Authors: Elisa Albert
Subtle
, Paul said.
I saw them at the Paradise in 1989
, Cat said.
Right before they broke up and Kelly died.
Cat needs you to know that she’s seen things, knows people, has been in the right place at the right time even if she’s currently in the wrong place all the time.
Paul went up to bed.
Have fun, ladies
.
If we get drunk or high enough, we can usually rally some sort of good time, Cat and I, at least a little sliver of fun, but sometimes we try and try and only end up morose and drunk/high, side by side. Then we don’t hang out for a while and it’s like we’ve never hung out next time we hang out and I get inexplicably mad at Paul, like how could you do this to me, make me this desperate isolated hausfrau scrounging for simpaticos in this backwater shitbox?
The first girl I ever loved was Nora Pulaski. Adorable athletic little doe-eyed cutie. First day of kindergarten she sits down next to me with all the assurance of her almost six years, gives me this knowing look, and informs me that we are going to be best friends.
Thrilling. She chose me. I don’t think I even wondered why.
We played with Barbies and rearranged the furniture in the elaborate dollhouse my father bought me the first time my mother was sick. Moved through all the levels of cat’s cradle, practiced cartwheels in the unfurnished living room of Nora’s rental on East Fifty-Seventh, coauthored a pamphlet of appreciation for the third-grade boy we both loved, a skinny, freckled redhead. Strange choice, that kid, but wow did we love him. We drew his name in bubble letters so many times.
Nora was confident, at home in herself. Her mom was calm and made us muffins. Once I heard Nora call her Mommy, which surprised me, because mine was strictly Janice. “Mommy” sounded so fond, so assumptive. I would no sooner call mine Mommy than throw myself into the arms of a stranger on the subway.
Around fifth grade we had this game in which I was Hugo and Nora was Nancy. Hugo would return home from a day of work “horny,” and Nancy would be waiting for him on the bed, and we would grind for a while.
One time Nora’s mom stretched out on the couch with us while we watched TV. She smoothed my hair, murmured
how’s your mom
,
sweetheart
, and I froze. Couldn’t speak for fear I’d lose it (lose what?), shake out some highly embarrassing primal wail.
By middle school, when my mom was dead, Nora got new friends. Smart girls. Confident girls. Girls with good mothers. Girls who were going to work from within the system and kick ass in college. She still said hi to me, wasn’t ever mean or anything, but we weren’t friends anymore.
I love fucking Paul.
Sometimes it’s like being on a floating dock in a breeze; sometimes it’s like saying goodbye aboard a failing airplane. Tonight it’s like a firm handshake to seal a deal.
I was with a series of angry fuckers up til Paul, real flip-you-over-try-to-hurt-you types, not a lot of eye contact. Thought I was having fun.
Such sweet beginnings we had, me and Paul. The delicious, clandestine smell of him on my sheets. Nothing intellectual about it, just wanted to bury my face in his skin, breathe him. Gave me the shivers. He’s the kind of guy who’ll fuck you nice and slow. But sweet beginnings are not the challenge, now, are they.
We kept it secret for almost a year. There was the whiff of scandal: he an associate professor and I a grad student fifteen years his junior. Apparently they still frown on that sort of thing. Ridiculous, besides which he already had tenure. But there was also the issue of his long-term, long-distance girlfriend, a theory-of-theory-of-theory type stuck on the tenure track in some godforsaken corner of Indiana.
Commitment-phobe
, my bitchiest friend, Subeena, warned me.
He’s
how
old? They’ve been together
how
long?
We have an agreement
, Paul told me.
We live our own lives
.
But when he finally broke it off with her, she was livid, absolutely devastated, and he could not wrap his head around why.
We had an agreement
, he pointed out.
I gave up having children for you
, she said, and wept.
You said you didn’t even
want
kids
, he told her.
Don’t you love those women who ignore every imperative of time and biology then act all super-duper tragic at forty? Come on, now.
Tonight we huddle naked under the down, laughing about funny things the baby’s doing lately. He is cool, we agree. Cracks us up. Of this much we are certain: he is a sweet boy, a funny sunny love of a boy. He has this way of smiling at us, this sly little grin. We adore him. Oh, do we ever. We’re happy. We’re blessed. We are we are we are we are. Knock wood, spit three times, wave garlic, throw a pinch of salt, whatever you got.
You keep saying how happy you are
, my favorite professor, Marianne, said over coffee last year when we were supposed to be talking about my dissertation.
You keep saying that. You just told me four times how happy you are. I am happy for you that you are so happy
.
A minute or hour later I’m awake from a dream, sweaty: my cousin Jason brought a prostitute to my father’s old family house in the Berkshires and woke everybody up with their humping. I hadn’t seen everyone in a long time, all together. My grandparents, Aunt Ellen, cousins Jason and Erica. Even my mother was there, spectral but healthy. The prostitute was Mina Morris twenty years ago: stringy hair, dark lipstick, addicted, wild-eyed, half-crazy.
I was sleeping!
my mother screamed at no one in particular, stomping around in a thin pink nightgown. I could see her heavy breasts in shadow.
You woke me up, you inconsiderate little shits!
She used to call me that, like a term of endearment.
Shut the fuck up, bitch
, Mina Morris told her coldly, and my mother was shocked silent for once.
My father sold that house in the Berkshires years ago. Aunt Ellen has barely spoken to me since I married Paul, though she did send a handwritten letter, lot of
disappointed
and
history
and
our people
and
suffered enough
, which I pretended to disregard but later tore up in a rage and flushed down the toilet. Cousin Jason is highly religious, lives in Arizona, works “for the government,” and wants further proof that President Obama was born in the United States. In his profile picture he is wearing a novelty Israeli Army T-shirt, stone-cold serious. Erica lives in the city working wholeheartedly the kind of fashion rag you read if your highest aspiration is Best Dressed at cosmetology school. We used to go out for drinks when we were in our twenties. She sent a very fancy onesie for the baby.
I’m awake, is the point, drenched, and there’s this thumping, now scratching, now thumping again coming from inside the ceiling.
Crap
, Paul whispers.
Mouse?
Bigger. Squirrel. I don’t know. Raccoon. Fuck.
Paul is your basically stoic, healthy, strictly uncomplaining non-Jew. He’s hard to ruffle. He’s never had a cold. Once, just one time, I got him mad enough to yell at me, and was perversely thrilled he had it in him. The sex afterward was epic.
I thought a trapped animal in the wall of a house was only, like, a literary device.
He slides a hand between my thighs, mutters something about calling Will in the morning, and goes back to sleep.
Takes me a while longer, though, because it’s pretty noisy inside the ceiling or the wall or whatever, and I’m not exactly eager to see my mother again.
This time I dream it’s summertime and sunshine streams from between my thighs, radiating softly around my hips. I am very, very pregnant and very, very happy. Sunshine within, sunshine without, gold and warm. But something is wrong with our house. Will comes over. He brings me a sloppy fistful of wildflowers, lays them on the counter. He gestures at my glowing middle, averts his eyes.
Amazing thing you’re doing there, Ari. Totally amazing.
I don’t know where Paul is. Will heads to the basement to examine the furnace, which I realize is too hot, intensifying the sunshine unbearably. There is burning through the whole house, burning in every room, everything melting together: happy and yellow, smelling of beeswax and cum.
Some hours or minutes pass this way, then there’s Mr. Baby, howling at the pale, icy dawn.
Raccoon!
says Will when he and Paul come clomping down from the attic.
Pretty sure. There’s an opening near the baseboard under the window.
The baby toddles over, hides behind my legs. He’s an awesome baby, a swell little guy. Still a baby, though, of which even the best are oppressive fascist bastard dictator narcissists.
So what do we do?
Paul’s slumped at the counter, head in hands.
Move
.
Will shrugs.
Traps. The good kind. Weather turns, you know, they find ways in. Cold out there. Can’t blame them
.
Will’s parents were professors at the college. He ran from them, from here, became a carpenter. Worked on boats on the South Shore of Boston for a long time, drank and drank and drank and drank. Found his way to AA and Thich Nhat Hanh and mindful awareness. Came back here when the professors died. To
face it
, he told me once. Our eyes met and we understood each other. We have to be careful with eye contact, me and Will. We avoid it as best we can, good soldiers, everything on the up-and-up.
So he fixed up their old house, three down from ours. Knows how to do all sorts of useful things. Welds in the garage, helps us figure out the rudiments of boilers, roofing, basement finishing, painting, electricity, stays for dinner, eats my slow-cooker hippie food, says
whatever
and
no biggie
and
glad to help
. Fifty-one, tall, floppy hair, runner’s body, lined face, piercing gray eyes, strong hands, cool dirty sneakers. I regularly imagine fucking him for a long afternoon in a highway motel where the bleach doesn’t quite cover the smell.
The baby puts his hand near the oven, admonishes himself with an approximation of “hot!” and looks for approval. I offer it up:
yes that’s right good boy who’s a good boy you are oh you’re such a good good boy!
Who can say I’m not a good mother? Who can say I don’t read the subject headings in the books? The How to Care for Your Child if There Is Absolutely No One with Any Primal Knowledge Around to Guide You guides. What to Expect When There Is No Received Wisdom Whatsoever. I keep them in an out-of-the-way drawer, like porn.
Can’t we just, like, seal off wherever it got in?
Paul has his arcane PhD, his prestigious appointment, but no idea how to strip paint or tighten a pipe fitting or deal with a rodent.
You don’t want him in there. He’ll die in there. You guys have peanut butter?
Paul brightens, reaches an arm around my waist, or what used to be my waist.
Yeah, we can rustle up some peanut butter. Ari, stay out of the traps, will you?
The joke being that I’m not as lithe as before I fabricated and surgically evacuated a new human being, fuck you very much. I like to go at the peanut butter with a spoon. Before he’s finished the sentence he understands that he has made a mistake, and his face turns sorry.
Prick.
Yes, clearly I am not as lithe as before I fabricated and surgically evacuated a new human being. At any opportunity my stepmother will still give me the Scan, let’s call it, that classic down-up as common to the female of the species as is the vagina—and offer a specious
don’t worry, sweetie, you’ll get back to normal soon
. Bitch, I mean, come on: do you think I don’t know I’m wearing enormous pants?
The baby’s first birthday.
Surgery day
, I point out, because I have trouble calling it birth. Anniversary of the great failure.
Ari. Don’t.
Can’t handle a party, none of that circus shit. Baby doesn’t know the difference. We give him his first taste of ice cream after dinner, sing the song, blow out a candle on his behalf, clap, kiss. We forget to take pictures. The joyful chocolate-faced baby, lone candle, flurry of my desperate attempts at good cheer.
Will comes over with a bottle of good scotch.
We made it, babe
, Paul says, toasting. Who exactly does he imagine as having made it? And to where? All we’ve done is get used to it.
Clink
. I’m surrounded by sweet males. There is that.
I was on happy pills in college, but they messed with my memory and made me fat, so I ditched them. Regularly Paul wonders whether it might be time to check back in with some meds again, maybe “talk to someone.” I bristle. I want to feel things about things. Sad that I don’t have a mother and that the one I had was a total bitch. Mad at my ball-sack OB for gutting me like a fucking fish for no good reason. Surprised and frustrated that even the best man on earth turns out not to cure loneliness. Bored to tears by my own in-depth examination of a subject I once adored. Worn down by the drudgery and isolation of caring for a tiny child.
He was born on a Tuesday after a long day of labor, but I did not “give” birth to him. He was not “given” birth. The great privilege.
Instead, the knife.
He was “late,” they said. Late, late for a purely invented date. So he got evicted, and everything went south, and me too complacent to challenge, too stupid to question. Why so stupid? Why so complacent?
They cut me in half, pulled the baby from my numb, gaping, cauterized center. Merciless hospital lights, curtain in front of my face. Effective disembodiment. Smell of burning flesh. Sewn back up again by a team of people I didn’t know, none of whom bothered to look me in the eye, not even one of them, not even once. Severed from hip to hip, iced, brutalized, catheterized, tethered to a bed, the tiny bird’s heartfelt shrieks as they carted him off somewhere hell itself.