by Lydia Millet
“She’s the one that does the primal scream?”
“That’s the one. But she’s really a nice chick. You’ll like ’er.”
Pete picked her up in the Mercedes, with Marsha in tow, and dropped them off at the restaurant. Marsha ordered satay with peanut sauce and coconut milk soup.
“It’s a learning growth process,” she said, dipping her chicken. “When I can actually express the primordial anguish, you know in this venting scream, then it’s like a purging. A catharsis. I graduate and I can train other students. The course takes two years. I have another three months before the scream.”
“You can’t just go ahead and scream?” asked Estée, staring as skewered chicken made vanguard assaults on the rectal O of glossy lips. She had no appetite for birds, reminded by their white meat of gizzards and spoor-encrusted claws.
“That would be premature,” said Marsha. “A premature scream can traumatize you. It would set me back a year. I mean if just anyone could walk off the street and scream they wouldn’t have to charge so much for courses. Like I said, it’s a formative growing experience. Right now I just chant. I also sing karaoke. That’s where I met my husband.” She extracted a tube of lipstick marked Koral Kreme from her purse and applied it. “I’m so compulsive about makeup, but I mean you have to look your best. Sex equals money equals power. Lew, that’s my husband, he totally hates how I wear it to bed.”
“Do you have children?” asked Estée.
“Are you kidding? I have a career. I went on the Pill when I was sixteen. Have some chicken, here. It’s delicious. Not exactly local, but what the hell.”
“No thank you,” said Estée. “I don’t eat much meat. My father was a butcher.”
“Are you kidding? Honey, how old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Jesus, eighteen? The guy’s a cradle robber. You don’t have, I mean, you’re living with Pete, right? Listen, seriously. Has he tried anything?”
“He tried to impregnate me,” she admitted. “I think it worked.”
Marsha dropped a satay stick in her lap.
“Damn, this stuff stains,” she said, red in the face as she dabbed at the brown mark with a napkin. “Listen, you should stay away from Pete, I mean he comes on to everyone. He came on to me until he started playing softball with Lew, that’s my husband, and he’s been having sex with a woman at the office, Leola, and he screws around on her. And she’s married.”
“Don’t worry, I know all about it,” said Estée, spooning up soup. “The biological imperative of Homo sapiens male is to inseminate as many females as possible. The male moves from one to another as quickly as he can, for maximum propagation. But the female of the species tries to find a secure nest, a good habitat for bringing up the young. It’s biology. Reproduction of the fittest.”
“What are you, a science major?” asked Marsha, flustered. “Listen,” she urged, “don’t tell Pete what I said, okay? I mean I work for the guy. He goes, this girl is staying at my place, friend of the family, she doesn’t have friends in L.A., and I mean I’m very outgoing, I like people so I go sure. I’m just worried about you, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. But don’t tell him what I said, okay?”
“I don’t tell him anything,” said Estée. “He has certain functions but little comprehension.”
“Yeah right,” said Marsha. “Tell me about it. Waiter? That Thai beer, do you have it in a lite version? Like Thai beer Lite?” and she lit up a cigarette. “I mean he doesn’t understand my therapy. He’s always bugging me about it. Lew’s the same way, it’s a thing with guys, they’re so narrow-minded. I go, Lew, I got an inner child that has to get out. This is a learning growth experience. He goes, learn and grow somewhere else. In my house I want someone who acts normal. Then he goes to a ball game and comes home blind drunk with no voice from yelling insults at the umps.”
“What’s the umps?”
“Stop it, I’m serious, I’m all trying to deal with childhood trauma, my father used to spank me and make inappropriate remarks, I only remembered it in therapy.”
“My father used to make me eat moths and conduct experiments on lower mammals,” said Estée. “Then he put me in a cage and killed an old woman in front of me. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.”
Marsha gazed at her, spoon raised, with soup dripping off it. Then she put the spoon down with a clang against her bowl and looked at her watch.
“You know what, I just remembered I got an appointment with a new client that’s listing with me,” she said rapidly. “You got Pete’s credit card, right? He’s deducting it. I’m really late. I’m glad we had this talk. I really have to go,” and before Estée could say good-bye she was out the door, purse swinging at her hip, catching a heel on the threshold as she went out.
Estée watched her make her way down the sidewalk in jiggling strides on her high heels, the loose one causing her to wobble. Coming to a stop at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the light to change, she looked at her watch, reapplied her lipstick, and vanished. Estée paid the bill, left the restaurant, and studied the site of Marsha’s disappearance on her way to the bus stop. All that remained was a heel.
In Pete Magnus’s mailbox she found a note without an envelope.
PRopHETEER, wARMonger & BLAsFemuR, BuRn in HELL wiTH ALL youR monEy. LETTing Old PEopLE diE wiLL dAMn you FoREvER.
She tried to show it to him, but he was on the telephone, with his arm in a sling. “This old sow comes up to me, corners me in the lobby, she’s all, are you an anti-Semite? She goes, because you’re shutting Holy Blossom down, would you shut it down if it was Our Immaculate Virgin Residence? She shoves a picture in my face, it’s like one of those mass graves full of Holocaust victims. She goes, you think just because we’re poor Hassids you can do this to us? You think we’re Hassidic so you can herd our fathers around like they’re cattle? This is what people like you have done to the world! She goes, I could go to the ACLU or the Anti Defamation League. She goes, we’ll sue your ass off for discrimination. Esty, did you use up the Valium? Jesus Esty, you snorting it or something?”
She left the note on the coffee table and went into the kitchen, where she found the sink overflowing, refuse clogging the drain as the tap ran. She turned it off.
“Her breath smelled like gefilte fish. I’m all, lady, I would terminate the lease on that place if it was home to Saint Goddamn Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds, if it was Ronald fucking Reagan on life support there I would terminate the lease! And she’s all, you Nazi! And what does she do? I swear to God, she pushed me through the revolving door, I fall down the stairs outside there and bust my arm. Didn’t even have time to get her name so I could sue her before she took off and the ambulance came. Anti-Semitic my big butt. I mean my mother’s maiden name was Schwarz, you know what I’m saying? My great-uncle was a rabbi. I had a bar mitzvah, all that shit, I gave it up because they made me wear the little hat. I mean the guys braid their sideburns, you know? I go, fuck the yarmulke Mom, I’m outta here. The woman still doesn’t talk to me. Yeah. Gimme the stats on Friday.” She picked up a dishrag and wiped a line of salt off the kitchen table, and the piece of curled paper beside it.
Spying from the kitchen door, she saw him put down the cordless, adjust himself to the left of his zipper with the unmaimed arm, pop the tab on his Diet Coke, and redial. He waited with his antenna pointing straight up, impassive, transparent in means but opaque in purpose. It was clear that he operated predictably, one sequence presaging the next, but why? She felt a cramp in her stomach: the baby chewing. In a wash of warm impatience she strode up behind him, grabbed the phone as he said, “Steve?” and lobbed it across the room. It hit a Fon statue with a resounding clang and fell.
“What the fuck Esty? I just got back from the emergency room, I’m in pain here, I was attacked, I got stitches and a broken bone here, I’m in crisis and you’re throwing a hissy fit? Do I get sympathy, concern? What is this?” He craned his neck and looked over his shoulder at her.
“Marsha has an inner child that’s trying to get out and I’ve got one too.”
“I told you already, you’re seeing the shrink. Now get the phone back, would you? I’m a gimp, I’m an invalid here. That was my stockbroker, he’s gonna leave the office soon. Would you get me the phone? You want me to go broke?”
“Like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Disappeared. I could too.”
“I know already. She went away and you got a Masai warrior trapped in your cervix. Okay fine. Now would you get me the phone?”
“You don’t like having a broken arm, right?”
“Damn fucking straight. Now gimme the phone!”
“But an arm, it’s external, it’s an appendage, it’s important but not necessary. Whereas a stomach or say a uterus, it’s internal, it’s what you are. You can’t do without it.”
“Get to the point Esty, Steve’s waiting here.”
“You have a broken arm, I have a cannibal. If you’re so upset about an arm, how would you feel about a cannibal?”
He closed his eyes and lay back, scratching at his cast with curled fingers.
“Look at it this way Esty. The cannibal’s just in your head, where the broken bone is an actual fact. Now would you get the receiver?”
“You have a broken arm,” she said. “Not a broken leg. And please stop leaving those piles of salt everywhere. I’m the one who has to clean them up.”
She turned her back on him and was heading for her bedroom when he pounced, approaching from behind as silent as a cat. Gritting his teeth, yowling from the pain afforded by his arm as it got crushed between them, he brought her to the floor. The demon warrior toppled off its end table. When she kicked Pete Magnus in the knee, he grabbed its broken spear.
“You want me to get rid of it?” he hissed. “I’ll do it right here, and then you can shut up about it.”
But he was not her primary concern. The baby had won its first victory: there was egress. She felt the rupture inside, the split sack of a balloon. The walls of the balloon were thin and punctured easily. Pete Magnus’s face turned black like burnt marshmallow and he went away, along with everything.
She recognized familiar terrain by the smell before she saw it: lemon-scent disinfectant, Lysol from the golden bottle. A different room, this time private. On her bedside table plumed a vast spray of roses, in virulent orange. A thin tube fed into her arm, right inside the skin. She sighed when she knew where she was, and sighed again at the dull matte gray of the television screen bent down toward her from the ceiling. She had sighed more times than was healthy when Pete Magnus made his appearance, before any other sign of life intruded. He wore an olive suit and dark-blue tie.
“Esty, honey,” he said, placing a warm fat hand on her limp wrist. “I need you to forgive me. You’re gonna be fine.”
“Did I have a coma?” she whispered.
“No honey, no coma. You almost had a miscarriage, you had what they call one of those hemorrhages. But the baby’s okay, it survived. You’re fine too Esty.”
She was vindicated. She had not followed in Bill’s footsteps.
“You tried to stick me with the spear.”
Pete Magnus took his hand off her wrist, clasped it in his lap, and bent his head. His cast was gone. “I’m in counseling Esty,” he said. “Believe me, I’m working through my hostility. My aggression was an act of self-hatred due to the fact I don’t love myself enough. You don’t know how rough it’s been on me.”
She averted her eyes from his puffy face, more darkly tanned than she remembered. On the wall behind him hung a banner of ligatured computer printouts whose large-dot matrix letters formed the exhortation Get Well Estee.
“You had an operation,” said Pete Magnus. “This new laser surgery. Don’t worry, major medical covered it. All you got is a little scar.”
“You tried to stick me with a spear,” she repeated. The roses had no scent; from one stem a tag stuck out—100% Silk.
“Listen Esty, when you get out we can go to counseling together. Blame is not the point Esty. Healing is what’s important. Plus you’re gonna be fine.”
She gazed up at the ceiling till someone prodded her in the abdomen. It hurt. A doctor had done it. A group of young men in white coats, and two women, stood at the foot of her bed. They stared at her. They were a wall of licensed professionals. The wall was white, the wall was tall. One leaned over her from beside the mattress with a gleaming instrument. He stripped the sheet back and opened her robe.
“Interns,” said Pete Magnus.
She would not permit it. no entry signs should be posted on her front and back, all over her so that everyone saw them. They were all invasive. They put their hands and faces everywhere. They were prospectors and she was public land. “Please go away,” she said to them. “Don’t touch me. It’s inside. There’s nothing you can do.”
“Esty, they’re doctors. Here to help. Stay calm.”
“I don’t care. Get them out!”
“Esty, don’t get hysterical on me.” He moved off, took the prodding man aside, and spoke to him softly. She closed her eyes and waited. Feet shuffled. Someone blew their nose.
“Are they gone?” she asked.
“They’re gone. Hey now, you can come home soon, Esty, awright?” cajoled Pete Magnus. “Don’t get yourself excited.”
“Spears,” she muttered, pensive. “Stethoscopes.”
“Jesus, Esty, you gotta let it go. Blame is not productive. Don’t forget, but forgive. Healing Esty. Healing.”
“How about Marsha?”
“Marsha?” Pete Magnus’s pager was beeping. He turned it off. “Fuckin Marsha never came back to the office, you musta put a bee in her bonnet Esty. Husband’s clueless, guy came in looking for her, accusing me of all kinds of shit, I’m like, dude, hands off. I figure she dumped him and took off. I could see why. That guy has a lot of aggression. It’s rooted in insecurity. So she split. Load off my mind, with that chanting and shit. I was getting sick of it. She’s probably living in a commune where they chant oogala boogala. Good riddance.”
If he refused to listen she would not waste her breath. It was true he was stupid. He was eyeless and armless, butting his stubby head against walls. She would take a firm hand with him from now on. She would bide her time, then dart out from under the rock.
“The baby deal Esty,” he said, seating himself on the edge of the bed. “I mean are you sure, you know, I’m the father? No offense. But it’s so weird.”
“You’re responsible,” she told him. “You bought the head. You put him in the box. Plus you supplied the sperms.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” said Pete Magnus. “I been thinking, we should go away. I got some plans, an enterprise. Talk about it when you’re better. Here, you know, I got these idiots trying to sue me for terminating a lease, making my life a living hell. They got no legal basis, that doesn’t mean they go away. I filed for a restraining order, but that shit takes time. You ever been to Florida?”
When visiting hours were over a doctor entered her room. He was old: his pink face was mottled and his earlobes hung long and flabby on each side of his head like handles on a Grecian urn.
“For your chart here, I need some information. Family medical records. Is there a history of cancer? Heart disease?”
“You name it,” she said, disinterested. “Obesity, mental illness, chronic paraplegia.”
“Paraplegia is not a disease,” he chided, head waggling. “I’m mainly interested in heart disease and retardation. Was there a history of that?”
“Unca Dicky had a low sperm count,” she mused. On the silken roses beside her head there crawled a silken caterpillar, spotted and hoary. “My mother went bald and had to defecate in her bed. My father was fat and he was also crazy. Other than that I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“Hereditary conditions, we need to be informed. As your comprehensive health care providers. The fetus lived through your accident, but we have some quest
ions about it. For instance, it has an anomalous heartbeat. Frankly, we’re concerned.”
“Anomalous?”
“The heartbeat of the fetus is stable, but fast. Much too fast. We don’t understand. The fetus’s brain is about one-third the volume that it should be. Like the brain of a chimpanzee fetus. We’re going to run some more tests.”
“Oh that,” she said, relieved.
“I’m afraid, Miss”—he consulted his clipboard—“Kraft, that though the baby may have defects, it’s too late to terminate your pregnancy. I’m sorry, but you need to know the situation. Realistically. We feel the infant may be challenged. Both physically and mentally.”
“I already know,” she said.
“I don’t think you appreciate the ramifications. You’re a very young single mother and in the event the baby does live beyond its first hours, you may have to bring up a difficult child. Your guardian has informed us you have access to a sizable trust fund. In that you’re very fortunate.”
“You’re a scientist, right? You’re aware that freaks of nature do occur?”
“We don’t like to call them freaks,” said the doctor sternly. Weedy gray tendrils, thin as thread, grew out of his nostrils. They were reaching out like plants toward the sun, trying to take root in her. Constant vigil was required. If she was not careful she would become a petri dish of sprouting microorganisms. She was already on her way.
“Please get away from me,” she said.
“Calm down. You’re going through a difficult time. You need some time to adjust, honey,” he said, and pinched her cheek as he left.
The next day he told her their tests were inconclusive. They would conduct more research, but it would have to wait. They would document the later stages of the embryo’s development. Pete Magnus wheeled her out of the hospital and drove to the back of his apartment building to avoid the picketing crowds in front. People carried signs that read Let Our Parents Die in Peace. Respect Your Elders. Big Business Is Bad Business. She was displeased when Pete showed her what he had done to her room.