“But…”
“It’s about closure. No one goes sifting through the ashes looking for bone fragments. No one will know and it’s the idea of having a piece of your loved one that matters. Do you think a body in a graveyard is any different? And let me tell you some of those coffins don’t have bodies in them anymore anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about body snatching. There used to be a lot of it in the old days for medical use. And nowadays, given the need for donor organs, some bodies don’t make it into the ground with all their parts. A good closed-casket ceremony can hide a multitude of things.”
Cheryl felt like she’d tripped onto the set of a horror movie by mistake. “Surely you’re joking.”
“Am I?” Janet thrust the box at Cheryl. “What you’re doing pales in comparison to body snatching. Now, go make the kid happy.” She turned away.
Standing in the baking aisle at the Mill Creek Safeway, Cheryl pulled out her phone and Googled how much a human body weighed after cremation. Only 3.5 percent of body mass remained, which meant Martha Sue mostly likely weighed four to six pounds after cremation. Cheryl did the math. Arm and Hammer Baking Soda came in sixteen-ounce cartons. She’d need six. She’d get eight in case something went wrong. She grabbed two more. Better safe than sorry.
In the parking lot of Safeway, Cheryl sat in her sporty green Veloster. She’d purchased the car at Lexus’s request, because she was a doctor and was expected to have a nice car. Lexus was all about dress for success and this went for cars as well.
Having a life coach as a girlfriend had its ups and downs, Cheryl decided. She didn’t feel very successful right now. She certainly wasn’t doing a good job of parenting. She felt like a complete fraud, in fact. She contemplated her next move. Could she really do this?
A woman pushed her cart up to the car next to Cheryl’s. It was obvious Cheryl would have to move or the other woman wouldn’t be able to open her door to put her groceries in the backseat. She pressed the “Home” icon on her GPS, activating the route, and pulled out of the parking lot.
She had driven across town to the Mill Creek Safeway so that none of her neighbors would see her. As it was, the people in line had stared at her queerly. One lady told her that she could buy it bulk at Costco, and the cashier asked her if she was making a lot of baked goods. Cheryl had been stuck for an answer, so she told her that her fridge didn’t smell good and she had read somewhere that baking soda removed the bad smells.
“Must be a pretty big fridge,” the cashier had said.
“It is,” Cheryl said.
She didn’t think anyone believed her.
The drive home was rife with the mental pacing that telling a lie always provoked in her. She was going to lie to Lexus. That was bad enough. But she was also going to abuse the trust of a child.
Cheryl had made it a point in her relationship with Lexus never to lie. Lying really did pave the road to hell. In the two relationships she’d had before Lexus came along she had lied to her partners. Not about huge things like embezzling household funds or cheating on them, but about small things—cockroach lies.
Like when she hung around with other medical residents after work and didn’t tell her girlfriend, Amy, that because she knew it would make her mad. Amy felt Cheryl should come home immediately and spend time with her because they had so little of it together.
Or when, instead of leaving right away, she’d stay in the break room and catch a nap before she went home, because when she got there Amy would want to go out and Cheryl didn’t have it in her—not without a nap.
Amy didn’t understand how important it was to her to become a doctor. When they argued, Cheryl would always say, “But you knew I’d be working a lot when we got together. I spelled that out for you. Everyone knows med students work a lot.” To which Amy would say, “I thought if you loved me you would make time.”
Time and lies had finally killed that love affair. Luckily, Cheryl hadn’t had much in the way of property. She packed her clothes and books and rented a room from a friend, finally got enough sleep and finished off her residency in a much more relaxed and truthful state of mind.
Her next girlfriend, Tammy, was not such an easy toss. She was also a doctor, and they’d bought a house together, with art and Persian carpets and a Jack Russell terrier that Cheryl loved. It was losing the dog that got her most. She had told Tammy a different kind of lie. She had told her she loved her and that she was good in bed, when in truth Cheryl didn’t love her and oftentimes didn’t come. She came to dread sex because it meant telling another lie by faking another orgasm.
The split was an ugly business. Cheryl gave Tammy most of the stuff, got some financial remuneration and vowed to stay away from women. She threw herself into her career, joined a practice, hated it and switched to doing triage at the hospital. That’s how she met Lexus, who’d come in with three fractured ribs after crashing her mountain bike into a tree on the Johnson Ridge trail. It was love at first sight. Lexus said so and Cheryl had to agree. They would have had sex then and there had Lexus not had three fractured ribs.
The anticipation had been stimulating, but postponing their lovemaking also accomplished something else, something that Cheryl had never done. She became friends with Lexus. This was a lesbian dynamic she’d never experienced. Lexus told her from a life-coaching perspective that when couples sidestepped lust long enough to develop friendships, things often turned out better. “You discover whether you actually like the person before you buy a bed together and move in.” She was right.
Now, driving home, Cheryl realized she was going to lie to Lexus for the first time ever and she felt awful. She would also be lying to a child. She felt like Lady Macbeth. She hoped she wouldn’t go around dusting the urn all the time and being conspicuous about her guilt. Pulling into the back lot for tenants only, she sat in her car and didn’t move. Going inside and putting the faux ashes inside the urn would mean the deed was done. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Sparky knocked on the window. She rolled it down.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you all right?”
Cheryl nodded. She knew she didn’t look like someone who was all right. Certain kinds of mental states lead people to sit for extended spaces of time in their cars—depression, thoughts of suicide, moments of hesitation prior to committing a crime. It probably hadn’t helped that she had had her head resting on the steering wheel. She nodded and then said, “No, not really.”
“Is there anything I can help with?”
Sparky was such a nice, caring woman, Cheryl thought. Why would someone want to beat her up? Wesson must be a horrible person. Of course, Cheryl was about to become a lying coward and a fraud. “Probably not, but thanks for asking.”
Sparky studied her. “You know as long as you didn’t rob a bank, kill someone or commit adultery most things can be fixed.”
Cheryl looked up at her. “You’re right. I haven’t done any of those things. Nor do I intend to.”
“See, you look better already.”
“Thanks, Sparky.”
“Catch you on the fly,” Sparky said and left.
Cheryl remembered that was Vibro’s salutation—an allusion to softball. Softball was one of the things Vibro was extremely good at, unlike poetry. Both she and Lexus pretended to enjoy Vibro’s poetry when there was no way to get around the fact it was awful. Now, that was a face-saving and kindly meant lie. Lexus justified her opinion by saying that not being a poet herself she was in no position to judge the poetry of another.
“No, you’re lying. You know it’s bad, yet you don’t tell her so,” Cheryl would say.
“It makes her happy and it does no harm to the universe. The world is not a lesser place for having her bad poetry in it,” Lexus would reply.
“There—you said it was bad,” Cheryl said.
“Only relative to my lack of knowledge.”
“You’re rationalizing.”
“I
t causes little harm and more good to let people have what they want sometimes. Vibro wants to be a poet. I read her poetry because it makes her happy.”
Cheryl pondered this as she took the bags filled with Arm and Hammer Baking Soda and the “remainder” box from the backseat. She grabbed her kit bag from the front seat. She thought about concealing the baking soda in her kit bag, but Lexus’s car was not in the lot and Pen wouldn’t be home for another thirty minutes. Cheryl hated that Pen took the city bus to school. Pen attended Lowell Elementary on Mercer. She assured Cheryl that lots of kids took the bus, but Cheryl was certain that the bus was full of potential predators. Despite having seen all kinds of horrors as an ER doctor, to her the world had never seemed like such a dangerous place as it had since she became responsible for a child.
She brought everything upstairs and set it on the counter. The urn was sitting on the mantelpiece in the living room. Having a fireplace in an apartment was a luxury of the old-school-type. A lot of landlords would have walled them up to avoid huge insurance premiums, but Mr. Agassiz had seen the value of them and put in gas-fired logs. The renters got the ambiance without the danger. Cheryl hoped the urn wasn’t going to stay on the mantelpiece but that instead Pen would put it in her room for private communion with the remains of her mother. Even Lady Macbeth hadn’t been forced to stare at the body of the dead king every day.
Cheryl took a deep breath and ripped open the first carton of baking soda and poured it into the remainder box. There, she’d done it. She had started sliding down the slippery slope of deceit. What atrocity would she commit next? She decided she’d deal later with her further indiscretions, lies and frauds; right now she needed to get all the baking soda in the box before she got caught in the act. It took five cartons to fill the box. She then transferred the box’s contents into the urn, albeit with some spillage. She was thankful it wasn’t the real stuff. She was wiping off the counter when she heard a key in the lock. Geez, they were home early, she thought as she stuffed all the Arm and Hammer boxes into the trash and stashed the remaining five boxes into the pantry behind a case of ramen noodles. Well, at least this way she wasn’t going to be able to back out or even have time to feel guilt-ridden before the event took place.
“Hey, there,” Lexus said as she sidled up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Did you find her?”
Cheryl didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Janet helped me.” She pointed to the remainder box.
“Janet, the very attractive morgue woman, that Janet?” Lexus said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, that Janet.”
“Very cool,” Lexus said. She picked up the urn and felt the heft of it. “I always wondered how much we weighed you know…after.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Thank you so much for doing this. It’s going to make Pen feel better about her relationship with Martha Sue. You’re going to be a great mom,” Lexus said, squeezing her tight.
Cheryl buried her head in Lexus’s shoulder. She felt horrid.
The key scraped in the lock. Lexus bolted for the door. “Guess what, guess what, she’s here. Martha Sue is here,” she said as Pen came in the front door.
Oh, my God, it’s started, Cheryl thought.
Pen let her backpack slump to the floor as she took in the urn. She picked it up. “She’s heavy.”
“I know, right?” Lexus said.
“I always wondered,” Pen said.
“Me too,” Lexus said.
“Thank you,” Pen said to Cheryl.
Cheryl nodded, stuck her hands in her pockets and loathed herself.
“Maybe we should go out to dinner and celebrate Martha Sue’s return,” Lexus said.
“We’ll bring her with,” Pen said.
“What was her favorite restaurant? We could take her there,” Lexus said. She and Pen smiled at each other, acknowledging their perfect unison of thought.
It was happening already, Cheryl thought. Martha Sue would haunt her for the rest of her days.
“She really liked IHOP. The combo breakfast with extra sausage,” Pen said.
“Then IHOP it is,” Lexus said.
“I’ll go put my books away,” Pen said, lugging Martha Sue along with her.
“Honey, are you all right? You don’t look so good,” Lexus said, putting her hands on the counter.
“I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“Great, this is awesome,” Lexus said. She rubbed her hands together. She glanced down at them. There was a white residue. “Huh, there must have been…” She didn’t finish but washed her hands.
Cheryl got the Windex and wiped off the counter. “All good,” she said. She wiped her hands on her pants. There was more residue. She swiped at it with a dishcloth. God, the shit was everywhere.
“Yes, it is,” Lexus said, giving her a big hug. “And it’s only going to get better.”
Chapter Sixteen
Red Panties
It was Saturday morning and Vibro was cleaning house as was her custom. She pulled the pillows off the bed and found a pair of red silk panties under her pillow. They weren’t hers and they for sure weren’t Jennifer’s—being several sizes smaller than either of them wore. So that left the infamous “other” woman, whom Vibro was going to kill when she caught her. Imagine finding panties under your pillow, she thought. Another woman fucks your girlfriend and stuffs her panties under your pillow—not the pillow of her lover, but rather, to add insult to injury, under your pillow. The nerve. What was unnerving was the fact that, judging from the size, they weren’t the panties of PR woman from work either. How many girlfriends did Jennifer have?
The cuckolded girlfriend was at a loss as to what to do next. Vibro supposed she should keep the panties as evidence. Putting on rubber gloves, she found a gallon-sized Ziploc Baggie and put the offending panties in it. She got a Sharpie pen and wrote “Exhibit A” on the bag. She pulled the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into a black garbage bag. They had been defiled. She would buy new ones as soon as she finished fumigating the apartment.
She would remove the woman’s presence from her apartment completely, she decided. The entire place was contaminated. She didn’t find any hair samples in the bathroom, but she scrubbed it thoroughly anyway, to remove any trace evidence. She sniffed the curtains in the living room. They didn’t smell different, but she snatched them down and shoved them in the washer anyway. After scrubbing and disinfecting every surface in the apartment—thank God they didn’t have carpet, she would’ve had to rent a steam cleaner—she sat on the couch and stared at the bag of red panties.
She couldn’t decide what to do next. She wanted Jennifer out of the apartment and out of her life. Permanently. The problem was that Jennifer always managed to weasel her way out of these situations. Jennifer would conjure up some line of utter bullshit about how the underwear came to be there. A sick friend had a vagina with a fever and in a malarial fit took them off and shoved them under the pillow. Or a stranger had thrust them at her on the city bus and told her to keep them safe and then darted off into the night.
What Vibro needed was proof, irrefutable proof, a huge manila envelope full of condemning evidence.
She thought about what Dolores said about getting a private detective to follow Ramon. Vibro was not one for squandering her hard-earned cash. On the other hand, how many more cell phones and pedicures was she going to have to pay for before this relationship was terminated? And what about the bills Jennifer was supposed to pay but never did? Maybe coughing up the money for a PI wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It could save her money in the long run.
She got the Yellow Pages out and thumbed through the ads. She chose Fovea Inc. because the name sounded interesting. She dialed the number. A woman who sounded like Albert the Chipmunk might if he had a three-pack-a-day habit answered the phone.
“Fovea, how may I direct your call?”
“I want to find out how I engage a PI and how much it costs.”
“If
you have to ask how much it costs you can’t afford it, sweetie,” the gravelly, yet high-pitched voice said.
“I might be able to afford it. It’s not like you’re looking at my bank statement,” Vibro snapped.
“Mr. Mayberry starts with a retainer of fifteen hundred dollars.”
There was silence. First, that was a lot of money to get rid of Jennifer and second the name Mayberry didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. It reminded her of Mayberry R.F.D., the reruns of a television program she’d watched as a child on Nickelodeon.
“Well…” Vibro said. “It’s not like I don’t have the money. I just don’t know if I want to spend it.”
“Honey, tell me what you want done and I’ll tell you if it’s worth it.”
Vibro considered this. Perhaps she should hang up, but this was free advice, even if it was coming from a three-pack-a-dayer chipmunk. “I think my girlfriend is cheating on me. I found panties under my pillow.” She said it fast so the sting of the embarrassment was like ripping off a Band-Aid rather than digging out a sliver.
“Oh, honey, don’t waste your money on that,” the chipmunk said.
“Why not? I want her out of my apartment and my life. She’s a wheedler.”
“I’ll tell you what to do. Find yourself a birdwatcher.”
“I don’t want a new hobby. I want the cheating whore out of my life.” Saying it out loud like that kind of made her feel good. Jennifer was a cheating whore.
“Now, just hold on to your panties. I’m talking about surveillance, about gathering evidence, and for that you’ll need binoculars and a slick camera with a telephoto lens—that stuff is spendy. I was hoping you could borrow it from a friend.”
“Oh.” Vibro thought furiously. She had to know someone. “Well, say I could find the stuff, then what?”
“You sit in a car and eat a lot of doughnuts and wait until you can get a couple good pictures, the incriminating kind.”
“Then I can put all the stuff in a manila envelope and hand it to her. I threaten to sew her vagina shut if she doesn’t leave and it’s all over,” Vibro said, getting into the spirit of the thing.
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