Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  The highway spit me out onto East Jefferson. I turned right, then right again, until, suddenly, a few blocks from the river, I was free of the traffic. Yet as I tore down East Larned, out of nowhere, a woman with a baby carriage stepped into the crosswalk. I slammed on my brakes. The Subaru made a tearing sound. It was not a woman at all, but an elderly, hunched man pushing a rusted shopping cart. His feet were bandaged with duct tape. He never glanced at me. When the light turned green, I let my engine thrum, but I didn’t budge. I watched the man lumber down the block, then turn a corner and disappear. Still, I sat there. There were no other cars behind me. I could make my own rules.

  Overhead, the “People Mover” skated eerily along the elevated track that looped its way in and out among the empty skyscrapers. It stopped with a ghostly hiss at a platform where no passengers waited. The doors opened. No one got on. No one got off. The doors closed. Something about watching the train hoosh and hiss, hoosh and hiss, and the hypnotic blinking of the traffic signals, and the quiet husk of the city, calmed me, finally.

  Then, the scene in our kitchen hit me anew.

  My God. What had I done?

  Perhaps, I told myself, it wasn’t as horrific as I’d imagined. A misunderstanding, a marital spat—okay, with a no-stick fish spatula—and a stainless-steel burger-flipper—but surely I wasn’t the only woman in history to do such a thing? Surely, there had been some cavewoman taking swings at her caveman with a mastodon bone—and plenty of nineteenth-century housewives in bonnets, brandishing rolling pins and cast-iron skillets, chasing their husbands around the chicken coops? Surely, legions of women had clobbered their philandering men with kitchen implements over the ages—couldn’t this be a trope, a meme, a thing?

  Quickly, I turned into Greektown. A diner called the Acropolis was open for business, so I pulled up in front of it, made sure my doors were locked, and stared at the little glowing rectangle of my phone. Not a single message. My heart thrummed. Slowly, mechanically, I punched in my passcode and called Joey. I couldn’t have done too much damage, I reasoned—unless—there had been so much blood.

  When he picked up on the second ring, my breath caught.

  “Yuh,” he said flatly.

  “Hey,” I said, sniffling uneasily. “It’s me.”

  “I know.” And then for a while, he was quiet, though his breathing was loud. I could hear the deflation and wheeze of it. “What do you want?” he slurred.

  “Are you okay? You don’t sound so good.”

  Another pause followed. I could hear the static of traffic in the background.

  “I’m with Arjul. He’s driving me to the emergency room.”

  “What—?”

  “You broke my nose, Donna.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Yeah. And my bridgework. And I can barely see, cuz my cheeks are so swollen. So yeah. That’s why I don’t sound very good, Donna. Arjul’s got me on 600 milligrams of Vicodin.”

  He gave a mirthless laugh, which sounded like an engine stalling. “You’re lucky I don’t press charges,” he lisped. “Or sue you.”

  It wasn’t clear if he was kidding.

  “Oh my God, Joey. Look, please. It was crazy—”

  “Austin came home early, Donna. His hockey practice was canceled.”

  I closed my eyes, pressed my forehead against the steering wheel. A whole sickening tableau unspooled before me. I said, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Luckily, just luckily, by the time he came in Arjul had already helped me into my sweatpants, and my old jean shirt, with the snaps.”

  “So he didn’t see?”

  “Well, I had an icepack on my face. And Arjul was there. And there was blood all over the kitchen.”

  “Oh God. Did he freak? What did you tell him?”

  A man in a leather coat sauntered out of the diner just then. He aimed his fist at a dented gray Ford parked in front of me. A car alarm began whooping insanely.

  “I told Austin you went on a bender,” Joey said. “I told him you called my office stinking drunk, so I came home to try and sober you up, and we had a fight. I told him that while we were fighting, I slipped and bashed my face on the kitchen island. And you just stormed out.”

  “Jesus Christ, Joey! Why on earth would you tell him that?”

  “What was I supposed to say, Donna? That you beat me?” Joey gave a sort of hiccup.

  “You said I was drunk?”

  “Austin saw my face, Donna. He saw the blood on the floors and the wall. Your stuff was strewn everywhere. Your car was gone. Arjul was there with an icepack. It was the only thing I could think of at that moment.”

  I sat panting. I felt cornered. But Joey was right. What other explanation could he plausibly have given? Certainly not the truth. Hell, our kids got squeamish once when Joey and I simply sang along to “Crazy in Love” in the car—just goofing around—bopping in the front seat. Ashley had leaned forward and announced, “If you guys don’t stop, Austin and I are hitch-hiking to Grandpa’s.”

  The light beyond my Subaru was ebbing, turning the sky the color of cognac. I shook my head. “No, you’re right, Joey. You’re right,” I said weakly. “Of course. It makes sense.” Then something else occurred to me. “So wait. Arjul is with you? Joey, he won’t say anything to anyone, will he? Or tweet stuff? Or post photos? I mean—”

  “Christ, Donna. Is that what you’re worried about? C’mon. Arjul’s known about Zsa-Zsa for years.”

  “Excuse me?” I felt a fresh jab of betrayal, yet before I could say anything else, a muffled, seashell roar poured through the speaker: Arjul in the background, saying something faintly, then Joey murmuring, “If you want.”

  Arjul’s voice was suddenly loud in my ear. “Yes. Hi, Donna,” he said breezily. “Let me tell you. You have no worries with me at all. I have explained to Joey that in India, we have something called ‘hijra.’ It is actually a very ancient tradition. Hijra are born men, but they feel and dress like women. In our culture, they’re considered a third gender. They can even have this on their passports now. So really. People have impulses to be another sex or to dress some other way from time to time. Who knows? There is endless variety. Maybe it is something left over from their past lives. And I have said to Joey, there is nothing for him to feel embarrassed about. Clothing is all just packaging in the end, is it not? We all come into this life naked. We leave naked. So what does it matter what we wear in between, whether it is satin or cotton, a big man’s pants or a little girl’s skirt?”

  “Yeah. All right, okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Arjul expected me to engage him in a philosophical debate at this moment, though I sensed he was intending to reassure me. “Listen, the thing is—” I tried to arrange my thoughts into some coherent order, but the prospect of having to explain what had upset me so much suddenly seemed overwhelming and exhausting. I felt a bolt of despair. All I could murmur was “I didn’t mean to hit him like that, Arjul.”

  “Oh,” he chuckled. “You have a temper like nobody’s business. But between dentistry and India, I have pretty much seen everything,” he said, almost happily. “The human condition, it is endlessly fascinating. No two dental records are exactly alike. People talk about snowflakes being unique. But I always say, ‘Have you ever truly looked at somebody else’s teeth?’”

  “Yeah. I guess. Okay. Thanks,” I said. I was absorbing less and less; the notes and cadences were just washing over my anxiety.

  Joey came back on. “We’re just pulling up to the emergency room. Shit. The lot’s full. I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

  “Where’s Austin? He’s at home?”

  “Yuh. I told him I might be a while. I told him to order a pizza.” I heard gravel crunching, then the squeak of a brake. Joey said, more calmly now, “Okay, we’re heading in. So where are you anyway? Are you on your way home yet?”

  “Just driving.” I sniffled. “Greektown. Where are you? Beaumont?”

  “Yeah. Once I know how long the
wait is, I’ll text. Actually, Arjul will.” And then, for the first time, something close to tenderness crept into his voice. “You and me, Donna, we don’t seem to do so good with messages lately, do we?”

  “No,” I said. And my eyes started to fill with tears. “No, Joey. We don’t.”

  “Shit. It’s getting dark. Hey, I’m inside now. They’re going to make me shut off my phone.”

  “Okay.” I exhaled. “Look, if you’re going to be there awhile, tell Arjul that I’ll come relieve him as soon as I can. I just want to check on Austin first.”

  “Thanks. That’d be great. Arjul’s going to have his hands full for the next few days covering for me. Hey, Donna? One more thing?” Joey’s voice was growing more muffled as he walked. I could hear the clatter of the ER around him.

  “Yeah?” I swallowed.

  “On your way over, can you stop at Smashburger and pick me up a chocolate milk shake? Not the Oreo one. Just the regular.”

  We hung up. I breathed in and out, staring at my screen saver. I’d customized it with a photo from our family vacation three years ago in Petoskey. Ashley stood squinting, dressed in a beach tunic glinting with little sequins. Her face had a glassy, feverish look from sunburn and her arms were roped playfully around her brother. At thirteen, Austin’s scrawny frame was just beginning to elongate—his smile was a metallic blaze of orthodontia—but big and wide and unabashedly happy.

  Austin. I knew better than to call. He and his friends didn’t regard “talking” as a function of a telephone at all—in his mind, I supposed, talking on a telephone was as ridiculous as talking into a typewriter—if he even knew what a typewriter was. Good God, I was old—but if I called him, I knew it’d simply go straight to the Black Hole of Calcutta known as his voice mail. Squinting at my screen, I doggedly pecked out: Hey. R u ok? Be there in 40 min.

  It blurped into the ether, and there was no answer, until I started up the car and my phone pinged with his response:

  Awesome! Totally psyched! Miss u!

  For a moment, I felt sweetly perplexed until, in a separate bubble, a string of emojis appeared: three phallic ears of corn, three eggplants, a bikini top, several pairs of lips, and a smiley face with hearts bugging out of its eyes.

  This was immediately followed by:

  NO! IGNORE LAST TXT!!! That wasn’t 4 u MOM!!!!

  My kid was sexting? Just yesterday he was learning to say “ba-ba” and “cup.” Was he inviting a girl over to our house behind my back? Before I could even begin to fathom how to respond to this, another text arrived, this one clearly for me:

  Mom r u drunk?

  Then another:

  Dad sez u r drinking again.

  This was followed by a string of emojis: three glasses of wine, three angry red frowny faces, and a giant thumbs-down.

  Then he texted: Y come home? U left so leave. Go 2 AA meeting instead. B w other drunks.

  I sat back heavily in my seat. After a moment, I started to type out: Am sober & coming home when my phone vibrated and whooped insanely and my daughter’s name flashed on the screen. Ashley. Skyping from London. She never, ever initiated calls; always, I’d had to email and nag just to set up a phone date.

  “Ash?” I said, pressing the “S” repeatedly, hoping I was connecting. “Hey Ash, can you hear me? Honey, are you all right?”

  “I can’t believe it, Mom!” her voice shouted so loudly, I nearly dropped the phone. “YOU’RE DRINKING? YOU’RE FUCKING DRINKING AGAIN?”

  “What?”

  “Austin just WhatsApped me. He says you drunk-dialed Dad? And Dad had to come home from work to keep you from passing out?”

  “Wait, no. Hang on. Ashley—”

  I could hear her panting and gasping over the phone; she was in tears. “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, MOM? DID YOU NOT PUT US THROUGH ENOUGH HELL THE FIRST TIME? All those burned meals—and the time the cops came—and my thirteenth birthday THAT YOU TOTALLY RUINED—was all that humiliation JUST not enough for you? Is life so fucking hard that you can’t say no to a fucking cocktail?”

  For a moment, I went mute; I’d never heard my daughter like this—I was unprepared for her fury, the raw hurt behind it, the explosive profanity. Clearly, it had been stockpiled for a long time. She seemed like an entirely different person.

  “Ash,” I said.

  “How many of those meetings did we have to go to with you, Mom? Clapping and celebrating every time you got a fucking token—”

  “Ashley, it’s not—”

  “And now, today, you beat up Dad? You BEAT him?”

  “What?” I felt all the breath knock out of me. “Ashley, who on earth said—”

  “Oh, please, Mom! Austin’s sixteen now, not six. He’s not stupid, you know. He said there’s no way someone gets their face bashed up like Dad’s was just from ‘slipping’ in a kitchen. He said Dad had welts all over the place. But, oh, of course, Dad’s still sticking to his story, still trying to protect you, still being the great enabler—”

  I set down the phone, letting her rant on. Her thirteenth birthday party. The memory bobbed to the surface like a cork: Joey preparing the grill for the make-your-own pizzas. Our yard stippled with light. Ashley’s new clique of pretty seventh-grade friends sipping pink lemonade from plastic martini glasses.

  Carrying out the tray of pizza toppings, I stumble on the decking. Circles of pepperoni and bacon bits and flecks of mushrooms turn to confetti. As I mix myself another vodka-and-lemonade in the kitchen, I write “Happy Bithday” on the red velvet cake by accident, scrambling to disguise it with candles.

  Kelsey, the most popular girl in Ashley’s class, announces they’re giving her a group gift. All the girls crowd around, bouncing as Ashley opens the box, pushes back the tissue paper. “Oh my God,” she starts to shriek. “Oh my God! Is this—?”

  The other girls start squealing, clutching one another, jumping up and down in unison like teammates, exploding with glee: “It’s Juicy Couture! It’s Juicy Couture!”

  “We all saved up! We’ve been saving up for months! Megan was even babysitting!”

  “You guys! You guys!” Ashley cries tearily, hugging an armful of hot-pink velour. She has been campaigning for Juicy Couture from Joey and me all year. “Mom, look!” she shouts, dashing into the kitchen. “They got me an entire outfit!” She holds up a fuzzy hooded sweatshirt and matching pair of lurid pink sweatpants. Across the butt, written in big gold block letters, is the word JUICY. “Isn’t this awesome? All the celebrities wear this. Paris Hilton. Britney Spears. J. Lo. Madonna. It costs, like, $300!”

  “More! $359!” Kelsey announces proudly. “But my mom found it on sale online for $329 and we all chipped in!” In a barrage of overlapping stories, each girl details her role in the secret operation; it sounds positively military.

  A cloud comes over me. Joey and I are fending off foreclosure. “You paid $329 for a tracksuit?” I spit.

  Ashley’s smile freezes. “Mom, it’s not a tracksuit. It’s Juicy Couture. For real. See?” She turns down the waistband.

  I feel myself sway slightly, the kitchen starts to bifurcate. “Well,” I say. “Who needs a label inside, when you’ve got the name plastered across your ass like a billboard? ‘Juicy.’ What’s that supposed to mean exactly? You’re a fresh piece of meat? An underage hooker?”

  “Mom, please?” Ashley presses my hand to the fabric. “See? Just feel how soft that is?”

  The pink velour is liquidy, silk-like. “Good God,” I murmur. Then I start to laugh, really laugh. “You know what they feel like? You remember that stuffed pig you used to have when you were about four? They’re made of exactly the same fabric! Oh my God,” I say, laughing. “It’s Pinky Pig! They’re dressing you up like Pinky Pig!”

  A drowning look passes over my daughter’s face. Her friends shift about uncomfortably, stare at the floor. I sense I’ve gotten off track somehow. “Oh, c’mon, you guys, I’m kidding!” I say garrulously. “It’s a joke, okay? I mean, okay, so it’s three hun
dred bucks for a tracksuit—for a thirteen-year-old—during a recession. That’s an absolute riot! God, what does it take to get a laugh around here?” Snatching up the pink hoodie, I begin animating it like a puppet, poking it in their faces. “Hi, everybody, I’m Pinky Pig, I’m Juicy Couture!” I say in falsetto. “Oink, oink! Here, piggy, piggy, piggy!”

  I stared up at the roof of my Subaru, my eyes growing wet. The things I wished I could go back and undo. Ashley was nineteen now—legally an adult—living half a world away in one of the more sophisticated cities in the world. I could tell her the truth about Joey. But I knew better. I sensed it in my gut: If one of Ashley’s own multiracial, bisexual friends dressed up as a Sissy Maid, my daughter might think it was “the coolest thing ever.” But not if it was her own father. Teenagers were like that—hell, all of us were. My daughter loved her daddy so. If I told her, there’d be no rolling it back. I just could not do that to her. I had ruined enough things already.

  “This fight with your father and me, Ash,” I said carefully. “It’s complicated.”

  “What’s so fucking complicated, Mom? You’re white and privileged and First World— You don’t, like, even have a real job.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, it’s not like you’re full-time, or a wage-slave coal miner or a seamstress in some Bangladeshi sweatshop—”

  “Well, here’s a news flash,” I said more angrily than I’d intended. “Neither are you.”