Vacuum in the Dark

by Jen Beagin

  Terry sighed. “Any old friends here?” she asked. “From grade school?”

  Mona didn’t answer, but it wasn’t a bad idea. And it would kill time. If she hurried she could make it to the house before dark. She put her boots back on.

  “What just happened?” Terry asked. “Where are you going?”

  “You’ll see,” Mona said.

  It was a pleasant twenty-minute walk. Mona was the only pedestrian, unless you counted zombies waiting for the bus. She walked along two avenues, one wide boulevard, and finally a lane, at the end of which stood the house. The house itself looked the same, a sprawling one-story stucco with a red-tiled roof, but they’d ditched the water-wasting lawn and replaced it with desert grasses, shrubs, and ice plants. A white car sat in the driveway.

  “I made it,” Mona told Terry. “I’ve arrived at the residence of Penny the Pooper.”

  “What?” Terry said.

  “You heard me,” Mona said.

  “But she pooped in the stream at summer camp,” Terry said. “You called her a terrorist.”

  “She pooped all over town, Terry,” Mona said. “I still want to peek in her window.”

  Penny’s bedroom was at the front of the house, just to the right of the entrance. Unfortunately, her bedroom window wasn’t street-facing. Rather, it faced the walkway to the front door, which didn’t make for easy peeping. But at least the curtains were open. Still, she would be seen by anyone standing in the kitchen. Not for the first time, she wished she were wearing a UPS uniform and carrying a package.

  “I would say UPS driver is my sixth-most frequent fantasy,” Mona told Terry. “For the record.”

  “Shit or get off the pot,” Terry said.

  Mona walked past the house and then backtracked across the yard. She got on her hands and knees and crawled alongside the front of the house. When she reached Penny’s bedroom, she stood on her knees and cupped her hands at the window. Penny’s room was exactly as Mona remembered—lavender walls, white furniture, a double bed with canopy. The only difference was the shit on the walls.

  “There’s shit on the walls?” Terry asked, alarmed.

  “Photographs,” Mona said. “And posters. From high school and college. It seems Penny was very popular. Extremely blonde. Lots of friends, proms, parties. Looks like she went to UC Santa Barbara. She’s got, like, zero edge, but she’s a babe.”

  “So, the total opposite of you,” Terry observed.

  “Pretty much,” Mona agreed.

  “It’s funny,” Terry mused. “Seems like you’d be the pooper, not her.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” Mona asked, though she already knew.

  “Because you were vaguely goth?” Terry said. “And in a mental hospital? And on meds. And you dated a junkie—”

  “Hang on,” Mona said. “I think I hear footsteps.”

  The front door swung open. There stood Penny’s mother. Barbara. Or Babs, as they’d called her. She was dressed like a golfer. Her face looked strangely bland and frozen.

  “Babs loves Botox,” Terry whispered.

  “May I help you?” Babs asked.

  Mona got to her feet and brushed wood chips off her pants. “It’s me, Mona.”

  Babs’s face held no expression, but she had to be feeling something. Anger? Surprise? Delight?

  “I don’t think it’s delight,” Terry said.

  “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was best friends with your daughter,” Mona said, and swallowed. “In grade school.”

  Tight, tight smile. So tight!

  “Focus on her eyeballs,” Terry advised.

  “I was just visiting my mother,” Mona went on. “And I got to thinking about Penny, and I wondered if she still lived here. We haven’t spoken since seventh grade.”

  “She’s at nursing school,” Babs said. “In Oakland. She’s getting married next year.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Mona said.

  Babs nodded in agreement. Now would’ve been the time for Babs to ask about Mona’s career and marital status, but she said nothing. Her daughter had taken dumps in dressing rooms all over the city, and yet Babs was giving Mona the Caddyshack treatment. We have a pool and a pond, her eyeballs seemed to say. The pond would be good for you.

  “Well,” Mona said finally. “Give Penny my best.”

  “Will do,” Babs said.

  On the walk back, the taffy in Mona’s stomach arranged itself into a giant knot. She stopped walking several times and clutched her stomach. In Clare’s bathroom at last, Mona discovered that she’d started her period. She’d been free-bleeding for a couple of hours, if not longer, and she had what looked like blood on her cheek. What the fuck.

  * * *

  SHE SPENT THE FOLLOWING DAY alone and starving in Clare’s apartment. Her food choices: Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and root beer Popsicles, Clare’s staples. Thirteen years ago, she would have crept upstairs to the third floor and jiggled some doorknobs. The apartment directly above her had always been unlocked, she remembered, and always smelled like bacon and Budweiser. The tenant, a lonely alcoholic named Brian, had named his two cats Bacon and Bud. She remembered wolfing down bologna from his fridge and looking at his Playboys.

  The two old banana boxes in Clare’s utility closet were the only things she planned on breaking and entering today. She placed them on the coffee table in the living room. The cardboard was shiny, vaguely greasy, and each box was marked “MONA’S BULLSHIT” in red Sharpie (her own handwriting).

  She sat on the couch. Box #1 held a jumble of construction paper art, homework from elementary school, magazine clippings, and other junk. The only thing worth saving: a snapshot of Spoon and Fork, her Jack Russells. When her parents divorced, Spoon and Fork were given to a “farm in Idaho.” In this picture, they were hunting in a field of carpet weeds. Fork had his head in a hole, ass in the air, tail blurred midwag. Spoon was on his back, probably rolling around in something vile. She stared at the picture and let her eyes go out of focus. Tears welled but didn’t spill over.

  Hours later, Clare was gently shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes and lifted her head. She’d drooled all over the mauve corduroy cushion.

  “You were having a bad dream, sweetie pie,” Clare said.

  She had been in the backseat of a car parked next to a nodding donkey in a scrubby oil field. Dark sat in the driver’s seat with Spoon on his lap, Fork and Mr. Disgusting in the passenger seat. They both looked at her over their shoulders. We’re here, Dark said, waiting for you. Why aren’t you looking for us?

  Clare sat on the arm of the couch. “You found your stuff.” She peered into the open box. “Anything good?”

  Mona cleared her throat. “Just a lot of wind, mostly.”

  Clare yawned. “Ready for dinner, baby?”

  She looked past Clare, out the dirty window. The sun was glinting off the windows of the condominium across the street. “What time is it?”

  “Five,” Clare said. “You know Frank likes to eat at five thirty.”

  She had the sudden urge to snatch the ballpoint pen from the coffee table and stab Clare in the arm with it, a physical urge she felt in her fingers. The impulse startled her, made her wonder if she was a terrible daughter. Then again, she had a history of doing violence to Clare with her fingers. As a kid, part of her morning routine had been to wait for her father to get in the shower before climbing onto Clare’s bed, straddling her, and massaging her neck and back with vitamin E oil. Harder, Clare would say. Mona pressed down with all her weight. She dug in under the shoulder blades. She tried to cleave the muscles from the bones. Ouch, Clare would say. Are you trying to kill me?

  “Frank’s waiting,” Clare said. “I better get over there before he eats without me. We’re having tacos. We’ll probably play cards after. I’ll put a plate aside for you, okay?”

  Play cards—a euphemism, she assumed. They probably played cards loudly, with no regard for the neighbors.

  * * *

 
; ALONE NOW AND WIDE AWAKE, she emptied the remaining box onto the floor and reclaimed the gold: photo albums, diaries, the Liquid Paper project, good drawings. The only genuine gold was a locket from Clare’s mother. The locket, large and pear shaped, was suspended from a beaded chain the color of gunmetal. Inside, her grandmother had placed a picture of Clare as a teenager. “That way, she’s always with you,” she’d said as she fastened the locket around Mona’s neck. “Making sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

  The last time she’d worn the locket had been a month or so after her thirteenth birthday. Frank and Clare had had tickets to an Emmylou Harris concert, but they didn’t know what to do with Mona. This was shortly after her “arrest,” and so she was grounded. They refused to leave her alone. Clare must have called Luisa, the Brazilian lady next door, because that’s where Mona ended up.

  They were having a party over there. Luisa greeted her at the back door and led her through the kitchen, past an old woman stirring a pot, and into the dining room. A large, gap-toothed woman chopped strawberries on a flimsy card table. Here Luisa stopped and handed Mona a plate full of rice and plastic silverware. Mona followed her into the large, sunny backyard of the apartment building, where the music was louder and people were dancing. Shirtless men stood leaning against the fence, smoking and watching women, and she heard Brutus, the German shepherd next door, barking his head off.

  Luisa beckoned her to the corner of the yard, where eight or nine men were gathered around something on the ground, yelling and laughing and jostling one another. Mona thought they must be playing a game, but as she got closer she saw that it was a barbecue pit, and the spectacle they all seemed so fascinated by was meat roasting on thick metal spikes. There were seven spikes in all, and impaled upon each one was a different kind of meat—steak, ribs, sausages, pork chops, whole baby birds. The spikes rotated and dripped over the hot coals.

  Luisa deposited her next to her husband, Sergio; said something to him in Portuguese; and then disappeared. Sergio wore a bright green apron over his massive belly and held a long, serrated knife. He smiled at her with his silver teeth and offered her the plastic cup from which he was drinking. She took a sip and it tasted like strawberries and he gestured for her to finish it. Then he shouted at the men to stand back and he leaned over the pit, picked up one of the spikes, and sliced beef onto her plate with his big knife. The meat was too pink for her, but she didn’t say anything.

  Mona picked at her food and watched the women dance. They rolled their hips and whipped their long hair in circles and made their arms look like snakes. Three of the men at the fence began dancing with the women, and then a man was talking to her in Portuguese. He peeked inside her empty cup and refilled it from his own. She pretended to understand him as she drank. Suddenly Luisa was scolding the man and pulling her inside.

  Luisa gently removed the cup from her hand and said, “Go to my bedroom and watch TV. You can bring your plate in there and eat on my bed.”

  But Luisa’s room was occupied by kissing people, so Mona closed the door and sat in the living room. Now that Luisa was gone, she slipped out front and let herself into Frank’s apartment with the hidden key.

  The birds were screeching at her. She tossed some meat into their cages. Wahkan hissed and wouldn’t go near it, but Takoda pecked at it and then started screaming again. She covered their cages with towels and then went into the bedroom to snoop and to try on Frank’s cowboy boots. There, on the floor next to the bed, lay one of the dresses Clare had chosen not to wear to the concert. A sundress printed with brown and orange paisleys, backless with a plunging neckline. Mona stepped into the dress and paired it with cork wedges. Then she dipped into Clare’s makeup, since it was sitting right there. Brown eyeliner, gold eye shadow, mascara, bright red lipstick. She dusted her breastbone with bronzer, just like Clare, and took her hair out of a ponytail and brushed it until it was shiny.

  Next door, they’d dimmed the lights and turned up the music, and there were twenty people in the living room alone, and thirty more in the yard. She walked right past Luisa, helped herself to strawberry punch, and watched the writhing knot of dancers in the living room. She felt overdressed. Some women seemed to be wearing the Brazilian flag and nothing else.

  As guests squeezed past her, she stumbled and knocked over a tall plant in a bright pink pot. It was a freckle face plant—Frank had one in his kitchen—but this one was fake, which made her laugh.

  A young man helped her pick up the plant. At first, she didn’t recognize Chaz without his uniform. Chaz parked cars at the Velvet Turtle, an upscale restaurant in Redondo, and lived here with his aunt Luisa and uncle Sergio. He usually kept his long hair in a ponytail, but now it was down around his shoulders—dirty blond, uncombed—and he wore a yellow T-shirt and tight, faded jeans.

  He only knew eleven words in English. This she’d discovered a few days earlier, when he’d gotten locked out. It was raining, so Clare invited him in. His name tag said Charles, which he pronounced Chaz, and he said he was twenty-five but he looked older, and he listed the words he knew in English: “keys,” “door,” “car,” “house,” “beach,” “ocean,” “yes,” “please,” “thank you.”

  Now Chaz was pulling her toward the dancers but didn’t seem to recognize her from next door. She was certain he thought she was someone else. Someone named Linda. He whispered Leenda in her ear while they danced. Leenda, Leenda, Leenda. She told him, “My name is Mona. I live next door, remember?” But he just smiled and put his hot hands on her hips. They conversed through body language, though he did most of the communicating. Here, drink this. See my necklace? It’s a pot leaf. I smoke pot. Do you? You don’t? You should try it. Take off your shoes—you’re too tall. Are you hot? Here, have some of my ice. Wait—let me pass it from my mouth to yours. Now give it back. Oooh, do that again. Loosen your hips. Like this. Don’t move your feet too much. There you go. Turn around. Now lean back into me. And then more Leenda Leenda in her ear.

  Two hours later, Frank suddenly materialized, sitting on the couch with Sergio, looking her up and down. Something was awry—very awry—because he smiled winsomely at her even though Chaz was essentially dry-humping her buttocks. Between songs Frank told her it was time to leave.

  She didn’t realize Frank was drunk until she saw him walk. He lost his footing on one of the steps and caught himself, and then stumbled in the courtyard and almost landed in the fountain.

  Clare was passed out on the couch but Frank had no trouble picking her up and carrying her to his waterbed. She felt envious. Other than Spoon and Fork, being carried was the only thing she missed from childhood.

  Frank came back into the living room while she was changing into her pajamas.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “You look sad.”

  He put a blanket over her, and then he staggered into the bathroom, where he did some very efficient, no-nonsense puking. “Don’t stay up too late,” he yelled down the hall on his way to bed.

  She heard the door click shut and waited, anticipating the sounds of their fucking, but she only heard shallow breathing and then snoring.

  She was sleeping when the pounding started. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, pause, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, pause. Must be a stranger, she thought, because no one came to their front door. An emergency of some kind. But the pounding didn’t sound desperate. It was confident and entitled, a cop’s knock, and she thought it might be one of Frank’s friends.

  It was Chaz. She turned on the lights and opened the door, thinking maybe he was locked out again, but he walked in like it was his own apartment and embraced her. He smelled like a campfire and immediately started fumbling with her nightgown. And she thought, Okay, but would you carry me first? She would have asked, had he spoken English. Would you carry me out the door and around the block a few times?

  He nudged her toward the couch. He seemed to be telling her a story, and presented her with a condom. She turned it over a couple of times, wondering what it was. She gave it b
ack. He took this as a cue and ground against her. She’d had a man’s hand in her underpants before, but he didn’t do that. He just rubbed himself roughly against her, and she followed her instincts and pretended to be dead.

  The birds’ cages were covered, but they were awake. Wahkan mimicked the noise of a door creaking open—Frank’s door—and Takoda made strange little gasping noises as he shredded newspaper for another useless nest.

  Chaz’s eyes were closed in concentration. Did he still think she was Linda? She stared at the blond hair on his brawny forearm, and then out the window. She imagined that this was her apartment now, and she was pitching Frank’s shit into a Dumpster on the lawn. A stack of Bird Talk magazines went first, followed by dream catchers, peace pipes, and the creepy face masks. She yanked the bronze sun face off the wall and threw it like a Frisbee into the Dumpster. Same with the portrait of Sitting Bull. She gathered all the weaponry together—the tomahawks, lances, war clubs, bows and arrows—and tossed those, too. The knives with stone blades would stay—she liked those—and so would the kachina dolls. Well, not all of them. She would get rid of the foxes, wolves, and roadrunners, but she would save the clowns, rain priests, badgers, and morning singers for a—

  Chaz stopped moving and collapsed on top of her. He murmured in her ear and rested his dry lips on her neck for several seconds. He climbed off her and went into the kitchen and drank from the faucet. She pulled down her nightgown, covered herself with the blanket, and then closed her eyes as he passed through on his way out the door.

  The next morning, in the kitchen with Clare, Mona tried to pretend everything was normal by making her favorite breakfast, a fried-egg and jalapeño Cheez Whiz sandwich on white Wonder bread. Her hands were shaking and she was nauseated. That’s when Clare found the condom, still in its package. Clare gasped as if it were a piece of human feces.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  Mona’s stomach churned.

  “Where’d this come from?”

  “Chaz,” Mona said.