Woman No. 17

by Edan Lepucki

  She shook her head. “I thought once Spanx were invented, she might find a way to reach me. You know, just to help me with the problem of my figure. I bet she wears them all the time, like, even to take in her garbage cans.”

  We both laughed.

  Devin was yelling from the living room, and this time it wasn’t for me. “Seff! Seff!”

  “You better get in there before he wakes his brother,” Lady said.

  But it was too late because there was Seth, walking into the kitchen without a shirt on. His grubby gray sweatpants were too short and his Achilles tendons looked as thin as rubber bands, but more vulnerable. His chest hair was thicker than I remembered, a bramble of black.

  “Seth, you’re half-naked!” Lady cried. She looked embarrassed for him.

  Seth shrugged. He didn’t have his phone with him.

  “You have to wear a shirt around here, okay?”

  He made a fist and wrapped the other hand around it slowly. It was that sign. Stop Drop Dead.

  Lady glanced at me. I stared into my coffee.

  “Don’t you dare,” she muttered, I assumed to Seth.

  “Seff!” Devin called again.

  “I’ve got to get writing,” Lady said then, but too loudly.

  “Do it!” I raised my coffee mug. She clinked it with her own and Seth rolled his eyes.

  “What?” Lady said. “I’m paying this young woman to watch your brother and be my personal writing coach. Also, we’re becoming close friends, despite the age gap. Hopefully she’ll do some light housekeeping.” She winked at me.

  Seth rolled his eyes again and on her way out of the room, Lady got on her tiptoes and kissed his shoulder. Seth leaned away from her, but in the next minute he was petting her head, exasperated and indulgent like an owner putting up with a dog who keeps begging for food. Lady laughed. There was no cringing here. Karl was onto something: she did love Seth more.

  “Please get Dev dressed,” Lady called behind her. She wasn’t clueless enough to keep me in the kitchen with her son.

  “Will do,” I yelled, and stood.

  I didn’t want to be alone with Seth. But I did. He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and tossed it from hand to hand. I started for the living room but my desperation to be near him overtook my relief.

  “I got an email,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “For my project. It’s a photo of someone’s mother, just like I wanted. So thanks.”

  He smiled and took a bite of the apple. With the fruit still in his teeth, he signed something I couldn’t understand but it seemed meaningless, like Good for you!

  “I’m probably going to set up the same scene as in the picture, photograph it. Maybe paint it. We’ll see. I really love to paint.”

  Why was I telling him all of this?

  We both waited. Back in the day, boys and girls had to dance with a balloon between them. Seth and I would have to rely on a two-year-old.

  He balanced the half-eaten apple on the counter and came toward me.

  “Seth…” I said, and he held up his hand, as if to sign something else. I had the urge to grab his hand and bite it.

  “I have to start work,” I said.

  Apple foam glistened at the corners of his mouth. A mom probably would have reached forward and wiped it off, but I wasn’t his mother.

  He took my hand.

  “Cut it out,” I said. Which is something a dad might say.

  He nodded once and didn’t move. Neither did I.

  28.

  Dad: Did you know that pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs? I learned that today. Never too late to learn something new.

  Me: U r about 65 million years late actually.

  Dad: ROTFL!!!!

  Me: U r not rolling on the floor laughing. Poidh!

  Dad: What the heck does that mean?

  Dad: Hello? Are you there?

  Dad: Esther?

  Me: Sorry working. Means pics or it didn’t happen.

  Dad: I know, Maria Googled it for me. How’s nannying?

  Dad: The eggplant finally came in! I ate one tonight. So delish. I’ll attach a photo next time I’m out in the garden. P.O.I.D.H., am I right????

  Dad: Did you get the photos?

  Dad: I bought a new juicer. Want me to mail you the old one?

  Dad: Esther?

  Dad: I just left you a voicemail. Call me when you can.

  Dad: It’s seven at night, I know you aren’t working. Call me before I have a panic attack.

  Me: Here I am sorry. Holy eggplant Batman! The juicer is 2 heavy to mail. Prob best to give it away.

  Dad: Everything okay, Waterbug?

  Me: Yeah def.

  Dad: You sure?

  Dad: Esther?

  Me: Daddy, I’m sleeping please stop texting.

  Dad: Oops! I love you!!!

  Dad: Esther?

  29.

  By the end of the week I had gathered almost everything I needed to photograph Bless This Mess (Mother No. 2): the leotard, the wig, the hanging basket, even the needlepoint.

  More like Bless These Paychecks from Lady. Bless This Internet.

  First I would do an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven painting of the original photograph. Once I was finished, I would delete the email with the scanned photo and then I’d stage my own photo, based on the painting alone. Eventually the two pieces, portrait and portrait, would hang side by side, alike and not.

  I decided I wasn’t going to stuff my bra for the shot because I wanted the viewer to see what was different between me and the mother in the painting. What I lacked. As in, tits.

  I was sober for the Internet shopping and the late-night drives to Target and the 99 Cent Store, but I painted drunk off my ass like a freshman in her first week of college—or, not like the college freshman I had been, but like a depiction of one. This project was turning my whole life into a Ceci n’est pas une pipe situation.

  I was cracking myself up, my breath hot and raw with tequila, my belly turning doughy like my mom’s from too many beers with dinner (and lunch), and I kept working. I loved the looseness of my hand as I painted and the shocking blue color I mixed for Molly Elizabeth’s leotard, chosen by Happy Kathy at the absolute zenith of my buzz. It felt so good and intense to paint people. I’d given it up after high school, but now the feelings came back: how fun it felt to start, to wonder, Who are you going to be?, as I put paintbrush to canvas. It was hard to get the proportions right, but soon enough I was lost in pigment.

  I was storing the empty liquor bottles in my old gym bag so Lady wouldn’t find them. My dad kept texting me, but more than once I had wet paint all over my fingers and couldn’t respond and pretty soon I’d forget altogether. It was exactly what Everett deemed “the ephemeral urgency of an incoming text,” aka his pseudoscientific explanation for not always getting back to me. Whatever my own reasons were for not answering, my dad was getting anxious and ornery. Meanwhile, Seth had made himself scarce since the kitchen incident. I told myself it was for the best.

  Now it was late-late Thursday night and I was just a couple of drinks close to passing out in my own vomit—if I could just put in the effort. I had finished painting for the night; I was pretty far gone but not so much that I didn’t worry about ruining the whole portrait with one stumble. (“Why walk when you can dance?” my mom liked to say. Dance meaning stumble.) Time to clean my brushes and pass out naked.

  The next three days were all mine to sleep and drink and paint. Lady had taken me off my weekly evening duty because she was still feeling guilty about making me work Labor Day. She had texted Karl about the arrangement as soon as we made it. “See,” she said slowly. “I’m not a bad person,” and I realized she was dictating exactly what she was typing to her husband. She looked up at me then and pretended to snarl. “It’s a win-win situation, really, because now he can’t force me to have dinner with him.”

  I tossed my brushes into the sink and my phone chimed, which meant I had a new email i
n my art project account. The chime kept me from checking my phone constantly, a waste of time since I’d only received two other photos since Bless This Mess and they’d both been dick pics. Three were enough to start a special folder in my email. After receiving the third one I posted a new Craigslist ad with slightly different wording, fingers crossed that the pit-stained pervs would find another victim.

  The new email was from iammuffinbuffin@gmail.com and this time there was no subject line. The body of the email read: I can’t follow instructions. Xoxo Muffin Buffin.

  I took another sip of tequila and clicked open the attachment. It took forever to load and I wondered when a start-up or a think tank would invent a time unit for the Internet, those “Load, goddammit, load!” moments that made a minute feel unfairly long, or when Instagram sucked an hour of your life in what felt like ten minutes.

  The picture finally loaded. Instead of a scan it was a photo of a photo, and obviously taken with a phone.

  “Damn right you can’t follow instructions, Muffin Buffin,” I said. At least it wasn’t a cock. Ceci n’est pas un penis.

  Honestly, I was happy the photo wasn’t a perfect scan. It was a little blurry, a little off-center, a little far away. Yet another degree removed! But I was also confused. This wasn’t a photo of someone’s mom. Or, not only. There were two people in the picture, a guy and a girl, both around my age—1990s from the look of her dark lipstick and undersized vintage shirt, which read VIRGINIA IS FOR. The word LOVERS had to be outside the frame. He was leaning against a wall and she was sort of leaning against him. The girl had her face angled to the guy, her expression serious, like she had something big to tell him. She was trying and failing to pretend she wasn’t totally obsessed with him. He had his eyes on the camera, brooding or bored, a real Johnny Depp wannabe if it weren’t for the Scorsese eyebrows. There was nothing in the background except the putty-colored wall. I imagined them perched on the banks of the L.A. River, waiting for a drag race. The sky was as white as the surface beyond the photo’s edge.

  “How the fuck will I ever stage this?” I asked.

  I poured another finger of tequila into my juice glass and drank it down. Peter Rabbit seemed to sigh from his hutch. I burped and the room wobbled once.

  I looked at the photo a second time. The girl wasn’t wearing a bra and beneath the thin shirt I could see her silver-dollar areolae and the ski slopes of her nipples.

  “Peter Rabbit,” I said. “I can’t handle all these pre-mom boobs.” I cut open my last lime and sunk my teeth into a wedge. “Yow!” I cried.

  Once I’d licked my fingers clean, I inspected the photo again. There was something familiar about this girl, and I looked closer.

  I knew it, even with half her face turned away from the camera and her hair dyed auburn. I expanded the photo. I could tell by the shape of her mouth and by the mole on her neck.

  It was Lady.

  And the guy, I realized, looked a lot like Seth: he had that same dark hair and olive skin, the same shape of the eyes, the same nose. It had to be his dad.

  Seth had sent me this photo of his parents. Why not one of Lady alone? And why from this anonymous email address? Why xoxo me?

  It was past two a.m. and I was toasted. Everyone in the Manse had to be asleep, and even if they weren’t, it’s not like I could march upstairs to Seth’s bedroom and ask him why he’d emailed me the photo.

  I hit Reply on my phone and typed:

  Thanks but what’s your phone number? I have some questions. Xoxo

  I deleted the xoxo before I pressed Send and then took another shot. I hissed off the burn like a possum in the glare of a flashlight and refreshed my email. There was no reply yet. Duh, I had sent it less than ten seconds before. I knew that in the Manse kitchen a list of pertinent phone numbers was taped to the inside of a cabinet: Lady’s cell, Karl’s, Kit’s, the CDC in case someone swallowed some rat poison or something, Seth’s old school, even 911. At the bottom, someone had written Seth’s cell in red pen.

  I’d sneak into the house and get his number, text him my questions. The beep of the phone would wake him.

  I unlocked Peter Rabbit’s pen and pulled him out. He smelled like hay and he was soft and warm as I put him inside my shirt, his heart beating against my belly button, his little claws digging into my skin.

  “We’re going in,” I whispered, and together we headed for the Manse.

  The tequila was making me feel like a ballerina assassin as I slipped into the dark house: graceful and bitchy and invincible. My scalp tingled. It was exactly why I’d switched from the vodka. My mom once told me she’d never been loyal to a specific hard liquor. She said vodka made her buzz and gin made her float and tequila made her tingle. Bourbon made her cry. The way I felt now was so good I was ready to marry Jose Cuervo, though I’d probably question that commitment come dawn.

  The house was silent except for the drone of the vintage electric clock and the exhale of the air conditioner, which was working better than ever since a repair guy had come and fixed it in less than twenty minutes. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and the bunny scrabbled across my skin.

  In the dark I opened the cabinet and held my breath as it squeaked. I dictated the number to myself but I must have let go of my midsection for a moment as I typed it into my phone. It was an idiot move. Peter Rabbit shot out of my shirt like a fur-covered cannonball.

  “Peter!” I whispered. He went running like I was Mr. McGregor.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I said under my breath. I closed the cabinet. My scalp wasn’t tingling anymore, I felt dizzy. I turned off the flashlight and waited in the dark, listening.

  “Peter?” I said.

  He came right to my feet, a spot of white in the darkness. I bent down to pick him up but he backed away, then started hopping toward the back door.

  “Come on,” I said, but still I was surprised to hear him following me outside.

  As soon as I got back to the Cottage, I texted Seth: Why did you send me a pic of your parents??

  Three seconds.

  Wut? Who dis?

  S. You sent me an email of ur mom and I think ur dad.

  One second.

  Ill b right there

  I couldn’t take my eyes off my phone. I heard Peter Rabbit knocking about in his pen, it sounded like he was finally snorting up his dinner, and I kicked the door closed with my foot.

  When I looked up, Seth was standing in the doorway. His hair resembled a topographical map, all ridges and dips, and the waistband of his gym shorts was rolled in on itself, like Devin’s pants when he dressed himself. He was wearing his T-shirt inside out.

  “You were asleep,” I said.

  He glanced at the tequila bottle on my desk and mock-stumbled into the room.

  “Is your whole life a game of charades?” The second I said it, I worried I’d offended him. Or Happy Kathy had said it, and it was my job to experience regret because my mom sure as hell never did. But Seth didn’t seem hurt, just anxious.

  “Here it is,” I said, and he grabbed the phone out of my hand.

  He stared at the photo, zooming in and out with his fingers, again and again, and then he sat on the floor, right where he’d been standing just a minute ago.

  “That’s your mom, right?” I asked, kneeling next to him.

  He nodded.

  “And that’s your dad?”

  He just kept staring.

  “Did you send it to me, or what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Seth?” I said, but he wouldn’t look away from the phone.

  The fierceness of his stare told me he hadn’t sent the photo. He hadn’t even seen it before. Seeing it now was doing something to him, pureeing his mind into a smoothie.

  “Do you know your dad?” I asked.

  That made him look up. He shook his head.

  “Have you ever seen—?”

  Again, a shake of the head.

  “You look just like him.”

 
I handed him the tequila, because what else do you do with an eighteen-year-old who’s seeing a picture of his dad for the first time? He put down the phone to grab the bottle with both hands. He took one long drink.

  Then he signed something I couldn’t follow.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I have no idea what you’re signing.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket.

  Who sent this?

  His eyes were shining, and not from the liquor.

  I shrugged. “You think your dad did?”

  He made a face I’d never seen on anyone before: alarm, fear, shame, desire, all mixed together. I wanted to paint that face.

  I leaned forward and kissed him. I was the last thing on Seth’s mind, which was maybe why I’d done it. Is it Katherine Mary who doesn’t like to be ignored, or me?

  He tasted stale but his lips were softer than Everett’s, bigger too. I closed my eyes but the room started spinning and I had to open them.

  I was just slipping my tongue into his mouth when he pulled away.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. You’re right, I’m wasted.”

  I felt embarrassed, but then I saw his boner beneath his shorts. Boys can’t fake apathy or enthusiasm, poor babies. I smiled and he pointed at my phone. He wanted to see the email, I realized. He wanted to know who had seen his tweet and sent me the photo.

  “It’s from Muffin Buffin—or something?”

  Seth looked horrified—he recognized the email. I thought he might vomit. Hell, I was pretty sure I was going to.

  “It’s Lady,” I said.

  He was typing into his own phone.

  She said there werent any pics of him. Liar.

  The room began to wobble again.

  “She probably had a good reason for—”

  Before I could finish, Seth lunged forward and kissed me back.

  30.

  I was having the shopping dream again. In it, I have hundreds of dollars to spend at some cement-floored boutique helmed by two leggy shopgirls, but I can’t find anything that fits and I am crying softly to myself in the dressing room. In this particular version, I was pulling off a too-small mohair sweater and the fabric was tickling my nose. I woke before my eyes opened and I was sure Devin was in bed with me, that he’d sleepwalked into my room sometime before dawn, as he is wont to do, in search of a cuddle and the breast milk that dried up a year ago. I thought I could smell his sleeping body and his stinky, snot-coated hands, feel the tiny furnace of him. But when I opened my eyes there was only S’s bunny sitting on my chest, self-satisfied as the goddamned Cheshire Cat.