Dirty

by Megan Hart

  Dan hesitated behind me, not making the quick, one-kneed motion that Catholics have perfected before sliding into the pew beside me. I heard Mrs. Cooper, my mother’s neighbor, murmur something to her husband Fred in the pew behind us, but I didn’t turn around to look at her. Mrs. Cooper used to bake me cookies and had taught me how to crochet. I hadn’t seen her in at least ten years.

  My mother grabbed my arm the moment I sat down and clung to me as though she were hanging over an abyss and I the only rope that could save her. Considering I’d often imagined my mother as hanging from a rope over an abyss, the irony of her sudden dependence on me wasn’t lost, but rather made me smile in an entirely inappropriate way I hid behind my hanky.

  She ignored Dan, and Mass was not the time for introductions. Once more I was transported. I’d forgotten how the familiar words used to soothe me, or how the bars of colored light coming in through the stained-glass windows always added up to numbers with perfect square roots. I’d forgotten the ebb and flow of religion and how it could make you mindless, and that wasn’t necessarily bad. My head might have forgotten how to pray, but my heart had not. I murmured the words, counting the beads of my rosary. It was learning one could pray using numbers that had first convinced me everyone must have never-ending calculations in their heads. I’d been astounded almost nobody else did.

  I was aware of Dan beside me, but he sat quietly without saying much of anything. He didn’t hold my hand, nor did he reach for a prayer book. He watched with interest on his face, like he’d never been to a Mass before, his eyes following the priest’s back-and-forth meandering around the altar as though he were viewing a particularly interesting tennis match. At the waving of the incense burner, he let out one stifled sneeze.

  I looked at him. We both smiled. I gave him my handkerchief. After that, he held my hand even though my mother sniffed and muttered and stepped up her wailing on my other side.

  My father was one of seven children and the first to die, so there was much commentary given about him before the Mass had ended and we could “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” I couldn’t avoid being part of the line of mourners at the door, shaking hands and accepting the sympathies of those who filed by us. Dan kept to my side, gamely taking hugs and shaking hands and murmuring thanks to those who must have assumed he had a right to be there. I was glad to have him at my side, a buoy helping me keep above the water my mother would have dragged me under. She kept her glare mostly hidden beneath the veil of her hat or her gigantic handkerchief, but every so often in a lull between mourners she’d turn and shoot me with venom, always adding an extra dose for Dan, who either didn’t notice or was calmly unconcerned.

  By the time the last person had left the church and headed to cars for the procession to the cemetery, my feet and back ached, and my face hurt from trying to smile and look woeful at the same time. My head hurt, too, from tension that radiated from my skull down the back of my neck and knotted between my shoulder blades.

  “I’ve rented us a car,” my mother said stiffly. “Since I knew I couldn’t expect you to drive.”

  “I’ll be happy to help you to it, Mrs. Kavanagh.” They were the first words Dan had spoken to my mother, and I tensed, waiting for her to snap his head off.

  Ah, but she was the queen of many things, the art of lulling her prey into a state of false security only one of them. “Thank you, Mr….?”

  “Stewart.”

  “Mr. Stewart,” she said with an imperious lift of her chin to indicate the disgrace of having to even ask.

  The car she’d hired was big, black and ostentatious, but while I might have rolled my eyes another time, I was glad for her pretensions this time. It meant there was plenty of room for the three of us. There would have been room, even, for two more…but those two weren’t here.

  “So, Mr. Stewart,” said my mother without preamble. “What did you think of the Mass?”

  “It was very nice.” Dan’s answer was diplomatic.

  “I noticed you didn’t pray along,” my mother continued.

  I groaned. “Mother, for God’s sake—”

  “I’ll thank you,” she said sharply, rapping me on the knee with her knuckles, “to watch your mouth.”

  Precious advice from a woman who had once stood in the doorway of my room and told me I was a no-account whore whose lying tongue would rot and sprout maggots on my way to Hell. I glared at her, but Dan seemed unfazed.

  “Well, no. I’m not Catholic. I didn’t think it would be appropriate. I was there to support Elle.”

  She sniffed, sitting back against the expensive leather seat. “What are you, Lutheran? Methodist? Don’t tell me you’re one of those Evangelicals.”

  “No.” Dan smiled with a small shake of his head. “I’m Jewish, actually.”

  For once my mother seemed to have nothing to say. My own jaw dropped, though I recovered quickly. He looked at us both with a hint of amusement in his shining eyes.

  “I see,” my mother said, though I was sure she didn’t. I was also sure she’d never met a Jew in her entire life. I was surprised she didn’t ask him to part his hair and look for the horns.

  Dan met my eyes, his mouth quirked in a tiny smile. He gave a small shrug, which I returned. The revelation kept my mother quiet until we got to the cemetery. Not as many people came to the graveside service, which was fine with me. Fewer hands to shake. Fewer hugs to suffer.

  We got out of the expensive hired car on a small hill of grass, and my stomach fell away. This time I was the one hanging over the abyss, and Dan was my rope. While my mother marched her completely competent self down the small gravel path toward the pile of dirt and open grave that awaited her approval, I gripped Dan’s hand so hard my nails gouged his skin. I had to turn away from the sight.

  “Roses,” I said through gritted teeth.

  He looked down the hill and put himself between me and the sight. “Doesn’t she know you’re allergic?”

  I had forgotten I’d told him that lie, because really, what’s one amongst so many?

  “She knows.”

  He put his hands on my upper arms, rubbing lightly. “Then we won’t go down there.”

  “I have to go down there, it’s my father’s service, she’ll be expecting me…”

  I was babbling and knew it but couldn’t seem to stop. Dan shushed me, his hands stilling. I looked up at him.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Elle.”

  I sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. Sunshine streaked his face, showing his freckles and the lines around his eyes. In bright light like this I saw the gold flecks in the blue-green irises.

  “We can listen from up here,” he told me. “You don’t have to go down there if you don’t want to.”

  He was right, but what’s more, wouldn’t budge. I babbled some more about duty, respect, honor, and expectations, and he listened to all of it but did not step aside to let me move toward the service that had begun without me.

  “You don’t have to go down there,” he insisted. His hand came up to smooth my hair. “It’s all right.”

  It was not all right. None of it was. It was wrong, all of it, and I knew I’d pay the price for my cowardice if not then, then later. I always did.

  My family is large and boisterous, happy for the most part and, for the most part, drunks. Alcohol is the thread that ties them all together, the jolly Irish aunts and uncles from my father’s side and my mother’s sentimental Italian relatives. I have all four living grandparents and a slew of cousins, many of whom are now married and starting families of their own. I hadn’t seen any of them in years, though a lot of them still lived close to the town in which my mother still lived. They probably saw more of her than I did, spent more time in her house with its never-changing decor and my father in his chair in the corner of the den.The chair was empty now and looking forlorn, and though there were more asses than seats to put them in, nobody sat in it.

  “Like some sort o
f shrine,” I muttered from my spot by the wall. I had indeed been drinking, but only one glass of wine. A drink at which my father’s family would scoff and my mother’s sing odes. “This whole house is a fucking shrine.”

  Dan had been welcomed in with open arms by everyone but my mother, who was too distracted in her role as Grieving Widow to make much of a fuss. He’d shaken hands and suffered through good-natured ribbing with an aplomb I envied. He’d fetched and carried drinks and plates of food for the old ladies, flirting with such chivalry he set them all to tittering.

  He leaned against the wall next to me. “Your family seems nice.”

  I didn’t answer him right away, sipping wine and letting it fill my mouth before swallowing. “Most families do, don’t they?”

  He didn’t have much to say to that. He looked around. My mother hadn’t changed much since I’d lived there. Her frenzy for having the latest and the best was reflected in her appearance less than the house’s. The television, a big screen that dwarfed the room, must have been my father’s idea.

  My cousin Janet appeared in front of us, her face and form rounder than I’d seen her last but the infant in her arms the clear reason for it. She smiled at Dan and reached to give me a one-armed hug that didn’t jostle the baby. I admired her skill and supposed new mothers got used to doing things that didn’t wake their babies.

  “Ella,” she said warmly. “It’s so good to see you. How…how have you been?”

  “Good. You’re looking good. Congratulations.” I peeked down at the sleeping baby. “I got your announcement.”

  “We got your gift,” she said. “It was lovely. You made it yourself?”

  I glanced at Dan and my cheeks heated at his look of interest. “Yes.”

  “It’s beautiful.” She turned to Dan. “She knitted us the most gorgeous baby blanket. Hi. I’m Janet.”

  I made a quick introduction. “I was glad to do it.”

  “We’d hoped to see you at the baptism,” she said. “Your mother said you were out of town.”

  “Oh…yeah. I travel a lot.” Another lie.

  She nodded sympathetically. “Well, don’t be a stranger. You know where we live.”

  She looked across the room at Sean, her husband, who had graduated from high school with me. “We’d love to see you. And you, Dan,” she added. “Any friend of Ella’s is a friend of ours.”

  The beauty of Janet’s words was that she meant them. She gave me another hug, this time one that woke her sleeping angel, and with a murmured apology about breast-feeding and diapers, she moved off through the crowd.

  More family and friends came through, most of them pausing to talk to me and tell me how good it was to see me. I nodded and smiled at all of them, because I did appreciate their sentiments. I did. It wasn’t their fault I had run away and didn’t want to look back.

  “Why,” Dan asked after another round of relatives had faded for the moment, “do they call you Ella?”

  My third glass of wine had left me with flushed cheeks and a pleasant tipsiness I didn’t want to become full-blown intoxication. “It’s my name.”

  Another cousin interrupted us. By the time she was done reminding me I owed her a phone call, my bladder had begun to twinge. The small powder room off the kitchen had seen a steady stream of action, and I’d just seen Uncle Larry heading into it. I couldn’t wait for Uncle Larry. That left the bathroom upstairs.

  “I’ll come with you,” Dan said when I told him where I was going. “I need to go, too.”

  We wove through the throng, most of them well on their way to being soused on my father’s gin. I put my foot to the bottom of the stairs, looking up. I hadn’t been up there since leaving home, but my hand found the light switch with unerring ease, proving once again the body remembers what the mind tries to refuse.

  Sixteen stairs. I’d counted them too many times to forget that. What once had been white shag now was bare, polished wood with a stapled runner of beige and gold flowers running up the center. It’s nearly impossible to get blood out of white shag carpet.

  “You all right?” Dan said from behind me.

  “Fine.” I took a step with him close behind.

  Faces followed us up the stairs. My mother had hung pictures in matching wooden frames, each in its place the same precise distance from the next. One was askew, possibly knocked by a stray elbow as people passed each other on the narrow stairs, and I reached a finger to straighten it.

  “Is that you?”

  The gap-toothed smile and ponytails were mine, indeed. “Yes.”

  “You were a cutie.”

  I looked at him with a raise of my eyebrow. “Sure. If you like kids who look like monkeys.”

  Dan laughed. “You didn’t look like a monkey, Elle.”

  I’d have been more than happy to keep moving, but Dan studied all the photos. Elementary school pictures. Photos of my mother and father in bad 1970s haircuts and polyester fashions, grinning with an infant in front of them. Sports teams with the individual photo set off to one side. She had so many pictures hung it seemed impossible that any could be missing, but I knew they were. She’d taken them down, every hint or reminder she’d had two sons, not just the perfect one. It was as though Chad had never existed, and I was an afterthought, my smile captured behind glass as though to prove a point and not because of maternal pride.

  Dan was smart. It didn’t take him more than a moment or two to scan the wall of photos and see there were few of me and many of another. His brow furrowed in concentration as he looked at frames filled with the same smile. The one that did not belong to me.

  At the top of the stairs was the final set of photos. A triptych, a threefold frame. The first held a picture of Andrew, grin broad, skin tanned, eyes twinkling. The second slot was a photo of me, a girl with long dark hair and puffy cheeks, skin flawed with pimples. No smile. The third slot was empty.

  “Elle.” Dan looked from the frame to one a bit farther down in which I held up a fish for the camera, my head tipped back with laughter. There had been only three years difference in time between the pictures but a lifetime had happened. “Is this you, too?”

  “Yes,” I answered and kept moving to the hallway above.

  He caught up to me, followed me down the hall. His hand caught and turned me gently. “What happened?”

  “I stopped smiling” came my answer. “And nobody asked me why.”

  We stood like that for one of those eternal moments that last seconds but seem like hours. A shadow passed across his gaze. I put my hand on the doorknob directly behind me, pushed open the door, stepped inside.

  “Want to see my old room?” The words came out sounding like a challenge rather than an invitation.

  “Sure.”

  He followed me inside. Emotions cascaded over his expression as he looked around the space that had been left untouched for ten years. I saw interest, then awareness and discomfort, but it was the flash of pity that turned my heart hard.

  “Roses,” Dan said.

  “Yes. Roses.”

  I’d slept in a room full of roses. Roses on the curtains, the wallpaper, the bedspread, the pillows. Big red roses like something from a fairy tale, only not even the thorns had been enough to keep the monsters from this room.

  “There used to be a rug, too,” I said carelessly, pointing at the bare wood. “But it got stained. I guess she threw it away.”

  “Elle…”

  “You can call me Ella.” My voice was like stones tossed against a windowpane. One thrown too hard could break the glass. “They all do. Or Elspeth. It’s my real name.”

  “It’s pretty,” he said, moving closer as though he meant to hug me, but I stepped away. “I’ll call you whatever you want.”

  He looked around the room at my collection of dolls and model horses, set high on their shelves and yet free of dust. My desk. My closet, where he might find my ballet slippers and cast-off crown if he opened the door.

  He didn’t open the door. �
��What happened to him? The boy in the pictures?”

  I think he already knew, but wanted to hear my answer. Maybe he hoped it would be different. Maybe he hoped I’d lie. And maybe I should have, except that I was so weary of lying. Tired of hiding behind a wall of thorns.

  “I told you what happened to him already,” I said, voice flat and sounding very far away. “He slit his wrists and bled to death while I watched from the doorway. He’s dead.”

  Chapter 18

  I didn’t wait for his reaction. By that time, my bladder threatened to explode and I thought I might also puke, so I pushed past him and locked myself in the bathroom where I peed for what seemed forever and held myself from vomiting by reciting the multiplication tables over and over. Once that bathroom had been white, but apparently blood is also impossible to get out of towels and curtains. My mother had changed her color scheme to dark blue with yellow accents. Wallpaper decorated with sailing ships had replaced the stenciled pansies that had once danced along the white-painted walls. I touched the merry little boats, counting them. If I peeled it away, would I find the blood still beneath? Or had she tried to bleach it first?

  “Elle?” The doorknob rattled. “Let me in. Please?”I took a deep breath. “Dan, please go away.”

  Silence. I washed my hands, taking time to scrub each individual finger and rinse them, over and over. I went to the door. “Dan?” I knew he was still there, but I asked, anyway. He didn’t jiggle the knob. I imagined him standing on the opposite side of the door, and I flattened a palm against the wood like maybe I could touch him through it. I pressed my forehead to it, my eyes closed.