Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

  “Did you kill her?” Mona said.

  “No,” the woman laughed. “Anyway, it’s not about the way things look for me, obviously. It’s about the way they feel.”

  Mona felt an overwhelming urge to yawn, which she did, repeatedly, without bothering to cover her mouth. She almost wanted to be friends with this woman.

  “What’s your name?” Mona said.

  “Rose,” the woman said, and held out her hand.

  “Pretty name,” Mona said, grasping the woman’s hand.

  “Thank you,” the woman said. “My real name is Maria, actually.”

  She didn’t look like a Maria.

  “What’s your middle name?”

  Because she didn’t have one, asking people their middle name was one of Mona’s favorite questions.

  “Well, it’s funny you ask,” the woman said. “My middle name is also Maria.”

  “So, your birth name is . . . Maria Maria?”

  “My parents were drug addicts,” Rose explained. “They named me after some Spanish song they were listening to while fucking.”

  The sexual reference put Mona further at ease. It was the same relief she felt when someone pulled out a cigarette.

  “My name is Mona,” Mona said.

  “Is Mona your real name?”

  “Yes,” Mona said. “May I ask how you run without a guide? And how’d you get here?”

  “I walked,” Rose said. “I have maps in my head, and I do a lot of counting. I count the steps around the track, the steps down the street, then the steps to my house.” She shrugged as if she’d been bragging.

  “Would you like a ride?” Mona asked.

  “I prefer to walk,” Rose said.

  Boundaries, Mona thought. Nice. Maybe she isn’t totally nuts.

  * * *

  SHE’D NEVER SET FOOT IN a blind lady’s house, but she’d envisioned something dark and dirty. Not crazy dirty, but cobwebby, at least, and dusty. She imagined mustard stains on the couch and wine spills on the rug. And there would be mold, certainly. Mold in the bathroom, obviously, and Rose’s golden pubes all over the tub and floor. But what would the place look like?

  “Fifty bucks says there’s a piano,” Mona mumbled as she drove up Rose’s driveway for the first time.

  “Right, because all blind people are piano players,” Terry said. “My money is on some other instrument. The cello.”

  There was neither. In fact, the house was like nothing she’d ever seen in Taos, real or imagined. From the outside, it looked like two very different houses leaning against each other, back-to-back. One big, the other small. The big one was made of brick; the small one was white, weathered wood. A plaque declared it a historic house, over two hundred years old, that was once part of a ranch called Hurt.

  Rose answered the door wearing a crisp red sundress. Mona stared hard at her eyes, expecting the empty eyes of a dead person—or, at the very least, cloudy and without spirit. But not only did they seem like seeing eyes, they seemed all-seeing, the eyes of a soothsayer or prophet. They were the most curious shade of blue Mona had ever seen. Your eyes are nearly purple, she wanted to say. Are you aware of that?

  “Philip isn’t here,” Rose informed Mona’s forehead. “So, I’ll have to show you around. Might take a little longer.”

  “Is Philip your butler?” Mona asked.

  Rose laughed. “Husband,” she said. “He’s at a conference in Nebraska.”

  Husband? Mona hadn’t thought of that. She’d been looking forward to cleaning a house unseen.

  “Any kids?” she asked.

  “My daughter,” Rose said. “Her name is Chloe. She’s seventeen.”

  Seventeen?

  “I had her young,” Rose explained, reading her mind. “I was fifteen.”

  A teenager. Mona didn’t despise teenagers, but she preferred that they not be around—ever—while she was cleaning.

  The family lived on the brick side of the house. The wood side could stay untouched, as that’s where she saw patients. The house had a Spanish vibe. Handmade Mexican Talavera tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms, vaulted ceilings in the hallways, arched doorways. The vast, rectangular living room had an enormous fireplace, exposed and dramatic wooden beams in the ceiling, and wide-planked pine flooring. Rose collected rare Navajo blankets, neatly folded and displayed on long shelves in the hallway. Her only ornaments were three small, identical sculptures: cast-iron crows with human heads. The sculptures seemed to function as landmarks; they were the only objects Rose touched as she made her way through the house.

  Hanging over a blue velvet couch was a portrait of Rose floating on her back in a brook. She was gazing skyward and wearing a floral nightgown, her eyes as violet as they were in life.

  “What are you seeing?” Rose asked. “Dirt?”

  “A painting of you,” Mona said.

  Rose looked sheepish. “My husband painted it. He said it’s not vain to hang a portrait of yourself if you’re blind.”

  “He must really love you,” Mona said. Or he might hate you, and painted your last breath before drowning.

  On the pine floor lay a large flokati rug and several square pillows. On one of the pillows sat a dog named Dinner.

  “He’s friendly,” Rose said. “You can pet him.”

  Mona didn’t pet him, but only because she saw a loose photograph lying facedown underneath the coffee table. She picked it up. “I just found a picture on the floor,” she announced.

  “Who is it—Chloe?” Rose asked.

  “It’s a guy,” Mona said. “Your husband? He’s holding a hammer.”

  Rose stopped smiling and cleared her throat. “Could you, uh, describe him for me?” she asked.

  “Well,” Mona began slowly, “he has small hands. His skin is pockmarked. One of his front teeth is missing. Like I said, he’s holding a hammer, but he’s also wearing bronzer, along with a woman’s blouse, sweatpants, and patent leather pumps.”

  Rose looked like she might vomit. Mona felt a stab of guilt, as the man in the photograph was obviously dead or important or both. He had soulful brown eyes and a prominent forehead vein that made her think of erections. Standing next to a woodworking bench, he looked both insanely happy and on the verge of tears. She asked who the man was.

  “My father,” Rose said. “I’m a little freaked out because I keep this photograph tucked away, so I’m not sure how it ended up on the living room floor.”

  Mona didn’t know what to say. She stared at the hair on Rose’s legs. So stirring and erotic. Your leg hair is giving me a boner, she wanted to say. She recognized in Rose that thing certain men wanted and craved. The blonde thing. The petite blonde thing. The delicate blonde hairs. You saw those hairs and you knew what else to expect: pink nipples, blonde pubes, a neat little box.

  “What do you see when you think of the color red?” Mona asked.

  “Oh, I remember red,” Rose said. “I wasn’t born blind.”

  “Oh,” Mona said. “Were you . . . in an accident?”

  “Sort of,” she said, and smiled weakly. “I was having an affair with the man you just described.”

  Mona silently took a step back. She heard Dinner drink from his bowl in the kitchen.

  “Do you mean your father molested you?” Mona asked.

  “I thought of it as an affair,” Rose said, “which sounds ridiculous and insane, but I was convinced that we were in love. I was thirteen.”

  “Mayday,” Terry whispered. “Bail out.”

  “Not now,” Mona whispered back.

  “We never had intercourse,” Rose volunteered. “It was more emotional than anything. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t also sexual. It was that, too.”

  Mona cleared her throat. “And you went blind?”

  “Well, that was partly genetic,” Rose said.

  Mona looked toward the front door. Closed, but not locked. She imagined herself tiptoeing out of the room and then making a run for it.

  “People tell you thing
s,” Rose said. “Don’t they? They tell you their secrets.”

  “Sometimes,” Mona lied.

  People were vampires. Their stories drained the life out of her. Then, half-dead and bloodless, she carried on cleaning their toilets like nothing had ever happened.

  “It’s your voice,” Rose said. “And your energy. It relaxes people so that they open up. You seem so—I don’t know—grounded. Do you do cleaning full-time?”

  Here it comes, Mona thought, the inevitable “other than” question. There was no escaping it, ever. Even a blind person would ask.

  “I’m often very tired,” Mona said. “Too tired to talk. So, I listen. Also, I’m a writer.”

  Her new answer to the what-else-do-you-do. She’d only used it three times, so it was still in the testing phase, but so far it seemed easier to tell people you were a writer than an artist. People wanted to see your photographs and paintings. They wanted a look. But they had no interest in reading your writing. None whatsoever. Although, she supposed this wouldn’t apply to Rose.

  “What do you write?” Rose asked.

  “Epic novels,” Mona said. “They’re kind of plotless and . . . what’s the word? Episodic.”

  Actually, clandestine photography was her primary focus. Typically, she’d complete one of her specialized tasks first—removing smudges from walls and light switch plates, crumbs from silverware drawers, wax from candlestick holders, hair from hairbrushes—before searching their closets, and then she dressed in a hurry, not bothering with hair or makeup. She photographed herself wearing ball gowns or cocktail dresses or whatever else caught her eye—a printed silk blouse, a kimono, a mink stole, a Davy Crockett hat. Lingerie and wedding dresses were off-limits. She could already see herself sitting on Rose’s blue Chesterfield sofa, wearing Rose’s red garments, holding one of the cast-iron crows in her hand. Perhaps Dinner would be on her lap. Or, better, lying on one of the Navajo blankets.

  “I’ve always wanted to write a memoir,” Rose said then.

  This was the only problem with the new answer. It invited people to tell her why they thought they were fascinating individuals. Though this also didn’t apply to Rose, since she was, in fact, fascinating.

  “Maybe you can be my ghostwriter,” Rose said.

  “Oh yeah? Let’s talk about it while I clean the kitchen,” Mona suggested, and got to her feet.

  Outside, a blue truck coasted into the driveway.

  “My first client,” Rose said, and stood up. “Unfortunately, I have to go. When you’re finished, just call me and I’ll come over and pay you.”

  * * *

  THE NAME GRACE HAD BEEN written, painted, and gouged all over the house. She found Grace on the legs of tables, along the seams of lampshades, on the walls behind hanging textiles, on the labels of Rose’s collared shirts, on the edges of pillowcases and picture frames. Grace was etched below the seat of a chair, knifed into a ceiling beam, and scratched into the mirror in the entryway. The tags varied in size, but most were small and difficult to find.

  “Might this be the strangest thing you’ve ever found in a house?” Terry wondered.

  “It’s definitely up there,” Mona said.

  Her heart jumped with each new discovery, and the mystery deepened. In the six hours it took to finish the job, she’d found and photographed thirty-eight Graces.

  “I have to tell you something,” Mona said to Rose as she was getting ready to leave.

  “Someone named Grace tagged your entire house. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been doing this a long time.”

  “Oh yeah,” Rose said casually. “Those are from last year.”

  “You know about it?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Rose said, and stifled a yawn. “At first, we thought it was Grace herself, who was a patient of mine for three years. Grace was the daughter of my former cleaning lady—”

  “The one obsessed with bleach?” Mona asked.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “We figured it was Grace because she had her mother’s keys, but the funny part is, it turned out to be Chloe.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “I think she was jealous of all the attention I’d been giving Grace. I saw Grace several times a week, and we became very close. Grace and Chloe are the same age and in the same classes at school, and I think it was hard for Chloe, seeing as she’s an only child—”

  “But did Chloe confess?” Mona asked.

  “No,” Rose said. “She maintains she had nothing to do with it. But it resembles her handwriting. And Grace just wasn’t the type to do something like that, to write her own name all over the place. This was the work of an artist. Like Chloe.”

  “Hmm,” Mona said.

  Rose tilted her head. “You sound . . . dubious,” she said, and smiled. “You think it was Grace?”

  “No,” Mona said, and shook her head.

  “Philip?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was the cleaning lady,” Mona said.

  Rose laughed. “Speaking of which.” She handed Mona a wad of cash. “It smells really great in here. Thank you. Was it very dirty?”

  “The dirtiest thing was the inside of the microwave,” Mona said. “Which, by the way, is best cleaned by wetting a sponge with lemon juice and water and then microwaving the sponge for two minutes. The acid and steam loosen all the food. You wait for the sponge to cool and then you wipe everything down.”

  “Wow,” Rose said. “Okay.”

  Mona counted the cash. Rose had overpaid her. A test, perhaps.

  “There’s sixty bucks extra here, Rose,” Mona said.

  “It’s compensation,” Rose said, “for the therapy you gave me earlier. The photograph of my father startled me, and you listened to my story without judgment.”

  Oh, I was judging you, Mona thought. Don’t worry. Rose’s mouth hung open. She wanted something. Did she want to touch Mona’s face, like blind people did in the movies?

  “Do you think we could be friends?” Rose asked instead. “I don’t know if you hang out with your clients, but I feel close to you, for some reason.”

  Before she could answer, Rose asked for a hug. Mona obliged. Rose really got in there, wrapping both her arms around Mona’s torso, breathing her in deeply before letting go. Mona had always been a fan of a firm embrace. As a friend, would Rose act like a vampire? Did she want blood? Here, Mona imagined saying, offering Rose her wrist. Drink. If the blood sucking became too much, Mona could always just walk out the door, unseen, and Rose might never find her.

  * * *

  SHE MET ROSE’S HUSBAND, PHILIP, two weeks later. She’d just finished cleaning the house. Rose was out of town. Alone in the kitchen with her eyes closed, Mona ran her hands over all the surfaces.

  “Hello,” a voice said, as she was feeling the fridge.

  She opened her eyes, startled.

  “Were you pretending to be blind?” he asked.

  A shirtless man stood at the counter. His shoulders red from the sun, he wore dirty white trousers and gum-sole desert boots. This must be Philip, the husband.

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  He opened a cabinet. Out came a bag of coffee and the dreadful coffee grinder. She winced inwardly. He would probably spill grounds on the counter and possibly the floor, and he might even fuck up the stove.

  “I do that, too, sometimes,” he said. “What would you rather be—blind or deaf?”

  That’s when she recognized him. And his smell. His hair was shorter, his beard longer, and two bandages were taped to his mostly hairless chest. The bandages were bright white, fresh.

  “The way you wear that apron,” he said, “makes me want to crush granite with my teeth.”

  If Rose drained the blood out of her, he put it all back in, and then added more. She felt pregnant, even though they’d never touched. She supposed she’d have to call him Philip now, which was absurd. He was Dark.

  “It’s a smock,” she said.

  “I’ve been looking f
or you,” he said.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “At the bookstore,” he said. “In the same aisle. On the same day of the week. At the same time.”

  “Which day of the week?” Mona asked.

  “Thursday,” he said.

  “We met on a Monday,” Mona said.

  He snorted. “We definitely did not meet on a Monday.”

  “Why don’t you wear a wedding band?” she asked.

  He paused to scratch his beard. “Rose and I have an open marriage.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “Are you married?” he asked.

  “I don’t do this with clients,” she said.

  They stood there, blinking at each other.

  “Who do you do?” he asked finally.

  “I have someone special I call now and then,” she said.

  He leaned on the counter. “Will you call him tonight?”

  She looked at her watch and shook her head. “It’s Tuesday.”

  “So?”

  “Not on a Tuesday,” she said.

  He laughed. “Can you fuck him on a Friday?”

  “Fridays are fine.”

  “What about Wednesday?”

  She pretended to think about it. “Wednesdays are pushing it,” she said.

  “He wants you all to himself,” Dark said. “Is that it? Or you don’t want to be tied down.”

  She didn’t answer. The guy tended bar at a tavern one town over, and his schedule varied. He wasn’t fat, but he seemed oddly boneless—she couldn’t see the bones in his hands—and he had watery eyes and his name was Doug. She could never date a Doug. She could date a Dark, though, easily. There was nothing boneless about Dark, and she suspected she’d have dropped everything for him if he wasn’t married to the most interesting vampire in town. And the most beautiful.

  “Are you guys swingers or something?” Mona asked.

  “No,” he said. “It’s not like that. In fact, it’s probably nothing like you think.”