The Hole We're In

by Gabrielle Zevin

  She peeked through the hole, and though it didn’t seem possible, the perspective made the job even more depressing. All the little people became nothing more than ants gathering supplies for their personal dirt mounds.

  “How you finding the work?” Lenny or George asked her.

  “Had worse,” she said.

  ON HER FIFTH day of work, she spotted Minnie in the contraceptive aisle at the Slickmart.

  Patsy called her name. The girl was holding a pack of condoms in her hand, which, upon seeing Patsy, she hid behind her back.

  “Patsy,” she said, “I didn’t know you were working here.”

  “Just started,” Patsy said. “How you been?”

  They embraced, and the condoms dropped to the floor.

  “You won’t tell my brother, will you?” Minnie asked.

  Patsy chuckled. “Pharm’s not gonna care about you sleeping with some boy.”

  Minnie shook her head. “You don’t know Marcus as well as me. And besides, it’s not what you think,” she said. “The boy I’m... we’re getting married!”

  “What do you mean?”

  She told Patsy how she was in love with Joseph-named-Joseph from the church play, and they were going to get married, and neither of them believed it was right to sleep with a person before marriage, but they were going to make this right just as soon as they both graduated from high school. “It’s a real relief to tell someone,” she said. She put her arms around Patsy again, and Patsy wanted to weep, but not for joy.

  “Minnie,” she said, “you don’t have to marry the first person you sleep with, you know.”

  The girl turned red as an apple and looked away. “I...,” she stammered. “I don’t think it’s right not to. ’Cause of God. And the Bible.”

  “The Bible don’t know everything,” Patsy said. “And God don’t eff’n care who you sleep with.”

  “Stop yelling, Patsy!” The girl looked up and down the aisle to make sure no one was listening.

  Patsy hadn’t realized she’d been yelling, but now that Minnie had mentioned it, she could feel her heart beating quickly and sweat forming on her brow. She inhaled and thought a bit of the NATO phonetic alphabet. For a few seconds, the only sounds were distant rusty shopping cart wheels and the Muzak that was the store’s liminal sound track—at that moment, “Top of the World,” by the anorexic girl and her brother or husband, Patsy couldn’t remember which. “Sorry,” Patsy said. “It’s just... I used to believe that shit, too. But they lie to you, Minnie. Every week, my dad lies to you. The church lies to you. You haven’t been anywhere, so you don’t know. You don’t know anything.”

  For someone who didn’t know anything, Minnie laughed in a most knowing way. Patsy could tell the girl pitied her.

  Patsy offered to pay for Minnie’s condoms using her 20 percent employee discount, but the girl declined, and Patsy had to get back to pretending to sell hunting rifles anyhow.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she couldn’t concentrate on not selling guns, and she accidentally sold one, which depressed her. She kept thinking about Minnie and how wrong and young the girl was if she really thought she had to marry Joseph-named-Joseph. Patsy had been guilty of that kind of dubious thinking when she’d married Magnum. She supposed she had married him to prove a point more than anything. Six years later, that exact point was sometimes hard to recall.

  ON HER SIXTH day of work, the roof of the Slickmart began to leak. A persistent, menacing drip that escaped most everyone’s notice.

  * * *

  ON HER SEVENTH day, the leak made a watermark on the ceiling. A customer commented that the stain looked like Jesus standing with His hands out. Patsy didn’t really see it. To her, it just sort of looked like a stain. Upon squinting, she was willing to concede that the stain looked something like a man with his hands out, but she found no evidence to indicate that the man was Jesus in particular. She did think it looked rather like Magnum had the night he’d wanted her to get the hell out of the car.

  She supposed it was timing more than anything—it was only ten days to Christmas—that made folks think the stain was a miracle.

  ON THE EIGHTH day, Abraham Slick called the local television station, thinking a cute human-interest story might generate additional holiday traffic.

  Unfortunately, it brought in the wrong type of business, too.

  ON THE NINTH day, Patsy’s mother made her first in a series of pilgrimages to the store.

  Lacey went to discuss the matter with Patsy in guns, where she was busily not selling guns. Instead, Patsy was creating a Christmas rifle display—she wanted the guns to look like a Christmas tree, and this was turning out to be more challenging than her initial estimates. “Hiya, honey,” Lacey said. “How’s the arms dealing going today?” This was her one joke, which Patsy found rather edgy for Magnum’s sister. Lacey looked at the gun display and furrowed her brow. “Is that supposed to be a tree?”

  She nodded.

  “Festive,” she said. “So, Patsy, the thing is... Your mama’s kind of at the store now.”

  “Yeah. Probably Christmas shopping.”

  “Uh-huh. The thing is, Patsy, she’s kind of been here for the last six hours.”

  “Well, she’s not gonna win any speed-shopping medals, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Don’t you want to go see her?” Lacey lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s in the condom aisle. You know, below the stain. If it were my mama—”

  Patsy interrupted her. “Not really,” she said and then she changed the subject to matters more pressing. “Lacey, do you think Mr. Slick would allocate some tinsel to guns? ’Cause the whole rest of the store looks like Christmas, and I think my little tree really wants for something.”

  ON THE TENTH day, Patsy’s mother came again and though Patsy saw her, she chose not to say anything to her or even approach her. The Jesus stain was above the condom department, so Patsy really didn’t have much cause to go there. But yes, she had seen her mother. She was hard to miss. She was 250 pounds and dressed for church. She would stand there in the middle of the aisle leaning on a shopping cart and just stare up at the ceiling. Sometimes her lips would be moving slightly. Patsy thought she was praying, but she never got close enough to find out. She wondered if the Pharm was still supplying George with antidepressants.

  ON PATSY’S ELEVENTH day of work, her mother began moving condoms out of the row below the stain. George was overheard telling other customers that the prophylactics were disrespectful to Jesus.

  Mr. Slick called Patsy into his office. He asked her if it was her mother in the condom row. She replied that although the woman in the aisle had certainly given birth to her, she hadn’t been her mother for some time.

  “You won’t mind if I call the police, then?” Slick asked.

  Patsy considered the question. She really didn’t want to entangle herself with whatever spiritual/psychological breakdown her mother was having.

  And yet...

  She used the phone in Slick’s office to call Roger, who she hadn’t spoken to since he’d hung up on her.

  Before she could even begin, her father said, “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “I’m calling about your wife,” Patsy said. “She’s in the Slickmart—I work there now—and she’s about to get herself arrested, if you even give a crap about that.”

  Roger was momentarily speechless, and that gave his daughter pleasure. Patsy knew that the worst thing that could happen to the town’s star preacher was one of his own making a spectacle.

  He cleared his throat. “How long has this been going on?”

  “’Bout three days.”

  “And you didn’t think to call me sooner, Patricia?”

  “Fuck that, Dad. I thought you knew. She isn’t hurting anyone. They’re only throwing her out, ’cause she started moving the contraceptives.”

  Her father said he’d be there in fifteen minutes.

  She went to see her mother below the Jesus stain.r />
  “Hi, Mom,” she said.

  George was occupied throwing a bunch of K-Y Jellies into a shopping cart.

  She was muttering to herself, “Now, I really only have to move the ones with spermicide. Because there’s nothing wrong with a little lubrication. Nothing wrong with that at all...”

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, hello, Patsy,” she said after a bit. “I’ve just got so much to do today, baby. It’s crazy here.”

  For sure, Patsy thought. “Um, Dad’s coming to get you in about fifteen minutes.”

  George paused for a second and looked at Patsy blankly. “Roger’s coming here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would he do that?” Patsy thought this was said rather imperiously for a person who was making such a spectacle of herself in the Slickmart.

  “Well, I... I reckon he wanted to help.”

  Her mother snorted. “You can tell him I got everything under control, Patsy-babe.”

  George held up a bottle of warming lubricant. “Patricia, do you know if this has spermicide in it?”

  “I don’t think so. I just think it makes things warm.”

  George smiled. “Then it can stay!”

  When her father arrived, he pushed past Patsy and grabbed her mother by the meat of her upper arm.

  “George, we are leaving.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not finished.”

  “You are,” he said. She could see Roger pinching the adipose tissue under George’s arm. That will bruise, Patsy thought. For years after, whenever she thought of her parents’ marriage, this would be the image that came into her head.

  Roger smiled tightly at the people who’d gathered to watch the family saga under Jesus. “Show’s over, folks. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see.”

  “Dad,” Patsy started to say.

  “Not the time, Patricia.”

  Then he led her mother out of the store and Patsy watched George’s round turquoise butt waddle away. Her mother kept muttering, “I’m not finished, I’m not finished, I’m not done.”

  “You’re done,” Roger said.

  Her mother paused when they reached the automatic doors at the front of the store. “You’ll come for Christmas, Patsy?”

  “Probably not,” Patsy said.

  “Great, we’ll see you then.”

  Patsy was not immune to the sight of her mother being escorted out of the Slickmart, to the pretty business of the woman who had raised her come undone. But she had seen some hard things in her life already and had learned to treat everything like the photograph of the thing instead of the thing itself. She could hang the picture in the museum and carry on. And that’s what she did. That day was no more or no less than day eleven of Patsy’s job at the Slickmart.

  Patsy Gets Fired

  ON HER FOURTEENTH day of work, she was fired. It was exactly one week before Christmas, and she was told that the timing represented quite an accomplishment as Mr. Slick preferred to wait until after the holidays for firings.

  There were two official reasons for her dismissal.

  One, she was caught on the security camera poking holes in water bottles. Upon seeing the tape, she thought that it was somewhat unclear what she had been doing. She told them that she’d been examining the bottles to determine why they were leaking, an explanation they seemed to accept. “I was plugging holes,” she claimed. “Not making them.”

  “Why didn’t you tell a superior?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing,” she said.

  The second incident occurred in the break room and was significantly more damning.

  She’d been eating lunch with Lenny or George when a man she’d never met before came in. His hair was white blond and his arms were red, as was his neck. He worked in electronics, and the perception was that the electronics guys all thought they were the shit.

  So, Electronics sat down with them. And Lenny or George said to him, “You know Patsy?”

  Electronics kind of grunted in her direction. “Heard you were in the military?”

  “Yeah.” She said this with a definite period because she was not in the mood to entertain with old war stories.

  “What was that like?”

  “Hot,” she said.

  Lenny or George snickered.

  “Also sandy,” she added.

  “Bet your crotch got all sandy,” Electronics said.

  What a wit, she thought, though she had certainly heard worse after four years in the service. “Yeah,” she said, “my pussy’s like sandpaper.”

  All of them laughed at that, and Patsy loudest of all. She had learned that this was a good strategy if one wished to get along with unpleasant men. Then she said she had to get back on the sales floor, but really, she just couldn’t stand to be around the gentleman from electronics anymore.

  Later that afternoon, she was on break by herself when Electronics returned.

  “So...,” said Electronics, “what was it really like over there?”

  “If you’re so interested, why don’t you sign up?” She took the lid off her yogurt container and started mixing the strawberries from the bottom to the top.

  “Can’t,” he said. Then he lifted his sneaker and set it up on the faux wood table. “Flat feet. But you were lucky. ’Cause I bet you didn’t see any actual combat over there or nothing.”

  She asked him to please explicate.

  “I mean, ’cause you’re a gal. And gals don’t see actual combat.”

  An expert, she thought. She just shook her head. “Seriously, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Naw,” said Electronics, “now you’re looking all upset, but I didn’t mean nothing bad by it. It’s still a good thing you done, going over there and serving your country and all.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Appreciate it mightily.”

  He wasn’t finished. “But it ain’t the exact same thing as when a guy does it, right? ’Cause the guys are the ones who see actual combat, and the gals—”

  She set her yogurt down on the table. “You wanna see some actual combat right now?”

  “I’m serious. I’m just trying to figure it. It’s, like, different for girls over there. I mean, girls aren’t on the front lines, so—”

  “Honestly, I’m going to need you to stop talking now.”

  “Aw, Patsy, don’t be mad. You’re taking it all backward. I just meant—”

  She’d had her fill. So she took her yogurt spoon, flipped it point outward, and aimed it at Electronics’s throat. “Shut your cock holster, would you?”

  Then, she jammed Electronics against the Coke machine.

  “Am I talking to you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “No, I meant before. Was I talking to you?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “Seriously,” she said, “I’m gonna need you to shut the fuck up, so I can eat my yogurt in peace. You reckon that’s a possibility for you?”

  Electronics was at least a foot taller than her, so she had to reach up to keep the spoon at his throat. He nodded a little, and she took the spoon away. She could see a dark red spot on his Adam’s apple that would probably turn into a sweet little bruise.

  She walked over to the sink and rinsed off the spoon, which she had brought from home.

  “You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”

  She sat down and tried to resume eating her yogurt. Something about the strawberries at the bottom repulsed her a little. It put her in mind of human flesh she’d smelled and seen, and animal flesh, and the acid of vomit and other things that should stay inside but had come out.

  The unborn rewarded her with a kick to the gut.

  Other folks in the break room were watching her, though no one was speaking. “Anyone want the rest of my yogurt?” she asked. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said. “I just don’t want it anymore.”

  A roundish girl with apple cheeks spoke up.
Her name was Lara, and Patsy thought she worked in cosmetics with Lacey. “Sure, Patsy,” Lara said, “I’ll have it.”

  Patsy gave her the yogurt, then returned to guns.

  Mr. Slick fired her at the end of business day. It turned out that Electronics was married to his daughter.

  Patsy thought the boss’s timing was either ballsy or stupid. At the moment of her dismissal, she had been holding a hunting rifle. It wasn’t loaded, but Mr. Slick couldn’t have known that for certain.

  Slick put his arm around her shoulders and walked her out to the parking lot, and when she told him she didn’t have a car, he drove her home.

  “You’re a nice girl, Patsy,” he said after he’d pulled into her driveway. “You’re just going through a bad time right now. Why don’t you give me a call when you’ve had some time to sort yourself out?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m eff’n peachy. And hey, man, fuck you! You don’t have any right to say that to me. You don’t have any right to go acting like you’re such a good guy after you’re the one who just fired me a week shy of Christmas. Everyone knows your wife’s crazy and everyone calls your store the fucking Suckmart. Did you know that? And your son-in-law’s an asshole who don’t know jack shit about the service. So which one of us is going through a bad time? You don’t have any idea what kind of a time I’m going through.”

  Mr. Slick shook his head. He leaned over her and opened the car door.

  She smiled, wide and awful. “What? You don’t want to use me for your advertisements anymore?”

  “Happy holidays, Patricia,” he said.

  Patsy Visits Her Mother and Does Some Last-minute Christmas Shopping

  THREE DAYS LATER, she received a phone call from Helen.

  “What’s wrong with Mom?” Helen asked. Helen and George talked every Sunday night, and George had missed last Sunday’s call. Patsy told her that she didn’t know anything specific, but George had been escorted out of the Slickmart the prior Friday.

  “And you didn’t call me?”

  “No, guess not.”

  “And you didn’t think that Mom being carried out of the Slickmart was worth your further investigation?”