Death in Her Hands

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  “Kids today,” the woman said suddenly, stopping and bending over. She picked a book up off the floor, moving so slowly that I wondered at first if she was going to lie down and die. But she dusted the book off and slid it onto a shelf, then shuffled onward. I waited at the end of the aisle until she’d disappeared, though I could hear her rhythmic footsteps, the rustling of her big coat. The stench of her lingered. I inhaled and gagged. For some reason it pleased me to be so displeased by her perverse aroma. My face was in an exaggerated frown, I realized, and had been for long enough that my cheeks started to hurt. I tried to relax and breathe through my mouth. Then I walked up the aisle, as the woman had done, and inspected the book she’d picked up off the floor. To my astonishment, it was The Collected Works of William Blake. Blake. Blake. Holding it in my hands, I stood perplexed there for at least a minute. What on Earth was happening? I looked down at the worn red cloth cover, holding the book like a relic, like some charged thing. I turned to the frontispiece. The contents were all in old-fashioned type. It was like looking at a Bible as I flipped through. I didn’t know where to rest my eyes in all that language piled up—I didn’t know what it meant. And then I arrived at a page where it seemed the spine had been broken, since the pages stopped flipping as though someone’s finger had interjected and pointed and a voice in my head said, “Here.”

  There, underlined at the top of the page, was a short poem, only a dozen lines altogether, called “The Voice of the Ancient Bard”:

  How many have fallen there!

  They stumble all night over bones of the dead,

  And feel they know not what but care,

  And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

  It was clearly a message to me, from young Blake, my Blake. How sweet to send me a poem in return. He must have appreciated the poem I had left him that morning in the birch woods. What a special boy he was indeed. And with this in mind, I did something I never would have done before: I ripped the page from the book and tucked the thick volume between the encyclopedias, where I had drifted somehow as I’d read. I didn’t care if the smelly woman knew I’d done such a thing. She was some kind of siren, I thought, her strange look and atrocious smell mere flags for me to stop and look. Oh, what joy I felt in finding my next clue, though I couldn’t really make heads or tails of it.

  It was nearing five o’clock then, and the librarian clanged a bell—how old-fashioned, I thought—and announced that the library would be closing in half an hour. I folded Blake’s poem and stuck it in my coat pocket. I wanted to study the poem with my mindspace clear, away from the lamebrained people of Bethsmane. On my way out, I stopped in the ladies’ room, which was down a darkened corridor by the back exit of the library. I had used it several times before. It reminded me of the bathrooms of my public school days, the clouded polished metal that stood for an approximation of a mirror, the tight, graying octagonal tiles, the crafted and finely molded wooden doors and panels separating the old white porcelain toilets with jet-black seats. The toilets flushed with such power it was as if they’d been intended to do something other than just eliminate human waste—to disturb the pressure of the air in a room, to suck out some of the energy, to wash out one’s mindspace even, I thought to myself.

  “Goddammit,” I heard a voice say as the flushing ebbed. It was a woman, of course, and when I bent down to look under the stall door, I saw something one rarely saw in places like Bethsmane: feet in conservative one-inch-heeled shoes and flesh-colored stockings. It was not something people did around there, wear shoes or hose like that. Women in Bethsmane wore jeans, or leggings, or sweats. You might see young girls in short pants or miniskirts, but grown women did not dress in skirts or dresses. Bethsmane wasn’t for ladies. It was for people who hunted or drove trucks. It wasn’t an elegant place. The only wine I could ever find was in the grocery store, and the selection was all domestic. There was a reason I bought bagels that came presliced and needed refrigeration. The bakery where I bought my weekly donut sold bread, but it was mealy and full of sugar. I think they used the same dough for the bread as they did for the donuts. The place wasn’t cultured by any measure. People ate fast food. If they cooked, they weren’t eating many vegetables. I don’t know why, since there were farms all around downstate from us. It wasn’t like the ground wasn’t fertile. My seeds would have grown had they not been stolen. Women mostly dressed in cheap synthetic materials. The blouses they wore were tie-dyed and glittery, and many women had tattoos on their arms. The more “stylish” women looked like they should be on the back of a motorcycle. The softer types, the ones who just seemed practical, dressed in comfort clothes—tennis shoes or rubber flats you found at the drugstore, even in winter, it seemed. I had proper snow boots myself. I owned a pair of tennis shoes, but preferred sandals in warmer weather, or my leather walking shoes. I was practical, too, by the time I got to Levant, but I had dressed like a lady when I was one, when I was married, in Monlith. I’d worn things that buttoned up and skirts that flowed. So I felt I understood the kind of woman to wear closed-toed pumps and stockings like the woman in the bathroom stall beside mine. There her feet were, bulging out of brown snakeskin, scuffed and worn around the blocky heels. Her ankles were swollen, and the space between her feet was large. She had taken a wide stance, but why?

  “Goddammit.” The feet came together, clomped across the tile, then widened, and then there was a little grunt. And “Excuse me?” I heard the voice say after a moment.

  “Hello? Yes? Are you talking to me?”

  “Yeah,” the voice said. “Do you see a set of keys in there?”

  Instinctively I peered down into the toilet, which I had just flushed. I didn’t think I had seen any keys in there when I’d sat down. But it wasn’t my habit to check for things in toilets. Even after I made my business, I didn’t look. Because why would I? Who would expect to be surprised by a set of keys in the toilet bowl? Who would expect anything to be in there at all, except for what you’d know to be? “No, I’m sorry. There’s nothing here.”

  “Not behind the toilet bowl, not on the toilet paper thing?” the voice asked.

  I pulled up my pants, clutched my purse, and bent over. “No, there is nothing in here,” I said. I didn’t like how close my face had come to that black toilet seat.

  I opened the stall door. The woman was large, but not obese like the fat ones. She was only chubby. From behind she reminded me of a clapping seal, the way her buttocks flattened, her hands raised as if in prayer at her chest. She leaned against one of the two sinks there. The blur of her reflection in the fake mirror was white and red. Her hair was dyed and coiffed with hair spray. It was not a nice head of hair, but it was clear that attention had been paid to it, as had the selection of the floral print dress—pastel watercolor pansies on a pale blue background. She had almost no waist, and wore a tight white cardigan sweater, pilly and stretched across the back, wrinkling at the armpits. She was oddly flat-chested for someone overweight, I thought. Her chins were buoyant, but not completely shameful. Her face, when she turned to me, was pale with powder. A clear navy-blue line of makeup covered each eyelid. From where I stood, I could see the widened pores around her nose, the remnants of some pearly shimmering lipstick. She must work as a receptionist, I thought. She must do something in front of people, to be in Bethsmane and make such a fuss about her appearance. Not that there would have been anything out of the ordinary if we were in a normal suburb, anywhere remotely civilized. She’d be a dud in any real city. But she had put in some effort, which was remarkable.

  Funny to me that of all days to run into such a person, I’d be dressed so poorly. To anyone in Bethsmane, I was not out of fashion. My worst attire was better than what most people wore to work. This woman had on large fake pearl earrings, as well. She was probably around forty years old, but could have been younger. It was impossible to tell with poorer people how old they were.

  “Goddammit,” t
he woman said, her small pink lips trembling in a way that was to me surprisingly endearing. I took a step back into the stall. “I lost my keys,” she said frowning. And then she turned away and began to cry. I’d never seen such a thing. I watched her thick ankles as she went to the paper towel dispenser and cranked it. She tore off some of the rough brown paper and blew her nose.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her. What else could I say? I went to the sink but didn’t wash my hands. I was clutching my purse too tightly. I didn’t know what to do.

  “It’s been one of those days,” the woman said. “I come to return a book and now I can’t drive home. I probably locked them in the car. Oh, God!” She blew her nose again. “And my son is probably home from school.” She looked up at me then, and within the desperation, I could see Blake in her face.

  “Shirley?” I said, then dropped my purse. My hands turned numb and I bent over mumbling, “Surely, surely they’re around here somewhere.”

  “Well,” Shirley said. She leaned over the sink, her soft body indenting where the porcelain pushed against her middle, her thighs, it was hard to detect what started and ended where under that confusing floral pattern. “I don’t know what to do now. I have an extra car key at home, but it’s ten miles from here. Do you know . . . ?” And her voice trailed off. She licked her finger and swiped the rim of her lower eyelid, then wiped the black stuff that came off—mascara—on the paper towel. She blew her nose again. From her pocketbook she pulled out a tube of lipstick and dabbed it on, staring into her vague reflection in the polished metal.

  “Do I what?” I asked. “What do I know?” I picked up my own purse, rummaged through it as though it would explain something to me. Blake’s poem in my pocket felt like a ticket to something I was running late to. I had wanted to get home, light a candle, decipher it line by line. But here was Shirley, one of my characters. I’d have to be inquisitive, get her to expose herself in a way that would arouse no suspicion. I’d have to get her to warm to me. She seemed soft, overtly so. Standing beside her, me so skinny and ravenous under my down-filled coat, cold in the dim bathroom and tile, I almost wanted her to embrace me, put her arms around me. She was maternal in this sense. Still, I couldn’t get really close to her. She might be in on the murder somehow. I hated the thought of that, but women killed children all the time. They’re the closest to them and suffer the most having to raise them up.

  “I was just going to ask,” Shirley turned to me now—she didn’t seem to fear me, but she was shy, she blushed—“if you know if there’s a bus out to Woodlawn Avenue, out that way? I know there’s a school bus. But . . .”

  “Did you retrace your steps? Whenever I can’t find something, I try to remember—what did I do when I first walked in? Did I hang up my coat? Did I open the fridge? Did I drink a glass of water? Did you think it through? Couldn’t you call a cab?”

  Shirley sighed. She thumbed through her pocketbook again.

  “My money is in the car. My wallet. Probably next to my keys.” I can’t say exactly how I understood the pretense of this statement, but I took it somehow to be Blake pulling at the strings of fortune. It didn’t matter whether Shirley was telling the truth or not. Blake wanted me to see the house where he lived with Shirley, and where Magda had spent so many months in the basement. He was the one who had taken Shirley’s keys and wallet, of course. Shirley may have been in on it, too. I wasn’t sure how wide the scope of the scheme was, whether Shirley was smart or stupid. She did seem sincerely upset, but maybe she was just a good actress. A woman like that might have to be, and she was wearing quite a costume.

  “I can drive you,” I said, “if you show me where to go.” Perhaps this was part of Blake’s clue: They stumble all night over bones of the dead, And feel they know not what but care, And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

  I led Shirley out to my car in the lot behind the library. She politely directed me to the house, pointing where to turn, where to slow, where Woodlawn Road becomes Woodlawn Avenue. A boy appeared now in the graying early evening by the side of the road straddling a bicycle, his dark plaid flannel shirt floating behind him in the wind like a cape. He was exactly as I’d hoped he’d be: his eyes were alert but distant, the skin around them almost orange, like healing bruises. His forehead was thick and crested over his eyes, though his eyebrows were sparse, his skin an ashy olive tone. His chin, so unlike his mother’s, was cut as if by a knife, chiseled, sharp, and his mouth was wide and thin, his jaw a swooping thing that made me think of a ship’s anchor. He’d stopped at the edge of the driveway—two dark, worn, dirt galleys with fresh baby grass growing in a bed between them.

  “My son,” said Shirley. “Say hello to Mrs. Gool,” she said. I’d told her my name when she’d asked me in the parking lot. “Vesta, is that short for something?” she had asked. “It’s pretty. Reminds me of Velveeta. Or holy vestments.”

  “Hello,” I said, nervous for the boy to see my face. He leaned over with his hands gripping the handlebars, trundled back and forth like he was revving an engine. His T-shirt was white, his hair short and combed with grease. He wore blue jeans, not too baggy, and heavy black boots with thick, tracked soles. He just nodded at me.

  “House open?”

  “Yeah. Car break down?” he said. His voice was low, secretive, and caring.

  “Lost my keys, so Mrs. Gool gave me a ride.”

  “I could have brought you the spare,” he said, already up and balancing on his bike, ready to fly away.

  “Hop in,” I called out after him, but he was gone down the road already. “The bike would fit in the back,” I said.

  “He’s probably going to a friend’s house,” Shirley said. We drove on toward the house. “This is it,” Shirley said as we pulled up. “Now let me just run in and get the spare. You really don’t mind waiting? Do you want to come inside?”

  Of course, this was the proposition I was waiting for, but suddenly I felt my curiosity wane. “Oh no,” I said. “I don’t want to impose.”

  “You wouldn’t be imposing.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said.

  “All right, have it your way,” said Shirley, suddenly curt as she heaved herself up out of the car and shut the door behind her. The exterior of the house was worn, but more charming than the aluminum-sided box I’d imagined: chipping blue paint on old wooden siding, darkened windows with peeling white frames, some kind of twisting crystal hanging, bewitching things through the small glass porthole window in the front door, which was hooded in a half eave made of corrugated metal. The front steps were low, only two of them, and poured from the old kind of cement concrete that had pebbles pressed into it. I watched Shirley daintily step toward the front door. She did some strange ritual with the doorknob, pulling up then pulling toward her, then cranking her hand back and shoving the door with her shoulder. It opened into a dim wallpapered room and I could see stairs winding down. The way to the basement would be through a door at the bottom of those stairs, I thought to myself. Shirley turned around, her face flush with stress.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” she called out to me. “I feel bad. Come have a glass of water, at least, Mrs. Gool?” She waved, holding the door open.

  I conceded. I wanted to see the inside of the house. She was a gentle woman. I knew that she hadn’t killed anyone, could never. She may even be concerned for Magda, wondering why she hadn’t come home the last two nights. Shirley was well intentioned. She was an honest person. A homemaker. The floors in her house were bare and worn through so that the shellac went dull everywhere but around the edges of the rooms and the halls.

  “You probably don’t want to take off your coat, it’s drafty in here,” Shirley said, setting down her pocketbook on a white wicker table in that wallpapered front hall. The wallpaper itself was not dissimilar to the print of Shirley’s dress: yellow and blue flowers on a grayish background, painterly, not un
attractive, but mottled where it seemed there had been a leak down one wall, and peeling in other spots near the ceiling, which had raw plywood over half of it. A pipe had burst, I deduced. There was messy popcorn spackle on the other half of the ceiling. “Come into the kitchen and sit down while I . . . ” Shirley’s voice trailed off.

  “What a lovely home,” I said. The kitchen was like from another time, a time I had lived through but had never actually witnessed firsthand, I’d been too well off with Walter. Things were puce green, plastic, fake wood paneling on the kitchen walls, black iron pulls on the drawers, the scent of bacon fat heavy in the frigid air.

  “Well, I try to keep it clean, at least,” Shirley said, riffling through a drawer in the back of the kitchen.

  “Old house like this, must be quite a challenge. But so nice,” I said. “How many floors?”

  “Bedrooms are upstairs, and the bathroom. You need to go?”

  “No, no, I was just asking. It’s only you and your son?”

  “Yeah, my boy, my little man. He’s a good one. He keeps his mama happy.”

  If she knew that Magda was dead, it certainly didn’t seem like it. But what was making her so scatterbrained and emotional? Blake certainly seemed morose outside on the bike, and had wholly ignored me. Wise, I supposed. He wouldn’t want his mother to find out about our secret correspondence about Magda in the woods. The stairs down to the basement were narrow, right next to the refrigerator. At the bottom, the door was closed. Shirley wasn’t going to tell me she had a tenant. Even if she trusted me not to tell anyone, she’d think I’d have judged her. She’d fear renting out a basement sounded too lowbrow. She’d asked me in the car where I lived. “By Lake David,” I’d said. “Right on the shore, in the old Girl Scout camp.”