by Edan Lepucki
“Play with us, Seff!” Devin yelled.
Seth looked at me and signed, Can I?
I nodded, pleased that I’d understood.
I assumed he would make the fort’s architecture more complicated (as Everett would) or its foundation more secure (per the Steve Shapiro Method), but Seth grabbed one of the flashlights and crawled inside.
“It’s done?” Devin asked. “We ready?”
“I guess,” I said, and let him crawl inside.
A real-estate agent would have called the fort cozy, charming. I wasn’t sure we’d all fit. Seth kept nodding and gesturing for me to join them, and every moment I didn’t raised Devin’s begging another decibel. “Please, S. Please!” he yelled until I gave in.
It took us a few minutes to get settled, Devin elbowing me in the stomach and then in the face. It was like Tetris, with pain. When we finally found a configuration that worked, it actually felt comfortable. Hibernation has its perks. Seth and I lay on our backs with our legs bent, and Devin sprawled across us, his head on my shoulder and his legs across his brother’s chest. My left knee grazed Seth’s right thigh, but when I tried to move it, Devin squeaked in protest. I let it be.
Our makeshift roof was a slate-gray, king-sized sheet. It darkened our den, clouded it over, and the light-blue couch cushions surrounding us worked against the overcast. There were lines in the sheet, creases from where it had been folded, and if Devin and I had been alone, I might have told him to pretend they were hieroglyphics, or contrails from an airplane. With Seth there, I didn’t say anything. Devin babbled between us. He was already playing with the other flashlight, throwing its beam across the ceiling, making a pew-pew-pew noise.
“We aren’t shooting,” I said. “This is a show for our eyes.”
I heard Seth make a noise that was almost a laugh, and then the click of the other flashlight. The beam was smaller than Devin’s. It was a nickel of light. Seth dragged it slowly across the sheet, back and forth, back and forth.
“No!” Devin yelled and snatched the flashlight from his brother’s hand.
Seth made a flurry of signs. He spelled Devin’s name, and then signed the word no, but I couldn’t follow the rest.
Devin was now tapping the flashlights against each other like they were drumsticks and this was an arena rock show.
“Devin,” I warned.
Seth tapped Devin on the shin until the boy looked at him. Seth carefully held up one fist and wrapped his other hand around it.
Paper beats rock, I thought.
I held up my hands and did the same.
Devin stopped. “Seff! She also knows Stop Drop Dead?” He let go of the flashlights and the larger one knocked me in the chin before rolling away.
Seth propped himself on his elbows to see if I was okay. I waved him off.
“You did it wrong,” Devin told me, sitting up. “The other hand does the punch.” He lifted his left hand and made a fist.
“You can tell your left from your right?” I asked. “Wow.”
“It’s Mommy’s signs. The special signs! She and Seff do them. I have my voice, so I don’t need to.”
“But you know them.”
Seth sat up too and his head hit the sheet. Devin cringed for a moment and I said, “It doesn’t hurt because it’s soft.”
Seth typed something on his phone and passed it to me.
Dont tell her I taught you a special sign
“You didn’t teach me. Devin did.”
Devin was crawling over me to get out. “I want to play LEGOs,” he said.
Seth didn’t move and neither did I. Devin was already galloping out of the room. I felt short of breath as I passed Seth his phone. He typed something and passed it to me.
She doesnt want Dev doing the signs
“Why not?”
He gave me a look that suggested the answer was too complicated to type, but then he was writing something anyway.
Its our thing I guess. Me and my mom.
“If that’s true, how does Devin know…Stop Drop Dead?” I handed Seth his phone and did the sign once more.
With the phone in his hand, Seth drew something in the air between us. The letter K.
I told myself to let it go—You aren’t a detective, Esther—but I knew Katherine Mary wouldn’t.
“K. Karl?” I said. “Lady taught the special signs to Karl?”
He shook his head. He pointed to himself.
“You taught them to Karl. And Karl taught them to Devin.”
So Lady had no idea. Or she had found out.
“Oh shit,” I whispered.
Seth’s smile turned wicked. I remembered how Lady had described his few months in the Cottage. He’d had troubles.
The doorbell rang.
—
It was the Breathalyzer. As I signed for the package, Devin asked the UPS dude a dozen questions, including “Can I drive your truck tomorrow?” Seth had gone kaput in that magical way of his, taking whatever we’d shared in the fort along with him. By the time I carried the box into the kitchen, I was shocked to see he had materialized there, eating a banana at the counter as if he’d never been anywhere else. He lifted his chin at the box.
“It’s nothing….”
He waited. Or, no: he was just standing there. This wasn’t a calculated move—the guy couldn’t speak even if he wanted to. I bet everyone assumed he wanted to. I wouldn’t.
Devin was tugging on my shirt. “Open it! Open it!”
“It’s private,” I said.
“Is it an ax?” Devin asked. “Is it a gun? It’s a gun!”
Seth laughed: that deep sound.
“It’s not an ax or a gun. I’m doing a project. An art project.”
Seth looked surprised but I didn’t explain further.
“Don’t tell,” I said.
—
That night I locked the Cottage door and drank a beer as fast as I could, its ocean foam tickling my nose. Unpacked, the Breathalyzer looked smaller than I expected, like a digital camera with a little tube sticking out of one end. It had cost me almost $250—more like half a grand if I counted the interest my credit card would charge me by the time I paid it off. And if it didn’t work…I couldn’t even fathom how that would feel.
I had another beer and then I blew into the Breathalyzer’s tube. I tried to record the sound with my phone, but it didn’t pick up anything except for the beep of the digital readout. Light-headed, I leaned in to read the screen: .06.
I recorded the number in my notebook. I’d also been keeping a catalog of alcohol consumed, as if I owned a liquor store and this was my inventory. Beneath the date, I scribbled Amstel Light, 2 bottles. So far, I had zero clue what I would do with these figures, or how they related to the Polaroids, or to my extended performance: the bad hair, the ugly clothes, the blunt questions I asked Lady, like I didn’t care what she thought of me. The way I’d stayed in the fort with Seth after Devin had left.
I just had to keep going with the project. I remembered something Everett had told me: “The process will elucidate the intention, Es.” We’d been driving to San Francisco, crossing the new bridge, the old one beside us, getting dismantled rail by rail, the water so pretty I could barely stand it. We were talking about his show. Again. Always about his show.
Alone in the Cottage, I brought my left fist into the air and enclosed it in my right palm. Stop Drop Dead. Seth had taught Karl the special signs, and Karl had taught at least one of them to Devin. And now I knew it too.
I shoved the Breathalyzer under the bed. Seth had fucked that girl here, that didn’t seem to be in question. She’d let him touch her and he’d done it.
I pictured him teaching the girl one special sign, and another, and one more after that, as Lady slept soundly in the house above them.
19.
Friday night.
I fixed myself a vodka gimlet and boiled a hot dog to eat sans bun, as my mother preferred it. She ate like a toddler but was still thin and st
raight as a pole.
It was time to get serious, to not only elucidate my intentions but to decide if I had any to begin with. I was going to see my mom the next day and I already felt anxious. I’d been avoiding her because I was too busy trying to become her. Her sitcom would be on hiatus soon, meaning she’d be broke and then antsy and then clingy. She’d let go of her cleaning lady the same day I moved into the Cottage and I didn’t want to imagine her kitchen sink. From a housekeeping perspective, Katherine Mary’s utopian urge was dystopian.
The vodka was already warm in my wrists by the time I conquered the hot dog. It was so salty I had to drink more, almost ravenously. Was that why my mom ate so many hot dogs?
By the end of the drink, my alcohol level read .10. I wrote it down in my notebook, whose pages were beginning to resemble an Ellis Island ledger. I wanted to drown it in the Manse pool. The record wasn’t a story, it wasn’t a person, it told me nada. Katherine Mary would never have cataloged anything.
I poured myself a third gimlet and went to dig up my sketchpad and charcoals. I needed to make something. The Polaroids didn’t feel like enough. They were languishing in the dark of my dresser, Miss Havisham–style, until I could figure out what they meant.
With my charcoal pencils, I drew the tube of the Breathalyzer. First, up close, just its plastic ridges, ribbed like a screw, and then again as if from far away, as if the tube had been detached from the machine and was lying discarded in an empty lot.
By now I was very drunk, and so my hand was looser. The drawings were sloppy but intriguing; they didn’t have much in common with my cautious little landscapes of yore. One prof had called my work “as well behaved as a lap dog” and I sadly agreed. These drawings were nastier. I drew another: this time, the tube’s opening, with its cobweb of spittle.
I drew, and drank, and felt exhilarated. Like Happy Kathy. And like myself too. My mother was bringing the grit but I had the skill.
This wasn’t the first time I’d split apart. My parents broke up when I turned five and the world was sliced in two. My mom didn’t ask for full custody, probably because the skateboarder was still in the picture and they liked the privacy. After he left her but before she foreclosed on the house, she said she just needed time to let loose. That’s privacy too.
My dad gladly agreed to the every-other-week agreement; Steve Shapiro would never keep a daughter from her mother. He was still in love with my mom and he probably hoped I’d bring back a little of her each time I returned to him. As if I could.
Until I went to college, I migrated from one parent to the other every Monday, schlepping to school whatever I couldn’t stand to be away from: a specific pair of shoes, a certain sweater, my change purse of jewelry, my makeup. Otherwise, I had two of everything: two bedrooms, two favorite stuffed animals, two computers. There were also two Esthers: the one my dad took care of, and the one who took care of my mom.
As I finished my fourth drawing and my third drink, I saw how my life had trained me perfectly for this project.
20.
The secret to visiting my mom is to get there early, before Kathday festivities are under way. I was down the hill by nine the next morning and I didn’t bother calling. It wasn’t like she’d bake muffins or fan out a bevy of women’s magazines next to a box of aloe-softened tissues like my dad did. Besides, Katherine Mary gets a kick out of surprises.
I knew she was awake because I smelled coffee and the TV was on. A stick of incense burned on the coffee table, its gray ash dusting a soy-sauce packet.
“Mommy?” I called. As soon as I said the word, I became Esther again, the ruse of Katherine Mary becoming just that: a ruse.
My mom walked into the living room with a dish towel in her hand. Her T-shirt pictured a marshmallow with wide eyes. It read: STOP INTERRUPTING ME WHILE I’M TRYING TO ANNOY YOU! I’d won it in a school raffle when I was eleven.
“Baby!” she said. “You’re here!”
She let go of the dish towel, just let it drop to the floor as if some butler (i.e., me) would ferry over shortly to pick it up, and came to give me a hug, bending down so that her head fit under my chin.
“Mommy,” I said. “That shirt?”
She let go. “It makes me think of you.”
“I never wore it. Not once.”
“But you look like the marshmallow.” Now she stepped back to take me in. “Looking cute as always, Waterbug.” She grinned. “God, did I actually dress like that when I was your age?”
“Sadly, you haven’t improved.”
She shrugged and headed back into the kitchen. “Want a Siggy?”
“You’re having a hot dog now? It’s not even nine thirty.”
My mom favored the Costco hot dogs, the Kirkland Signature brand. Siggys.
“I swear I haven’t had one for a week,” she said. “I need the protein.”
I followed her into the kitchen, expecting a mini apocalypse: a pile of greasy pizza boxes and empty wine bottles; maybe a handle or two of vodka, also empty; pasta sauce splattered on a wall, probably the ceiling too. Human hair clogging the sink. A zillion dishes crusted over with multiple meals, the sponge a living thing. The overhead would be burned out and she’d have brought in a reading light. Or hadn’t and tonight it would be as dark as pupils in there.
But everything looked decent. There was a full trash bag on the linoleum, waiting for someone to take it out, and some mugs scattered on the counter. That was it.
“I thought you said you fired the cleaning lady.”
“I did. I felt like a shit for doing it, I mean, taking that paycheck from her, but the show stops filming next week and then I’ll be poor again.” She dropped a hot dog into the boiling water on the stove. “Want some coffee?”
“Frank’s here, isn’t he?” I said.
“Want some coffee?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.”
“He’s asleep.”
“When did you guys get back together?”
“I’m not sure we’re together.” She wiggled her nose. “Or, no, maybe it’s that we never broke up. I can’t keep track of our…what’s the word? Our status? This is why I’m not on Facebook.”
“They actually have a box for that: ‘It’s complicated.’ ”
But she wasn’t listening. “So what’s shaking in the Hills? Anything new with the dumb kid?”
“Mommy.”
“What? I’m talking about the two-year-old.”
“Sure you are. It’s really disrespectful.”
My mom speared her hot dog with a fork and lifted it, steaming, out of the pot. “You were in Berkeley for too long.”
“Devin’s great. He knows his left from his right, isn’t that amazing?”
“And the one who doesn’t talk?”
“Seth’s eighteen, Mom. I don’t watch him.”
“Doesn’t the mother worry about you two being in the same house together?”
“I have the Cottage, I told you.”
“Ah, yes,” she said in a nasally British accent. “The Cottage.”
“Stop.”
“How is the duchess, by the way?”
“Her name is Lady,” I said. “She’s fine.”
“Except that she’s worried you’re going to take her son’s virginity. The mute’s, I mean.”
“Mom!”
“What? You’re playing at being me, aren’t you?” She winked and took a bite of her Siggy. With her mouth full, she said: “Relax, Miss Square. I’m just teasing you.”
I told her I had to use the bathroom.
My mom had moved into this place after I’d left for school. She had no need for a two-bedroom anymore, and without my dad helping her with the rent she couldn’t afford one. This new apartment was a guesthouse above a garage. The place shook each time her landlord, Brian Fairbanks, opened the garage door below to back out his BMW, and then again when the door shuddered closed. The bedroom was separated by flimsy drywall, the kind artists build themselves in an
afternoon. You had to walk through the bedroom to get to the bathroom, which was so small there was no room for a plunger or toilet brush.
The bedroom was dark, but I could make out the big lump of Frank in the bed. He lay on his side and the comforter didn’t cover his meaty white shoulder, whiskered with hair. I may have thrown up in my mouth a little as I rounded the mattress.
Frank. He and my mom couldn’t seem to stay away from each other, even though a year before she’d scratched his face so hard she drew blood and he vowed never to talk to her again. They’d met on set; Frank was one of the transportation guys, or he had been—he was on disability now, who knew why or how. His mother, who lived in Boca Raton, had woven the basket hanging like a picture above the bed. My mom had attached it with yellow thumbtacks and string. The basket was the only thing Frank had ever given her. Okay, so he cleaned her house. But he helped her be a pig in it first. He had a snout face.
On the milk crate next to the bed, I noticed an ashtray with two cigarette butts in it. I leaned down, and sniffed. They smelled fresh.
I hurried to the bathroom. Toilet paper floated like jellyfish in the bowl, the water the color of apple juice. Too bad it didn’t smell like that.
“Mommy,” I said when I emerged from the bedroom.
She was sitting on the couch, with two mugs in her hands. “That was fast,” she said.
“Brian Fairbanks said if he catches you smoking in here again, that’s it.”
“I wasn’t smoking,” she said.
“Do you want to get evicted?”
“I told you, I wasn’t smoking. Maybe Frank had one before bed, but I’m sure he blew it out the window.”
“There are two butts in that ashtray. Brian Fairbanks won’t care if it was you or someone else.”
My mother handed me one of the mugs. “Thank you for reading my lease, Esther, but I can handle it.”
She made room for me next to her on the couch. We left one side empty, and huddled next to each other, my legs atop hers. We called it “Siamese-ing.” For all my mom’s flaws, she had a warmth. I wanted that. I needed to emulate that too.