from Mr. Jeffrey’s ass is not a sock, but a tiny pair of boys’ jockey shorts. First the crotch appears, then one stretched-out leg hole and then the other are extruded from the dog’s butt. I pull and pull, until the waistband snaps out of his anus and victory is at hand. I stuff the soiled underpants into the sanitary-napkin disposal. My mother slumps in relief against the wall.

  “Thank God,” she says, and crosses herself.

  I feel the room start to tilt and rise up under our feet.

  Mr. Jeffrey nuzzles my mother’s thigh, licks her arm where he nipped her. She rubs his ears. All is forgiven.

  My mother pushes open the stall door. The light in the bathroom is bright. In the mirror, the two of us look roughed up, as though we’ve been in a rumble. We both start to laugh, I laugh until my sides ache and I have to lean up against the sink to catch my breath.

  “Thank you,” my mother says, touching my shoulder as if I might be thinking she was talking to somebody else. “Really. That wasn’t any fun.”

  “It’s okay,” I mumble. I’m embarrassed by her gratitude.

  “Oh, look at the time,” she says, wiping her eyes. She hoists Mr. Jeffrey up into her arms. He sits there very straight, looking stoic and human, like a hairy dwarf with dreadful allergies.

  “You’ll stay, won’t you?” my mother asks. She turns on the water and runs her hands under the stream. She splashes a little water on her face, then heads back into the handicapped stall to get a piece of toilet paper. “Please stay, we’ll go for ice cream afterward, my treat,” she says, like I’m a little kid who can be bribed. She puts Mr. Jeffrey down on the floor, and he immediately begins sniffing at my calves. I wonder if he can smell blood. Does Mr. Jeffrey know what my mother could only imagine in her very worst nightmare? I lean against the stall door and watch my mother blot her face with the tissue, then drop it into the toilet. The tissue floats in the bowl like a paper angel waiting for somebody to pee on it. “Oh, come on, say you’ll stay,” my mother says. “You’ll like it. I know it.”

  “You don’t know what I like,” I say in a voice that seems too loud. My head is full of static; my mother’s lips are moving, but I cannot hear what she is saying. She reaches out and grabs my arm and it is funny the way she slides to the floor like a rag doll, like I am pushing her down, but I’m not, I do not weigh anything. I am just a kid. For a moment she looks afraid of me, then she pulls me slowly into her lap. We are wedged in tight between the toilet and the wall, my feet sticking out of the stall. My mother smooths my skirt down over my knees. I’m afraid that I am dying, right here on the floor by the toilet. I am bleeding to death. I want to tell my mother something, but I am not sure what it is. I listen to the water running in the toilet. It is so soothing. My mother’s breath hums in my ear. I think I hear her say, “I’m here.”

  TO SMOKE PERCHANCE TO DREAM

  The first time my father didn’t die of cancer I was fifteen, and it was lymphoma, a lump under his left arm. He let me touch it once. It felt like a grape buried below the skin.

  In reality it wasn’t a grape. It was smaller than a grape.

  My father leaned against the kitchen counter and opened a beer using a bottle opener my grandfather had fashioned out of the antler of a deer. There was a slight hiss, then the whoosh as the seal was broken and air filled the space. Then he told my little sister, Dee, and me what the doctor said. “‘It’s a cocktail onion,’ that’s what the doctor says, ‘like for a Gibson,’ the doctor says. Then he asks me, ‘So, Chas, are you a gin or vodka man?’” My father drinks. “He asked me that,” my father said, shaking his head.

  “Did you notice his shoes?” my father said to my mother, and made a face like he was in awe of them. “Hand-sewn Italian oxfords.”

  “Probably,” she said, as though this wasn’t odd, them talking about shoes at a time like this. She reached out for the beer—my mother never drinks beer—and took a big gulp.

  “I liked him,” Dad said. “He’s supposed to be the big hot shit.”

  Dee and I couldn’t believe it.

  “Cancer?” I said. Tears were rolling down my sister’s cheeks. In her arms she clutched Twinkle, the stuffed horse she’d slept with every night of her life.

  “Cancer?” The word moved out of my mouth like a snake. I had to say it to believe it. I couldn’t stop looking at my dad’s hair, black as ink, thick and a little wavy. The thought of that hair falling out in clumps, clogging the bathtub drain, covering his pillow, his head bald as a thumb, made me feel like I was going to tip over.

  “It’s serious, sure, but it’s not so big,” my father assures us. “Listen, I’m not saying it isn’t bad, but it’s not that big, and it’s lymphoma. If you’ve got to pick a cancer this is the one to choose. It’s the Christmas cancer,” he said, taking another sip of beer. “Believe me—in the world of cancer, this honey’s a gift.”

  My mother winced, grabbed the beer out of my father’s hand, and took another sip. She looked so weird with a beer bottle in her hand. “We’re going to be okay, girls,” she said. Her breath smelled like alcohol.

  My father was thirty-nine.

  “What can I tell you,” Dad said. He shrugged and took another bottle of beer out of the fridge. “I wish I could tell you something that would make it make sense, but there’s no answer. It’s just dumb luck. Sometimes bad things just happen to people,” he said. The beer slipped out of his hand and hit the floor; it started to foam up like it might explode.

  “Oh balls,” he said, picking it up with two fingers, but instead of dropping it into the sink or popping the top off, my father stormed out onto the deck and pitched the bottle down into the woods, where it smashed against a tree. Glass everywhere. My mother gasped, and covered her eyes. I’d seen Dad do this with empty wine bottles, lobbing them over his shoulder off the deck, in the middle of a party, but it was in celebration. Never like this. When he came back into the kitchen, he looked different. Nobody said one word. Not even my mother, whose eyes were filling up with tears, which, of course, made me and Dee start to bawl again. There was a look in my father’s eyes like shock, the look of a man who has always counted himself lucky now being betrayed by the odds. He didn’t believe it.

  He’d always taught Dee and me to think of ourselves as lucky.

  “People who believe they’re lucky attract good luck. It’s true. Good things come to them. People like to be around people who are lucky,” he’d told us. “You make your own luck.”

  Well, what happened?

  “There was a woman there who had a walnut-sized tumor removed from her breast,” my mother said, breaking the silence, her voice breathy, as if she couldn’t get enough air. I wondered if this was supposed to make us feel better.

  Sometimes bad things happened.

  “Take a left on Mercury,” I said to Scott, pointing to the turn with my cigarette. “Then straight on to the Milky Way!”

  He didn’t smile or laugh.

  I sat there and smoked, thank God for cigarettes. Cigarettes had saved my life. Ever since the cocktail onion I’d started smoking like crazy. It helped. I smoked Salems and Arctic Lights, anything. I held the smoke in my lungs until the skin across my forehead felt as though it was dissolving and my entire face might float free from my skull. The more I smoked, the angrier I’d get, and the stronger I’d feel. “Fuck you,” I’d say out loud. “Fuck all of you.” A week earlier Dad had checked in to the hospital. The doctor scooped out the onion, gave Dad like five stitches and a bandage, then sent him home with morphine and antibiotics.
Gone, gone, gone.

  He’d taken a week off from work. He didn’t rest, though, he worked in the greenhouse he’d built off the living room last summer. He’d created a fifteen-square-foot facsimile jungle. Crisscrossing overhead were curving branches draped with sphagnum moss and studded with spiny bromeliads. Below were enormous staghorn ferns, elephant ears, and some rabbit’s-foot ferns he’d dug up on the Blue Mountain where he’d grown up. Among these plants were half a dozen pots of purple and yellow cattleyas. When he wasn’t tending to his new passion for orchids, he was in the basement welding sculptures. He was into giant fish now. Thank God. He’d even sold a piece that he’d entered in an art show as a lark. It was now swimming in somebody’s backyard. For years it had been nudes. There was even one of my mother and us, or I assumed it was us, because God knows we never posed for it. It was a woman with two children, who are looking up at her, and she has her hands on the back of their heads like she’s trying to get them to hurry up, or else dance. I tried not to look at it too much.

  Twenty minutes before, Scott and I’d been making out in one of the half-built houses in a new development near my house, then I freaked out and demanded he take me home. I still had sawdust on my chest and in my hair, like pollen. My lips puffy from kissing.

  He was too good for me; he knew it, I knew it. He was using me, and I didn’t care. He didn’t know it, but I was using him too.

  The new development was going up on what used to be farmland, great fields flush with corn and wheat, tomatoes and pumpkins. The houses came in three lame styles of modern. Dad said this way people felt like they were being real individuals, because they could choose—breezeway, no breezeway? Yellow shutters, green shutters?—while also being perfect conformists. It was perfect. Dad took me there sometimes to practice my driving in the cul-de-sacs. I was a crappy driver. These houses made him so nuts that half the time I could be giving somebody a lawn job and he wouldn’t even bat an eye.