I hand Joyce a bag full of Jenny’s empty prescription bottles, and she hands them to a small, sad-looking pharmacist behind her. Then she turns back toward me and I start to ask her out, but before I can finish, she breaks up with me.
“Doug,” she says, crumpling her mouth into a fret, “I’m just not sure we should keep seeing each other like this.” That’s how she says it, and I’m wondering what she means by “like this,” so I ask her.
“I just don’t think starting a relationship is healthy for two people in our situation,” she says, “with me as, you know, an employee here, and you being a customer. Plus your sister’s condition and all. I guess I just don’t think it’s for the best. I can’t see it working out in a way that, in the end, we can all feel comfortable with, so maybe it’s better if we just call the whole thing off now, before anyone gets hurt, and while we’re still such good friends.”
I ask her why she suddenly feels this way.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, letting her shoulders sink. “This is so hard. I think I just didn’t ever really imagine this would be something long-term. Because, I mean, did you ever really think this was going to turn into something, I guess, real? Because I thought we were just having some friendly fun. We needed to get you out there, to get a few dates under your belt, and so we did. And so now I just think, well, so, we did it. It’s done.”
I ask her what she means. Then I ask her if going out with me was some sort of charity thing. If that’s what all this was.
“No, God, Doug. It’s just that when you first asked me out I thought—”
Because I don’t need her charity.
“That’s not what I—”
Because if that’s the idea, I want to tell her, she can forget it. I want to tell her that if that’s the idea, to hell with it and to hell with her. Jenny may need people’s charity, but I don’t. That’s the difference between us. I want to make Joyce acknowledge that Jenny and I are separate people with separate lives, and that with her puffy eyes and her weird squinty-smile thing, she’s in no position to be taking pity on anybody, but in the end I don’t get the chance, because just then one of the other customers rushes over to the counter and tells us that Jenny’s been assaulted.
* * *
—
It’s impossible to tell if the officer taking our statements is uncomfortable because of Jenny or because of what’s happened to her. I don’t know what the normal procedure is following a sexual assault, but I’m guessing stammering and no eye contact aren’t part of the protocol.
Jenny taps her version of what happened into Mother’s palm. She is calm. Calmer than the officer, and me, and Mother, who, after years of taking her outrageous misfortune in stride, is finally caving in right in front of us, barely able to translate as Jenny describes a body behind her, followed by a warm, open-palmed hand under her skirt. She describes two fingers and a thumb on the right side of her hip, and so, she thinks, the left hand of a left-handed person. She recounts a long moment of firm, steady pressure between her legs, and then nothing. Jenny taps the words. Mother makes the report. The officer asks questions, which mother must then translate to daughter.
Did it go—Mother has to pause—sweetie, in? My dearest, did they go—she pauses again, holds her breath—in you?
Maybe a little. Jenny thinks about it. Why?
The answer breaks Mother. The officer does his best. He is part of us now. Just by being here, by taking the notes, he is one of our small circle of constant, perpetual victimhood.
“Who?” Mother asks. “Who? What kind of creature could?” But I know better. We can’t help our attractions, our desires. Even now, I want Joyce. At the pharmacy, she’d cried as they’d questioned her, her eyes red, their puffy underbellies slick and rosy as she told the officer how much she wished she could have done something, prevented it somehow. She told him how sweet Jenny was, how obviously innocent, as if either of these things were in question. She made the same sniffling, gasping sounds that Mother is making now, and even then, with her face blotched and tearful and her makeup crawling down her cheeks, I wanted her.
Mother blames me.
“I blame you, Douglas,” she tells me as I drive the three of us home. She doesn’t mince words. Someone has exploited a chink in her armor, and that chink, she tells me, is me.
“You’re the chink in my armor, Douglas,” she says. “You let them stab me in the heart.” She repeats it every few blocks until we pull into the drive.
* * *
—
That night I find Jenny in my room, investigating. She can be a real snoop sometimes. She’s found the earplugs I keep in a little pouch next to my bed for when the hum of the walls becomes too much. She’s rolling them between her fingers, testing their sponginess, feeling them give and re-form. I take her hand.
It’s time for bed.
What are these?
Nothing. Earplugs. We put them in our ears to keep sound from getting in.
They’re funny.
They’re nothing.
What do you need them for? Is it noisy where we live?
I can’t stand to look at her. I take her other hand, pressing the earplugs between our palms.
I’m tired, I tap. It’s time for bed.
Okay. Good night.
She lets go of one hand, but I hold on to the other.
What is it?
I don’t know.
What is it?
Did it hurt?
What?
Did he hurt you?
I don’t know. It felt strange. It felt funny. I didn’t know what was happening. At first, I thought it was you.
Me?
I knew it wasn’t you. His hands were too big. But he was gentle and scared, the way you are sometimes. He was nervous, the way you were before you talked to Joyce. That’s all.
I’m sorry.
It’s okay. Are you going out with Joyce again?
I’m so sorry.
It’s okay. Are you going out with Joyce again? Did you ask her out again?
Yes.
Another date?
Yes.
Chicken Kiev?
Yes.
Delicious!
Yes. Delicious.
Ha-ha. Good night.
Her other hand slips away.
* * *
—
The next morning Mother makes what Jenny claims is her favorite breakfast, eggs Benedict and cinnamon toast, which is fine, even though hollandaise tastes like Elmer’s glue to me. At the table, Mother tells me I have to take Jenny back to the police station. She’s received an early-morning call. They have a suspect in custody. This seems soon to me, but apparently they got a good look at the guy from the pharmacy’s security camera, which has helped them make a quick collar.
“I just don’t think I can go back there, Douglas,” Mother says in a way that makes it clear she won’t.
Then, so there’s no confusion: “I won’t go back to that place.”
What did she say? Jenny asks after sucking down a yellowish glob.
We have to go back to the police station, I tap on her palm above the table, making sure Mother can see. Just you and me.
Okay, she says. Mother glares. Jenny dips her esophageal tube into her orange juice glass and drains it dry.
* * *
—
The policemen are nervous about letting Jenny feel the hands of the men in the lineup, but Jenny assures me that it’s okay, so I assure them.
“Thing is, we’re not sure if it’ll hold up,” the policeman from the night before says. “Legally, I mean. It’s not exactly procedure,” and I nod like I understand, though I’m not sure what else they expect Jenny to do with a lineup. I tell him that if it’s the guy, she’ll know it, which is the truth. Jenny remembers hands like mo
st people remember faces. A handshake is all she needs to know who she’s talking to. She loves meeting new people.
The police seem eager to make an arrest. They want this whole thing over with as much as we do. The officer leads Jenny into the room where the men are lined up. I watch from behind the glass.
The men are ordered to hold out their left hands, palms up. Jenny takes them one by one, examining them with her usual patience.
They stare at her with the looks we’re used to. Some reel at her touch, craning away as much as they can. Most focus on her neck-cap, their natural reaction being to look to where her head should be, to the part of her that should be reassuring them that all is well, that she means them no harm.
One near the end of the line doesn’t seem as bothered by her. He gives his hand over to her inspection without any fear that I can see. All of the men are oldish and squat with thinning hair, similar to one another in the way lineups are required to be for the sighted, but this man has a stockier build than the rest. Blue tattoos peek out from under thatches of white hair on his forearms. He doesn’t look at Jenny’s neck-cap, but instead at his hand in hers, watching as she charts the network of his palms, the segments of his digits, the shape and cut of his nails. Jenny lingers on this hand, going over it again and again. She seems unable to make up her mind about something, and there is a terrible moment where I think she might put his hand between her legs to be sure, but then she lets go and moves on to the next man’s waiting hand. After she’s examined them all, the officer leads her back behind the glass and she takes my hand in hers.
Tell them he’s not here.
Are you sure?
Yes. Tell them he’s not here.
They said they got a good look at him on the camera, I tell her. They said they think they’ve got him.
Tell them he’s not here.
I tell the officer.
“Is she sure?”
I tell them she seems pretty sure.
“Does she want to take more time? She can go through them again if she wants.”
Let’s go to the pharmacy, she taps.
They want to know if you want to go through them again.
Why?
To be sure.
I am sure. Tell them he’s not here. Let’s go to the pharmacy.
I tell the officer that she’s sure, that we’re done. The sides of his mouth bunch. He tells the men in the lineup through an intercom that they’re dismissed.
* * *
—
On the drive home Jenny is still insisting that we go to the pharmacy. She has yet to receive the nail polish she was promised yesterday.
And you can talk to Joyce about your date.
I don’t think we should go.
Why not?
I don’t think it’s a good place to go right now. I don’t think we should go back there.
Why?
I can’t believe you want to go back there.
Don’t you want to see Joyce?
No.
You can talk about your next date.
We’re not going on another date.
Why not?
She doesn’t want to see me anymore.
Why not?
Because she doesn’t.
Why not?
Because she said she doesn’t.
You said she did.
I don’t respond.
You said she did.
My hand sits limply in hers, like a dead animal she’s trying to prod back to life. I concentrate on driving. The car wants to stray. It’s easing away from the yellow line. It might be the crosswind, or the alignment. It’s hard to keep steady with one hand.
Why did you say she did?
I can’t say what I want to say. We don’t have a tap for it.
Why did you—
I pull away from Jenny and take hold of the wheel with both hands in order to drive properly. I drive like this the whole way home, hands at ten and two, like Mother taught me.
* * *
—
It’s late, and I’m awake in bed. I can feel the hum of Jenny’s sound system in my teeth. I think of her attacker, still out there, still walking free, still suffering under the curse that comes with the senses.
She has to know that it’s my fault. She should say so. She should know. I want to tell her how angry she should be. I want to tell her that things will never be the same for her again, that she’ll never feel safe now because she’ll never know for sure if I’m there or if I’m somewhere else, not thinking of her or the danger she’s in, which is out there, and real, and constant. I want to tell her to turn down the goddamn bass, that it’s keeping us awake and shaking the whole goddamn house down. I want to tell her that her world has been shattered, that she can never go back, and then maybe I’ll tell her what a sorry, pitiful creature she is, and how fucking unbearably pitiful she makes us. I want to tell her how fucked my life is because of how fucked her life is. These are the things I am going to tell her, right now in the middle of the night. These are the things she should know.
* * *
—
This is how I find her:
Writhing, bedsheets kicked aside, bass pulsing through the room like an intoxicated brain, the tower speakers thumping themselves into a blur, the subwoofer quaking like a frightened animal as she cradles it with her hands, burying it deep between her thighs, pressing it hard against the folds of her nightgown, her esophageal tube slowly sliding left to right as her hips buck awkwardly against the rhythm. Jenny lets the hard, solid tones beat against her. Her fingers, those slender daisies, struggle to keep the woofer nestled in place. She cleaves to it with knees and nails. Her hands are steady, practiced, like she’s done this before. Her water glass, nudged by waves of sound, inches closer and closer to the edge of the nightstand with each beat until it falls onto the bed, spilling out onto the sheets and onto Jenny before rolling off and shattering. Jenny must sense the spill, but doesn’t stop. I don’t know if she can feel me watching, or if she would even care. I wonder if Mother has explained to her the wrongness of associating bodies with pleasure. I wonder if Jenny thinks touch and love are the same thing. She tightens her grip on the subwoofer. Her thighs are quivering and bare. A sudden shoulder jerk whips her esophageal tube against the wall, smacking the call button dead center. “The Bells of St. Mary’s” chimes angelically above the beat. Mother, if she is awake, is on her way.
I leave the room quickly and close Jenny’s door behind me, the lullaby still coursing inside. Mother is already halfway down the hall. She’s tying her robe around her, squinting and maybe still half asleep.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Her water glass fell off the nightstand.”
“I’ll get a broom” she says.
“I’ll take care of it,” I say. “Go back to bed.”
“I’ll just check on her then.”
“She’s fine,” I say, still in front of the door. “I’ll take care of it.”
Mother looks at me with one eye still asquint, unsure if I’m being stubborn or helpful. She rewraps her robe around her. It’s oversize, and might have been my father’s. It keeps trying to swallow her up.
The beat drops, then rebounds, then skids backward into a crescendo. Behind me, the door struggles against the jamb. Mother, unable to find an easy way into Jenny’s room, pretends not to want one, retreating down the hall with no good night.
Here is your armor, Mother. Here is your good, clear-minded son.
I wait in front of Jenny’s door until Mother’s closes, and then for another hour after that, until all of our bodies are still together. Jenny’s lullaby plays all night. I stay put. I take almost no breaths. Still though, I’m here.
Rite of Baptism
Officiant: What name do you give your child?
&nbs
p; Parents: [Name].
Officiant: And what do you ask of the Church for [name]?
Parents: Baptism.
Officiant: You have asked to have your child baptized. In doing so, you are accepting the responsibility of guiding [him/her] down the River, through its sluicing corridors and over its gulping rapids. It will be your duty to keep [name]’s head above water, [his/her] pate dry, [his/her] little nostrils clear, and [his/her] little toes unmuddied. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?
Parents: We do.
Officiant: But do you really?
Parents: Totally.
Officiant: Godparents, are you prepared to help [name]’s parents as they guide [him/her] down the River? Are you prepared to keep [name]’s crèche afloat, to ward off, as much as possible, the many perils of the River, for example, the ravenous hippos and crocodiles, the apes with semihuman intelligence, and the creatures that appear to be otters, but are more menacing than otters, as evidenced by their tendency to bite? And, if necessary, are you prepared to pull the body of the nearly drowned, otter-bitten [name] from the baleful current of the River and perform CPR, keeping in mind that, when performing CPR on an infant, one should use only two or three fingers to apply chest compressions at a rate of approximately one hundred compressions per minute?
Godparents: We are.
Officiant: [Name], the Church welcomes you with great joy and claims you in the name of the Lord of the River. I now invite your parents to place you in your crèche, which they have fashioned out of a collection of pliable synthetic twigs and briars from the craft bin, meant to represent, in its own crude way, the crèche of Our Lord, fashioned by His own doubtlessly loving but almost adorably naïve mother and father out of actual twigs and briars collected from the banks of the River.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover Page 15