by Jen Beagin
“Anyway, you probably heard. He’s gone. His body hasn’t been found yet, but he always said that’s the way he wanted it. He must have crawled into the woods somewhere.”
She was struck with a sudden awareness of her nipples. They felt chafed, as if she’d been nursing a bearded man for the past thirty minutes. Then she realized it was loneliness. Which made perfect sense: nothing made her lonelier than a mouth on her nipple.
Loneliness is a presence you can feel in your body, she heard his voice say. She crossed her arms, thrust her hands into her armpits. Her head felt heavy and she considered resting it on the counter.
“You look totally cracked out,” Roxy said. “Why you wearing a bathrobe?”
“I’m fat,” she said.
“I take it you didn’t know,” Roxy said. “Must be a shock. I wasn’t surprised, though. He was pretty miserable.” She tapped her foot.
“Take a load off,” Mona said. “You’re making me nervous.”
She sat down. Her thighs dimpled where they met the stool. Her feet dangled slightly, not quite reaching the floor, and the leather on her shoes was marbled.
“What’s with the binoculars?” Roxy asked, pointing to where they sat on the counter.
“Bird-watching,” Mona said.
Roxy frowned. “I’m gonna miss the crazy fucker. That crazy voice’a his. Those stories he liked to read. He opened my eyes to a lotta shit. Whole other worlds. He used to read to me from this big fat book on myths? Persephone, Narcissus, Eros.”
She winced inwardly. Just another of his whores—that’s all Mona had been. She’d fooled herself into thinking they’d had some special bond. She looked over her shoulder toward the exit. Get away, she told herself. Make some excuse. You don’t need to hear anything more about it. She swiveled away from the counter and stood up.
“Where you going?”
“I’m cursed,” Mona said. “You probably shouldn’t be talking to me.”
Roxy looked irritated. “Don’t be like that,” she said seriously.
Mona swallowed and sat down again.
“I was gonna say—about Persephone—you know, I think about her a lot, ’cause I been tricked by pimps like that, but I don’t have anyone making deals with the devil for me, you know? I don’t have a mother, or anyone in my corner. I gotta look out for myself, not let myself get tricked. I gotta stop eating these pomegranate seeds, you know?” She licked her lips. “I think that’s the message.”
Mona shook her head. “The message is that you’re supposed to spend time in hell every year,” she said. “It’s, like, necessary.”
Roxy snorted. “For what?”
“Growth,” she said. “Development. Happiness.”
“I don’t know about you,” Roxy said, “but I live in hell year-round. I’m not some tourist.”
“Neither am I,” Mona said.
“I eat pancakes to get the taste of come out of my mouth.”
“Yeah, well, my mouth gets fucked, too—daily.”
Roxy looked at her sideways. “By what?”
“Bleach,” Mona said.
“You drink bleach?”
She laughed. “I clean houses. I inhale a lot of toxic fumes. It leaves a residue in my mouth and throat. I call it bleach throat.”
“You’re a maid? He never told me that.”
“He was embarrassed by it, I think,” Mona said. “Which is puzzling on a variety of levels.”
Roxy petted the critter on her right lid with the top of her forefinger. The gesture seemed to soothe her. Mona suddenly longed for a furry critter of her own. Tugging at the fur on her sleeve didn’t make her feel any better. She looked and felt like roadkill.
“Anyway, I saw him a week ago,” Roxy said. “I walked into his room and he was in bed with the television going. Old reruns of Soul Train—his favorite. He loved jerking off to that show.”
“I know,” Mona said, though this was the first she’d heard of it. Her eyes filled up. Don’t let it out just yet, she ordered herself. But the tears leaked out of her anyway, like sweat, and there was that feeling in her nipples again, the pain tugging from the inside, first one and then the other and then both at once.
Roxy reached over and adjusted the collar of Mona’s coat. “My mother used to wear a fur coat,” she said. “Real fur. She wore it while she worked. She’d just lay there on this dirty mattress, in the coat and nothing else, and the men would wait in line.”
“Jesus,” Mona said.
“Anyway, he wanted people to think he was all tough and stuff, but he was a total softie. He was like me—he felt things,” she said. “I can’t be in a room and not feel things.”
“Really?” Mona asked. “What are you feeling now?”
“Your sadness,” she said. Her face suddenly changed expressions—her mouth and chin drooped slightly and her eyes misted over. Then she swallowed hard and blinked several times, fighting back tears. It took Mona a second to realize Roxy was mirroring her expression.
“I feel things!” the drunk at the end shouted.
“Shut it, Carlos,” the waitress said.
“I have feelings,” he said in a loud whisper.
“I’ll give you a feeling if you don’t simmer down,” the waitress said.
“You think you’re better than me,” he said, to no one in particular. “But you’re no better.” He turned and looked at Mona. “You’re no better,” he repeated.
“Okay,” Mona said.
“Guess what, Carlos,” the waitress said. “It’s sleepy time.”
These were magic words, apparently, as he rubbed his eyes with his fists like a child, stood up, put on his coat, and walked to the door. “I’ve been to Egypt,” he murmured on his way out. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“He’s very charismatic,” Mona said, after he was gone.
“He’s Portagee,” the waitress explained, and set a plastic container containing the cake on the counter. “It’s mangled on one side, so it’s on the house.” She disappeared through a set of swinging doors. Mona caught a whiff of marijuana coming from the kitchen.
“Is that why you do drugs—because you feel things?” Mona asked.
“I’m not addicted to drugs. I’m addicted to this.” She gestured to her outfit.
“To not wearing pants?”
“Hooking,” Roxy said, unfazed. “It’s very addicting, believe it or not. I used to go to meetings for it.”
“Hookers Anonymous.”
“I kept relapsing. It’s really hard to work a regular job after you’ve done this awhile.” She reached up and stroked the critter on her left lid. Mona imagined the critters disengaging themselves from her eyelids and walking across Roxy’s face in opposite directions, disappearing into the damp jungle of her hair, where they’d eventually meet one another, embrace, and start mating.
“What’s your D.O.C.?” Roxy asked.
“Pardon?”
“Drug of choice.”
“Rubber cement,” Mona said. “And Liquid Paper.”
“For reals?”
“I was hooked on that stuff in elementary school. The glue was like coke, and the Liquid Paper was like crack.”
“You musta killed a lotta brain cells.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“So what’s your D.O.C. now?” Roxy asked, swinging her legs slightly.
“I don’t have one.”
“There’s gotta be something,” she said. “And don’t say something retarded, like ice cream.”
Mona thought about it briefly and decided to be candid. “My smell,” she said. She wished she were in her apartment now, lying on the couch in front of the television with her hand down her pants, alternately touching herself and sniffing her fingers. “You know, down there.”
Roxy laughed. “You must really like yourself.”
“Yeah, you’d think so,” Mona said. “Actually, I’ve been something of a panty sniffer my whole life.” She routinely sniffed the unde
rwear of her female clients; she didn’t go rummaging through the hamper, but if it was on the floor and she had to pick it up, she usually gave it a tentative sniff before throwing it in the laundry basket. “I’ve never told anyone that, by the way.”
“You shouldn’t,” Roxy said.
Mona shrugged. She expected to feel exposed, but didn’t.
Roxy leaned toward her and lowered her voice. “Do you, like, get off on it, or what?”
“Well, no. But it definitely alters my brain chemistry. It sort of stimulates and tranquilizes me at the same time.”
“Like a speedball?”
“Not as intense, obviously, and minus the, uh, life-threatening element.”
“I heard about your close call,” she said, and looked at the counter. “He felt bad about it.”
“Well, good, he should have. I was flopping around like a possessed person and he was all cavalier about it afterward.”
“He said you had a religious experience or something like that.”
“I was born again,” she said. “Literally.”
Roxy pointed to the cake. “You have a sweet tooth, like him.”
“It’s my birthday.”
“Aw,” Roxy said. “And here you are, all alone.” She reached over and touched Mona’s sleeve. Mona felt like punching her in the throat suddenly.
“I’m not alone,” Mona said.
They sat for a minute in silence, during which the words “I’m not alone” echoed in Mona’s head. She felt pain in her nipples again.
“Listen,” Mona said. “I’m thinking of leaving Lowell and moving to the desert.”
“To live?”
“No, to die,” she said. “Of course to live. Anyway, you can come with me, if you want. We can clean houses there. Start a business.”
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t last five minutes. I can barely wash my own hair.” She fingered the knot in her hair.
“Peanut butter might get that out,” Mona said.
“I’ll give you my underwear to sniff, if you’re jonesing,” Roxy said. “Might make you feel better.”
Mona laughed. “Enabler.”
“I’m serious.”
“It doesn’t work that way. It’s sort of a private thing—”
But Roxy slipped off the stool and strode toward the bathroom.
Mona swiveled toward Roxy’s backside, baffled. Did she really think Mona wanted her crusty underwear?
Time to go, she told herself. Sleepy time! She placed a few singles on the counter, grabbed the cake, and left before Roxy came back.
* * *
THE “DEAR VINCENT” LETTERS WERE becoming a habit. She wrote them in people’s kitchens. They were quick and dirty, whatever popped into her head, even if it was just a string of unrelated words. Often it was a question: Why do I feel the desire to perform minor surgery on myself? Should I go back on my meds? Why am I here? She sealed the notes in ziplock bags and left them in people’s yards. Under the porch, usually, or under a big rock. She liked the idea of someone finding them years from now, wondering who wrote them, how they got there. Although, she was beginning to feel a little like Emily Dickinson.
But now that was over, too. Judy, her new boss, hired a bunch of Colombians and made everyone work in teams. The main client, it turned out, was the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which required cleaning houses condemned for unsanitary conditions. Hence the shit heap in Pawtucketville last week. Its windows and light fixtures had been coated with what looked like honey but was actually nicotine, and so Mona and the Colombians—Judy of course wasn’t there—had been forced to clean in this weird brown darkness. Mona had opted for the kitchen, which she’d estimated would take a solid sixteen hours. The counters were littered with rotting garbage and unopened mail from the seventies, and for some reason there was dry dog food all over the floor, and not just a few cups but pounds and pounds of it, far too much to sweep or vacuum. The only thing to do was to shovel it into a trash can, which she began doing in earnest, and that’s when she noticed that it was alive and moving.
She dropped the shovel and called Judy. “Maggots” was all she could say.
“Pretend it’s white rice,” Judy said.
Thanks, Coach.
She’d continued shoveling in the dark, muttering to herself and listening to the Colombians laughing and singing in various parts of the house, and she must have shoveled herself into some kind of trance, because the old thoughts were coming back, telling her to fill her coat pockets with rocks and walk into the Merrimack River.
Later, when Mona was at home and in bed, Judy called and said, “I’m sorry, Mona, but I’m going to have to let you go.”
“Let me go?” Mona asked. “Where?”
“You’re burned out,” Judy said. “I need someone who can put their hustle pants on.”
“Hustle pants?”
“It’s not personal,” she said. “I have to think of my business right now.”
“You mean immigrant pants, right?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll still give you a good reference.”
Mona hung up and stared at Disgusting’s suicide note next to the alarm clock. She read the last paragraph as she did every night before turning off the lamp. “Go to the desert. I’ve always wanted to live in New Mexico, and I can easily picture you living in Taos, a small town I passed through when I was your age. Why not move there and start over? Rent an adobe casita. Paint some pictures. Join a healthy cult of some kind. Get a guru . . .”
* * *
A WEEK LATER SHE KNOCKED on her landlord’s door. He answered wearing a sweater vest and reading glasses and holding a bowl of what looked like soggy Apple Jacks.
“I’m moving out, Mr. Lim.”
“When?”
“Next week.”
“Your eyes is confuse,” he said.
She didn’t know what to say. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Hey, you want to buy my bed? It’s only a few months old and it was really expensive. I’ll give you a discount.”
“Your bed?”
“Yep.”
“Your bed.”
He had a habit of repeating whatever she said, placing the emphasis on different words.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred,” she said. “Cash only.”
He clucked his tongue.
“It’s a good deal.”
He wound up buying it for one of his nephews. He was also kind enough to help her drag most of her belongings out of the apartment. They arranged it all on the sidewalk: couch, armchair, kitchen table, nightstand, lamps. She decorated the tree in the courtyard with her winter clothes and shoes, which seemed to delight Mr. Lim, as he took pictures of the tree with a disposable camera. Aside from a holey blanket, some old canvases, and a frying pan, it was all gone three hours later.
The only items she had trouble parting with were her books, knickknacks, and Eurekas. The books and knickknacks would fit in the bed of her truck, no problem, but not the vacuums.
She abandoned three at the curb, but spent one last evening with Gertrude, her baby. She pushed her around the empty apartment and then parked her in the kitchen and stared at her while she drank too much wine. Unable to bear the thought of someone else’s hands on her, she considered drowning Gertrude in the Merrimack, but wound up carrying her down an alley instead. It was after midnight and the alley was empty and smelled of ripe garbage.
First she tried bludgeoning Gertrude with a brick, but the only damage she did was to her own ring finger, so she picked Gertrude up by the handle and smashed the vacuum against the pavement over and over like a guitar. It felt good to put her whole body into something and she worked up a nice rhythm.
Before long the bottom plate flew off, and then the belt and brush roll. She splintered the red plastic, put a few dings in the metal hood, and, after several minutes, heard a loud crack—the motor. By then she was panting and her legs and feet were tingling and she could feel her heart b
eating in her entire face. Who knew it could be so gratifying—so exhilarating—to destroy something you love, to ruin it for anyone else?
YOKO AND YOKO
SHE PULLED WHAT THE 12-STEPPERS called a geographic: she moved to a new town in another state without telling anyone. Once settled, she wrote to Sheila and her parents, closing each letter with a borrowed line from a short story of Hem’s: I am utterly unable to resign myself.
An adobe casita in Taos, Disgusting had said. Clearly, he’d never been to Taos, because adobe casitas were way out of her price range—twelve hundred dollars a month, minimum—and so she settled for Valdez, ten or so miles north of Taos proper, a small valley at the foot of the skiing mountain. A handful of Spanish farmers lived here, along with a small population of Anglos, which was what white people were called. Her fellow Anglos consisted of ski bums, assorted artist and bohemian types, oil-rich Texans, and one psychiatrist.
She rented the smaller half of an adobe house on the valley’s edge, near a stand of sturdy juniper trees growing along an unused trench. Built from mud and brick, the house leaned to one side in what seemed like shame or disappointment. Inside, it was cavelike and comfortable, with eighteen-inch-thick walls and low, flat ceilings supported by long, rough-hewn timbers hauled from the surrounding forests generations ago. The timbers were uneven, echoing the pitch of the roof, and the well-worn wooden floors groaned underfoot.
The original kitchen in Mona’s half of the house emptied into a spacious living room. One of the walls was marked by a wide arched doorway, now thickly bricked up, that once led into her neighbor’s half of the house. She lived on the north side of the property, which would make her place cold and dark in winter. Her front door was actually the back door.
At least the place was furnished. There was a double bed, a nightstand, kitchen table and chairs, several decent bookshelves, and a hundred other odds and ends: dishes, silverware, coffeemaker, phone, clock, trash can. In the living room, a set of matching orange leather sofas clashed wildly with the hand-finished plaster walls painted a color somewhere between asparagus, celery, and sage.