by Claudia Dey
I opened my eyes. Gena Rowlands, I said. Call me Gena Rowlands.
“Gena Rowlands.” Your voice had so much breath in it. “Pleasure.”
There was a period when you were really into your body. You were more content naked than dressed. You would close the door to the bedroom, and you would lie down beside me on the gold carpet, and I would think, Is she imitating me? Is she trying to be funny? But no, you were testing yourself: Can I do what I want to do? I want to lie on the carpet like a dog. Can I do that?
“Can I lie on the carpet like a dog?”
You already are, I would say.
You would do these exercises in the shower: touching your toes, touching your knees, your hips, your shoulders, your head, and then you would turn the faucets and make the water freezing, and you would rub and slap your skin, lift your arms and push your face into it, and I would tell you that you were a lunatic, and you would say, “I am getting my blood going. I am getting my blood going.” And then we would run along the empty highway—the abandoned part that continues west from the bungalow, navigable only on foot—and if any hunters happened to see us and ask you why you were running, what was chasing you, was there a black bear, a moose, a wild bison, you told them, “I am getting my blood going.” Soon, we would be running in the woods, where no one could ask you about it.
The en suite bathroom was the most notable feature of the master bedroom. Ten months apart, both you and The Heavy were brought back to life in the bathtub while I sat on the tiles beside you, not panting.
When the bedroom became too stifling, and you could not catch your breath, I would lead you to that other tropic. I would pull myself over the lip and into the tub, and you would unfurl your exhausted body on the cold floor. The porcelain against my fur. The square black tiles against your skin. They gave cool order to your being, you told me.
As much as you had repressed it, the story of your childhood came back to you. I was the only one you shared it with.
When you were a girl, the things you stole from your mother were the things that came from farthest away. Little brooches, rings, hair clips. Precious things. Sentimental things. Gifts from your father, who traveled all the time. You watched your mother as she overturned her bedroom looking for the thing you had stolen, and you helped her look for it, and when her distress reached such a level, you tucked the thing into her thick carpet and then lifted it proudly in your hands, and she said, still on her hands and knees, “You are such a good finder!” You didn’t want the thing. You wanted the praise.
Think of what I buried for you, Billie Jean. My small captures. The careful arrangement of bones under your pillow. Kneading your bedcovers back into place. You called my paws artful.
You lived on a cul-de-sac in a wealthy neighborhood outside a major city. The houses on your street were box-shaped, and the lots they sat on, sprawling. There was plenty of space between you and your neighbors. Easy to commit murder here and get away with it, your mother said to you once, and smiled broadly. Or be murdered, you thought to yourself. Your mother was a homemaker. She wore her hair in a large bun. She had a plastic dish that she held to the back of her head, and she wound her hair around it to give it volume. You pictured the dish transmitting secret messages to her. She always seemed to be listening for something you could not see. She was an obsessive reader. She would sit straight-spined on the couch and move only to empty her ashtray or to get a new book. The conversation she wanted was the one in her brain. You learned early to keep your thoughts to yourself. You knew your mother’s talents had been wasted. Like a private joke, she dressed every morning as if it were night. Furs, velvets, silks. When she walked through your house, her gold bracelets knocked together. She wore high heels all day even if your father was traveling.
Your father was a surgeon. He operated on the hearing impaired and, when you were a girl, pioneered a procedure in which he extracted the smallest bone from the human body and replaced it with a prosthesis, returning sound to his patients. Soon after, your father flew all over the world to teach other surgeons. Though he hardly knew you, you were the one he told everything to.
When your father came home in his long, cream-colored car, he put his arms around your mother, shortened her name, and promised to take her to Europe. You watched them from your bedroom window. Standing in the driveway beside their expensive car. Your mother’s heels sunk into the soft gravel. Your father’s hands cupped your mother’s jaw, tilted her face up to the sky. Why wasn’t she happier?
One night, after one of his longer trips, your father entered your bedroom and, pacing, lay his thoughts at your feet. He ensured your mother was not within earshot. “Love is a force,” your father said to you. “You understand me?” your father asked. You were thirteen years old. You were at your desk in your flannel nightgown. You had new braces on your teeth that made your mouth bleed. Your body was in riot. Your brain was too. You had skipped a grade, and this had isolated you. You had no friends. You had never kissed anyone, let alone loved anyone. “Yes,” you lied. You were grateful for your father’s attentions, and wanted to make them last. “Love is a force,” you delivered his words back to him, buying time as you strained for insight. “Like electricity,” you added, surprising yourself. “Yes!” your father exclaimed too loudly and then, collecting himself, sat at the edge of your bed and put his hands on his knees. His fingers were positioned in such a way you felt he was about to begin playing the piano. You heard the minor chords in your head, the complex music. Just above it, your father spoke. He was desperate. Beside himself. You found this expression disturbing. His eyes took on a faraway look––you pictured smoke rising from them––and he told you he was in love with these other women. “I am just so in love,” he confessed. And his love became your problem.
“I get it,” you said, feigning weariness.
“I am just so in love,” your father said again.
“It happens.”
Your mother must have taken off her heels, her gold bracelets. Neither of you noticed your bedroom door open just a fraction as you outlined what you saw to be your father’s options, and then at last, exposing your age, begged for vivid descriptions of these other women, imagined yourself sleeping in a new bed under a less cavernous roof. You too were so in love. Suddenly your father looked at you like he had no idea what you were talking about. It was so confusing. He was in love and then he wasn’t. It spooked you. When you reached for your father, you expected your hands to pass through him.
Soundless in the hallway, with the hearing of a panther, your mother would never fully forgive your betrayal. It lodged itself, hard and dark, inside of her.
* * *
HOW I LOVED to eat your underwear. Better than steak.
* * *
YOU STARTED TO take your time before you left the bungalow. Though I hardly needed to be tipped off, this was what did it: the consistent placement of your body in front of the bathroom mirror. Pony Darlene would sit on the edge of the bathtub, wearing ripped black pantyhose and some kind of shirt that she had cut to show off her waistline, her biceps, her sternum—sex had started its sure course, a lightning forking through her body—and she would cross and uncross her long legs and, looking up, watch you watch yourself. You were mesmerizing. You would ask Pony for her opinion, though the one you wanted most was mine. Something was taking hold of you. Something of substance.
You were preparing to be seen. To be touched. But, by whom?
Remember when you and The Heavy brought home a second dog?
That night, on the front yard, while I sat at your feet, you said, “I don’t think I have ever seen anything killed that quickly.”
Hosing down the other dog’s blood, The Heavy asked, “Have you ever seen anything killed?”
“I guess I haven’t, but our dog is not the attacking kind.”
“When pushed, we are all the attacking kind.�
�� The Heavy turned off the hose. “Billie Jean.”
“Yes, Heav.” And then you stroked my head. “Lucky us.”
Have you ever seen anything killed? I guess I haven’t. That was one of your first lies to The Heavy. Those were the early days. When you were still growing your hair. It was about shoulder-length when you made him promise: “I will marry you if you ask me nothing about my past.” The Heavy put his hand to his chest and he vowed to it. He was not a liar. The Heavy never could lie.
The morning of your arrival here in the territory, as he was unwrapping and then burning the last of the bandages that had kept his blood inside his body, he kept repeating the phrase new start. When he ran his rough fingers across his wrists, he could feel the scars forming. He knew they would harden over time, grow over the bright blue thread Traps had used to sew him up. The body was reliable after all. My reliable body. My new start. The Heavy said it over and over again. He believed in its possibility.
Gently, I argued against the concept. New start. It was beneath him. It was a motto for men capable only of short sentences, to convince people of thin truths. It was for inferior men. Men who lived above suffering, who turned their eyes from it, forced their minds blank.
We are what we have lost, I countered. Here was a way of thinking we could tear apart together. Thinking that reminded us we were alive, and what an inconsistent experience that was proving to be. We are what we have lost, I offered again. But, while The Heavy searched my eyes and seemed to find comfort in them, he was in his own world.
This man, when he was nineteen, when he was still known as Jay Jr., returning from the woods one August night with his best friend, Traps. Traps already had his nickname. Traps already had his wife. His son. Traps had a coyote slung across his back, her paws tucked under his armpits. Jay Jr. had nothing but his rifle at his side. They stepped onto the shoulder of the highway and were stopped by the sight of men and women running, and sparks in the air. The men and women were running toward the sparks. They sometimes built bonfires. They cleared their yards, and whatever they could find was burned. Cabinets, tires, wood pallets. They called them pit parties. The sound of cries and screams, and still Jay Jr. and Traps thought the cries and screams were a pit party. As they got closer, they could see the women were in their nightdresses. They were running with buckets of dirt. They had to push their bodies into the northwest wind. Reservoir is too far away, the men were shouting to each other. Some of them were naked. We’ll never get to it in time. The men were pacing in front of the Fontaine family bungalow. They were unable to do anything. They had never seen a house on fire before. Who knew a fire could spread so fast? Taking a bungalow faster than a cabinet, faster than tires, faster than wood pallets. It was a matter of minutes, the stunned men would say to each other the next morning. It was a matter of minutes, The Heavy would hear this in his head for years to come. No amount of dirt, no amount of water could undo it. No one could get to them. Jay Jr.’s mother, father, and sister. No one could get through the flames. Jay Jr. tried, though. The people would say, A fine boy, a good boy, a courageous boy, a boy who tried to put out a fire with his face.
Don’t know why a week after the fire, when The Heavy took a jagged hunting knife to his wrists, knowing to cut up rather than across, Traps had to use the conspicuous blue thread to sew him up. He pulled The Heavy from the bathtub, the pink water, his clothed body, his face washed of color, his eyes fixed on the wall, hard to tell whether he was still alive, and he laid him out on the bedroom floor. “You will never know how I love you,” The Heavy said when consciousness flashed through him. He was not speaking to Traps, not speaking to me. He was speaking to the subjects of his heart. He never raised his voice. Never cried. Like me, he never barked. Not once. He had taught me that to announce your wants was to leave yourself open to betrayal.
Traps had an entire sewing kit with him. I watched him unzip it. The small spools in two rows. I watched Traps deliberate. There were a few other colors that would have matched The Heavy’s skin and, in so doing, distanced him from his injury rather than reminded him of it. Traps took notice of me looking at him, and he lied, “The blue thread is the strongest thread. What’s your fucking issue? You’re in my fucking way. Go kill something. I am sorry about your mother, all right? That was an accident. All right? Can you please stop fucking staring at me? Please?”
Traps has a deep red scar on his right forearm. I bit him there so he would not be able to sew himself closed. He would have to go for help. Drive with his left hand, the right barely attached to his body. The scar is oval-shaped, the shape of my jaw, and you can see it both on the top and on the underside of his forearm. My mother had taught me to unlock my jaw only once I felt my molars meet. This way, I would not sever the arm, but I would damage the nerves permanently. Whenever Traps turned his key, pulled down his zipper, lifted his mug, touched himself, shook a hand, made a deal, counted money, shot his rifle, steered his truck, his forearm would flare with pain. Something like an electrocution. With it, he would be compelled to think about me. About my mother.
I waited until he was finished sewing The Heavy’s wounds before I bit him. I was a week old.
* * *
YOU AND THE HEAVY had that party. This was five years ago, and the whole territory came out for the party. I was never a dog’s dog. The dogs were in the yard chasing each other in circles, climbing each other’s backs, and barking into each other’s mouths. And then running for no reason at all. What is play-chasing? Something I will never understand. I was much more interested in your stocking legs. You had stockings with a shimmer in them, black seams up the back. You took them out of the package just for that night. I watched you roll them up your legs. It took almost ten minutes. You spent an hour with toilet paper wound between your fingers and toes, red nails held up in the air, drying. You spent the day behind a clay mask so your skin would be moist when people came in and put their faces against your face.
“It’s aspiration that keeps you young,” you said to me, gluing rhinestones around your eyes. “Wanting. Wanting to be something, wanting to go somewhere. Even wanting a different nose, different legs is a kind of aspiration. Even vanity is aspiration. But when you see those things you want are not going to happen for you, you enter the state past aspiration. The striving stops. Everyone thinks it’s freedom to be past aspiration, past striving, but it’s not. It’s defeat. It’s when your face starts to fall. Striving is antigravity.” Then you took a roll of duct tape and plied a silver band to your hairline, holding back a quarter inch of your face.
You studied yourself in the mirror. In a vast and prolonged way, you stood there and took in your image, the long hair, your perfume smudged beneath it, the lean neck, the lustrous mouth, slightly parted, the fight of your jaw, all that you’ve dreamed and had to conceal, the dark, shy eyes, love flickering through them, and your daughter one floor below, how your only wish was that her life would supersede your own, then you said, “Youth. Tell me. Why would I ever go back there?” Efficiently, you pulled the duct tape from your face and, to it, returned time.
When you were finally dressed, you came down the stairs, and surveying you, The Heavy took your portrait, then kissed you hard on the lips and rubbed his hand over your ass and then the small of your back and then over your ass again just before the doorbell first chimed. He would take you later. Twice. “Heav short for Heaven,” you would say. “Heaven.” Every table was covered in food and bowls full of cigarettes. Platters everywhere. Even the top of the television had a platter on it. Glasses and bottles were lined up on the bar. There was a punch bowl with cherries floating in it. Pony had covered the basement floor in old mattresses, and all of the children were jumping and doing somersaults. One boy lost a tooth. One girl collided with another girl and briefly knocked her out. When they were hurt, no one told their parents. One girl peed in her dress, and two boys were having so much fun, they started to cry uncontrollably
and then fell asleep in a corner. The girl who peed in her dress went upstairs, and without anyone noticing, took a dress of Pony’s and then hid her own dress in Pony’s drawer. When you found the wet dress a few days later, the overwhelming smell of urine, you stroked Pony’s head and told her never to feel ashamed. It felt so good, she didn’t even tell you Lana’s wet dress was identical to her dress, but not her dress. I knew how good it felt; you stroked my head all the time.
Who needs to bark?
Nothing like this had ever happened before in the territory. The people gathered to mourn the departed or to burn things, but never for a house party. It was the month of March. At last winter was loosening its death grip. The days were getting longer. The people could aim their faces at the sun. The ground underfoot was softening. Soon the dead would go into it and the dark heads of new flowers would rise. The people felt a heat build in their bodies. They needed pleasure. A natural rule breaker, a woman from elsewhere, you were the only one who could have set off this kind of release.
Five couples had sex in the toolshed, and a few people had their way with themselves on our bathroom floor, peanuts scattered everywhere. And there was one group thing. Later in the night. Under the badminton net. Four women. Three men. And from that group, a single woman with a painful-looking ponytail and a chipped front tooth went on with two men in a truck bed.
Now you tell me, who are the dogs?
When Traps and Debra Marie arrived with their boy, Will Jr. (finally, a child as private as Pony, my kind of child), Debra Marie handed you a small cake wrapped in tinfoil. When she saw the platters and the bowls, she saw her cake was not the right size of cake for the party. She had mistaken the scale, and this had a diminishing effect. A woman is the cake she brings to the party. Her cake was small; she was small. She had mistaken the scale of you, mistaken the scale of the party. It was a different kind of party. “What a party!” That is what everyone was saying. “What a party!” There was a stereo set up and there were speakers in every room of the house. You had twelve songs and they kept playing over and over. The songs had an order. They were slow and then fast and then slow again. You called it the rotation, and the rotation was exactly what everyone wanted. Even if they did not mean to, people were moving. They were moving on their way to saying hello to someone, on their way to the bar. They put their hands on their own bodies when they moved, and then on each other’s bodies. Pretty soon, people were dancing.