19
You are wet—it started raining—and feral—you barge into my house.
Your hair is dripping on your blouse and your blouse is soaked—I see the outline of your bra—and you pace around in my living room—did I close the door to the basement?—and you are quiet. Wordless and airtight, like my Whisper Room, and do you know about Melanda? Do you know about Jay? I never should have knocked out Melanda and brought her home. I should have let her try and ruin my name—A Girl Is a Gun—because you would have come to my defense. You would have told her she was wrong. But I let my fear get the best of me and you drop onto my red sofa and you look at me like I’m a cheater.
You point at my big red chair. “Sit,” you say, as if I’m a dog. “Sit.”
You don’t speak to me. You pull your shirt over your head and it feels like the first time I ever jerked off—Blanche DuBois, I love you forever—and it reminds me of the first real-life woman I saw naked—my mother fell in the shower, there was hair down there, there were breasts up there—and the first time I had sex—Mrs. Monica Fonseca—and it’s Sam Cooke in that passing car, it’s the Eagles on a summer night when even people who get off on hating the Eagles have to kind of love them.
You didn’t come to arrest me and you don’t know how hard I’ve worked for this but here you are, dropping your skirt, peeling off your tights—Oh God, Joe. Oh God—and your Murakami is so close I can smell it and you sit on the sofa and I start to stand and you order me to sit and you stare at my pants so I unzip them and is that okay? Yes, that’s okay.
Your eyes are on the road and your hands are on the wheel and we are going to the fucking roadhouse in our own way and your nipples pop for me—Oh God, Joe. Oh God—and the pages of your book were stuck together. Sealed off like your legs below your tights but look at you now. Unglued. Slick. Oh God, Joe. Oh Joe. You are inside of you, but you are there because of me.
I move again. I want to be Closer and again you shoo me off. Sit.
You won’t let me in today—you’re still married—but I am inside of you, inside of your mind—and you came here to teach me and I am your pupil and I’m a fast learner—This finger goes there. The thumb belongs here—and your knees buckle and your toes curl and you finish first—Sisters before Misters—and you roll up in a ball and hide your face in a red pillow. You know I’m getting close and you peek and your eyes are just above the red pillow and I finish because of your eyes.
You sigh. “Oh God, Joe.”
Again we don’t speak. We don’t move. Our bodies hum. The air is musty with our sweat, our fluids. Do I hug you? Do I high-five you? I know you so well but I don’t know you naked and you came here, in more ways than one, and are you grossed out? Am I becoming an anecdote in your head—So this one time I showed up at this guy’s house and touched myself while he jacked off, I mean that’s how you know it’s time for couples counseling—and the serotonin is crashing. What do I say to you? What do I do? Do I bring you water? Do I feed you?
And then you laugh. “Okay, I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. That was very hot.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
You’re a fox and foxes need to move so you pick up your tights and you tell me you’ve never done anything like this—you think you have to say that—and I walk across the room. I take your tights in my hands. I breathe in the white cotton center, the part that breathes you in, day in, day out. I am a gentleman. You want your clothes so I hand over your tights and you laugh.
“This is just never an elegant activity, putting on tights.”
I run my hand up the back of your leg. “Agree to disagree.”
You pull away and I take my hand off your leg. You pull up your tights and you fix your bun. “Huh,” you say. “I didn’t know you play guitar.”
“A little.” I should have hidden that fucking Philstick. “But not in a serious way. I have an oboe too. And a flute.”
You smile. “And you play them all at once, right?”
We’re smiling again and I got us out of the jam. I bring you down to the red sofa, the Red Bed. We are spooning. We are one. Your voice is small, scared. “I don’t know what to say right now.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
Silence falls on us like Guterson’s snow falling on cedars. We are learning what it feels like to be alone in private. You feel what I feel. Warm. Safe.
I shouldn’t tell you this but you’re here. You came. “So the day after we first talked on the phone, before I started working at the library… I bought a cashmere sweater.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t know it in the moment, but I got home and put it on and realized it… it felt like you.”
“I think you’re aware that I like that sweater.”
Licious saunters into the room and you light up. “Oh God,” you gasp. “Licious is even cuter in person. Come here, baby.”
Licious leaves the room—fucking cats—and you nestle into my chest and I kiss your head. “All of our cats are cute.”
You stroke my chest. “I like the way you say that. Our cats.”
We could be teenagers on a beach in the nineties and we could be in the hospital beds in our nineties and there’s something old about us together, something young. And then you pat my hand. “Joe, I should probably go.”
I hold you. “You should probably not say ‘should probably’ so much.”
I get an F in pillow talk and you’re wiggling away, you’re on your feet and you’re putting on your skirt and what do I say to make you stay? You pull on one boot and then you reach for the other and then you flinch. “What was that noise?”
The Whisper Room is almost soundproof and it better not be my dog. “I think I have a mouse.”
“Well, don’t worry. Riffic will take care of that. He’s the toughest one in the bunch.”
You are fully dressed by now and I’m still lying on the couch, a big spoon with no little spoon underneath and I can’t read your face. Is that guilt? Regret? You mumble something about humane mousetraps like we’re in a fucking Facebook group chat about exterminators and I nod, like I give a shit about mice right now.
I stand up. Do I touch you? Do I hug you? “Do you want something to eat?”
You shudder and tell me again that you should probably go and then you laugh because of what I said about your should probablies and I should probably build a time machine because I ruined it. The afterglow.
“See, Joe, this is the problem.” You open the door and you open your mouth and you look at me and you look away and just say it, Mary Kay. “You should probably stop being so perfect… I’ll um… I’ll see you soon, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Soon.”
Tastic creeps up on us and rubs against your leg and you pick him up and coo. “Oh God, Tastic, you are the cutest, you are! You are my perfect little baby, yes you are.”
You’re wrong—Tastic is the neediest and Riffic is the cutest—but I don’t question your judgment and you go before I say something stupid and YES! You called me “perfect” and that’s what I’m going to be from now on. If I were your cat, my name would be Perfect.
When you’re gone, I lean my head against the door. I want you to pound on the other side and beg for more, but that’s not gonna happen. Perfect men aren’t greedy. They’re grateful. I go into the kitchen and I like the idea of us in split screen, opening cabinets and going through the motions as we replay every nanosecond of our first (almost) time. I put the overcooked salmon and the blackened steak onto a plate. I get the Heinz ketchup. I grab a couple Hostess Cupcakes and the tray is ready.
I glance at my red sofa. You were there. You’ll be there again.
I open the basement door. The tray is heavy and each step is a challenge. But at the same time I have no fear of falling. I’m not walking. I’m floating. Perfect.
But then I make it to the bottom of the stairs and I stop short. Something is wrong. T
he room is silent. Lifeless.
And then I see her. Melanda’s facedown on the floor of the Whisper Room. There’s blood on the floor, on the glass wall, and the TV is down too. Shattered.
I drop my tray and I scream her name. “Melanda!”
I grope for my keys and I’m in the Whisper Room on my knees and I’m too late. She used the television set and there is blood, so much blood, and I grab her shoulders and I whisper. I hope. “Melanda, can you hear me?”
But her heart is silent—I am wasting my time—and that’s when I realize the blood on the wall isn’t spatter. It’s writing. She used her own blood as ink. Finger paint. Her last words, her goodbye:
Single White Female.
20
This isn’t a misdemeanor. This is a crime and Melanda’s the shark inside my shark, the body in my house and it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. If you hadn’t come over tonight…
No. This isn’t your fault. She did this. Not you. Not me. Melanda.
I can’t let my empathy get the best of me right now. She chose to end her life on my property and she left me to do the dirty work, to clean up the mess. I turn off the security cameras and delete my files—I don’t like snuff films—and if some twisted voyeur techie already saw what she did, well that’s the point, isn’t it?
She did it. Not me.
She will never be coming around again and as it all sinks in, well, in some ways I could kill her for what she did to us. Her blood is on my fingertips, it’s on the walls of my Whisper Room and she was in this room because she attacked me. I grab her phone. I can’t call 911. I can’t trust the Injustice System—if only you knew—and I can’t bury her in my yard. Fecal-Eyed Nancy is a nosy Nextdoor app–addicted gossip and I crack a smile. Is there something wrong with me? No. Laughing at funerals is a common phenomenon. We laugh at death because we have to, because what is more ironic than being stuck with a very smart, opinionated woman who can’t weigh in with her thoughts at a moment when I could really use her fucking help?
I could take her to the dock and let her sink to the floor of the bay, but the tide gets low. I could put her in the trunk and drive to the footbridge by 305 but I like that footbridge. I could dump her in Murden Cove—the smell is bad enough there as it is—but once again with the low fucking tide… For her it was easy—Single White Female—but this is hell on me and unlike that daytime-soap-loving sociopath in Fargo, I don’t have access to a wood chipper. And why would I fucking want a wood chipper? It’s not like things worked out for him and we all know how it ends—chills—and I will not end up in the back of a fucking police cruiser.
Goddammit, Melanda, why me? Why my house? I know she had her reasons. I’ve read the phone—I had to know everything about you—and I read her journals—I had to know everything she won’t put in the phone. I know that as recently as two weeks ago she was sick about never having had a baby.
I want to have one but then I go into Blackbird and those mommies are so smug as if giving birth makes them more of a woman than me and they’re so BORING and they think they’re so INTERESTING and how can I want to be one of them? UGH MK is lucky she did it early before all these women turned into martyrs and HELLO they have husbands and ok so the husbands don’t unload the dishwasher unless they’re asked to do it but they do it, you know? MK is lucky and I’m not lol I know. Get over it! Sigh.
But she didn’t get over it and now look what she did to us. Single White Female.
It’s hard to be alone, I know. We all need to let it out. But she listened to that Carly Simon song about the hardships of relationships almost nine thousand times and did any of it sink in? That song is about crimes and misdemeanors. You break a window, you burn a soufflé, but you don’t break yourself. You get a new shrink. You move. Seattle’s right there and isn’t that what you all think is so great about this island? You walk onto the ferry and into the city and find Frasier for fuck’s sake, or even Niles, but don’t do this. Don’t leave the planet and don’t go in Blackbird when you damn well know there will be fecal-eyed mommies in there wearing their babies in a circle jerk.
I’m sad for Melanda—she just couldn’t come around—and I am sad for me.
What do I do with her now?
I’m frozen—the Seattle freeze is officially real—and I can’t bring her to her house. I can’t allow headlines in The Bainbridge Island Review—LOCAL FEMINIST SLITS WRISTS—because headlines will lead to investigations and whispers. You are all that matters and you can never know that she ended her life. Same way you can never know that she was down here while we were up there and I wish Melanda had never attacked me in the woods. I wish she’d moved to Minnesota years ago, when the time was right.
I roll her body onto a duvet and I wrap her up like a burrito and it helps. I don’t have to look at her corpse anymore. But then my eyes land on her bare feet—nothing stays the same—and oh, Melanda, why?
I take out her phone. She left me with no choice, Mary Kay. I have to make you despise her. I have to burn the bridge and tell you what you shouldn’t have to know so that you never want to speak to her ever again. She’s been your best friend for a long time. You didn’t fight over Phil. You remained close as sisters, jumping off the pier at Point White, spending Mother’s Day together, sharing your daughter, the way you unknowingly shared your husband.
I close my eyes. I picture Melanda falling in love with Imaginary Carl. It’s new for her. She tells him everything and he tells her that she has to end this toxic friendship. You stole her boyfriend and you were young—I know—but at some point we all have to own up to our past mistakes. People do this when they fall in love, when they think they finally found their person. I did that with Love. I told her everything about me. And now Melanda’s going to reach into the bottom of her oversized broken heart.
Me as Melanda:
Sweetie this isn’t easy for me and it isn’t going to be easy for you but that’s part of the problem. Life is easy for you. You breeze into things. Phil wanted you the second he saw you and I said it was ok because what could I do? He didn’t feel that way about me. He felt that way about you. You can’t make anyone love you. I know that.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend. I love her. So on we go.
After you had Nomi you told me you were happy I had an abortion because if I hadn’t, you might have gotten cold feet with Nomi.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
My thirtieth birthday and you threw me a surprise party and it was all families and I was a third wheel on my own birthday and you could have had the party at a bar.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
The night before Mother’s Day. You invited me to “tag along” with you and Nomi but you didn’t call the restaurant and change the reservation and I had to sit at that table in the way of all the waiters and spent the whole meal apologizing.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
Last fall I told you I wish I had a boyfriend or a kid just so I had someone to drive around with when the leaves are changing and you said aaww and the next day you posted a picture of you and Nomi on the way to Fort Ward.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
I read that Sarah Jio book and I told you it made me feel hopeful because look at these sexy men lusting after this woman close to our age and you laughed and said “Good luck” and then you asked if I ever heard back from that job in Minneapolis.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
Christmas. I told you I had the flu and you knew I was lying because you know me and you didn’t come over and force me to come over even thoug
h you knew I wasn’t sick.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
I don’t want the pain anymore. I am not a good friend. So I can’t blame you for not being a good friend to me.
I’m not gonna dress it up and I’m not gonna make excuses because it is what it is and you need to know it.
Phil and I have been sleeping together for ten years. At my place. In his car. At his studio and at that wealth management place by the pub. The bunkers at Fort Ward.
I betrayed you. And I am sorry.
You betrayed me. And hopefully you are sorry.
Please respect my decision to walk away and save my own life. Nomi will miss me but she has a mom and a dad who love her and she’ll be okay. Goodbye, good love. M.
Send. Vomit. Breathe.
I carry my poor dog up the stairs and my pet is heavy and my house smells like salmon. Licious and Tastic and Riffic are running around, lazing about, cold as the grammar that inspired their names, acting as if nothing is wrong, as if I’m not holding a dead fucking body. But in a way, nothing is wrong. I didn’t kill this woman. I carry her body into my garage and I pop the trunk and I get in the car and I start the car.
I turn on some Sam Cooke—got to stay positive—and I break the speed limit, but only by five miles—the Injustice System better not fuck with me, Mary Kay. Not tonight—and you told me to go to Fort Ward before we even met and tonight, I’m finally doing it. You like Fort Ward and Melanda fucked your husband at Fort Ward so that’s where Melanda will rest. I know how to get there and I know where to park and I wanted to come here with you, not her.
It isn’t fair. None of this is fair. I kill my headlights. My heart thumps in my chest. All it takes is one cop, one restless rambler, one set of horny teens. But it’s January and it’s after midnight and time is the only thing on my side and thank God for that.
I get out of the car. There are no cameras in the lot and I spot the tiny shack the Meerkat talked about when we were coaching Mothballs with their iPhones—the moss on the roof is like the floor of a forest for Barbies—and there’s the opening to the trail you told me about—quickest way to the bunkers is the first entrance—and there’s the entrance I need: the long way up.
You Love Me Page 16