Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  Bringing my hands up to my face, I stared at my palms, running my thumbs lightly over the tiny cuts and creases where the rivulets of blood had run, like a reverse Lady Macbeth, reliving the sensation of the man’s chest beneath my hands as I tried to force the life back into him, the myoclonic jerk as his body expelled the fig.

  “Well, did you at least get it on video?” Victor sniffed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Next time that happens, you have to totally, like, film it. And put it on YouTube. I bet you’d get, like, a million hits.”

  Traci sang two bars of “Rolling in the Deep,” then stopped plaintively.

  “That does it.” Victor tucked his phone into his pocket and made his way toward the stage. “Somebody needs an intervention.”

  I stood up. I glanced down at the sugary margarita, then over at the gaudily lit stage. How, I wondered, how could I ever have looked forward to this? All I should be doing at this moment was wrapping my arms around Joey’s solid, meaty shoulders in our bed back in Michigan, and feeling him breathe, and telling him how much I goddamn loved him. I should be Skyping Ashley in London, waking her, making her talk to me while she sat in her flannel cow pajamas clutching a bowl of fair-trade coffee with soy milk. I should be sitting on the barstool in our kitchen as Austin got ready for school the next morning, watching as he straggled in and yanked open the fridge and gulped his low-fat chocolate protein drink directly out of the bottle like he wasn’t supposed to—after which, I should be rumpling his sweaty hair and insisting that he let me, his momma, kiss him, hold him, soak him into my pores.

  Instead, I was in this artificial fun house in a desert.

  “That’s it,” I said aloud to no one in particular, setting my feet down on the floor like two gavels. “I’m out of here.”

  I always hated red-eyes—actually, I hate flying, period, especially without booze—I’ve got a fear of heights, claustrophobia, the works—yay—me and my damn dog, two peas in a pod—but I paid the $200 change fee directly at the check-in counter, then raced across the concourse of McCarran in my blood-flecked stockings and rumpled blouse, my roll-on jerking and jiggling behind me, the evening’s adrenaline sloshing through my veins. Once I was finally settled into my seat on the last flight to Detroit—and we were certain it was actually going to take off despite an hour spent sitting on the tarmac—(how the hell could there possibly be air traffic at 1 a.m.?), I texted Joey all my revised travel info. I also emailed Colleen Lundstedt: Heading home immediately. Family emergency. For it was an emergency, wasn’t it? Then I composed a text to both of my children: Ashley & Austin, I love you more than the universe. You are two beautiful souls & the greatest blessing in my life & I am so proud of you. I knew it was overkill, but so what? I was done with being Cool Mom, tiptoeing around their adolescent moodiness, “respecting” their “boundaries.” Each of my children should have some record of my fathomless love for them before this flight departed. Just in case. How easily—how willfully—we forgot: All it took was a fig.

  As I braced for takeoff, I had the joyous, irrational urge to shake my fellow passengers’ hands and introduce myself: “Hi. I’m Donna. Guess what? I just saved a man’s life!” But the traveler on my right had outfitted himself like a termite—bulbous, noise-canceling headphones, eye shades, fat neck pillow—and the one on my left was hooked up to an action movie on his iPad, each of them radiating that territorial disdain other passengers always seem to reserve for the person in the middle seat.

  I finished off the package of gummy bears and tried to catch the eye of an attendant for a cup of water.

  Back home, with the time difference, it was almost 5 a.m. when my flight finally lifted off, rocketing up, up—and I clutched the armrests and peered down through the window at the hallucinatory Vegas skyline with its electrified fake Venice, its fake Paris, its fake New York—all brilliant and toy-like against the dark canyons at the horizon. As I watched it grow smaller in my wake, I exhaled—a complicated breath of loneliness and urgency and a little inexplicable dread—relieved to be heading back to the one place I knew that was truly, grippingly real.

  While I was gone, I’d let Austin use my Subaru, so when I finally did land, I had to take a car service, which was just as well. I hadn’t been able to sleep on the red-eye, and in my fatigue, I had no business driving.

  The town car threaded and lurched through the traffic across the flatlands of southeastern Michigan. Cidery morning light glinted over the marshes beyond the airport, burnishing the billboards and the gas tanks rising above the grasses like moldering cakes. Enormous jets levitated, hovered above the horizon. Sometimes they swooped in so low, I could see the logos painted on their tails: Delta. Southwest. Electricity zapped across the power lines bisecting the landscape.

  My iPhone was in my purse, which I’d thoughtlessly placed in the trunk. Dammit. My phone. The moment I’d brought it home from the store, I couldn’t stop fussing over it—was it still on? Was it beeping and vibrating? Did it have enough juice? To Joey’s chagrin, I had it sleep beside me in our bedroom so I could answer it as soon as it sounded. I even bought little outfits for it, too—first a clear plastic “skin,” then one by a designer made of quilted fabric.

  Now the whole world around me was abuzz, while I alone remained quarantined, insulated in a bubble of silence. I thought about asking the driver to pull over so I could retrieve my purse, but there wasn’t anyplace safe to stop. He didn’t even have the radio on. I tried to convince myself this was just as well. There was rarely any good news coming out of Michigan these days. At the moment, it was all Flint Water Crisis—all these little children poisoned from lead in the water, citizens calling for Governor Snyder’s head—24/7 of heartbreak and outrage—punctuated by occasional other breaking news about mass shootings, white policemen killing black teenagers, massacres by ISIS. While my daughter followed these stories obsessively, I myself could only take so much. News was always depressing—it sucked something out of you without giving anything back—and yeah, sure, absolutely, the great injustices of the world troubled me, but what, exactly, was I supposed to do about them? Before she’d gone to London, Ashley had wanted to take a semester off to go support the Black Lives Matter movement. “Your job isn’t to save the world,” I’d told her. “It’s to finish college.”

  “But Mom,” she’d protested, “how can I just sit in some classroom while the world is imploding?”

  “You think you’re going to best serve the world as a college dropout in a drum circle outside the state legislature?” I’d said. “Nuh-uh-uh-uh. You get your degree first. It’s like on the airplanes. You put your own oxygen mask on before you help others with theirs.”

  My daughter: the tweeting, the pinging! To find myself in the taxi now listening to only the thrum of the car engine without all those screen alerts: Well, I had to admit, it was oddly relaxing.

  Our house, too, was as tranquil as a temple when I finally arrived. It was past 9 a.m., so I’d missed Joey and Austin in their tumultuous rush out the door. For a moment, I listened for Mr. Noodles before remembering that he was at some new psychiatric clinic for dogs over in Auburn Hills. How the hell, I wondered, did we wind up with an inpatient for a pet?

  Usually when I went away, I returned home in the evening after Joey and the kids had had full run of the place all week. Before Ashley left for college, I’d likely find her in bed with her headphones clamped to her head, four days’ worth of cereal bowls, workout clothes, paperbacks, chargers, bath towels, shoes, and art projects covering the floor. The family room would be reeking of fried chicken and farts, Joey and Austin in their undershirts hunched before the enormous flat-screen, their thumbs working away furiously, their bodies lurching with each insane explosion, shouting, “Gotcha!” “Watch out!” “Aaah! DIE!” I’d have to fish the remote out from between the sofa cushions and aim the Mute button at the screen before they even registered that I was home. Dumped in the mudroom by the recycling bin (but not actually in it)
would be a landslide of empty pizza boxes and chicken buckets and pulverized cans of Mountain Dew. “Hey Mom,” Austin would say, his gaze still grommeted to the screen. “Dad showed me how to make a single pair of underwear last four days. So guess what? Less laundry.”

  But now, I’d scarcely been gone forty-eight hours, Ashley was on another continent, and the ravages of boy-ness hadn’t had time to take hold. How oddly serene the house felt. I was usually out the door myself by this hour; the late-morning light was not something I was used to. For a moment, I was afraid to make a noise for fear of shattering the hush. Slipping off my coat, I hung it over the others piled on the wrought-iron hooks by the door. Above the clutter of rain boots, gym bags, and skateboards clogging the entranceway, portraits stared down from the wall. Joey and Ashley at homecoming outside the stadium, maize-and-blue M’s grease-painted on their cheeks. Austin, age six, solemnly lighting our menorah on the coffee table before the Christmas tree, dressed in his Star Wars: Return of the Jedi pajamas. Joey and me flanked by his fraternity brothers in matching tuxedos, deep moss-green with gold cummerbunds, my wedding dress a fountain of ruffles. Dear God, what on earth had ever possessed me to choose all that? I supposed I was being ironic.

  I padded through the empty family room back toward the kitchen. My back ached. A drink, I thought suddenly, rolling my shoulders— No. Stop that. Instead, I should put in a call to Joey, shower, throw in a load of laundry. I wanted to call the restaurant in Vegas, too, to see if there was any news of the choking man, but it was still too early there. How funny: I didn’t even know his name. But first, I was craving something indulgent and breakfasty and hugely caloric, like waffles with maple syrup and bacon. A low-fat yogurt with frozen blueberries would have to do—though I’d put whole milk in my coffee instead. Certainly, I’d earned that. Hell, I’d saved a man’s life.

  Oddly, the lights in the kitchen were still on. As I entered the lemon-painted room, with its warped, sliding glass doors leading out onto the deck, I was overcome by an eeriness. I felt it: the sudden atmospheric shift, a disturbance of molecules, a shiver of fear.

  Then I saw.

  Ten feet away, a strange, slatternly woman was down on all fours on our laminate floor with her head in the oven.

  I screamed.

  The woman’s body jerked. A horrible metallic clatter issued from inside the oven, followed by a muffled cry as she struggled to get out. Her fleshy body was clad in a pinafore that had traveled up her thighs to unveil an enormous rump covered in white ruffled bloomers. Her wide, lumpy legs were encased in nubby pink ballet tights, and her feet were spilling out of old-fashioned black patent-leather party shoes with delicate ankle straps. I screamed again. The woman’s head popped out of the oven, a lunatic tumble of dark sausage curls. She appeared homeless, demented. Frantically, she shook and yanked at her hair to get it out of her face. Her mouth was a wild smear of candy-pink. Her cheeks were streaked with garish red circles in a grotesque approximation of rouge. Oversized clip-on pearl earrings knocked against her jowls.

  She staggered to her feet, and there was a singular moment of suspended disbelief before comprehension set in.

  This huge, crazed woman panting before me in a ridiculously frilly cap? I knew her crinkly, espresso-dark eyes. The aging, mawkish lips obscuring a year’s worth of bridgework. The grayish beard-stubble bracketing her mouth. I knew the bulky chest whose dark thicket of hair was curling over the cotton-eyelet edge of her pinafore.

  “Jesus Christ!” Joey shrieked. He dropped a can of Bon Ami oven cleanser and it rolled across the floor and under the table.

  I stepped backward. And for a moment—and I’m ashamed to admit this—I wasn’t sure what shocked me most: the sight of my husband standing before me dressed like a deranged Little Bo Peep—or the simple fact that he had actually been cleaning something.

  Just then, from the powder room by the pantry, came the sound of a toilet flushing. The sliding door rolled back and a young woman emerged. She was wearing black laminate, impossibly high stiletto heels, and a velvet mask like a cartoon bandit’s. She stood in the doorway like a strange bird, a heron dipped into oil, her two small, pert breasts like the bells you use to summon a desk clerk. “Is Zsa-Zsa having trouble following orders?” she cooed. Then she saw me and stopped. Her black-gloved hand went up to her mouth. “Oh,” she said plainly.

  Oh.

  Like a gunshot.

  For a moment, I just stood there, regarding the two of them, who were now regarding each other. There was that curious delay between the shock of the impact and the walloping onset of pain. For a moment, I wasn’t quite sure that any of this was actually happening.

  The young woman pivoted slowly to face Joey. “Zsa-Zsa, is this part of our session?” she said carefully.

  Almost imperceptibly, his devastated eyes now fixed on me, Joey shook his head. “Regis Philbin,” he mumbled.

  “Okay. Shit,” said the woman in the catsuit. “Well then.” Her voice turned perfunctory. “I think I better go.” With whippet speed, she disappeared into the guest bathroom again and quickly reemerged in a cheap, plum-colored trench coat, a large, ruched metallic bag slung over her forearm. Her mask was still on.

  “Um. We’ll settle up later, I guess?” she said quickly, frowning, rifling through her handbag. “I mean—”

  Joey turned toward her. “Please. Mistress Tanya.”

  It was then that I found my voice—sickened, lethal, almost unrecognizable: “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “Are you insane?”

  “Donna—” Joey’s voice cracked. He looked beseechingly first at me, then at the woman in black.

  “Get the fuck out of my house,” I said.

  The young woman held up her hands as if in surrender and took a step back.

  “Okay. No disrespect.”

  She was so slender, she looked like I could snap her in half.

  Her stilettos clacked as she hurried to the side door. (She used the side door? She knew my house?) As she yanked it open, she glanced back at me. “Hey, look,” she said awkwardly. “I know this seems weird, but, like, try not to judge too much? Really. Your husband’s a very nice guy.”

  The door to the mudroom slammed. A moment later, I heard the garage open and shut.

  Her departure seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the kitchen. I felt that I should shriek—hysteria was definitely in order—but my whole body suddenly felt like wet sand. I stepped back and slid down against the refrigerator door onto the tiled floor.

  Joey paced before the sink-island now like a caged animal. “You were supposed to be in Vegas,” he shouted. His wig was torn off. It lay on the counter like a dead animal. His spiky, salt-and-pepper hair was matted against his skull. Though caked with ghoulish pancake makeup, his face was red with fury. A rope of fake plastic pearls encircled his neck, the toy kind that I used to have as a child, where one bead snapped into another. On his wrist was a matching bracelet where his watch usually was. His pink pinafore had a satin bow on the bodice, his puffed sleeves trimmed with little pink rosettes. I noticed his apron for the first time, white satin with black lace and pink heart-shaped pockets. A lot of thought had gone into this outfit. A wave of nausea came over me.

  “You brought a prostitute into our home, Joe?”

  “She’s not a prostitute. She’s a dominatrix,” he snapped, as if this explained everything. “You just show up? Unannounced?”

  “Excuse me? This is my house! Plus, I emailed. I texted. That’s not the issue here.”

  “Eight p.m. you said, not eight a.m.”

  “What?”

  “You know I can’t read those tiny fucking letters—”

  “Joey, you were with another woman. You’re wearing a dress!”

  “Well, if you didn’t just sneak up on me—” He slammed his fist down on the countertop. Instantly, he winced. His face turned into a nimbus of pain.

  I was on my feet now. “What are you saying, Joseph? You’re in a dress with a prostitute and
your head in the oven, but I’m the bad guy here, because I didn’t use a bigger FONT?”

  “I told you: She’s not a prostitute. She’s a dominatrix!”

  A fat ceramic Privileged Kitchen utensil holder in the shape of a pineapple sat on the counter by the stove. I grabbed it and hurled it against the pantry door. Terra-cotta and cooking implements exploded across the room. I seized a caddy of fancy olive oil and balsamic vinegar and threw that, too. Condiments and glass splattered everywhere; the kitchen began to smell like a salad.

  Joey yanked off his apron and pinafore, threw them on the counter, and stood there, hairy-chested, in an enormous medical-looking, rubberized white bra and falsies, panting. “You’re being insane,” he shouted.

  “I’m insane? You’re in drag!” Then I stopped. I doubled over, gripping the counter. I felt suddenly whiplashed. “Oh. My. God. Joey.” Another thought had occurred to me. “Is this, like, a Bruce Jenner thing?”

  “What?”

  I cupped my hands around my eyes and started to rock back and forth. Horrible enough was the adultery—but was Joey himself a lie? He’d been president of his fraternity in college; he’d grown up hunting with his brothers in the U-P and fixing cars. Was all of this just a disguise—an elaborate act of overcompensation? We’d watched I Am Cait a couple of times, plus that TV series on Amazon, where the father transforms himself into a mom. Back in the ’80s, when I’d done the club circuit with my band, I’d certainly seen my share of cross-dressers: cruising the parking lots, flinging french fries at each other at 4 a.m. at the Motor City Diner. But now there were all these conversations in the media about people being born in the wrong body. My book club had even gotten sidetracked for an entire evening discussing it; Heather Mickleberg was convinced transgenderism was a chromosomal anomaly caused by gluten and Wi-Fi.