Sad Janet

by Lucie Britsch

  What they wanted was for me to be happy enough with the drugs that I’d recommend them to my friends. I forgot I was supposed to be grateful. And they forgot I had no friends.

  Aren’t you happy, Janet? the doctor asks. Didn’t you have a happy Christmas?

  Well, I didn’t stab anyone the whole time, or even want to, really, I want to say, but don’t. It was fine, I say, which is the wrong answer.

  Good! So you’re in for the regular pills, then? he says, getting out his prescription pad. They’ve really turned out a huge success.

  Where’d you hear that? I say. Not from me, I think.

  The whole world’s talking about it, he says. The internet, he means.

  I look skeptical.

  It’s changed people’s lives, he says.

  I’m not so sure. I’ve seen a few testimonials, new footage in the last week of TV ads—I never thought I’d be able to wear a Christmas sweater again, or, I don’t even scream when someone sings Wham! at me anymore!—but it’s clearly all paid for by Big Pharma. These are not real people. My superpower is seeing through bullshit. The problem is, people love bullshit, so I make it a practice to shut up.

  I don’t really read the news, I tell him.

  A lot of people like how it makes them feel, he says. They want to keep that feeling going. Don’t you want to keep going, Janet?

  I’m starting to think the pills are crack.

  I haven’t seen anyone from my meeting in the news, I say. They could be dead, for all I know. It’s like they’ve all mysteriously vanished, if they ever existed at all. Maybe Christmas is all just a collective hallucination. Maybe this is all part of it.

  Everyone in my meeting seems missing, Doctor, I say. Missing, presumed dead.

  Maybe they’re happy now, Janet, he says, but I don’t buy it. Just as likely they’re all kept out of sight, like missing limbs.

  They’ve moved on with their lives, he tells me.

  I do want to move on, but I don’t want to be told when.

  Before I leave, he tries one last time. His pen hovers over the prescription pad.

  It’s that easy, Janet, he says.

  For you, maybe, I say, and get up to leave.

  My door is always open, he says as the door shuts behind me.

  * * *

  I work New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, not giving myself much room to do or feel anything, only sleep and eat. I sleep through the world cheering in the New Year and I don’t feel like I missed anything.

  Happy New Year, I text Emma.

  New Year, she texts back, because she knows how I feel about happy.

  I feel desperately sad and weird that she only lives in my phone now, and heart. I wish I’d sniffed her more when I had her. Dogs know how important that is.

  25

  It’s the first week of the new year. Christmas is behind us, or ahead of us, maybe, if you want to mess with my head already.

  It feels like something we’re all trying to forget, pretending it didn’t happen, but the roads are still dusted with pine needles, with flecks of tinsel that act as ghosts. All that excess, all those decorations, no surface spared, vomitous glitter, mad-making light displays, garish sweaters whose owners think they’re hilarious. Grown-ups in onesies, for fuck’s sake. It made fools of us all, and for once I wasn’t the only one. We were possessed by something—the devil, maybe, but also Big Pharma. Which is the big thing no one’s talking about. In a few months someone might dare to bring it up, say, Wasn’t that weird or whatever, but right now everyone’s pretending it didn’t happen.

  * * *

  Everything goes back to normal quickly. December turns to January like the most disappointing caterpillar. My mother is in mourning for her lost daughter. Hi, I’m Janet, I want to say, I’m still here. I was always here.

  I fall right back into my old life. I wake up, check that there’s still no boyfriend, old or new. I go to work—my one constant, even when my job takes it all out of me and I start wondering if I might finally be over dogs, until a new one comes in and it’s never known kindness and it breaks my fucking heart and I try so damn hard not to think about how disgusting humans can be until I can get home and drink myself to sleep.

  At least I always remember to brush my teeth.

  Everyone is quietly disappointed in me. I tried, but the change they saw over the holidays didn’t stick. Debs is the only one who’s glad it’s all over. For now, anyway.

  Melissa hangs on as long as she can. She keeps saying how pretty the lights are in the office and what a shame it is to take them down. Even after the tree comes down she pretends to forget to take down the lights, and Debs lets it slide for a week before reminding her.

  I am fine. I am getting back on track. It’s not the track anyone wants me on, but it is mine. Sometimes just moving is okay, even if it’s not in any particular direction.

  * * *

  Then the cop shows up. The one I think Debs is secretly screwing.

  He always checks his hair before he gets out the car, as if that’s what we’re thinking about when we know he has a dick and a gun, two things we don’t approve of.

  I’m mopping the office floor because a dog got so excited that it was going home that it peed everywhere, which froze us into fearing that the family would say, Oh, we don’t want him now, because people are idiots, but they just thought it was cute and took off with him, and now here I am holding the mop.

  Debs is already there to greet the cop, but not in a welcoming way, waiting at the door and checking her lipstick, more in a Stay back, he who dare enter way. She never snarls, exactly, but she does do this thing with her eyes like, If you mess with me, I will rip your face off. She makes him nervous, but he still likes her.

  Melissa and I are openly eavesdropping now. I put my finger to my lips, and she almost explodes with joy that we’re doing something together. We can’t hear shit from where we are, though, so we just watch and imagine what they’re saying.

  Melissa thinks he’s asking her to marry him, because Melissa will never learn.

  I think she’s telling him to leave and never come back.

  We watch him drive off. Debs sees us standing there as she walks back up, and we’re sure she’s coming to shout at us, but she just says, Some lady died and they need us to go and get her dog.

  Spoiler alert: Sometimes people die. Even people with dogs die, and if they’re left too long, there’s always a risk a dog will eat its owner. Cats will just ignore you when you die, same as they did in life, but if you have a dog, you’d better plan ahead.

  When old people die, and they don’t have a family member who wants a dog, they bring it to us. The old ones get new homes quick, because old people like old dogs. Only sometimes the new owner dies and the dog comes back to us again, and it goes on like that until the dog dies. One day, just for kicks, I told Melissa that maybe the dogs were killing the old people, and now she doesn’t like dealing with them.

  This dog today won’t leave the apartment, though, and the cop didn’t want to cause it any trauma when it’s already had a really shitty week, so he told the family he knew some ladies. He always calls us ladies, which makes me vomit in my mouth a little.

  Melissa wants to go and get the dog, but Debs says I have to do it. She hands me the keys and the address. Suddenly I start worrying that it’s a setup, that when I get there he’ll be waiting in a robe, in candlelight, and it’ll put me off men more than I already am.

  Clearly I’ve watched too much trash TV.

  * * *

  I try not to think about it as I pull up at the apartment. I don’t need any more weirdness in my life. I’m just now relaxing back in to my usual low-grade discomfort.

  When I open the door, I expect to find a gross old-lady apartment, like from Hoarders, but it’s not. This woman wasn’t old, for one thing. From the picture
s on her fridge she looks in her thirties, maybe.

  This is the part in the movie where you find out it’s me and I’ve been dead all along, but it’s not me and I’m not dead, I don’t think.

  The apartment is really fancy. Nothing is from IKEA. I feel underdressed, even though technically I’m overdressed in my jeans and two sweatshirts and giant coat.

  The woman is dead, but I’m still jealous of her for all the nice things she has—including her face, even in death probably. The dog is this little gray furball, a Pomeranian, I think. It’s not yappy, though. It’s just sitting there on the rug—in the spot where they found her body, I’m guessing—looking at me like, What took you so long? Hey, I say, and give it a ruffle. I’m sorry, buddy, I say. The dog doesn’t show any signs of aggression, so I figure this is going to be easy, I’ll just have a quick look around, then pick the dog up and get out of here. I don’t know how long someone has to be dead before they’re allowed to haunt a place, but I don’t want to hang around and find out.

  There’s a Christmas tree in the living room. There’s no better excuse for leaving the decorations up than dying. It’s a perfect tree, expensive-looking, the kind you see in magazines and store windows. Classy, my mother would say. Not like the kind I was used to, that looks like someone just threw shit at it. There’s a box of fancy chocolates open on the coffee table and I close it because dogs aren’t supposed to have chocolate, but the dog doesn’t seem to be frothing at the mouth or anything. It was probably too bummed out to think about candy.

  The dog hardly seems to register that I’m there. It lets me pet it, but it’s not begging to be picked up or fed or let out. It just sits there. For all I know that’s just what this dog is like. It’s what they call aloof, if you’re a dog or a supermodel. I couldn’t be aloof if I tried. A boy said I was mysterious once, but it was just because I wouldn’t tell him if I was underage.

  I look around the apartment. I was wrong, it is IKEA, but it’s the good stuff. And it’s clean. She must have had a cleaner. She probably also had a real job, one that didn’t involve dog shit. I wonder if she even picked up her own dog’s shit.

  I’m relieved to see she has books on a shelf, but I wonder if they’re show books, books to make her look smart but not nerdy, cultured but not a bore. I run my finger over them all. I finger every book I come in contact with—I’m perverted that way. I bet she has a book on her nightstand because she wants to read but never gets around to it. Something with the word girl in the title, something some magazine said was the book to read.

  I go to the kitchen and find the dog food and put out a fresh bowl, but the dog isn’t interested. I’m not surprised; dog food is vile.

  I take a closer look at the photos of the dead girl on the fridge. She was maybe five years older than me, but I never know how old people are—the adult acne I have on my chin keeps me feeling youthful. She had good teeth, as in they’re all still there. In one photo she’s kissing some guy up a mountain. She was one of those girls, then, girls who kiss boys up mountains. She’d probably gone kayaking too or something else awful.

  I open up the fridge. Looking in people’s fridges is important. I’ve never been in someone’s house and not looked. My conclusion is always the same: people are disturbing. There isn’t much here to report. Some hummus. Some celery. One depressing yogurt, the kind that helps you poop. Diet Coke. Nothing that a Janet would eat. No large pizza I could wear as a sheet mask.

  In the freezer, I find a liter of vodka. I don’t just neck it straight from the bottle—this is a classy establishment, remember—but I find myself a glass and pour myself one. I’m trying to be respectful. She would have wanted me to have a drink for her, I’m sure, the dead girl. Okay, so it isn’t for her, technically, it’s for me, but I am doing her a favor, after all, or at least doing one for her dog.

  Before I even get to the bedroom, I know that this is the type of girl who owns multiple dresses and has regular hair appointments and manicures. I wore a dress once. It was traumatic for everyone. A peek in her closet confirms it: full of handbags, not backpacks. If I started carrying a handbag, I’d feel like I was having an out-of-body experience, like my hands weren’t my own anymore, then my arms, and soon my whole body would be gone. I imagine the same would happen if I ever got behind a pram.

  I was right, there is a book on her nightstand. Marlena. Which is a girl in the title, after all. There’s a bottle of Xanax by the bed and I think, yawn. If only instead of pills we could go back to taking spoons of magic. I bet the hipsters would like that. I don’t look in her drawers because I made that mistake once before, at a boy’s house, and I can never unsee his mother’s monstrous 1980s vibrator. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat: If I don’t look, this dead girl may or may not have been able to get herself some pleasure in life.

  On the dresser, I spot a photo of her as a child, sitting on Santa’s knee. I know it’s her from her teeth. And then my vodka-splashed brain does a funny thing: The photo makes me think of Vyla Shirk. The first Janet.

  It’s not that she looked like Vyla. I have no idea what Vyla looks like. It’s just that this could have been Vyla’s life. Nice dog, spotless apartment, go up the mountain, leave the pharma mogul, sit right here on Santa’s lap. I wonder if she always had a thing for Santa.

  What if that’s why she ran off with the mall Santa?

  What if it wasn’t that the pill made her horny after all?

  Debs texts me, Where the fuck are you?

  This was supposed to be a quick job—get dog, get out. I don’t know what to tell her, so I don’t reply. I can’t say, Sorry, but I’m about to have a breakdown, because I’m only fifty percent certain that’s what’s happening.

  I head back to the kitchen, pour myself another vodka, then sit myself down in the living room to stare at the perfect Christmas tree. My mind is spinning. My eyes light on a pile of Christmas CDs by the stereo, on the tree, on the Santa photo. And in a swirl of reds and greens and vodka, I decide: this dead girl was definitely Vyla.

  Poor, sad Vyla.

  After the pharma boss got tired of her, I decide, Vyla must have come here and tried to start over, but it was too hard. She was already taking all the pills people take to keep going, only she couldn’t keep going, and then somehow it was Christmas again and it all came rushing back to her: how sad she was, and how this man had wanted to fix her but he hadn’t, he had just broken her more.

  The first version of the pill made people horny for Santa, you see, I say to the dog, who I’m now lying next to on the rug. Your mum, Vyla, got horny for a mall Santa. He’s your dad, I guess. So she ran away with him, or so the story goes.

  The dog just looks at me like, Humans are a fucking mess.

  Then Vyla came off the pills, I tell the dog, and she wasn’t horny for him anymore. Poor Santa, I say. I wonder if he murdered her.

  I get nothing from the dog. I was only joking, I say, but still not a sound. Tough crowd, I say. I hope she wasn’t murdered, but it makes a juicier story than just saying she died of sad, though, right? Which kind of looks like what happened, don’t you think?

  The dog does not think. Instead it farts, which I guess is something. I fart back in reply. It’s my attempt at bonding. I get my phone and show him this website I found for people with a Santa fetish. The dog sniffs and turns its nose up, which is the correct response.

  So Vyla still wanted to be horny for him, the mall Santa, I tell the dog. She’d already told her family he was the one. Ignore the Santa outfit, she said, I’ll make him shave for the wedding. Because the pills were making her obsess over weddings and babies and shit. Only when she came off them did she realize it was the pills talking—but she didn’t want to look stupid, so she started taking other pills to make up for them, and Santa was all for it as long as she was still horny.

  It sounds like every relationship, if I’m honest. You think it’s going to be one w
ay, then it’s not, but you’re invested now, so you do crazy shit to hold it together.

  But then Vyla spiraled out on all those pills, and Santa decided he didn’t like her anymore, and then he was offered a real job with normal clothes and he left. Poor Vyla even tried going back to the man who made her the Christmas pill, but he wouldn’t take her.

  It was sad for everyone, I say, stroking the dog’s ears.

  Which is what brings me here, I say, clambering to my feet, pouring myself another vodka, and resuming my snoop of the dead girl’s apartment. All the nice stuff she had—the apartment, the furniture, the dog—it looks like she was trying to carve out a little space in the universe for herself, after all that mess. And then she crawled into it and died.

  And then it hits me: Vyla is dead. She might have been the only person in the world who could understand me, and now she’s dead. And here I am, somehow, in her apartment. It feels like some bullshit Ghost of Christmas Future moment. Like I’m being shown what will become of me. But I’m not sure any of it really makes sense. All I know is that I’m very drunk, and I’m grieving some girl I’ve never met. Two girls, maybe. Three, if you count me.

  If poor, dead Vyla is my Christmas Future, the dog is my Christmas Present, and I’m my own Christmas Past, because I’ve been haunting the shit out of myself for years. This makes me laugh out loud, but still the dog doesn’t care.

  I look in Vyla’s closet, and I find those dresses I knew she had, the ones I won’t wear. I try one on over my jeans and sweater, but I don’t look in the mirror. This isn’t about how I look, never was. The world would be a better place without mirrors. I am very drunk, but dumb TV party girls have no monopoly on being drunk, you know. At least I’m not whooping or wearing some ridiculous outfit. Okay, so I am wearing a dead girl’s dress, but I’m not flashing my tits at anyone.