‘For what?’
‘To make peace with my past. You can’t run forever.’
What a crock. ‘You were lonely and happened to notice you’d totally fucked up your life. You’re hoping I’ll make it better for you.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair.’
‘Did you give me a name?’
‘Of course. Cecily.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘What’s wrong with Cecily?’
‘Did you stash me in a handbag?’
‘I don’t think you should make light of this. It wasn’t easy for me.’
‘Me neither.’
Stalemate. She nibbles on one of her bits of bread.
‘Cecily Charity,’ she adds.
Cecily Charity Ramsbottom. Now there’s a reason not to live. I wolf down tomato slices, waiting for her to weep and plead for forgiveness. She starts shredding one of the napkins.
‘Why don’t you have any photos of anybody?’ I ask.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Your parents or anybody.’
‘Oh. I’ve never been close to my parents and my sister is … my sister is mentally ill.’
‘She’s locked up?’
‘They don’t lock them up anymore. I’m not sure where she is.’
‘Homeless.’
‘That’s a possibility.’
I start buttering more bread, might as well stuff myself before she discovers I’m not the long-lost daughter of her dreams and boots me out. ‘So,’ I say, ‘you go spying on the daughter you ditched, but you don’t give a buzzard’s ass about your sister who’s probably licking cat food out of a can somewhere. Is it genetic?’
‘What?’
‘Her condition.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know much.’ I talk with my mouth full, spraying bits of bread on the glass-topped table. ‘What about my father?’
‘What about him?’
‘Who is he?’
She looks at me as though I’m speaking Chinese. ‘You know who your father is.’
‘I do?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Is this a trick question?’
‘No, it’s just…I thought you knew. I thought he’d told you. He said he would.’
‘Gee, I guess he didn’t.’
‘I see. Well, I really don’t know if it’s my place to tell you.’
‘Tell me or I’ll fucking rip your face off.’
She looks at me the way she probably looked at me when I was incessantly crying.
‘Tell me,’ I repeat.
‘Damian is your father. Your adoptive mother doesn’t know. He didn’t want to hurt her.’
Suddenly I’m down the mine with Tilly, choking on coal dust, covered in soot.
‘I met him while he was renovating our offices,’ she explains. ‘He didn’t tell me he was married.’
He’s never worn a ring, says he isn’t the ring type.
‘We were careless,’ Constance says, going at her napkin again. ‘And anyway, our affair took place in … in awkward circumstances.’
‘Behind dumpsters,’ I suggest, ‘in storage rooms, on top of the drywall. He’s been at it for years.’
‘Yes, well, I certainly had the impression he’d had some experience.’
‘Which is what attracted you to him. A little walk on the wild side after all that shit-eating and paper shuffling.’
‘He seemed like a good man. I think he is a good man. I mean, he arranged the adoption, was very understanding. I really thought it was for the best.’
‘Did you ever meet Zippy?’
‘Who?’
‘His wife. My mama.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘We thought it would complicate things. Damian wanted to keep it simple.’
‘So you handed your baby over to a complete stranger?’
‘That’s not unusual with adoption.’
‘She was fucking psychotic,’ I say. ‘A total nutcase. She tried to kill me.’
‘He told me she fell in love with you on sight.’
‘And you didn’t ask questions. How’d the thesis go?’
‘Very well. I worked night and day on it for months.’
‘Kept you up like an incessantly crying baby.’
She goes back to tugging on her chain, pulling it from side to side, sawing at her neck.
‘I have to sleep now,’ I say. ‘Is there a spare room?’
I follow her up narrow stairs past more aborted art. I lie rigid on a narrow bed. I don’t even like this woman.
Who needs a past anyway? Look at that Amazonian tribe with no long-term memory. Out of sight is out of mind with these folks. They don’t sweat about years gone by. All they need is a few pots and pans, a machete, a knife, a couple of palm-leaf bags, and wooden bows and arrows. They’re total hunter-gatherers. Missionaries and government agencies have been trying to teach them farming and religion for decades. The tribe doesn’t give a monkey’s turd. They arrived in the Amazon between ten and forty thousand years ago but the only history that means anything to them is what someone living has seen or heard. When asked about Creation they say, ‘It’s always been this way.’ They have no fixed words for colours, no words for left and right, and their only numbers are one and two. Their language is driving linguists nuts because one word can mean many different things depending on how they say it. When the missionaries try to interest them in Jesus, the tribe’s people say, ‘Have you met this man?’ A guy who died two thousand years ago doesn’t draw crowds. Only immediate experience counts. They don’t live in the past or plan for the future. They don’t search for long-lost relatives. They don’t get stressed and fat and cancerous and diabetic. They don’t take pharmaceuticals.
I listen to Constance moving around, tidying up after me. If she really cared she’d be at my door apologizing, begging me to understand. I think if she begged me to understand, I might be able to. If I could see the neediness in her that I’ve been living with for years. All I’ve ever wanted was someone to really care about me. I mean really care. Die for me. Animals die protecting their young. Mutti was ready to die for Marianne. Anne Frank’s mother starved herself to feed her daughters. Anne Boleyn had her head chopped off to protect Elizabeth. Mrs. Barnfield would die for Rossi, is dying for Rossi.
I start snooping in drawers. Nothing but sheets and sweaters and little scented sachets, a heating pad. The books on the shelves are drivel, all about diet, exercise, living with chronic pain, how to make your money work for you, and a couple of award-winning novels people buy but never read.
I lie back down, try to sleep, but I’m caffeinated.
I miss my hamster, Alice. When I couldn’t sleep I’d build her wonderlands with toilet rolls and egg cartons. I cut windows in cardboard boxes so she could waddle in and out of them. She was so curious, so eager to keep moving. Which is what humans are before shit keeps happening. What was shitty about Alice’s life? Why was she shutting down when I took such good care of her? She started limping and couldn’t trust her legs. She stopped coming out and slept more, ate less. At first I could tempt her with grapes, slices of pear or apple. When she was too weak to eat even that, I tried giving her juice through an eye dropper but she wouldn’t swallow and the juice soaked her fur. She was dying and there was squat I could do about it. Zippy said there was no way we were taking a ten-dollar hamster to the vet to pay seventy bucks to have some whitecoat tell us there was nothing he could do. I saw her point. Alice was letting go, finally escaping her cage. Her courage and dignity astounded me. She lay on her side in the cedar chips, staring nowhere. I made sure she was warm, put some extra bedding around her and waited while blood leaked out of her butt. I couldn’t eat, just watched for her breathing to stop. It seemed unfair that death took longer than birth, that it only took minutes to be born and days to die. Zippy tried to make me go to school, but I didn’t want Alice dying when I wasn’t w
atching. She did, though. When I woke, her eyes were closed and she was getting cold. I didn’t tell Zippy because I knew she’d get hysterical about a dead rodent contaminating the air or something. I lay still, as still as Alice. When Zippy figured out what was going on she charged at Alice with rubber gloves. ‘Don’t touch her!’ I screamed.
‘We can’t leave her here.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’ I wrapped her in lilac tissue paper and placed her in a Celestial Seasonings tea box. I buried her behind the building, placed a couple of rocks over her so the raccoons wouldn’t dig her up. They dug her up anyway. I wrapped her mauled body in more paper and dug her deeper, put bigger rocks over her. I visited the grave daily until Damian dragged me off to the new frau.
So that slug is my father. That oily, balding, brainless lech is part of my dna. I knew all along, despite my dreams of dads in Father’s Day ads, that mine had to be a deadbeat. I stare at a full-length mirror. Constance has a lot of mirrors. What’s she looking at, the angle of her hats?
I lean in closer. There’s something about the nose. People used to say we looked alike. I thought they were being polite. Nope. I’ve got the slug’s nose.
So rather than let Zippy in on his rolls in the sawdust, he lived a lie. Made me live a lie.
There’s something about the shoulders, the way they slump. The neck’s too long and the arms too short. We’re deformed and I only just noticed it.
I take off my clothes. I don’t have a mirror at Drew’s because I can’t stand looking at myself. But now I want to see him, her, the bruises. Purple turning yellow around the edges. I’ve got her witchy hands and feet but they’re his meaty thighs. And his ass. He’s got this little round ass that looks weird on a guy. It’s my ass. I get closer to study the eyes and the mouth. Hard to say. Maybe they’re from past generations. I met Damian’s mother once. We visited her in Florida. She was always mopping up after me, chasing me with a sponge. I couldn’t stop spilling around her. ‘What’s wrong with this child?’ she demanded. Maybe it’s the old trout’s mouth.
I locate the bathroom, all coordinated. Peach and cream walls, towels, mat, shower curtain, bath salts. I stand under the shower for a couple of hours, trapped in a body that is not my own. I use all her towels and leave them in piles on the peach and cream floor. I squirt peach lotion all over the body that is not my own. I dig around in her makeup case, find a lipstick and scrawl on the mirror: YOU’RE GOING TO DIE ALONE.
28
At first light I am the last human on Earth. I see traces of humanity, signs posted on telephone poles: Oh My Junk Removal, Nanny Wanted, Sod Laid, Bikini Booty Camp, K9 Walker, Salsa for Tots, Fuzzy Love Pet Sitting. All posted with hope rendered meaningless now that I am the last human on Earth. If only they’d known. Although they did know, didn’t they? Unlike the dinos, we were given a heads-up.
These boots were made for walkin’. Clomp clomp clomp go the witchy feet, squelch squelch squelch go the meaty thighs, bounce bounce bounce goes the round ass. The slug nose sniffs the human detritus, the slumped shoulders shudder under the weight of Sick Topics.
I grab one of the tomato’s cherub lawn ornaments and smash it into his driver-side window. Glass shatters, jewels sparkle on the asphalt. Beep beep beep goes the alarm. I sing loudly, ‘Oh, what a beautiful mor-ning. Oh, what a beautiful day. I’ve got a wonderful feel-ling, everything’s go-ing my way.’
Padre appears, scruffy in a striped bathrobe. The tomato hovers in something slinky, claws on mouth.
‘What the…?’ he begins. Neighbours peer through blinds.
‘Oh, what a beautiful mor-ning. Oh, what a beautiful day … ’
‘Would you stop that?’ he says, scrambling back into the house for the car remote. The two of them squabble. ‘I left the fucking thing on the sideboard,’ he shouts. ‘What’d you do with it? Your crap’s all over the place, purses, gloves, scarves. It’s a fucking boutique in here.’
‘I’ve got a wonderful feel-ling, everything’s go-ing my way.’
A suited neighbour skiddles past, hurrying to kiss ass at the corpse. ‘Everything alright here?’
‘Tootin’,’ I say. ‘I’m his daughter. There’s no place like home.’
The honking stops and Padre stands aghast, hands jabbing the air before he rushes to assess the damage to his beloved guzzler. ‘Happy now?’ he asks.
‘Not really.’ I ram my boot into his fender.
‘Stop that, just stop it, alright? You’ve got my attention, is that what this is about? Do you need bail money? Those bastards wouldn’t tell me a thing. What’s going on? Come inside, for God’s sake.’
‘I don’t want to go inside.’ Nobody’s watching anymore, they’re back at the morning hustle.
The slug’s examining his fender.
‘How do you like dem apples?’ I ask.
‘Jesus, Limone, what’s got into you?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I have no idea. This is … this is delinquent behaviour.’
‘Unlike fucking on drywall. He’s still at it, you know,’ I shout at the tomato skulking in the doorway. ‘Been tested for hiv lately?’ She slams the door.
He slouches against his guzzler, exposing the widening bald patch at the top of his head, and for a second I feel sorry for him, the sad old bon vivant running out of tail.
‘I presume your mother contacted you,’ he says.
‘Which one?’
‘I thought it might be best coming from her, mother to daughter.’
‘Wrong again, son.’
‘She’s a good woman.’
‘She said you’re a good man. Isn’t that convenient? While we’re at it, you might tell me about any good bastard siblings you know about. I’m kind of hoping for a family reunion. Something big, depending on how many there are, of course. I’m thinking of booking the Four Seasons ballroom.’
He rubs his brow. Poor lad, I’m such a trial.
‘So what’s the deal?’ I persist. ‘Any sibs?’
‘No. I’m always very careful. It was different with Connie. She was … an unusually passionate woman.’
‘Ga-ross,’ I cry. At least parentless I didn’t have to picture Ma and Pa in the missionary position.
‘She’s had a hard life,’ he says.
‘Yeah, the civil service really takes it out of you.’
He spits on the cuff of his bathrobe and rubs his precious fender. ‘What do you want from me? Is it money? What are the police saying?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What?’
‘Here we go round the mulberry bush.’
‘If you mean why didn’t I tell you I was your father, let me be frank. You are a difficult girl, Limone. I didn’t want to make you more difficult.’
‘How would that make me more difficult?’
‘Look at you, you’re just … you’re an embarrassment, really. You seem incapable of finding any kind of direction. You alienate anyone who tries to help you. Look what you’ve done to Drew.’
‘What I’ve done to Drew?’
‘Don’t start with that. She was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions.’
‘But I wasn’t grown, remember? I was a wee lass.’
‘Yes, yes, we know, who always felt sorry for herself. Well, that doesn’t fly anymore, kiddo. According to the police you’re old enough to be responsible for your actions. So go for it, Limone, just leave me out of it.’ He turns his back on me, climbing the steps to his hideous house. I grab a handful of the tomato’s decorative pebbles and hurl them at him. They miss by a mile. He is behind the door and out of my life in seconds.
I try the old think-about-someone-worse-off-than-yourself trick. Those Chinese girls in one of Drew’s human-rights rags. After the Jap invasion, ‘comfort stations’ were set up for Jap soldiers so they could rape Chinese girls. Getting raped fifty times a day meant they couldn’t walk a
nymore. A father bribed the Japs with chickens to get his twelve-year-old daughter out. Back in the village she was raped by more Jap soldiers. She had a miscarriage and was left infertile. Sick Topics.
No sign of the catfish. I scamper to Kadylak’s room. Her stuff’s still there. Maybe somebody’s taken her for tests. I can’t wait in here, could get caught. I scoot back to the elevators.
The Second Cup is jammed as usual. I line up with the relations of sick children. An old biddy takes six hours to choose a cookie. Her cross-eyed daughter tries to hurry her along. ‘Come on, Maw, there’s people waitin’.’ An obese woman behind me huffs and puffs. Her yellow-skinned companion, probably in need of dialysis, probably on the verge of death, says, ‘My worst fear when I retire is that I’m going to be busy busy busy being unproductive.’
I hunch in a corner, surrounded. The cross-eyed daughter fits her mother into a chair. ‘It just goes to show,’ she says, ‘money and ej-a-cation don’t make you happy and all that stuff.’
I see the catfish and cower. She always orders soy vanilla something or other. While she’s deliberating over munchies, I charge back up to the floor. Kadylak’s still absent and I’m starting to freak. I pace, periodically checking the corridor. Peggy sees me but doesn’t seem to know I’m persona non grata. ‘Have you seen Kadylak?’ I ask.
‘She was with her dad.’
‘She was?’ Right away I feel a thousand times better knowing he’s here. Maybe he’ll hold my hand again. Maybe we’ll talk more, the three of us. They don’t think I’m difficult.
But then I see him coming out of the elevator with her unconscious in his arms.
‘Help me, she not breathing!’ he shouts. ‘She not breathing!’
They’re rushed to icu where a tube will be shoved down her again, more lines attached to her, more blood sucked from her. Surrounded by technology, she’ll be far away from me.
I get Tilly out and put it on her bed. I straighten the covers and place Sweetheart and Mischa on her pillow. No one will come in here now. I lie down on the sofa bed.
I hear the click of the door and duck for cover behind the bed. The catfish spies me anyway. ‘I can’t believe you’re here again,’ she blasts. ‘This is pathological. The police were looking for you. Am I going to have to call security?’
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