Difficult Women

by Roxane Gay

  How Red Ikonen got His Reputation

  Red Ikonen had mining in his blood. His daddy and his daddy’s daddy had been miners up in Calumet when mining was something that mattered up there and the town was rich and every Sunday the churches were full of good folks grateful for the bounties of the hard earth. As a boy, Red loved his father’s stories about the world beneath the world. By the time it was Red’s turn to head underground, there wasn’t much mining left to do and that was a hell of a cross to bear. He was like a soldier without a war. Red started drinking to numb his disappointment. He married a pretty girl, had five handsome boys and two lovely girls, and continued drinking to celebrate his good fortune. The pretty girl left and he drank so he wouldn’t feel so lonesome. Finally, drinking was the only thing he knew how to do so that’s just what he did.

  He was a tall man—six foot seven—and he had a loud voice and no sense of how to act right. That sort of thing just wasn’t in him. There wasn’t a bar in town where Red hadn’t started a fight or done something untoward with his woman or someone else’s woman. Things had gotten so bad he needed to drive over to South Range or Chassell to drink with the old guys at the VFW who really were soldiers without a war, because no one in town wanted to serve him a drink. When the Boys were still in town, bartenders would call and have one of them come get their father. By the time Red Ikonen was drinking so he wouldn’t feel so lonesome he had become a mean drunk. He never had a kind word for his boys who drove miles into the middle of the night to bring their drunk daddy back home.

  One by one the Boys left home, tried to get as far away from their father as possible, until it was only the Twins left, and then he started doing untoward things with them and it was a small town so people talked and it wasn’t long before no one at all wanted a thing to do with Red Ikonen.

  How Laura and Hanna Became Best Friends

  Laura Kappi grew up next door to the Ikonens. For a while in high school, she dated one of the Boys, but then he moved away, went to college, and didn’t bother to take her with him. Laura was, in fact, a friend to both Hanna and Anna throughout high school. When Anna and Logan moved down to Niagara, Laura saw how lost Hanna was without her twin. She decided to do her best to take Anna’s place. Hanna was more than happy to let her. They became best friends and then they became more than friends but they never talked about it because there wasn’t much to be said on the subject.

  How Hanna Reacts When She Sees Her Mother for the First Time in Sixteen Years

  Before they go inside, Anna reaches for Hanna’s waiting hand. They both squeeze, hard, their knuckles cracking, and then the Twins go inside. Ilse Ikonen is sitting on the edge of the couch. She is a small woman with sharp features. She has always been beautiful and neither time nor distance has changed that. Her hair is graying around the scalp, her features hang a bit lower, but she doesn’t look a day over forty. Red is sitting where he always sits during the day, in the recliner next to the couch, staring at his estranged wife. He has tucked in his shirt, but his hands are shaking because he is trying not to drink. He wants to be clearheaded but his wife is so damned beautiful that with or without the drink he doesn’t know up from down. Peter is sitting next to Ilse, also staring, because the resemblance between his wife and her mother is uncanny. They have never met. Anna’s husband, Logan, is sitting next to Peter, holding their son, half-asleep, in his lap. He is deliberately avoiding any eye contact with his mother-in-law. He is helping his wife with the burden of her anger.

  As soon as Hanna and Anna enter the room, their stomachs churn. Beads of sweat slowly spread across their foreheads. Ilse leans forward, setting her teacup on the coffee table. She smiles at her daughters. Hanna thinks, Why did you offer her tea? Anna thinks, I was being polite. Hanna bites her lip. “What are you doing here, Ilse?” she asks.

  Ilse Ikonen uncrosses her legs and folds her hands in her lap. “It has been a long time,” she says.

  Hanna looks at all the broken people sitting in her living room on her broken furniture looking to her to fix their broken lives. She turns around and walks right back out the front door. Anna makes her excuses and rushes after her sister. She finds Hanna holding on to the still-warm hood of her car, hunched over, throwing up. Anna’s stomach rolls uncomfortably. When Hanna stands up, she wipes her lips with the back of her hand and says, “I mean … really?”

  How Laura Finally Convinces Hanna to Run Away with Her

  Hanna sits in her car until Ilse Ikonen takes her leave and gets a room at the motel down the street. After her mother leaves, Hanna drives to campus and goes to the dank room of one of her college boys. She lies on his musty, narrow twin bed and stares at the constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling while the boy awkwardly fumbles at her breasts with his bony fingers. She sighs, closes her eyes, thinks of Laura. Afterward, when the boy is fast asleep, his fingers curled in a loose fist near his mouth, Hanna slips out of bed and heads back across the bridge to Laura’s house.

  Laura smiles when she opens her front door. Hanna shrugs and stands in the doorway, her cheeks numb, still nauseated. She shoves her small hands into her pockets, tries to ignore the cold. Laura wraps her arms around herself, shifts quickly from one foot to the other. “Why don’t you come in?”

  Hanna shakes her head. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  Laura arches an eyebrow and even though she is barefoot, she steps onto her snowy front porch. She gasps, steps onto Hanna’s boots, slides her arms beneath Hanna’s coat and around her waist. Laura lightly brushes her lips against Hanna’s. Hanna closes her eyes. She breathes deeply.

  How Hanna Falls Even More in Love with Laura Than She Thought Possible

  When Laura can no longer feel her toes, she says, “We’d better get inside before I get frostbite and I am forced to spend the rest of my life hobbling after you.”

  Hanna nods and follows Laura into her house. It is familiar, has looked mostly the same for the past twenty years, and in that there is comfort. Inside the foyer, amid coats and boots, a shovel, a knitted scarf, a bag of salt, Hanna sinks to the floor and sits cross-legged. Laura sits across from Hanna, extends her legs, resting her cold feet in Hanna’s lap.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Hanna shakes her head angrily. “My mother’s back.”

  “I mean … really?” she says.

  Hanna doesn’t go home. She calls Anna and assures her sister that she’s fine. Anna doesn’t ask where she is. She’s starting to make sense of things. Hanna lets Laura lead her up the steep staircase lined with books. She lets Laura put her into a hot bath. She lets Laura wash her clean. She follows Laura to bed and for the first time in months, she falls asleep in a mostly empty house. She thinks, This is everything I want.

  As Hanna sleeps, Laura calculates how much money she has saved, the tread on her tires, how far they will need to travel so that Hanna might begin to forget about the life she’s leaving behind. It all makes Laura very tired but then she looks at Hanna’s lower lip, how it trembles while she’s sleeping.

  How It Has Always Been

  The next morning, Laura hears the knocking at her front door. She wraps herself in a thin robe and takes one last look at Hanna, still sleeping, lower lip still trembling. Laura has always loved Hanna, even before she understood why her entire body flushed when she saw Hanna at school or running around her backyard or sitting on the roof outside her bedroom window. Dating one of the Boys was a way to get closer to Hanna. Laura would kiss Hanna’s brother and think of his sister, her smile, the way she walked around with her shoulder muscles bunched up. Being with the brother was not what Laura wanted but she told herself it was enough. For the first time Laura feels something unfamiliar in her throat. It makes her a little sick to her stomach. She thinks it might be hope. Downstairs, Anna is standing on the front porch shivering. She has a splitting headache. When Laura opens the door Anna quickly slips into the house. Anna squeezes Laura’s hand and heads upstairs into Laura’s bedroom.
Anna crawls into bed behind her sister, wraps her arms around Hanna’s waist. Hanna covers one of Anna’s hands with hers. She is not quite awake yet.

  “Don’t make me go back there,” Hanna says, hoarsely.

  Anna tightens her arms around her sister, kisses Hanna’s shoulder. Anna says, “You have to go back to say goodbye.” There is a confidence in Anna’s voice that reassures Hanna.

  Hanna sighs, slowly opens her eyes. She sees Laura standing in the doorway. Hanna smiles. “You don’t have to stand so far away,” she says. Laura grins and crawls into bed with the Twins. Laura says, “Remember when we were kids and the three of us would lie on your roof at night during the summer to cool down?” Both Hanna and Anna nod. The three women roll onto their backs and stare at the ceiling—the cracks and water stains, how it sags. “We were miserable even then,” Laura says.

  How Hanna Finally Confronts Her Mother

  Where Hanna has always been the protector, Anna has always been the voice of reason, able to make the right choices between impossible alternatives. When they were girls and Hanna would plot retribution against anyone who had wronged the Twins, it was Anna who would deter her sister from acting thoughtlessly. When Red Ikonen would stumble into their room drunk and Hanna would try to stab him with a kitchen knife or bite his ear off it was Anna who grabbed her sister’s arm and said, “It’s him or Superior Home.” It was Anna who would sing to her father and stroke his beard and soothe all the meanness out of him. In these moments, Hanna would feel so much anger inside her she thought her heart would rip apart but then she would let the knife fall to the floor or she would unclench her teeth because anything was better than Superior Home, the state facility where motherless children were often discarded until they turned eighteen. They heard stories bad enough to make them believe there were worse things than the stink of Red Ikonen’s breath against their cheeks as he forgot how to behave like a proper father.

  Anna held Hanna’s hand as they walked back to their house, a bracing wind pushing their bodies through the snow. Hanna tried to breathe but found the air thin and cold and it hurt her lungs. As they climbed the porch stairs Hanna stopped, leaned against the railing, her body heavy.

  “I don’t feel so good,” she said.

  Anna pressed the cool palm of her hand against Hanna’s forehead. “You get to leave soon,” she said. “Hold on to that.”

  Hanna stared at her sister. She said, “Come with us—you and Logan and the baby.”

  Anna shook her head. “It’s my turn to stay.”

  “Bullshit. We’ve taken our turns long enough.”

  The front door opened. Peter glared at the Twins. “Where the hell were you last night?” He grabbed Hanna by the elbow, pulling her into the house, and she let him. She wanted to save what fight she had left.

  In the living room the scene closely resembled the tableau Hanna stumbled into the previous day with Ilse Ikonen sitting on the couch, poised regally like she had never left and had no need to offer acts of contrition.

  Hanna tried to squirm free from Peter’s grasp and he finally relented when calmly, quietly, Anna said, “Let go of my sister.” Peter held a natural distrust of twins. It wasn’t normal, he thought, for there to be two people who were so identical. He also harbored no small amount of jealousy for the relationship twins shared. While he was not a bright man, Peter was smart enough to know he would never be as close to his wife as he wanted.

  The Twins stood before their father, their mother, their husbands. They stood in the house where they had grown up filled with broken people and broken things. Anna thought, This is the last time we will ever stand in this room, and Hanna suddenly felt like she could breathe again. She tried to say something but she couldn’t find her voice. Her throat was dry and hollow. The Twins looked at their parents and thought about everything they had ever wanted to say to two people so ill-suited for doing right by their children.

  “I’m sorry to intrude,” Ilse said, her voice tight, her words clipped. She crossed her legs and fidgeted with a big diamond ring on her left hand. “I wanted to see how you girls and the Boys were doing, perhaps explain myself.”

  Anna shook her head. “Explanations aren’t necessary,” she said. “Your leaving is a long time gone.”

  Hanna removed her wedding ring and dropped it on the coffee table. Peter sneered and said, “Whatever,” and Hanna rolled her eyes.

  The Twins stood before their father, their mother, their husbands. They sucked in a great mass of air, threw their shoulders back. They had rehearsed this moment more than once but then they realized that with all the time and wrongs gone by, there was nothing worth saying.

  How Hanna, Laura, Anna, Logan, and the Baby Got Away

  They piled into Laura’s truck, their belongings packed tightly into a small trailer hitched to the back. They sat perfectly still, held their breaths, looked straight ahead.

  Requiem for a Glass Heart

  The stone thrower lives in a glass house with his glass family. He is a flesh-and-blood man going about the business of living with his glass wife and glass child, their glass furniture and glass lives.

  The stone thrower, a good yet flawed man given to overindulgence, met his wife on a beach, after a lightning storm on a night when the sky refused to surrender to darkness and yet there were stars up above. He saw the small fissure her body made in the sand first, moved closer, moved carefully. Then he saw her, her body bathed in moonlight, her eyes shining brightly. He instantly fell in love because he could not believe what lay before him. Her beauty was so mystifying and entrancing that it pierced through his skin and into his blood and wove itself tightly around his heart.

  He did not think about what it would mean to love a glass woman. He fell to his knees. He took her hand in his, turned the palm over. He gently placed his lips against the tender spot between her thumb and forefinger. He closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. He prayed that when he opened his eyes she would still be there. When he did, she was.

  The stone thrower’s wife instantly fell in love because the stone thrower was everything she was not. He was the first man who did not see through her. He helped her to her feet, and then they walked for hours and miles and miles more. He listened and enjoyed her husky voice as she told him all of her hopes, her dreams, her fears. She tried to keep some secrets for herself, but couldn’t. His propensity for indulgence was infectious. She laid herself bare and did not think about what it would mean to love a man of flesh.

  The stone thrower and his wife courted for seven months and married on the seventh day of that seventh month. She wore a silver gown and diamonds in her glass hair. The stone thrower stood next to her, in front of his friends, their families. They vowed to love, to honor, to protect, to obey, although he did not yet know how he would keep his word.

  When the stone thrower and his glass wife make love, she is always on top, her cool glass hands pressed against his chest. She lies down on top of him, leg to leg, breast to chest, face to face. He kisses her long, slender neck, the hollow spaces above her clavicles. He slides his hands along the length of her glass hair, then holds her face, tracing her lips with his thumbs. The stone thrower’s wife warms to his touch, just slightly, and though he can’t see it, he can feel her body respond. He enjoys the pressure of her glass thighs trembling against his and the way she breathes into his mouth, shallow and fast.

  When the stone thrower’s wife comes, her body fogs in a random pattern outward from her heart. As she catches her breath, she can often hear her heart threatening to implode with the high-pitched lamentation of glass succumbing to pressure. When she’s certain her heart won’t break, she rolls onto her side, and the stone thrower lovingly traces lines in the condensation he has left behind. Sometimes, after they make love, the stone thrower will light a candle, sit against the headboard, holding his wife in his arms, her glass spine arched against his thick, matted chest. He’ll look down at his seed slowly sliding out of her. He asks her to lay herself bare fu
rther, to share secrets he does not yet know. He has become accustomed to seeing too much and now yearns to know too much. She often acquiesces, speaking softly, exposing herself in complicated ways. The stone thrower smiles. His wife does not.

  Every morning, the stone thrower sits across from his glass wife at their glass table, and he watches as orange juice sluices down her glass throat into her glass stomach. She rarely bothers with clothes when the drapes are closed, feels she has nothing to hide. It is a remarkable thing, the stone thrower often thinks, being able to see such intimacies, being able to see the separation of her whole into parts. She’ll look at him, then to the distance, her cheeks growing warm while she remembers the night before. As they discuss the coming day, the stone thrower’s wife will reach across the table and take his hand in hers. She’ll trace the calluses, the fingers that are bent but not broken. He’ll squeeze back, gently, ever careful not to break her.

  After the stone thrower and his glass wife share breakfast, he takes his glass child to school, holding the boy’s cool, translucent hand in his. He listens carefully as the boy tells him about his hopes, his dreams, his fears. With every word his son speaks, the stone thrower feels his heart expanding, nearly breaking the cage of bone protecting it. After he kisses the boy on the forehead, sending him on his way, the stone thrower will sometimes stand just outside the child’s classroom, peering inside, holding his breath, hoping that the other children will be gentle and kind, however fragile such hope may be.

  During the day, the stone thrower’s glass wife busies herself with the work of living in a glass house. Room by room, she uses soft cloths to wipe clean every surface because her husband cannot help the things he leaves behind. As she wipes away the fingerprints and skin and stray hairs she smiles to herself and hums the waltz to which she and the stone thrower danced at their wedding. Sometimes her neighbors will stop in front of the glass house and stare as they catch glimpses of her body’s glass contours beneath the clothes she wears more for their benefit than hers. They will whisper to each other and shake their heads. They will condemn that which they cannot understand.