Woman No. 17

by Edan Lepucki

  “I brought you one of my new dresses,” I said. “It already has a hole in it.”

  A few minutes later she had her sewing box out and her glasses on, and she was hunched over the coffee table, needle and dress in hand.

  “It’s so cheap,” I said. “It hasn’t even been washed yet.”

  “I know—it’s got that hamper stink.” She looked at me over her glasses. “What are you up to, Esther Shapiro?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean with your getup…and your face. When was the last time I saw you without lip gloss on? Are you seriously doing this—pretending…?”

  “I told you, it’s for fun.”

  “It’s too intense to be for fun. It’s bizarre.”

  “Didn’t you have fun when you were my age? Tell me about the family you nannied for.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you remember.”

  “They lived in Nichols Canyon. Their house was built on stilts. I thought it would fall down at any moment, I bet it did eventually. The little girl was four or five, I think.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Is there a difference between four and five?”

  “Loads. Did you drink then?”

  My mother pierced the fabric with the needle and sighed. “Esther.”

  “What?”

  “You’re fixated,” she said. “Did I ask you over here to hold back my hair while I threw up? Or to clean my apartment? No. I’m enjoying my Saturday morning.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just came to get a book.”

  I’d brought my art books back to L.A. with me, and my mom had asked if I could leave them with her, that she’d take care of them. She said she liked looking at them, and that she wanted something of mine to keep her company.

  The Kit Daniels monograph was on the bottom of her bookshelf.

  “She’s Devin’s aunt,” I said.

  “Who?” My mom pointed to the woman on the cover, who was lying across her bed in underwear and a camisole, talking on the phone. The drapes were closed, but sunlight seeped in at the edges.

  “The photographer,” I said.

  I was thinking how Kit would love my mom’s apartment, especially if what Lady had said about her having a thing for clutter was true. On top of the TV, a stapler sat next to a juice glass. A Priority Mail sticker was stuck to the door, right next to the peephole.

  My mom began looking through the book. I leaned forward, hoping to get a glimpse of Lady, but the pages flipped by too quickly.

  She said, “Remember, in high school when you painted freeway exit signs, but you changed the words?”

  I remembered. Instead of Robertson or Fairfax, the signs read stuff like Heaven or Hell.

  “Ugh, so cheesy,” I said.

  Everett and I had enjoyed a good, postcoital laugh about that one. If I’d told him about the drawings before we had sex, he wouldn’t have fucked me.

  “They weren’t cheesy! They were fantastic! I loved your art. Steve has all that, doesn’t he?”

  I nodded; they were in one of the many boxes marked with my name in his garage.

  “Bastard,” she said.

  “Good morning to you too,” Frank said from the bedroom doorway. He’d put on a rumpled Hawaiian shirt and a pair of jeans, praise Jesus. I tried not to look at his toenails.

  “Hi, Frank,” I said.

  “Hey there. Nice haircut.” He came over and patted first my head and then my mom’s, like he was playing a game of Duck-Duck-Goose. “I was thinking of going to get some cake.”

  I’d forgotten about Frank’s sweet tooth.

  “What kind of cake do you like?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “All kinds, I guess.”

  “How about urinal cakes? They serve those in the bathroom at Dodger Stadium.”

  My mother held her head back and laughed.

  “Don’t get any for me,” I said. “I can’t stay long.”

  “How about chocolate?”

  “You have to stay!” my mom cried. “Don’t you want to sleep over?”

  “I told Lady I’d watch Devin tonight,” I lied.

  “Stop it,” my mom said.

  “Stop what?”

  “If you want to be me, even me at twenty-two or whatever, you can’t lie. I never lie.”

  “Is this the Cindy Sherman thing?” Frank said, nodding at me. He was putting on a newsboy cap. He would slip into his sneakers, not bothering with socks, and be on his way.

  “Is this Kim Daniels involved?” my mom asked, flipping to the front of the book.

  “Kit,” I said.

  “She is then.”

  “No! There’s nothing to be involved in.”

  “You’ve always been an artist,” my mom said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Frank opened the closet door and my mother screamed.

  “What?” I asked.

  There was a white bunny with red eyes, twitching its nose like it was about to sneeze. It ran under the coffee table.

  “What the fuck?” I yelled.

  “Peter Rabbit!” my mom called out.

  Frank was peering into the closet. “This cage needs to be cleaned, Kathy.”

  “That’s not a cage, it’s a pen,” my mother said.

  “That’s not a pen, it’s a closet!” I said.

  “There’s a pen inside the closet,” she explained.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t want Peter Rabbit to poop all over the place,” my mom said. “It’s my understanding that I can actually train him to poop in a bin, like a cat goes in a litter box? But I haven’t yet.” She had the bunny in her arms now, and she was stroking it ears to butt.

  “Mommy, you can’t have pets here.”

  “It’s only temporary. Cheryl gave him to me.” That was one of the actresses on the sitcom. “Did you know Cheryl’s an amateur bunny breeder, out on her ranch in Malibu?”

  “Brian Fairbanks said no animals under any circumstances. Do you know how high rents have gone up since you moved in here?”

  “This pen reeks, Kathy,” Frank said.

  “I couldn’t say no to Cheryl. She’s desperate in this way that’s hard to describe.” She lifted Peter Rabbit. “Wanna hold him?”

  I shook my head. “Mom. Your credit is horrible. Brian Fairbanks will kick you out because of this, and then you’ll be in real trouble. You know this animal isn’t worth that.”

  “Please don’t monetize my bunny,” she said, but she didn’t protest when I pulled out the pen and began cleaning it. I said nothing when she switched from coffee to beer, perhaps willing Happy Kathday to commence despite what I was doing.

  “Do you have to take him?” she asked when she kissed the bunny goodbye. His pen was already in my trunk.

  “You know I do,” I said, and ushered Peter Rabbit into the travel carrier my mother had, after some urging, pulled out from the bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, I was driving back up the hill with a bunny in the passenger seat.

  —

  When I got back to Lady’s, Milkshake came trotting up to me, sniffing. I wondered if he could smell the Esther on me.

  “S?” Lady called out. “We’re in here.”

  She sat at the dining room table with a half-played Scrabble board in front of her. She was in a pair of men’s pajamas, rearranging tiles on her easel.

  “I’ve got all vowels,” she said distractedly. And then, looking up, “Where’d you go?”

  “Just a few errands.”

  Seth walked into the room with his hand up in a peace sign, bending his fingers. So he’d seen Peter Rabbit.

  “What happened?” Lady asked. Her voice had gone cold and I wondered if my mom had been right; maybe Lady did worry there was something between me and her son.

  “I have a rabbit with me,” I said, sitting. I explained the situation. “I know I should have asked you first, but it seemed necessary that I remove the animal from
the apartment.”

  “Is it your habit of rescuing your mother from eviction?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Well, bring it in here,” she said. “As long as he doesn’t make a big mess, I don’t mind. What about you, Sethy? Do you mind?”

  Seth shook his head. He was gesturing with his chin toward the front of the house. He wanted to get the bunny. I nodded.

  “So…Scrabble,” I said, when he was gone.

  “I make him play with me.” Her voice sounded distant again. Had she found out that I’d learned Stop Drop Dead? Or that I’d been in that fort alone with Seth? He could have tattled on me, which meant she knew I’d been snooping in her closet.

  “Are you upset with me?” I asked. “I don’t have to keep the rabbit. I really don’t.”

  She flicked her fingers at the pen and score pad. “Not at all. I’m just losing.”

  Seth returned with the bunny. Now he really was a magician, I thought. Like Lady, he was wearing pajamas. Not a set like hers, just some plaid pants and a T-shirt with a hole at the collarbone. I thought of my mom; she’d have mended that hole by now, pajamas or not.

  “His name is Peter,” I said. “Peter Rabbit.”

  Lady looked up from the board where she was placing some tiles. “Peter Rabbit! Better make sure he doesn’t sneak into Mr. McGregor’s garden. Do you have a little outfit for him to wear? The real Peter Rabbit wears a waistcoat and loafers, doesn’t he?”

  I said I didn’t know, and Seth handed me Peter.

  Lady was looking at her son. “Karl probably won’t like that we’ve let her keep a rabbit here. He’ll be afraid Peter might bite Devin. Or that Devin might squeeze Peter to death. Oh my God, can you imagine?”

  I covered Peter’s ears. “Devin would never do that,” I said. Neither looked at me and I realized my mistake. As we used to say in elementary school: “This is an A-B conversation, C your way out.”

  Seth was flashing his hands like he was performing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” A special sign! I felt my body go hot.

  Lady shook her head. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  He switched to ASL, his hands moving so quickly that I recognized nothing. He was flinging the words at her.

  “You’re going too fast,” Lady said. “I can’t understand you.”

  He picked up the pen and began writing something on the notepad.

  “Not there,” Lady said. “We need the room to keep score.”

  He shoved the notepad at her.

  I couldn’t help but lean over too, to see what he’d written.

  Learn it already.

  I expected Seth to rush out of the room, angry, but he didn’t move. I held my breath and held tighter to Peter Rabbit. I admired how Lady maintained normalcy. She was so used to her son not talking that this argument wasn’t any different from one with spoken words.

  Finally, Lady said, “I’ve tried to learn ASL, you know that. I just can’t get my brain to work like that.” Her voice was gentle, apologetic. “Your turn. I got nine points. What a joke.”

  Seth took back the notebook and added the score.

  “I had this boyfriend,” I said. I don’t know why I spoke, except that I felt invisible. Or I wanted to give something away, confess random shit like my mom sometimes did.

  Lady turned to me. “A boyfriend?”

  Seth was looking at me too.

  “Everett. In high school he went to two big-box stores with the vacuum sealer his mom used for her raw food snacks. He unwrapped the Scrabble boxes, stole some letters, and then sealed the boxes back up again.”

  “Didn’t anyone see him?”

  “Somehow, no.”

  “Let me guess,” Lady said. “He stole the tiles to spell out ‘Will you go to prom with me?’ ” She raised an eyebrow. “And you said yes and it was magic.”

  “What? No, this was before my time—before our time, I guess.” Our time—the words caught in my throat. I tried to play it off by snuggling with the bunny, who smelled like tortilla chips; my mother had probably eaten with him on her lap. I wished I could give him a bath, or vacuum him. “The tiles didn’t spell anything,” I said, “or maybe they did by accident. Everett took whatever ones he grabbed first. It was a chance thing.”

  “He sounds like a real asshole,” Lady said.

  “He’s an artist.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  21.

  Night fell. A rager was happening somewhere in the Hills and as the music reverberated across the canyon a girl squealed and a guy said, probably not to her, “I get it, man.” Someone jumped into a pool. An owl hooted, then stopped, and later, when a coyote sent out its shrieking bark, another coyote answered. I put Peter Rabbit in his pen and covered it with a blanket. I didn’t want him to be afraid.

  I’d planned to draw the Breathalyzer again, and then sketch a few of my outfits. I liked the seam my mother had fixed for me because the thread was a slightly different shade of blue and you couldn’t see it unless you were looking. I’d look.

  But first I sat with Kit’s book. I remembered the photographs, but now that I knew Kit and Lady, they felt different. The woman leaning over her washing machine: the one with the hairy upper lip and her hamper full of stuffed animals, for instance. She looked like a hunter now, not the hunted. Especially compared to the woman on the next page, who was half-naked and very pretty as she put on her lipstick in a full-length mirror. There was a stain on her underwear; I’d never noticed it before. It was right at the crotch, a tiny splatter of what I assumed was menstrual blood. The calendar on the wall behind her said DECEMBER and I wondered if she was getting ready to go to a Christmas party. It made me want to cry, she was so real. Or she seemed real.

  I was making myself wait until the ice in my margarita melted before I flipped to Woman No. 17. I drank and checked my glass, drank and checked.

  Finally, I flipped to the page. There it was: the Sea World towels and the bathtub, and Lady sitting on its edge with her stockings pinching her waist, her face like a deer’s: beautiful and useless.

  But there was something different. I leaned forward. My index finger traced the objects in the shot, including Lady’s body: her legs and belly button, her arms. I stopped at her chest. There it was. In this version, Lady’s nipple wasn’t sticking out of her bra cup. She looked tasteful and sexy. Confident. Another hunter.

  Who had changed it? Which was the original?

  I was downing the rest of my drink when someone knocked on the door. I pushed the book under the bed and went to open it.

  “Lady?” I said. I was a little drunk but it was my day off, she couldn’t get mad.

  I opened the door but no one was there. The pool looked like a sheet of obsidian.

  I was about to close the door until I saw the Scrabble tiles on my welcome mat. Two of them. I picked them up—one said I, the other, H. Five points, total.

  I thought of Seth in the fort drawing the letter K with his finger, how it had seemed to float in the air between us until it sparkled out like a firework.

  I and H.

  Hi.

  22.

  I allowed S to keep the bunny even though I found the circumstances under which she had procured it a little troubling. To remove it from her mother’s house—like a social worker removes a child in danger. Considering my own mom-hatred, perhaps I could relate. Either way, I said yes because Seth had always loved rabbits and I hoped this one in particular might calm him down. Appease him. He’d been touchy; I couldn’t say a thing about Karl without getting reprimanded and he never wanted to hang out. He’d even signed stop honking right in front of S. We came up with stop honking after seeing some geese at a state fair. It meant quit talking and saying nothing, you silly bird.

  If Seth saw my Twitter, he’d be signing that all the time.

  Cheek implants: for when you want to look wealthy and insecure.

  My dog’s eye boogers smell like the saltiest egg rolls.

  My dog
looks like a bunny with dreadlocks. #RastaMaltese

  The bunny had been S’s roommate for a week now, but Seth was testier than ever. I had to ask him three times to take out the trash (that had once been Karl’s purview), and every time he left the house he either slammed the door or snuck out without a goodbye.

  I’d taken to hiding in my room with my phone. I liked to check it in my closet, lights off, and one morning, after S and Devin had left for a walk to the nearest construction site, that’s where I headed. I told myself I would get writing in a minute or two.

  With a reassuring click, the phone came to life, its extraterrestrial glow brightening the dark closet and no doubt my sallow face. I tapped on the cheery white bird icon and let it expand across the screen.

  As always I searched Seth’s timeline first, but there was nothing new. I’d already seen his most recent tweet, posted days before:

  My greatest fear is that someday i will forget the titans

  I wanted to tweet something about how my teenage son was a clever little jerk when I saw it. Someone was following me.

  She called herself @CarolGardens55: Brooklyn dweller with an interest in roses. She tweeted photos of sunsets and musings on the tea she was drinking. Who knows how she found me but I suppose I wanted her to because I hadn’t designated my account private. I didn’t follow her back, but I didn’t block her either.

  Then I tweeted, If my knuckle hair is blond does it count? and set down the phone slowly, as if it were a bomb.

  When I checked six minutes later, Carol had retweeted it. I panicked at the thought of her thirty-nine followers reading what I’d written, but then I imagined Carol pruning flowers before going into the bathroom to shave her fingers one by one and it made me feel a little less alone.

  The next morning I had two more followers. They were bots, their desire for me so unequivocal there was no way they weren’t machines. I considered blocking them but I couldn’t bear it because their pouty-lipped avatars had to be real women…somewhere.

  My fourth follower was @MichaelRLafferty of Sioux City, South Dakota: environmental lawyer and popcorn eater, unapologetic bed hogger. “All tweets are my own,” he’d added, as if anyone would ever assume his firm had forced him to broadcast such inanities as I hate traffic!