by Carol Anshaw
Fuck your French dolls! Cate screamed internally as she sat silent on her end of the call. But she does not want to lose this job and so she let Molly condescend to her—informing Cate that with the play only weeks off now, there was really no time for anyone involved to have a life, especially not a horrifying one. And so she is looking forward to seeing Cate on Tuesday. The change of scene will do her good.
* * *
The drawing of the kitchen suddenly pulls a bad lever and she’s through the trapdoor.
the terrible odor like a bad zoo, a roadside repulsion. neale, squirming under the fat man. “help me here, mama,” he says, and the woman with silver-toe cowboy boots skitters over and places a neat little kick to the side of neale’s head. a thin, dark red seep begins. there’s no time to consider anything, to weigh options. there is no options list.
This is how it goes. No matter how hard she tries, she can neither hold back her memory nor force it. What she gets are short clips like this one. Important chunks are still missing. She doesn’t know what she’s hiding from herself. It can’t be that she’s too frightened to look at these pieces. She’s actually weirdly unfrightened. But she’s another person now. She has been tested and, in a fumbling way, has passed. She has always lived on an easy island. Plenty of bananas, breezes over her hammock. The odds were against her ever having to save someone or, even less likely, kill someone. But she had to, and she did.
The night sky crackles softly with pale, distant lightning. She goes to the front of the shop and opens one of the casement windows to watch. Sailor jumps up beside her, paws on the sill. Together they read the strangely tropical wind. A storm is on its way. Warm weather is smashing into what had been a grim cold snap. Cate is working through this night because all that has happened to her in Chicago this week won’t matter in New York: the machinery of the play is in fourth gear and she has to catch up with it. She puts away the notebook and tries to put her energy to the task at hand.
The play now has a title: Blanks, in reference to a terrific quote by the architect Edwin Lutyens, a friend of Vita’s mother. Cate has the quote push-pinned to her corkboard.
The only thing is to know and realize that Vita has got blanks in herself and these blanks are blank. If I find a blank, I get a plank and bridge it and I don’t look down, lest I get vertigo.
Presumably the blanks were the dead spaces in Vita’s empathy, particularly for those she seduced and abandoned. Cataracts occluding her view of the marriages she wrecked along her way. Damage and collateral damage along a potholed country road, a treacherous garden path.
The work Cate is fiddling with tonight is something small and manageable: drawing the front of the newsstand for the train platform.
Outside, the storm has broken free of the clouds and the rain is hammering down. She Googles the font for British train signage, which turns out to be Gill Sans Light. She types:
SEVENOAKS
then inlays a background of a worn, yellow/gray/white to print on sign stock.
* * *
A sweep of light brushes across the surface of the drawing table. Tires crunch through gravel. Sailor rushes to the window. Dana. Cate doesn’t even have to look to know. A text hisses from her phone.
like what, you weren’t going to tell me?
The TV interviews. She’s gotten calls all week. At least it saved her the embarrassment of having to tell the story again and again, to find a posture to take around it. And now, she sees through the open window the air shimmering above the radiator, and beyond that Dana sitting on her car hood draped in a clear plastic, disposable rain poncho. Cate can’t think of a snappy response.
Dana lifts the overhang of the plastic hood and peers up at Cate, then puts her head down and they restart the conversation.
are you alone in there?
no
are you counting that dog as company?
fuck you, Cate texts, then goes to open the door.
Sailor gets there before her, poised at the threshold, shuffling his butt on the floor, getting ready. It’s always a good time for company as far as he’s concerned.
“You stay. No jumping.” As Cate opens the door, he jumps up on Dana, then licks her face on both cheeks, as though he’s French. Then, to make a further impression, he does his “spin,” his easiest, default trick. He has only ever seen Dana that one time at the dog beach, so he can’t have a scrapbook of fond memories of her. Then he’s back for some more kissing. It’s becoming clear he’s not going to be much of a guard dog.
“Graham and I are trying to train him to not do this,” Cate says, pulling him off. But then he’s standing again, paws on Dana’s shoulders. She can’t remember if she told Dana about Graham and Sailor staying with her. Dana rubs her cheek along the side of his head, thumbs the inside of an ear. “Who are you, the make-out king?” She laughs in a way that’s particular to her, a rollout of delight. Always appealing.
A serious shot of lightning crashes and bleaches the sky. Sailor rushes into a corner. Dana turns to look outside, then turns back to Cate. “Shouldn’t it be, like, snowing?” She brushes the water from the poncho in sweeping gestures that cause droplets to stipple Cate’s jeans. “The thing is, I knew before. I knew that afternoon. I knew something bad was going down.” The crazy thing is that Cate believes her. Because this is how they see their connection. Like a deserted power station, mysterious and huge; darkened, but always active, sudden orange running sparks skittering through the air inside. This example will be tacitly added to the Myth of Them. Since this turned out to be a belief system of extremely limited value, Cate doesn’t think it warrants any acknowledgment. She goes into the small bathroom to get a hand towel, then gives it to Dana, who wipes her face only a little. She can’t help this.
“How are you here? Shouldn’t you be slinging your hash?”
“I can’t stay long, but I had to come by.” Dana spins around. “Where’d the couch go?”
“I got rid of it when I stopped seeing you. Now all I do here is work.”
“I always fucked you on the table. You should’ve gotten rid of that instead.”
Cate opens the mini-fridge and pulls out a couple of beers, pops them open. Dana takes one, then sets it on the windowsill as she rubs her wet hair with the towel. She has such thick hair that any gesture involving it carries a small erotic payload.
“I just had to see you. See that you’re all right. And Neale. Is she a mess?”
Although they only met twice—when Cate brought Neale to Toaster for breakfast—they clicked right off the bat. Of course they did, because Neale could see how perfect she and Cate were for each other. Although really, she’d probably like any girlfriend of Cate’s who was politically progressive, with a blue-collar background, a degree from a culinary academy instead of a college.
“They did a scan, to see if the concussion was serious. It wasn’t. But the woman kicked her in the face and her cheek is broken. There’s going to be a surgery around that. She also has a sprained wrist. And the guy was trying to rape her. So of course she’s flipped.”
“Jesus. I guess I figured that was probably in the mix. How long is she going to be in the hospital?”
“Two more midnights. I got that off the wall chart in her room. I guess that’s how they measure time in the hospital. Regular night and day must get mixed up inside. I have to tell you something else. Today I looked at the menu on her tray table. She’s on soft foods because of the broken cheek. For breakfast she can have pureed waffle. I hate to say this, but I’m kind of glad you came by so I could tell you about the waffle.”
“That’s hilarious. But you can tell me the bad stuff, too. Your bad stuff. Maybe that’d help?”
“So. The thing is, I don’t have a solid memory of a lot of it. I don’t have a full picture. I was just operating on impulse. You know. Something bad happening. Stop it. Smash smash smash. I can see this part all over again if I want to. And then when he stopped moving, I rolled him and his flopp
ing dick off Neale. Jesus. I can see any information about this is kind of TMI. But also NEI, not enough information about the whole thing. Patches are still blacked out, like with a Sharpie. I supposedly whooshed a rather large amount of spray from the extinguisher at the woman, got her in the eyes. But then what? Where did she go and how did I get to the guy while he was still gettable? I think I’m censoring my own mind.”
Cate’s cell buzzes its way across the table. She looks to see who it is, then lets it buzz on. “Private caller. No idea. I mean, I always thought it was you. But you, as you can see, are here.”
“It did used to be me. Are you in something new? I thought you were seeing someone on the up-and-up.”
“I am. And it’s something I’m hoping goes somewhere. It has a lot of promise.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen her. Very presentable.”
“Where’d you see her? You mean from half a mile off at the beach?”
Dana doesn’t say anything.
“Oh, please don’t be stalking me.”
“I’m not stalking. That would imply hiding. I want you to know I’m still close by. Walking the perimeter.” She pulls Cate in by the front of her sweater. “Especially now.” Cate feels her shoulder getting damp with tears. Dana is an easy crier, but even so, Cate’s moved. She stands still, but inside is trying to back up. Really trying.
“You have to remember we’ve entered a new time frame. We’re not close anymore. We’re supposed to be going on with our lives without each other. Shouldn’t you and Jody be getting married? Now that it’s legal?”
“I don’t want to talk about weddings.” This is exactly the part of conversations with Dana that she hates. Sidesteps out of the way of pointed questions. Like now. Does Dana mean she hates flowers and dresses with trains? Handel? Or the weddings of friends, how corny they can be? Or is she saying she and Jody, on the other side of an opaque barrier from Cate, have already gotten married? Cate doesn’t want to ask, because that would indicate she cares about the answer, and she does not want to indicate that. She’d like to keep her distance from Dana’s real life, as though it’s a play and she has a seat in the last row of the balcony. Between scenes, she can hear the shushing of pieces being pushed around while the stage is dark and the events to come are fine shadows made of dust, reassembled into new, colorful items, already in place when the lights come up again. But still, far, far away. She tries again to get this across.
“Every time I see you, you seem to be operating on the assumption that I’m still waiting for you, that nothing has changed with us. When in fact everything has.”
“Unfortunately, for me anyway, not enough has changed. I still think about you way too much. You, too, maybe? Your hand is shaking. Your little half-hand.” Dana takes it gently, by its two fingers. “Oh, baby.”
“I’ve got too much going on now. In my life and in my head. I can’t get back into it with you.”
“Maybe now is exactly when you need me. To understand where you are.” And then she’s pushing Cate against a wall, wiping her wet hands through Cate’s hair, holding her head as if it needs protection. Then, instead of saying any of the things anyone else would say—how sorry she is that this has happened, how traumatized Cate must be, how brave she was—she puts her mouth over Cate’s ear and says, “You must feel so fucking powerful.”
No one else has guessed this.
bludout
She knocks on the back door. “It’s me,” she says to it. Sailor adds a couple of paw scratches. He’s here too, is what he’s saying.
“Hold on. Joe will unlock it for you.” Neale’s voice from the other side is faint. Cate can barely hear her.
Joe opens the door but doesn’t say anything. Sailor stands to put his front paws on Joe’s shoulders. The two of them stand like this for a while, Joe rubbing his forehead against Sailor’s.
“Did you get creepy questions from your friends?” Cate asks him, lifting Sailor from under one of his front legs and setting him back to ground level.
“We’re on Christmas break so I’ve only seen Kiera and Theo and they’d never ask a creepy question.”
A piece of memory is sliding into place.
he makes a terrible sound. his hands go to his head, which has started leaking blood. she twists the opposite way, then smacks him much harder with the extinguisher, this time with a backhand. there’s the slightest cracking sound, like that of an eggshell. then just mush.
“oh no, no.” he says this mildly, almost politely, as though there has been some mistake. more blood rushes out, a lot of it onto cate’s hands. he sways a little, then collapses sideways, onto the floor. she looks at daffy duck on his neck. the tattoo makes everything a little worse, she’s not sure why. lying still on the floor, he looks big, but now soft. his chin is recessed into fat, babyish cheeks. the rain jacket, although filthy, has hung onto its price tag. now he’s still. she’s not sure if he’s alive, dying, or dead. a new smell has come to the fore, warm, and bad. what the inside of humans smells like. for good measure, she bashes his head a couple more times. she started out just wanting him off neale. now she also wants to make sure he’s dead.
She refocuses on Joe, who is grabbing around on top of the refrigerator, for doughnuts that aren’t there.
“I’ll get some this afternoon.”
Neale is sitting on the kitchen floor with a rag and a can of a product called BludOut, rubbing in a hopeless way at a faded but stubborn stain on the linoleum. Banged up and dressed for bloodstain removal, she looks like an extra in a war movie. Her cheek is still swollen and bruised. Cate realizes that of course all of this is superficial and will dissipate. Her surgery is scheduled for next week.
Joe says, “I can walk over to the Seven-Eleven. Not a problem.” He seems relieved at the idea of getting out of the house. Weirdly, he looks older, even though it’s only been a few days since Cate last saw him.
“No way you’re going by yourself. Cate killed one of them, but the other is still unaccounted for.”
And so Cate drives Joe the two blocks to the 7-Eleven. Their easy, oblivious days are behind them. Now they must protect themselves.
* * *
When they’re back, Joe takes his doughnuts upstairs and Cate opens two cans of diet ginger ale, then drops to the floor next to Neale, thinking how could you be closer to someone than saving them? This horrible event has brought them to a new place, past the ordinary configurations of friendship, which now look like preliminaries. Of course, she can’t bring herself to say this.
Neale says, “The other thing I feel bad about is that, although I am totally grateful, what you did was really too much for any friend. The whole mess itself was too big, then your response had to be so huge, so way off the edges of anything. It’s hard to put everything back to regular.” Then, after a bit more worthless rubbing at the stain, “Do you think they had our house staked out? Like for a burglary? It’s kind of hard to imagine.”
“Maybe they weren’t looking for lucrative, maybe they were just roaming around, looking for something easy. They seem like people who might’ve had a lot of free roaming time. Maybe they tried this and that gate and they were all locked but yours wasn’t. The bigger problem was the keys dangling in the door. Maybe the door wasn’t even open—”
“No, it was open. I was just back. I knew I was running late, that you were going to be here any minute, and so I was a little frazzled, I was yanking stuff out of bags. I remember thinking if I could just get the frozen and cold stuff put away I could leave the rest until I got back. I keep replaying those first minutes. I see the two of them coming through the back door, but this isn’t even remembering. It’s only imagining, because I never actually did see them come in. My back was to the door. I was putting a couple of Leans into the freezer. I didn’t even know they were there until the woman coughed. The cough was the scariest moment in my life.
“And now I’m frightened she’ll be back with one of their friends. I don’t even know how to picture th
em. I think maybe they’re junkies? The police weren’t able to ID the guy. He just slipped away, like a spiky line melting into a nice, smooth anonymous one.”
* * *
“Do you think you should see someone professional?” Cate says. “Or do you think we should?” Cate would like to fold her arms around Neale, but the two of them have such a withering view of hugging there’s no way they could just start that sort of thing up now.
“The hospital brought in a counselor, but she used words like penetration, also ejaculate. As a noun. Journey as a synonym for life.”
Sailor is busy now, sniffing the floor with a little too much enthusiasm. It goes beyond sniffing into a snuffling that implies prey. A squirrel in a bush. Or with the new influx of urban wildlife, a rabbit. Or in this case, traces of blood from a large man.
“Hey, buddy.” Neale rubs her thumb over the sharp angle of bone above his eye. “Everything is over. All is said and done.”
He casually licks the bruised side of her face. He’s a visiting nurse.
“Maybe Joe and I should get a dog. I think we could use a canine presence in the house.”
“We could look on Petfinder,” Cate says, but she can tell Neale has drifted away somewhere. “I wanted to be the one who brought you home, but Mrs. Pappageorge beat me to it.”
Neale revives a little to say, “We were at a red and when it changed, she jumped like a jackrabbit in front of the oncoming traffic to turn left. Laying on her horn the whole way. It was a heart-stopper. When I mentioned that it was a little scary, she told me this was how she learned to do it in driving school. That must’ve been a driving school in Athens. I imagine it has more aggressive traffic, more done with honking.” Cate looks around. The kitchen is not its usual mess. It’s not even just clean, it’s sanitized. Maureen called in a crime scene/dead person cleaning service, which did a great job with the exception of the intractable bloodstain, which is now the only sign of a large event having taken place here.