I pretended he had a gun to my head, raising the stakes even further. I’d imagined my death a thousand times over. Just today speeding along the winding roads I’d seen it in a car wreck. My face through the dashboard, glass at my throat. I bit the inside of my cheek and concentrated on coming because those were his rules: me first. I had to come to win. Come for the pain to stop. Come and get the fuck out of there.
So I did.
His body froze on top of me, and he pulled away. I lifted my head, looked down. In the dim light I saw streaks of blood on his white carpet. I shuddered, fearing he’d torn me apart, but felt the familiar grind in my stomach. I knew then what these last lachrymose days had been about. Why all the helplessness, the hopelessness, the cravings for sweet and salt so deep there wasn’t enough junk food at 7-11 to satisfy them?
RR caught me eyeing the stains and sneered. I was afraid he might hit me again or worse. But he just lifted me and carried me upstairs. I was too weak to protest. He sat me down on the toilet and stuck his hand in the shower, testing the hot and cold before gently guiding me inside, alone. I turned down the cold and scorched my limbs, my face, my torso to rid every trace of him. Healing myself, cleansing myself until my skin blotched pink and a surreal coat of steam covered the bathroom.
I stepped out of the shower, my stomach buckling with period pains. I folded up a hand towel and stuck it in between my legs, almost thankful I didn’t have a tampon. I wanted to feel the blood dripping from my body, an assurance the trip was over. You don’t get your period when you’re living on porn-star time. I wrapped another towel around my body and said: You’re almost home, Slivowitz; you can do this.
When I came out of the bathroom, he was sitting on the bed in a pair of briefs. I picked up my sweats from the floor and stepped into them, then dug a T-shirt out of my garment bag.
“You don’t really want to leave, I mean, it’s just getting good,” he said.
I turned around, and he seemed almost serene, the anger banged out of his face. He looked old, more washed-up than ever. He motioned for me to come to bed. I sunk inside and let him hug me, though every touch of his fingers was like a cattle prod, every slush of water beneath me a vise grip. “You’re a wild lay, Silver,” he said, summoning the anger I’d left temporarily in the bathroom. “You want the stakes higher and higher.”
I forced a smile and kept my head against his stomach, waiting. It was easier than fighting, easier than protesting: Actually, it wasn’t good for me, despite all physical evidence to the contrary. During those long minutes before he nodded off, I became certain it hadn’t been the game or the stakes, but only my desire to get back to New York and leave Silver Ray behind that had made me come.
When he finally turned over, I tip-toed downstairs. Amid the last burning embers I gathered my clothes from the floor, checking my jeans for Vera’s keys. They were still there.
Stepping out of my sweats, the bloody towel slipped to the carpet. Another stain. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t stain him enough. I picked up the towel and rubbed it against the white walls, feeling vindicated with every abstract streak. Until the ink ran dry, and I knew I had to be more concrete. I stuck two fingers inside me, wet them with day-one red. In the middle of his living room, as big as I could, I wrote: EAT ME.
I almost fell to the floor laughing, wondering what level of rage his face would register when he saw my mark. But I had to get out of there. I went to the kitchen, stuffed a few paper towels in between my legs, and was out the door, my heart beating so loudly it echoed through the decaying canyons.
I climbed into Vera’s car and snapped the safety belt across my body. Again, a sign I was leaving his time zone; in movies seat belts were optional. Like condoms. I turned the key, listening as the ignition roared regally in the yellow-blue air, twilight’s happy twin. Soon it would be daylight. Full of heat and gore and everyday people. Tourists were more trogloditic, by day creeping back to their hotel rooms to sleep off the monotonous nights of make-believe.
A few minutes outside of Boulder City, I caught the first sight of dawn. It was a battered sunrise, with rays smooth and strong fighting through the fog. I sped across the empty desert roads. Heading into the sun; going home.
A HANDBOOK FOR LIFE AND DEATH
The second I stepped from the fluorescent tunnel at La Guardia Airport, I saw Shade leaning against a row of green chairs. I closed my eyes, afraid I might be hallucinating, yet upon opening them she was still there, smiling in her way that sized the world down to manageable. I felt my body stiffen, the features of my face freeze as if cemented. “How did you know what airline?” I said. “What plane?”
“You forget what a good reporter I am.”
She put her arms around me, and I hugged back so tightly, I thought we might collapse. It was the first time in my life I could understand my mother’s lying down on the floor of this very airport almost a decade ago. Nothing else mattered.
Shade linked her arm through mine and led me outside. It was a damp night, much colder than Las Vegas. I tried to zip up the thermal sweatshirt Vera had given me, but my hands shook. I buried them deep in my pockets and with my elbow pulled Shade’s body closer to mine.
At my jeep, I saw Freddy yawning in the back seat. “You’re spoiling her,” I said.
“She loves it.”
“I’ll bet.”
We buckled up, and I was glad she was driving. New York felt foreign to me; so big, so ancient. Shade turned on the car, but left it parked. Heat flooded up my legs, the windows were steaming. On the head rest behind me, Freddy stuck her nose in and out of my hair. “By the way, I changed her name,” Shade said.
“You can’t change her name.”
“Yes I can. She’s Little Miss Showbiz now.”
“It’s too late, she’s probably in her thirties.”
“So are you.”
I brandished a wary eye, then had to look away. Shade touched my arm, lightly but purposefully, the way that never failed to make me shiver. I swallowed a mouthful of phlegm. “Shade, I want to say something.”
“I know, Slivowitz.”
I turned my head back to her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Yes you did, it’s okay.”
“But I should have stayed, I shouldn’t have….”
I bit my lip, but it was no use. The tears had finally come. They’d been holding out since I got to Neil’s early this morning. Not even when Ivory threw her arms around my neck on the way to the airport did I let emotion surface. I wouldn’t let them know anything was wrong.
Shade reached over and took my hands in hers. “It’s really okay,” she said. “We’ll figure it out…if you still want.”
“Actually, I think I’ve already figured it out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I can, I have to deal with Bay Ridge first.”
She looked at me curiously, but didn’t say anything. The car purred beneath us. “Trust me,” I said.
She let go of my hands and clicked off the emergency break. We drove to Brooklyn, bypassing the city but for the skyline. A few hulking towers budded like tombstones through the viscous gray-black clouds. Death clouds. I put my hand on Shade’s leg and her thigh muscle tightened. I left my hand there until we came to my house.
“Don’t you want your car?” Shade said.
“Nah, take it back to the garage. But keep her for me… Mrs. Vaudeville.”
“Little Miss Showbiz.”
“I don’t know about that.” I sighed, slamming the door shut behind me. Shade stared, making it difficult to walk away. But I’d come this far, I had to go home.
Inside, I fended off Mom’s questions. How could I take a vacation when I was out of work? Why didn’t I tell her I was visiting Neil? And who was that driving off in my car? I never let them borrow my car. I gave pat answers, curt answers, told lies. She wasn’t satisfied, but I didn’t care. I headed upstairs toward the muffled drone of a TV comment
ator. Aunt Lorraine was watching monster trucks. “Such a wanderer, my only girl, my wandering Jew,” she said, then pushed up her bandanna with her fingertips out of habit. I wanted to sink into her arms and cry and have her take away the pain like she used to. But she was no longer equipped.
I sat down beside her and took her hand in mine. It was still silky-smooth, a contradiction to the rest of her skin. The bandages around her catheter had given her a terrible rash.
“You know what I realized?” she said.
“No, what?”
“Nothing’s so bad when you got a big TV.” I pressed her hand into my own. She turned her head a bit, looking me in the eye. “I can’t read anymore, but what’s to read anyway? It’s all on TV. I used to like my newspaper, a few magazines, love stories. When I was a human being.”
“I can read to you if you want.”
“You don’t do guilt right. Never did. You’re not like other girls that way. When you were born I told your mother, ‘Thank god, a girl. Finally, a girl.’ And after the first two, those brats, what you were doing visiting him is your own business, but I remember saying girls are good because they’re guilty from birth.”
I laughed, “Not me though.”
“You have your own way.”
“So did you.”
“I never left the family.”
“I’m here, I came back.”
“Girls always do,” she shrugged as best as she could, then turned back to the TV screen. Stubby trucks with ten-foot wheels trampled a line of cars not unlike Vera’s minivan. It made me queasy, but I kept watching, amazed that Aunt Lorraine hadn’t lost her stomach for such carnage.
“You know I’ll do whatever you want,” I said.
“I know,” she shushed me. Where her faith came from I couldn’t even guess. I climbed beneath the afghan and rested my head next to hers on the pillows. Like this, we watched monster trucks. I tried to see what she saw, but couldn’t get beyond the banners for cigarettes and beer, an audience full of baseball hats cheering on destruction.
During the commercials I tried to talk to her. I wanted her to tell me something profound, something important, so I pressed her on what she was thinking and feeling.
“I’m dying,” she said finally. “How do you think it feels? It’s lousy.”
“But there must be some kind of peace?”
“No.”
“Come on.”
“You go down, they throw dirt on you, and that’s it. End of story.”
Our eyes then locked, and for the first time I felt the weight of the pact between us. Despite her stated faith in me, I think she did fear this day would never come. Luckily, she couldn’t see my fingers knotted together behind my back, nor feel the grave pounding of my pulse. I was still betting on the odd natural disaster, playing my deus against an ex machina like a video slot machine, and hoping we wouldn’t have to go through with it.
A couple of days later, I borrowed Hy’s car and with Rowdy drove out to Queens. Ostensibly, we were to visit Dad’s grave, but Aunt Lorraine had asked me to check out her plot. “Make sure everything’s kosher,” she’d said.
The day was bitter, the kind of late-February cold that made your bones weak. My nose wouldn’t stop running as we trudged through the frozen dirt and weeds, passing the gravestones shoved up next to each other like people on a crowded subway car. Death in New York.
My father’s grave sat next to another man’s, Abe Shusterman: a beloved husband, father, and grandfather. The stones were so close they were almost touching, with similar paths of ivy springing forth in front of them. To the left of Dad’s grave was an empty space big enough for two more. “It ain’t right,” Rowdy said. “He should be between Ma and Aunt Lorraine, not next to some other guy.”
“Maybe there’s something we don’t know,” I said, but the words flew through the air as if they were invisible. Like dust mites.
I bent over, picked up a few small stones, and put them on top of Dad’s grave. Rowdy did the same. The stones were supposed to say you were there, watching. We stood next to each other, looking down for a few seconds until my fingers and toes were numb. “You ready?” I said, and Rowdy burst out crying.
“We got nowhere to go!” he said.
“What?” I asked, but he just cried. His face was pale and damp, liquid dripping from his eyes and nose and mouth. Looking at him made me feel colder. “Come on, Rowdy, it’s too cold out here.”
“There’s no place for us, you know what I’m saying? I got nothing, there’s no room, where we gonna go?”
It was true; Dad had bought the plot for Mom, Aunt Lorraine, and himself. He couldn’t have thought much about burying his children. Who did? The wind swiped against my face. I looked down and saw Rowdy’s swollen feet in his white athletic shoes. He wasn’t wearing any socks. “We’ll find a place,” I said, and looked up at him.
“Where?”
“I don’t know where, we just will,” I said. “Now come on, let’s go.” I tugged his arm, and we walked next to each other, our feet crackling into the ground as we passed through the graves. In the car, Rowdy pointed out the stones with faces engraved on them. “Look, that guy’s all covered with birdshit!” he giggled, and sure enough there was an etching that looked something like Sigmund Freud with white chicken pox on his face. I laughed, and soon we were both hysterical in that same silly way I’d been at 7-11 with Ivory.
On the way home, we stopped at the mall to buy a suit and new shoes for Rowdy. I had several hundred dollars left over from my Las Vegas slush fund and couldn’t bring myself to spend it on something practical, like credit card bills or rent. It was still funny money and more tainted than ever. I’d been thinking of donating it to charity; might as well start at home.
Shopping malls were a lot like casinos. Maybe they were missing the clink-bing-bing, but there were no clocks, and both places were full of happy-loving people spending their hard earned dollars, full of noisy people and bad air. If terrorists came to Brooklyn and sealed the entrances here, it would be only a matter of time before we all choked on the breath of a thousand strangers. The apocalypse at Macy’s.
I had a headache so I left Rowdy trying on shoes and crossed the clay bridge over a filthy pool with pennies on the bottom to find a drug store. Instead, I stopped at the phone bank and called Shade. Her machine picked up, but I knew she was there. She was home all the time now, writing articles for Jason and working on a screenplay. About the strike, I think. I rambled until she picked up.
“Do you want to be buried in a cemetery?” I asked her.
“I don’t know, I’m ambivalent about taking up the space. I feel like what right do I have?”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“I have this cousin who’s going to be buried in the pet cemetery with her cats,” she said. I looked across the bridge at my brother directing the poor sales guy to bring him yet another pair of shoes. He only wanted a place to die; maybe he needed a pet.
“You can be buried with your pets?”
“Sure,” Shade said. “A few of her cats are there already, she visits them.”
“A cat lady.”
“Totally.”
“That’s sort of gross.”
“I know, isn’t it? Cremation’s the way to go, I think.”
“The cat, too,” I said. Through the drooling fountain I could see an altercation brewing between Rowdy and a couple of clerks. He must have had about twenty boxes piled in front of him. The two men in brown polyester raised their arms up and down. It looked like trouble.
I said I had to go, and Shade asked when I was going to see her. “I’m afraid if I see you I won’t be able to leave,” I said.
“See, you need to practice letting go.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing, I’m sick of practicing.”
“I know, baby, I’m sorry. But we’re almost there…remember, the holding on comes easy, we don’t need to learn it.”
“That’s good. Did y
ou make that up?”
“No, it’s a real poet, the German.”
I was constantly amazed by her, not only by what she knew, but how she packaged the information, as if she’d been saving it for me. Or maybe it was my biased reading of her words. Either way I had no time to respond. Across the atrium, I saw a man in a white shirt and tight chino pants lifting Rowdy by the shoulder. I dropped the phone and bounded over the bridge screaming, “Let him go, let my brother go!”
That evening, I took the subway into Manhattan to retrieve my jeep and decided to stop by my apartment. It was worse than I’d remembered—video scraps and shards of plastic all over the floor, the smell of old cat food and ammonia from the litter box. I filled two green bags with garbage, then went for the cleaning fluids. I must have dusted, scrubbed, and wiped for hours before collapsing on my bed.
The next morning brought a burst of sunshine so powerful it woke me at dawn. Streams showered upon my shiny floor and white walls. The stove sparkled in chrome. I felt rejuvenated by the sheer cleanliness of everything. I showered, dressed, and, careful to remember my Jackie-O sunglasses, headed for the garage. Soon I was driving toward the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, destroying the lyrics to songs from the last four decades.
At the house, I noticed Hy’s Cadillac wasn’t anywhere on the street and panicked. A quick and messy parking job. I fumbled with my keys at the front door. Guilt swiped my feet out from under me. I hadn’t meant to stay away last night.
I ran upstairs to Aunt Lorraine’s bedroom. Apparently, Mom and Hy had just left for the weekend. “Here’s a sport for you,” she said in a near-whisper. She was watching a women’s fencing competition. “Takes lots of concentration and balance. You always had such good balance, all the roller skates and surf boards.”
“I never had a surf board.”
“You learned how to ride a bicycle in one day. I remember the bike. It was red and you didn’t come home last night.”
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