Oola

by Brittany Newell

  When I rose and yawned, she made a show of stabbing out her cigarette on the scarred wood of the railing. She didn’t make to follow me, nor did she light another. She stayed where she was, chin propped in one hand, eyes sifting the distant hills. “Sleep deprivation is the only free drug,” she said without turning around. Her tone was friendly and informative, as if she was passing on some trivia.

  “Does that mean you’re getting high right now?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m smashed.”

  I opened the door. “I’ll be in bed when you’re done partying.”

  From the bedroom, I could see her through the window. I watched her as I changed my clothes. She lit another cigarette and smoked slowly and methodically, as if remembering how. Mosquitoes formed a second halo around her cigarette smoke, and the porch light around the mosquitoes, and around everything else hung the almost visible odor of flowers. She didn’t wave the bugs away. The only move she made to tear through her insubstantial cocoon was to lean over the railing and spit as far as she could manage, her little white asteroid arching into the grass.

  * * *

  THINGS CAVED IN OCTOBER AND went swiftly from there.

  I found out the reason why she hadn’t been sleeping, I must admit, by accident. I wasn’t trying to pry when I asked why she’d moved her bathtub. It simply struck me as illogical, since now she had to fill a bucket from the garden hose and lug it all the way across the lawn to the shady little spot to which she’d transplanted the tub and panels. It currently sat beneath a cluster of redwoods, which dripped sap and needles into her bath, turning the spring water the color of snot.

  “Isn’t that annoying?” I asked. We were digesting our dinner in the living room.

  She barely looked up from her magazine. “Well, they can’t see me there, so I reckon it’s worth it.”

  “What?” Visions of peeping hikers and flesh-hungry hermits clouded my brain. “Who can’t see you, O?”

  She looked up again, mildly irked by my incomprehension. “The aliens,” she said. “I’m sick of them seeing me,” and bowed her head once more. The headline of her magazine is burned into my brain: SCIENTISTS PROVE THAT BLONDES DO HAVE MORE FUN!

  I walked out to the porch and shook a cigarette from the pack she’d left on the railing. I was in a pre-emotive state, methodical and cold. I thought back over the past two weeks, sieving my memories for clues. How could I, of all people, not have seen this coming? But I was not yet sure exactly what this was or how much of a force in our lives it would be.

  Yes, I’d noticed when she ordered moonstones off the Internet and placed them around the bathtub in a special astral pattern. But she’d always dabbled in astrology, peppering her sentences with speak of auras and good vibes. How could I clock this Cali girl, an unrepentant Aquarius? And, yes, she’d recently upped her iron intake, to a noteworthy degree. When we’d gone shopping these past months, she sprang for iron-fortified breads and blocks of cadaver-colored tofu. One afternoon I watched her make one of her many snacks: a bowl of oatmeal with dried apricots and pumpkin seeds, drenched with two ominous spoonfuls of blackstrap molasses. Thrice in a row, she made sweet potatoes for dinner and insisted that we both eat the skins. When I asked if she thought she was anemic, she shrugged. She was dousing her potato skin with salt, also fortified. “I need to balance my alloys,” she’d said. “My metals are off.”

  I chewed for a moment, remembering something I’d read in one of her magazines, that low iron was often a symptom of irregular menstruation, and also that red lipstick can counteract black under-eyes. I made a mental note to remember this first bit. How could I know that her period wasn’t to blame? It seemed an obvious answer for all subterranean quirks, the throbs or whims that escaped my eye. This was the one area where she resisted me slightly, and it was the uncharacteristic shyness she showed for the subject, and anything that threatened to lead back to it, that irked me more than my barred access to her actual ovaries. She was voluble about certain aspects, such as the cramps that felt like a spork scraping out her uterus the way one scrapes out a spaghetti squash, but squeamish about others, like why she only used Pearl Plastic applicators. “What?” she snapped. “Should I prefer Pencil?” Sometimes she wanted to talk about it—“I feel like a manatee,” she’d wail at random—and sometimes my questions were met with cold stares. The closest thing I’d gotten to an explanation was this, when we crammed into a gas-station bathroom on the outskirts of Phoenix so that she could swap out the toilet paper she’d used in a pinch: “Sex is when you enjoy your animal body. This”—she’d waved the bundle in the air—“is when you realize that all animals are meat.” Suffice it to say it was a sore spot between us, ever since I asked if I could put her tampon in my tea.

  All things considered, I felt it wisest to drop the topic of iron. Besides, more spinach couldn’t possibly hurt us.

  Another thing: She’d begun to play the radio at the softest volume possible, leaving it playing, inaudible, for hours on end. When I made the mistake of turning it up, I found it tuned to an unintelligible frequency. White noise swarmed me, an invisible posse of bees. “Fuck!” I yelped, and switched it off. Oola, reading in the living room, didn’t seem perturbed. “Not hardcore enough?” she called to me. “Put it back on, to the classical station. They’re supposed to play Puccini.” I did as she told me, but when I glanced at the radio the next afternoon, I found the station tuned to another unknown number, the volume grazing null.

  There was also her effort to befriend the local crows. She told me that she’d read about it as a kid: If you left them food, they’d bring you presents in return. She scattered the lawn with stale bread, Saint Francis in sweatpants. “You’ll see.” And sure enough, after a week, a hot-pink, slightly hooked acrylic nail beckoned from the weeds. It glinted in the grass like a poisonous mushroom. This seemed to please her even more than Theo’s bloody tributes. He sat in my lap and we watched, a bit bitter, as she placed her present on the hearth. Over the course of the following week, her avian pen pal dropped off the complete set of nails, plus its mangled tube of adhesive and what was either a feather or a single false eyelash. She didn’t have to say I told you so.

  I like to think that our love story avoided clichés, the obvious symbols like a mystery razor or single bleached hair turning up in the bath. What hairs did gather in the drain or on the tiled walls (the baddest of blond) I carefully extracted and hung in my window like jerky hung to dry, and I did so out of interest, never suspicion. Our sex had never been normal, so the seed of discontent could not have been detected there. The fleas in our sheets surely kept an open mind when Oola played dead and I fetched. Only one single moment stood out to me clearly, blinking forebodingly like a NO VACANCY sign. It was a Saturday, Indian summer, if you’ll allow me the term. I know it’s not PC, but it somehow best evokes the sounds and the smells of that freak heat wave, it being late September and the clerks keeping the chocolates in the deli case for fear that they should melt. Nothing was normal but nothing too bizarre, just a subtle rearrangement of the things we took for granted, like weather or language, shifting as we slept.

  On this unusually sultry night, Oola announced that the next morning she was going to pick blackberries along the neighboring fire roads. The subtext was, alone. I wasn’t bothered by it then, because mornings were my study time, and this meant that she’d probably make something ambitious for dinner. With berry pie on my brain, I agreed to wake her at dawn.

  It was when I came downstairs at noon, and she wasn’t back yet, that I experienced the first prick of misgiving. But again, it was a minor thrill, assuaged by her appearance some twenty minutes later, a dot on the driveway. I could see her from the window over the sink and hurried to get lunch on the table. But she was walking slowly, her eyes zinging every which way, and I was on my second cup of coffee by the time she finally tripped inside.

  “What’s up?” I called.

  She smiled at me warmly. “Oh, look at you.” She seemed t
o have trouble removing her shoes.

  “Success? Where’s the loot?” The basket she’d left with in the morning was MIA.

  She giggled. “I lost it.”

  Before you get ahead of yourself, bear in mind, this is Oola we’re talking about. Oola, who could and did lose the clothes off her back (that sounds slutty, she’d bray). Oola, who once lost her sheet music in the bathroom before a recital and had to play an entire sonata from memory. Oola, who lost not just her keys but the master key on the way to the locksmith to make her third copy (I’m incorrigible! she was often heard wailing). This was a word that would come back to me just four weeks later, when I slipped into a lilac undershirt that she’d forgotten, or abandoned, in her bottommost bedroom drawer. Bottom line: We never locked the cabin, but if she’d had a key, it would certainly be drifting in the Pacific by now. A basket of berries was nothing to sweat.

  She reached for the coffeepot, and it was then that I noticed the scrapes on her arms. She was covered with them, from wrist to shoulder, many fresh and beading anew. A particularly nasty gash near her elbow threatened to drip on the carpet. I sprang forward in my seat and pressed a napkin to it. She accepted the napkin and then gently pushed me away.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The berries resisted.” She was unfazed, dabbing her elbow while dressing her bread. She proceeded to make one of her infamous sandwiches: two pieces of pumpernickel spread with super-chunky peanut butter and three kosher pickles. She could make these bad boys with superhuman speed and, it turned out, the use of only one hand. “These are my battle wounds.”

  “Are you OK?” I asked after a beat, even though everyone knows that by asking this question you’ve already given up.

  “Of course,” she said. “I made it out on top, didn’t I?”

  I pulled back and considered this claim: There was dirt on her face and twigs in her hair, which shook as if caught in a breeze as she chewed. I was confronted by the obviousness of her lie but also by the obviousness of her ribs through her T-shirt, sweat-stained by whatever misadventure she’d had, and with no other option I nodded and put my hand on her waist and said, “True.” I knew it was a lie no bigger or smaller than the lover’s all-too-frequent bedroom assertion, I’m fine. A slight rustle. Keep going; I like it. I felt as if she’d returned from a long journey and I’d asked her how it was. After my two years of traveling abroad, my mother had picked me up from the airport and asked the same thing.

  “Amazing,” I’d said, and though she smiled at me, expecting more, that was the most I could manage.

  After a beat she had touched my cheek. “Gosh, you’re so tan. And in need of some protein. Your father and I are on a new diet. Liquids till two p.m. But don’t worry, I’ll make something nice tonight. Do you remember the Johnstons? Their cat has diabetes. Diabetes!” And just like that, life surged on. We were walking to the parking lot; we both commented on a toddler in a T-shirt that read BORN TO BE BAD. One always picks the present tense, if only to stay afloat.

  Across the table from me, Oola smiled chunkily, mouth full of pickle. She changed the topic; we drank coffee; she made gingerbread for dinner. They were supposed to be shaped like little genderless people with raisins for eyes but turned out bulbous and charred, like characters from Mad Max. “Don’t worry,” she said, decapitating a particularly squinty lad. “I’ll feed them to my birdie friend.”

  Remembering the blackberries, my skin went cold. By the time she joined me on the porch that evening, I had a list of questions prepared. I delivered them as nonchalantly as I could. I felt a bit stodgy, like the parent who finds his kid’s stash and in confronting Leif Jr. tiptoes around the more pressing questions (namely: Are you a methhead, AND DO YOU TURN TRICKS FOR DRUGS?). This comparison would have amused Oola, but I didn’t want to risk getting off topic. We fell with relief into our Q&A format.

  “So,” I began, keeping my voice light. I tried to pretend we were discussing a film that she’d seen and I hadn’t. What did these aliens look like?

  “If only I knew!” she laughed. “I like to picture them like antique lamps, with fringy shades.” She paused. “But if I think about it, they’re probably small. Small and light. Like dust mites or cotton fibers.”

  Free radicals? I ventured. How quickly I succumbed to a poetic mode.

  She nodded. “Or dust bunnies.”

  How long had they been watching us?

  “Watching me,” she specified. “Not long. But they’ve been making themselves known for quite a while.”

  How so?

  “They’re pranksters. They made the water salty. They’re making the bees die. They make the flowers freak.”

  The flowers?

  “You know, the pollen. Hay-fever hell.”

  This was another strange occurrence, lost in my files on decoded sleeptalk and long-lasting lipgloss. One morning in August, pollen filled the air. Sheets of yellow superseded the sun; I could see no farther than a foot in front of me. Fields of gold, we sang, bandannas over our noses. It was like a lyrical plague, the gilded sky evoking both biblical fables and music videos, and I was outwardly pleased, as it circumscribed O’s movements to the kitchen and living room. It was a wonderful, childish, putrid afternoon. Out of sheer boredom, she’d let me play doctor. I tasted the grit, tinged with gold, from under her nails. She’d taught me how to apply liquid eyeliner, in one perfect swoop, and I convinced her to burn me with her cigarette butt, right here, on the back of my leg. “Hardcore,” she giggled, rolling her eyes. “Encore,” I begged, eyes rolled back.

  Did she ever feel safe?

  She pursed her lips. “I don’t feel threatened by them. I just wish they’d give it a rest. Nine to five, that’s all I’m asking.”

  What about when she was sleeping?

  “That’s when they’re busiest. I haven’t slept for ages. Not more than an hour.”

  I was jolted out of my scholarly composure. “That’s not true! I’ve seen you.”

  She stared at me, brow furrowed, with an almost sympathetic gaze. The truth cracked like an egg over my head: I was mistaken. I pictured all the nights I’d kept vigil by the bed, tracking the roils and gasps of a second-rate actress. By turning away to light a cigarette, she spared me from saying it, the blunt and terrible fact that she was unreachable behind closed eyes. Feeling rattled, I presented my last question.

  What was it like?

  She exhaled grandly and considered. “Familiar. There is a feeling I get, when I sit very still at the bus stop, and realize that I’m being watched. I’m not sure by who, but it’s very distinct.” She turned her face from me and regarded the canyon. “I get this tingly sensation: the feeling of turning on, like a movie screen, revving to life. Sometimes I even feel it when no one’s around, when I’m sitting on the sofa at home. For some reason I picture a bird-watcher, crouched in the garden, using binoculars. I can sense the tiny adjustments of a lens. When I’m feeling morbid, it’s a sniper, and I swear, I can feel myself coming into focus, smack in his crosshairs. When I get up, I feel him move with me. The weird thing is, it’s not that unpleasant. It’s almost a comfort to feel the eyes follow you. You stop, they stop. You turn your head too quickly, and you can feel yourself blurring out, just for a second, before getting clear again, sharpening up. It’s easy to start hamming it up if you aren’t careful. You’ll drink your coffee and say AH! and smack your lips. You won’t be reading so much as striking the pose of one lost in a book. Sometimes I even hallucinate applause, gasps of surprise when I take off my shirt.” She took a long, sultry drag and exhaled specifically, as if to demonstrate what she did when alone.

  “When I was younger,” she went on, “it used to be that I could go see a movie to shake him off. His attention was diverted, and mine too, to the movie screen. It was incredibly effective; I’d go from Eating Popcorn, enjoying each Luscious Buttery Kernel, to actually just eating it, picking my teeth. Maybe he sat two seats down, or behind me. I never looked around, for fear of
catching his eye.” She chuckled. “When I was a kid, I would sneak into matinees and breathe on people’s necks. The theater would be mostly empty and the five or six people there spaced far apart, so it was easy to hide. I’d move from row to row on my hands and knees. I began to recognize faces, the regulars. Widows and loners and pervs, I suspect. There was a very old man in a feathered hat who was there every Thursday, without fail. What was odd was that, nine times out of ten, they never turned around. I know they felt it—I could see their shoulders tense, their hair prick up—but they just kept staring straight ahead. Not a single person ever told me off.” She sighed. “Where was I? Oh yes. There have been mornings where, I don’t know how else to say this, I feel like a Polaroid. You know how it starts out gray, and then the colors bleed in and the picture takes shape? That’s how I feel, like I’m not whole until noon. But it’s not me who’s watching the picture emerge.” She laughed drily. “And it isn’t you either.” She flicked her ash into the grass. “Now I finally realize who it was all along.”

  Who?

  “The aliens, Einstein. They’re breathing down my neck. That’s how I know it’s not hostile. I used to do it. It’s … neutral. They’re just a bit nosy, that’s all.”

  Before we go any further, I have to ask you: How weird is this really? Have you never seen a portrait blink? Have you not yet been stumped by that wrinkle in time?

  In my stoner youth and later days of aimless travel, I’d encounter it somewhat often. When I walked through the suburbs of Narnia, I’d find myself squinting at the pink and peaceful sky, certain that beyond this mucous lining were the stunted limbs and bloody buds of actual life. All that was solid was really a stocking! Back in my bedroom, it only took a few tokes before the fabric upon which my friends and my bed and my body were embroidered would change from heavy hotel-napkin linen to that airy fabric full of holes that I think is called, ironically or not, eyelet. Virgin’s fabric, a peep show for goosebumps, which blinks in the breeze yet sees all.