by Dan Pope
Gross.
The requirements of the body were so gross. There was her and there was this thing she had to carry around. Feed it and bathe it, make it go to the bathroom, suffer its illnesses, endure its discontents. It was blissful to exist outside the body, above it, her real self looking down.
Sometime that evening she felt the high dissolving. She reached for the packet of morphine and found it empty. All gone, just empty plastic receptacles. She checked the clock: It was 9:42 P.M., Monday night. This was now, the time of the living. All the triviality suddenly returned, like geese splashing down in a pond. She felt a panic descending, a four-day backlog of anxiety, striking all at once. What had she forgotten? What had she done?
She got up, feeling suddenly light-headed, and steadied herself with a hand on the dresser. The world was spinning and she with it. She grabbed her fleece jacket and went through the pockets: There it was, what she’d forgotten.
The sapphire.
Her face stared back blankly from the dresser-top mirror. Her skin seemed paler, her lips, darker, almost goth. She practiced a smile, observing the results. Curious, this mask. How strange that people considered it Emily. She had been outside her body for four days. Shamans, she’d once read, could free their spirits, could hover above themselves the way she had. They did it through trance and a lifetime of training. She wanted to get back there a whole lot faster. She combed her hair and changed into her low-cut jeans and a belly shirt, a suitably slutty look.
The sound of the TV came from the den, voices speaking in French. Audrey, the Netflix addict, sat on the couch. Emily tiptoed down the hall—her father still at work—and stopped in the kitchen for a belt from his Black Label, a super-long shot, slugging directly from the bottle.
She grabbed her sweatshirt from the closet, stepping around the dog. Sheba whined and got to her feet, but Emily shushed her. “Stay,” she whispered. She closed the door behind her and went out into a cold night, her first breath of fresh air in a long time. Immediately, she felt shivery and light-headed, but light-headedness was part of the shaman program, was it not? For four days she had holed up in her bedroom with almost no food—a few handfuls of baby carrots and cheese sticks—peeling away the excess layers, eradicating all but the essential. Her bedroom was her sweat lodge, morphine her peyote.
Above, a plane passed over the crest of the mountain. She could imagine the scene from the cockpit: all the little houses, lined up like cereal boxes on a shelf. They all looked the same, probably were the same design, inside and out, built by the same hand sometime in the black-and-white 1950s.
She approached his driveway. Inside, the bluish light of the television glowed from the first-floor den. She rang the bell, and a few moments later the porch light came on. He appeared in the doorway, stubble on his cheeks, a curious expression. “Yes?”
“May I speak to the lady of the house?” she asked. A bizarre question, but she was winging it, letting her actress-self take over.
He had a glass in his hand. Whiskey, it looked like. She felt drunk just sniffing the alcohol. But she knew how to cover herself; no one ever knew how wasted she was, right up until the moment of blackout.
“What’s up? Selling Girl Scout cookies?”
“Not exactly.”
He studied her, his eyes narrowing in recognition.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I think so,” he replied. “You live in the farmhouse, right?”
That surprised her. She hadn’t counted on that. As far as she knew, he’d seen her only that one time, when he’d given her a pervy stare from the driver’s seat and she’d responded with the finger. She suffered a moment of hesitation, contemplating the consequences. Fuck it. She didn’t want to think about consequences. She’d come this far. Stupid to back out now. “You won’t tell my mother, will you?”
“Tell her what?”
“About this.” She dug into her pocket and produced the sapphire. He leaned forward to study her open palm. His face changed, and then he picked the ring out of her hand and said, “Come in.”
In the hallway, the dog raised its snout as she went by. The house smell reminded her of that night, but the rooms seemed benign now, absent the manic zigzagging flashlight in the darkness. He passed the den, his seducer’s lair, with the fireplace burning in the background. She could hear the wood crackling and hissing, and she decided it wouldn’t be so bad if she were to fuck him. Like mother, like daughter. That would be a victory of sorts, to get his pants down, his cock inside her. But he directed her into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her.
“This was my mother’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary present,” he said, placing the sapphire on the table. “She only wore it on special nights, to weddings and galas.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Would you care to tell me how you got it?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Did someone give it to you? A boy named Billy?”
Emily blinked, trying to focus. How could he know about Billy? Had he found out, somehow? Had Billy gotten caught? She hadn’t even seen him or talked to him since that night. Did this man know about the raided medicine cabinet, the missing morphine? Would he call the cops now? A gauze filter seemed to cover her brain. Everything seemed loud and echoing—the drip of the faucet, the rasp of the oven clock, his breathing. “No,” she said. “Try again.”
“Emily. That’s your name, right?”
“Yeah. What’s yours?”
“Benjamin.”
“How about I just call you Ben?” She leaned back to take off her sweatshirt, and her head felt loose on her neck. She tied the sweatshirt around her waist, offering him a view of her breasts.
“You want me to believe you did it? Broke into my house?”
“Bingo.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To pay you back for fucking my mother.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it? I saw you. You and her together.”
“I don’t know what you saw—”
She reached for his glass and took a sip. The cough-liquid boozy vapors made her head swim. “Whiskey and ginger ale,” she said. “Yum.” This was the preblackout stage, the part she wouldn’t remember later, just flashes of this and that, the part she liked the best because she wasn’t responsible, there would be no memory, nothing to cringe over or be embarrassed about.
“I’m going to call your mother. I think she should hear this.”
“Good idea. You call Audrey. I’ll call my dad.” She took her cell phone out of her jeans and handed it toward him. “He’s a lawyer. We’ll get the whole family together.”
He paused. “Look—”
“I didn’t think so.” She put the phone back in her pocket and smiled. He wouldn’t call anyone. She could mess with him all she wanted. She needed to get upstairs, that was all that mattered; she would say she had to use the bathroom. “What do you want with her anyway? You could do a lot better.”
“The only thing I’ve done with your mother is walk the dog.”
“Is that what you call it? Sounds like something from the Kama Sutra. I don’t blame her, though. You’re hot. You’re the hot older guy.” She batted her eyes at him, her mall-girl act again. “Wouldn’t you like someone younger? Me, for instance.”
“Cut it out.”
“What, you’re denying it? I saw you checking out my ass that day. That’s why I flipped you off. You’re a horny old fucker, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “Your story doesn’t make sense. You break into my house and trash the place. Now you bring back a ring worth thousands of dollars?”
“So?”
“So, why not keep it? Why not sell it?”
“I felt guilty.”
“You could’ve just left it in the mailbox if you felt so bad.”
“Didn’t think of that.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re covering up for your boyfriend, aren’t you? He broke in, didn’t he? That kid Billy.”
It pissed her off, him thinking that she couldn’t rob his house by herself—even if she hadn’t. “I took your fucking ring, okay? I steal things all the time. I took it and now I’m bringing it back. You should thank me instead of breaking my balls.”
He sighed, looking at her with his puppy dog eyes. Her mother had fallen for that gaze. “Fine. Thank you. Now you should go.”
She got up and went down the hall and knelt next to the dog, rubbing its belly. “Would you mind if I warmed up in front of the fireplace?”
“Yes, I would mind,” he said.
“Chill out, Ben. Don’t be so uptight. Go pour yourself another scotch. Get one for me too. I deserve a reward, don’t you think?”
“Ah. So that’s why you came to my house at this time of night. For money.”
“Not money. Something better.”
“Like what?”
“Like what you do to Audrey.”
“That’s enough,” he said. “It’s time to go.” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her toward the front door. She was surprised at his strength, how easily he was dragging her along, and she felt weightless and unable to resist. No, this couldn’t be happening, she couldn’t leave without raiding the cabinet. She gathered herself and wheeled away from him, swinging her arms, yelling, “Let go of me, motherfucker!”
She screamed—as loud as she could. When he dropped her arm, she ran up the stairs, clutching the banister for support. Everything was moving so slowly. It seemed to take an unusual effort to move her arms and legs. She heard his voice, close behind her.
“Hey, come back here!”
At the top of the stairs she ran into the bedroom and ducked into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. In the mirror, the sudden appearance of her face startled her, pale and wide-eyed, her lips bluish.
He pounded on the door.
“You hurt my arm, asshole.”
“I’m sorry.”
She opened the medicine cabinet. There it was: the stash. All those brown bottles—more than she’d remembered—and the cardboard packets of morphine, stacked on the bottom shelf, right where she’d left them. Ativan, she decided. Ativan had that nice mellowness, just what she needed to dissolve the stress of first-degree larceny or whatever crime she was committing. She fumbled with the childproof cap, giddy with the effort. How to line up the lines. Turning, twisting, like her dad’s old Rubik’s Cube, looking for the groove. Finally, the happy click.
Ta-da.
There were only five pills in the bottle. She dumped them into her hand and bent under the faucet for a mouthful of water. She popped all five, like Tic Tacs.
Good-bye, anxiety.
She went to work on the cabinet, taking off the caps and dumping the pills into her pockets. She didn’t need the bottles; she knew the pills by sight. Halcion were the tiny round blue ones. Ambien, the cylindrical white ones. OxyContin, perfect yellow circles. The jumble of reds, whites, and blues, the colors of America. And what was more American than modern pharmacology? God bless Pfizer and Merck. If only they didn’t torture and kill dogs, the fuckers.
When he banged on the door, she froze. For a moment she’d almost forgotten where she was. “Leave me alone,” she told him. “I’ve got cramps.” The magic words; they never failed to scare off teachers, horny guys, anyone who wanted you to do something you didn’t. She filled her pockets, enough to last a year, longer. And she would hide them well this time, where her mother wouldn’t find them. She returned the empty bottles to the cabinet, lining up the labels.
Done.
She pulled on her sweatshirt and raised the hood. When she opened the door, he was standing directly in front of her, a worried expression on his face—worry and something else too. Fear. She saw it in his eyes. He was frightened of her. This exhilarated her, made her want to go further.
“If you tell my mother I was here . . .” The words felt heavy in her mouth. She started again: “If you tell her any of this, I’ll say you raped me.”
“She won’t believe you.”
“Maybe not. But my father will.”
She pushed past him and scrambled down the stairs and out the front door. She broke into a run, the pavement rising to meet her, the pills shifting in her pockets like handfuls of sand. She ran all the way to her house and slipped open the kitchen door. From her parents’ bathroom came the sound of a running faucet.
She closed her bedroom door behind her and collapsed onto her mattress. She removed one of the packets of morphine from her pocket, spilling some pills onto the floor, and tore open the box. She pinched one of the capsules out of the foil. Down went her jeans, in went the bullet. After a few moments, the pill seemed to expand as it warmed to her body, then softly explode. She pulled up her jeans and rolled onto her back.
Mission complete, she said to herself.
She waited for the euphoria. She stared at the white stucco ceiling, and after a while the ceiling seemed to multiply and morph like a screen saver. She blinked, watching the cosmic vision, the kaleidoscopic patterns, but it soon made her feel sick. A dizziness overtook her. She tried to blink it away, but it got worse. This wasn’t blackout. This was something different. Something scary.
She tried to get up, but the force against her was too strong. Then the void came all at once, like a roller-coaster drop. She disappeared for a moment. Where was she? Had she passed out? Her arms felt numb. The muscles in her legs started twitching. An alarm sounded in her ears, nearly too much to contain. This was wrong, this was not like before. She tried to call out for her mother, but no sound came forth. It took a great effort to conjure the word and get her voice:
“Mom!”
Then she fell into the void, downward, toward a deeper darkness.
The display, unseen on her cell phone, read:
11:58 P.M.
Monday
November 26, 2007
Mother and Daughter
Two hours earlier
LATER, AUDREY would remember the silence, the first sign that something was wrong. She looked up from the TV, realizing that she hadn’t heard a peep from Emily for a while—no blow-dryer, no music, no opening and closing of closet doors, none of the usual sounds her daughter produced.
“Honey?” she called.
She didn’t expect an answer. Her daughter hadn’t really spoken to her for weeks. She knocked on her daughter’s bedroom door. “Is everything okay?” Getting no response, she cracked the door and looked in. The bed was unoccupied, the blankets askew. Audrey checked the bathroom, then turned out the lights in the room and searched for her daughter—kitchen, living room, basement, garage. Nothing. Emily wasn’t home. Ten o’clock at night and her daughter had snuck out. So much for trying to ground her. She wondered if Emily was even sick. Or had she just been feigning illness all along? Audrey didn’t think so. Her daughter hadn’t looked well for a couple of weeks, and it would be unlike Emily to want to stay home, away from all the excitement of the world. Maybe sneaking out meant she was finally feeling better. Maybe that was a good sign. With Emily, nothing was clear.
What now?
Audrey got her jacket and went outside. Andrew, as usual, was no help. He hadn’t come home from work yet. Audrey didn’t bother calling him. Emily had probably gone to meet a boy. He would have arrived at the appointed hour, some suburban badass driving his father’s Mercedes. She would be wearing her black cardigan, buttoned too low. He would honk the horn, or maybe she’d told him not to so her parents wouldn’t hear, and she would jump in—and disappear until dawn again.
In the distance an animal howled—a coyote, it sounded like—from somewhere on the mountain. Audrey listened, holding her breath, and the coyote pealed
again, a sort of laughing now, trailing away. She suddenly felt foolish, standing watch like some chaperone: Mom the bummer. She didn’t want to play that part anymore. Emily didn’t listen to her anyway. Tell her to stay away from the ocean and she would swim out to the jetty. That was her nature, to test the limits. Audrey just happened to be the one setting those limits. She’d been silly to think she could ground her daughter. So Emily had snuck out. That was to be expected. Audrey was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. Maybe it had; maybe she just hadn’t noticed. There was no need to call the cops or wait up all night, as she had done the last time. No need to worry. Emily would return when she was ready, as always. Adolescence was a form of insanity under the best circumstances—the body changing, desires bulging, insecurities howling. How could she make her daughter understand that this was only temporary?
Audrey went back into the house and began the ritual ablutions of day’s end: creams and cleansers, scrubbing and brushing, nose blowing and bladder emptying. When had it become such an enormous effort just to go to sleep? Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the bathroom, lathered with lotions, and slipped into bed.
She reached into the bottom drawer of her night table and opened the compact case, where she kept her Valium, where Emily wouldn’t find them. She took two. This was how she slept without dreams, without grief rousing her at 3 A.M.—the only way she could sleep, now. The holiday had made it worse, as always. She turned out the light and stretched, a luxury to have the bed to herself. Almost immediately, she fell asleep.