Gently, infinitely gently, Mindy put her hand on Lucia’s shoulder. She pressed. And, satisfied with that attention, Lucia sunk down into the tub. Her head disappeared underwater in a cloud of silvery hair, and for a second Mindy thought she was going to drown. Then Lucia resurfaced, her smile kindled.
“Does that feel good?”
Lucia almost purred, the noise deepening until it could’ve come from the belly of a jungle cat. She leaned back until she was resting against Mindy’s mom’s Sears bathtub pillow, her hair spilling out toward the floor. It still had some brambles in it. Mindy grabbed her good comb and began brushing Lucia’s hair. Lucia made more purring sounds and Mindy giggled. It felt good to get that kind of response. It was probably great for her blood pressure.
When Lucia’s hair was straight, Mindy picked up the small pile of twigs from the floor and dumped it into the wastebasket. Then she squirted shampoo into her palm and massaged it into Lucia’s scalp. Lucia rocked against Mindy’s hands in absolute comfort, her body kicking up little waves as it thrummed. When she was done, Lucia dunked herself again. When she came up, hair cleaned, she brushed it behind her shoulders herself.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yes…” Lucia sounded it out clumsily, like a stroke victim.
Mindy grabbed a loofah and ran it over Lucia’s back and shoulders. Lucia’s mouth fell open and she let out a really porn star sigh.
Mindy paused. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Lucia pouted and held her hand out of the water, watched it drip. Mindy took her hand and rubbed the loofah down her arm.
“Mindy?” Lucia said, small and cloyingly vulnerable.
“Yes, that’s me,” Mindy replied, for some reason feeling it had been as much a question as anything.
Lucia picked at the golden cross around her neck, the only thing she wore. “I feel dirty.”
Mindy felt tears heating her eyes. “It’s okay, baby, you’re safe now. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Promise. I got a yellow belt at the YMCA.”
Lucia moved suddenly. Her perfect breasts emerging from the water like island paradises. She stood. Turned, her hips swinging as gently as a pendulum, her breasts thrust out.
Mindy couldn’t not look. She felt her breath trickle out of her chest without replacement. Found herself standing slowly, rising to Lucia’s height. Finally, she closed her eyes. The afterimage of Lucia burned white on her eyelids, but when Mindy opened her eyes again, she could look Lucia in the eye.
Lucia reached out to Mindy. Her cold, cold fingers brushing over Mindy’s face. Taking away some of the tears she found there. Lucia put her fingers in her mouth. Her fingers trickled off her lips. “I’ve been thinking about the night.”
Mindy misheard. “What night?”
Her voice was small. It seemed to barely make it out of her. “The darkness…what if you could see everything in it? Wouldn’t it hurt your eyes? If there were no darkness? Not even behind your eyelids. If everything were just so…bright?”
“Lucia… I think we should call the Girls’ Town crisis hotline. You’re freaking me out.”
Lucia swept one long leg after the other out of the bath and onto the floor. She walked out of the bathroom and Mindy followed her. She could see this violence in Lucia, something barely restrained, and if it were anyone else, she’d worry that when it got out it would come toward her.
Instead, Lucia stood in the middle of the upstairs hallway, dripping dry, her pallor and her bruises and her limpid hair all spooling together into something Mindy couldn’t define. Her face was slack. She looked at Mindy like she was begging her for something. Then she smiled. An awful, clownish smile, showing all her teeth, all her “pep”.
“Tuck check!” she cheered and swung around her own belly button in the air, barely leaving her feet before they slapped back onto the carpet, wet with old muck and new water.
“Tuck check!” she chorused again to herself and went into another 360 degrees. She landed off-kilter, ripping backward, but another chorus—“Tuck check!”—and she launched again, a propeller speeding up. Landed on her feet again, but like a car with a flat tire, she was steadily being pulled off-course. “Tuck check! Tuck check! Tuck check!” Each backflip took her further down the hallway, faster and faster, covering more distance with each loose stunt. Mindy could only think of a firework going off. It burned hotter and hotter until it exploded.
Lucia crashed into the table at the end of the hall, her body a wrecking ball that took out papers and books and vase and flowers. And she laid there in the wreckage, her damp nymph-body out of a Michael Bay movie, her hair spouting a red ribbon of blood from where the back of her head had struck the wall. In some insane way, the color reassured Mindy. And as she rushed to help Lucia, the cheerleader laughed and laughed. A jagged laugh; it cut Mindy. Cut deep into her.
The bleeding stopped fast, Lucia’s body desperate to hoard whatever color it had left deep within itself. Mindy got Lucia dressed in a baggy shirt—everything of hers was baggy on Lucia—and a pair of men’s boxers that Mindy’s mother had bought her accidentally. Mindy still hadn’t figured out how her mother had “accidentally” thought she had a son instead of a daughter. She put Lucia in her bed, wrapping her up in blankets like they could protect her, and said a quick prayer over her. She didn’t know if there was a Jesus, but if there was, she couldn’t think of anything better for Him to do than look after Lucia.
And though a part of her only wanted to crawl into bed with Lucia, to hold her close and protect her better than God or bedsheets ever could, she knew Lucia would hate that. Waking up with a dyke. So she took her comforter, too warm for all but the winter months in Texas, and dragged it downstairs with her. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept on the couch. She built a little castle out of cushions, laid her head down on it, cocooned herself in her comforter, and she dreamed.
She wasn’t sure if she was herself or Lucia in the dream. She was in her own bed. When she got up, she passed the mirror, but she didn’t have a reflection. She was thirsty, though. So thirsty she was made of desert, her mouth and throat cracking, her stomach heaped with sand. Downstairs was water. She could hear it flowing.
Down the steps. Across the floor. The darkness was so…light. Like a spider-web, it was there, but she could see right through it. See to the girl on the couch. See it was herself sleeping there, so innocent, so delicious.
Her hand was suddenly around this Mindy, the other version of herself’s throat, so strong that she could’ve lifted her right up off that couch. But that Mindy didn’t feel someone’s throat in her hand; instead, in her dream, she felt the thumb stroking along her jugular. It felt like an ice cube.
“Your blood’s so warm,” she said, playing Prince Charming to the sleeping beauty. “I can feel it moving through you.” She brought her hand up to Mindy’s face, like she was trying to cool the hot blush on her cheeks. “In that big brain—in your cute face… Then it goes down…down…” Her hand moved, and snow fell on Mindy’s chin, down her throat, onto her chest, her clavicle…between her breasts. “to here. That great big heart of yours. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. It soaks up your blood like a sponge. Pumping, swishing. It’s so warm. I bet it could make me just melt. Are you scared?” Mindy asked herself.
Despite her cold words, she was. Scared. Excited. Aroused. Giddy. It all seemed indistinguishable at the moment. “Yes.”
“Me too.” Mindy moved her lips down to her own body. She was at a feast and couldn’t decide what to try first. Whet her appetite with the little vein in the forehead? Or gorge herself lower, at her breast? Her lips brushed through Mindy’s hair, over her earlobe. Following the path her fingers had frozen earlier. Down her throat, with its pumping, swishing carotid artery. Between her breasts. To her heart.
Mindy wanted her heart so bad.
“Let’s be scared together, Mindy.”
Mindy woke up. Her hand flying to her throat, feeling the clear, unbroken skin. Her hand rolled lower, ov
er her chest, her stomach, but there was no blood, just warm sweat plastering her shirt to her body. Then her hand dipped between her legs and she felt it. Heat. She was burning like a furnace, but there was no blood. Just the thought of Lucia…what? Doing what to her?
Doing this. Mindy let her hand fall into her panties. As she touched herself. As she thought of Lucia and came like a pot that’d finally reached a boil.
It was early morning. The gray light that had just begun tinting the house said as much, even before she found her glasses to see the clock. Mindy felt slick and overwarm; a robot with too much lubricant on one of its joints. She didn’t find anything immoral about masturbation, but she’d never come so quickly before.
It seemed sinful, how fast it had happened. It took her longer to wiggle out of her panties than it had to orgasm.
After washing her hands thoroughly at the kitchen sink, she went out to get the newspaper. The golden glow of dawn hadn’t come. It was an overcast, drizzling sort of day that blew raspberries at her. She ducked under the sprinkler to get the paper and came back by the front door.
The welcome mat was white. Mindy knelt down to look at it. She’d already brought the plastic and the chain inside, hiding them in the garage; had she missed something? No. The white was mushrooms, springing up from under the mat like the fingers of a hand holding it from underneath. Mindy lifted up the mat against her better judgment, finding several more vestigial bulbs. She took a picture of them with her cell phone. This kind of thing needed to be Googled.
Inside, she started on breakfast. Something extravagant. She fixed pancakes, as excessive as those were for only two people. She made some with blueberries, some with chocolate chips. Finally she had a plate piled high. She put it on a tray and added a tall glass of milk, some utensils, newspaper, and a squat bottle of syrup fresh from being nuked in the microwave. All that was missing was a little vase with one flower, which seemed like tempting fate for people with allergies.
Out in the hallway, she gasped so hard she nearly dropped the tray. The footprints Mindy had so assiduously cleaned up, with Swiffer mops and Resolve Spot & Stain, were still there in ghostly form. They’d metastasized into mushrooms with long, slender stalks and caps the size of tennis balls, with small siblings alongside them. The patches of fungus went up the stairs. One for each step Lucia had taken.
Mindy went up the stairs, careful not to so much as brush one with her Keds. At the very top of steps, the mushrooms were less developed. Shorter, thinner, their white color less glossy, more translucent.
The door was open a crack. She toed it all the way open. The bed was empty. Déjà vu struck. Mindy remembered how she’d left the sheets in her dream. It was exactly how they looked in the cold light of day. She set the tray down and forced herself to focus on Lucia. Went to the window and saw that Lucia’s blinds were drawn. Called her phone and it went straight to voice mail.
In the bathroom, little cords of moss ran between the tiles, sometimes crossing them through cracks. Underneath the bathtub, they sprang into life. There were at least six heads springing up right where the porcelain tub met the linoleum floor. Ghastly white with black spots on the heads. Mindy took another picture and hurried to her computer and ate the pancakes there.
A lost hour of research, and she had narrowed them down to some kind of Enokitake mushrooms—just really big. One word jumped out at her: saprotrophic. They fed on decay.
* * *
Lucia wasn’t at school. Had called in sick. When she got home, Mindy didn’t want the mushrooms in her house anymore. Grabbing a pair of old dishwashing gloves from her mother’s box of old things, she ripped each one out and stuffed it into a supermarket plastic bag. The tiles she scrubbed clean with a hefty dose of bleach, and the carpet she sprayed and vacuumed. The welcome mat she threw out. She took the bag to the same garage closet where she’d put the plastic, the chain. Tied the bag shut and left it there.
She tried Lucia’s number again, but it went straight to voicemail. She didn’t even hear the song of its ringtone in Lucia’s lonely house.
* * *
Three days without Lucia. Mindy stayed in the gym after school, watching the cheerleaders practice. Gravity was put on a lower setting. They did basket tosses, back tucks, stunts that Mindy couldn’t name any more than the dances in a Bollywood movie. But they all had meaning. They were sewed into Lucia’s body in sweat and muscle and scars, only Mindy hadn’t looked for them. Hadn’t seen Lucia jogging by her bedroom in the early morning, or staying late after school, or disappearing to away games. Mindy had always fit in around those gaping holes in Lucia’s life. Even back then, Lucia had been a ghost. Now she’d just been exorcised.
When they noticed her, Pammy and Tera asked if she knew where Lucia was. She hadn’t shown up for practice. She always showed up for practice. Principal Haywood was urging the cheerleading coach to kick her from the captaincy. Mindy left the arena of cheers and chants before she started to cry.
When she got home she opened the garage door and a cloud of moths flew out. They’d been near the mushrooms. Mindy could just tell.
* * *
In her dreams, she is Lucia, and she wants to see herself, see Mindy, see a mirror. She gets out of bed, the sheet wrapped around herself like a body covered at the morgue, and goes to the window. Just a quick look between their two houses. Even seeing Mindy sleeping will be enough. But she has lost track of time. It is dawn, and when the blind rolls up, the light comes in. Her eyes burn too hot to need this soft warmth; it’s too much for her. She sees the light itself, a shower of shimmering needles that stick in her extended arm like a porcupine’s quills. Each of them is red-hot. They burn in her skin as she wraps the sheet tightly, protectively around herself. She closes the blinds once more. Her arm is not her own anymore. It has been claimed by the day—
Mindy woke up and needed to see Lucia. With her own eyes, now.
* * *
Enough cabin fever, enough stir-crazy, and Mindy could do anything. Even cook.
Mindy found her mom’s world-famous chicken soup recipe on page 244 of her seventies yellow cook book. It took some chopping, some slicing, and almost setting a dish towel on fire, but Mindy got two quarts of soup created and poured into a Tupperware container. To that she added a twenty-ounce bottle of Sprite from the fridge. Thus armed, she went next door and she knocked.
It took a while. She rang the bell in case they couldn’t hear her knocking, knocked again in case the bell didn’t work. After maybe five minutes, she heard the door unlock.
Lucia’s mother was like a funhouse reflection of her. The same tawny hair, but not as bright, thinner, framing a crabapple version of Lucia’s face—too many cigarettes and too little sleep. Her lumpen upper body was hugged by a T-shirt for a rock band Mindy had never heard, even on the oldies stations, and a pair of stained sweatpants ended in a set of gel shoes. Young and pretty, Mindy instantly felt embarrassed for her.
“Yeah? Whaddya want?” Mrs. West asked. Her words carried a strong brandy scent between consonants.
“It’s Mindy? Lucia’s friend from school? I live next door?” She raised the Tupperware container, feeling idiotic for putting it in a picnic basket. It’d been the only way she’d been able to carry it, the Sprite, and a spoon. “I heard she wasn’t feeling well, so I brought her some chicken soup. To get better. She eats it and then she gets better. Hopefully.”
Mrs. West started a cigarette. It was a practiced motion—first she dug a pack out of her pants and slapped at the cardboard packaging like it was an unruly child. “Lucia doesn’t like getting company. Not too fond of it myself.”
“I know that, but I—” Mindy unslung her backpack, Mrs. West still tapping out bass on the cigarette pack. “I brought her homework. From the school she’s missing?”
A phlegmy laugh came up from Mrs. West like a sudden cough. She fetched a single Marlboro from her pack and clenched it in teeth that had seen non-brown days. “School. Yeah. That what she does when she
ain’t shaking her ass on some football field? C’mon in, can’t stand outside jabbering all day, let the cool air out, bugs in. Got enough of both…” She slid back inside. Mindy followed after a moment; she hadn’t opened the door more than she had to poke her head out. In the hallway inside, Mrs. West was working a spark from a plastic Zippo. “Sumbitch husband dragged us out here. Looking for work at the bottom of a bottle. Then he up and left us here, Hell’s sauna. Joke’s on him, though; governm’nt still sends his dole here.”
Mindy came inside. Instantly, she was watching her step. She didn’t want to walk on anything.
It wasn’t like her own house was the cleanest. Before Jon had gone to college, when she was still into Sailor Moon and Neopets, the two of them had left clutter all over. That’s what her mom had called it. Not junk or trash. Clutter. But they got older, stopped leaving their toys out because their toys were all in their phones, and her mom hired a Spanish woman to come by once a week and tidy up.
Lucia’s house had trash. It was a subtle distinction—a robot or an alien wouldn’t get it. But you just had to look at the pile of bills that’d come through the mail slot and been swiped aside by a foot. The groceries still in bags, not put away—Costco-sized groceries were all store brands, not name brands. Mindy followed Mrs. West automatically to the kitchen, thinking they were carrying on a conversation, but Lucia’s mother was talking to herself—keeping herself company as she poured a drink. A social drinker. Mindy left her.
Up the stairs, same story. Down the hall, same story. The door to Lucia’s room had the same collection of warning signs and keep-out signifiers that Mindy had once had before she took them down in a fit of maturity. Mindy rapped on a High-Voltage sticker, shaking a hanging pillow that said The Princess Is IN.
“Get lost, Bro,” Lucia groaned through the door, her voice strained and far off.
Mindy turned the knob anyway, cracking the door the width of a molecule. “It’s your lesbro, not your bro-bro.”
“Which one? I’m friends with a lot of lesbians, I go to viewing parties of The 100.” The warmth in Lucia’s voice was invitation enough. But Mindy opened the door slowly. Like she would if there were a growling Rottweiler on the other end.
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 12