by Tanen Jones
Mary
It was the easiest job I’d ever had.
Warren.
Stetson.
May twenty-second.
He didn’t ask me any of those things.
“Why Vegas?” he said, leaning back in his chair. It was past eleven and Leslie was slipping, wine-drowsy. She excused herself to the bathroom.
I could’ve made up something. I wanted to. Something good, to make me seem more interesting, more specific. That’s what I would have done at Letourneau’s, so he’d remember me and come back next time. Or so he’d feel sorry for me, tip me extra. But liars are always specific. People who are telling the truth don’t bother to try to convince you.
“I was bored,” I said instead, picking at a loose stitch at the cuff of my denim jacket.
“In Louisiana?” He was poking for information. Leslie seemed to have told him very little about her sister. He liked me, but he didn’t want to. He was scruffy and loyal, like a dog. He wanted to be on Leslie’s side. Any reason I gave him to dislike me would relieve him.
I smiled. “Yeah, I was there for a little while.”
“Yeah? What’d you do?”
“You mean, like, job-wise?”
“Sure.” He watched me.
“Bunch of restaurants, mostly,” I said. “I got fired a lot.”
“I waited tables too,” he said. “That’s mostly what I did during college. You really get a feel for humanity doing that shit.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s why I got fired a lot.”
He laughed.
“So you have a kid,” I said, seizing the opportunity to redirect his attention. “You know, I didn’t think Leslie was the mom type.”
“Leslie’s a great mom,” he said.
I had hit a nerve. “That wasn’t what I was trying to—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “No, we’ve always wanted to be parents. That was always in the cards.”
“Does she stay home with him?”
“With Eli? No.” He took a sip of his wine. “We have a daycare for weekdays.”
I frowned. “I thought—”
Leslie came back and flopped carefully into the seat next to Dave. Her cheeks were pink as she leaned forward to kiss Dave’s eyebrow. He made a face, then smiled. “Hey, baby,” he said. “You look ready for bed.”
“I am,” Leslie said.
“Me too,” I said. “Leslie, can you show me where the guest room is?”
“Oh—sure.” She got up, gathering the bowls and glasses and taking them to the sink.
“Dave, thank you so much for dinner,” I said, standing. “You don’t even know how glad I am to finally meet you.”
“Yeah, same,” Dave said. His smile flashed across his face so quickly I nearly missed it.
“Mary,” Leslie said, as we went into the hallway, just outside Dave’s earshot, “thank you. You are doing such a good job,” she added, lowering her voice.
I waited as she led me through the white stucco hallway and up the stairs. When we were in the guest bedroom (unnaturally clean, framed photographs of the New Mexican landscape lined up on the bureau), I shut the door and pressed the lock on the knob.
“So there’s a luggage rack in the closet,” Leslie said, pointing at my duffel bag, which Dave had leaned against the closet door.
“You didn’t tell your husband you got fired,” I said flatly.
She didn’t answer me right away. I could see her face in the mirror. Her ears, sticking through her lank hair, were mottled red. “Not your business,” she said. “There are fresh towels in the bathroom closet.” She turned to leave.
“How was I supposed to know that?” I hissed, reaching for her shoulder. “What if I fucked it up for you?”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Well, just keep not fucking it up, then,” she said. “Okay?”
“Does he know you’re going to lose the house?”
“If we get the money, we won’t lose the house,” she said, jaw tight. “So it’s not an issue.”
I stared at her. Finally I sat down on the bed, which gave slowly underneath me. Memory foam. “How come you didn’t tell me you had a baby?” I asked.
“I told you everything you need to know,” Leslie said. “All you need to do is stick to small talk, sign the papers, collect your money, and disappear. At no point do you need to discuss my personal life with my husband.”
“Not telling me was stupid,” I said, my voice pitched low. “I want to make sure there’s nothing else that’s going to get me in trouble. If you don’t want your husband to find out about your personal life, you should think about that.”
Leslie’s lips thinned. She didn’t look drunk anymore. “You’re doing a great job,” she said. “Focus on that.” She came over to the bed, and I felt her long, cold fingers tuck the tag on my jacket back into my collar.
I just looked at her. She exhaled through her nose and left the room. The door clicked shut behind her.
16
Leslie
Alone in the master bedroom, I stepped out of my clothes and gathered up the pile for the hamper. Then I padded into the bathroom to wash my face. I was almost out of retinoid cream. I put a thin ring around each eye, rubbed a stripe into the paper-crease lines on my forehead. Dave had left his shaving things out on the counter. I examined his razor and dropped it into the trash can; he always forgot to switch. I dug out a new one from the package under the sink and left it next to his shaving cream in the cabinet.
When I went back into the bedroom, Dave was in his underwear with his reading glasses on, holding his tablet. I admired the way the long, hard line of his calf muscle shone a little in the reflected light from the lamp, and wondered why it was that the things I liked best about his body were natural, genetic, whereas the things I liked best about mine were artificial: my carefully maintained skin, my gel-protected fingernails.
It took him a moment to notice me. He dropped his tablet into the blankets and held his arms out to me. “Come here, you makeupless kid,” he said.
I got into bed and draped myself naked over him, pressing my face into his neck. He smelled like cumin and wine. “I missed you,” I said.
I felt his laugh. “You were only gone for, like, two days.”
“Yeah, but the whole thing was…” I sat up. “I don’t know. It was weird.”
“Seeing your sister again?”
I nodded. Seeing her body had been awful, but also a relief: I’d never have to worry about her again. If she needed money. What kind of upsetting message she’d left on my machine.
“You never talk about her.” Dave was trying hard to sound casual, incurious.
“Because she’s not a part of my life.” I stopped, and tried a softer tone. “Because her life is not easy on the people around her. I don’t want you to be sucked into that part of my family.”
“I appreciate that.” He rubbed his hand over my back. I sank into the blankets. “Do you think you’d ever forgive her?” he asked after a minute. “I mean, she seems…she seems like she’s cleaned herself up a little, right?”
He likes her, I thought. “No,” I said flatly.
Dave studied my face. “Okay.”
I rolled off him. “What did you do? While I was gone.”
He made a creaky groan, stretching a little. “Shot the shit with our incredibly charismatic baby, mostly,” he said. “Saw my mom for a little while. Took Eli to Elaine’s for a playdate with Brody.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah, they seem to get along pretty well, although Brody is definitely the one in charge. Our son may be beautiful, but he is a follower by nature. Not a future president. Maybe a future personal assistant. He was all ready to hand Brody his sucker. Not even a peep of protest. Natural philanthropist.”
I made myself smile. “How’s Elaine?”
“Oh, you know. The Internet’s star mommy.” Elaine was Dave’s coworker, the first one he’d made friends with when he’d started four years ago. Back then her older son, Tanner, was a year old. Elaine had run a semi-popular blog chronicling Tanner’s firsts—first steps, first words. Two years ago, when she was seven months pregnant with Brody, her husband left her. A few similar blogs picked up on the story, and Elaine gathered more and more followers. She moved most of her blogging to Instagram, where she posted professional-quality photos of herself and her kids several times a day. She had a funny, dry tone to her writing, undercut by the dreamlike, idyllic photography. Dave said she had enough followers now to do ads.
He picked up his phone and scrolled through Instagram. “Look, she posted a picture of Eli. Doesn’t he look great?”
Eli was sitting on a tiled floor, staring at one of Elaine’s cats, who skulked blurrily in the background. His face was turned away from the camera, which emphasized the length of his thick dark eyelashes, and his mouth hung open in fascination, the edge of a small pink tongue poking out. He looked just like Dave when he was concentrating. He looked just like the baby I’d dreamed we would have.
3 seconds before he tried to kiss Misty, Elaine had captioned the picture. Disappointing results. #ladieshesacatlover #cutebaby #thesmallestflores #brodyspals #playdate. It had 654 likes.
“She’s a good photographer,” I said. “Wow.”
“I think she’s thrilled I have spawn now, so she can change it up for the ’gram,” Dave said. “You can only take so many pictures of the same kids before people are like, Call me when they cure cancer.”
“I mean, she probably just wants more adults to hang out with,” I said. “She must be lonely.”
Dave laughed. “I doubt it. She’s got people over at that house day and night. She could be on Martha Stewart or whatever. Handed me a glass of homemade lemonade as soon as I walked in.”
“Still.” I pressed my cheek into the pillow. “It’s different, not having a husband.”
“Yeah, probably.” He set the phone back on the nightstand. “Eli had a good time over there. I think he needs more friends. I feel like now that you’re getting things wrapped up with your father’s house, you’ll have some extra time to hang with him. There’s a birthday party for one of the other kids at daycare next week. Friday the thirty-first. Maybe you could take him.”
I didn’t move. “I don’t know how long this thing with her is going to take. With Robin.”
“Well, if you’re free.” The mattress tilted as he shifted his weight. “You want to watch something?”
I let him touch my hair, too gently. It felt apologetic. “Do you think Netflix has Anthony Bourdain?”
“Baby, we are gonna find out,” Dave said, and clicked the TV on.
* * *
—
Dave fell asleep barely fifteen minutes into “Hanoi.” I waited until the episode was over to get up and pull on my T-shirt and boxers and shut the light off. Then I crawled in next to him once more, trying to will myself into sleep.
I pulled his arm over my shoulders and pressed his wrist to my face. His heartbeat, like a live worm, moved against my cheek. His pulse had always been quicker than mine, reminding me every time I was in bed with him of his more subcutaneous functions. It was as if, as the night blinded me, I became more able to see the beauty of his insides: the violet thermal glow of his chest cavity, the electric-blue slosh of his stomach, the red pulsing veins embroidering his skin. He bled heat into the covers, into the mattress, his living so aggressive it kept me alive by proximity. I clutched him to me.
I’d expected to dream about Robin last night, but instead I had dreamed about Dave. The camping trip we took, up in Abiquiú, a few months before we got married. He’d borrowed his sister’s wife’s old gear, which included a clear-topped tent, and we lay in bed under an enormous glittering canopy as Dave tried to convince me of the existence of various types of desert predators I’d never heard of, complete with sound effects. That one’s the conejillo, he’d said. You don’t know it because it’s a Spanish name. Can you hear it?
And then later: Wake up. I miss you.
I’m right here, I’d said sleepily, opening my eyes to the still-bright stars.
How long had I been lying awake now? An hour? I looked at the bedside alarm but couldn’t remember when Anthony Bourdain had ended.
Dave’s heartbeat pounded in my ear.
I gave in and sat up.
Down the hallway, lit a little to my dilated pupils. Mary’s door across the hall, shut tight. The next door, propped open. I pushed it farther and slipped inside.
There he was, asleep in the crib. He slept facedown, knees tucked underneath him—a position that suggested sleep had caught him standing up, crumpling him thoughtlessly. I stared at him, Eli, our baby, listened to his tiny, rapid breathing.
I don’t know how long I stood there, thinking, One more week. Then everything will be fixed.
One more week.
17
Robin
Am I making Leslie sound like a saint? To me she was, at least back then. She taught me how to tie my shoes, how to heat up soup on the stove. She taught me how to read, in between school lessons, sat at home with one of the old Sassy magazines she stole from the hairdresser’s, helping me follow along the lines of “Ben Stiller: Cute Boy Director” with my fat pointer finger.
She taught me how to lie.
My mother was away again, although her purse still hung on its usual peg by the front door, and Grandma Betty had come to take care of us. We were unused to the surveillance. When it was just my mother around, I went to bed at nine, at Leslie’s provocation (she stayed up later, hours that I deeply begrudged her, plagued by visions of Leslie having dozens of friends over, all of them dancing madly around the bonfire without me or eating my personal Cheez-Its). But Grandma Betty believed that children should go to bed at eight, and sometimes barged into our shared room without knocking, hoping to catch us awake.
That night, having gone to bed earlier than I ordinarily did, I’d woken up alone at half midnight. The other bed was empty, Leslie off doing whatever it was she did without me. Instantly I was filled with outrage. Probably she was watching television on the tiny screen in the garage, or was in my parents’ bedroom, trying on my mother’s things. I jiggled the doorknob, but it was locked from the outside, something Leslie often did when she wanted me to stay out of her business.
I resolved to wait up for her. I thought about folding myself into a ball of blankets at the bottom of her bed and seizing her toes as soon as she got into bed, but I had done that once already, so the sheen had come off. Instead I rolled under her bed, which was taller than mine and could fit a broad-shouldered five-year-old. I’d let her discover my empty bed and fear the worst. I’d come out when she was good and sorry she’d left me out of her surreptitious adventure.
Arms reached out and grabbed me as soon as I rolled under the dust ruffle. I screamed. Leslie clutched me to her and put her hand over my mouth, and I sagged into her embrace.
“What are you doing under the bed?” I said into her fingers, drooling not a little. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me what I was doing there.
She nodded at an overturned water glass on the carpet. Inside it, something went tink, tink, tink, as if about to make a speech at a wedding. Its shape stretched and shrank as it moved around, bent this way and that by the curvature of the glass. I reached for it and she slapped my hand away.
“What is it?” I whispered, annoyed.
Her eyes didn’t leave the glass. “A mouse.”
“Oh.” I twisted around to look at her. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For it to die.”
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“Why?”
“I kept hearing it under my bed at night. I thought I would trap it, and then…” My body was propping the dust ruffle open, letting the light from the nightlight under the bed. I could see the flutter of her lashes as she blinked rapidly, and her body against mine was as hot as a coal.
The doorknob rattled and the door burst open. I froze in place.
“Robin?” Grandma Betty said, flicking on the light. “Leslie? What are you doing under there?”
The dust ruffle had given me away. I rolled out resignedly. Leslie followed, mouseless.
“Why were you out of bed? What was all the noise about?”
“It was a mouse!” I blurted.
“A mouse game,” Leslie said. “Robin pretends to be a mouse and crawls under my bed, and I have to catch her.”
Grandma Betty seemed to swell. “Your father has to get up for work in the morning.”
“I know. It was all my fault,” Leslie said. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to play the game.”
Grandma Betty adjusted her translucent nightgown. Through it I could see her cotton underwear with the lace stitching around the waistband. “Kitchen floors tomorrow, and silverware, Leslie. Don’t make another noise.”
She shut the door and locked it behind her, plunging us into nightlight-gloom again.
“Leslie?” I whispered.
Leslie got out of her bed and climbed into mine, stroking my hair. I fell asleep before I could remember what I had wanted to say, listening to the tink, tink, tink from underneath Leslie’s bed.
In the morning she was already in the shower before I woke up. I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the bed. The overturned glass was still there; I supposed Leslie had been too scared to do anything about it. I gave the glass a sharp poke and it tipped over onto the carpet. The mouse was revealed. A girl mouse, gray and cream, with long silver whiskers. It was too exhausted to run; it only dug its claws into the carpet and twitched. I picked it up by its tail and put it in my backpack to take to school with me.