by Jen Beagin
“It’s only a couple miles.” He walked her to her truck and opened the door for her. “Listen, I’m sorry this didn’t work out, but call me if you want. I work a lot but we can hang out now and then.”
“Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”
While they were exchanging numbers he noticed Carmen-Maria-Sofia lying on the passenger seat. “Is that yours?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I found it under Betty’s bed yesterday.”
He scowled.
“You know her?”
“Oh yeah. We had a really fucked-up relationship. I was staying with John in Vegas the summer he met her, and since he worked nights, she looked after me during the day. It was only a week, but it was the longest year of my life.”
“Did she give you a death sentence?”
“She told me I was gay. This was before I knew what that meant. I was only ten. She was very graphic about it—told me about anal sex and all kinds of stuff. Scared the shit out of me.’ ”
“She can be kind of insufferable.”
“Are you going to keep that doll?”
“Why—you want it?” she asked.
“God, no,” he said. “I hate dolls.”
She told him about the Spanish ladies she’d had as a kid, along with their side effects: paranoia, paralysis, anxiety, insomnia. “I wanted to take them to the garage and smash their faces.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I just couldn’t summon the energy. I was too passive and nonconfrontational. And I was afraid they’d somehow reassemble themselves and gang up on me.”
He nodded as if that made perfect sense and then startled her by wrapping his arms around her and squeezing.
“You poor thing,” he murmured, directly into her ear.
She felt herself bristle. Don’t pity me, Jesus, she thought.
* * *
A WEEK LATER SHE ARRIVED at Betty’s as scheduled. Betty met her in the driveway. Despite the insane heat, she wore a white cap-sleeved angora sweater, matching white leggings, and white patent leather high-heeled sandals. Her eyes were glowing.
“I’ve missed you, Maura! I almost called you a couple of times, but I stopped myself. I wanted to respect your boundaries.”
“I have a present for you.”
Betty clapped her hands. “You didn’t!”
“I certainly did,” she said. “I think you’re going to like them.”
They went inside and sat in the living room. “Your aura is pink and lavender, Maura. You’ve met someone, haven’t you.”
“I found Jesus.”
“Oh my God,” Betty said. “What happened? Tell me everything.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, you look fantastic.”
“I have a confession to make.”
Betty looked frightened. “You’ve fallen for Johnny.”
She laughed. “No, nothing like that.” She opened her mouth and then closed it. Just say it, she ordered herself. Say the words. Spit them out. “Here’s the thing,” she said, and then paused again. “My name,” she said too loudly. “My name is . . . Mona. Not Maura. Mona.”
Jesus, that was easy, she thought. Betty sat there, blinking.
“M-O-N-A,” she said, for good measure.
Betty regarded her with swimming-pool eyes. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“I wish I knew,” she said. “Whenever I thought about telling you, my throat would close up and I felt like someone was suffocating me with a pillow.”
“It’s your chakra. I told you it’s blocked.”
She put a hand on her throat. “Well, I feel better now. Much better.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Anyway, I know you’re dying to open your present, so here.”
She handed Betty the photographs and watched her flip through them, oohing and aahing every few seconds. “How’d you get so close this time?”
“Zoom lens,” Mona lied.
“He looks so tired,” she said. “He’s not taking care of himself.” She selected one from the pile and touched Johnny’s face with her fingers. Then she pressed the photograph to her chest and closed her eyes. She looked like she was swooning. Mona could see her eyes moving beneath her eyelids. When she started speaking her voice was thick and throaty.
“A kitchen. Open cabinets. Messy counters. Dog food on the floor. Newspapers. Empty boxes. There he is. He’s fixing something with a screwdriver. It’s . . . a broken toaster oven. A pot is boiling over on the stove. A woman. Black hair. Red blouse. Her name begins with an L. She’s crying, mumbling, something about the post office. He’s ignoring her.” She opened her eyes and placed the photograph on the coffee table. “I’m not sure what I was seeing there, but I think he’s moving out. Or she’s moving in.”
“Hey, what happened to your voice? It sounded really . . . different.”
“I was in alpha,” she explained.
Whatever that meant. Christ, she wasn’t far off—he was in fact moving. But maybe she knew that because she staked out his house in her spare time? Spied on him from the sagebrush? In any case, it was a very convincing performance. She could see why Betty made so much money. Speaking of which.
“So you’re pleased? I really stuck my neck out this time.”
“I can tell,” Betty said. “I didn’t think you’d get quite so many, but I was going to give you five hundred dollars anyway—just to show my appreciation.” She handed Mona a bank envelope from her purse.
“Thanks.” She resisted the urge to count it.
“You should go shopping,” Betty said. “Buy yourself some shoes. Or get a massage. Or a facial.”
“Why bother, when I’m dying?” She cleared her throat. “Look, you don’t tell someone they have a year to live. You said you did it out of love, but that’s, uh—not love. That’s just cruel and hateful. You’re pushing sixty. You should know the difference by now.”
Betty winced. She hated to be reminded of her age. “Mona,” she said slowly, trying it out. “Mona. Mohhhh-na. Listen, Mona.” She smiled. “Let me tell you something. I said you would die at twenty-seven, but you didn’t even ask how I came up with that number. Do you see the number twenty-seven written next to your life line? No, you do not. The fact is your life line ends abruptly, but you could live to be thirty-two or thirty-eight or even forty-five, okay? It’s impossible to get an exact number. Also, your palms change over the course of your life. They’re not like fingerprints. I only said twenty-seven because you were dead already. You weren’t really living. You were just coasting along like a zombie. And look at all you’ve done in the time I’ve told you. It’s only been a week and you’re already starting to get out there and live your life!”
“Well, I don’t know if I’m living my life, but I’m leaving the house at least, yes.”
“Listen, you’re a photographer, right? Show me a picture of yours and I’ll read it—for free. Right here, right now.”
“Oh no, that’s okay—”
Betty sighed. “Do you have any idea how good I am at this? I have a very long waiting list. I’m booked solid for the next three months!”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Any pictures in your wallet?”
“Of course not.”
“What about that truck of yours? Anything under the seat?”
Well, yes, actually. In the glove box—
“Aha, I can see it on your face. Go out and get it. I’ll wait here.”
What the hell. She went out to the truck and opened the glove box. Shoved between the pages of an old guidebook was a slightly blurry picture of Mr. Disgusting standing on the fire escape of an abandoned mill in Lowell, taken around the time they first met. He looked sane and healthy and had a subtle tan.
Betty placed the photograph on the coffee table and stared at it without blinking for two full minutes. She seemed to be hypnotizing herself. Although, watching her, Mona felt hypnotized, too. She watched Betty pick up the picture, breathe on
it, and then rub it against her angora sweater. She held it against her cleavage with her hand, breathing deeply through her nose.
“Cocaine,” she said after several seconds.
Mona stared at the wall clock in a stupor, waiting for her to continue. Thirty seconds ticked by. She could feel her heart beating sluggishly in her chest. In the corner, one of the cats poked its head out of a carpeted cat condo and said, “Ouchy.” She wanted to throw a pencil at its head like a dart.
“That’s it?” she asked tiredly. “Cocaine?”
Betty didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed but her head was moving as if she were looking around the room. “It’s freezing in here,” she whined. “I can’t breathe, I can’t see!” Her voice sounded like a five-year-old girl’s. “I’m frozen! My eyes feel like glass.” She fingered a fold in her sweater. “My dress is . . . stiff.”
“What about the guy?”
“Dolls,” Betty said. “I see dolls.”
Ah, okay. This wasn’t about the photograph at all. Last night Mona stuffed Carmen-Maria-Sofia into a plastic bag and buried her under some frozen peas in the freezer. Betty must have been peeking in through the kitchen window.
“Have you been spying on me, Betty? Is that what you do—spy on people?”
“Shh,” she said, and held up a hand. “No talking.” She looked away, shook her head. “Okay, I’m somewhere new.” She winced suddenly and clutched her stomach. The photograph fell to the floor.
“Betty, you dropped—”
“I’m lying in bed. There’s two dogs under the covers with me. They’re breathing on my legs. I’m listening for footsteps in the hallway. I’m scared, very scared. My legs are hot—”
“Betty—”
“Shh! What’s that noise? Something’s beeping. Oh no, it’s too late, it’s too late. I can’t stop it. I’m peeing!”
Mona’s scalp tingled. Her feet were sweating in her sneakers. Bed, dogs, footsteps—whatever. But the bed-wetting alarm? How could she have known about that?
Diaries, that’s how. Obviously, Betty had broken into her apartment and read one of her old diaries.
“Doggies,” Betty said now in a weird monotone. “Angels.”
In the corner, the cat jumped off the cat condo and darted out of the room.
“Dogs don’t have cameras behind their eyes,” Betty said evenly. “But dolls do. They watch and record, watch and record.”
She felt the overwhelming urge to silence Betty. Something must be shoved into her mouth immediately. A sock, an apple, a fistful of dirt.
“If the dogs are on the bed you can’t get me,” Betty said in the little-girl voice. “Those are the rules. You can’t see me. Stop looking!”
Mona slapped the coffee table with her hand. “Okay Betty, that’s enough.”
Betty shuddered. “Jesus Christ.”
She frowned and looked away. “I don’t know what your trick is, Betty, but it’s working, whatever it is.”
“Those were some really strong feelings,” Betty said. “Really powerful. Something terrible happened to little Mona. Something really bad.”
“It wasn’t that bad, actually,” Mona said. “What about the cocaine?”
Betty shrugged. “It was the first word that came to me. It doesn’t always make sense.”
Mona felt queasy. “Can’t you just tell me about the guy in the picture? You know—facts.”
Betty picked up the picture and fanned herself with it. “Fine,” she said. “You want to know about this guy?”
Fuck, now she was scared. What if Disgusting was alive and well and living a few towns over? What if he was married? What if she ended up like Betty, engaged to herself and surrounded by cats?
“Well, you and this man were siblings in a past life,” Betty said calmly. “I don’t know if that interests you, but he was your sister. This was a long time ago. Two hundred years, maybe. He was a good older sister—he took care of you, looked after you, protected you. He loved you very much. And then you met again some hundred-odd years later, and that time he wasn’t so good to you. Maybe you were lovers. He lied, cheated, abandoned you. And then this last time he had the chance to make it up to you, but I don’t know if he did. I can’t see much. You must not have been together for very long. But you’ve known each other a long time, and you’ll meet again, perhaps sooner than you think.” She shut her eyes briefly and then opened them. “Right now he’s at the bottom of a body of water. Not the ocean. A lake somewhere, and not around here—I can tell by the trees.” She studied Mona’s face. “He’s been dead for, oh, about a year, maybe more.”
“What’s his name?”
Betty let out a puff of air. “Is this a test?”
“Yeah.”
She took a deep breath through her nose, let it out. “I don’t know, but I can certainly hear his voice.”
“What’s it sound like?”
“Strange,” she said. “Like a large, talking insect. I keep hearing a Polaroid camera taking pictures. He’s telling me a name but I can’t make it out. Rhymes with ‘foreign’? He wants you to say it. I bet if you say it he’ll stop haunting you.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said.
Betty looked at the carpet and tilted her head. “He says he’s renting space in your brain, preventing you from moving on.”
“Am I really supposed to believe you’re chatting right now?”
She smiled. “He’s making fun of me. He thinks my shoes are stupid. He’s calling them ‘poopy church shoes.’ He doesn’t want me to say his name because he doesn’t want it in my mouth. He wants to hear you say it.”
“Mr. Disgusting,” she said.
Betty shook her head. “His real name.”
“But that’s what I call him.”
“Names are powerful, Mona. If you utter his name out loud, you’ll be able to move on and meet someone else. Aren’t you ready for that?”
“Actually, I don’t know his real name,” she said. “He was adopted.”
Betty closed her eyes again. “Werner.”
“Really?”
“It’s German. But he has another name.”
“Ho, shit,” Mona said. “I just got goose bumps.”
Betty chuckled, clearly pleased with herself. “So say his name.”
“Warren,” she murmured.
“He can’t hear you.”
“Warren,” she said again, louder.
Betty set the picture down and beamed at her. “You’re glowing. How do you feel?”
How do I feel, how do I feel. “Uh, okay, I guess. A little lonely, maybe.”
“Close your eyes,” she said. “Now, I want you to picture a very specific shade of blue. It’s called certainty blue. It’s the color of a gas flame.”
“It’s the color of your eyes when you wear those crazy—”
“Do you have it?” Betty asked. “Can you see it?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Now keep the blue in your mind and go into your body,” Betty instructed. “Focus on your spine. On the vertebrae.”
“My spine?”
“Yes,” Betty said impatiently. “Let the blue travel down your spine to the very bottom, just above your tailbone, and then hold it there and count to three.”
Fuck, she was right. Something felt different.
“Stand up,” Betty said. “Check it out.”
She stood, walked to the kitchen and back, felt like she might cry. It was gone. That hard little knot to the right of her spine. Not merely loosened, but . . . gone. Like it had never been there.
“You’ve been released,” Betty said.
“Holy shit.”
“I never thought you were a Maura, by the way,” she added.
* * *
WHEN SHE PULLED INTO THE driveway at home, she saw Yoko and Yoko in the yard, standing in what they called the garden, which was really just a big patch of weeds. She got out of her truck and walked toward them. They were staring at one of the weeds they called
burdock.
“Ghost moth larvae,” Nigel said. “They’re edible. They taste like almonds. We’ll have to pick them off by hand. We can make something with them.”
“Yikes,” Mona said.
He bent over and examined the stalks. “Burdock is a blood purifier,” he seemed to say to himself.
“Where are you coming from?” Shiori asked.
“The psychic’s house,” Mona said. “I tell you what, she said some spooky shit today that somehow fixed my back. I think she might actually be . . . psychic, goddamn it, which means I may only have a year to live. Fuck.”
Nigel gave her a puzzled look.
“Are you okay?” Shiori asked.
“Totally fine, actually,” Mona said, and walked away.
* * *
SHE WASN’T IN THE MOOD for their company, but she also didn’t want to be alone. Jesus’s number was tacked to the wall near the phone. Maybe she’d call him tonight and invite him over. They could drink wine and she’d show him her life’s work.
Instead, she found herself dialing Mickey’s number. He didn’t bother with hello.
“Remember that time we went to Vegas and got perms?”
“Yeah.”
“I was just thinking about that the other day. The rest of my hair fell out after that. Do you still have that ring I bought you?”
“I lost it when I moved to Lowell,” she said. “Listen, I want to ask you something.”
“Uh-oh.”
She stared at the Fat Fuck drawings on the wall in front of her.
There was a house
A little girl
Two dogs
One Fat Fuck
It was a nice skirt
Fat Fuck was found with no hands
Fat Fuck is dead
Usually she focused on the captions rather than the actual drawings, but now she zeroed in on “Fat Fuck is dead,” the drawing for which showed a man lying on the ground.
His hands were red. A girl stood over him, holding a knife.
“Why did you take pictures of me naked?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, people have been taking nude photographs since the camera was invented,” he said. “It’s called art. You love art.”
“I thought it was pretty weird at the time. Still do. I think other people would agree with me.”