Homebodies

by Cheryl Loudermelt

  There were some things that no quantity of snickerdoodles could repair, like Todd’s pissy attitude and her inability to stop poking the bear. She felt lonely again, especially in the deserted space of the mall, and wished she’d brought Red along for the trip. The dog at least would have shown some enthusiasm. It was sad, she thought, that Todd didn’t have as much patience as her dog and wasn’t half as trainable. She felt bad for thinking that, but not bad enough not to think it again.

  Especially after the fourth store they entered, by which time Todd was practically out of his mind fidgeting. “Come on, Em. Just pick something. I said I’d take you shopping, not looking for a fucking unicorn.”

  Emily glared at him over a rack of sweaters. “You have a funny way of apologizing.”

  “Christ.” Todd pinched the bridge of his nose but said nothing more, at least not loud enough for her to hear and call him on.

  They trudged up the unmoving escalator to the second floor of the mall. Most of the stores there she passed because they were candle shops or make-up counters or beauty salons. It seemed like there were even more shut up stores on the second floor than there had been on the first, and one or two that she might have gone in were locked up tight. Finally, they found a store called Tooley’s that Emily couldn’t remember ever going in before. It looked like the kind of place where high school girls shopped. There was a skateboard hanging in the window by the mannequin, who was dressed like it was thinking about going clubbing. She hadn’t the slightest idea why someone would need a skateboard for that activity and wondered what half-brained sales person had put together the ridiculous display. There was little chance of finding anything worthwhile inside. She went in anyway, mostly because it annoyed Todd to keep shopping, and, other than finding some new jeans that didn’t sag around her hips, annoying Todd was the second most important thing in the world.

  To her surprise, there were quite a few nice things in the store that didn’t seem too young or too flashy. They were all junior’s sizes, but she guessed that after losing enough weight to warrant new jeans anyway, she probably didn’t have to worry about them fitting. Before long, she’d loaded herself up and Todd like twin camels and headed for the dressing room in the back.

  She hung the camp lantern from one of the clothing hooks and the clothes on the other hooks inside the dressing room. Then she handed Todd her purse.

  He stared at it like it was made of lizards and filled with bubonic plague. “Seriously?”

  “Take it.” She thrust the purse toward him.

  Todd took the bag like it was radioactive. “Why can’t you just take it in?”

  “I’m already taking in the backpack. There’s only so much room in there. Besides, there’s no one here. What possible threat could there be to your vast ego in an empty store?””

  “Fine.” Todd flopped down on a pouf placed outside the dressing rooms for just such an occasion, sinking into it much more than he clearly expected, and he wrapped both arms around her purse, covering as much of it with his body as possible.

  “There you go.” Emily grinned. “Guard it with your life.”

  She lost track of time putting on and pulling off clothes, but a while later she’d narrowed down a few prime choices she liked the best. One blue shirt was very flattering. Emily pulled it off and dropped it into the open backpack sitting in the corner. The small dressing room had powder pink carpet and smelled a little like feet, and she was feeling strangely lonely with only herself to look at in the mirror. “Do you think Mr. Ward and Mrs. Aims are having an affair?”

  Outside the fitting room, Todd laughed. “Not unless there’s a lot of Viagra involved.”

  “Gross, Todd. I don’t want to think about that.” Emily reached for the jeans slung over the dressing room door. They had little swirls of stitching on the pockets shaped like butterfly wings. She had mixed feelings about them. She liked the style but was unsure what use there was to having butterfly wings on her butt. “I mean, it could have been an affair of the heart. Maybe they’re totally in love.”

  “I don’t know.” She could hear amusement and boredom mingling in his voice. “Maybe. Are you almost done?”

  She glared at the dressing room door and hoped he’d feel it. “Don’t rush me.”

  “Sorry dear.” He sighed, obnoxiously loud. “Shutting up.”

  “I am almost done.” She smiled at the thought of Todd in irritation sitting on the zebra striped poof outside the dressing room, holding her purse and surrounded by women’s clothing and dainty things, but she frowned when she looked into the mirror. Between her pristine white bra and panties was a wasteland of wrinkly skin. It had always been bad, at least as long as she remembered, but it was getting worse the more weight she lost.

  She ran her hands over her protruding ribs and a dull pink scar that ran across her lower abdomen, then turned slightly to examine the sad, flabby state of ass affairs. “Awful.”

  Outside the door, Todd groaned. “You want me to get you a different pair?”

  She was too distracted by how cruddy she looked to be mad at him for his impatience this time. “No. They fit. I’m just too skinny.”

  “You look fine, dear.”

  Emily squeezed the loose skin of her stomach with two fingers. “You have to say that. You’re my husband. I wish-”

  Emily stopped and closed her eyes for a vision that stole her away, a thief in the dark of her brain. A dark-haired woman, pressing a coffee mug to her lips, the edges of her mouth curled and catty. Laughter, raucous. Girlish fear. If they didn’t tone it down, they’d be asked to leave. They were too happy to allow the artsy types brood properly. Honesty, brutal but loving, even in the worst pair of jeans. How long had it been? She shook her head, trying to scatter the woman’s face across the floor where it wouldn’t hurt her anymore. She felt sick, the kind of deep heartsick that turned the floor into a waterbed and made her unsteady on her feet.

  “Emily?”

  The sound of Todd’s voice at least steadied the floor. There was no telling how long she’d been quiet. “I’m fine.” The words rushed out because she wanted to believe them, and quietly, because she didn’t want to hear them sound untrue. She pulled the jeans on with ease and didn’t bother with another butt check. No one cared about her butt, or whether it had butterfly wings, not even her. Her stomach felt like it was full of coffee grounds and cottage cheese, and she wanted to go home. She couldn’t remember ever having wanted to be at home that much before. She had the jeans around her knees when Todd called to her again.

  “Emily.” This time the tone of his voice bored into her with alarm. Something was wrong, and not just that wrong thing clunking around inside her brain. There was a low moan, a clatter, a loud crash, a rack hitting the floor, and hangers scattering across the carpet. Emily jerked the jeans up to her waist and fastened the top button without bothering with the zipper. “Todd?”

  No response but grunting, and that wasn’t only coming from Todd.

  Emily reached into the backpack for the .45 she’d thrown in next to tampons and lip moisturizer. She pushed open the dressing room door, stepped into the dark shop still wearing nothing but the jeans and her bra. The lamp behind her cast a long beam of dim light across the floor, filled by her silhouette. Todd was on his back, straining to keep the girl’s snapping teeth from his exposed neck and face.

  The girl was quite pretty, except for the oozing bite on her arm and black veins festering under pale grey skin. Her nametag said “Sara” and she had smoldering red hair that curled wildly around her face. Her head was bloody on one side where someone had failed to hit her properly the first time, and her mouth was bloody for probably the same reason. Emily rolled her eyes at the incompetence of Sara’s last customer, at the same moment, she realized the girl was wearing the exact pair of jeans Emily had just put on in the dressing room but filled out the butt butterflies much better.

  “Emily!”

  “I’ve got her, Todd.” She rolled her eyes
again, gripped the gun with both hands, and pulled the trigger. Red hair, black blood, and grey brain splattered onto a purple T-Shirt that said, “Espresso Yourself” in scrolling silver letters.

  Todd pushed Sara’s limp body into the floor and slowly climbed to his feet. They said nothing for a moment while he bent over to recover himself. “Pushy sales people.” He fumbled for the words between breaths.

  “Uh-huh.” She stared at him expectantly.

  He closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders forward. “I know.”

  “One teenage girl Todd?”

  “I said I know.”

  She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or scream at him. Emily grabbed her old shirt from the dressing room floor and pulled it on, then grabbed the backpack, zipped the gun inside with her new clothes, and tossed it over her one shoulder. She sat the camp light down on the floor while she retied her shoes. “What did you do with my purse?”

  Todd cringed. “I think it’s got brain on it.”

  “Damnit, Todd.”

  But she was derailed from chastising him further. They were still shopping, after all, and there was a whole rack of brain-free purses behind the sales counter. Todd said nothing while she opened and looked inside each one until she found one that she liked slightly more than the old. Then he waited patiently while she carefully took her things out of the disgusting purse and transferred them over to the new one. “I’m done shopping. I want to go home.”

  She knew he wouldn’t argue with her. But he had his wallet in his hand, standing by the register. “How much do we owe them?”

  Emily almost went to check the tags, but she stopped herself. “I don’t think we owe them anything.”

  “You’re just going to take all that stuff?”

  “Yeah. I think I am. With service that bad, they deserve to be robbed.”

  Todd looked at her like she was a stranger, and was clearly uncomfortable with robbing the store, but he followed her silently out into tomb of the mall.

  8

  Red was happy to see them when they got home. She was almost worried he’d be pouty, but he greeted them at the door and did a dance of joyful circles around them, as though he thought they might not have ever come home again. She sat down on the floor and let him climb all over her while she petted him. Then she went upstairs, where she put on all the new clothes again, so she could show them to Todd. Todd looked away from the television long enough to tell her she looked nice. He did not notice the butt butterflies at all, and by the time she’d finished her fashion show, she felt worse from his lackluster compliments than if he hadn’t looked at her all. It was a terrible thing to be seen and ignored all at once.

  Eventually, she sat down on one end of the sofa and welcomed as much of Red as would fit in her lap. He’d been clinging to her heels ever since she got home, so much so that she was determined not to leave the house without him again, even if she was going somewhere he wasn’t allowed.

  She didn’t want to watch Todd’s movie, which was something about a guy falling in love with a fat girl and how that was somehow both shocking and funny. It was all a little disgusting, and she was perturbed that Todd was so in to it. She wondered if she got fat if he’d leave her, but that was a stupid thought.

  Todd wouldn’t need her to be fat to leave. She wasn’t sure why he stuck around at all. She stared at the television anyway, because there was nothing else to do. In her head, there was a different story, one made all the more intriguing by her inability to recall it.

  The girl she remembered in the dressing room, Emily was certain she had known her once. The image had been too real for her crappy imagination, and the colors, even the sounds, were vivid enough to make her think that there was something important about that woman that cowered on the edges of her mind like a child in the dark. As Emily thought of her, she felt a connection that seemed to stretch through and drop anchor in empty space.

  “Emily?”

  She blinked and looked at Todd. “What?”

  He sat with the remote in his hand, both eyebrows raised, and his chin dipped down like he was staring at her over some invisible pair of eyeglasses. “The movie is over.”

  She’d been staring at an empty screen. “I know.” She had no idea why she lied about that, except that she didn’t want to talk, to be forced to tell him about a girl she could barely remember only to have him accuse her of imagining things again. If he’d left her alone, she might have gone back to staring at the empty screen and trying to fill in the mystery in her mind.

  Todd huffed and set the remote down on the sofa beside him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Red had fallen asleep. She ran one of his silky yellow ears between two fingers, and let it flop back against this head.

  “Seriously.” Todd’s face was exasperated. “What did I do now?”

  “Nothing, Todd. Not every thought in my head has to be about you.”

  “Was I not paying close enough attention to your clothes?”

  She rolled her eyes and leaned her head against the backrest of the sofa. “I said it wasn’t about you.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  She looked at him and thought of just telling him about the girl, but honesty was overruled in favor of self-defense. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s like, the last thing you should say if you want me to believe you’re fine. I’m fine is universal chick language for ‘I’m pissed and it’s your fault.’”

  She tried to smile at him, stretching her face like putty that only held shape for a moment. “Since when do you know so much about women Todd? The next thing I know, you’ll be wanting to talk about my periods.”

  Todd scrunched his nose and squirmed on the sofa. “Just because I know it exists doesn’t mean I want to talk about it.”

  Todd was still staring at her. She thought there was little chance of distracting him outside of talking about lady functions. Red was like an inferno in her lap, but he was far too cute to move. She rubbed his ears absently and looked down at the carpet. “I just thought of something earlier is all. It bothered me a little, and I’ve been thinking about it since.”

  Todd looked slightly relieved. “Well what was it?”

  Emily sighed. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”

  “Maybe I can help you figure it out. Did you remember a dream or something? Sometimes you have nightmares.”

  Emily shook her head. “It wasn’t a dream. I think it was a memory.” She watched Todd’s face carefully. His look shifted from one of base curiosity to real concern. “Did I used to know a girl with long brown hair? I feel like I did.”

  Todd frowned. “I don’t know. Why would you think about that?”

  “I don’t know why I thought about her, but I did. I was standing in the dressing room and she popped into my head.”

  Todd rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, like he suddenly had pain there. “Seriously, Em. I’m trying to help you, but you’ve got to help me a little. I mean, first you see things at the dump, and now you’re dreaming people up in the living room. You need to get hold of yourself. I don’t know what to do for you if you’re just going to keep heading toward crazy at every turn.”

  “I’m not crazy, Todd. I remember her laughing and drinking coffee. Why would my imagination just make up some random girl drinking coffee? She had to be real.”

  “Uh-huh, and so was the guy in the dump because the dog said so.”

  Red lifted his head off her lap and raised an offended eyebrow at Todd that she thought exemplified exactly how she felt. He laid down again with a snort. Emily appreciated his attempt to stand up for her but wished dogs had words instead of only nasty glances.

  “When you put it like that, of course I sound completely crazy, but that’s just it isn’t it. You can’t really talk to me, so you just assume everything I say is garbage you don’t have to listen to because it’s crazy.”

  Todd chewed on his lip in exasperation. “I’m lis
tening to you right now, Em. And you sound crazy.”

  Emily looked away from him, back at the empty television. “Because you’re not really listening. I’m only half here to you, like a ghost.”

  He didn’t really answer her. It was clear all he wanted was to get the conversation over with. “Fine. Whatever. You remember some girl. I don’t know. Maybe you knew her before we met.”

  She was getting infinitely tired of his eye rolls. “Sure. That makes perfect sense.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Yeah. I’m glad.” She pushed Red off her lap and climbed from the sofa. “I’d hate to say anything that didn’t make complete sense. I might break you. It might shatter your universe to think that not everything has to make perfect sense.”

  Todd huffed and closed his eyes. “I’m not going to fight with you about some girl you think you remember. I told you I don’t know, and I don’t know why you’re pissed at me for not being able to read your mind.”

  “I’m not pissed at you.” She said, but in her brain, there was more to say. ‘I’m done with you.’ But she’d never be able to say that much out loud. More importantly, she thought he was lying, and she felt that there was always something in him that seemed a little disingenuous. Even when he told her the truth he sounded like he was trying to slip something by her. He never looked trustworthy, fidgeting on the sofa, flicking one of the plastic buttons on the remote control with the edge of his fingernail, like he had something to hide.

  But he had no reason to lie about this, and if she read too much into it, she’d be guilty of the crazy he so often accused her of. The memory, in the grand scheme of the world, was so inane. So irrelevant. There was no benefit for him to lie about it and irritate her so much. He had nothing to gain. She couldn’t stand to look at him, to think about him anymore. “Goodnight, Todd.” She spun for the stairs and stomped away.