Pretend I'm Dead

by Jen Beagin

  “It was like watching a plant die,” her mother used to stage-whisper to friends and relatives. “You could smell it all the way down the hall. By the time they amputated, his hand looked like an old glove. A crushed, black leather glove.”

  The glove imagery occupied her imagination for weeks afterward—she’d been six or seven when she first heard it—but it came in handy later. She kept the image in the back of her mind and could bring it forward at will. It was money in the bank, a kind of emergency fund; when her father did something mortifying, the image of the empty glove helped her forgive him. Unfortunately, by the time she reached junior high, she’d unwittingly drained the potency out of it.

  “I’m forty-seven,” he said now. “Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years?”

  “Booze?”

  “Fear,” he said.

  Interesting. Maybe he had some actual wisdom to impart. Wouldn’t that be nice? Some fatherly advice? In her time of need?

  “Fear keeps you alive?”

  “A spectacle of fearsome acts.”

  Oh. Well, he just gave himself away with “spectacle.” And “fearsome.” Definitely not in his lexicon. Must be a line from a movie. He was a poor enunciator, yes, but not when he was reciting something. Then the words tumbled out perfectly, like a stutterer who doesn’t stutter when he sings. Whose line was it? She was good at this game. She’d probably be able to recognize it if he kept going.

  “Fearsome acts, huh? Like what?”

  “If somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. If he offends me, I cut off his thumb. If he rises against me, I cut off his head and stick it on a pike. Raise it high up so all in the streets can see.” He paused. “That’s what preserves the order of things. Fear.”

  Dammit. It was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn’t place it, which was a shame, because he’d never tell her.

  “I never had a son,” he said. “Civilization is crumbling.”

  Wait a minute now. She could see the actor’s face. He had a mustache. A black mustache. Lunatic eyes, like Mickey’s.

  “Daniel Day Lewis!” she said. “Hah!”

  “What?”

  “Uh, the movie you’re quoting,” she said. “Gangs of New York.”

  “I’m not quoting anything.”

  “Oh, Dad.”

  He giggled. “How’s your mother? Still beautiful?”

  “Probably.”

  “Still married?”

  “I believe so.”

  “She wanna see me?”

  Mona laughed.

  “I don’t understand why we can’t be friends. I mean, we were married fifteen years!”

  “Yeah, well, she’s kind of brain damaged from the concussions you gave her.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, concussions.”

  “I guess you don’t remember kicking her in the head? With your boots?”

  “Whoa! Wait a minute. I never hit your mother. Never once. Did she tell you I hit her? Let me tell you a secret about your mother: all those bruises were self-inflicted. She beat herself up. Don’t you—”

  She hung up, crawled out of the closet, checked her hands again. Little less wormy. It was going to be all right. She’d pass out soon enough.

  “Hey, thanks, by the way, for your brilliant suggestion, Bob. Nice one. Real nice. I feel way better now.”

  She took herself to bed. Alone again, she realized the depth of her need. It yawned widely, expanding inside her, a sizable black hole. Exhausted, she resigned herself to being sucked under and dragged through its muck for several hours. She closed her eyes and turned to face the wall, her head full of pins and needles. The dogs were howling outside. Think pleasant thoughts, she ordered herself. She imagined following the dogs into the woods. They led her to a log cabin where a man stood in a clearing, chopping wood in the failing light. It was him, Mr. Disgusting. He’d been waiting for her all along. He dropped the ax, picked her up, and carried her toward the cabin—

  But then the dogs surrounded them and started chasing them through the trees. Disgusting dropped her and took off running. She tried to follow but stumbled, fell. Her legs were cement. She was too tired to lift her head.

  Why not offer herself to the dogs? Let them have their way with her. They could chew her face off and she’d die the way she’d always suspected, a friendless, fuckless wonder.

  A friendless, fuckless wonder, she repeated. You are a wonder. Friendless. Fuckless.

  Tears stung her eyes. Feelings are just stories, she reminded herself. They have a beginning and an end.

  “The End,” she’d like to say.

  HENRY AND ZOE

  SHE COULD HEAR YOKO AND Yoko’s phone ringing through the wall. She looked at her own. Three weeks, and not a single service call. Not one!

  She turned on the television and settled into a Merchant-Ivory production on PBS, breaking her rule of never watching a period piece unless she was on her period. Helena Bonham Carter and Beefeater were a hellish combination, no question. She considered wandering out to the highway, hurling herself against a speeding windshield.

  She missed Yoko and Yoko. Not their sanctimoniousness, but their physical presence on the other side of the house. They were attending a series of workshops in Italy, and they’d taken their cellos with them and wouldn’t be back for over a month, and now the house felt more lopsided than usual, like the unweighted end of a giant seesaw. She was up in the air, her feet dangling, and she needed Yoko and Yoko’s dreadful music to bring her back to earth.

  Maybe the Merchant-Ivory soundtrack was to blame—Puccini would turn anyone to mush. She muted the volume on the portable rescued from a Dumpster. Better. Then the phone rang. Her phone!

  A man named Henry Moss introduced himself and asked for Bee’s Knees Housekeeping. He sounded embarrassed, as if her business had an unsavory name, like Busy Beavers in the Buff. Which wasn’t such a bad idea—if she cleaned houses naked, she’d probably have a lot more going on than A Room with a View.

  After introductions he explained that he’d received a flyer and asked, “So how does this work?”

  “Well, my rate is twenty dollars per hour, but I can drop by and give you an estimate, and we can take it from there.”

  “Very good,” he said. “What about references?”

  She said yeah, sure, she could give him some of those, and she gave him Sheila’s number in Florida, along with three names of former clients in Lowell. If everything checked out, she told him, they could meet the morning after next.

  Time to put the gin away and turn off the television. Now that her plans for the next forty-eight hours involved leaving her house, she could do something more productive, like allow herself positive thoughts of the future. Maybe moving to New Mexico wasn’t Big Stupid Mistake No. 502, after all. Henry Moss would become her first steady client, he’d tell all his friends how great she was, and before long her phone would start ringing off the hook.

  * * *

  HIS HOUSE, A TIDY RED adobe casita with milky turquoise trim, sat on a narrow lane extending off the town plaza. She parked behind a vintage orange-and-cream Range Rover in the driveway. Two burgundy-colored chili ristras hung on either side of the mahogany front door. There wasn’t a doorbell, so she knocked. She didn’t remember posting a flyer on this door.

  The man who answered was well over six feet and had messy hair the color of an Irish setter. His lips were chapped. His eyes were a shade of blue she associated with Ukrainians and hummingbirds. A pair of dirty reading glasses sat on the tip of his nose, and she wanted to remove them and clean them with her apron.

  She shook his hand, which was warm and dry and much bigger than hers. She placed him in his midforties. He seemed pleasantly surprised by the looks of her, and she was glad she had put some effort into her appearance. Her hair wasn’t exactly clean, but she’d made an attractive pile of it on top of her head and she was wearing red lipstick, a navy-blue blouse, jeans, and an apron from the
forties. Clients relished seeing her in an apron—a source of comfort, she imagined, the idea that someone was taking care of them.

  She sensed he was a private person, unused to having strangers in his house. A short hallway opened onto a pueblo-style living room with low ceilings supported by hand-plastered walls decorated with sun-bleached cow skulls.

  “So this is the living room,” he mumbled. “It’s pretty basic, I guess.”

  The floors would be difficult—neither the woven kilim rugs nor the uneven Saltillo-tiled floor would tolerate an upright vacuum. She’d have to sweep the floors and lug the rugs outside. They were too large to shake, however, so she’d have to beat them with a broom. She pictured herself on the back patio, beating the crap out of the rugs.

  The kiva fireplace was overflowing with ash. She wondered what he’d been burning, as it wasn’t quite cold enough for a fire. Perhaps the ashes were left over from last winter. In any case it would need emptying and cleaning, so she added an extra half hour to her estimate. Judging from his taste in furniture, he was single. No woman would tolerate so much leather. A clove-colored leather couch with matching love seat, and a hunter-green leather armchair and matching ottoman—these she would clean with Murphy Oil Soap, one of her tricks. A large white animal pelt—not a polar bear, but something big—lay on the floor in front of the enormous television. The lamps, she noticed, were all the same: banker’s lamps with green glass shades.

  Next, the kitchen, which was full of restaurant-quality stainless steel appliances, all smudged and covered in fingerprints.

  “The people at Home Depot said to use a special cleaner on the stainless steel,” he said. He opened a cabinet and handed her a bottle. It had never been opened.

  “They’re just trying to make money. This stuff is way overpriced, not to mention toxic,” she said, setting the bottle on the counter without looking at it. “Olive oil works best. Trick of the trade.”

  He looked down at her over his glasses. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, and smiled.

  She followed him past a small office and bathroom, down a long, dimly lit hallway lined with a mosaic of framed photographs, all featuring the same dark-haired girl. The closely grouped photos reminded her of a shrine, minus the candles, and were dwarfed by a large, life-size oil painting of the same girl, aged eight or so, sitting on a park bench, wearing a pink gerbera daisy behind her ear and a white cotton dress, her bare feet dangling. The heavy-framed painting was the focal point of what she imagined must be an altar to his daughter. His dead daughter? The one he killed while driving drunk?

  He opened a door at the end of the hallway. “This is my daughter Zoe’s room. She stays with me on weekends.”

  Okay, not dead, just idolized and worshipped to make up for the messy, drawn-out divorce. She poked her head into the room. Unmade bed, scattered clothes. On the walls, a poster of Kurt Cobain, another of Orlando Bloom, and framed abstract drawings of horses.

  “How old?” Mona asked.

  “Twelve,” he said. He seemed uncomfortable suddenly, as if she were prying. “Would you mind changing her sheets each time? She likes to eat cookies in bed.”

  “No problem.” Mona liked to eat cookies in bed, too, but only changed her sheets once a month.

  He opened another door. “I sleep in here.” Another unmade bed. His white sheets were printed with orange morning glories. His nightstands looked antique and had splotched mirrored panels on them. The closet doors were mirrored. Another mirror in a gilt frame hung above the headboard. She could see herself and Henry in one of the mirrors. He was looking sideways at her.

  “Do you do laundry by any chance?” he asked.

  “I do it all,” she said. “I’ll even iron your sheets if you’re into that.”

  “Uh, that won’t be necessary,” he said, as if she’d suggested something crazy.

  She inspected the master bath: green slate floors, a large, doorless, two-headed shower, and two sinks, each with its own framed mirror. The sinks were made to look like large oval bowls resting on a wooden vanity. He’d spent some money in there.

  As they walked toward the front of the house, she asked what he did for a living.

  “I own the Blue Mango Cantina, but I have another . . . project in . . . Santa Fe, so . . . I’m only around on weekends.” She got the feeling he was making it up as he went along. “It’s a little complicated. I just stay down there during the week,” he added.

  “Are you a chef?” she asked.

  “No, but I love to cook.” He tilted his head at her. “Do you do something other than . . . ?” He made a vague gesture at her apron.

  Because she was white and well spoken, people assumed she must do something “other than.” Clearly, cleaning houses wasn’t good enough. Or it shouldn’t be, anyway. She must be in some kind of rut. Would he have asked if she were Hispanic? Of course not. She watched him squirm a little—she was probably glaring at him without realizing it—and decided to let him off the hook. “I take photographs.” Not a total lie.

  Visible relief on his face. Usually they preferred that she be in college, taking classes toward something practical, like a business or nursing degree. But this was Taos, after all, which was overrun with people calling themselves artists. “Well, you’re in the perfect place,” he said. “You can’t beat the light around here. What sort of photographs—landscapes?”

  “No,” she said. “I take pictures of myself, mostly.” Naked, she wanted to add. On your sofa. With a broomstick up my ass.

  “Interesting,” he said, nodding. “Where you from again?”

  “Massachusetts by way of California.”

  “Oh right. I know that from your references. They spoke very highly of you, by the way. And that’s where I’m from originally,” he said. “Boston, I mean.”

  “What pahht?” she asked, exaggerating the accent he was conspicuously lacking.

  “Beacon Hill,” he said.

  Rich prick. “Aw, that’s nice.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “I suggest weekly visits to start. I’ll probably spend about five hours the first time and four hours the second time. After that, I’ll charge you my minimum, which is three hours. My schedule is open right now so you have your pick of days. Most people prefer Fridays.”

  “Actually, I prefer Mondays,” he said.

  * * *

  THE FIRST TIME IN A client’s house was a sort of seduction: she would do something beyond the call of duty to make them feel special, and by the third week they’d wonder how they ever lived without her. For Henry, she cleaned the filthy coffeemaker inside and out. She did the same with the cappuccino machine, removing the stubborn milk stain from the steaming rod with a piece of steel wool. She cleaned out his silverware drawer and refrigerator. She washed the walls, scrubbed the floor by hand.

  Now the bathrooms. She started with the basics: mirrors, sinks, shower, and then cleaned the toothbrush holder, the toothbrushes themselves, and the toothpaste tube. She removed the hair from his hairbrush and soaked the brush in soap and alcohol. She eliminated the mineral deposits in the toilet bowls with a pumice stone. She folded the toilet paper into a point, like they do in hotels.

  In the hallway, she dusted the Zoe shrine, which she suspected wouldn’t go unnoticed, examining each picture as she cleaned it: Zoe eating spaghetti with her hands, blowing out candles, jumping on a trampoline, playing piano, holding a green balloon, licking an ice cream cone, sitting on a horse, hanging upside down from monkey bars, blowing a kiss to someone outside the frame. Her favorite was a close-up of Zoe at age seven or eight, wearing eye makeup and a platinum wig with mascara running down her face.

  Zoe was alone in every photograph. As she got older, her facial expressions became more inscrutable. There was a guarded blankness about her, and she seemed to have stopped smiling at around age nine. In the most recent photographs she’d acquired a uniform: heavy black eyeliner, black T-shirt, denim miniskirt, black Converse
high-tops.

  She obviously had a secret or two. Mona wondered if many of them revolved around Henry. Mona had spent years keeping Mickey’s horror-show high jinks from her mother. Not telling her mother was essentially like tossing the secret into an abandoned well—without nourishment and in spite of its hoarse screaming, it would eventually die. Later, in junior high, she wondered if the secrets were feeding on each other, perhaps gaining strength and intelligence in their numbers, scheming to balance on top of one another, so that eventually one or all of them would climb out of the well and wander into town for everyone to see.

  She thought of the secret vacation her father had taken her on when she was eleven. A weekend at the Tropicana in Vegas. They’d driven there in his plumbing truck. Instead of heading for the casino straightaway, he surprised her by asking, “If it was just you and Mom here, what would you do?”

  “Well, first we’d go shopping,” she said. “Then we’d get our hair done and Mom might get a manicure. Then we’d walk around and eat donuts.”

  “That’s it?” He looked disappointed.

  She shrugged. “Yeah. Then we’d go to the movies when it got dark.”

  “Okay,” he confirmed. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.”

  But her father took her “shopping” in a pawnshop. Instantly bored, she kept her eyes on the owner, a nerdy man with glasses, and his ten-year-old son, who kept staring at her father’s hook. Lost in his own world, her father wandered around the shop for what seemed like forever, carefully picking up guitars and then putting them down again. He handled each one warily, like a specimen in a jar. Mona gave him a few minutes, then walked over and stood right next to him, hoping to remind him that she was there and that they were in a pawnshop and not in a regular store, buying new jeans as she had hoped.