She regains focus on the screen. Bidding’s currently hot on the high-end dupes. Because she’s got a masochistic streak, Lucy can’t help checking for Theo’s aliases, so she can nurse that old wound of his broken promises. And there he is, bidding on Jade, of course. Bitterness wells up against whoever’s getting Theo’s gift. Jade is a legend. The counter on her website stands at 547, which is astronomical. To be a dupe like Jade, you have to love what you do, which in Lucy’s view makes her fucking insane. Of course, she’s Faithful. Her website shows a tall, muscular beauty with wavy black hair down to her waist. The photos aren’t doctored, she looks just as startling in real life; Lucy’s worked a few calls with her, and it was hard to concentrate, she’s so jaw-dropping gorgeous. In all the photos she’s with a Nafikh, any X-rated areas blacked out with exclamation points over the smudge. She’s always smiling, the way They like it, and there’s nothing fake about her joy. Jade’s completely reliable. The sentries cheer up when she makes an appearance. They know there won’t be any shenanigans or accidents. She’s so good at what she does, she keeps all the other servs in line and the sentries can sit back and gab among themselves. The prediction is she’ll get boosted this season, and she’s counting on it, too: a glittering banner flashes at the bottom of the web page: My time has come! with smiley faces on either side.
Crazy freak.
Lucy just can’t fathom it. Come Nafikh season, she goes entire nights awake in bed, stiff as a board from all the tension, her eyeballs dried up and burning. Waiting, waiting, waiting. The little black burner cell Bernie bestows at the start of the season is the enemy. It terrorizes her, lying there on the bedside table, tucked into her bag at work, on the sink when she’s in the shower.
It galls her that the Nafikh Themselves are so scared of dying, and yet totally indifferent to the plight of servs. She’s got a recurring fantasy in which she finally gives one of Them a taste of Their own medicine. She swoops out of the darkness with a weapon—sometimes it’s a sword, other times a gun. Those abysmal eyes go wide with shock, and the massive body crumples. The Nafikh screams. It can’t blow out of this world to safety, It’s too weak now, it’s too late.
Your turn to die! Lucy screams.
Sometimes, after that, she’s able to get some sleep.
ON CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING, Lucy gets herself together to go visit Eva. She has two gifts for her: a boxed set of scented soaps and an Amazon gift card so Eva can order a bunch of the trashy romances she likes to read. She wraps them in the glittery gold and silver Christmas paper Eva loves and ties them with multiple ribbons, dragging the scissors to make bunches of curls. The gifts look pretty good, almost like a store did the work. She tucks them into her knapsack with care, so they don’t get crumpled on the trip.
Lucy makes her way to Hull about once a month in season, tries for more the rest of the year. It’s a long day going back and forth from Somerville, so sometimes she spends the night, but never in winter in case she misses a call, and certainly not at Christmastime when the Nafikh show up in numbers. They love the lights and music and window displays. They can’t get enough of the tuba concert at Faneuil Hall, the Holiday Pops, the Nutcracker ballet, never mind the parades. It’s a nightmare with all the crowds. Servs run back-to-backs this time of year, and she’s lucky her rotation worked out so she can make Christmas Eve, at least. Still, it’s a risk being so far away; if she gets called in, she’ll end up with a penalty for no-show.
Why the fuck go? Julian used to berate her, back when they still had some kind of a relationship. It’s not like she’s actually your mother, so why do you have this obligation?
You wouldn’t get it, she’d say, just to piss him off.
Lucy loiters in front of the mirror, patting cover-up onto her bruised cheek without much success. That stupid Jay turned out to have one hell of a mean streak; the bruise is going dark and blotchy, and there’s no hiding it. She’ll have to say she slipped on the ice and put up with all the drama. And maybe next Service, she’ll remember to keep her shit temper in check. You never know when someone’s going to crack.
She gears up for the day: she swills coffee in abundance, picks out a few books and shoves them in her bag, makes sure she’s got cigarettes, a granola bar, money, breath mints. The walk and ride to South Station take about forty minutes, but she has to build in extra time; then there’s then the wait for the train, then the train ride itself which takes another forty.
She closes her door with care, so as not to aggravate Mrs. Kim down the hall. She heads down the stairs from the third floor, sensing the building’s quiet, everyone away on holidays or visiting family except for the Syrians on the ground floor. They’re Christian, but they’ve got nowhere to go, and she can hear the radio playing Arabic news; in summer when all the windows are open, Lucy has to wear earplugs to drown it out.
She reaches the lobby without having to greet anyone, and there finds a row of bright handmade Christmas cards taped to every mailbox. She unsticks hers, opens it. It’s from the young couple that moved into 2E in fall. All Lucy knows about them is she’s pregnant, they fight a lot, he’s a machinist at some company in Waltham. Lucy reads the bubble-letter greeting, Merrrrrry Christmas and Happpppy New Year! She almost tosses it in the bin in the corner, then imagines it being discovered and shoves it in her purse, annoyed she now has to carry it around.
It was already snowing when she was getting ready, but now the snow’s gusting down the street, blinding her. She stops to tie her scarf around her face. The wool goes damp and warm with her breaths as she trudges along. When she finally makes it into the subway, the scarf is soaked. Her skin itches in the heat, waiting on the platform for what feels like forever. A worry starts up that she’ll miss the train, have to cancel. Eva’s surely already in the kitchen, preparing a feast with carols blaring on the radio.
When she emerges into South Station and heads for the ticket counter, she feels the Source jolt. She finds him, it’s one of the ticket sellers. He’s wearing a Santa hat. His eyes dart her way, and he gives a grumpy nod. Here we are, fucked together, is what the nod conveys. He’s currently enduring a tirade by some downtown suit with cheeks flushed a deep red. “Can’t they hire people who speak English?” he demands of the people in line behind him. “Where are you from, anyway? Do you speaky Englishy? Do you understandy?”
The serv is unmoved. “Ticket not valid,” he says.
“Then where’s the goddam ATM?” the suit yells, as if the ticket seller’s trying to conceal it.
“This way across room.”
His accent is pretty awful, typical of most servs, who get just enough basic instruction to handle their crap jobs. The rule is, when they’re in public, they have to speak the language of the country they’ve ended up in. Otherwise, they typically use the rudimentary Nafikh they arrive with to communicate with each other. Servs keep entirely to themselves. They have no call to explore the human world, nor to seek a place in it, and his bland disinterest finally gets to the suit, who marches off muttering. Lucy comes to the counter. He doesn’t say a word when he passes her the ticket, for which she’s grateful. Romeo, his nametag reads. What a joke, he probably can’t even get with one of their own kind. Lucy holds her ticket tight, always gripped by an irrational fear she’ll lose it and have to fork out for another.
The train’s pretty much empty and Lucy gets a window seat. She opens one of her books, then tries the other, but she can’t concentrate. She keeps going over what she’ll tell Eva when the questions start coming. How’s she been passing her free time, any men she’s interested in, what jobs she’s been getting from the agency—at least the jobs aren’t lies. She wishes the same could be said for the rest. She wishes she really was the Lucy they think she is, depressive drop-out who pulled herself together and now pays visits from the big city. The lies leave her sick, no matter how necessary they are. It’s because Eva loves her so, without guile or any regret for the years Lucy spent curled up in the dark weeping, or the times the
cops rolled up to the house with all the neighbors watching. Loves her, and trusts her.
She knows she let Drunk Pete’s curses stick too deep, but she can’t help it. Ain’t no serv ever had a ma. You can’t be loved. If he could see her now, still clinging like a barnacle to her life in Hull, scraping her way through Services, he’d die laughing.
At Nantasket Junction, she finds Sean idling his truck in the fire lane. Usually Eva’s neighbor Phyllis will do pickup, but not in any kind of weather; it’s unnerving she still has her license at all. Lucy steels herself getting in, it’s so hot and close with the fan blowing high to keep the window clear of fog. The car floor is littered with energy bar wrappers and crushed Coke cans, so she kicks her boots around to make space.
“Sorry,” Sean leans over and kisses her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Luce.”
“You too.”
“Whoa: what the hell happened?”
“Fell on the ice.”
He gives her a Yeah, right look, but she ignores it, saying, “You look all spiffy. You’re gonna make all the little old ladies giddy.”
“Yeah, sure,” he chuckles. “That’s date night for me.”
“So—no more Janie?”
He shrugs. Lucy doesn’t press; Janie is a selfish bitch who doesn’t deserve him, so good riddance. He drives slowly with his wrist, the other hand tapping his knee. His plaid shirt is crisp and clean and he smells of cologne. He always has Christmas Eve dinner with his nana at the nursing home, then he comes back later to bring Eva to midnight mass.
“Aunt Eva says you can’t stay over,” he remarks at last.
“I’ve got work first thing tomorrow. It’s a company fighting a takeover, they need extra hands. It pays double. I can’t say no.”
The lies pour from her like water. He gives her another sideways look but doesn’t call her out. He thinks she moonlights as an escort, a theory he advanced when he was wasted one night, then laid into her about his right to worry, her being his younger cousin and all. You don’t have to do it, he blathered. You’re better than that! She had to dig pretty deep not to contradict him. It stung, that he pictured her stooping so low, despite the ironic parallels to the truth. But she saw the advantage of letting his theory stand. He’ll never dare suggest it to Eva, who’d have an aneurism from sheer horror, so he ends up in a circuitous way serving as her ally, stopping Eva when she’s pushing too hard lest Lucy blurt out the dreadful truth.
“Harry O’Neill finally kicked the bucket,” he says.
“Eva told me.”
“Remember when he caught us stealing all that gum?” He chuckles to himself. “What morons we were.”
“Yeah. You puked, you were so scared.”
“At least it hit his shoes.”
Lucy laughs a little, surprised to remember, actually. Memories of her early years are fragmented, disconnected. The shrinks way back said it was due to trauma. Not remembering things, not sleeping, nightmares, all these symptoms would go, they promised, once she resolved her issues. Fat chance of that. Sean keeps talking, and she listens, tries to joke around, her hands clenched inside her pockets. They were two peas in a pod, once upon a time, that’s what Eva used to call them. They used to make a tent in her room, hide inside, make plans for the future. Now he thinks she got clocked by a client while giving him sex for money. It just sucks, and as much as she berates herself that it’s just how it has to be, the frustration builds up so much sometimes she could just explode.
He pulls up to the house. Single candles stand in each window, and the bush out front is draped with blinking lights. “What’s up with you?” he frowns.
“Nothing,” she forces a smile. Then leans over and gives him a quick kiss. “It’s good to see you, cuz.”
“You too, man. Merry Christmas.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“I’m running late.”
She pauses halfway out, looking back. “Bullshit.”
“What?” he asks innocently, though he knows damn well she’s sussed out he’s headed to Janie’s.
“Come on, Sean. Christmas Eve? Don’t be lame.”
“You worry about your own shit,” he says, waving her off.
She slams the door hard to seal her disapproval. He drives slowly away down the snowy street. He uses his blinker even though there’s not another car in sight. He is a good man, that’s what Eva always says, sighing.
“Why didn’t Sean come in?” Eva cries from the doorway. She’s in her Christmas housecoat with the embroidered trees and candy canes, clutching it tight against the cold. Her wobbly legs stick out from under the glitter-encrusted hem, ending in fuzzy red slippers.
“Because he’s a moron,” Lucy says, kissing her hello.
“But I told him to,” she protests. “He should have had a sherry. My Lord, what happened to your face?”
“I fell on the ice. Get inside,” Lucy says. “You’ll catch your death.”
Eva hobbles down the hallway towards the kitchen. Lucy smells the fish baking; the house is overheated and terribly close, with the ever-present odor of cat piss that no amount of delicious kitchen smells can conceal. Come winter Eva locks the house down and turns up the heat, and thus it stays until late spring, when she’ll deign to crack a window or two. Lucy takes off layers of clothing, slips off her boots. One of the cats rubs up against a boot, its tail stiff in the air.
Lucy hurries into the half bath off the foyer. There’s a new St. Jude card taped to the mirror. It gets to her, because Eva can’t possibly suspect the quagmire that is her life: Lucy works hard to make it all look like things are just fine, so why the Judes everywhere, still? When Lucy was small, Eva prayed every day to an array of saints, begging them to lift the mental sickness possessing her child. Eventually, she cracked and went for Jude, the end-of-the-road saint. Lucy can’t stand the green robes and the long-suffering gaze. She pees hard like it might snuff out her annoyance. The tiny framed flower paintings opposite the toilet are grimy with dust. So is all the edging on the door panels, and cat hair has collected under the vanity. Lucy will have to chew out the cleaners again. She washes her hands and dries them on the Christmas towels threaded with gold. They’re stiff with newness. Lucy imagines Eva at the CVS, carefully picking them out.
“How are you today, Ma?” Lucy asks, pulling out a chair at the table.
“What?”
Lucy repeats her question louder.
“What do you think? I’m the same, just older.”
Lucy ignores the crotchety tone; Eva’s getting up towards eighty, so she’s allowed her moments. The big-boned, stolid woman of Lucy’s childhood has been worn down to a weaker, hunched version that can’t stand her own diminishment. The sight of her fills Lucy with worry: that she might have to move back here, in the end, because who can afford live-in care or a nursing home, and then how will she make Service calls all the way from Hull? She imagines the penalties piling on no matter her efforts to get to calls on time. Eva complaining she’s gone all hours of the night. The neighbors peeking out the curtains. In this doomed future, her quota climbs relentlessly until the Gate labels her unfit, brings her in, and puts her down, the ultimate penalty for evading duty.
“It’s not so bad,” Eva says. “My hip’s actually been all right for a few days. The doctor gave me some new pills but I threw them away. Who needs more pills! I even went up to the attic this week.”
“That’s not safe,” Lucy protests. “You could fall.”
“Look who’s talking! Now, tell me about you.”
“The agency’s getting me into a really swank law firm.”
“Oh, that’s good news!” Eva beams.
“Yeah, the job won’t start for a few weeks, though. They said it could become full time.”
Eva is delighted, and Lucy falters under all that happy pride. The part about getting the job is true, but so long as she’s in Service, she’ll never be able to take a full-time position. She shouldn’t have given Eva that hope. She t
urns away, unzips her knapsack to bring out the gifts. Eva cradles them in her hands as if they are rare and marvelous objects, then sets them on the kitchen table. It’s always a ceremony, the opening of presents, there’s no rushing. Eva makes her way over to the secretary desk in the corner. It’s piled up with mailings and junk. A cup sits precariously close to the refurbished laptop Lucy got her so she can play online Scrabble. She picks up a present wrapped in wide cloth ribbon, expertly looped into a pretty flower, and gestures Lucy should open first. Eva watches with excitement, leaning forward.
Please, not another self-help book, Lucy thinks.
The paper falls away to reveal an album. Lucy opens it. At first she can’t recognize anything. It’s like there’s a film over her vision, preventing her from identifying the curly-haired woman in the wool skirt suit and little tilted hat. The man in the loose undershirt grinning next to a bright blue boat, holding a paintbrush dripping white. The name half-finished, Lucy Belle, their darling baby just adopted, dream come true. The same boat that’s now dry-docked under a tarp, so wrecked it might as well be firewood, except that Eva can’t bring herself to have it hauled away.
“You’re always saying how you can’t remember,” Eva says. “So I pulled together pictures for you, you know, so you can have your own album. You’re a grown woman now, after all. You should have an album.”
She says it the way another mother might say, You should have a family.
Lucy’s eyes smart. She blinks hard, her hands flipping the pages. The pictures are all from the first years. Nothing from later, she realizes, when everything went to shit. None of the blood, the razors, the screaming and weeping, the ambulances and stitches and pills and shrinks. It’s never spoken of, not by any of them. Eva likes to dwell on the time when the life she’d fantasized about still lay ahead. The boat freshly painted, the sun shining, the baby draped in white at the christening, screaming, as well she should to let out that devil.
Lucy can hardly remember, and Eva doesn’t want to. What a pair.
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