by Beth Goobie
A gasp sounded as Mrs. Eccles came back to herself, and she leaned forward, blinking rapidly while she stubbed out her cigarette. “Like I said, sweetie,” she gushed. “You discuss it with Dee. Think about it. We’ll certainly make it worth your while.” Getting to her feet, she swept another amused glance around the room, her demeanor so cool and collected, so determinedly suave, Jez wondered if the woman remembered—even knew about—the entity that possessed her. “I do so like the way Dee lets her imagination run wild in here,” Mrs. Eccles simpered. “Toodle-oo.” With a flirty little wave, she let herself out the door.
Alone and sunk deep into her breathing, Jez sat, once again listening to the shadow heartbeat. “Louisie,” she whispered, but all she got in response was that distant echo coming back from the other side, a vague answer to her own ongoing question, replying thud for thud. Longing flickered through Jez, multi-forked lightning along a horizon. Something had been left unfinished between Louisie and herself, and her twin seemed to sense it too. But how could they connect now, especially after The Chosen Ones, her Chosen Ones, had so obviously warned against reopening the death gate?
From outside came the sound of footsteps taking the stairs two at a time, and then the door swung open with such force, it was carried into the wall. Oblivious, Jez remained slumped and staring at an overflowing ashtray as Dee dropped her Adidas bag onto the floor and splayed across the bed.
“Your mother was here,” Jez said dully.
“Oh yeah,” said Dee, echoing her monotone.
“She had Andy leave a note in my locker,” Jez continued, forcing her way through an explanation that obviously wasn’t necessary. “I thought it was from you, so I came here for four o’clock, like the note said.”
Silent, Dee played a finger across Marilyn’s pursed lips.
“Cute little look-alike joke you all played on me,” Jez added, anger creeping into her tone. “Is that how your mother dresses everyone she propositions, or just the ones she’s sure of?”
“Fuck off,” Dee said coolly, as if the words were hardly worth the effort.
“Oh,” said Jez. “Thanks for the explanation.”
“What d’you want explained?” asked Dee. Languorously, she yawned and stretched. “That I get fucked for money? That I’m part of my dad’s business? Well, maybe not his business. Officially, he’s an architect. Officially, I’m just recreation, like his buddies’ daughters. They call us the ‘Play Pen.’”
“This is what I would like explained, please,” said Jez, enunciating each word clearly. Officially or unofficially, she too could act as if ice cubes wouldn’t melt in her ass. “Did you want to make me part of this Play Pen? Was that what this whole goddamn thing was about?”
“No,” said Dee, exhaling slowly. “At least, not all of it.”
“Which part?” demanded Jez.
“The first part,” admitted Dee. “Early on. When Andy and my mom were checking you out. They check out all my friends.”
“And what were you going to get for me?” asked Jez. “Double your clothing allowance?”
“Hey,” said Dee, rolling onto her side and giving Jez her back. “That was before I knew you.”
“Oh,” Jez said icily. “And now you know me?”
“What the fuck,” came Dee’s muffled voice, “do I know about anything?”
Everywhere, the air was heavy with shadows coming in to roost. Fighting off their underbelly of despair, Jez leaned forward and flicked on the lava lamp. “Oh, don’t be such a suck!” she snapped.
Dee lifted as if pulled by strings. “You’re calling me a suck?” she asked disbelievingly.
“Yeah,” said Jez. “I’m calling you a suck. You lied to me, you set me up twice—once with your brother and at that party. And today there was that lovely little pimp scene with your mother. I’m the one getting screwed here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed!” spat Dee, leaning forward. “I’ve noticed a lot about you, Jezzie-Jezebel. How you hang around with the rest of us poor fucked-up slobs, pretending to be one of us, but inside your head you’re still that snotty Christian goodie-girl playing judgment. You think you’re some kind of prophet, a messiah for the stoners and the woodies. This whole thing is some kind of experiment, a story out of the Bible that you’re playing inside your head because it isn’t real for you. You aren’t stuck here like the rest of us. You can always go back, can’t you—back to Mary-Eve.”
“I don’t want to go back,” protested Jez, her cheeks stinging. “How can you go back from the Apocalypse? Isn’t that the point?”
“Apocalypse?” sniggered Dee, rolling her eyes. “Come on—that’s just another game Christians play inside their heads. See? You’re still thinking like a goddamn Christian. The experiment failed, you didn’t make Jezebel, and you’ll always be stuck being goodie-goodie Mary-Eve. So go on home now,” she sneered with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Run on home to Mommy.”
Stunned, all Jez could do was stare.
“Oh,” added Dee, her smile a thin, bright wire. “You can take this message to Mommy while you’re at it. Here’s something else I’ve noticed. You’re a dyke, Jez. You hang around with me because you think I’m so easy, I’ll fuck anything. Tell me, Miss Goody Two-Shoes—what makes you any different from the guys shadowing my ass?”
Faces ransacked and wasted, they watched each other. “Come on, Jez,” Dee said finally, sinking back onto the bed. “You knew. You can’t tell me you saw me working Dinky’s party and you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know you were working,” spluttered Jez.
“Well, I was,” Dee said flatly. “For pay. You got jumped for free, and I got jumped for bucks.”
“It’s not rape if you’re selling yourself,” hissed Jez.
“Sure, it is,” said Dee. “Either way, they pour through your asshole like Javex. It’s that bad every time.”
“So why don’t you stop?” asked Jez.
Body convulsing, Dee jerked out a sharp laugh. “You don’t stop!” she said. “Not with the customers my daddy handles. Big dicks, big bucks. I’ve been trained; I do special tricks. They’d miss me if I was gone.”
“That’s their problem,” said Jez.
“No, Jez, it’s mine,” Dee said bleakly. “It’s all mine.”
“So go to the police,” said Jez.
“The cops!” hooted Dee. “Believe me, you don’t want to know what I know about the chief of police.”
Jez couldn’t help it; her mouth opened into a thin cry.
“That’s what it’s like on this side of real, baby,” mocked Dee, her eyes taking on a satisfied gleam, as if savoring Jez’s shock. “Everything’s bought and sold. You don’t have to go seeking to find out—on this side the finding out never stops. So go on home to Mommy, Jez. Go back to Mary-Eve and churchie-church, and wait for your goddamn Apocalypse. I get one every week. The Big A’s just another rerun, man.”
For the second time in her life, Jez felt it happening—the sensation of hanging on desperately as the pain of something leaving tore through her gut. “No!” she whispered, rising to her feet, one arm clutched to her abdomen. Staggering, she cried out as the coffee table bit into her shin and a copy of People magazine slid to the floor. Without warning, then, the world went blind, leaving her shuffling through darkness with no sight to guide her as she fumbled her way toward the door and pulled the jackknife from its position in Farrah Fawcett’s former face.
“You knew too,” she whispered, gripping it tightly. She and Dee had made blood vows together, she thought, her eyes fixed on the jackknife as her vision faded back in. Together they had cut their tongues on this blade. The words she needed to find now would be as painful—blood-soaked—but if she held on, maybe they would come.
“Knew what?” asked Dee from the bed.
“What we both know,” sai
d Jez. Still holding the jackknife, she turned toward the other girl’s careful gaze.
“It was a game, Jez,” said Dee.
“If it was a game,” Jez said heatedly, “you wouldn’t have given back my soul that time in the car.”
Startled, Dee blinked, then glanced away.
“You weren’t supposed to, were you?” said Jez, fingering realization. “That thing that has your mother, it wants me too. I saw it this afternoon—your mother is possessed, man. That’s what it means to be chosen, y’know—one of the chosen few. You’re chosen by something from the other side, and then it possesses you. And if that thing runs your mother…”
Sensing the danger, Jez hesitated. A loaded silence followed as Dee studied her, narrow-eyed, from the bed. “Not quite, Jezzie,” she said, grimacing. “Close, but no cigar. That thing, as you call it, doesn’t run me. Believe me, my mother is not how I want to end up. But she has taught me some useful things. I know how darkness can open you to other worlds. And I can call things—anything I want.”
“Yeah,” Jez said softly. “Through pain.”
“How else do you call something?” asked Dee.
The question hung unanswered between them.
“You called me,” said Jez.
“I think that went both ways,” said Dee.
“All right,” said Jez, taking a shuddery breath. Finally, finally things were coming back to themselves, turning away from the abyss. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there was yet one more personal monster to pull up out of that inner chasm. “You’re right, this isn’t just about your shit. I had…a twin once. She died when I was seven. She was half of me. No—she was everything. And when she died, she took it all away.”
“So?” asked Dee, her tone guarded.
“She took it from inside me,” said Jez, touching the jackknife’s tip to her chest. “I felt her die inside myself. Not like a separate person, but part of me. I thought that was the end of the world—my Apocalypse—but I guess it wasn’t because I’m still here.”
“So?” repeated Dee, her eyes narrowing.
Frustration shot through Jez; she felt her own eyes narrow. “So you’re still here too,” she said, fighting the quaver in her voice. “You’ve suffered, you’ve born a heavy cross, and you know things only someone who’s suffered as much as you can know. You’ve found out about a lot of things I don’t know; I don’t think I want to know them. And you’re right—I could go back…to wearing sperm midis, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and watching real life through windows.
“But if I did, we wouldn’t find out what we’re supposed to find out. We wouldn’t be seekers, we’d be losers—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” cried Dee, her body again convulsing. “What d’you think I need to find out about? What the hell are you going to teach me?”
“Maybe this is a different kind of finding out,” Jez said intensely, crawling onto the bed beside her. “A different kind of seeking than what you’re used to.”
Eyes closed, Dee snorted.
“Come on,” said Jez. “You haven’t really been seeking. Not yet. Everything we did, you already knew it all.”
“So?” said Dee, her eyes still closed.
“So,” said Jez, “when you know, you’re conquered.”
Motionless beside her, Dee seemed to stop breathing and Jez opened into the pause. “If I went back to being Mary-Eve now,” she said, “it’d be like losing another twin. Maybe not as bad as the first time, but—”
“Shut up,” Dee said softly, opening her eyes. “I get it, okay?”
Carefully, carefully Jez pressed on. “You’re half a person too,” she whispered, clutching the jackknife for strength. “Half of you is in your body, and the other half flying around in your demons. Maybe they’re not dead, but they’re outside you. You’re cut in half, like me.”
“Would you get that fucking knife out of my face?” exploded Dee, pushing her away. “I thought you were grabbing it to cut my throat!”
“Not yet,” said Jez, slumping fluid with relief onto the bed. Thud-thud, thud-thud went her heart, Louisie’s shadow heartbeat matching it, pulse for pulse. Womb-like, the room curved in around her; she was home again, at the beginning of things.
“What the fuck am I going to do about the pill?” she moaned, staring at the ceiling. “For sure your mother will cut me off when I tell her no.”
“Jez, you dodo,” said Dee. “There’s a family planning clinic on Simpson Street.”
“They won’t tell my parents?” asked Jez.
“Guaranteed they won’t tell,” said Dee. “It’s their job not to tell.” Quietly, she chortled. “I can’t believe you fell for that one. Weren’t you listening in health class?”
“Yeah,” said Jez, her face hot. “I guess I just believed your mother.”
“I stopped believing Mom a long time ago,” muttered Dee.
“Does she know about the thing that’s possessed her?” asked Jez, recalling Mrs. Eccles’s vapid expression as she made her flirty toodle-oo wave.
“Yeah,” said Dee. “She calls it her astral buddy. She and Dad called it in. I think she’s afraid of it, but she won’t admit it. She says it tells her things—how to call money toward her, how to have power over men. But she has to feed it.”
“With her soul!” Jez burst out.
Dee shrugged. “Mom isn’t that hung up about her soul,” she said. “She’s more into her body. Speaking of which—all you have to do is drop in on the Simpson Street clinic this week and you’ll be able to keep on fucking Georgie-Porgie without taking a day off.”
“We don’t do it every day,” mumbled Jez.
Silent, they lay next to each other, parallel heartbeats. Jez took a tentative breath. “When I tell your mother no,” she said. “Well…how mad will she get? Will she still let us be friends?”
“Yeah,” said Dee, her voice carefully casual. “As long as you keep your mouth shut.”
Jez considered. “Who would I tell?” she asked.
“Exactly,” said Dee. Then, stretching, she drawled, “So, Jezzie-Jezebel. You’re not going back to Mary-Eve?”
“Yeah, I’m going back,” said Jez, touching the jackknife’s tip to Dee’s lower lip. “I’ve got some more finding out to do. But I’m taking you with me. Brace yourself, baby—you’re about to meet my mother.”
Ten
Before the Waiting for the Rapture End Times Tabernacle, before the Divine Sister and the Tongue of Fire, before the house on Quance Crescent, I had a different father, or perhaps simply a different set of circumstances with the same father in waiting. This father carried a noticeable heaviness, moving, it seemed, always close to the earth, as if in giving Lawrence Philip Hamilton his material form, God had left the process of creation incomplete—shaping the man out of clay then leaving him, a human figure with its feet still rooted in mud. Indeed, my father often seemed confused by his body, unsure where he ended and his surroundings began, and could frequently be seen reaching for objects with a tangible intensity, as if through touching them he gained a clearer definition of himself.
His salvation thus anchored itself in the external—that which he could touch and, through touching, remake in his own image. Predictably, this transformed the home that was to have been his castle into the dungeon that held him captive, for the slightest detail could make or unmake him; he was condemned to a perpetual shifting of knickknacks, straightening of wall hangings, and the deft bumping of furniture with knee or hip until everything realigned according to some internal blueprint. Upon sitting down to a meal, his fingers twitched nervously across his place mat, and he tapped each article of cutlery a quarter inch to the left or right and twirled his water glass into a slightly different position. Any dinner table centerpiece called out for his corrective touch, and the ladle in the casserole dish always had to be angled more accurately; certain
ly no one was allowed to begin eating until all dinner napkins had been placed neatly on laps and every shoulder aligned squarely with its respective chair back. Typically, upon his daily return from work, Louisie and I would be sent to our room to change into clothing he deemed more suitable, and he watched continually to ensure we kept our knees together when we sat, lifted our forks gracefully to our mouths while eating, and chewed the required number of times before swallowing—so much so, it seemed as if he sought out the very rhythm of our breathing, intending to pattern it to his own.
When it came to matters of religion, however, my father appeared content to let others design the landscape. Descended from a long line of Presbyterians, he was a true-blood backbencher, leaving the politics of church and Heaven to those trained for the task. For the most part, his faith restricted itself to the material realm—rules that regulated, for instance, his weekly tithe, manner of dress, vocabulary, and social interactions. If there was a spiritual realm that existed beyond these regulations, he seemed largely to ignore it, regarding it as irrelevant to the daily choices he needed to make, and it was his habit to wade with dense authority through legions of ideas, dismissing entire bodies of philosophy and any hypothesis that did not bend the knee to his opinion.
Even as a very young child, I understood that this granted me enormous freedom. My father took note of the parts of my life he could place his hands upon and relentlessly, inexorably reshape; all other aspects floated like unheard radio waves above his head. Thus I could play leapfrog with Louisie and an invisible horde of rainbow fairies while he laid out the backyard patio bricking, oblivious, and I could babble wildly of the many-splendored possibilities of polka-dot elephants and flying cats at the breakfast table while he disappeared behind The Globe and Mail, leaving me to freely birth myself into the wonder of each new idea. My father’s world had narrow perimeters and a pedestrian heartbeat; I simply vacated it for others I found vibrating beyond his reach, and he remained entirely unaware that I had left him. All it took was a careful observance of his personal code—dress neatly and comb your hair, don’t run in the house, say please and thank you—and my father’s ponderous hands moved elsewhere to exact their pound of flesh.