by Averil Dean
I look back at the pages I wrote at Verity’s house. My wrists, now crossed over the battered notebook, are scraped and ringed with bruises. But that first night under Verity’s leaky roof, the empty pages gleamed white and full of promise, and I couldn’t fill them fast enough.
When I first arrived, I thought Carla was right to suggest the placement at Verity’s house. My new foster was a potter who had converted an old detached garage into a studio. Her worktops were old doors set on sawhorses and caked with clay and flecks of dried paint. She had experimented at first, she said, to find out what would sell. Now she had it narrowed down. She did coffee cups using molds made of Styrofoam cups, and she did bowls. Palm-sized bowls that she said could be used for anything: spoon rest in the kitchen, ashtray by the couch. If you cooked, they could hold spices or salt. You could use them for facial scrubs, or to soak your nails, or for condiments at dinner. The bowls were her best seller, she explained, though you had to have a spiel to make people see why they were so useful.
Every week Verity took her bowls and cups to the street market and set them up on a folding table under a tent. She took me with her—to learn the business, she said. She gave me a bag full of saltwater taffy and I walked around the market, handing out the pieces one by one. Each piece was wrapped in waxed paper printed with her logo: Verity’s Got Bowls. If you brought her the taffy wrapper, she’d give you a second bowl for half off.
“Now that you’re here,” Verity said, “we can expand. You could do bonsai, maybe. Or soaps, soaps are good sellers. Not jewelry, though, you can’t make a dime with jewelry. People help themselves to the five-finger discount.”
She ran happily through the possibilities: dog sweaters, purses, handmade stationery. Eventually she ran out of ideas, and decided to have me embellish her coffee cups with sayings she’d copied from a website: Shh, This Ain’t Coffee; How About a Nice Warm Cup of SHUT THE FUCK UP; Thanks a Latte; and my favorite charmer, Coffee Makes You Poop. She gave me some stencils and a set of brushes and told me to go to town.
The profits would go to the household, for expenses.
I joined in with a spirit of bemusement. It was not loneliness that led Verity to the foster kids, as Michael had said; Verity was an entrepreneur, she was in it for the free labor. And I was perfect for that. I fit right into the assembly line and didn’t complain. There was nothing to complain about, anyway. I admired her resourcefulness. I liked the way the paint felt under the brush as it went on, and the magical alchemy of firing the pieces to set the glaze, the heat of the kiln. It was quiet work, like writing. It soothed me.
Of course she was crazy. I found that out the very first week. But it was the kind of crazy I thought I could handle.
Verity was a drunk. Not a drinker, not an alcoholic. She was big-time.
She’d start in the afternoon, when she got home from her shift at the supermarket where she worked as a checker. Always it was red wine, which as she pointed out more than once was actually good for your heart. She had a special glass she carried around, with a short, thick stem around which she’d thread her fingers to cup the wine in her palm. The glass made her gestures more theatrical, more expansive, the wine sloshing around inside and sometimes over the edge, leaving small pink puddles on the countertops and floor, lines of sticky maroon down the back of the couch. She would set the glass on the table without removing her hand, as if she thought someone was going to take it away.
Often she had friends over in the evening, bearded men with thin ponytails and flannel shirts who laughed and slapped her butt and knew she was good company until around midnight, when the alcohol hit a critical mass. In the early hours she was raunchy and fun, her T-shirts cut in wide, ragged circles around the neck and tied with a rubber band at the waist, long horsey teeth stained with wine. Sometimes I could hear the men in her bedroom, the headboard rapping like knuckles on the wall, and Verity’s voice rising in a sexual delirium: Yes, yes, oh, honey! Yes!
On the nights she was alone, she usually slept in the living room, exhausted from screaming at the politicians on TV or repeating loud amens and hallelujahs along with the kind of congregants who would shiver and roll their eyes in a religious fervor before falling out in a trance at the miracle of forgiveness. Also, she shopped. She knew all the TV salespeople by name and had strong opinions about which of them could be trusted: “Lisa’s on tonight, she’s doing a cooking show with Cody, and I really do need a new frying pan.” Lisa and the gang sold her on dolls and gadgets and spandex underwear, on Popsicle molds, egg slicers, pinking shears and jewelry, producing a steady stream of UPS boxes and an ongoing flirtation with the delivery man. Verity never remembered what she’d ordered, so every box was a surprise. She said it was like having Christmas every day.
Definitely, she was crazy. But we all have our thing.
I tried to stay out of the way. At night, I would bundle up in layers of socks and sweaters, and go down to the garage to paint that day’s collection of bowls, or experiment with new glazes on the ceramic coffee cups. A space heater buzzed at my feet, and a bare bulb swung overhead, pushing the shadows around the room like dancers. The garage was quiet and damp and uncomfortable, but the silence drew me almost every night.
Sometimes it drew Michael, too.
He was teaching me to play backgammon. He had a beautiful set with red and white checkers made of polished stone that he would rub with his thumb as he surveyed the board. He knew all the variations from Russian backgammon to acey-deucey; he said he’d learned the game at the Center when he was fifteen and used to play with his friends in the yard, or even by himself if no one else was interested.
I liked the patience of backgammon, the interplay of skill and chance. We played most nights when Verity was asleep on the couch or watching the shopping network for late-night deals. Michael kept a tin of weed in the shed, and we would pass the pipe back and forth as we tried to psych each other out, filling the cold room with skunky smoke that mixed with the steam from our breath, mingled over the board, then settled like a cloud bank at the ceiling.
It was easier to beat him when he first taught me the game. Later, as I learned the ropes, I found it almost impossible.
“You were letting me win,” I said.
He grinned. “You wouldn’t have wanted to play if I beat you every time while you were learning.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re hooked. You’ll keep playing whether you win or not.”
“You’re like a drug dealer. ‘First time’s free...’”
“Very perceptive, young lady.”
I looked up. “Really? You’re a drug dealer? What do you sell?”
“Just weed, mostly. Used to push some coke, but that was a pain in the ass. People would buy a little, go away, come back again in the middle of the night for more. And more, and more. A pothead is just gonna take his bag of weed and leave you in peace.”
“Huh. Is this a big deal?”
“Does it look like I’m a big deal? It’s a sideline when I have extra.” He moved a checker, lining them up to beat me again. “When I get my own place, I’m going into business for myself. A buddy of mine said he’d get me some seeds and help me set up a grow house. Really, you just need a room and some lamps to start with, but once the crops are rolling it’d be easy enough to expand. Just takes time.”
“And money.”
“Yeah, money. But not as much as you’d think.”
He went on to describe his plans. He had the whole thing all worked out, with prices and timelines, details about licensing and semilegal sales channels he’d already worked out. It surprised me that he had such a well-thought-out agenda. Michael had always seemed a little lazy to me, unambitious. But as he talked, I began to realize how much work he actually did. Often it was Michael who drove me around Vashon, who did the grocery shopping or the laundry, who collected the hens
’ eggs and made dinner for all of us. He was so quiet and easygoing that I had never given him credit for his initiative.
I imagined him prosperous, bright and warm in his greenhouse, with all his plants around him.
“This probably sounds like a pipe dream,” he said, grinning at the weed in his hand. “But I’m really going to do it.”
“I know you are.”
* * *
I have a picture of Michael in my box at home. Just a snapshot I took one night when we went out for pizza. He’s got a slice in his hand, such an ordinary thing. But sometimes I look at the picture and search his face for some hint of knowledge—an orb of light floating near his head, some haunting double image or regret in his eyes.
Sometimes I even think I see it.
* * *
At dawn I’m still awake, curled in a chair by the window of the white motel, the notebook Michael gave me lying open on the table. I thumb through the pages, reading bits of work I did years ago at that rickety desk in Verity’s house. Much of it is unfamiliar to me. Writing exercises, poems, assorted fragments from whatever I was working on at the time, none of which went further than the notebook in my hands. The fact that the pages are written in my handwriting unnerves me, as though my past self is trying to send a message through the void.
Lonesome is a quiet man
who leads you from the crowd, whispers in your ear
that you are not okay.
Lonesome is an open sky: a far-off birdcall to a fallen mate, repeating; a curled-up
chick inside an egg, freezing.
It’s the scent of a stranger’s house, the lure of the unknown, the deep, damp base note of
skin and sweat and semen.
This is where his spirit lives, here
amongst the dying plants, whose leaves
lay crisp and fragile on the floor,
where weed is left in a kitchen drawer, and thick shoes sit
beside the mat, encased in mud that breaks like glass and crumbles by the door.
Here is his mind,
exposed: in the bills, stacked or scattered,
the carpet, clean or torn; in the leftovers, the aftershave, the kitchen knives, the porn.
Within these walls there lives a spirit.
Just inside the door.
I look over at the bed and see Jack is awake, watching me. His hair is rumpled and his wide shoulders are curled lazily forward. One long arm is stretched across my empty side of the bed, palm down. He looks like a big exotic cat, tangled in the sheets.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he says, gruff with sleep.
“Put your glasses on.”
“What are you writing?”
“Just something I started a long time ago from a prompt.”
“What’s the prompt?”
“Lonesome is. Dot dot dot.”
“Interesting. Can I read it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Jack’s opinion matters to me; I won’t be able to dismiss what he says.
“It makes me uncomfortable. All my subliminal crap is still in there.”
“I’d have thought that was a good thing.”
“Not for me, I’m not that brave.”
He beckons me, holding the blankets up and patting the mattress beside him. I set my pen aside and crawl in next to him, let him spoon his warm body around mine.
“Why would you need to be brave?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. I’m asking you.”
“The more people know about you, the more powerful they become. You’ve got to hand that shit out in small doses.”
“You think me asking to see your work is a power trip?”
“I think we both understand your desire for leverage.”
He kisses my ear and the back of my neck.
“I don’t want leverage,” he says.
“No? What do you want?”
His voice is a murmur in the half-light.
“I want to give you what you need, and take what I need. I think they’re the same thing. Am I wrong?”
I hesitate. We never discuss the things we do, and Jack never asks permission. He just knows. Somehow, he always knows. His knowledge of my body is almost supernatural, so finely tuned that he can bring me to the edge of climax and spin me there like a yo-yo on the end of a string, until I am wired and slick and pleading for release.
I’m not sure that’s what he means, but the answer is the same in any case.
“No,” I say. “You’re not wrong.”
He lifts the hair from my neck and nuzzles in, wraps his arm around me. For a few minutes we are quiet, and I wonder whether he’s gone back to sleep. I close my eyes and begin to drift.
“Why don’t you ever sleep at night?” he says softly.
Silence creeps into the room.
“Is it just since your mother died?”
“Yes.”
“Since you went into foster homes.” His voice rumbles behind me like distant thunder, a vibration at the back of my neck.
I don’t open my eyes. The sun filters through a chink in the curtains, pinkening my eyelids. His arm is solid and heavy around my waist, his palm cupping my breast.
“Yes.”
“I see,” he says.
What he sees, he doesn’t say, and for that I’m grateful. We lie together quietly and after a few minutes Jack falls back to sleep.
I wish it were as easy for me.
Even with my eyes closed, I feel the presence of the door across the room.
I hear the long-ago creak of another door, one that always opened—even when I’d locked it, even when I’d jammed it with a chair, with a desk, finally with my pink lacquered dresser, which I’d dragged across the room.
Even when I’d sealed it up with an entire roll of packing tape.
Even when I gave up on the bed altogether and slept behind the clothes in my closet.
The door always opened.
Eventually I stopped trying.
Don’t hide from me, Alice, you know I’d never hurt you. I only want to make you feel good.
The horror was that it did feel good. Big hands, strange acrid male smells. Huge invasions that stretched and burned but also, shamefully, brought with the dread an inexplicable excitement, a helpless itching pulse between my legs that utterly devastated me.
You like it, honey, doesn’t it feel so good....
I prayed that it would not. When the terrible thrill rose in me, I tried to absolve myself with nicks and cigarette burns as if a heady dose of suffering would mitigate that awful moment of acceptance, that horrifying onslaught when orgasm rushed through me like a demon and left in its wake a craving for sensation I couldn’t bear to feel. I tried so hard to carve it out of me that the pain and pleasure and shame and fear became inextricably linked in the process, and any one of those sensations could trigger any other.
Later I would fuck other men. Terrifying men who recognized the addict in me, whose perversions mirrored my own. One of them dug a copy of Lolita out of his glove box and sent me away with it. I was flattered at first—Lolita was my age, the source of an older lover’s obsession—but after reading the book I realized he’d meant to be ironic. Humbert’s nymphet inspired love. I inspired at most a fascinated infatuation. With my black hair and clothes, flat chest and filthy mouth, I was a sinner’s nightmare. Men fucked me quickly, looking over their shoulders. They fucked me and skulked away.
It seemed I was not the only one trapped in this nightmare; we were all afflicted. I began to feel a sort of nauseated tenderness about the whole business, which I brought back into line with firm swipes of the razor.
Too firm, on more than one occasion.<
br />
In the aftermath, as I walked the halls of the PNC with the night nurses and cleaning crew, past doors with names and numbers on the side, I found myself sometimes opening Molly’s door, slipping between the cool sheets as she had done four years earlier when my mother died.
“We are so fucked up,” she would say, but we’d twine together for comfort and I’d stroke her milk-white hair, and sometimes I’d stir at daylight and realize I had slept.
Jack’s breath is heavy now and his hand is warm around my breast.
Doesn’t it feel good, honey, doesn’t it feel so nice....
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I wake up one afternoon not feeling right. My body is heavy, and there is an unlubricated stiffness in my joints that makes even the smallest movement seem like an enormous effort. I get up and sit with my pages, but the words have become hieroglyphics, devoid of meaning, a collection of sharp and painful letters on a glaring white page. It’s three o’clock. Jack is supposed to come over after work; we have plans to check out the new Italian restaurant up-island and maybe go for a drive along the coast. But after a long hot shower and a mouthful of acrid coffee, I decide I’m coming down with something. I call him, leave a voice mail and crawl back into bed, shivering uncontrollably though my face and chest are prickly hot.
I wake again to the sensation of the bed sinking. I am startled, rolling forward, but my eyelids are heavy and almost impossible to open. Through the curtain of my eyelashes I see Jack sitting beside me. His hand is wide and cool on my forehead.
“I think I’m sick,” I tell him as if imparting valuable information.
“I think so, too. You need to see a doctor.”
I shake my head, and the room seems to tilt as though I’m going to slide out of the bed. I clutch at the sheets and close my eyes, muttering that he should go home and let me sleep it off. But he lifts me, blankets and all, from the bed, carries me through the front door and lays me across the backseat of his truck. The engine starts up and I fall asleep again, shuddering with cold, listening to the sound of the tires on the wet pavement.