Living Things

by Landon Houle

  Jill snorted. My mama just wanted me to go away.

  The girl laughed without smiling, and the bartender coughed, cleared his throat.

  Jill held the drink. The Tang wasn’t the best. She thought she might throw up soon. She considered going to the bathroom. She could hang her head over the bowl. She could read the “Footprints” poem. She knew it was about Jesus, about never being alone. Instead, she kept talking.

  They can really mess you up if you stop to think about it. Mamas, I mean. And Daddies too. Daddies especially. When they want to.

  Jill’s thoughts were turned around backward. It seemed like she was getting to the right place but in a stuttering way that could make a person crazy. She felt something fluttering at her temple and flinched before she realized it was the girl, brushing the hair out of Jill’s eyes. She’d scooted closer and looked hurt, maybe even a little angry when Jill shrank from her. What little eyebrows she had were knitted up, wrinkling her forehead. She was never pretty enough for the movies. That was plain to see. You do like girls, she said, right?

  The bearded bartender was watching them. It seemed like the same song was playing over and over again, some generic R&B. Just then, Jill could have sworn it was getting a little louder.

  Why else would you come? the girl said.

  Now, Jill thought. Now she would go to the bathroom. She tried to get up, but before she could, something was pressing her back against the scenes of the English countryside, against another time, another place.

  I know what you need, the girl said, and if before she’d seemed like a sullen teenager hell-bent on getting a sunburn, now, in an instant, she’d become an all-knowing epitome of at least one kind of experience. She was like a ballerina, performing a show she’d rehearsed for years. She pivoted off and away from the couch and shimmied down to a squat, and then she was spreading Jill’s knees as far apart as her own.

  Jill needed to pee. She meant to tell the girl so when she heard a noise, she said, Did you hear that?

  The girl grinned as she plastered her thin lips against Jill’s knee.

  Jill cocked her head. It was the sound of a rusted hinge that might have been a truck dropping a ramp at the convenience store across the street. Or it could have been closer, in the parking lot, a door opening or closing.

  Can you turn that down? Jill said to the bartender. The music.

  She made a move to push the girl away, but the girl was stronger than she looked. A vein pulsed in her shoulder as she gripped Jill’s calves, and for a minute, she was like a girl in a movie. Something in the girl’s face. She was dangling off the edge of a building, hanging on for dear life. Please, that girl would say. Help me.

  The music was even louder now, at least that’s how it sounded in Jill’s head. She looked down at the girl who was, just then, licking Jill’s shin bone. She looked so young, like a kid with a popsicle.

  That. There was another sound, clear and distinct and definitely Barbara. With more resolve, more confidence than Jill had felt in years, she shoved, and the girl lost her balance and fell over backward. Dimly, Jill saw the girl’s face, more surprised than angry as she fell. She was someone’s baby, losing her footing. She was falling through the air, plummeting to a gruesome death.

  From some distance, it seemed, Jill heard the bartender calling after her hey, bills to pay, what the fuck. But she was already through the door and out in the lot. The door of the car was open, and she ran to it, unaware of her own voice, the rising chant. No, no, no, no, no . . .

  Barbara’s bags were still there. The clothes and toys and bottles and other junk Jill had packed that morning. I’ll take her back, she’d decided. I’ll take her back where she belongs. She’d been certain it was the right thing to do. She shouldn’t be responsible for a baby, for a life. She didn’t feel like she could be responsible for anything.

  And now Barbara was gone. The car seat was empty, and Jill half-drunk and out of her mind with terror, lifted the bags and the floor mats, and looked under the seats as if Barbara might be playing some trick, as if she were old enough to consider the ways she might fool a person.

  Jill even thought she heard Barbara laughing. Then she knew she heard it, and raising her head from the floorboard to look out the windshield, she saw the muscled back of a woman wearing high heels and a pink sparkly one-piece, and when this woman turned around, Jill saw that she was holding Barbara.

  Jill rose up so quickly she slammed her head against the top of the car, but she kept moving. She ran, tripping over a rock, turning her ankle but lurching forward, and from a certain perspective, she and Nicole didn’t look so different, stumbling ahead, reaching for something to catch themselves. All of those kids skating in circles at Ralphie’s Roller Rama, breaking their arms and legs. Kids, well, people were so delicate when you got down to it. There was hardly anything so fragile.

  The stripper must have thought so, because when Jill reached for the baby, the woman hesitated only for a few seconds, and then seeing, recognizing something in Jill’s face, she handed Barbara over.

  Jill closed her eyes and pressed Barbara to her chest. Oh my God, she said and said again. There you are. Here I am. Jesus.

  The stripper watched. She was much older than the blonde girl, much older than Jill, too, and she was tall. She looked down her nose. You shouldn’t leave a baby in a car like that.

  Jill stammered something about thinking it would be okay, just for a minute, such a nice day.

  It don’t matter! the woman said. It don’t matter what kind of day it is. You don’t leave a baby ever.

  Jill’s whole body was bobbing up and down in an exaggerated show of agreement.

  A baby can die, the woman said.

  I don’t know, Jill said.

  The woman rolled her eyes and adjusted herself. She popped the strap of her bathing suit, shifting from one heel to the other. People take babies for granted, she said. People would pay a lot of money for a pretty baby like that.

  I don’t know, Jill said again. It seemed like all there was to say. I don’t know what I’m doing.

  She meant she didn’t know what she was doing with Barbara. She didn’t know what she was doing at the Foxy Lady or with Cathy, and she didn’t know about a lot of things which were larger and not yet formed in her mind.

  Jill patted Barbara’s back. She studied the woman, and the woman looked back at her until Jill finally understood. She shifted Barbara to her shoulder and reached in her pocket. She pulled out a wadded five and a couple of ones. She handed them over, and the woman took them. She was smiling now, and in a sweet slow drawl, she said, Pleasure.

  Jill said yeah.

  The stripper blew a kiss at Barbara. Y’all take care now.

  They were home a few hours before Cathy got back, and in that time, Jill did things she’d never done by herself before. Cathy usually stepped in. Cathy usually took over. But now it was just Jill, giving Barbara a bath in the kitchen sink. She bumped Barbara’s head on the faucet and put her pajama pants on backwards, but they figured it out. Eventually, they got it right.

  Jill fed Barbara a bottle, burped her, changed her, and then laid her down in the crib upstairs. She found a book and read from it. The story was meant for a much older kid, but Jill kept reading. After a while, she eased up from the chair, turned off the lights, and watched Barbara for a few more minutes before she made her way down the hall and the stairs.

  Jill didn’t feel like a mother. She didn’t feel like she was entirely herself, either. There was always some distance, some spiritual gap she couldn’t seem to bridge. But maybe that was normal. Maybe that’s how everyone felt.

  I’m so sexy? she said like a question. She went over to Porky’s cage. He was holding tight to his perch, looking at himself in the mirror. Jill watched him through the metal bars. Porky was only a year old. He could live ninety-nine more. He would outlive all of them. Cathy kept saying how they needed to make up a will, for Porky, and now for Barbara.

  It h
urts, Porky answered. Whatchya think? It hurts.

  Jill stared at him a little longer. Then she threw the sheet over the cage.

  She was sprawled in the chair with the television on by the time Cathy finally came home.

  Howdy, Cathy said, when she opened the door and closed it behind her. She stepped out of her boots and set her duffel by the door. She unclipped the talkie and switched it off. She stopped and listened, then pointed up. She asleep?

  Jill nodded.

  You did that? Cathy said.

  Jill shrugged.

  Wow, Cathy said. She took a deep breath and let it out again. She made her way to the matching chair and fell back in it. She stared at the TV, and by the look on her face, Jill could tell that the wreck had been bad, that probably someone was dead.

  They both stared at the television. It was a nature show, something about the way plants are adapting to conditions of global warming. The screen showed a time-lapsed video of a desert plant, its leaves widening to catch more of the morning’s dew.

  I took Barbara for a drive, Jill said.

  Did it work? Cathy said.

  I guess so.

  Good, Cathy said. Then she turned and looked at Jill. Show me your hands, she said like she did every day. She’d been after Jill to go see a doctor about the tremors. She warned that it might be a sign of a medical condition. Maybe something serious.

  Jill rolled her eyes, but she stuck out her hands. They still shook but maybe less so. Five fingers were painted and five still weren’t.

  Here, Cathy said. The bottle of Blue Blazes was on the table. Cathy turned on the lamp and went to unscrew the lid, but Jill took it from her. You, she said. She motioned for Cathy to put her hands on the table.

  Cathy rolled her tongue and shook her head. Nails, that’s something I don’t do.

  Jill, though, wouldn’t take no for an answer. She thought of the girl at Foxy Lady. I know what you need, she said with surprising force.

  Cathy watched with eyes that were tired but searching, and when she looked at Jill like that, Jill got the feeling that Cathy saw things deep inside her, as if in Jill, there was still so much to be found.

  Jill shoved a clear spot on the table between them. She tapped the varnished wood until finally, Cathy relented. Finally, Cathy spread her fingers out flat.

  Jill took the cap off the bottle. I think we should teach Porky something new.

  Cathy frowned. Like what?

  Jill shrugged. I don’t know. Maybe some of those codes you use.

  Cathy laughed. Code 33, 999.

  See? Jill said. It’d be funny. Porky the paramedic parrot. After a while, she added, I could learn too.

  Jill held onto Cathy’s hand to steady her own. The lines weren’t perfect, but she kept painting. Even when it was uncomfortable to lean like that, even when she felt a muscle cramp, she would keep on until she couldn’t, reaching out across the little table and the remote control and whatever else that was piled there between them.

  OF WOLVES

  The gall bladder, Candy said, is left of the pancreas.

  Gall bladder, pancreas. Gall bladder, pancreas. The pancreas was right, so the gall bladder left, Candy said and said again. She saw the body parts with faces and legs and arms and hands that the gall bladder, angry as he was, balled into fists and shook at the pancreas. I’ve had it up to here with you!

  Mnemonic devices. Mind cartoons. This was what Candy had been reduced to. She gritted her teeth until they squeaked. She used to memorize things—license plates, for instance—without even trying. See it to know it, her father had said. That’s my Candy.

  But she wasn’t his Candy anymore. She was forty now, and nothing came easy.

  The frog in the tray was starting to smell. Candy gripped the tweezers, but her hand shook. She pushed up the sleeve of her robe and grabbed her own wrist, dug her thumb into the meat between the thin bones until her fingers went numb.

  Gall bladder, pancreas. Pancreas says, I’m outta here! I’m through with you! Sayonara, gall!

  Just slow down, Marty said. He was mumbling, but Candy could understand. Tell me what happened.

  Marty was still in bed. He was still in his boxer shorts. He was still asleep.

  Candy, at her vanity, dug at the frog. Gall bladder says, Beat it then! See if I care!

  She glanced up at the mirror, but Marty’s eyes were closed. His mouth was smashed open against the pillow, so that his tongue showed pink and wet.

  Candy went back to the frog. Adios, muchacho!

  There was a time when Candy’s mother Sue had tried to explain her daughter, mostly to teachers who were, they said, simply voicing their concerns. Candy tries too hard sometimes, Sue would say. That’s her problem. She just wants everything to be perfect.

  In many ways, Sue didn’t understand her daughter, but she’d gotten this part right. What she’d said was as true then as it was now. Candy had a desperate need to make sense of the world. She wanted things to line up in some order of importance, and when they didn’t, she’d do the rearranging until she could discern some reasonable relationship between cause and effect. Candy would be the one to make sense of it all.

  Sometimes this sense was as small as the insertion of a period rather than a comma. The reporter who worked under Candy, The Airhead, could never correct her own splices no matter how many times Candy pointed them out.

  Other times, Candy constructed what she believed to be the larger order of things—the fact that it was her mother’s penchant for clutter and spontaneity and what she called “life” that made Candy the way she was, what some, including those concerned teachers, had called obsessive. Neurotic. Controlling. These words were better than those that passed between Candy’s classmates. They couldn’t come up with anything better than weird or weirdo.

  Logic of a certain kind and magnitude—what made a person a person, for instance—was not what one would call pleasant, but Candy felt a certain satisfaction in her own knowledge, a haughtiness about the things she knew and assumed others didn’t.

  It was pitiful, Candy thought, the way people went on about things, like they had no will or say, like they were sacks of bodies without bones and brains. Candy, for example, was simply explaining that a comma was needed every time you used a conjunction to join two independent clauses when The Airhead ran out of the office with her face caved in on itself and her nose full of snot.

  This is why, Candy told Marty, The Airhead is on a fast track to nowhere. In every instance, Candy preferred knowledge to ignorance. Her teachers had appreciated what they called her curiosity and her knack for proper sentence construction even if Candy was a bit ruthless when it came to literature, to understanding a character’s actions and motivations. She was one of those students that came to a story or a novel from a place of righteous expectation. In “My Papa’s Waltz,” she could not get over the fact that the father had a drinking problem. Who cared about this rare moment of tenderness between child and parent? And who could take seriously the blind man in “Cathedral”? They were all just a bunch of drug addicts after all. Regular hedonists with no control. Forgiveness, to Candy, meant nothing, and it seemed, said the teacher, that empathy meant even less.

  Candy’s essays and presentations were tiresome, but she never missed a deadline or forgot to introduce quoted material without a proper signal phrase. Such details, her teachers agreed, were important and in fact, essential to success. These fundamental concepts composed the very foundations of good writing, and anything Candy lacked was too difficult to identify, too complicated to correct in the proofreader’s shorthand teachers favored when they were staring down the barrel of a hundred freshman essays. A, their tired hands scrawled, and it was Candy’s own heavy-browed glare, a look so volatile as to foster its own apparition, that came so easily to mind even when the teachers were in their socks in their own homes with their coffee and their cats, and so, seeing this child’s face as if it were there and full of terror in the very room with them
, they scratched out the minus. What did, they thought, a few points matter? What did any of it matter when you got down to it?

  And this was just the sort of existential thinking that would have driven Candy into a lip-splitting, eye-blackening rage. After a few exemplary incidents, those kids that called her a weirdo weren’t brave enough to say it to her face. They’d seen what could happen. They’d seen what Candy could do.

  But in the classroom, Candy’s rigor and dedication as well as her work for the student newspaper—who could forget that stellar article on why they were the Fighting Falcons?—pushed Candy’s teachers to suggest journalism, and, as she had always done, Candy followed their instructions to the soulless letter. There was about her the nature of a robot, as if under that skull of matted brow and hair there was not a mind but instead a set of wires and chips.

  All of that had been so long ago, but school, specifically grades 1–12, was somehow still the defining experience of Candy’s existence. Except for the four years she’d spent at Clemson, Candy had lived her whole life in Black Creek in the same house as her mother.

  Sympathetic people said it wasn’t that Candy was an unfeeling person. It wasn’t, as one especially bored teacher had hoped, that Candy was a sociopath. It was just, these poor sensitive souls said, that parts of Candy had been arrested. She hadn’t developed in all the ways a girl should, and, too, her curiosity—which was actually more like an aggressive interrogation—was manifested in the very shapes and lines of her physical appearance. There was the squirreled brow she refused to pluck or even, as Sue gently suggested, shape, and this brow, bully that it was, dwarfed and shaded every other feature of Candy’s face that might have held or expressed joy, passion, or even a real sense of sadness. And, in a part of the country that favored monograms and pearls and, on occasion, full skirts and hose, Candy wore baggy slacks that hung loose in the seat and rode tight in the waist and the ankles which gave way to a pair of odorous orthopedic sandals.