—It sounds appalling, I said.
—It is appalling, he agreed. But it’s not so bad when you realize that every other person on the planet is doing it with you.
—What if I move to New York and become an actress?
—You aren’t going to do that, he said.
—I’m not good enough.
I was staring at him directly now, and he was staring back. I was afraid that if I blinked he’d stop talking.
—It’s not about being good, he said. It’s about knowing your chances and being smart.
—Did you do that?
—Try to make it as an actor? Sure. It was kind of like Rent, but without the music or the love or the fun or even the danger. It was risky but not stage-worthy. It just kind of sucked.
The vacuum of my ordinary life was in front of me. It was terrifying. I couldn’t look at it head-on anymore.
—I thought theater was supposed to imitate life, I said. I thought there’d be more.
—No, he said. Life is pretty boring, or it’s so painful that nobody wants to watch the real thing. Theater just makes life more interesting.
I knew it was inevitable that I would kiss him. We ran out of words and I was overwhelmed. What were the other options? The script had reached its real purpose, this was the end of the act, and all of my prior moments in front of him had been performance art. Now I was supposed to show him that I wasn’t like the other girls. I was braver. So I walked to his side of the desk and kissed him. The tip of his nose was cold. He didn’t put his arms around me. He didn’t even put his feet down. I pulled back.
—Jennifer, he began.
—No, I said. It doesn’t have to be like this. We could be stupid together. We could go somewhere. We could do something different. You’re still young, right?
—I’m thirty-three, he said. And then, as if he needed to explain how ordinary his life really was, he added: I’m taking Rogaine.
My lips and fingers were tingling. I couldn’t get enough air. My heart was chugging blood. His nose was cold. He was taking Rogaine. At home, next to the Rogaine, the shelf over his toilet probably had tweezers and suppositories and lotion. There were no stage lights bathing his face in creamy light. His office was cramped. The posters did not make up for windows.
—I can’t breathe, I said.
My lungs felt shrunken. I couldn’t get in enough air.
He pulled his paper lunch sack from the garbage and shook out the contents and crumpled up the neck.
—Breathe into this, he said.
—I think I’m dying, I said.
—You’re not dying. You’re just freaking out, he said.
I put the bag over my mouth and inhaled and exhaled.
—I need more air, I said.
—You’re getting too much already, he said. Don’t talk. Just breathe into the bag.
I stared at the garbage can. There was a Kit Kat wrapper, and some stiff old tissues. I wished it was empty, like a prop.
—Do you love me? I asked desperately between inhales.
—Breathe slower, he said.
—Could you love me? I asked.
I slithered out of my seat. I was lying on the floor now.
—Steady breaths, he said.
—This is such a trope.
I huffed into the bag.
—Yes, he said. But even that should be sort of comforting.
• • •
I stayed home from school on Friday. I told my mom that I needed a mental health day, and she agreed.
—Maybe you’re having a growth spurt, she offered when I told her I was overtired.
—My shins hurt, I said.
She rubbed lavender oil on my temples and buttoned herself incorrectly into her cardigan while she stared at me.
—Kid, you’ve got to stop growing up on me, she said.
—I’m trying, I said.
I lay on the living room couch clutching my ratty baby blanket, feeling like I’d been parboiled. I thought of the afflicted girls in Salem, the real girls, long dead, who convinced everyone that they were precious enough for the devil to want them. It was clear now that Dakota had gotten his casting right. For the rest of my life I would play Mary Warren: I would never bewitch and I would barely be seen. Even in college, my sorority sisters would continually forget or overlook me. One year, during superlatives at Spring Fling, they would forget to give me a title at all. I was anonymous in my unremarkable body, and only semivisible if I was pointing a finger or following a girl. Years later, I would pull my sorority composite out of the back of my closet and stare, gazing at Margot’s dramatic black plait drifting out of the frame, and Corinne’s coy half-smile, and Shannon’s sharp little chin, skipping over my own face until I looked for myself row by row.
I was missing rehearsal. It didn’t matter.
Sasha texted me.
Where r u?
Home sick
were in the screaming girl part. ur missing out.
best moments?
the part where tarryn is yelling at the audience, y do u cum yellow bird?
I wrote
hahahahahaha
and didn’t laugh at all when I typed and pressed send.
And then I wrote a note on printer paper, using my left hand.
The drama teacher is fucking a student.
The student is afraid and won’t tell.
I folded it into thirds and ran my thumbnail over the creases.
• • •
On Monday morning I taped the note on the door of the faculty bathroom and waited. I was called into Principal McChesney’s office before second period.
—There has been an allegation leveled against Mr. Dakota, he said.
—An allegation?
I thought of everything Dakota had taught me. Breathe from the belly. Do not break eye contact. Use your emotional memory to your advantage. I pretended I was a flawless, shimmering girl, a woman really, trapped in absurd circumstances.
—A terrible allegation, McChesney continued. But we think you may be able to help us.
I hadn’t expected them to have security cameras in the halls. I knew there was one by the front entrance of the school and a few in the cafeteria, but apparently there was another one, right over an emergency exit sign, that was angled at the faculty bathroom. I had been stupid. I never thought to look.
—Are you the student who left this? he asked me.
He slid my note across the table. It felt like I was on TV. I tried to look at it as if it were a new artifact in my life. I pinched it between my fingers and pictured the version of myself who had written this as a completely different person, a woman possessed.
I considered my options.
Say it was a joke.
Say it wasn’t a joke.
—I found the note in the parking lot and thought it should be turned in, I said.
—I see, he said.
He took the note back and smoothed it on the desk.
—It’s awfully pristine to have been blowing around in a parking lot, he said.
—It was under my windshield wiper, I said.
—That’s helpful, he said. Where did you park? We can check the cameras there, too.
—Good, I said. I wonder who wrote it.
• • •
During cultural history, I went to the bathroom and called Greyhound. A ticket to Salem was only thirty-eight dollars, but they needed a license to verify that I wasn’t a minor.
I lagged my way back to the classroom. Jarred Liotta was shouting.
—Who moved it? he asked. Who the fuck moved it?
—Language, Blevins said.
Sasha waved me over.
—Someone took his meemaw’s shoe, she said.
Jarred was pulling the TV out from the wall now, trying to see if his meemaw’s Croc had been knocked backward. Chip Finnick got up and started yanking books off the shelves.
—Open your backpacks, Jarred demanded.
—You can’t
make us open our backpacks, Sasha said. That’s a privacy violation.
—I’ll do it, I offered. If I was expelled later, at least I could say that I hadn’t taken his meemaw’s shoe. I opened my backpack, and Mr. Blevins unzipped his sad little briefcase, and soon our class had opened every bag and watched while Chip and Jarred pawed through the contents. It was like airport security. We all patiently waited for boarding.
—She can’t be gone, Jarred said. Where would she go?
—Hey, man, it’s just a shoe, Pablo said. He put a hand on Jarred’s shoulder.
—It’s not! he shouted. It’s not!
He was near tears, but none of us laughed. Instead we dug through cupboards and behind bookshelves, combing for a dead lady’s rubber Croc.
—Where would she go? Jarred repeated, and I thought of the tiny possibility of a shoe finding its mate and running an invisible body through the walls of the school and across the muddy soccer field outside, the ghost gaining speed, like a thing taking flight, barreling for the tree line at the back of the property, streaking over the clotted grass and ugly fence into a new place, glancing back only briefly to see, just outside the backstage fire exit, beside the generator, Mr. Dakota as he wound his arms around Tarryn’s back and she burrowed into his chest, her cheek pressed against him, feminine and kittenish, and the glint of her shining eye, darting, darting, like a wild thing held captive, held safe, wanted, loved, away from cameras, their meeting nothing more than spectral evidence, traceless, unmarked in time.
4
When You’re Naked and You Have To
-DEIRDRE-
October 2007
After I saw the body on I-95, just outside of Providence, I called my mom to get some worldly insight, and maybe, if I’m being real honest with myself, some sympathy.
—Oh, Deirdre, she said. (And then:) What was it doing there? (And worst:) besides blocking traffic?
It was worst because I’d thought it, too.
—It was a suicide, I said.
—Oh, baby, she said again.
(My mom’s sympathy was strictly syllabic, not content driven. So “Oh, baby” had a sigh and a stretched vowel and a swoop at the end that I taught myself to interpret as I am sorry that you have seen what you have seen, my precious child, but what you have seen is only a sliver of this world, and—)
And then she said: Not that I would ever do this, or think of this, but if I were to do it, I think it is so selfish to leave a mess that I would probably get a tarp, and leave a check for the EMTs, or something. How was work?
—Boring, I said.
Which was true. I had fallen asleep on the table, for real this time.
—Does the caterer reimburse you for travel?
—Mmm, I said. Traffic was picking up. The lights of the ambulance, fire truck, police all spangled in my rearview mirror, disaster in refracted color. I wasn’t supposed to be bothered by the body anymore.
• • •
Back at the house, I told my roommate Margot, but I told her in the kitchen, so probably Kyra knew, too, and maybe Corinne, and definitely Ingrid.
And of course Margot wanted to know: What did it look like?
Explaining it was like untangling a dream. When he dropped from the overpass, and I stamped on the brakes and watched him roll off the windshield of the driver in front of me, the car scudding to the right and then shuddering over him again, and then I saw the driver stumble out of the car and root around on her hands and knees, one loafer on, the other MIA, her bare heel white and perfect and naked while she crawled, sobbing, or digging for something on the asphalt, it was hard to tell, and waiting for the police to come, and waiting longer for my lungs to open up and gulp a fresh, choking handful of oil—fat air, all of that wasn’t enough to explain it even though it was true. The words were boring and didn’t actually describe what had happened as much as hold a place for what it really was.
Margot was impatient with my lack of detail.
—Let’s look him up, she said. I followed her back to our room like a duckling.
• • •
Googling “Suicide in Providence October 8” got too many results. “Death on I-95” turned up three for one night.
She said: They aren’t calling it a suicide.
—Homicide? I asked. And I thought immediately of a masked man, Zorro’s evil doppelgänger, pushing him off the overpass.
She said: Not homicide, just death. I have his name. Wanna know his name?
It was like I was getting an ultrasound, her face glowing over the screen with results, my belly in a knot, and I told her no when I really meant yes.
She said: Tremaine J. Bechetti.
See, I wanted to tell the dead man, I took the time to google you. I care! I am repulsed by your death but I care!
—Darwin said sympathy is our most basic instinct, Margot said.
—Did he really say that?
—It might have been Benjamin Franklin.
The door was closed, so it was okay for her to shut the laptop and crawl under my duvet with me and press her body up against my back. She traced patterns on my neck with her finger. Her breath was stale when I rolled over to face her; it drifted over me like fog. I curled into her chest and thought about crying, but I couldn’t really muster it so I made some wiggly motions with my rib cage instead.
—I’m really sorry, she whispered. And then she added, You smell like ginger.
• • •
Tremaine J. Bechetti had a Facebook page. His face was broad, as if it had been pressed with a rolling pin. He wore baseball hats, but not backward. He worked in the butcher department at a grocery store in Pawtucket. He liked wrestling and sunglasses and The Eagles and one of those science fiction video games. He had the photos that all of us had; centered in a halo of flash, girls turned sideways at the camera with hands on hips, he with arms in action—either draped forgetfully around someone or holding a drink or both. People had already started posting on his page, a wailing wall:
trey my man you will be missed but i know your partying with the lord now.
My thoughts and prayers go to the Bechetti family during this trying time.
I didn’t know Trey too good but he always had a smile on his face at Fisher, rip.
I didn’t want to drive back through Providence, but I didn’t have an option. The next morning, still in bed, Mr. Kita called and offered a job for Saturday. They’d pay for my gas and I’d walk out with $500 before tip.
—I’ll do it if Manabu’s working.
—Maybe he is. I’m driving, I’ll look later.
Mr. Kita was always driving when he called me, and he never had answers to my questions.
—Can I shower there? I asked.
—It’s a private residence. I’ll confirm.
—If Manabu’s not working I’m not doing it, I said.
—You want the money or not?
When I hung up, Margot rolled over and took my sheets with her.
—Do you hate your job? she asked me. Because I do.
I watched her get out of our bed and unlock the door. We were roommates again. I wasn’t ready.
—I think I dreamed about Tremaine, I lied.
She said: I’d be jealous if he wasn’t dead.
And then she leaned into the mirror beside the closet and started squeezing blackheads out of her nose. I could have throttled her with something close to love. But instead I ate a Pop-Tart and spent the morning sequestered on the back patio, skipping a lecture on Israel and Palestine and getting incredibly, stupidly high.
• • •
This is not a ghost story. But Trey was the first thing to follow me, the first thing that I had known as vividly, undeniably wrong. I called my mom on the drive again, a repeat of the body without the body. She didn’t answer but I made up the conversation on the drive and knew it to be true:
—Hey.
—Hey yourself. What’re you doing calling me on a Saturday?
—Driving to wo
rk.
—Again? How far this time?
—Not far, the dinner’s in Providence.
—Is that so? she’ll say, not invested in the so of it at all, or the is, or the that. She could be a voice on an airport intercom: she’ll never hear herself, the queen of platitudes.
—I can’t stop thinking of the body.
—Oh, baby.
Oh baby. Oh baby. There’s a long hiss in my ear.
—I looked him up, I say.
—Oh, baby.
—I thought it would be better for me if I knew him better.
—Stop that. You always hurt when you try to fix.
—Aren’t you supposed to have something comforting to say?
—I don’t know. I guess so. Other parents would. Think of taxidermy butterflies that flapped their wings in Brazil once. Or something.
Even in fake conversations, my mom doesn’t measure up. This is how I know that I am truly hers.
• • •
The wife answered the door. She didn’t say hello. Instead, she yelled into the cavern of tile and filigree behind her, to no one, or the house, or a hidden fleet of penguined servers: the girl is here! I stepped inside. It was a place designed to hold words like foyer and ottoman and dumbwaiter. I would do well here.
—Can I shower first? I asked her.
She looked as if I’d inquired about her last mammogram.
—I’m sorry?
—Can I use your shower? It helps lower my body temperature.
—The company didn’t mention that, she said. Watching her face rearrange was phenomenal. The forehead never moved but her lips could have been the peaks and valleys on an EKG.
—Of course you may shower here, she said, and suddenly her arms were arcs of graciousness, leading, as if I were a shoddy marching band. I followed her past the dining room, where a chef—not Manabu—was prepping the table. I didn’t know him. I stayed.
The guest room shower was rococo and tile. I hung my clothes on the towel bar, crowded among layers of guest towels. Naked, in the mirror, my skin rose in goose bumps fat as braille.
This is how you do it:
Pretend that there is a box inside of your skull, a box that you can open and climb into and close, your own control room, a place where you can steer your reluctant, shivering body into the task of acting as a nyotaimori. You are a useless geisha. You will walk into the foyer, comfortable in the nothingness that is you, and you will not blink when you meet the head of the household, a man who would be handsome if he didn’t hire women to lie naked on a table as the platter of a meal, you will ignore the obvious derision of the wife when you appear in the doorframe of her impeccable dining room, you will ignore the not-Manabu chef who stares at your nipples, first one, then the other, like he can’t figure out which pupil to focus on in a close and intimate moment of eye contact with a lover, you will lie on the table, on a slab of wood more expensive than you, and you will try not to think about razor burn, or the leaves being draped over your pubic hair, or the tuna that rests in tiny turrets on your body, of your love at home in your bedroom, of taxidermy insects, or of the body on I-95. It is easy to trust a chef and a chopstick-wielding crowd when you’re naked and you have to, so you will die and revive and get paid to do it, and three hours from now you will walk out with an obscene amount of money for nothing, a modern Lazarus, your thighs sore from pressing them together, your eyes adjusting to the light after three hours of fake sleep. In the meantime, sit in the corner of your panic room and wait. Wish that this was a movie with a sound track that could tell you what to feel. Know that the process would be better if you had known him better, if you unraveled him like a cassette tape and were left with sticky black ribbon on the floor, easy to fix, easy to tear. If you could crawl back in time like a half-gilled animal returning to the mud, if you could root beside the woman on I-95, with purpose, finding his feet, then legs, the core, the face half alive half dead, to spread yourself repentant over the shell of his being, then maybe you would have had an answer. Or something.
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