Death in Her Hands

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  I walked all the way back at night, pulling Charlie with me, as punishment, really. I knew he was scared. I hadn’t fed him. I refused to talk to him. That was how I used to punish Charlie—I turned quiet and cold. I had learned how cruel this was from Walter. Some nights he’d come home, and I’d have his dinner heated in the oven, and I’d have the lights in the den so lovely and comfortable, and I’d be reading on the couch, and he’d simply walk past, drop his coat on the back of the couch, nearly hitting me in the head. Not “Good evening, Vesta,” or “How are you?” Nothing. Later, in bed, he’d groan and complain about a student or a colleague or some paper that was due, as though his work were so important and he was so put upon by the trivialities of life. He had no idea of the trivialities of life. Early on in our marriage, he had passed those all onto me. I don’t think he’d been to a grocery store for thirty years by the time he died.

  I took some deep breaths and slowed my pace. I could see the opening at the end of the little road through the pines. I drummed my fingers against the hard edge of the Death book they’d given me. It reminded me, the look and feel of it, the crisp bound corners covered in the dark blue cloth, of a book Walter had given me once, I think, just to shut me up. The Comforts of Phenomenalism, it was called. Every time I complained to him, he merely pointed out that reality was a perception, and that my perception was inherently flawed because I didn’t have the same education as him.

  “And whose fault is that?” I asked.

  “It’s certainly not mine. I’m just another pawn here, in the chess game of life.” This was a metaphor he’d stolen from me and used to mock me with. I’d made the mistake once of comparing our life in Monlith to a chess game with an idiot, how long I was waiting for something to happen, some move, whether threatening or banal, just so I’d have something new to do.

  I didn’t read much of The Comforts of Phenomenalism. It depressed me to think about existential issues. It made me feel I was living in a dream and that although I was powerless over my mind, I was also dependent on it to conjure up all of my reality around me. When I didn’t like what I saw, I blamed myself. “Conjure something better,” I told myself. “Conjure a bed of roses, a million dollars, a cruise ship, old-time music, champagne, Walter as a young man again, and you young, too, dancing in the sunset, warm heavenly breezes lifting your feet from the deck, nothing to worry about, nothing to be ashamed of,” and I’d close my eyes and open them to Walter’s balding, waxy head on the pillow beside me. He was still handsome, but there was no romance left between us. I’d conjured that out of him, I supposed. Maybe I’d wanted too much, to be too comfortable. I could have run away, but those stories never ended well.

  When I reached the edge of the pines, where the neighbor’s gravel road opens onto Route 17, the sun was setting already. How was it possible? I’d barely investigated at all, and soon I would have to go back home. I didn’t want to be wandering around Levant once night fell. It would be a very strange thing to see, some old woman in her dusty coat grasping Death in her hands and whistling into the forest. Ghod, on his way to the party, would surely stop to ask if I’d lost my mind. But Charlie was still out there. I didn’t feel I could live with myself just turning back around and going home, so I decided to walk to the store, and see whether Henry was holding him hostage. I could call a taxi to take me home. I hadn’t brought my purse, but I did have an emergency ten-dollar bill in the inside pocket of my coat. Or so I’d thought. When I checked, the pocket was empty. I hadn’t taken the money out. Someone must have stolen it, along with the neighbor’s medical bill, which was also missing. The man, I presumed. I could imagine him dragging me from the front yard into their sitting room, placing me faceup on the settee, feeling my pulse weak. He had placed his ear on my chest hoping or not hoping for a heartbeat. I wondered what else he had done while I was unconscious. With his hands on my body like that, he could have easily found his way into my pocket. My coat had been zipped when I’d sat down on their lawn. And it was unzipped when I awoke on the settee. He was a thief. He probably hoped to sabotage my hunt for Charlie, in cahoots with Ghod. Everyone was in cahoots. Even Shirley seemed to trust Ghod. “Call the police. They’ll come out right away.”

  As I walked along in the quickly dwindling light up the road, no cars passed, and so I opened the book and read a paragraph at random.

  Nobody knows your sorrows. It is best to keep it that way, as expressing sadness often invites pity. Sensitive women or young people often find pity consoling, and so they pervert their tearfulness into superficial melancholy in order to be further comforted. Some may become dependent on this superficial comfort, and will entangle themselves in darkness so that those around them will constantly try to “brighten” their spirits. Some call this “the depression.” Make it a regular habit to deny sadness when someone asks how you are coping. When you publicize your lament, the dead feel you’ve cheapened their absence, as though you’re taking advantage of their deaths to reap the attention you secretly wished for yourself while they were dying. When you mourn openly, the dead feel as though they’ve been murdered. If you must weep, do it in the bath, or in bed alone at night. Do not dedicate your sadness to anything but the dead. It is easy to confuse things, which is another reason to be discreet.

  What nonsense, I thought. To do the opposite of what the book decreed, I decided to be miserable. I tried to summon tears from my eyes as I walked. The sky darkening above me helped. I first thought of everything that angered me—Walter’s constant belittling, a lifetime of boredom in Monlith, my dashed dreams, my squandered passion, the abduction of my dog, the theft of my ten-dollar bill. That got me thrashing, mentally. And then I thought of my loneliness, my approaching death, how nobody knew me, how nobody cared. I thought of my parents, long dead, and how little love they’d given me. I thought of Walter, of his nauseatingly gentle caresses. Even when he meant to be tender, he was condescending and controlling. I’d never been loved properly. Nobody had ever said, “You are wonderful, even your bitterness and neurotic energy are wonderful. Even your suspiciousness, your rigidity, your graying, thinning, hair, your wrinkled thighs.” I’d been young and beautiful once, and even then nobody had kissed me and said, “How young and beautiful you are,” not unless they wanted something from me. And that was Walter. Always wanting something, some permission to be boastful, some permission to have power. I cried and cried, thinking of the love I could have had, had I never met that awful, deleterious, pompous man. I let tears drip from my eyes, my head bent toward the gravel, and as they splatted they made a little trail behind me. Maybe Charlie would pass by later and follow the trail. Poor Charlie. He was the only one on Earth who loved me, and even he had left. My head began to throb. I got dizzy again. The moon was up. The stars would come out. Ahead I could see the yellow lights of Henry’s store, the single gas pump, the blur of pink neon from the sign that I knew read “Cold Beer.”

  Inside, Henry stood behind the counter with his back facing me, arranging cartons of cigarettes. I hid between the aisles of bread and cereal. It was a wonder a place like that could stay in business. I imagined the only people who went there regularly were the residents of Levant who could not afford the gas to the strip mall in Bethsmane. I’d seen such poor people counting their change, drinking from two-liter soda bottles in their trucks. I was indeed fortunate. The Girl Scout camp had been so cheap. I thought of the poor people, how they weathered things with such tough skins. They were the kind of people who could swallow their sorrows, be brave, be selfless, just as this Death book prescribed. I paced the aisles of Henry’s store, my boots squeaking on the linoleum floors. In the one refrigerator case there were just three half-gallon jugs of milk, a couple of packages of imitation cheese, butter, margarine, and bacon, the kind that’s presliced and sealed in clear plastic. There was a large neon orange “99 cents” sticker on it. The store carried basic household goods—sprays and cleaners, various hardware, big boxes of matches, jars
and cans of food, and sundries. The shelving was aluminum painted off-white, with little round holes punched through. I slid Death under a loaf of bread. I no longer wanted it. And I didn’t want to seem suspicious, walking with such a book. That would look very odd. “She must be out walking around, lamenting the dead,” Henry would think. But I’m not so sure how much Henry did think at all. The back of his head was muddled on one side, long graying hairs combed over what looked like mushy scar tissue covered in skin white and thin in spots, then blushing darkly into indigo. I was a little nervous to speak to him. The times I’d visited the store before, I’d had Charlie with me to distract me from his face. It was easy not to look him in the eye then. But now it was just him and me, the darkening evening outside. He’d said nothing when I walked in. Maybe he had hearing loss.

  “Finding everything all right?” he asked suddenly, without turning around. He didn’t sound like such an idiot. I worked up the courage to walk up to the counter, empty handed.

  “This is very embarrassing,” I said, looking down at the little rack of chewing gum by the register. “But I seem to have left my money at home, and I’ve been out looking for my dog, and it’s gotten too late to walk home, and there’s a problem with my car, and I wonder, have you seen a dog come by?”

  “It’s not safe for a lady to be walking out alone at night,” he said almost accusingly. I tried to look up into his face. It looked like his skull had been worn away on one side. I could see where the shotgun had blown part of his head off.

  “I didn’t intend to be walking around at night when I left the house,” I said defensively. “So you haven’t seen a dog around? Nothing strange?”

  “Strange is relative,” he said. He reached beneath the counter and brought out the phone, a black old-fashioned thing that looked greasy and marked up with fingerprints. “I haven’t seen your dog,” he told me, now reaching down under the counter again. This time he pulled out the slim phone book for the Bethsmane area. “You can look up the number for animal control. And Leo Smith. He’s the only person I know works by giving rides. Pay me back for the calls next time you’re in the store.”

  “May I ask you, sir, have you ever heard of a girl named Magda?”

  “Mary Magdalene?” he thumbed his nose and sat down on a tall stool. “I didn’t take you for a Christian.”

  “Oh, I’m not. I was just wondering—”

  He scratched at the blown-off side of his head. He must have had awful headaches. I couldn’t imagine what that would have felt like. I wanted to ask, but I was holding the receiver in my hand now. I flipped through the phone book and found Leo Smith’s number. I dialed, smiling and nodding at the disfigured man. It was a miracle he’d survived. I wondered if he resented it, having been found and saved. Or had he saved himself? Stood up and held a towel to his head, brushed the shredded brains from his shoulder, and driven himself to the hospital? There were stories I’d read about things like that. The phone rang and rang, but nobody answered. I hung up.

  “No answer.”

  “I can drive you,” Henry said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of that,” I said. And I backed away and up the aisles. “If my dog comes by, will you hold him?”

  “I’m not sure I want to hold on to a stranger’s dog.”

  “My name is Vesta. Vesta Gool.”

  “Vestibule?” The man chuckled to himself. “That can’t be right.” He shook his head.

  I left the store. In case Henry suspected I was snooping, I made noise skidding in the loose gravel in the parking area out front, then stomped my boots on the pavement as I walked out of view of the store. Then I tiptoed back and snuck into the woods—just short pines, bushes mostly—and stepped as quietly as I could around to the back of the store. I could see light shining from a window facing the back, and a high chain-link fence around the back corner. I got closer, saw that the fence was padlocked shut. “Charlie?” I whispered. When I peered through the links of the fence, all I could see were cases of beer stacked along the outside wall of the store, and an overturned crate. The gravel around it was littered with cigarettes. I whistled softly. Charlie didn’t bark or whimper. If he had heard me, he would have. He was not inside. I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to fight Henry to get back my dog. But still, where was Charlie?

  I made my way back to the road through the bush and jogged up Route 17, keeping to the center double line of fading white paint glowing in the moonlight. If I just kept to that line, I thought, I’d make it home safely. There was a distinct metallic tang in the air, and although the sky was clear I sensed a storm approaching. If Magda’s body had been a real dead thing, it would soon be washed clean of evidence. If I’d believed in God, I’d have asked Him for a sign. “Show me what to do” is all I could think of sending up into the mindspace, which was like all of outer space above me on the road. One couldn’t imagine how many stars were up there. I was afraid to look, afraid that the stars might spell out some answer from God, and then what would I do? If Walter had been alive, he’d pull up beside me in the car, insist I get in that instant. “Why are you being so silly, Vesta? Get in the car. There is no God up in the sky. There is no great conspiracy. This is what happens when you don’t occupy yourself—you get bored. You start inventing things. Now, stop this nonsense. Come home and go to bed. You are exhausting yourself for no good reason.”

  “Oh, all right, Walter,” I would have said. “You’re right.”

  “You’re chasing the white rabbit. Get in.”

  But what did Walter know about chasing anything? He made a living sitting still, just thinking things and writing them down, convincing others that what he thought and wrote was correct, and in this way, the world was supposed to change? His work was that powerful? I was sick of theory. What mattered was what a person did, not what they went around pontificating about!

  “Let me see if I understand you. You say you are bored, and yet you have the entire world at your fingertips. You haven’t even tried to use the computer I bought you.”

  That was the last argument we had, Walter and I, him convincing me to be happy and satisfied in the huge house in Monlith. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait for you to die. I hope your tumor grows and grows. I hope that cancer kills you quick.” And for weeks I thought of it there, in his testicles, a little pustule to start out with, festering with the rage that I was projecting into it. I channeled through the mindspace all the acid vitriol I’d ever felt for Walter, burrowing it into his body through the lungs every time he inhaled. That is really how I killed him. In my mind. I once heard Pastor Jimmy mention something called a “psychic death.” Maybe that is what I’d brought on in Walter. Had it pained me to watch Walter suffer? Well, yes, of course, I had to concede that. It was awful. He was my husband, my one and only, the only man I’d ever loved. To watch him suffer was to suffer. It was excruciating to watch him die. And I did feel somewhat responsible. One of the first things I’d Asked Jeeves when I took the computer class was “What does cancer feel like?”

  When I passed by the turn in the road, I heard no music, no twinkling crystal, no laughter from the neighbor’s cottage. The lights from the cottage were dim but I could see them, glowing red through the thick of black trees. I thought to whistle for Charlie—maybe he was stuck in a hole somewhere out in the woods and would howl if he heard me—but I was scared to make any noise. I didn’t want any trouble. And a part of me believed that Charlie wasn’t out there. It was useless to look for him. He was gone, and I had to accept that. I cried as I walked. It felt good to feel so sad, to allow myself to grieve. I was haggard and tired and thirsty and hungry. I needed to be soothed, and there would be nobody to soothe me. And so I decided to soothe myself. I invented a new voice in my head: “Poor old Vesta.” I could feel this other Vesta resonating in the mindspace. Perhaps the tang of storm was her, the coming of a new spirit into the atmosphere, replacing Walter.

  I was
very relieved to come upon my own mailbox by the side of the road. I rarely checked it, for I rarely received any mail. I found only a coupon circular when I stuck my hand in now. There was an eerie quietude to the night as I walked this final stretch to the cabin, as though the trees were holding their breath as I passed. As the car and then the lake and cabin came into view, the sky cloudless despite the coming storm and lit by the full moon, which I finally looked up to acknowledge, I swore I heard a whisper, just a word, unintelligible, but just as sure as the wind in the trees was it the voice of a human girl, my Magda, no doubt. I could almost feel her eyes on me as I walked over the gravel and to the front door. Then I tripped on something on the path and fell face-first into my empty garden of dirt.