A Different Bed Every Time

by Jac Jemc

  My favorite part was when the congregation would recite the longer prayers together. There were slight variations depending on the versions they learned and when the congregation’s mouths touched different words at the same time, I could never decide if the result sounded like a beautiful chord or an argument. I stared up at the cross and thought about how Christ had known what was coming and how he must have mentally prepared himself for a long day.

  My sister seemed suddenly enthralled by mass. We left and she tried to point out all of the loopholes to my mother, and my mother just kept repeating the sentence, “That’s faith.”

  On the way home from church my mother stopped to give communion to an older parishioner. My sister and I sat in the swing on the shut-in’s front porch and played word association games.

  “Heave.”

  “Heavy.”

  “Weeping.”

  “George.”

  “Oooo, who’s George?” my sister asked, and I had to explain how I’d connected “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to George Harrison.

  When we got home, I couldn’t take my church clothes off quickly enough. I stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoning, and wondered how I could be tired by noon on a Sunday. I stripped down to just my underwear and the brace, and poked at the spots where the hard plastic made my flesh bulge out. “You’re not fat,” I told myself. “Shut up.”

  I went out to the yard with a book and a blanket, kneeled on a bright fig and watched the juices blossom through the throw.

  I jotted down the dreams I could remember and when I reread them, they sounded like apologies to myself: consoling, reassuring, “won’t let it happen again.” I laid in the sun, still, and searched inside my body for the sensation of each organ pumping me alive.

  The day was breezy and I climbed to a low tree branch, closed my eyes and held my arms straight out to the side, feeling the air and the leaves reach for the sensitive skin of my inner elbows and the spot my tank tops left bare between the brace and my armpits. My father strolled by with hedge clippers.

  “You look like a bird.”

  “Good,” I said, squinting one eye open to see if he lingered.

  I could tell my father had the same thought every day of his life: how did I make these two weirdos?

  My sister had been dabbling in performance art then, rehearsing her new piece: resting her chin on the dining room table, trying to prevent a rat from throwing itself over the edge with her cupped hands.

  “Cecile,” I said, “I’m done with my homework, if you want me to pose.”

  She scooped up the rat and put him in his tank. On the way to the garage, she ran her hands through her hair before washing them.

  “Becky, you’re a real natural. I swear. No one with an effed up back has been so paint-worthy since Frida Kahlo.”

  “Rebecca,” I said to her. “I want people to call me Rebecca now.”

  “Yeah, right on. Reinvent yourself, kid. I’m into it. How’s the puppy fundraising?”

  No one else knew about my silent theft and clandestine sales. She liked the idea. We thought I might just single-handedly wean our father off cigarettes. We knew that wasn’t possible, of course, but we had all sorts of justifying to do.

  “It’s going well. I’m about a hundred dollars short,” I said, patting the back pocket of my jeans. I kept the money on me, sure my mother would find it if I left it in my room.

  “Here’s something I bet you haven’t thought about: what happens if you want to go away to school? What do you do with the dog then?”

  “I’d take it with me, obviously,” I said.

  “Rebecca, you can’t have a dog in a dorm room,” she said.

  “Dad told me I look like a bird.”

  “That’s sweet?”

  “I don’t think it was meant to be. But I liked it, yeah.”

  She hummed and continued painting.

  “Have you ever slow-danced, Cecile?” I asked my sister.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered.

  “Like with someone you really like?”

  “Yeah, I guess. What’s going on? Do you have a dance coming up?”

  “Probably at the end of the year.”

  “It’s so not a big deal, Becs. Just a body against a body.”

  “Rebecca,” I corrected her.

  Several days later my sister asked me back to the garage. The warm spell had drooped. She wanted to try a slight variation on a piece she’d made a few weeks earlier. She needed my head at a different angle and hadn’t had luck painting it without me there.

  Cecile got things ready while I wandered her studio, which sat full of our old bikes and the sled, the gardening tools, bags of soil.

  “Cecile? Why is there a goldfish in the washbasin?”

  “Oh, Bruno won it for me at the Mt. Carmel carnival. I don’t have a bowl yet.” She coughed.

  “Bruno? Who’s Bruno?” I flicked at the water a little to make the fish swim. “You can’t leave a fish in a sink covered in your old paint. Carnival fish are doomed as it is. Give the little guy a chance.”

  “Bruno is my new friend,”

  “I see. What were you doing at Mt. Carmel anyway? You know all the money they earn from that carnival goes to the church, right? I thought you weren’t into that.”

  “Mom asked if I wanted to go to the novena with her. I think she was joking, but I told her I’d come with and hang out at the carnival until the novena was over and then we could ride the Ferris wheel like old times.”

  “Really going for Daughter of the Month, huh? Why didn’t you ask if I wanted to come with?”

  “Aw, Becs. I thought it might make you sad. That you can’t ride so many of the rides now.”

  I sighed. No one was taking to my request to be called by my full name.

  “And, besides, I think it was meant to be that I wandered alone for a while, because I met Bruno.”

  “Tell me more about this Bruno.”

  “He graduated from Lane too. He’s taking some time off deciding what to do for college. Right now he works as a projectionist at a movie theater on Western. He’s a real dude, but I talked to him about my art and he seemed really into it.” She paused to cough. “I was taking a bunch of photographs that night with plans to use some for paintings. Wanna see? Come here. I’ll show you.”

  I wandered over to her laptop set up on an old door balanced on two sawhorses. Bruno filled the screen. He was no one I would picture my sister with. He had on a Sox T-shirt and baseball cap. “This is the guy who won you the fish?”

  “Yup, I named the fish Bear in his honor.”

  “That’s really special, Cecile.” I rolled my eyes, and she shoved me.

  “Quit it, Becky. He’s really sweet and he’s actually super smart. He knows so much about movies and reads the Trib everyday. He’s way up on current events. He made me feel dumb with how little I knew about Chicago politics.”

  “Awesome. I only hope I can find someone to make me feel stupid some day.”

  “Oh, Lord. Fine. I don’t know when you got so cynical, kid. I’m going to invite him to dinner at home here next week. You’re gonna have to be nice.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said, taking my shirt off and easing onto the stool set up for me.

  Cecile cranked some sad song and I heard her scrape another cough out of her throat. She’d been smoking. Suddenly I knew.

  When I walked into the dining room the next day, there was a pigeon chained to the table. Every few seconds it’d remember it was trapped and flap its wings frantically. I had no desire to watch that bird pull its own foot off. “Cecile!” I hollered. This was too much. She wandered downstairs, stretching, rubbing her eyes. “Cecile,” I said, “we live in Chicago, not the fucking country.”

  “Whoa, Becs. Language!”

  “Seriously though, this bird’s life is not some trial you get to put it through. It’s a living thing and deserves to be free like you and me.”

  “Life is a miracle. Blah
, blah, blah.”

  “This bird is shitting all over the dining room table, Cecile.”

  “Eh, she’s fun to be arouuund,” Cecile drawled.

  “What is wrong with you? Are your drunk or high or something? What is the deal?”

  “Aw, God! I am going back to sleep, Rebecca. This is too much. You are not my mother. Jesus.”

  I wasn’t, but I was the closest thing she had right now and vice versa. Our mother had taken up a second job catering in the evenings and on weekends, and we were lucky if we caught her for the minute it took her to brush her teeth twice a day to babble news at her or ask for lunch money.

  “You used to be fun!” Cecile called from halfway up the stairs. When she reached the top. I heard her kick something. A second later the punch bowl shattered down the stairs. She’d brought it up there to soak her feet a few nights ago and now the crystal stretched itself down to the hallway.

  I sat at the table and said everything I had to say by tapping my fingernails on the surface.

  My mother stopped home between catering shifts to grab a clean white shirt and I asked her how she liked the bird chained to the dining room table.

  “There are moments when all I can think about are dead birds in the dark, Becky. I’m mostly unconcerned.”

  “That’s where we get it from, I guess,” I said and wandered away, her voice sticking in my ears.

  I went to the kitchen and started pitching expired jars of condiments into a trash bag. I tried to haul it out to the alley, but the bag broke, leaving me more lopsided than usual and nauseated. I wasn’t supposed to carry such heavy loads without the brace on, so I went back inside for a couple more bags. I cleaned up the mess and divided the trash between the new sacks. When I opened the back gate, Bruno had a knife to my throat and I dropped the bags again.

  “Give me the money!”

  I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the wad of singles I’d been saving for the puppy. I handed it over without a thought. All of this felt right. I shook my head, angry at myself for having the cash on me, but relieved to give it up. “That’s all you want, right, Bruno? Don’t mess this up.”

  The blade dug into my skin. Not enough to make me bleed, but I could tell he didn’t like that I knew his name.

  “I won’t tell her. Do you want me to call Cecile down here? I can tell you she’s not in a real good mood. She wouldn’t unchain the bird in the dining room and she kicked a punch bowl down the stairs.”

  “What are you talking about, kid?” he asked. He took the knife away from my skin and shoved the cash into his own pocket. He had a wide ugly forehead his baseball cap had covered in the photograph; his eyes were useless nickels in his head. I didn’t say anything and let the silence crumble his resolve. I wished something would happen.

  “Cecile!” I shouted over my shoulder and her face appeared in the window. “Bruno’s here!” I screamed through the glass. She smiled and disappeared to run down the stairs.

  I told Bruno to put the knife away. “I hope you at least buy Cecile something with that. Nothing living. She can’t sustain growth.”

  Bruno grimaced. Cecile flung her arms around him and they mashed their tongues together. I figured manners had no place here, so I stuck around, waiting for an introduction, until I couldn’t stand it.

  “Cecile, will you take this trash out? I’ve gotta go.” Without taking her mouth off his, she pointed a thumbs up my way.

  Cecile’s solo show finally opened: sixteen portraits of my spine pointing in all different directions. She treated me like some side-show act when I appeared at the gallery, parading me around to all of her friends with their unkempt hair and lack of antiperspirant. I excused myself, not following the conversation, unable to participate in the unbridled praise comparing Cecile to name after name I’d never heard before.

  Bruno stood at the snack table across the room, looking out of place in a basketball jersey and jean shorts drooping below his butt. I walked toward him and he tried to slip away, but a gaggle of professors were clumped between him and the rest of the room.

  “Hey, Bruno. Still living the dream, huh? Did you buy something nice?”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Rebecca,” he said, and I had to blink back instant tears. I’d never wished someone would call me Becky so badly in my life.

  “Let me know if you need any more cash,” I choked out and turned away.

  Cecile had begged our parents not to come, but there they were, ogling the paintings, toggling their eyes between them and the real-life me, sizing up what they’d been ignoring. My mother and father stared at me, my mother inspecting my torso to try and tell if I had the brace on under my sweater without actually having to ask me. They expected me to start making excuses any second. The feeling was mutual.

  Ratman

  I arrive back from visiting my mother for a week on September 12th. Magpie gives me a live rat as a welcome-home gift. He never gets it right. No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to position my target closer to where he is pointing his arrow. I know he thinks he’s aiming straight for me, and sometimes I find myself capable of thinking this is endearing. He holds the rat in his dirty, browned hands and looks at me like I should know how to look back at him. Eight years ago, Magpie wanted to have sex on September 11th. Like the September 11th. I wasn’t into it, but I kept trying to convince myself that it could help, that it could make us feel like we weren’t alone or in danger. Magpie fucked me on a pile of old newspapers, my bare ass rubbing the newsprint, Magpie squeezing tight at my hips. I tried to forget the dirt under his fingernails, how it seemed like they never got clean. The whole time, the pile of dry paper wobbling, I kept thinking about the tremor of a building before it falls. I kept thinking of steady streams of cigarette smoke. I kept thinking of kindling.

  I smiled at Magpie, because I thought that would be nice, but he had his eyes crimped shut, busy thinking of someone else, imagining the cushion of her breasts against him as he rocked into her, busy thinking of the soft landing of a safety net, of some set of primitive wall drawings that would affirm his sense of being right where he belonged. I made estimations. I thought of Zeno’s paradox. I guessed at what the halfway point would be. Then I guessed again. And then again. And then, contrary to the rules, Magpie arrived, but I was still only half of half of halfway there. He slumped against me and I bumped my head on the wall behind us and Magpie didn’t notice. This September 12th, Magpie followed me around the house with the rat clutched to his chest until he squeezed it too hard, and then we had several ounces of dead flesh and limp tail to deal with, and I wondered what made me come back and come back and come back. Magpie cried on September 12th. I had never seen tears come from him before. I tried to appreciate the gestures, the rat and the tears, once I realized I didn’t have to deal with them. I measured our life together and divided and divided and divided, and though I felt like I was making it smaller, in reality I was metastasizing it. Magpie looked at me in that way that wanted me to look the same way back, but finally, I looked away.

  The Wrong Sister

  Okay. Say the reason you’re stuck here in limbo is totally unclear to you. Say you were a woman who cared about little but treated others basically well. Say you had a twin who was married to a doctor, but because you were so ambivalent, you never agreed to partner up, never liked anyone enough to commit or even give someone a real chance, to ever approach the situation where you might have to explain these feelings to another human being because you’ve joined to have and to hold, in sickness and in blah blah blah…

  But every once in a while, because it seems harmless and because sometimes your sister needs a break and because you gave up on that theater degree long ago but miss the thrill of lying, of being genuinely dishonest—let’s say ever year or two you relieve your sister, and unbeknownst to her husband you replace her for a week or two, tops. Your sister’s husband is the most crass and unpolished doctor you’ve ever met. He’s a rube wit
h a medical degree. You don’t even recall the branch of medicine, so uninvolved and detached are your interactions even when you’re pretending to be his wife. Somehow this man is actually a really good doctor—top of his field, full of expertise.

  You live in a big city in a small neighborhood when you’re playing his wifey. When you’re you, you live on the other side of town. No one really knows you. The grocery store clerk might recognize you if you smiled at her once in a while, but as earlier stated, you’re a bit heartless, so you haven’t. Most people who see you assume you’re your sister on a bad day. Let’s say your sister comes to you and tells you her husband’s really in a mood lately and though she still loves him, to be around him right now is to tear her hair out. “Please,” she says, “be me.”

  You shrug. Agree to it. Let her know what’s going on at work, switch cell phones, squeeze into those pointy-toed shoes she thinks are chic, erase yourself into her. Drive in her car, to her house, and get ready for a week off. Cook some lobsters for dinner, listen to their screams without interest. Smile at the rooftop garden, at her husband’s color-coded tie rack, at that godforsaken dog confined to the laundry room.

  When her husband gets home, you know what she means immediately: he’s acting up. His eyes clock around, avoiding your face, landing on it at every quarter hour and ticking away. His facial hair seems mangy and patchy—like he’s been letting the razor slide around willy-nilly. He unloads groceries and you’re surprised he’s done shopping. This doesn’t seem like him, but then you see that it’s nothing to be floored by: ten pounds of center-cut rib-eye, two hundred massive garbage bags, straws, beef jerky, a box of donuts. You look at him, and in your best impersonation of your sister, you say, “What the hell is all this?” He grabs the bundle of zip ties from you, and replies curtly that it’s stuff he needed from the store that you (your sister) had not gotten for him. You pluck the lobster from the warmer and say, “Dinner, mon cher, is served.” He plops himself down and before you have properly buttered your meal, he’s inhaled his and is heading towards the garage.