by Jen Beagin
She remained dry-eyed instead, even after several swigs of Beefeater.
* * *
A FEW WEEKS LATER SHE let herself into Henry’s house and set her cleaning bucket on the floor of the entryway. She removed her shoes, put on an apron, and was about to head to the kitchen when she heard a noise, a groaning noise in the walls followed by the sound of water running. The sound was coming from the back of the house. “Hello?” she called out, startled. No response.
She tiptoed down the hallway, her heart thumping. Strangely, Henry’s bedroom door was closed. Was he sick again? Did he stay home from work? She put her ear to the door. Someone was sobbing in there—a girl. She knocked twice, loudly. “Hello?” No response. The sobbing suddenly stopped. She counted to three and threw open the door. Henry was lying on the bed next to Zoe. They were both naked from the waist down, and Henry was stroking Zoe with a wet washcloth while she cried silently.
Mona leaped onto the bed, straddled Henry, and began pummeling him with her fists. Then she put her hands around his throat and squeezed—
No. She entered the room with a baseball bat. Henry leaped off the bed and she swung the bat at his junk—
No. She entered the room holding one of Henry’s Japanese cooking knives. He jumped off the bed and tried to attack her. She held the knife out in front of her, sliced the air a few times. He lost his footing and fell to his knees. She plunged the knife into his chest. He gasped. Zoe screamed. Blood bubbled out of his mouth.
“Get dressed,” Mona said. “Hurry! I’m getting you the fuck out of here!”
The fantasies varied from week to week, depending on her mood. Sometimes they completely revolved around the savage beating she administered to Henry. The beatings were bloody and intimate. They rolled on the floor, grappling and biting, tearing at each other’s clothes and hair. She pressed her thumbs into his eye sockets. She kneed him in the face. There were broken bones and teeth. Other times Henry was just an extra and it was all about her and Zoe—their special bond, their new life together in some faraway place. Sometimes she fantasized beyond the initial rescue and she and Zoe were in Mexico, where they’d hunted down Tom, who’d instantly fallen in love with Mona and married her, and now Zoe was their adopted daughter. In either case, the naïveté behind the fantasies embarrassed her, as did the pleasure she derived from them. She caught a glimpse of herself after a particularly vivid one—she and Zoe were on a road trip, headed to Philadelphia to be interviewed by Terry Gross, who’d somehow heard about their incredible story—and saw that her cheeks and chest were flushed, as if she’d just had an intense orgasm.
Maybe she needed to get laid. But that would involve small talk, the thought of which exhausted her. She was exhausted in general lately and had been sleeping in her work clothes for several nights in a row. Last night she’d passed out with her shoes on.
A few months after finding Henry’s letter, she spent part of a Saturday afternoon at the local bookstore, browsing the fiction section. In one of the aisles, a young girl sat cross-legged on the floor, reading Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. Mona recognized her outfit—a black button-down blouse and a purple denim miniskirt. She’d spent ten minutes removing a chocolate stain from that skirt a few weeks back.
“Zoe,” she blurted before she could stop herself.
Zoe looked up at her and smiled slowly. She had the guilty look of someone who was bad with names.
“You don’t know me,” Mona assured her. “But I know you . . . sort of.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes and looked her up and down. You sound like a freak. You’re scaring her. “I’m your cleaning lady,” Mona said quickly. “I clean your house.”
Zoe blinked several times.
“Your father’s house?”
“Oh!” Zoe said. “Right. You’re . . . Mary.”
“Mona,” she corrected.
“Oh yeah.” She snapped the book shut and stood up. Mona had been carrying Zoe in her fantasies for weeks—she liked to carry Zoe out of Henry’s room and then out of the house and even down the street—but Zoe was way too big for that, she saw now. She was just an inch or two shorter than Mona. She glanced at Zoe’s chest—little boobies!—then back at her face. Her eyelids were smeared with shiny purple shadow and she had several piercings in her ears. She immediately felt the now familiar urge to kidnap Zoe and take her out for ice cream, but Zoe seemed . . . beyond ice cream.
“My dad totally loves you,” Zoe said. “He practically creams his jeans when you wash out the garbage cans.” She laughed and then covered her mouth with her hand. She had braces. When did she get braces?
“Sorry,” Zoe said, and rolled her eyes. “That was gross. I don’t know why I said that.”
Well, you are your conversation, she heard Nigel’s voice say.
Zoe scratched her head. Her fingernail polish matched her eye shadow. Mona wanted to kiss those fingers.
“I’m glad he notices things like that,” Mona said. “It, uh, adds to my job satisfaction.” She paused. “Or whatever. You have good taste in books, by the way.”
“Oh, well, I have to read this other one—Catcher in the Rye?—for school, but they’re out of it, so I figured I’d read a few pages of this one, but I dunno. It’s a little . . . weird, I guess.” She bit her lip and stared at the cover, tracing the title with her finger. She was suspiciously self-possessed. Mona still remembered a line or two from Franny and Zooey and considered reciting them, but that would be lame, number one, and would probably scare the piss out of Zoe. She realized now that she didn’t know how to talk to kids. Were you supposed to ask them about school?
“Is your dad here?”
“Yeah, he’s right over there.” Zoe pointed toward the magazine section, but the only man Mona saw was emaciated and completely bald.
“Where?” Mona asked.
“Right there,” Zoe said, pointing. “Dad!” she called out.
Mona wanted to shush her, but it was too late. Henry looked at them and smiled weakly, then put down his magazine and walked toward them. She looked over her shoulder toward the exit, thought about making a run for it.
“Hi, Mona,” he said. “Long time no see.” He smiled at her. His lips were a red, worn-out rubber band, and his eyebrows had fallen off. He was extremely pale and gaunt, and looked much too vulnerable to be out in public. A large, walking eye white. He continued smiling at her. He likes me, she thought. “It’s so good to see you,” he said. It’s good to see me.
“Likewise,” Mona said.
“You’ll have to pardon my appearance. I know I look like death warmed over.”
Well, yes, that was exactly what he looked like. Was she supposed to acknowledge the missing hair and eyebrows, or pretend everything was normal? She had no idea.
“Dad!” Zoe said, punching him softly on the arm. “You look like a skinhead. A healthy skinhead. Or no, wait—a monk. A Buddhist monk.”
He laughed and put his arm around her. “Thanks, pumpkin. You always know just what to say.”
“I’m gonna shave my head,” Zoe said. “Out of solidarity.”
Henry laughed. “No, you’re not.”
“I should, right?” Zoe asked Mona.
“Don’t answer that, Mona,” Henry said.
He pulled Zoe closer and kissed the top of her head. Of course he worshiped her—he was dying, and she was his only daughter. Writing her love letters and showering her with gifts was the fucking least he could do. He was innocent. He was Michael fucking Landon. Mona, on the other hand, was just a large, dumb animal.
“How you doing, Mona?” he asked.
“Good, good!” she croaked. “Good,” she said again.
“Has my buddy Adam called you? I gave him your number last week. You may end up hating me for it—he’s a real slob.”
“Nope,” Mona said. “Nope. Not yet. Not yet. But I’ve heard from all the others. Thanks for that. You practically built my business, like, single-handedly.”
“Aw,” he said. �
�I doubt that.”
“Thank you,” she said again. Stop repeating yourself, dummy.
He winked at her and she noticed that his eyelashes were missing, too. It didn’t do much for a person’s eyes. “Still taking pictures?”
“Oh yeah,” she said, and tried to smile. “Still, uh, doing that. Yeah.”
He looked at Zoe. “Mona’s a very talented photographer, Zo,” he told her. “Might be famous someday. She’s got a really good eye.”
“Ha ha,” Mona said nervously.
“Dad!” Zoe said. “You’re embarrassing her.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “But we just love having you, Mona—can I say that? You’ve made things so much easier. Right, Zo?”
“Yep,” Zoe said. “She even folds my underwear, Dad.”
“I know. She folds mine, too.”
They both looked at her appreciatively.
Mona shrugged. “Just doing my job!”
They stood there for several seconds, smiling and nodding at one another.
“Well, we’re gonna scoot. Ready, sweetie?”
“I gotta put this book back,” Zoe said. “I don’t want it.”
“I’ll take it for you,” Mona said.
Zoe handed her the book and said thanks.
“Good to see you again, Mona,” Henry said. “And thanks so much for your hard work.”
“No problem,” Mona mumbled. “My pleasure.”
She watched them walk arm in arm toward the exit. Henry looked back at her as they walked out the door. She dropped her head and opened the book, her hands shaking. “Maybe there’s a trapdoor under my chair,” she read. She closed the book and set it on the nearest shelf.
Walking home, she tried to imagine shaving her head for Mickey. She doubted it ever would have occurred to her to make such a noble gesture, especially at Zoe’s age, but then she remembered a game she’d sometimes played with herself as a kid, wherein she’d tuck her right arm inside her shirt and pretend to be Mickey. She couldn’t believe how impossible and time-consuming it had been to simply write her name, button her blouse, brush her teeth. Even something as routine as using the toilet had felt alien and disorienting with one hand, and she remembered feeling less like Mickey and more like a clumsy, useless baby. Still, it had been important to her to walk in his shoes for a few minutes, even if it meant falling on her face.
* * *
THE RESCUE FANTASIES HAD VANISHED now, of course. Each time she cleaned Henry’s house she saw new evidence of his illness: blood splattered on the rim of the toilet, bloodstains on his sheets and pillows, vomit on the floor next to his bed. On one occasion she found shit in the shower. Just a nugget, what would have been a floater if it had landed in the proper place. It looked sad, lying there next to the drain. She picked it up with a paper towel and flushed it down the toilet.
Maybe it was the poop that triggered the new batch of fantasies, because they started again that same day. The daydreams were still heroic and absurd, and were sometimes accompanied by the heavy strings of the Raging Bull theme song, but this time it was Henry she saved, and sometimes Henry looked like Tom.
BETTY
FROM A DISTANCE SHE COULD pass for Spanish but up close she was just ridiculously tan with dyed black hair. This may explain why the woman trailing behind her across the store parking lot kept yelling hola in her direction. She pretended not to hear and continued wheeling the cart toward her truck.
“Por favor, please,” the woman called out in a tired voice.
Por favor, please, Mona repeated to herself, and smiled. She stopped walking and turned around. It was the petite redhead she’d noticed earlier, squeezing peaches in the produce section. She’d liked the expression on the woman’s face because it had seemed to say “Wow, these peaches are superripe” and “Sadly, I don’t especially like peaches” simultaneously.
Somehow she’d failed to notice the woman’s outfit before: low-cut green angora sweater, leopard-print velour leggings, white leather high-tops. The woman’s cleavage was sun damaged and livid red. Her hair was a similar red, but brighter, obviously enhanced with a rinse. Like most redheads, she probably thought she looked best in green.
“Gracias,” the woman said as she caught up. She was older than Mona initially thought: late forties, early fifties.
“I speak English.” First words of the day.
The woman removed her enormous sunglasses and looked Mona in the eye. “Oh, right,” she said.
There was something unnatural about the woman’s eyes that Mona couldn’t put her finger on.
“You do cleaning, right?” the woman asked. “I noticed your, uh, apron.”
She nodded, offered her hand. “Mona,” she said.
“Betty McKenzie,” the woman said, grasping Mona’s fingers rather than her whole hand. She suspected Betty was one of those people who always introduced themselves with their full name, even when meeting three-year-olds.
She realized what was strange about the woman’s eyes: she was wearing blue contacts on what were already very blue eyes, which made them inescapably, unyieldingly blue, a color that made Mona think of fate or acts of God.
“Wait a minute. I’ve heard of you,” Betty said. “I mean, you were recommended to me once.”
“By whom?” Mona asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Adrienne Payne,” Betty said.
Ah, Adrienne, the pain-in-the-ass vegan and a referral from Henry. She’d made an unusual request: she asked Mona to refrain from bringing animal products of any kind onto her property, as it “disturbed the energy” in her house. This included the obvious—meat and dairy—but also the leather shoes Mona preferred to work in, along with her leather belt. Adrienne was otherwise fairly low maintenance, so this didn’t seem like such a big deal. Mona figured she would just eat carrots if she got hungry. But there was something about Adrienne’s house—the “energy,” perhaps—that made Mona ravenous, and she often found herself craving fried chicken, Frito pie, hamburgers, and milk shakes. Still, she managed to respect Adrienne’s wishes and ate neither meat nor dairy in the house or even in the yard.
Things ended badly, however. Mona had been scheduled to clean while Adrienne was out of town, mushroom hunting in some forest in the Pacific Northwest, which was Adrienne’s idea of a good time. Lunchtime had rolled around and Mona grabbed a burrito at a nearby taco stand and brought it back to the house. What the hell, she thought. It was a thousand degrees outside and the AC was busted in her truck.
Adrienne came home early, of course, and let herself in unannounced. She caught Mona sitting at her kitchen table, thoughtfully chewing a piece of roasted pork that she’d picked out of her mostly devoured pork burrito, all of which Mona later suspected she may have been forgiven if she hadn’t also been feeding small pieces to Adrienne’s miserable cat, Pookie-Ooh, also a vegan, though not by choice, obviously. Pookie-Ooh was clearly very happy, probably for the first time in his life, because he didn’t even acknowledge Adrienne when she walked in, even though she’d been gone for more than a week. Mona could still see the outraged expression on Adrienne’s face—it was as if she’d caught Mona having loud sex with a real live pig right there on her kitchen floor, or as if Mona had been doing something truly despicable to Pookie-Ooh, such as holding him down and sticking a pencil up his ass. It was by far the dirtiest look Mona had ever gotten and she’d felt perfectly justified in gathering her things, leaving the house without a word, and never returning. Adrienne left numerous messages, but Mona never returned her calls—a ballsy move, really, considering that her business relied almost exclusively on word of mouth.
Evidently Adrienne had recommended Mona’s services before the Pork Burrito Disaster.
“How do you know Adrienne?” Mona asked casually.
“She used to be a client of mine,” Betty said.
“What do you do?”
“Oh, lots of things.” A common answer on the part of the middle class in Taos, an endangered spe
cies rapidly nearing extinction. “Hang on a sec and I’ll give you one of my cards.” She trotted over to the only classic American car Mona could identify by sight—a 1960 convertible Cadillac. The car was sandwiched between two mud-splattered pickup trucks and painted the most beautiful shade of midnight blue Mona had ever seen.
Mona imagined Betty was in the Witness Protection Program. Her real name was Denise and she’d been married to the Mob for twenty years. To avoid doing time, she’d turned state’s witness and the feds relocated her to New Mexico from Queens or Jersey. This would explain her accent and taste in cars. And clothes, too, now that she thought about it. Then she noticed the license plate:
PSYCHIC, in all caps.
Betty handed her not one but a handful of business cards. Mona glanced at one out of politeness. Betty’s name was printed in a font two sizes too big, with a list of services underneath: psychic readings, channeling, astrology charts, energy work, aura cleansing—blah, blah. She smiled and slipped the cards into her back pocket.
“Nice wheels, by the way,” Mona said.
“Oh, thanks,” Betty said. “It’s called divorce.”
“Wow.” A few seconds ticked by in silence. “Well, I should go,” she said. “My ice cream’s melting.”
“Could I get one of your cards?” Betty asked.
“Sure,” Mona said. “Of course.” She rummaged through her bag, pretending to search for one. She’d run out of cards months ago. “Guess I’m out,” she said sheepishly. “Could I just give you my number?”
* * *
BETTY CALLED TWO HOURS LATER and Mona gave her the usual spiel: twenty dollars an hour, cash only, with a four-hour minimum the first day, and a two-hour minimum moving forward.
“That’s it?” asked Betty. “You should charge more. You’ll never make it in this town on that.”
“Are you flirting with me?” Mona joked.
Betty laughed. “I’m serious.”
“Well, this is a first,” Mona said. “Make it twenty-five an hour, then.”
“Done,” Betty said.