“OK, so then we’ll move. We will. If we have to, we’ll figure it out. I promise.”
The Mr. Coffee beeped, and Alex stood abruptly to pour himself a cup. Susan was imagining Andrea, poor old Andrea, nodding, stoic but brokenhearted when presented with the news that they were leaving. She remembered the feel of the shaky old hand resting on her elbow, the two of them enjoying a mother-daughter kind of moment on the stoop that afternoon, partners in some unnameable melancholy.
“So that’s the plan,” Alex said, pouring his coffee and smiling gently. “We give it a few days. If we so much as hear a bug farting in the night, we are out of here.”
Susan sighed. She knew what he was doing; kicking the can down the road, giving her time to forget this flight of fancy when a few days had gone by. It had happened before. When she had wanted to get a dog; when she had made noises about leaving New York, moving upstate, somewhere with mountains. He would say, hmm, let’s think about it, hmm, we’ll talk about it next week, when I’m not so crazy at work, when Emma’s not sick, whatever … and eventually other things cropped up to distract her attention. She looked at her shoulder. The pink mark on her arm was tiny, barely visible. Maybe it was a pimple. And they had brought in a professional, paid good money for a thorough investigation not two weeks ago, and been given the all clear.
But the fresh knot of unease that had formed in her chest that morning at three o’clock, when she woke to see the monster on her shoulder—it was no dream, no dream at all—had not abated. It throbbed, sending out one message, over and over: they had to move, had to get out of there, and quick.
Or else or else or else.
Alex turned to look at the clock, and Susan gnawed furtively at her nails, wrenching off a hunk of thumbnail and spitting it on the floor. A pulse of pain shot up her thumb, and blood welled where the nail had been and drooled down over the knuckle. Alex turned back and planted a sweet kiss on her cheek. “So, we’ll handle it. We’re on top of it.”
“OK,” she said and smiled weakly, rubbing her eyes. “OK.”
Clutching his coffee cup, Alex padded upstairs to get ready for his day. As soon as he disappeared, Susan’s shoulder began to itch.
18.
When Marni arrived for work, an hour and a half later, Alex had just left, and Susan heard him on the exterior stairs, greeting the nanny in passing. She had remained in the kitchen, slowly sipping her coffee and staring with dead eyes out the front windows.
“Hey,” Marni called brightly from the front door, and Susan leaned back in the chair to respond.
“Morning. Emma’s upstairs.”
Marni poked her head into the kitchen, and the girl’s big brown eyes and tousled auburn hair were framed by the morning sunlight like a shampoo commercial. “You all right, Susan?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
Susan smiled tightly. Marni was so effortlessly beautiful, and she could only imagine what she herself must look like: unshowered and exhausted, her hair a knotted mess, her eyes red rimmed, her face unmade-up and greasy.
“Marni!” Emma squealed from upstairs. “I’m making a pee-pee, Marni!”
“Awesome!” Marni yelled. “Here I come!” She bounded out of the kitchen toward the stairs, flashing an ain’t-she-cute? grin over her shoulder as she went.
Susan rose and trudged up behind her, wondering about the moment a few minutes earlier, when Marni had brushed past Alex outside the apartment on the stairway landing. It was a small space. How close had they passed? Had her small perky breasts pressed against his chest? Had Alex gotten a deep noseful of her flirty orange-blossom perfume? How often did they squeeze past each other that way, while Susan was upstairs picking out Emma’s clothes or downstairs pouring milk on cereal? Marni was immortal, impervious to tiredness or hurt. She was like Alex in that way, Susan reflected sourly: both of them wore the mantle of the world so lightly. Not the type to get sunburned, or stung by bees, or suffer the untimely death of their mothers.
Susan climbed the steps until she stood on the landing between the bedrooms, watching Marni get Emma dressed. Her eyes lingered on her daughter’s naked body: her clear vanilla skin, the bulge of her tummy, the fragile lines of her legs, the small pink creases of her nipples.
“Hey, Em? Do you feel itchy?”
Emma looked up and giggled, like it was a joke. “No, I do not.”
Marni laughed and Emma waggled her head playfully, but Susan didn’t say, “Good puppy,” like she was supposed to. She nodded silently, slowly, and went back down the stairs to the kitchen.
Susan turned on her MacBook and drummed her fingers on the kitchen table until the screen lit up, telling herself all the while that she was being an idiot. Go take a shower, she told herself. Put on something pretty, get the hell outside. It was really a great area—the Promenade, the cute coffee shops on Smith Street, that row of antique-furniture stores along Atlantic Avenue. Outside the kitchen windows of 56 Cranberry Street the day had blossomed bright and blue, the kind of crystal blue you only get on crisp autumn days, when smoky clouds drift through pockets of sunlight.
Go paint something, for God’s sake. Capture the autumn light. Eat a bagel.
Instead, Susan stayed rooted to her kitchen chair, drinking coffee and surfing the Internet, her face bathed in the pale light of the screen. She Googled “bedbugs” and “bedbug infestation” and “signs of bedbug infestation,” scanned the resulting paragraphs, and jumped from link to link. She downloaded an article from the Journal of Applied Entomology, scrolled through chat-room threads, and watched YouTube clips of bedbugs swarming in laboratory jars.
“Yick,” said Susan.
When the coffeepot was empty she brewed more.
Susan learned that bedbugs can be killed by extremes of heat and cold; she learned that they hide in the hair of their victims, in discarded clothes, under beds, and in couch cushions. Back on BedbugDemolition.com, Susan discovered numerous schools of thought relating to bedbug control. Some exterminators adhered to the aggressive methods of Dana Kaufmann: contact kill, residual kill, growth control. Some advocated the exclusive use of pyrethroids; others suggested more traditional insecticides or a compound made of diatomaceous earth, which could be purchased at pet-supply stores and which, when sprinkled around the home, kills the bugs by drying out their waxy membranes.
“DDT!!!!!!” suggested one contributor, who signed himself EndsJustifyMeans. It was noted in a flurry of responses that DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, one contributor sneeringly adding, “SILENT SPRING MUCH, DUMBASS?” To which the stubborn EndsJustifyMeans simply wrote “DDT!!!!!!” again, this time all in bold and underlined.
The guy who signed himself [email protected] had contributed to this thread, too, writing “makesureit’sreallybedbugs.” Susan wrinkled her brow and grunted, “Huh,” when she had teased out this jammed-together phrasing. What does he mean, “make sure it’s really bedbugs”? She clicked on the signature link and dashed off a quick e-mail to [email protected]: “So how you do you know it’s really bedbugs?”
As she plowed through website after website, Susan occasionally scratched at her wrists and shoulder. At some point, the shoulder-bite itch intensified, and she dug a ballpoint pen out of the junk drawer and used its capped end to zero in on the itch. At 11:52, her phone rang, startling her with its crazy rattling vibration on the counter. The screen showed that it was Karen Grossbard, a college friend, who was in town for the weekend with her two kids; they had made loose plans, a couple weeks earlier, to hang out today. Susan was absorbed in a detailed explanation of the dual proboscis morphology of bedbugs and other hemipterans: one channel to suck the victim’s blood, the other to inject saliva and anticoagulant, which maximized the flow of blood while keeping the host from feeling the sting.
Keeping her eyes locked on the article, Susan fumbled for the phone and silenced the call.
Another sign of a bedbug infestation, according to a contributor to BedbugDemolition.com named M
rMcEschars, was their deposited feces. “Gross but true!” MrMcEschars wrote and attached a picture of one such deposit in his bathroom: a small pile of black and brown dust. Five minutes later, Susan was yawning elaborately, stretching back in her chair and twisting her torso, when she spotted a pile of the feces on the kitchen counter, just below the broken outlet cover. She blinked, gasped, and froze, staring at it in shock.
Finally, she rose slowly, walked over to the counter, and poked gingerly at the pile with the tip of her ring finger.
Coffee grounds.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Susan said to no one. She exhaled heavily as her heart resumed beating. She was brushing the coffee grounds off the counter and into her palm when she heard keys jingling in the door, followed by Emma’s hopeful call of “Mama?”
She called, “In here, love!” as she rinsed the coffee grounds off her hand into the sink.
Her legs were wobbly beneath her, dancing with pinpricks. She had been in the kitchen, seated at her computer, since the girls left, five and a half hours earlier.
“Hey, you want to know what I read on the Internet?” Susan said.
“That the Internet is a giant waste of time?”
“Har-dee-har.”
The TV was on in the background, with Alex keeping one eye on the Top Chef season finale. When they spoke on the phone at 5:30, Alex had announced his intention to make a big chef’s salad for dinner, but Susan told him the lettuce had a lot of rotten pieces, so could he grab a pizza on his way home, instead? She was lying about the lettuce. In fact, she had seen small dark specks on the bottom of the vegetable drawer, and, even after confirming that they were apple seeds, and after rinsing the drawer thoroughly, she couldn’t shake the idea that the spots had been dead bedbugs.
“All right, sorry. What did you read on the Internet?”
“I learned that a lot of people with bedbugs think they’ve killed them—they think the infestation is over, in other words, and then the bugs come back.” Alex chewed his pizza, half listening, while Susan yawned into her fist. That afternoon she’d taken Emma to the big playground down in Dumbo and watched her make circuits from the rope ladder to the slide and back, too exhausted and preoccupied to give chase.
“They’re not like ants, where you just use Raid or whatever and they’re gone. Even in abandoned apartments, with no one to eat from, bedbugs can live for months and months. Some people say up to a year. Oh, and they can hide in your hair. Disgusting, right?”
“Yes,” said Alex, and made a face. “Actually … wait …” He put down his slice, dug his fingers into his corkscrew curls, his features convulsed with exaggerated terror. “I … I … feel them right now! Aaaaah!”
He shook his head wildly, clutching at his temples.
Susan looked at him evenly. “I need you to take this seriously, OK?”
“I am. Seriously, honey. I totally am. In fact, I called Dana Kaufmann today.”
Susan’s heart leapt in her chest. “You did?”
“I did. Could you pass me another slice of the mushroom?”
She obeyed, her hands trembling slightly. Yes! Let Kaufmann come back. This time she would see—surely, this time …
“I just figured we might as well have her come back and take another look,” Alex said. “She wasn’t too happy about it. She told me she was ‘past the point of reasonable doubt as to that particular residence.’ Quote, unquote.”
Susan smiled. It was easy to imagine the deadpan Dana Kaufmann using exactly those words, and in exactly the icy tone Alex had conjured. Alex smiled back, took a big bite of his fresh slice, and tugged a strand of cheese from the corner of his mouth. “Anyway, I talked her into it. I told her my wife is pretty sure we’ve got bedbugs now, even if we didn’t before, and my wife’s a pretty smart lady.”
“Thank you.” Susan reached over and stroked Alex’s cheek gently. “I really appreciate it.”
“I’m on your side, babe.” There was a pause, and then he delivered the punchline. “Hey, can I borrow two hundred bucks? Tax free if we pay in cash.”
Susan laughed and helped herself to a piece of pizza while Alex started in about his day. Slowly but surely, he said, things were turning around for GemFlex. “Bottom line, we might remain midlist for a little while, but to tell you the truth, that’s fine. Midlist is fine.”
“Of course it is,” Susan said.
“I mean, so we’re snapping a few Rolexes instead of Cartier, who cares?”
“Exactly.”
“Although, actually, on Friday afternoon we booked a gig with Tiffany—”
“Oo-la-la.”
“I know. So, who the hell knows?”
When Alex asked Susan what she’d done with her morning, she took a breath and said, “Oh, you know. I took a walk, did some sketching on the Promenade. I’m going to get back in there and do some painting soon.”
“That’s great, honey.”
They cleared the table, and Susan sat sipping wine while Alex put in a tray of fish sticks so Marni would have something to give Emma for lunch the next day. When a decent amount of time had passed, Susan changed the subject back to the bedbugs.
“So, I’m sorry. When did Kaufmann say she was coming back?”
“Uh, I wrote it down. Friday at 4:30, I think.”
Susan nodded, tried to smile. It was now Wednesday night, and Friday at 4:30 seemed like an awfully long way away.
“And look,” Alex went on. “If she finds anything, then we’ll decide what to do.”
If she finds anything … Susan felt a cold rush of fear in her spine. What if she doesn’t?
Four hours later, Susan was standing at the linen closet, gathering up a couple of sheets, a pillowcase, and their spare blanket, when Alex stuck his head out of the bedroom.
“Hey. What are you doing? You’re sleeping on the sofa?”
“Yeah. I know, I know.” She laughed, trying to sound light and self-teasing. She had thought Alex was already asleep. “I think, for now, I’ll just be more comfortable.”
Alex made a pouty face and looked like he was about to argue. But then he shrugged. “OK, babe.”
She walked down the steps to the front hall, clutching her ungainly camp-out bundle tightly to her chest, and then looked back up at Alex at the top of the steps. They stood that way for a long moment, her looking up and him looking down, and from Susan’s perspective he was silhouetted by the wash of light from the bathroom behind him. Her husband looked a distant stranger, dimly perceived from a mile away.
*
Susan inspected the sofa thoroughly before lying down, of course. A contributor on BedbugDemolition.com named EcdysisMan had written a chilling vignette about (finally) clearing his gorgeous double bed of bedbugs, only to have an overnight guest discover a thriving colony between the cushions of the sofa. Susan lifted the cushions one by one, shook them out, banged them together, slipped her fingers into the cases and wriggled them around. Nothing.
She dry swallowed an Ambien, lay down, and descended immediately into a vortex of anxiety.
Alex would see, wouldn’t he? He’d have to see. It was ridiculous to stay in an apartment that had bedbugs—if there were bugs, if it’s real, what if it’s—over a matter of a couple thousand bucks. It was insane. She could call her dad, ask him to borrow the money, to help them out with the move.
No way … come on, Susan …
Her dad didn’t have money and wouldn’t be inclined to loan it if he did. Alex’s parents were the ones with the money, and they had given Alex a ton to go to art school—money that he was supposedly paying back, although Susan couldn’t remember the last time they had made a payment. The room felt hot, too hot, but when she kicked her leg out from under the blanket she felt a draft, so she tucked it away again. Beads of sweat formed on her temples and dripped down into her eyes, convincing her for one alarming instant that bugs were crawling across her eyelids. She wiped away the sweat and stared at the ceiling.
At least it’s a d
ifferent ceiling for a change.
Small sounds drifted up the air shaft from Andrea’s apartment: shuffling, slippered footsteps, the clink of a spoon on a teacup. She was reminded of the weird ping they had heard—whatever had happened with that? I guess Andrea took care of it.…
Of all the flaws with the apartment, all the things Susan had complained of, it was the only one Andrea had done something about.
When at last she slept, Susan had horrible torturing nightmares of bedbugs. They were marching across her stomach, leaving behind them a trail of that disgusting brown-black dust—feces. A trail of bug shit on her body like the uneven black line of an Etch-a-Sketch. They scuttled up her stomach and bit her chest, her shoulders, her neck and face. In the dream she couldn’t lift her arms to wipe them away, could only lie helpless as they sank their horrid needle-noses into her undefended flesh—stinging—pinching—biting—and then, disappearing, skittering back to the air shaft, crawling into the cracks between the glass and the wall—
She opened her eyes, gasped for breath, rose unsteadily from the sofa and staggered across the room. She slapped at her body, ran her fingers across her chest—no bugs. No marks. Nothing. It had be a dream, this time—right?
It had to be.
In the darkness, she pressed her face against one of the little windows on the air shaft, trying to see down.
19.
When she woke it was still dark, and Susan was on the floor, wrapped in a starchy linen tablecloth they’d gotten as a wedding present from Alex’s great-aunt and never used. Susan had no memory of taking the tablecloth out of the sideboard, nor of deciding to sleep on the ground. Her back was sore and knotted, her eyes ached in their sockets, and her mouth tasted like ash. Rubbing at her temples with her thumb and forefinger, Susan stumbled from the living room down the hall to the kitchen, where she glanced at the clock on the stove. It was 6:22 in the morning.
She trudged up the stairs, scratching absently at her wrist. Halfway up the stairs, she heard Alex’s alarm go off and felt a pang of longing—now he would snooze for ten minutes, and it would be so pleasant to slip into the bed, to nuzzle her face into his neck and snooze alongside him. Instead, she went into the bathroom, peed, and flushed.
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