Mitch didn’t move. She dragged her fingers through his hair, but felt no oily patches.
“Please look at me.” Mitch half-opened his eyes. “Where did they anoint you with the oil?”
“Not sure,” he said. “Forehead maybe?”
“Didn’t you feel it?”
“I took a Valium. I’ve been taking them for a while.”
It had all been confiscated: the DEA had gone through every drawer. “Where’d you get Valium?” Mitch closed his eyes and rolled over.
Diane pulled him back and he covered his face with his hands. “Ellie,” he said. “It’s not her fault—she has no idea what they are.”
The room tilted; Diane’s head prickled as if tiny shards of glass were lodged in her brain.
She found Ellie lying on her bed, reading a book. Ellie glanced up, then shrank back against her pillow.
Diane felt short of breath and placed a hand on the doorframe. “Ellie.” Her voice had plunged an octave. “Show me where those pills are.”
Ellie’s eyes widened. Still holding the book, she got up and went to her dresser. She laid the book down, opened one of the drawers, and pulled out a small felt purse. Mitch had brought it home for her after one of his conferences. It was purple, with iridescent sequined flowers stitched across the front. Ellie took it to church every Sunday. Diane always looked inside to make sure Ellie had a dollar bill to put in the collection plate.
She opened the snap and rooted around: a lip gloss with no lid, loose change, a tiny notebook, three broken crayons.
“You have to open the zipper,” Ellie said. She got back on the bed.
Diane saw a tiny zipper on the outside of the purse, just underneath a large daisy. How had she never noticed it before? And there they were: a couple of dozen small round pills, scored across their middles. Most were blue; a few were yellow and white. They could have been Smarties, pastel Skittles, Easter-themed M&M’s. “When did Daddy give you these?”
“They’re vitamins to help his back get better.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We were going to surprise you. When he got better.”
Diane bent down so they were eye-to-eye. “Ellie, it’s very important for you to tell me something. Did you ever eat any of these?”
“Daddy said promise not to.”
Diane stood up. “When do you give them to Daddy?”
“Just sometimes. When he’s watching TV.”
“What about today? When did you go to him?”
“When you were outside. Me and Kyle just wanted to see him.”
“Kyle was with you? Does Kyle know about the pills?”
“It was only me and Daddy’s secret.”
“How many pills did you give him, Ellie? When you went in?”
“Just a blue one.”
Diane sat on the bed next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Do you know why Daddy takes these?”
“Because he wants his back to get better. And you won’t let him take his medicine.”
“He takes them because he’s sick somewhere in his brain,” Diane said. “He’s not allowed to be a doctor anymore.”
Ellie got off the bed and backed away from her. “He just has a bad back. You even said so.” Her chin was shaking. “I don’t care if he’s a doctor. He’s still Daddy, and you won’t even let us see him.”
All the forced smiles, the playdates and TV programs to keep them busy, the chipper half-truths. “I didn’t want to upset you and Kyle,” she said. “But you have to believe me.”
“I believe Daddy.” She turned and ran out the door.
Diane turned the purse over and let the pills fall into her palm. She selected a yellow tablet and placed it on her tongue. Its sweet coating turned slick in her mouth, but once the surface melted away it tasted like burnt chalk. She spit it out into her hand.
As she walked toward their bedroom, she felt as if her body were stationary, the rooms and hallways sliding past. The door was open, the room filled with light, and she saw her husband and children, all on the bed together. Ellie was curled into the arc of Mitch’s chest and legs; his chin rested against the top of her head. Kyle lay on his side behind them, one small arm flung over Mitch’s waist. Mitch said something into Ellie’s ear and she laughed, not her girlish giggle but deeper. A woman’s laugh.
Diane felt something, like a hand, pressing on the top of her head, as if forcing her down to a posture of humility. She sank to her knees in the doorway. “I love you,” she whispered, not to any one of them in particular, but to all of them: a triptych, a sacred tableau. She would do anything to save them.
Kyle sat up. “Mom,” he said. “Come here.”
Yes, she thought. That’s it. I need to get onto the bed. But something was pressing her lower, onto her face. She fought for a moment against her rising panic, then let herself sink. She heard Kyle say something else but she couldn’t make it out. She tried to lift her head, but her face pressed into the carpet. She would do anything to save them; there was nothing she could do to save herself.
Imperfections
I want you to meet my wife, he said. We need to tether this—whatever this is—to the space-time continuum.
I saw their dog first, a yellow Lab mince-stepping from the hatchback, each paw shaking on the upstep, old. His wife emerged from the driver’s side and kicked off her flip-flops. He doesn’t do well on long drives, she said, smiling, but when I reached out to shake her hand she was already turning back to the car, gathering trash. I scratched the dog’s head while he peed on the curb.
The man looked at me. I was going to sign your copy, he said, so I invited him and his wife to come up to the now-empty hotel room, where one of his lithographs was packed in my bag. His wife said, I’d better stay with Hank. And then I said the important thing, the thing I hope he remembers: Oh, then I’ll just go grab it.
No, he said. I’ll come up with you, and barely out of her sight the man put his arm around my waist, whispered, You’re perfect, took my hand, and pulled me upstairs where my luggage sat just inside the door; and what I want to say, here, is that he threw me onto the mattress, but the truth is I sat stiffly on its edge while he signed the print, then handed it to me. All the things I can’t say, he’d written, and then he was—not cupping, not cradling, but palming my cheeks, hands flat, like he was about to pray.
I closed my eyes. After seventeen years of marriage, I thought, someone else is going to—but he kissed my forehead, a long press, one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi, until I said, too loud, Go be with your wife, because it was the only thing to say, and his lips were that close, and somewhere a voice said Joseph and Potiphar’s wife—flee.
The kiss made my right eye burn. After he left I flushed it with cold water but the burning grew unbearable, so that during the two-hour shuttle ride to the airport I had to keep both eyes closed. Like you put a seal on my forehead, I wrote to him later, and hot wax dripped down into my eye. I kept rubbing it, kept pressing my face hard into the backseat window, my headphones on, listening to the playlist he’d made for me the night before while we sat on his bed with our laptops open and saw pictures of his wife, their trip to Prague, Hank jumping off a diving board; pictures of my husband’s birthday, the boys spray-painting the number 40 on the garage door, the girls giving him the “40 Reasons We Love You” poster they’d made. What we were saying without saying it: Here’s why this can’t happen—what we would keep saying during the following months of Just one last breath before we hang up, let me hear you say my name, your name, any name, won’t you please send me a picture of your foot, breast, ear, some part of you so long as it’s you; and when I said, Well, but there are freckles, plus this funky trilobite mole just above my navel, he said—another thing I hope he remembers—But it’s your imperfections I want to
fuck.
You Look Like Jesus
I didn’t keep the photographs he sent. At the time, deleting them felt like a way to esteem my husband.
I remember the important ones. A cell phone picture he took during a long run: waist-up, eyes squinting, face shining with sweat. Rows of white tombstones behind.
Here I am, his text said. Please call.
You’re a beautiful man, I said when he answered.
You have no idea how much I needed to hear that, he said.
Another one: he was sitting on the floor, stretching, legs long in front of him, feet bare.
People tell me I have nice feet, he said.
I looked, zoomed in, looked again.
They’re shaped like mine, I said.
Show me, he said.
I took my shoes off and angled the computer down, clicked the red camera.
That confirms it, he said. We’re related. From the same soul-cluster.
I want to show you more, I said.
He was silent. Then: So far, we haven’t done anything we couldn’t tell our spouses about.
I know, I said.
Ten seconds, he said. I’ll look for ten seconds and delete.
I took my laptop into the bedroom and locked the door, undressed and got up on the bed, lying on my side. The sheer curtains over the window behind me gave my body—cropped neck to mid-thigh on the screen—a backlit luminosity. Just before I took the picture, I slid one hand down, between my closed legs, so that my upper arm pressed my breasts together, my hand covering the bit of blond-brown hair.
I sent the picture to my husband first. New wallpaper, I wrote in the subject line. Then I called the other man. I heard the e-mail ding on his end, the sharp intake of his breath.
It’s the curve of your hip, he said. The concavity of your navel. You’re thin, but cut like a woman.
Thank you, I said, disappointed that he didn’t say anything about my breasts.
Oh, I could go on—the photo where he was holding a football with some famous player’s signature but all I could look at were his fingers, long and square, imagine what they would feel like inside me, on the upsweep; his nephews at Central Park Zoo, their windblown scarves, both of them fair-haired like their uncle; the scanned image of a page from his elementary handwriting workbook, The angels worship Jesus written over and over, parochial school cursive loosening down the page.
And the one I never told my husband about.
What did I look like to you, before we met? he asked me on the phone. The night of the opening, when I kept staring?
Focused, I said. Like you had a question and knew I had the answer.
Check your e-mail, he said.
He’d taken a picture of himself at that very moment: leaning way back in his office chair, reclined almost flat, clothes off, eyes closed. One hand was holding the phone to his ear, the other arm flung out to the side. His mouth was open slightly, his brow furrowed as if in pain. An erection arched rose-colored against his navel.
And what do I look like to you now, he said.
Better to Lose an Eye
The envelope Lindsey pulled from the mailbox was an oversized yellow square. It was addressed, in handwritten calligraphy: Lindsey Montgomery (and Parents). Standing in the driveway, the hot gravel biting her bare feet, Lindsey tore it open. The card inside was a giant sun with words printed over its smiling mouth. Lindsey hopped from foot to foot while she read.
Back-to-School Party!
Saturday, August 12, 5–8 p.m.
Madeline Seyler’s house (call for directions)
Wear your swimsuit and bring a towel
RSVP 602-239-7646
Parents welcome to attend!
Lindsey tore the invitation and envelope into tiny squares, then buried the pieces beneath an egg carton in the outside trash can. She went inside and, using the polite language Nona taught her, left a message on the Seylers’ voice mail. Thank you for the kind invitation. We will be unable to attend.
The next day Mrs. Seyler called. When Lindsey answered, she asked to speak to Lindsey’s grandmother. Lindsey brought the phone to Nona.
Nona listened. She said, “No, I hadn’t heard.” She said, “Thank you, we will,” and put the phone down.
She looked at Lindsey. “Why didn’t you tell me about the pool party?”
“I told Mama,” Lindsey lied, looking at her mother, who was asleep in her wheelchair in front of the TV. She was wearing an orange skullcap pulled low over her ears. Lindsey could hear the heavy, low rasp of her breathing.
“Well, we’re going,” Nona said. “All three of us.”
They drove to the party in the new van. Nona liked driving it. She said the van was a smooth ride and it was a blessing never to have to worry about parking. Next to Nona, Lindsey’s mother sat in her wheelchair, which locked into place with clamps built into the van’s floor. She was wearing her red cowboy hat.
In the backseat, Lindsey sat with legs crossed underneath her terry-cloth cover-up. Her stomach felt like it might take off. None of the other kids had seen Mama the way she was now: the swath of scar and hollow dent at the base of her neck, the round bag of urine, the inward sag of her feet in their hot-pink Converse high-tops. Lindsey knew that before the party was over she’d have to say the words tracheotomy and quadriplegic. She’d have to say things like “Nona dresses her,” “It goes into her bladder bag,” “shot in the throat.” And she’d have to say the thing she hated more than anything else to say: “She’ll always be that way.”
Madeline’s house was white stucco with orange tiles on the roof and giant palm trees in pots on either side of the front door. Nona parked the van in the driveway and Lindsey stepped out onto the asphalt.
“Go on in and find Mrs. Seyler,” Nona said, handing her a tray with carrot and celery sticks arranged in a circle. “Make sure she knows we brought this.” Good—now she wouldn’t have to walk into the backyard alongside Mama. Lindsey turned toward the side gate, onto which someone had taped a sign: Arcadia Christian School 4th graders—Come On In! She balanced the tray so the ranch dip in the center didn’t spill over.
But Mama, her chair lowering from the van onto the driveway, said, “Give the tray to me.”
Lindsey was startled by the choke in her own throat. These little bullet-bursts of rage toward her mother always startled her and she hated herself for them. Mama couldn’t help what had happened to her. At night, when Nona lifted Mama onto the hospital bed they’d set up in the laundry room downstairs and Lindsey lay curled at her feet, listening to the scrape of her breathing—then she felt sorry for her, so sorry she would cry, crawl up the mattress and stroke her mother’s long blond hair. One night Mama said she wished someone would paint clouds on the ceiling, and Lindsey promised she would do it when she turned ten, because then she’d be old enough, Nona would let her stand up on the tall ladder. At night, with Mama lying asleep in bed like anyone else’s mother, Lindsey knew she would do more than paint ceilings for her, more than stroke her hair. If she could—if someone covered her own face with a pillow and held a gun to her head the way Marcus had done to Mama—Lindsey felt she would die for her mother.
But now, hearing the whir of the wheelchair coming up the driveway, she felt the heavy drag in her stomach, the disgust. Not for her mother, really, but for parts of her, the things that were changed: the pasty skin, the crazy hats she wore, the latest tattoo, a flaming sword that reached from her right shoulder blade (“I can’t feel the needle,” she’d said, “so I might as well”) to the snarled curve of her upturned fingers. Lindsey had seen a dead crab once on the beach in San Diego, its belly bared and bleached pinkish-white in the wet sand. While she watched, a wave came in and pushed it and made the claws move, only a little, but enough to suggest life, enough to make Lindsey walk over and toe the b
elly with the tip of her sandal. But it was long dead and the shell had cracked into fragments and there was nothing inside, only sand and seaweed and a few threads of what looked like stringy gray snot. It was sickening. The pieces lay there in the sand, the claws scattered, it was only the waves that moved them and that’s how it was, now, with her mother’s hands, whenever Lindsey moved them for her, helped her raise the spoon attachment to her mouth or wrap her fingers around the stick control of her chair. When Mama reached the top of the driveway Lindsey took her mother’s hand off the stick and placed it in her lap, watching it bend back into its familiar ruined shape. She set the tray on top of the hands, loathing them.
Nona came up the driveway with the pool tote in which Lindsey had packed her towel and goggles. “Here,” she said, handing her the bag. “I’ll push.” Lindsey opened the gate and held it while Nona guided her mother inside, then she followed them down a flagstone path. Lindsey jogged a bit to keep up. Nona was a retired hippie. She’d had Mama when she was only eighteen, with a mistake-of-a-boy. And then, she said, came her three Rs: she repented, got reborn, and retired her old ways. But she kept the look; she wore long skirts and didn’t cut her hair until a month after Mama’s accident, when she came home with it sculpted into little arrows pointing in toward her face. Nona showed Lindsey her long brown braid, rubber-banded and sealed in a Ziploc, which she slid into a padded envelope addressed to Locks of Love. In her bedroom that night, Lindsey cried when she thought about the braid, curled up in the baggie like a severed tail. She cried for the little girls with cancer who would have to wear wigs made of Nona’s hair, cried because what Nona had done was beautiful, because of how tall and startled Nona looked in short hair.
“Look at this place,” Nona said now, in the chipper way she talked to Mama. “Can you believe it? Think where you were a year ago, shut up in that laundry room, no way to get anywhere. And now that blessed van . . . God is faithful. He is Jehovah-Jireh.” She stopped pushing for a minute to raise her hands, palms toward the sky.
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