Woman No. 17

by Edan Lepucki

  “I can tell you’ve been drinking tonight.”

  “How?”

  “Because I was once married to your mother.”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  Now it was his turn to say my name but I wasn’t as mature as he was, and not nearly as needy, and I hung up.

  43.

  The next morning Lady told me Seth had gone to Kit’s for a few days. We were in the upstairs bathroom of all places, standing over Devin as he tried to drop a deuce in the toilet.

  “You need to eat more vegetables, Dev,” I said. “It’ll help.”

  “So you have no comment about Seth?” Lady asked me.

  “What kind of comment would I have? He misses Karl. Don’t torture yourself.”

  “It’s still stuck!” Devin yelled and I kneeled down and placed my hands on his thighs.

  “You can do this, Dev,” I said. “Just push.”

  “Jesus, I’m having flashbacks to his birth,” Lady said.

  Devin let out a whimper.

  “Push!” I said.

  He did as he was told, and as his eyes went glassy, Lady and I cheered.

  Finished, Devin climbed off the toilet and touched the floor like a stripper. His butt was so flat it turned into two sharp points when he bent over. I waited, in case Lady wanted the honors, but she didn’t move. Not that I blamed her; I was getting paid to wipe.

  “Why I need vegetables?” Devin asked.

  “For the roughage,” Lady said.

  “What’s roughage?” he asked.

  “It’s…” Lady began, “um…I have no idea.” She knew this wouldn’t satisfy him, so she added, “Now, flush!”

  Lady wasn’t writing today. She wanted to spend the day with Devin, but not alone. “Let’s do something together, the three of us,” she’d said over breakfast.

  We decided to swim, and before Lady had told me that Seth was already gone, I’d pictured him finding the three of us in the pool, his hair matted and knotted from sleep, those same dumb basketball shorts. I’d be in my bathing suit, preferably lying across the blue raft like a French girl in a French movie about sex and secrets. Now he wouldn’t see me at all. I wondered, if I had let Seth be in my photo, if I’d let him play Marco to my Lady, would he have not gone to Kit’s? The hypothetical was too dangerous to ponder and so I shooed it from my brain.

  Instead I found myself watching Lady closely. The tilt of her head, the side smile, which my dad would call a smirk and my mom would call the Bitch Itch. I kept thinking about the Lady in front of me versus the Lady in the photo I’d painted. Wealth had made obvious improvements: her hair had more body and her highlights were perfect. Her clothes draped just-so (her swimsuit, for starters? Designed for an heiress, built for a surfing superhero). She was exfoliated in the way that only rich people are, and her teeth were whitened though not capped (she was still down-to-earth). She looked cared-for.

  But Karl and his dough couldn’t smooth her edges. A part of her had shut down or fallen away since that photo was taken. She had once been younger and more hopeful. The hope wasn’t here now and it wasn’t in Woman No. 17 either. Time didn’t just take that away, so who did?

  The next day I would stage my photo and I would bring the old Lady back to life.

  Lady and I took turns catching Devin, who liked to jump off the pool steps ad nauseam. Before we got into the water, Lady had suggested I see her aesthetician for a wax.

  “The razor burn, S,” she began, and I swam into the water where my bikini line couldn’t be critiqued.

  “Why do you care?” I asked. It’s what my mom would say, and had said, to me.

  “Just trying to help,” Lady replied, and dipped her head back to soak her hair. When she stood up straight, it took her a moment to focus on Devin and me, as if she’d momentarily forgotten that she wasn’t alone. She looked like she was remembering something bad or stupid. Could’ve been my imagination, but she seemed more troubled than usual.

  “Stop thinking about Kit,” I said.

  “What? Oh—if only I was thinking about that.”

  “I’m jumping again!” Devin cried from the edge and I moved closer to catch him. We were both saying goofy things and cheering each time he landed with a splash. He smiled so wide he gulped water with every jump.

  We stayed in the water until our skin turned elderly. My eyes were burning from the chlorine and my sunscreen had for sure melted off long ago. But Devin wasn’t even close to being over it, and neither was Lady; she was laughing at all the ridiculous shark games her son came up with, and she kept telling him “Kick, kick, kick!” with the pep of a swim instructor. The happiness, the innocence, was contagious. I wanted to draw it. I wanted to have it. I backstroked to Devin and told him to swim to me. Lady nodded, and pushed him into the open water. There were about four feet between us.

  “Kick, kick, kick!” she cried, and Devin kicked.

  “Use your arms!” I called. “Kick and paddle!”

  Devin waved his arms and kept kicking.

  “Look at you go!” Lady yelled.

  He was moving toward me.

  “Oh my God,” Lady said, “he’s Michael Phelps.”

  “You’re swimming!” I cried.

  “He’s swimming!” Lady cried.

  She was grinning at me, and I realized I must have been making the same big happy face.

  I grabbed Devin and Lady came bobbing over, clapping her hands.

  “I swimmed!” Devin yelled. “I swimmed!” He pushed off me to do it again.

  The two of us watched him paddle toward the edge of the pool.

  “He’s swimming,” Lady said. “I can’t believe it. Not even three and he’s really swimming.”

  “That was the best,” I said, and we high-fived.

  After some enforced string-cheese eating at the pool steps, Devin swam by himself in the shallow end while Lady and I sat at the edge, dipping into the water whenever we got hot. She confessed that Seth had learned to swim only a couple of years ago, when they moved into this house; I told her about the outdoor pool in Berkeley that my dad preferred, icy cold even on summer mornings; we laughed at Devin trying to swim and pick his nose at the same time. At noon Lady ordered Brazilian food for lunch, which we ate on the chaise lounges under the umbrella; I lured Devin out of the water with French fries and apple juice.

  “How are the landscapes?” Lady asked me once we were all settled into our food.

  “Uh…they’re okay…I guess. It’s just a hobby.”

  “It’s still important to you.”

  “I want to do one with an overcast sky. Which is hard, considering…” I gestured at the blue sky above us.

  “So you don’t paint what you see?”

  “Not necessarily. Sometimes it’s in my head. What I remember.” I didn’t dare look at her. “Or the past.”

  “I hope you’ll show me one someday,” she said.

  I didn’t answer, and we both turned to watch Devin, who had returned to the pool.

  “This has been so fun,” Lady said.

  “It has.”

  At five, we’d been inside for a while, tired and pink from the sun. We were watching a marathon of Yo Gabba Gabba! and Devin was nodding off between us. He’d swum instead of napped.

  “Is it too early to put him down?” Lady asked.

  I shrugged. “You’re the mom. I guess he might get up at five a.m. tomorrow, but maybe that’s a price you’re willing to pay.”

  “I’ll put him to bed and then make us some omelets,” she said. “Unless…you have plans?”

  “Nope,” I said. Not unless Seth comes home, I thought.

  “I can pay you overtime,” she said.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Devin didn’t even protest when I turned off the TV and Lady lifted him from the couch, more tenderly than I had ever seen. This day had helped her.

  While they were upstairs I got out the eggs, milk, and cheese. I’d started to make a salad when Lady returned. She
was wearing jersey sweatpants and a thin white T-shirt.

  “Nice loungewear,” I said.

  “Karl told me it’s eclipsing the jeans market.” She put the cheese back in the fridge. “A classic omelet is just eggs. But we can add chives. Let’s put persimmon in the salad. That okay?”

  “I have zero opinions about persimmon in salad,” I said and she laughed.

  “How do you feel about French 75s? I know you drink like a fish, but do you drink well?”

  I tried to act like what she’d said hadn’t fazed me. “What are French 75s?”

  “My sweet grasshopper, you have so much to learn.”

  It was a cocktail, the kind Maria might order on someone’s birthday. Gin plus Champagne, lemon juice, and simple syrup, which I watched Lady make on the stove. It was just water with sugar melted into it.

  “Where’d you learn all this?” I asked.

  “Some of it you’ll pick up in your thirties. I didn’t—because, well, my thirties were complicated. But you will.” She was cutting the pith from a lemon. “Most of it I learned from Karl. And, okay, Kit. She gave me a few pointers early on.” She dropped a curl of lemon rind into a filled glass and handed it to me. “This is one of Kit’s.”

  I sipped. It was as fizzy as every other drink Lady had ever served me, but it was slightly sweet and bright from the sugar and lemon. The gin kept it under control, gave it some gravitas.

  “It’s good,” I said.

  “Dangerously good,” she said. “Tomorrow you’ll be happy you have the day off.”

  A classic omelet looks like a pair of Meryl Streep’s underwear and tastes like eating air. Or not—I don’t trust myself because by the time we were eating I was on my third French 75 and even the salad tasted like packing peanuts compared to the carbonated tartness of the cocktail. I could drink it forever.

  “Do you think this would taste the same in, like, a plastic cup?”

  “Honey, nothing tastes the same in a plastic cup,” Lady said.

  She didn’t seem drunk until she carried our plates to the sink, and I saw she was swaying a little and humming the Yo Gabba Gabba! theme song.

  “I have an idea!” she said, turning suddenly. “Let’s pour one more round—just one more—and then creep upstairs to Dev’s room. He’s so cute when he’s sleeping.”

  “It’s when he’s awake that he’s a little shit,” I said, like Katherine Mary might, and downed my drink.

  She cackled. “Thank God you’re funny,” she said, and grabbed a new bottle of Champagne from the fridge.

  “How many of these do you have in there?” I asked.

  “Just enough to reach oblivion.”

  But she said it like someone who never drinks that much.

  Upstairs it was quiet and dark, and when Lady spilled some of her drink in the hallway she laughed in openmouthed silence before refilling her glass with the bottle of Champagne in her other hand.

  The room glowed blue from Devin’s nightlight, like we’d entered mid–alien abduction.

  “It’s creepy in here,” I whispered.

  Lady brought an index finger to her lips and gestured to the bed.

  Devin had kicked off his sheet and flung his arms across the pillow so that he was posed like a pinup model. His hair stuck straight out from his head, his lips were the pinkest I’d ever seen them, and he snored slightly, like Milkshake sometimes did. He did look cute.

  Lady was leaning over the bed and I could tell she wanted to touch him.

  “Here,” I whispered. “Let me.” I took her glass from her.

  With her free hand Lady bent over to pet Devin’s hair and pull his covers to his chin. She sighed before leaning closer. She held her lips to his cheeks until he flinched.

  “Run!” she whispered, and we hustled out of the room before he could wake up.

  In the hallway she said, “He’s so precious when he’s like that, it kills me.”

  I remembered what Karl had told me long ago, about not playing favorites, so I didn’t agree or disagree. Instead I said, “I’ll probably pass out pretty good after I finish this drink,” and handed her glass back.

  I waited for Lady to agree. When she didn’t answer I could tell she’d turned down Melancholy Avenue and was either reviewing some old shame or rehearsing a future one. I didn’t expect it with gin, but Katherine Mary didn’t touch Champagne so what did I know?

  I snapped my fingers twice. “Don’t lose me now, Lady,” I said.

  “Sorry.” And then: “Do you want to see the original?”

  I thought she’d been thinking about Devin, which meant she was talking about Seth.

  “Seth?” I asked slowly.

  “No! The photo. It’s in my closet.”

  I had to play dumb because she didn’t know I’d been in her bedroom closet. I waited for her to say more.

  “Woman No. 17,” she hissed.

  All I had to do was nod.

  She pushed open her bedroom door with her shoulder. The lights were on, and her dirty clothes were flung all over the floor and the reading chair, which probably hadn’t seen a book since Karl had moved out.

  The closet door was open, its lights on too, and I stood where I was as Lady sailed into it.

  “Come on,” she said. “It’s like a whole other room in here.”

  I complied, trying to keep my eyes off the wall where the photo hung. I finished the rest of my drink and was about to burp into the crook of my elbow when Lady poured me some Champagne. I let out a big mean belch and she smiled wickedly.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and she said I was excused.

  Lady was nodding at the photo, which hung above the dresser just like I remembered. “Karl will get it in the divorce. It’s his.”

  “Are you actually going to divorce him?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to. But maybe I do. Who knows? I should, now that I’ve…” Her voice trailed off as she turned to face me. The closet was big but it was still a closet and I could smell the stale spiked Champagne on her breath and steaming from her pores (and mine).

  Lady finished her drink and refilled her glass, then rested the bottle on the dresser.

  “You can get closer,” she said, “if you want a better look.”

  I did. Lady moved aside, slumping against the dresser and then sliding to the floor to sit.

  “You okay down there?” I asked, but my eyes were already on the photo. I was leaning forward, the drawer hitting my rib cage.

  “You sure can hold your liquor,” Lady was saying. I didn’t answer.

  I’d been studying the photo in Kit’s monograph for a couple of weeks now, and here was the original, so close I could reach out and pet it with my grubby fingers if I wanted to. Almost everything about the picture was the same. There was the paisley shower curtain hanging on plastic rings; midway across, the curtain had ripped away from a ring and it sagged open. There were the threadbare Sea World towels and the edge of a window, propped open with what looked like a can of instant coffee. There was the overhead light fixture. There was the black cord that I assumed led to a hair dryer just beyond the frame.

  I hadn’t noticed before how the wall of the bathroom was oddly rippled—bubbled with what I guessed was moisture trapped under the paint. Had this been changed for Kit’s book? I doubted it. Whenever I saw a painting or photograph in real life after studying it for a class, I was always amazed by the tiny details I had missed. Sure I could get the Mona Lisa on a coffee mug but the real Mona Lisa, the painted one I mean, would find a way to escape reproduction, I don’t care what all the fancy-pants French theorists argue. A work of art has an energy to it: not just a painting or a sculpture, but a photo too, even if the photographer made more than one print. It was like I could smell the darkroom chemicals coming off this one.

  On the floor at my feet, Lady was singing the Yo Gabba Gabba! theme song again, but she wasn’t telling me to hurry up, she wasn’t asking me why I was so obsessed with Kit’s work, so I went back to the phot
o, finally looking at Lady. I’d been waiting to do it last. Her hair, pulled into a careless bun at the top of her head. The scratch on her arm, healed to a scab. Her stockings, with the meekest run in them, right at the shin.

  And there was the one change: the nipple peeking out. It altered the entire tone of the scene. She looked so pathetic in this shot.

  “Lady?”

  She stopped singing and stood, teetering a little.

  “The picture I have? In the book? It looks different.”

  “You can tell, huh?”

  “I mean…” I began. “It’s not obvious at first, but…” I pointed to the photo, to her body. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but your boob isn’t showing in the version in Kit’s book.”

  She nodded. She seemed relieved I’d noticed.

  “You’ve been looking at Kit’s book a lot?”

  “I guess I—”

  “And that’s what you see here?”

  “Why did you change it?”

  “That’s just a distraction,” she said.

  “Your nipple?”

  She sighed and picked up the Champagne bottle, taking a long swig. She handed it to me and I hesitated. My head was starting to hurt, like my brain was a river and it was drying up, the soil in the beds cracking, but I also wasn’t as drunk as Lady, and I needed to be or she wouldn’t tell me anything. I put the bottle to my lips and drank. Then I drank some more. I was realizing now that you had to keep going with Champagne or everything sucked.

  When I handed the bottle back to her, she said, “Kit changed something else. I had Karl ask her—no, he told her to do it. She’s all about her artistic integrity but I guess not when her brother needs a favor.” She paused. “No one could see this version.”

  “Why not? It’s not that porny.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “So why is it even hanging up here?” I asked.

  “Good question. I don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s because Karl likes the truth?”

  She rolled her eyes and pointed to the photo.

  “What?” I asked.

  Now her finger was touching the glass. It slid across it, leaving a smear, and I was going to protest but something stopped me. She was passing the image of herself and moving toward the image of the window. Next to the coffee can, mostly out of the frame, was a plastic bottle. For vitamins, maybe. I hadn’t thought much of it before. Was it not in the book version? I leaned forward. I could just make out two cut-off words: PREG ESS.