The Pisces

by Melissa Broder

“Yes, for both of us,” I said. “You look like you again. You look like you’re back.”

  “Oh I’m back, baby.”

  “I really thought for a minute there that you had become sane.”

  “Never.” She laughed. “I will never give up on suicide again. They thought the meds were making me too Valley of the Dolls, I guess, so they changed them. Well, that didn’t work and I had another attempt. I tried to hang myself off the bathroom door handle with a four-hundred-dollar cardigan from CP Shades. They had to break in the door and found me naked on the floor of the bathroom, not dead yet, but passed out. It was brilliant.”

  I laughed with her, but also I shivered. This was what happened to girls like us. We were wired to die.

  “Are you still giving up men?” I asked.

  “Christ no! Do you want to know the best part of all this? David found out about this last attempt. He’s been writing me letters compulsively. Two of them a day, pages and pages. He doesn’t even mail them; he comes here and drops them off for me. It’s like the more suicidal I am, the more he wants me. When I get out we are going to try and live together. Arnold is going to get full custody of the kids in the divorce and I can’t be arsed to give a fuck. So I’m too crazy to be a mother? Well then, that’s fine. I didn’t make myself this way. It is what it is.”

  “You sound…good,” I said.

  “I’m great,” she said, tugging at her hospital gown. “And what about you?”

  “I’m a mess. I think I may have poisoned my sister’s dog.”

  “Oh my God.” She giggled. “You did what?”

  “It’s not funny. He’s dead.”

  “That beast you brought to my house? You poisoned him? With what, bad Alpo?”

  “No. Tranquilizers.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “A junkie dog. Jesus, who would have thought? You know, I could tell he had a drug problem. He tried to steal my TV.” She snorted.

  Now it wasn’t comforting at all to have the old Claire back. Why was she laughing? She was like one of those young boys who shoots animals with a BB gun and then has no remorse. Except I was the one who had killed Dominic. I wondered if we were both inherently evil people. Bad women. Were we? Evil people rarely know they’re evil. Someone had told me that once. What if we were put on the planet to fill some purpose but that purpose was bad? Maybe this was why we had to die.

  “He was such a sweet dog,” I said. “It’s horrible. My sister is going to be destroyed. I don’t think she will ever forgive me.”

  “Listen,” she said, “it’s not your fault he couldn’t handle his shit. Never trust an addict, Lucy, not even a dog.”

  “Stop it. I feel irredeemably awful.”

  “Well, you’re not.”

  “Do you ever feel that way? Like you’re the worst one and there is no hope for you?”

  “Darling, I know I’m the worst one,” she said. “And of course there’s no hope.”

  I began to cry.

  “Oh, love, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m guessing it wasn’t intentional.”

  “No, of course it wasn’t intentional. And he had diabetes. So maybe it was that.”

  “It probably was.”

  “I really fucked up this time.”

  “Listen,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Your sister can find another dog. But there’s only one Lucy.”

  I wanted to believe her. I kept trying to wriggle out of the reality of the situation, find some way to prove to myself that I wasn’t a dog killer. But no matter how I looked at it I was a murderer, third degree at the very least. I wanted to see myself the way Claire saw me. She was so nonjudgmental. But she only withheld her judgment of me so she didn’t have to judge herself. She couldn’t have me be a villain, or she would be one too.

  “What about your swimmer?” asked Claire. “Did he ever come back?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And?”

  “We’re going to run away together.”

  “To the desert?”

  “No,” I said. “To the depths of the ocean.”

  “Dark,” she said. “Like a suicide pact. So romantic, I love it.”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Sort of.”

  55.

  Annika and Steve immediately got on a plane and headed home. I was terrified for their return. I sat on the white sofa, thinking of all that had gone on there, and dug my fingernails into my gums. When they bled a little, I imagined wiping the blood under the sofa cushions where my period bloodstains were. Now I understood the desire Claire had to hurt herself. I couldn’t drink anything or take a pill, because I needed to be clearheaded for their arrival. But the last thing I wanted was to be lucid. I needed an out, something to release me from the feelings of shame. So I took it out on my gums.

  When they pulled up in the driveway, Annika refused to get out of the taxi and only Steve came in. He had never liked me to begin with, but now he clearly hated me. I thought of his trench coat, covered in Garrett’s semen, in a dumpster somewhere. He issued a brusque hello and went into the pantry, where Dominic was still covered with the blanket.

  “Goddammit,” he said. He sounded angry.

  Then he went back outside. I crept over to the window and saw him talking softly to Annika, coaxing her out of the cab. But she refused to come. I heard her crying and saying, “No, no, no.”

  She looked up and our eyes met through the glass. She opened the cab door and came rushing into the house. I thought that she might yell at me, but she took me in her arms and hugged me. I sort of stood there as she cried on my shoulder, not knowing what to do.

  “I loved him so much, Lucy,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “He was the most special baby in the whole world. I just, I never loved anything like I loved him.”

  “Let’s sit down,” I said.

  We sat down at the kitchen table. She was tan from the Roman sun and smelled like orange blossoms. Her ass had gotten bigger under her yoga pants and she wore a blousy shirt to cover it. I sat with my hands under me, clenched in fists, and squeezed them hard every time she spoke.

  “What am I going to do now? I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?”

  “Do you want me to go out and get you something to eat?” I asked.

  “Eat?” she looked up at me. “Oh no, I can’t eat.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wanted so many more years with him. There was so much life we had left together. I mean, I would have eventually outlived him. But not for so many more years. He wasn’t even old. And to me he was still a puppy. He will always be my puppy.”

  “Annika, I’m so sorry,” I said.

  But she didn’t blame me. She didn’t say, “How could you have let this happen?” Instead she stared blankly, her full lips slightly parted, as though she too now knew the nothingness. Maybe it was the first time she could see it. Even when we lost our father she hadn’t had this look. This was the face of a mother who had lost her child. It made me think about my mother. I wondered, if my mother hadn’t died—if it had been me who died instead and my mother had lived—was this what she would have looked like?

  Steve came over and put his hands on her shoulders. He said that they were going to have Dominic cremated, because California law would not allow them to bury a body so close to the beach. The vet tech would come pick him up in the morning. With that Annika began to sob. She went inside the pantry. I followed her to the door and saw her lie down on the floor with her dead dog, her hair fanned out beside him. He was hers, the creature she loved most, and I had taken him from her. I could smell him from the doorway. Neither Annika nor Steve said anything about the smell, but the scent of death was wafting up from his body and through the glass house.

  * * *

 
—

  After Steve had gone to bed and Annika fell asleep on the floor of the pantry, I crept out to the rocks in the dark to see Theo. He hadn’t come out of the water and was resting his arms on one of the rocks, bobbing in the waves.

  “You’re late,” he said, looking up at me. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. But I’ll always come. And tomorrow, the water.”

  “I’m glad,” he said without smiling.

  I took his hand to reassure him. His fingers were chilly. I thought about how cold and lifeless Dominic’s body was, how death was not the warm bath I had imagined. The water was going to be freezing. I was scared of it, scared of feeling the freeze rush into me, or maybe scared of the warmth rushing out of me. I had never thought of that warmth as something I would miss. And Theo was being so distant from me now too, sulking. I felt lonely.

  “I wonder what the experience will be like, how my life will—manifest under there. Also, how I will stay under the waves and not just bob to the surface.”

  I was hunting for a potential answer.

  “You have to trust me,” he said. “It’s going to be beautiful. I will help you go. You will have chosen, but I will assist you. Then we will have a very long time together.”

  “And we’ll still make love under there?”

  “Of course we will,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m just a little scared.”

  “Here, let me come up and join you.”

  With that he pulled himself out of the water and took a seat next to me.

  “I love you,” he said, cupping my face with his cold, wet hand. He kissed me softly on the cheek in a way that made me feel like a sweet child, no longer horrible. I felt that I was again back in the womb he and I shared, an innocent. Was this all it took to be cleansed: one beautiful person to treat you kindly and gently, and you were exonerated? How could Dominic’s death and Theo’s love both be true at the same time? How could I have killed Dominic and still be worthy of such tender affection? I was either awful or I wasn’t. Which one was it? I didn’t think I could be both.

  His kisses moved from my cheek to my nose to my lips. I gently kissed and licked his beautiful mouth, one lip and then the other. He lay back on the rocks and pulled me on top of him. My thighs sandwiched his pelvis. As we kissed more, I felt him get hard under his cloth. I was excited to still have that remaining life force in me, the kind that could make his cock come alive. I began rubbing my body against him, moving up and down on his thigh and then on his pelvis. Then I moved my pussy back and forth on the length of his cock, over the cloth, as though I were anointing him. I rubbed faster and faster as we stayed in an embrace, our mouths locked on each other. A warmth spread from my pussy up through my stomach and into my heart. It radiated out through the top of my head. Everything was suddenly warm, the cold completely eliminated.

  Was this what the eve of one’s wedding was like? I felt that we were being held on the rock by Aphrodite herself. Tomorrow she would drop me into the water, but maybe the water was only her lap. What if I would only be dropping to a warmer, deeper embrace?

  I moved against him again and again. As I moved, I imagined us beside a giant underwater sand castle. The walls of the castle were made of coral and sea crystals of all colors, textures, and sizes: peach, silver, pastel mint, cyan pieces embedded in translucent white chunks, big slabs made of thousands of tiny sparkling dark-green crystals, rusted gold rocks, transparent indigo pyramids, rosy sea glass, neon-orange honeycombs of coral. The castle had tall turrets and spires, and Theo and I were beside it, preparing to enter.

  But then I began to come and, as I did, the castle melted slowly to the ground. He and I clung together as the castle vanished, eclipsed by a wave of pleasure, disappearing from my inner vision. I didn’t stop moving until I rode over the peak of that orgasm. If anyone had looked at the rocks they would have seen a woman, thirty-eight years old, hopefully a little younger-looking, writhing against what looked like a large fish. Or maybe they would have seen her just riding the air. I wasn’t sure which was crazier.

  * * *

  —

  When I got back to the house Steve was awake at the kitchen table, eating cereal, wearing a pair of blue striped pajamas, hairs sticking out from his balding head. I was drenched with sea spray and grime. He looked at me sternly.

  “Late-night swim?” he asked.

  “Just a beach walk,” I said.

  “I don’t know what went on while we were gone,” he said calmly. “But why is it that every time you come here, disaster strikes?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m leaving tomorrow night,” I said.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not telling you to leave. I only mean—your sister just wants to be good to you. She only wants you to be happy.”

  “I know.”

  “But you can’t not make a mess.”

  “I guess I can’t.”

  “If it were up to me, we would have hired a dog sitter. But Annika wanted to give you the time here. You know she’d do anything for you.”

  “Would she?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he said, as though it were crazy that I didn’t know. But the truth was, I didn’t.

  “Whose blood is that? What happened?” he asked, pointing to the sofa. He had turned over the pillows.

  “It’s—”

  But just as I was about to answer, he cut me off.

  “No, you know what? I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But it’s my blood. There was no one else here but me.”

  56.

  The following evening I packed my suitcase. I thought about my little sweaters and dresses floating in the water as I packed up each one. It made me feel sad. I kept thinking the words belonging and my belongings. Dominic was no longer in the pantry. I wasn’t sure who had come and taken him away. It smelled heavily of ammonia, but I swore I could still smell death.

  Annika had gone back inside the pantry. She was just sitting there on the floor with Dominic’s bowl and a squeaky toy in the shape of a duck.

  She looked up at me.

  “This was his favorite toy,” she said, giving it a squeeze. “Did you know that? Did I tell you that?”

  “Yes. We played with it together a lot,” I lied.

  “Good.” She smiled. “I wanted him to have the most beautiful life.”

  “Annika, I am so sorry. I want you to know I’m grateful to you.”

  “I knew I should have come home. I should have listened to my intuition. But you told me you could handle it. You said that nothing bad was going to happen to him, that he would be fine.”

  “I know. If there is some way I can make this up to you—”

  “No, it isn’t your fault,” she said. “It’s my fault.”

  “You couldn’t have known. Even the vet didn’t know how sick he was exactly.”

  “I will never forgive myself,” she said. “Never.”

  “Annika,” I said.

  There was nothing else left to say. I held out my hand to help her up. She took it, but instead of standing up, she brought me down to the floor to sit with her. With our backs pressed against the wall I held her hand with both of my hands. I softly stroked her skin, so that it was warmed. I felt nervous doing this, as though I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate. Why wouldn’t it be appropriate? We were sisters, after all. It was such a small act, but it felt so intimate. It was the gentleness and surety of the way I touched her hand that made me feel strange, as though I didn’t know I knew how to do this. I wondered who or what inside me was doing it. It was motherly, almost.

  “Do you want me to play with your hair?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I put my knees up so she could lean against th
em. Then I rubbed the back of her neck and the scalp area behind her ears.

  “Mmmm, that feels nice,” she said.

  “Lie back,” I said, folding my legs into a cross-legged position. She put her head in my lap and closed her eyes. I traced each of her eyelids with my pointer fingers. I softly rubbed her eyebrows and between them, moving in circles up to her forehead and slowly tickling her scalp. I became less aware of time passing. I seemed to drift in and out of myself for a little while, as though the act of giving this sweet nurture somehow relieved me of having to be a person—or made being a person bearable. But every time I’d almost let go of myself completely, disappear into the experience, I remembered that I had somewhere else I was supposed to be. I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to forget all about my plan. But I felt that I had to go through with it, as though some other part of me that was not my head or my heart—more like an internal magnet—was grabbing me and pulling me toward another magnet.

  “I’m going to have to go,” I said to her, giving her one final pat on the head.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, looking up at me.

  “The airport,” I said. “My cab will be here in a moment or two.”

  “The airport?”

  “Yes, I booked my ticket.”

  “Oh no, don’t go,” she said.

  “I felt like I should leave you guys alone.”

  “No, I don’t want that!” she said. “Please stay. Steve is at work all day and it’s going to be so lonely without Dominic. I’m scared to be alone.”

  “I can’t,” I said, standing up. “I have to get back to the university.”

  “But I need you,” she said.

  Suddenly I wanted to stay. For maybe the first time in my life, I didn’t want to abandon an uncomfortable feeling. I wanted to give her motherly love in the way she had tried to give me motherly love. Hers had always been from a distance, but it was there. And I wanted to give her motherly love in the way that she couldn’t give me motherly love: by staying, even when it was uncomfortable. Wasn’t it time that I showed up for her?