Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

  “Thank you,” she said, relieved. “And thanks for showing me your art.”

  “And you, as well,” he said.

  * * *

  FOUR DAYS LATER, LENA CALLED and invited her to Friday dinner but didn’t mention a reason or occasion. Mona assumed Paul had told Lena everything, and now Lena wanted to acknowledge that fact and put some boundaries in place. Like: You can take your cute pictures, but stop going through our closets. And please, please keep your paws off my jewelry and the genitalia of my ancient fertility statue.

  Strange to be a guest in their house, to see how the mess was made. Paul was at the stove, stirring, and the air smelled like meat and fresh mint. Mona was sitting on the Very Rare Chair, drinking real red wine. The real stuff was dry, apparently, tasted like time itself, and smelled like pipe tobacco and delicious dirt with some blood and dried blackberries mixed in. Lena was talking about how badly she missed rain, a common lament around Taos, and how rain had inspired her most recent outdoor sculpture out on the enormous patio. The base was a rustic wooden rowboat, about ten feet long. Over the boat was a canopy of sorts, a large umbrella-like skeleton of giant glass ornaments, with strings of blue dangling rhinestones. Lena had made the ornaments and rhinestones herself. She’d been blowing glass for fifteen years.

  “Did you make the boat, too?”

  “No, it’s a found object. I use them in all my sculptures.”

  “You mean you just found that boat?” Mona asked. “In Taos?”

  “No, at an antique fair in Connecticut,” Lena said.

  How can an object be considered found when you bought it? Mona wondered.

  “A found object is something that wasn’t art before,” Lena said, reading her mind.

  Mona braced herself for some abstract talk on the function of art, but Lena didn’t go there.

  “Well, I love it,” Mona said.

  As Lena refilled their glasses for the third time, her emerald ring winked knowingly at Mona, recalling an early photo shoot, when she’d worn both the ring and the orange lace blouse Lena was now wearing. Mona wondered if Lena had chosen these items on purpose.

  “Don’t you get lonely cleaning houses?” Lena asked quietly.

  “I have people I talk to,” Mona said, thinking of Terry. “On the phone.”

  “Do you have employees?”

  Mona shook her head. “I’m more of a lone-wolf type.”

  “Me too,” Lena said. “Although not by choice.”

  Paul approached the table carrying three plates, waiter-style. The plates were severely lopsided. Lena said she purposely designed them to make it appear as if the food were sliding off. Mona gaped at the plates as if her Hungarian lover had uttered something especially brilliant.

  Paul sat and told them to dig in. It was lamb. She hated lamb. She cut the meat into tiny bites, chewed as little as possible, washed it down with wine.

  “Paul tells me you’re a talented artist,” Lena said, and smiled.

  Mona blushed and nibbled on a green bean.

  “Are your parents artists?” Lena asked.

  “No,” Mona said. “But my grandfather painted pictures. My father’s father. I wouldn’t call him an artist, but he painted every day for as long as I knew him.”

  “What did he paint?” Paul asked.

  “Seascapes. Candles burning in darkness. The occasional creepy clown.”

  He gave her a blank look and continued chewing.

  “The last years of his life he painted the same picture over and over. He never seemed to get it right.”

  “What was it?” Paul asked.

  “A bullfight,” Mona said, and coughed. “He painted it from memories of his time in Mexico.” She wanted to abandon the story, but she was committed now. “After he died my grandmother found dozens of the same exact painting. Now everyone in my family has one hanging in their house.”

  “Where did you put yours?” Lena asked.

  “On the mantel,” she lied.

  She didn’t have a mantel, and the painting was sealed in the original package Mona had received in her late teens, never opened. She kept it under her bed wherever she moved.

  “Were you two close?” Lena asked.

  “Not really,” Mona said.

  She hadn’t thought of him in years, though she’d practically lived with her grandparents growing up. While her parents were busy ruining their marriage, she’d spent three or four days a week with her paternal grandfather, Woody Boyle, a mild-mannered man, an avid reader and functional alcoholic. But he’d taught her all of life’s essentials: how to spit like a man, take a good photograph, drive stick, make a stiff drink, swim butterfly, French-braid, and, perhaps most importantly, how to play dumb.

  Something was brushing her leg under the table. One of the barbarians, no doubt. She shifted in her seat and felt something soft under her boot. Poop? She looked down. Not poop: a bloated, half-dead lizard. The cat, still under the table, looked up at her face. You’re welcome, it seemed to say.

  “Your cats remind me of the Manson family,” Mona said.

  Lena laughed and looked under the table. “Richard brought a little present for our guest,” she said. “Didn’t you, kitty.”

  “Oh God,” Paul said.

  Lena put down her napkin and picked up the dying lizard with her bare hand. She walked to the sliding glass door and chucked the lizard outside. It landed inside the boat.

  “Hah!” Lena said, and sat back down. She wiped her hands on her napkin, gulped some of her wine, and then laughed. “It’s funny you mention the Manson family,” she said. “Do you happen to know that after Charles Manson killed Sharon Tate, who was Roman Polanski’s wife—”

  “Lena, please,” Paul said, and put down his fork.

  “Please, what?” Lena said.

  “Not that story,” Paul said. “Not tonight.”

  Lena sniffed and poured herself and Mona more wine. “Fine,” she said.

  They were silent for a minute. Paul’s wineglass was covered with greasy fingerprints. In a few days, Mona would be washing these very wineglasses and drying them by hand. And perhaps chucking dead lizards out the window.

  “Did you know that whiptail lizards are lesbians?” Mona said.

  Paul raised his eyebrows at her.

  “They reproduce asexually,” Mona said, “but they must mate with a female to ovulate.”

  Another silence.

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Mona?” Lena asked suddenly.

  “No,” Mona said. “Not since high school. Women don’t seem all that into me, actually. The last woman I messed around with lives next door to me. Her name is Shiori. She’s short and Japanese, but has these gigantic breasts.”

  Paul smiled at her.

  “Go ahead, Paul,” Lena said.

  “What?” he said, startled.

  “Picture her with the busty Asian neighbor,” Lena said.

  “Actually, Lena,” Mona said, “your rack rivals Shiori’s.”

  Lena grabbed her tits and squeezed. “These?” she said. “These are fake.”

  Mona swallowed. “What?”

  “I know,” Lena said. “I don’t seem like the type. In fact, I’m not the type. It’s a strange story, really. When I was a teenager, I gave birth to—”

  “Lena, please,” Paul said. “Must you? Tonight?”

  She said something in Hungarian that sounded like scolding. Mona watched Paul’s jaw tighten. He said something measured and dismissive in return. They glared at each other for a few seconds and then both looked at Mona.

  “He thinks I’m as subtle as a flying brick,” Lena explained.

  “And she drinks like a pelican when we have guests,” Paul said.

  “You mean fish,” Lena said.

  “I think we’re all a little tipsy,” Mona said.

  Everyone seemed to be looking at their hands. Mona wished there were more people in the room. People like . . . Terry. She tried to conjure Terry sitting in the chair next to her, but
it was impossible—she didn’t even know what Terry looked like.

  “Time for dessert,” Paul announced.

  Lena served Mona lemon cake on another of the crooked plates and coffee from a French press. Paul kept staring at her. At least he was wearing his glasses. Presumably, he fucked Lena sans glasses, something she hadn’t considered before. They must do it doggy, she thought.

  Suspiciously, Paul didn’t eat any cake. Lena devoured three pieces with her bare hands. She wondered what they wanted from her. Were they lonely? Bored? Did they miss their daughter?

  “So, did you two meet in Budapest?” Mona asked after a minute.

  Lena looked at Paul, but he kept his eyes on Mona.

  “We met at art school in Los Angeles,” Lena said carefully. “Paul was the painter-in-residence. Everyone worshipped him, including me. We had a brief affair and then I didn’t see Paul again for several years, until we were both living in New York City—”

  “I’m looking for a new model,” Paul interrupted.

  “Paul,” Lena said, and rolled her eyes. “Who’s the flying prick now?”

  “Brick,” he said.

  He seemed to study Mona’s nose, then her neck, then her nose again, and now her wrists and fingers. She nervously chugged the rest of her water.

  “Sorry, Mona,” Lena said. “We don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  At least now she knew what they wanted.

  “Would you be interested in something like this?” Paul asked.

  To stand there, naked, for hours? The only thing she was truly comfortable doing naked was scrubbing the tub or having sex with Dark, and Dark was history.

  On the other hand, she could already see Paul standing at his easel, asking her to spread her arms so that the sleeves of her brand-new reversible silk crepe kimono with the peony motif fanned open. Lena walked in and almost dropped her cup of tea. Is that hand-embroidered? she gasped. Where on earth did you find it?

  “Maybe you want to think about it for a while,” Paul said.

  She tried to picture herself naked, completely naked, twitching under the studio lights. No kimono, no hat, no sunglasses, nothing. She slipped her hand under her shirt. Her poor stomach was sweating.

  “I’ll be there, too,” Lena assured her. “In the sessions.”

  “As a chaperone?” Mona asked.

  She laughed. “For myself. I would very much like to draw you.”

  “Do you still want me to clean your house?” Mona asked.

  More importantly, could she still take pictures of herself cleaning their house?

  “Yes,” Paul said. “Or we could hire another housekeeper, if you prefer.”

  Another housekeeper? “No,” Mona said quickly. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “We’ll pay you for the modeling,” Lena said.

  “Forty dollars per hour,” Paul added.

  “And you can continue your project,” Lena said. “You can bring your portfolio for me to see.”

  “Oh, it’s not like that,” Mona said. “I mean, I don’t have a portfolio.”

  “You can show them to me on your computer. Or your camera, like you did with Paul.”

  “Sure,” Mona said. “Okay.” She sipped her coffee. “I guess I could give it a try. Modeling, I mean. But, despite what you might think, I’m not exactly the nudist type.”

  Paul laughed.

  “What sort of poses do you have in mind?” Mona asked. “You know, so I can practice at home.”

  “Nothing difficult,” Paul said.

  Mona stabbed the cake with her fork. “I better go on a diet.”

  “This is not for Hollywood,” he said.

  They stared at her as she ate the rest of her cake.

  “Hey look, it’s raining,” she said with her mouth full.

  Pouring was more like it. They looked out the window at Lena’s sculpture. The wind plinked the fake dangling jewels and pelted the boat with water. Mona wondered if the boat could float if it had to, or if it was ruined for floating now that it was found.

  Lena beamed at her. “Wonderful.”

  Mona wasn’t sure what she was referring to—the rain or their new venture—but she felt apprehensive suddenly, as if she’d agreed to something more intimate, like sexual surrogacy. The feeling quickly passed and was replaced with a kind of yearning. Such amazing bone structure, she imagined Lena saying. Look at her cheekbones.

  * * *

  SHE PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY and saw Yoko and Yoko in the side yard, sitting on a blanket and staring at nothing. Stargazing, they called it. Somehow, they did this completely sober and without snacks. Tonight, they were wearing orange monk-style pajamas and wool socks with sandals.

  “I can’t stay,” Mona said when she reached their blanket. “I ate half a cake.”

  “And wine, it appears,” Nigel said.

  “Am I walking funny?” Mona asked, and yawned.

  “Your teeth are purple,” Nigel said.

  “For the record, I talked about your boobs tonight, Shiori. I almost told these people about our ‘guided meditation,’ but thankfully, I restrained myself. I did, however, talk about my grandfather, for some lame reason.”

  “Good,” Shiori said softly. “It’s good for you to let people in, Mona.”

  “You are your conversation,” Nigel said, for perhaps the eighty thousandth time.

  “Except I think I overshared,” Mona said. “I’ll probably be nursing an oversharing hangover tomorrow. Along with a regular hangover. But the sharing hangover will be much worse. And harder to get rid of.”

  “They’re not thinking about you,” Nigel said calmly. “They’re thinking about themselves and what they said to you, or perhaps what they said to each other. Or, if they are healthy individuals, they are not thinking at all. They are sleeping.”

  “We miss you,” Shiori said, and reached for Mona’s hand. “We never see you anymore.”

  “What do you think of when you look at the stars, Mona?” Nigel asked.

  “Scattered pocket change,” Mona said. “Dimes and nickels. Slot machines. Gambling.”

  “You are bigger than the stars? Or do they make you feel smaller?” Shiori asked.

  “I don’t have health insurance,” Mona said. “My ass isn’t covered. Do you know that vultures eat their meals butt-first? They start eating the ass while waiting for the animal to die.”

  It was a game she liked to play with them sometimes. Not very imaginatively, she called the game Sudden Subject Change. They never wanted to play.

  Shiori cleared her throat. “Would you like to learn about the constellations?” she asked. “We’d be happy to teach you.”

  “God, no,” Mona said. “I’m off to bed.”

  “Stay curious, Mona,” Nigel said.

  * * *

  INSIDE, SHE DRAGGED THE UNOPENED package containing her grandfather’s painting from under the bed. She stared at her grandmother’s name in the return address. Ginger Boyle, dead now five years—Big C. She’d spent most of her career working as a bookkeeper in some mysterious office in Glendale. She’d had bright red hair and long red fingernails, wore white pantsuits and dark sunglasses, and carried herself like a gangster from the forties, pronouncing Los Angeles the old, Anglo way: “Law SANG-lus.” She chain-smoked Pall Malls, spiked her coffee with vodka, and drove a black Lincoln Continental with tinted windows. Men she didn’t like she called sissy and mister, as in, “Listen, mister, stop being such a sissy and get your shit together.” Women she called either broads or gals. “Did you get a load of that broad’s getup?” Or “That gal talks a blue streak.”

  Woody resembled a Mr. Man type—big muscles, suspenders, blurry sailor tattoos—but Ginger made him piss sitting down, and if they took a trip together—to Vegas, usually—she did all the driving. He was older than Ginger by twenty-two years, so it was strange that she had the upper hand, but after retiring from the navy, he essentially became a housewife and personal assistant. He cooked all of Ginger
’s meals, washed and ironed all her clothes, and ran all her errands. He seemed to enjoy waiting on her, and being ordered around like a dog: Sit down! Stop slouching! Don’t wear those pants! Turn down the idiot box! Quit snoring and turn over!

  They’d lived in an apartment complex for golden-agers in Palos Verdes. Their apartment was swanky: mustard shag, glossy white walls, clunky black-and-white furniture. They had a wet bar with a minifridge; marbled mirrors and glass shelves for all the booze, which they kept in classy crystal decanters; and a sink with a foot pedal. Ginger invited the neighbors over on Saturday nights and played Glenn Miller records while Mona and Woody worked the bar. Mona knew when to shake, when to stir, when to blend, and the difference between a Tom and an American collins, but Woody wouldn’t let her bartend until she turned nine. She’d be tall enough by then, he said. In the meantime, she took care of the garnishes. She cut wedges, wheels, and twists. They all preferred tall drinks: Salty Dogs, Gin Rickeys, Cherry Hookers.

  When everyone was good and loaded, Mona sat down at the electric organ and played “Hey Jude” and “Yesterday.” She sang, too, and sometimes her eyes leaked. Not that anyone was paying attention to her teary recital—they were all laughing and carrying on with Ginger, the life of the party. Woody was the only one she wanted to impress, anyway. He sat in the green Barcalounger in the corner, applauding and smiling at her between songs.

  On weekdays, Woody picked her up after school a couple of days a week. She’d swim laps in the pool and then they’d make French donuts, and then he’d paint for an hour while she practiced the organ. He taught her how to improvise her own little flourishes at the end of songs. At six sharp, Woody fixed dinner and drinks and they’d listen to Ginger talk about her day at the office. “So, I says to him, ‘Are you out of your goddamned mind?’ And he turns to me and says, ‘Sorry, Gin,’ so I says, ‘Jesus, what are you, some kind of sissy?’ And he says sorry again, sorry, sorry, so I says, ‘Listen, Lou. Sorry doesn’t walk the dog. Sorry doesn’t make the bed. Sorry doesn’t butter the goddamn biscuits.’ ”