COMMUNE OF WOMEN

by SUZAN STILL

  Sophia’s been shoving pills down her, but – I’m sorry – Advil really doesn’t cut it when you’ve got a hole bored clear through you!

  Sophia says she shouldn’t eat anything. Who’s hungry? And she wouldn’t eat that junk, even if she were hungry – which she’s not.

  She feels hot and sweaty, and like something with big teeth is gnawing on her left shoulder while jabbing a redhot wire right through the bullet hole.

  Christ! She pays enough taxes. Wouldn’t you think the LAPD could get it together to come and rescue them? Sometime soon? Like, before she dies.

  X

  Oh! She must have been sleeping!

  Where is everybody? All the monitors are quiet.

  Oh, there they are.

  Still with that cluster of civilians who, for the most part, are still sleeping on the floor. A few are sitting up but with their knees drawn up and their arms around them like they need something to hang onto – or hide behind.

  The Brothers are there, too, either standing and talking, or lying down, asleep. But where are the sentries? Maybe it’s the changing of the guard, although she does not see anyone in the corridors right now. Are the Brothers becoming careless?

  With those ski masks on, it’s impossible to tell who is who. Could that be Jamal, over by the restroom door? She cannot tell.

  Ah! Now they are moving. Six of them go off into the corridor and she starts to see them flitting from screen to screen. They split up into pairs and she monitors their individual trajectories through the terminal.

  It is strange, seeing them moving past bodies that will never move again. One of them has stopped and is rooting through a pile of bodies with the barrel of his rifle. And...

  Oh! He just shot someone who must have made a fake death. The body arcs up from the pile and then slams down. The Brothers move on, but more furtively, looking front and back. Probably they are worried the shot will have alerted the police. But they do not have to worry. She can see the police – or FBI or NSA or whoever they all are. They are on the monitor farthest to the left. They are still out by the main doors, massed like the starting lineup of one of their American football games – one that never begins.

  She feels that she is playing an authentic role in this action, even though she is not out in the corridors killing people. With these monitors, she is the first to know what is happening outside – if only the Brothers were interested.

  She turns on the news and there is the same blonde newswoman again.

  In the camps in Palestine the women hold everything together, while the men sit around and roll cigarettes, smoke and talk politics. The women cook and tend the children and clean and sew and haul water and stand for hours in the aid lines.

  Not one of those worthy creatures looks like this one, with her plastered-in-place, artificially-colored hair and her artificial frown and, when she forgets that it is a serious report she is giving, her artificial smile.

  It makes X proud that she is a warrior; that she is not artificial. Her beliefs are part of her. So what if her hair is not golden? So what if she does not wear makeup? Jamal says she is beautiful. For whom else does she need to be beautiful? She does not need to flaunt herself over fifty states as this woman does.

  She is beautiful because her heart is pure.

  Heddi

  It’s hard to get enthusiastic about breakfast when the menu only consists of candy bars and chips. At least there’s still coffee. That rallied everyone at bit. When that runs out...

  This is going to be a really long day unless they can find a way to make it interesting. In the hallowed halls of her night’s rest and the pillared temples of her deepest thoughts, Heddi made a plan. Now, she’s feeling too chicken shit to propose it.

  This is the biggest challenge of her professional career; the ultimate group therapy session.

  Has she got the balls to try to pull this one off? Has she got the energy?

  Poor Betty is dissolving – and they haven’t even been here 24 hours yet. Ondine looks like she’s just gone around the world in a hot air balloon. Sophia is strong but Heddi can tell she’s exhausted from all her tending of Erika. And Erika looks like boiled Death under a ver-mouth demi-glaze.

  The only person who seems to be thriving is that old lizard, Pearl. Heddi supposes you couldn’t daunt her with a jack handle.

  If she were going to do something, this would be the moment. Their royal repast is over; morning ablutions are finished. Everyone’s kind of milling around or sitting there, dejected.

  This is it...show time!

  Heddi claps her hands. “Ladies, may I have your attention?”

  And then she makes her pitch. “Since we seem to have nothing but time on our hands, how about getting to know one another better? What if we each told a story about ourselves? Anything. Happy. Sad. Long. Short. Just something to help pass the time and to help us get acquainted.”

  They’re staring at her dully, like a pasture full of shocked cows. Finally, Betty asks, sniffing and wiping her nose on a paper napkin, “What do you mean?”

  Heddi starts over. “Well, I just thought it might pass the time if...” Etc., etc., etc.

  Ondine sighs and says wearily, “I can’t think of a thing. If you start, Heddi, maybe the rest of us will get inspired.”

  Oops! She hadn’t anticipated that.

  There’s a weak chorus of “Yeah” and “Good idea.”

  Tag! She’s it!

  She rummages around in her bleary mind for something that might catch their attention. The story she calls The Holly and Heddi Show might do it. It’s not exactly the stuff of Jungian analysis, but it has a quality of low comic relief that might be...well...a relief.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll tell you this crazy story about my step-daughter, Holly, and me. But you have to promise that if it’s boring you stiff, you’ll stop me.”

  “Ain’t lak the Chip ‘n Dale boys is about to make they appearance.” This from the Breugel, seated in her domain near the candy machine. She’s contentedly picking her teeth with the blade of a small pocketknife.

  “Okay then. Here goes...”

  Heddi tugs at the hem of her silk skirt, bringing it down over her kneecaps and squirms a bit, nestling her bottom deeper into the cushion of the orange Naugahyde chair. She clears her throat, glances to see if anyone is interested and finds, to her discomfort, every eye – even Erika’s feverish one – fastened on her.

  “Well, one day, Roscoe calls me, frantic,” she begins...

  “They’re gone!” he screams. Heddi holds the receiver out a little from her ear.

  “Who?” she asks.

  “Both of them!” he screams again.

  She’s never heard him like this before, although Holly – Hal’s daughter by his first wife, Sharon – has often told her, in afternoon saga-ettes while Roscoe is out in the orchards on the spray rig, contentedly dousing every living thing with toxins, that he frequently falls into these hysterical rages.

  If you have to choose between Holly or the soaps, Heddi always tells her best friend, Linda, choose Holly. No commercial interruptions and the quality of immediacy is compelling. Only Holly and Roscoe don’t dress as well as their TV counterparts, their at-home attire being selected from a wide range of sweat pants.

  So, there is a short pause while Roscoe collects his wits. She hears his heavy breathing – which may represent volcanic emotions or just the pumping up of his energies before a belch.

  “Both of whom?” she asks, with what she hopes sounds like patience.

  “Holly,” he gasps. “And the wolf.”

  “Together?!” Now, Heddi’s screaming. Holly’s not allowed to even touch the wolf. Why would Holly run off with the wolf? It makes so little sense that Heddi suddenly thinks, Oh my God! The wolf ate Holly!

  While she’s thinking this, Roscoe’s talking and she’s so addled that she doesn’t understand a word of it. She has to ask him to start again.

  “Holly ran away from home,”
he says, laboriously now, with exaggerated patience.

  “With Rosebud...?” Heddi asks, incredulously.

  “No! Dammit! No!”

  The explicative shocks her. Not that she’s a prude, but Roscoe is a devoted congregant of the Four-Square Revivalist Church of Born-Again Sinners and Ranting Righteous, down near the Crossroads. They don’t swear, dance, sing, laugh, have parties or, more than likely, don colored underwear. Their major entertainments appear to be family picnics in front of abortion clinics and the on-going repression of the congregation’s women and children.

  “Then where is Rosebud?” Heddi’s turn to speak slowly and patiently.

  “If I knew, would I be telling you she’s lost?” he fires back in exasperation.

  “I mean,” she says, gritting her teeth now, “did Holly, or did she not depart at the same time and in the same vehicle with the wolf?”

  “No.”

  She’s been hoping for years that Holly would divorce this idiot and now, one minute into this wacky conversation, she’s convinced all over again of the justice of this intrusion of opinion into Holly’s business.

  They sit in less than companionable silence in their respective homes, gaining strength for the next go-round.

  Heddi draws a careful breath. “So...” she says, “how did the wolf get loose?”

  Roscoe suddenly sounds forlorn. “I don’t know. I think maybe Holly opened the kennel before she left.”

  This, clearly, is the ultimate betrayal. Sleep with his best friend; withdraw his anally squirreled-away money from the bank and squander it on colored panties – you could work it out. But let the wolf loose, just when she was on the verge, through careful and constant pestering, of becoming the wildest, most savage watch animal in three counties: “Et tu, Holly?”

  “Well, Roscoe,” Heddi says with a sigh, “what can I do for you?” She knows Roscoe would never call her, except in the most abject desperation.

  Like all “femi-Nazis,” a cute term he picked up in his daily quasi-religious communion with Rush Limbaugh, Heddi falls well outside the pale of the prescribed associations of both Roscoe’s church and his politics. Translated, this means she has a college education and a career – a situation highly subversive in Roscoe’s view – and probably in Rush’s, as well, although he and Heddi not being personally acquainted, that’s only conjecture on her part.

  Roscoe thinks Heddi is a bad influence on Holly. She is, she suspects, unwittingly the cornerstone upon which this latest crisis in his life is founded.

  “I need you to come and stay at the house tonight,” he says without hesitation. This is the rehearsed part; he’s on terra firma, at last. “I can’t go looking for Holly and stay home and wait for Rosebud to come back, too. You’re the only other person Rosebud might come to. I need you to come here and watch for her. I’ve got some chicken defrosting in the fridge. If she comes around, lure her to you with a piece of chicken, then slip the leash around her neck. Think you could handle that?”

  This last question oozes with such condescension that Heddi almost says a knee-jerk, “No!” But she really needs to see the scene of carnage that’s been developing over at Holly’s house over the last couple of days. Holly’s described it in minute detail over the phone, but Heddi’s still having trouble grasping it. She thinks about her weekend plans to finally plant the narcissus bulbs in the camellia garden and kisses them goodbye.

  “Sure, Roscoe,” she hears herself saying. “I’ll pack an overnight bag. Give me about two hours and I’ll be there.”

  “What’s that, Ondine? Oh...Holly’s mom? No, Roscoe couldn’t call her. She’s dead. After Hal, she married an exec from Mutual of Omaha. A few years later, there was an odd accident... There were always questions, but no one ever could prove anything...but that’s another story. Anyway, no Sharon to call on, so...”

  It’s a pretty short drive from Malibu out to the hills of Ventura County. Hal bought Holly and Roscoe twenty acres of citrus trees for a wedding present. It’s a nice spread and in their defense, they keep it pristine – even if it is through constant dousing with the wonders of modern chemistry.

  When Heddi arrives, Roscoe meets her in the driveway. His face is normally red, but now it’s almost a burgundy hue. He doesn’t seem to realize that his hands are balled into fists, or that he’s punctuating each word as if he were jabbing at a speed bag.

  “Where are you going to start looking for Holly?” Heddi asks, keeping her distance. She has the sudden realization that Roscoe probably thinks she knows where Holly is and is hiding her from him. Actually, it surprises and worries Heddi a little that she doesn’t. Holly always checked out every move with her before. She looks at Roscoe and wonders if she’s in physical danger.

  “I thought you might be able to tell me that,” Roscoe snarls, squinting at her against the midday sun.

  “Roscoe,” Heddi says with all the sincerity she can muster, “I don’t know. I really don’t. Holly said on the phone yesterday that she was upset. That’s the last I’ve heard of it.” She looks him full in the eyes, earnestly. To her surprise, he believes her.

  “I’m going to see the pastor, first,” he says, mostly to himself. “Maybe he’ll have some clue. Now, you remember what I told you about Rosebud?” He doesn’t even stop to hear her response. “Don’t forget to set the alarm system. I left the code tacked above the key pad by the back door.”

  Roscoe is twitching, already turning away, agitated and ready to bolt for his vehicle.

  It seems like a perfect time to say something profound or soothing. Good luck won’t do it because Heddi’s not sure how she feels about him going after Holly. Most likely, Holly needs space, not rescue.

  Heddi’s tried very hard to like Roscoe over the years, love being clearly beyond her abilities in his regard. And to consider, under Dr. Copeland’s tutelage, all the reasons why she should forgive him his outrageous misogyny, bigotry and stinginess. She does believe that we are, to a large extent, products of our upbringing, which in Roscoe’s case may have been closer to downbringing. But she also believes that at some point in our lives, we have to take responsibility and rise above all that.

  In all fairness, that may be exactly what he intended to do by joining the Wayside Chapel of Congregated Patriarchs and Askew Values. And how he came, just these last few days, to do what he did, which in turn has driven Holly, more forcefully than usual it would seem, away.

  “Well, Roscoe,” Heddi says, “good luck.”

  He nods distractedly, already halfway into the cab of his half-ton Chevy truck. He spits gravel as he goes off down the driveway without a backward glance, the back of his head bar-coded by the gun rack and his Rush: Excellence in Broadcasting bumper sticker proudly dead-center of the tailgate.

  Holly’s taste was never Heddi’s. That she’s been married to Roscoe for more than fifteen years is proof enough of that. And for added emphasis, there’s her house. While Heddi’s personal motto could be Aesthetics Uberalis, Holly’s would be Utility First.

  Every square foot of floor, for example, is done in beige linoleum – even the living room. The only rug in the entire house is a little pink cuticle of fluff around the base of the toilet. And every square inch of this linoleum could serve as dinnerware, so spotless, so highly polished, so basically antiseptic does it appear to any scrutiny except electron microscopy.

  Holly even does her housekeeping while they’re talking on the phone. Heddi will hear odd grunts and scratchings.

  “What are you doing now?” she’ll ask.

  “I’m on my hands and knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the crack between the toilet and the linoleum with a toothbrush,” Holly will say.

  Heddi can see her there in her lime green sweat pants, her mop of frowsy red hair held out of her face by the headset that holds the phone so her hands are free to work, the antenna seeming to grow out of her left ear like a little antler.

  Meanwhile, Heddi reclines on her seafoam green leather couch, propped up
on the cushions she had made last year from mill ends of Scalamandré silk the color of a cold May ocean. The sun streams through French windows onto her antique Chinese rugs and the indigo glows in a kind of sexual incandescence from the stroking of the rays.

  “That’s great, Hol,” Heddi will say.

  So, now it’s a shock to walk into her living room and see what has happened. The floor is still spotless, stretching out before her like a highly waxed desert. The two recliners in turquoise vinyl are still at perfect 30-degree angles to the big-screen TV. The faux-bois Formica coffee table still holds this month’s issues of Field and Stream and Sunset at perfect right angles to the edges.

  It’s to the windows that Heddi’s eyes leap in astonishment. There, just as Holly had told her through her tears yesterday, is the proof that her marriage has just taken a perfect 180-degree turn for the worse.

  “You won’t believe it,” she gasps, snuffling. “He went to the pastor and the pastor agreed with him. They both think I’m possessed by an evil spirit...or maybe the Devil Himself. I’m not sure. So...so...” her voice fades into helpless weeping.

  “So...what, Holly?” Heddi asks, trying to sound gentle and to urge her on at the same time.

  Holly takes a deep breath. “So, the pastor blessed some oil for Roscoe. And then Roscoe came home and used the anointed oil to make crosses on every single window in the house!” Her voice rises to a pointy little squeak and then cascades into further weeping.

  There is a considerable silence, while Heddi’s mind adjusts to accommodate this new input.

  “Just how big are these crosses, Hol?” she finally asks, trying to encompass the magnitude of this event.

  “They cover the whole damn window!” Holly shrieks. “Top to bottom! Side to side! Every one of them. And I just washed them all yesterday!”

  There’s another long silence. “I see,” Heddi says, finally.

  But it is clear to her now that she did not see.

  “Well, Hol...maybe you can retaliate,” she says, trying to make light of it. Sometimes, she can humor Holly into laughter, right through her tears. “What would freak Roscoe out, as much as he’s freaked you out?”