This Vacant Paradise

by Victoria Patterson

  Esther took a drink of water, and an ice cube knocked against her front tooth. Water dribbled from the side of her mouth, and she wiped it away with her napkin.

  “I don’t want to be friends again,” Brenda explained. “I just want to get this forgiveness thing over with.”

  Restless and agitated, Esther noticed that her right hand was trembling slightly at the table and that the water had created dark splotches on her blouse. She smiled, at the edge of an abyss. If the world had its way, she thought, I would be cowering somewhere in a pit, accepting my fate.

  “Sean’s on medication finally,” Brenda said, reaching for the breadbasket. Her manner was detached, but then she looked fierce. “Why do I have to do all the work to get better, and all he has to do is take a pill?” She frowned. “I want a pill!” She stamped her fist on the table; the breadbasket and bread plates wobbled, the water glasses and martini glasses shook. “Give me a pill!”

  “I thought you were on medication,” Esther said.

  Brenda met the statement with a blank stare. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the Virgin Mary lately,” she said. “Have you ever really thought about it? Imagine getting pregnant when you’re still a virgin.” She broke open her roll, put a small piece in her mouth. “Poor Mary,” she said, barely audible, chewing. “When you think about it, really think about it, she got the short end of the stick.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Esther said.

  Brenda seemed to acknowledge her, as if she was tired. Her hands went to her stomach and she leaned her head back against the booth, in a philosophical posture. “You broke the unwritten rule.”

  Esther wanted to point out that the rule of never dating a friend’s ex (Charlie) might not apply to married people, but she kept her silence.

  Brenda sat up a little from the booth. “We’re meeting with Pastor Ken,” she said. “Sean won’t do the healing program, but he’s agreed to the meetings.”

  Esther was relieved, knowing that the rumors might stop. Sean hadn’t been concerned with her problems, only with how she could alleviate his suffering. The phone calls had stopped, the flowers had stopped—all around the same time as her arrest.

  Brenda seemed to be studying her. “I forgive you,” she said, in an ingratiating tone. “I know that you’ve been suffering,” she said, and her head went down. She shook it a little, as if in empathy. “Pastor Ken,” she said, directing her attention to Esther again, “once told me that we’re lucky to suffer, because suffering is a tremendous opportunity for spiritual growth. Jesus Christ suffered more than anyone, and he’s the son of God.” Her smile was serene. She looked beautiful. She was imperturbable, enigmatic, hidden.

  Bitterness rose in Esther’s throat, and she wanted badly to bestow her forgiveness as well, but she knew that it would only bring more trouble.

  I forgive you, she said to herself anyway, in a tight and mean voice. I forgive you, Brenda. And even though she didn’t say it out loud, she knew that it showed in her eyes.

  2

  ESTHER’S BREATHING WAS steady beside Charlie, her body turned from his, on her side. She smelled like honey, but underneath was a womanly smell—more like vinegar. The Valiums she’d taken earlier, in combination with the cocktails she’d no doubt consumed, had put her out quickly, into a heavy sleep. Whatever had happened at her dinner engagement had left her in a foul mood, and Charlie had been relieved when, rather than examining the source of her displeasure, she’d destroyed any possibility of discussion through medicinal measures.

  A hazy bar of light had escaped through a dent in the blinds, reflected from the neighbor’s motion-sensitive porch light. A little too sensitive, going on and off at random. Psychotic light. Once, he’d taken out the bulb. If it didn’t stop, he’d do it again, leave the bulb on his neighbor’s welcome mat.

  Not one for drug consumption himself but anticipating a long, sleepless night, Charlie had taken half a Valium, the only noticeable result being a sporadic cottony sensation in his toes and fingers, pulsing, recurring, like the stupid porch light. He lay still, held his breath. He put his fingers next to Esther’s thigh, felt the warmth of her, and let his breath come out. Then he held his hand above his face, studied its black silhouette. He waggled his fingers and, in frustration at his insomnia, flipped himself off.

  The problem: He was very alive. He didn’t want to blame Esther, but she did make him feel more alive, with her shoplifting arrest and her problems and her constant presence. So alive that death was right there, willing and waiting. Death could swallow him. Without his wanting them to, possibilities scurried through him, a cinema of morbid visuals: choking on a salad crouton; tripping on a curb, hitting his forehead on the street; fainting on the toilet, head slamming into the porcelain lip of his bathtub; a brain aneurysm, like a firework going off, and then black; falling asleep at the wheel, his Honda veering, veering, veering right, slamming into a truck; a drunk driver going the wrong way, a black dark night, headlights blinding him, and crash; diseased, right now, right this second, unaware—cancer cells streaming through his blood, or some other lurking silent ailment. No sense of security, feeling this alive. None.

  His body was heavy on the mattress, and he had begun to sweat. Moistness crept over his skin; he was aware of every sensation: adrenaline rippling in his veins, wrenching him.

  He turned so that he lay on his side, facing away from Esther. At least his neighbor’s motion-sensitive light had gone off.

  He’d experienced the beginnings of a panic attack before, but had always been able to climb his way back by imagining good things, just like his parents had taught him to do when he was a kid, interrupting their lives with his nightmares and fears. (“Just think about all that’s good in the world; concentrate on being happy.”)

  He used to think of his golden Labrador (Buttercup!), visualize her panting, squinty-eyed, happy dog face and dog breath. Or how his father used to tuck him into bed, making the blankets tight and firm over him. His dad used to say that the blankets were “an armor against bad things.”

  Charlie was the youngest of three—a surprising but welcome “whoops!” long after his parents had ceased thinking of themselves as reproductive agents. He had gotten the best of them, been indulged by their love and attention.

  His mom used to sing songs she’d created especially for him. His favorite, set to a perky tune, was an endless list of all the folks (and animals and deities) who loved him: “Momma loves Charlie; Daddy loves Charlie; Buttercup loves Charlie; Gangy loves Charlie; Pop Pop loves Charlie; Auntie loves Charlie . . . ,” going on and on, and usually ending with God and Jesus loving him, so that he’d feel himself surrounded and consumed (and slightly suffocated) by a safety net of love.

  He heard his mom’s voice singing. And he saw himself swinging his golf club, driving a ball into an endless blue sky. His legs bent, arms back, and the swing—phoosh—as graceful as flying, his club, arms, legs, torso as one.

  Over and over, like counting sheep.

  But these visualizations and good thoughts seemed immature and futile, and he searched for adult thoughts to comfort him.

  Immediately, he came up with women. All the women he knew. How much he appreciated them. He saw their skin, a blending of them. And then he focused on Brenda’s endless legs, the curve of her calves, her slim ankles. The small cleft—like a tiny thumbprint—in Jennifer’s upper lip, her bottom lip as plump and soft as a marshmallow. The smooth flesh of Esther’s neck, below her ear and at her throat. And an endless array of young, beautiful women, sitting at their desks, watching him in class: crossing their legs, leaning forward, smiling at him—adoring him.

  He traveled further back, all the way to high school, remembering Angie’s thin waist, her lanky frame. Nipples as small as quarters. She had been a cheerleader; he used to love to watch her high kicks for the thrill of her awkward clumsiness, in the midst of all her perfection.

  She’d been his first and he’d been hers, in her father’s Buick,
parked in a weedy shelter near the Back Bay, rain pattering on the roof and windows. They’d had trouble getting the car seat to lower, and then it had thumped down all at once, making them laugh.

  Angie was married now, three kids. The last time he had seen her was at Vons, navigating the cereal aisle, one kid sitting in the grocery cart, the other two holding on to it. Middle-aged and bravely unwilling to dye her dull gray hair, she’d smiled sullenly and he’d kissed her on the cheek chastely, remembering the way she used to ride him—how skilled they’d gotten at the gymnastics of sex in a Buick.

  He hoped that Angie would slide him back to sleep—not the old Angie, but the young one. His fingers grazed his penis, desiring the distraction of lust, but it was warm and soft, sluglike, unresponsive.

  And he slipped back to death. His nerves wouldn’t allow him to sink into safety. Panic whirled inside him. He listened to Esther’s even breathing, moist and oblivious. He thought of waking her, making her share his turmoil. But she would only add to it with her wide-eyed and troubled stare. She was wrapped in the sheets, peaceful.

  Horribly alive, Charlie tried to pray: Dear God, he thought. What was he doing? Composing a letter?

  Nothing more came to him. Because there was no God. There was only a void of death, an ending.

  As a child, he’d felt something: Our Father, who art in heaven, please, please. God bless Mommy and Daddy. Dismal, small life, no relief. What did it mean? His heart thudded—like it might come out of his chest. He was wet with sweat.

  Certain that he was having a heart attack, he leapt from the bed with a plaintive squeak of the mattress, took off his T-shirt and boxers, and lay naked on the cool wood floor.

  He saw a mouse under the bed, and his heart and head clenched at the same time, in a sort of panic-awe, until his eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw that it was his sock, scrunched in a ball.

  From his peak of fear, his life became as small as a speck, and as useless. Panic continued to course through him, moving freely, without hesitation, but along with it came shame. He’d been afraid of his own sock!

  He took long, deep breaths. His heart continued to thud, but he no longer thought it was a heart attack.

  Feeling that his thoughts had led him into this nonsense, he went tense with anger, snapped back a little, his stomach churning. His breathing slowed, his heart calmed.

  And he had inadvertently led himself to a solution, making the seeming futility of life bearable again: an exhausted reticence that, one way or another, he had no control over whether he lived or died, and he was too tired, too overwhelmed, to fight it.

  He didn’t care. But lurking closely was a cowardly awareness that he might not be a great man. That perhaps he’d been fooling himself with all his books and ideas and rebellions. Perhaps the key to life was to be comfortable—to seek comforts to ward off the void.

  An overwhelming desire for a glass of milk took hold of him. White, pure milk, gorgeous in a glass—a solid something.

  He got up from the floor, went to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. The light illuminated all the food products and beverages, humming with certainty, and as he reached for the carton of milk, appreciating the feel of cold air circulating around him, he made a decision: I need to protect myself. I cannot live like this.

  3

  THERE WAS A familiar weight in Eileen’s bladder; she refused to wear adult diapers, no matter what Rick said. I have to go to the bathroom, she thought. Then I’d like to smoke a cigarette, drink a Heineken.

  Her cane was beside her bed, leaned against her nightstand, and she paused and stared at her left foot. Gnarled toenails, veins popping at her ankle. One purplish vein looked like it might explode right out of her skin. There was a scab on her big toe because of Rick. She’d sat in her chair, watching the movie Red River, while Rick clipped her toenails; watched John Wayne tackle an Indian in the river, plunge a knife into him—once, twice, three times—the water splashing. And then Rick had cut too close and she’d yelped. “Sorry,” Rick had said, plucking tissue from a box, wrapping it around her big toe, blood soaking through. “The least of my problems,” she told him. And it had been worth it, the smile he gave her.

  All that effort, just to stand. “Up and at ’em,” Rick would say if he were here, holding on to her.

  Aaargh! Uuugh!

  “Here we go,” she heard Rick say. “You got it.”

  And then she was standing, both hands clutching her cane. Alone. No Rick.

  She waited for the dizziness to fade; then she waited for the swarm of flies to leave her head before she moved.

  She saw her image in her three sliding closet mirrors as she used the cane to get to her bathroom. Hello, asshole, she thought. Fuck you. Asshole, asshole, walking slowly, slowly, bare feet shuffling on carpet, back hunched in her flannel nightgown, vision blurred—the work of the sleeping pills and the Heinekens, mixed with Prozac. Dr. Franklin had called it a sexy antidepressant. Sexy. Sexy. Asshole. Asshole. And then she was out of sight of the mirrors.

  The doorway to the bathroom was open, the light kept on. She made a turn, a tug on her feet, a mix-up—why was the carpet swollen in one place and sunk in another? An instant, a flash—many falls before—an exiting, a letting go, a giving of time, space, person. An acceptance: She gasped and braced for impact.

  And her head hit the door frame, cane flung to the side. Her head—her neck—took the brunt. Other times, a leg, an arm, her torso, her ass, helping conclude, buffer, but this time—this one time—her head against a door frame.

  She was curled on the carpet, making sense of her surroundings, ashamed, in pain. She imagined stars swirling around her head. The skin was peeled back on her forehead, and when she touched two fingers against the warm place and drew them back, she saw that they were dark with blood. The alarm from her alert bracelet had sounded and the phone was ringing and she was lying in the doorway between her closet and the bathroom and the toilet was making a noise like a gurgling stream.

  “EILEEN, JESUS, EILEEN. Are you okay?”

  Even as her son-in-law lifted her, helped her to the bathroom, pulled her flannel nightgown up beyond her thighs, held her steady while her urine dribbled into the bowl of water, toilet making its gurgling noise, her mind would not quiet.

  Thief, she thought. Of course I’m not okay. Leave me alone.

  She was helped back to bed, Lottie on one side, George on the other; they tucked her in, covers at her chin, set her cane by her nightstand.

  “It looks like a scrape,” she heard Lottie say. “Like a scraped knee, but on her head. It doesn’t need stitches.”

  The silhouette of her daughter and son-in-law staring down at her—concern, pity—and she wanted them gone.

  She wanted to make sense in private.

  “How does your head feel?” Lottie asked.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, thinking, It hurts like hell, and she shut her eyes to them; she was already leaving them, dismissing them.

  Mr. Nobody. She hadn’t thought about that in a long time. When she’d sent her gay son to a psychologist, she’d sat in for five minutes of his first (and last) session—he must have been ten or eleven, right before puberty hit.

  “I wish I wasn’t a boy,” he’d said, “and I wish I wasn’t becoming a man.”

  “Is that so?” Stupid psychologist—long eyelashes, probably a gay. One gay helping another gay.

  “Yes. And I wouldn’t want to be a girl, either.” Panic had rolled through her, but looking back, she recognized that he was clever—her clever faggot son.

  “Then who or what would you like to be?”

  “I wouldn’t like to be anyone; I’d like to be Mr. Nobody.”

  “But if you were Mr. Nobody, you’d still be somebody.”

  “I wouldn’t like that; I’d like to be just nothing.”

  Mr. Nobody. Mr. Nobody. She had the sensation that she was like fog: here and not here at the same time. And then she was asleep.

  WHEN
SHE WOKE in the morning, she opened her mouth, but there was only a garbled sound. She leaned on her elbow, in such a position that she saw her expression in the dresser mirror: Her eyes were loose with fear, like in a horror movie before the character lets out a scream.

  She looked away.

  Her head floated and then crashed with pain; floated, crashed with pain. She made her way to the bathroom with her cane and then abandoned it near the toilet, descended to her hands and knees near the specks of blood on her white carpet, a streak of blood along the door frame. The urine ran down her thigh, and she tugged a towel from its rack and swiped herself.

  Crawling to her closet, she saw that Rick had laid out her sweat suit on the orange chair, but it was too tricky. A cream-colored sweat suit, two blue stripes down the sides; the zipper jacket had pockets and a hood. She’d changed into it at Christmas after she’d peed her pants. Her family had sat around the pinewood table, drinking wine, picking at their meals, and only Rick had noticed the dark stain down her pant leg.

  She opened the sliding, mirrored closet door, looked up at Gurney’s polo shirts in various hues, his selection of cashmere sweaters, a camel-hair jacket that he used to wear to funerals, and his Lands’ End slacks with their elastic waistbands. She’d kept his clothes all these years, even when Lottie had insisted that she throw them out. She pulled on one of the polo shirts, and the hangers rattled.

  Lying on the floor, she hooked her flannel nightgown over her head, right arm, then left, and pulled it off. There was a sparkling of light and a stabbing in her neck as it went over her head. She found underwear from her dirty-clothes hamper: left leg, then right. She jerked the peach-colored polo shirt on, light sparkling again, stabbing neck pain. The shirt was inside out, backward, the collar rubbing on her chin. It was small on her, tight, but there was no way to get it off now.

  She crawled to her chair. It took twenty-three minutes, inch by inch—she watched the minutes glowing on her electronic clock. She held on to the chair and rose, the room spun, and she vomited. It looked like melted chocolate, all down her chest. And then she realized that it was blood.