Woman No. 17

by Edan Lepucki

  The liquor made my throat burn and a snarky blogger appeared in my head: She calls it art, but really she just wants to wear alcoholism like a Barbie doll wears plastic heels. My imaginary blogger was clever.

  I poured another. If I was going to do this project, I had to really do it.

  As the liquor warmed my belly, I felt Katherine Mary arriving apparition-style. She stepped into my body as a bride steps into a hoop dress. Here we are, I thought.

  I circled my wrists like my mom sometimes does before tucking in to a big meal. I pushed the hair from my eyes as she would, even when she’d tied her hair into that pernicious purple scrunchie and there was nothing to brush away. I took in the room with a distracted nod as if I didn’t notice the bare walls or the yellow pool noodle in the far corner. My mom could be as blind as a bachelor to her surroundings. I would be too.

  I was becoming Happy Kathy—that’s what she called herself after a drink or two. “Happy Kathday to me,” she liked to sing. “Happy Kathday to me.” I sang the song now and the voice I heard was deeper than my own, deep as a bassoon. I waved my arms above my head and swayed; it was a dance my mom thought was sexy even though she looked like a demonic sea anemone.

  I shuffled over to my camera. It was a hand-me-down from Maria, digital, not adequate for an artist like Everett, but nice enough for a sometime photographer like me.

  As I clicked photos of my empty glass and my wrists, a love for Katherine Mary soared through me. Mom! I danced between each click. My ass cheeks quivered. I brought the vodka bottle to my face and the frost on the glass cackled. I kept dancing, mock-gasping at the cold. It was a sweet duet and my eyes were watering. This was what my dad had been seduced by: Happy Kathy’s utopian urge.

  I decided to go into the Manse.

  I was tilting as I crept up the stairs, the evening glistening with promise and mystery. My body felt loose. Novocained.

  I’d told myself Devin was stirring and that I should check on him. That’s the line I’d give Seth if he caught me, and I held my breath as I passed his door. When he didn’t open it, I kept on. I didn’t even poke my head into Dev’s room. Katherine Mary wouldn’t, she’d go right for Lady’s door: to the boss lady’s quarters, to her boudoir. She’d want to check out the master bedroom in this house. My mom was a private eye in a past life—she says that sometimes.

  I wondered if Karl’s stuff still covered one of the bedside tables. Maybe he had a jar of collar stays on top of the dresser or a tube of gross hemorrhoid cream in the medicine cabinet, incriminating chest hairs in the shower. Or had Lady taken over the room completely? The rest of the house was so nice, I wondered if their room was a wreck. Maybe that’s why Lady kept the door shut.

  But no. The room looked like something out of a movie about rich people. There were two huge windows that overlooked the backyard. The king-sized bed was dressed in all white, and there were reading lamps built into the wall. Minimal clutter. Above the bed hung a wreath of succulents: velvety, spiky, alien. The only sign that Lady lived here was her computer bag against one wall and a pair of flip-flops by the door. Next to the bed, on a small table that looked like a giant sugar cube, was a folded up issue of Variety. Karl.

  On my dad and Maria’s favorite TV dramas, terrorists would film their hostages with the newspaper under their chins, as a kind of time stamp. I picked up the issue; four weeks old, but Lady couldn’t toss it into the recycling bin. Why had she kicked him out? I felt a sudden ping of despair for her, for this ineffectual hoarding. And for Karl, who might come up here, see his stuff untouched, and feel hopeful.

  Oh, who cares? Katherine Mary wouldn’t. I flung myself on the bed and flapped my arms up and down like I was making snow angels, which I’ve never done in real life. I wished I were naked, or wearing a flapper-style dress and black pantyhose, the kind with the lines up the back.

  The thought of that outfit carried me to the closet and I opened its door, felt up the wall for the light switch.

  Once the light was on, I was standing in a room about half as big as the Cottage; it was like a closet on a reality TV show: soft lighting and soft carpeting, built-in shelving, two tiers of hanging space on each side. His and hers.

  Karl’s side was just a bunch of shirts and garment bags. Lady’s side was packed, coordinated by color rather than type of clothing (which was lunacy—how did she find anything?). On one shelf a big basket held a dozen scarves. I wound one around my neck and checked out my reflection in the full-length mirror that hung on the far wall. Blue was my color. Katherine Mary would’ve pocketed it, but I held back. I needed to commit to being my mom, but if I got fired I’d be nowhere. And, besides, what would I do with the scarf—use it for a mixed-media collage? I dropped it back into the basket.

  Lady had hung a few kid drawings next to the mirror. There was a photo of Seth at the beach, maybe at age twelve or thirteen, posing by a sagging sandcastle, and, next to it, one of her with a just-born Devin.

  I turned to face Karl’s stuff. I hoped it would smell like a man, like shoehorns and wool sweaters, like a park statue plaque: metal and weather. I leaned in and breathed into a row of Oxford shirts, the hangers swinging and settling back on the rod. Katherine Mary would probably put her face into the clothes and hug them to her, but Karl might be OCD about his shirts.

  I needed more vodka.

  I moved to Karl’s dresser, which was covered in receipts and a pile of hardcovers. A small tower of quarters waited next to a parking ticket like they were having a conversation.

  Hanging on the wall above the coin tower was a framed black-and-white photo. It was one of Kit’s, from her Women series, and my heart stuttered as I leaned forward to get a better look. I recognized the style right off: the tight shot, the domestic details—in this one, a paisley-printed shower curtain; a curling iron propped on the edge of a sink; two ratty towels on the rack, the word SEA on one, and WORLD on the other. And a woman.

  She sat on the edge of the tub in a bra and stockings. Her stomach sagged over the waistband. The stocking seam was like a scar bisecting the lower half of her torso. One dark nipple peeked from the top of her demi-cup, but it wasn’t sexy, it was embarrassing, like she’d been caught with a booger in her nose.

  I was looking at her body first, as Kit intended, or so a classmate had said. When I got to the woman’s face, I stepped back.

  “Holy fucking shit.”

  It was Lady.

  Someone put a hand on my shoulder and I shrieked.

  Seth was standing a foot away from me. He was holding up his hands, as if to say, It’s okay, calm down.

  “Fuck, Seth! You scared me!”

  Now he smiled.

  “I thought I heard Devin and I came up here. I…Your mom’s at a party. For someone who used to live on this street? I guess they moved…?”

  He was waiting—or no, I reminded myself, yet again, he just couldn’t talk. I was drunk enough for him to notice. Could he smell it on me?

  “I have a sore throat so I took some cough syrup. I think it’s making me kind of loopy. Oh my God, Seth, please don’t tell Lady.”

  He just stood there.

  I was going to say sorry but instead I made my hand into a fist and held it to my chest.

  Sorry, I signed.

  He signed something back. Judging by his smile, it meant something like, I would never tattle.

  “This is your mom,” I said, and nodded at the photo.

  Seth took two steps back with his hand on his chest, pretending to be surprised.

  “With your acting skills, who needs dialogue,” I said. I’d meant it as a joke but Seth shot me a serious look that said, Do you really want to go there?

  Unnerved, I turned back to the photo on the wall.

  “Does Lady hate it?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I bet Karl loves it.”

  He nodded and then shook his head. It was complicated.

  I had so many questions, but Seth wasn’t about to write me an
essay on the topic. I wished I could remember anything from my ASL class.

  Where’s the library? I signed.

  He laughed. Again, sound. He could make sound.

  “See? I’m practically fluent,” I said.

  He stepped past me and I smelled the minty tang of his shaving cream. He had on a different T-shirt than earlier. He’d bathed. He’d shaved. My ears felt hot.

  Seth grabbed a pen from Karl’s dresser. On the back of the parking ticket, he wrote something and handed it to me. Santa Monica at Rexford.

  “What does this mean?” I asked. And then I knew. “Ha. The Beverly Hills Library, I get it.”

  Seth looked very pleased with himself. But now what? We were standing in his mom’s closet and I was drunk.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He didn’t nod, but he didn’t shake his head either.

  “There’s something I’ve wondered about.”

  For a second, Seth’s face fell slack, annoyed. He thought I wanted to know about being mute.

  “Not about you,” I said quickly.

  He made a face like he didn’t believe me.

  “I don’t give a shit about that,” I said. There was a meanness in my voice; it was my mom’s when drinking took her down a scary, potholed road.

  Seth looked startled and I felt powerful. He nodded, as if to say Go ahead.

  “Did your mom feel exploited by Kit?”

  Seth obviously hadn’t expected me to ask that. He turned to the picture, as if considering it for the first time.

  When he grabbed the ticket from me, our fingers touched.

  He wrote something else and handed it back.

  ASK HER.

  14.

  The party was a clusterfuck. not my words—I overheard one of the caterers murmur them as she slipped into the kitchen, her tray still half-full of unloved endive. I don’t think she understood what the phrase meant because there weren’t that many people at the party. The hostess kept eyeing the front door as if expecting some magical guest of honor to walk through it; meanwhile, her husband had gone to show a colleague the grapefruit tree he’d planted in the yard, never to return. Between serving drinks, the bartender was not-so-discreetly reading something on his phone. I wondered with a thrill whether he was on Twitter. Since becoming @muffinbuffin41, I’d tapped out a few more tweets, though I didn’t dare follow anyone, for fear they’d see them. After my Dora cleverness, the next had been useless:

  It’s hot. This has been a tweet.

  But after that, I tried:

  There’s a secret delight to farting after getting a Brazilian. The gas travels! Physics!

  I’d tweeted this one just before getting out of the car and heading to the party. It still had me giggling; it was the only thing keeping me vertical. Otherwise, I might have found a room to lie down in. The catering girl had been right, except it wasn’t the party that was the clusterfuck. It was me.

  I kept picturing Kit walking through my house just a few hours earlier: her Maoist couture, her stink-eye. She had opened the sparkling rosé that I’d been saving to celebrate a good writing day. Of course she would take that triumph away from me.

  Why had she come over? Karl knew I wouldn’t want his sister around snooping; once upon a time he’d been protective of our life together. Now, maybe, he’d given up on that—maybe he’d given up on me, as I had him. The hostess of the party certainly thought that’s what I had done. “I’m sorry to hear about you and Karl,” she said when I arrived, but instead of empathy in her eyes, there was only judgment. “I imagine you have your reasons,” she added.

  “So imagine them,” I said, and shuttled myself to the sofa. I’d come because I thought it would be good to get out and socialize, and because I was already paying S for the privilege. But never again, or at least not here. Now that the hostess no longer lived on our street it would be easy to pretend she didn’t exist.

  I didn’t recognize this sofa. It must have been purchased with the housewarming party in mind. It was a sleek midcentury piece, which meant I wasn’t supposed to actually sit on it. I wanted to stand up and lift it over my head. Throw it across the room. Maybe I could aim for the stereo, which was playing cabaret covers of Leonard Cohen songs—they’d probably bought the CD at Starbucks. I forced an asparagus spear down my throat, counted to three hundred, and slinked out the door.

  —

  I was still upset when Karl rang the doorbell the next morning. I kissed Devin and sent him downstairs with Seth; I waited in my room until they were gone. I had to, otherwise I’d be compelled to talk to Karl about his visit the day before. He’d be contrite. He’d insist on running down the hill for a new bottle of bubbly, likely a more expensive vintage than the one I’d chosen, and he would present it to me with yet another apology. He wouldn’t let me stay mad.

  Or would he? I didn’t want Karl to grovel, but I also didn’t want the opposite: he might pshaw my concerns, let me stew. Not out of unkindness, but apathy.

  It was Friday. Karl would be wearing the linen shirt I loved: charcoal-gray, the buttons tiny and wooden but somehow breathtakingly masculine. It was one of the few items of clothing he’d packed upon moving out; he always wore it on pickup days and I never complained about the ritual because the shirt looked so good on him. If I’d asked him to leave it in the closet, just so I could gaze at it every now and again, on my own terms, he would have complied. It’s why I didn’t say a thing as he’d carefully folded it into his suitcase.

  An hour later, Seth left for his morning film class and I crept downstairs, the house quiet except for the thrum of the dishwasher. Sometimes I wanted to crawl in there, let the water wash over me, toss and scrub me clean.

  Instead I checked my phone. I went first to Seth’s timeline; his newest tweet time-stamped twenty minutes prior: My stepdad picked up my brother & it felt like a drug deal. #LegalizeToddlers.

  I heard myself shriek-laugh even as I wanted to cry. If @muffinbuffin41 followed @sethconscious, she might reply. But how? Instead I typed to no one:

  Clusterfucks should be named, like hurricanes.

  From the window I could see S doing laps in the pool. Her hair would turn green from all the swimming. Upstairs I kept a drawer of bathing caps; I’d offer to lend her one.

  I walked outside and kneeled at the edge of the pool. S was swimming toward me from the other side, and her skin looked as pale and quivery as I’d imagined.

  “I’m worried,” I said when she reached me.

  She grabbed the concrete edge and looked up at me, stricken.

  “Your hair,” I said. “Also, you need goggles.”

  She treaded away from the edge, her chin dipping in and out of the water’s surface. “I don’t care.” The words took her some effort.

  “One day,” I said, “you’ll look at yourself in the mirror and wish you’d started the anti-aging creams early, that you’d never gone outside without SPF. And that you’d used a deep conditioner on your hair, at least monthly. Also: never stop doing squats.”

  “Squats?”

  I grinned and stood up. I pretended to sit on an invisible park bench, ass out. “Squats, S. S is for squats. Otherwise, your butt will fall.”

  We both laughed.

  “Seth told me something,” she said. “Well, he didn’t tell me, obviously…”

  I couldn’t help but be annoyed. “You can still say ‘tell.’ ”

  “Kit took a photo of you. Seth said you were one of her Women?”

  My blood turned cold as the pool water. One of her Women.

  To Kit, I’d always be Woman Number Seventeen, whose Sea World towels she loved for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate. (The day after she came over to photograph me, I drove those towels to the Goodwill and shoved them at the blue-vested employee, refusing a receipt. There is always someone less fortunate.)

  “It’s true,” I said. I let my voice drop a few octaves: “I am Woman Number Seventeen.”

  “Okay, Darth Vader.
” S was now floating on her back. I was surprised how decent her body looked; she was curvy but thin, her breasts small but buoyant. “Don’t squander your good looks,” my mother had once said to me when I dared wear a mock turtleneck. I felt like telling that to S.

  Instead I said, “Why were you and Seth talking about Kit?”

  “I guess because she stopped by.”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew Kit’s work.”

  “Only a little. From school.” Her body faced the sky and she squinted in the sun. “Did you meet her through Karl?”

  “It was the other way around.” I headed back to the house. “It’s too bright out here, come inside if you want to talk.”

  She jumped out of the pool and in moments was right at my heels like a puppy.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Eager, are we?”

  “I like stories,” she said lamely. She’d wrapped her towel under her armpits.

  “You should wear it slung on your hips,” I said.

  “Wear what?”

  I nodded at her towel, and she looked pleased. “I would, but…”

  “But what? You’ve got a nice midriff.”

  “My mom taught me to do it like this.”

  “Don’t listen to your mom.” I thought of the pink bubbly going flat in the fridge. It was the same brand my mother drank and I hated myself for liking it. The day my dad died, she’d opened a bottle and proposed a toast to extramarital cheaters everywhere.

  “I have an idea!” I said. “Let’s get drunk tonight and share stories about our fucked-up mothers!” I hooted as I stepped into the house. S was quiet. “Sorry, sorry,” I said. “I’ve just been out of sorts since Kit showed up here yesterday.”

  “You hate her photo.”

  “What’s your obsession with the photo? The photo is okay. It’s mildly exploitative and I look flabby and depressing in it even though I am neither, and certainly wasn’t before I had Devin—flabby, I mean. But it’s just a photo.”

  “And it’s anonymous.”