Authors: Sarah Langan
And here she was, dreaming of Hinton, Iowa—1992. Long before college and Omaha. Long after the slits in her wrists had healed into narrow white lines. Smack in the middle, when things had been bleakest. The man in the three-piece suit
scritch-scratched
against the closet she’d locked him in. The theatre seats below were dark, but she could see the audience’s glassy black eyes. The hole in the kitchen floor was broken faux linoleum and plywood, whose edges could have been teeth. Yes, she remembered this. It all came back.
As she watched, the show began. Starring characters reprised their roles like a movie on repeat that had always happened, would always happen, forever and ever.
Suddenly, Betty Lucas was kneeling in front of the hole. Blond still, and surprisingly young. She grunted as she pressed the knife against the tile and broke open more plywood. The hole widened. She cut her fingers as she worked, but the blood didn’t slow her down.
Audrey watched from the fold-out chair at the kitchen table. Hand cupped over her mouth, knees pulled under her butt, chin tucked close to her chest, she tried her best to make herself small.
Outside, an early frost. A cold walk home from school. The girl, sixteen years old, opened the double-wide screen door. The hole over the crotch of her tan, Salvation Army coveralls was closed by a row of safely pins, and her hair was so greasy it looked wet.
“What are you doing, Momma?” the girl asked.
Audrey cringed. The girl was dirty, wretched, ignorant. What would the admissions director at Columbia, or the head of human resources at Vesuvius say, if they knew that Audrey Lucas came from this?
Betty looked up from the floor and bared her cigarette-stained teeth. “Who are you?”
“Momma? It’s me,” the girl said. Her voice cracked. She wiped her eyes, then took a breath to stifle the sobs. The cuts in the floor were sloppy, irregular angles that made the white tile stickers jagged, and Audrey felt a sudden fury, that Betty Lucas had allowed her daughter to dress in rags while she’d always made sure to buy her own clothes new.
Betty shoved the knife into another chunk of floor. It sounded like slashing a tire, the way the air whooshes as it rushes out. “See what you made me do?” she asked. Her manic words came fast: “Seewhatyoumademedo!!!!”
“There are doctors. There’s medicine you can take,” the girl said. Only, she was so frightened, defeated, that she whispered, and Betty didn’t hear.
When she’d dug deep enough, Betty dropped the knife and tore open the subfloor with her hands. The dirt underneath came out in blood-mud fistfuls. She threw it against the girl’s legs, where it splatted. “IseeyouwatchingmeYoucan’thaveher!” she shouted into the hole.
“Momma, stop it!” the girl cried.
“You hear them?” Betty asked. “They climb through holes, Lamb. That’s how they get inside us. We’ve got to kill them. You’d do murder for me, wouldn’t you?”
Scritch-scratch!
The man scraped the door, and in the dark down below, the audience murmured.
The girl patted her thighs. Once. Twice. Grown Audrey, watching from the table, did the same:
pat! pat!
Suddenly, Betty jerked to her feet. She teetered for a moment, like the unbalance in her mind had also unbalanced her body. Then she charged. Fast as lightning, she spun the girl into a half nelson, and wedged the knife against her throat. “Who are you really?” she asked. “And what have you done with my daughter?”
The girl didn’t struggle. Instead, she mirrored grown Audrey and tried to make herself small.
This had happened before. It had already happened. And yet tears came to Audrey’s eyes. Why didn’t the girl run? Why didn’t she scream? Didn’t she want to live?
Betty drew a light line along the girl’s neck with the knife. Blood beaded against her pale skin like tiny red pearls. The girl bit her lip, squeezed her hands into fists, closed her eyes as if counting backward, but never once budged, or even whimpered.
Audrey flinched. She knew what would happen next. She remembered. Betty would see the blood, and regret. She’d let Audrey go, and a little while after that, she’d run out the door, and ashamed, stayed AWOL, living in bars and with strange men for six weeks. The cut would heal in less than a day, and the on-duty cop who showed up on a noise complaint would look her up and down, then snicker, and tell her that with a mother like Betty, she ought to wear turtlenecks.
But none of that was so terrible. People survived worse. No, the terrible part was the lesson Hinton taught her that she’d forgotten until now. Always, before Hinton, Betty’s red ants had raged outward, at boyfriends and bosses and imaginary conspiracies. But this time, they’d
attacked Audrey, and she’d finally understood that the pact they’d made long ago had been a lie. There was no one Betty loved, not even her daughter, and that second-grade photo of her favorite little girl had met the bottom of a garbage can long ago.
Betty’s grip on the knife loosened. The girl’s chest heaved. Blood gathered along the neck of the T-shirt under her coveralls. The effect was a macabre red-and-white carnation.
Poor girl,
Audrey thought. Time slowed. Audrey unfolded her legs and arms and sat straight in her chair. Sat larger. She wanted to be a good influence. Wanted the girl to glimpse the possibility of a better future.
The girl peered at her from the corner of her eyes, and Audrey thought they saw each other. Had somehow reached out across the void that divided past and present.
The girl nodded very slightly, as if to say,
Yes, I see you. I know you, too.
Something inside Audrey cracked open. A wall she hadn’t guessed existed. She remembered being that girl. The pain, the shame, the bravery of every tiny revolt against Betty, that had been so hard to commit. Those revolts had laid the groundwork for all the other battles she would fight in her adult life, and win. She realized now that she’d left one good thing behind in Omaha, and she could still claim it, if she wanted: herself.
“Help me,” the girl mouthed. Audrey’s resolve returned. She leaped from the folding kitchen chair, and charged. “Get out of this! You don’t need her…. RUN!” she shouted at the girl.
The girl (little Audrey!) hesitated. Betty did not hear. Only held the knife, and her daughter, too tight. Behind the closet door, the man
scritch-scratched
against the plywood.
“GO!” Audrey shouted as she ran, as if to tackle Betty.
The girl heard. Her lips turned up. Only slightly. Only
if you were looking. She smiled, then jerked away from her mother in one fast motion. The knife cut deeper. Blood streamed as she spun, but the wound didn’t slow her down. She raced out the screen door and down the dirt road without looking back.
Audrey watched her go. Dirty, inconsequential girl. Wretch destined for a career in early motherhood and crystal meth. Audrey was so overjoyed by her escape that she shook with relief. “Good girl. Smart girl. I love you,” she said, because even if Betty and Saraub were inconstant, at least she would always have herself. And this girl she’d been, it turned out, was worth something, after all.
In the audience, the crowd oohed and aahed. The lights got brighter, and she could see their faces. There were about fifty of them, and they were all old, in their seventies at least, but their skin was pulled preternaturally smooth and tight. “You see!” Audrey cried out at them. “Don’t screw with me. I’ll fight. I’ll win!”
She expected to wake up, or to enter another dream, but instead the lights got dark again.
Scritch-scratch.
That sound remained. Only it carried more of a hollow echo, like the man was close to breaking free from the closet. The kitchen brightened like a stage set. So did the hole in the floor, and Betty’s wild blue eyes. In front of and behind her, letters briefly lit up the stage:
A
u
d
r
ey
L
uc
as:
t
hi
S
is
Y
O
ur
L
i
fe.
Audrey felt a breeze. She looked down, and saw that she was now wearing those same coveralls as the girl, only the safety pins had come undone. No panties. Her nakedness, exposed. She covered herself with her hands. A thick tuft of dark woman hair.
Betty turned and looked straight at her. Saw her. The feeling was like a stab in the chest. Audrey’s blood pooled at her feet. “Who are you?” Betty asked.
Scritch-scratch!
Audrey could hear the wood shavings as they fell from the plywood closet. The man had almost dug his way out.
“This is a dream,” Audrey said. “You’re my subconscious. You’re not even Betty. I’m not your daughter. It’s just me, talking to me, because I’m upset about Saraub.”
“Really?” Betty asked as she cleaned the girl’s blood from the knife with her hands, then licked her fingers, so that the corners of her lips got bloody. Betty nodded at the screen door. “Little girl won’t get far. Only a few years. Twenty on the outside. Wounds like that bleed slow, but they’re fatal.”
“She’ll make it,” Audrey said.
Betty shook her head. “No, she’s damaged goods. Now come with me. Come see the floor.”
(Scritch-scratch!)
The audience got very quiet, and Audrey understood that something bad was coming. She and Betty stood on either side of the broken faux linoleum. Audrey’s coveralls flapped. “We’re the same, Lamb,” Betty said, as they both peered down. The hole was deep, and at its bottom lay a mirror. The two women’s black-eyed images were indistinguishable, because both were riddled with squirming red ants.
Scritch-scratch.
The sound was very close. The man in the three-piece suit was almost out.
“Please wake me up, I don’t like this game anymore,” Audrey begged. Flap-flap, went her pants. So exposed. The red ants wound between mother’s and daughter’s reflections, then mounted the sides of the hole and climbed out.
Betty grinned. Her silken hair and dewy skin channeled an old Hollywood movie, where the people were charming, and nothing bad ever happened.
Scritch-scratch!
In a quick, jerking movement, Betty reached across
the void. She squeezed the hole in Audrey’s coveralls. So shameful. So exposed. “You come from me. I own you,” Betty said.
The hole pulsed wider, its jagged sticker linoleum like teeth, and the ants a red tide bubbling up from its depths. “It wants to live inside us, Lamb. It smells our weakness. It climbs through our holes. Don’t you hear it?”
Scritch-scratch.
The hole got bigger. So did Betty’s frozen grin. “Get out while you can, Lamb,” she said as she squeezed. Only her fingers were red with blood, and now, so was Audrey’s crotch.
“No. It’s not after me, only you,” Audrey tried to say, but her words got garbled. Her throat hurt. Bad. Something wet. She felt her neck with her fingers. Red.
Still bleeding, she broke down and began to cry. In her dream, and in real life, too. The sound carried through 14B’s air shafts, and halls, and even the elevator. Through the vibrations in the walls, it roused sleeping and vigilant tenants alike. A weeping, desperate sound that made their hearts flutter in carnal delight. Down below, in the theatre, the black-eyed audience grinned.
Scritch-scratch!
The sound was close. A tiny hole in the closet door near the eyehook appeared, and a long, pale finger reached through it. The latch came undone.
The ants swarmed Audrey’s ankles. Pins and needles on fire. “I’m thirsty. Someone cut my throat,” she gasped as she cried.
Betty loosened her hold on Audrey’s crotch. A red, broken thing. “Better run, Lamb. It’s a bad place, where you live.”
Audrey traced the curving, open wound on her throat. “It never healed,” she said. I’m still bleeding.”
“Better run, Lamb.”
Audrey backed away from the hole. Betty stayed.
The man burst from the closet. Betty lurched as the red army riddled her skin from the inside out. She didn’t scream, though the sound was high-pitched and hysterical. Even as the insects bit, and her face swelled unrecognizably like a dry thing left too long in water, Betty Lucas laughed. The audience laughed, too.
Audrey turned to run. The man in the three-piece suit caught her by the shoulders.
“You’re stuck to something, my dear,” he told her. “A tumor. Let me get that for you,” he said. Then he raised his finger, which he’d whittled to a sharp bone point, and sliced her throat open.
She jerked in her sleep, and stopped breathing. Everything got quiet, except the television in 14B, which turned on and off and on again, like the fluttering eyes of a large animal. Across the screen the late-night movie read:
A
u
d
r
ey
L
uc
as:
t
hi
S
is
Y
O
ur
L
i
fe.
G
reat to finally talk to you, too, Bob!” Saraub Ramesh enthused into the mouthpiece of his cell phone. Reception was terrible, but at least he sounded less nervous than he felt, due mostly to a serious hangover. Thread-sized sparks of lightning flickered across his eyeballs, like he could see his own blood circulating there. He’d been dry-heaving half the night, and only remembered fragments of what had happened before that: a pole dancer, somebody sucking on his ear and making it sticky. God, he really hoped that meant she’d been gnawing on a mouthful of taffy. After that, there’d been a piano, and an apartment building with slanted floors and cockeyed windows. He remembered Audrey looking out from a crooked doorway, seeming small and alone, like the first time he’d met her in front of the Film Forum.
She’d been pacing beneath the marquee that day,
and he’d noticed that she looked both prettier and older than the online photo she’d posted. High, chiseled cheekbones, and heavy circles under her eyes from either drugs or an obsessive personality. After he got to know her, he’d learned: both.
He’d loitered near the side of the building before approaching, because it was his nature to watch. She’d worn flats and wool trousers instead of belly jeans and sparkling eye glitter, which had made him wonder if she was the last woman in New York who dressed like a grown-up. She’d held her arms crossed around her chest and taken deep breaths, as if reminding herself to remain calm.
From the second he’d clicked on her profile, he’d understood that there was a story in her, the girl from the Midwest who’d started her life fresh after thirty years. Left her family and friends behind, to worship the glittering man-eater called Manhattan. From her hunched shoulders and the pinched guardedness of her expression, he’d understood that she was a wounded person. But still standing. Still carrying on. He’d never lived much, except through the eyes of a camera, and he admired people who had.
Seeing her there, he’d known that if he started talking to her, he’d never stop. Good-bye to Tonia, who’d never read a book for pleasure, and expected him to start working for the family business as soon as they got hitched, and build her a mansion in Jersey. Good-bye to his family, too, and the life they’d planned for him. But he also knew that if he walked away, she’d wait under the
Strangers on a Train
sign for at least an hour before going home. And it was cold out there.
He’d never imagined, two and a half years later, that she’d be the one to leave. He’d always seen himself as the weaker link.
Now, head throbbing, Saraub switched the phone
from one ear to the other. Its ringing had woken him this morning—make that, afternoon. And good thing. It was the CEO of Sunshine Studios.
Reception was bad. The connection was all static. But then he walked to the window, and Bob Stern’s voice returned. “Before we juice this thing up, I wanted to get you on the horn,” Bob said. Saraub could only make out half the words: “wan et you on e orn.”
“That sounds about right,” Saraub answered. A white dot floated over his left eye, like maybe he was having a Wild-Turkey-induced aneurism. He considered this briefly, then decided there wasn’t much he could do about it either way, so no point worrying.
“Just want to get a handle on where you see this going,” Bob said. He had a staccato way of talking, like he was stabbing his words with a pitchfork.
“I’ve got one or two interviews left, then I’ll start my final cut. My hope is for a small art house release. Ideally, after good word of mouth, it would grow from there. Anything you want to know, shoot. I’m happy to go over details,” Saraub answered. Then winced, because he might not make it through this call: Wild Turkey’s anti-Thanksgiving was gurgling its way through his stomach.
“How much you spend so far?” Bob asked, only it sounded like: “Ow uch end so far?” When Sunshine declared bankruptcy, a multinational called Servitus bought it in a fire sale and appointed Bob Stern its new CEO. He was an investment-banking executive who’d never produced a picture, but Servitus had made the gamble that he’d steer the studio back into the black. He’d been clearing off his predecessor’s desk last week when he found the proposal and reel for
Maginot Lines,
then called Saraub’s agent and asked if anyone had made an offer yet.
“I spent about $150,000,” Saraub said. “Since I had my own equipment, I mostly only had labor expenses,
and I didn’t pay myself. I’ve got an assistant on salary, and I cover all our travel, but that’s it.” He opened the window, hoping to get better reception. “I can send you an itemization.”
“Naw,” Bob said. “You can worry about all that when you pitch it for my people. Your prospectus—or do they call them pitches here?—is pretty thorough. Cheap, too. Cheap is Jehovah, Allah, and Christ, all rolled into one. I just wanted to tell ya, I saw the rough cut, and I came. Man, love. I’m in love!” Bob gushed.
Saraub’s stomach gurgled. He’d heard about half Bob’s speech, and really hoped he’d correctly interpreted the rest. For three years, he’d been trying to get studio backing, but even his good leads had always turned sour. By now, most of his film-school friends had given up and gotten jobs in software development. But so far, he’d never let the turkeys get him down. One rejection, ten, one hundred. He smiled and said thank you so he didn’t burn bridges, ate an extra bag of chips, punched a wall, then kept going. He’d resolved to wait every last one of them out until he got the answer he wanted.
“I’m so glad to hear it, Bob,” Saraub said. “But seriously, anything you want clarity on, let me know.”
“No, no. That’s all fine. Sore—How do you call that—Sore-rub?” Bob asked.
“Yeah. Sore-rub. Thanks. No one ever gets that,” he said as he tripped over the metal IKEA lamp on the floor, then covered the receiver to muffle the grunt. Audrey had been gone five weeks, and already the place was a sty. The carpet was littered with take-out containers, spilled soy sauce, and, inexplicably, pennies. The thing about food in early fall is, it attracts flies. They landed on his face at night as he drifted to sleep, and every time that happened he’d think:
It really wasn’t so bad when she moved my shit.
“It all sounds square. My worry here is experience,” Bob said. “You say you want to edit it all yourself, and
we can cover the suite. But you’ve never worked on a feature before. No bullshit, kid. Can you deliver?”
“I edit commercials every day. It’ll be cheaper just to let me see the thing to completion. I’ve got it all figured out,” Saraub said. In fact, he’d never edited a feature-length, and he’d never selected accompanying musical scores, either. But
Maginot Lines
was his baby, and what Bob didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “It shouldn’t take more than six months in postproduction, and the legwork is almost done.”
A phone rang in the background from Bob’s end. Papers rustled. Saraub pictured a high-floored but depressingly sterile office in Studio City, and ten frenzied assistants with earphones attached to their heads, praying the new boss didn’t give them the axe. “Obviously, if progress stalls, we retain the right to bring in our own people,” Bob said.
Saraub frowned. Out the window, he could see holes all down the block, where luxury condominiums had lost investors midway through construction. Behind boarded planks, they were open sores of dirt. So this call was about ownership, and Sunshine planned to acquire controlling rights. But three years, no takers, and his bank account nearly drained, he was in no position to dicker. “Yea—yes. I hear that’s standard.”
“All right, then. This has been enlightening. I’ll need a list of all your interviews and their info for legal if we sign a deal, and I’ll get back to your agent in a few days.”
“Thanks, Bob. I apprec—” Saraub started, but by then, the phone was already dead.
He sat down at the kitchen table and, despite the throbbing in his head, grinned. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to make a feature. Every weekend the last three years, he’d conducted interviews. Every morning, he’d gotten up early and cut film or placed calls. Even Audrey had gotten into the act, sending out questionnaires from her office and using
Vesuvius stamp machines to save on postage. Opposite their futon was the time line she’d made on poster board, itemizing his subjects. Each branch represented an interview, the date it was conducted, and its overall significance to the film. It was preternaturally neat, with perfectly straight lines like she’d used a giant typewriter. “So you remember what it is you’re doing,” she’d said with a smirk when she finished it, which had been kind of funny, and given his lack of organization, kind of true.
At first, the movie was supposed to be about the trend of multinational corporations, often subsidized by the World Bank, to privatize third-world natural resources like water, forest reserves, fossil fuels, and even air. But the more he learned, the more he’d realized that the story wasn’t abroad, but local. Privatization was happening in America, too, but because of this deep recession, people cared more about jobs and food than breathable air. No one wanted to blow the whistle on corporations that doubled the price of tap water, because at least they were cutting a profit and providing their employees with health care.
As it happened, Sunshine Studios’ parent company, Servitus, had invested heavily in New York water rights, as well as Appalachian coal, Arctic oil, and the verdant timberlands of the South. They were based in both Atlanta and Beijing, and so far, they’d drained the upstate Hudson Valley and were selling their spoils to Europe in the form of bottled water. Riverbanks and natural springs had dried up, and a few of the houses surrounding them had collapsed. Small farms couldn’t afford to irrigate because in its scarcity, the price of water had become too high.
When this recession ended, people would lift their heads to discover that America didn’t belong to America anymore. By then, it wouldn’t be worth much, anyway. West Virginia and Pennsylvania were already flooded
from all the coal mining and the Alaskan pipeline had almost run dry. If you looked at this country from space, you’d see that it was filling with holes.
He knew it was cheesy. His married cousins, who’d been smart and joined the family rug business, now lived grown-up lives, complete with wives, kids, suburban McMansions, and Cuban cigars. They had things that, after toiling thirty-five more years in film, he’d probably still never be able to afford. But days like this, he saw through all that bullshit and remembered what mattered. He was trying to make the world a better place, and that made life worth living.
There was only one person who’d understand how he felt. His enthusiasm got the better of him, and he flipped open his phone and dialed Audrey’s number.
As soon as it connected and began to ring, his stomach gurgled. An image that he’d blotted out returned. He remembered yelling, and a piano. Oh, crap, he’d gone to her place last night, drunk as Caligula! Had he…what the hell, had he told her he
hated
her? Oh, no. This was really bad. The floating white lightning returned to his vision, only bigger. It kind of looked like a hovering alien spaceship.
He’d said worse things, too. He tried to remember them, then tried even harder not to remember them. In his mind’s eye, she was looking at him through a crooked, half-open door. Its length had dwarfed her, making her appear fragile and childlike. So very un-Audrey. He’d been so blotto that for a moment, he’d genuinely been worried that the ceiling of that place had been about to collapse. He was worried about her now, too. Something about that apartment building had been
wrong.
Or had he only imagined those humming walls?
Her cell phone clicked directly into voice mail: “I’m not here right now…” His pulse raced, and his stomach jake-braked. He owed her an apology. Big-time…
But until those movers showed up yesterday, it hadn’t hit him that she really was leaving. She’d had so few boxes that he’d felt compelled to send along some dishes, a couple of blankets, and the piano. Girls are different from men. They need nests. He’d thought about the money he’d poured into
Lines,
so that all he’d been able to afford was a broken-down wreck in Yonkers. It had only occurred to him then, that while he wanted kids, unless she worked full-time or he gave up freelance, they’d never be able to afford the health insurance, let alone the diapers. And then he’d thought about all those rich Wall Street scions in her office, who probably presented their wives with diamond-crusted nannies every Christmas, and he’d started to wonder if she’d hadn’t left because she’d needed more space at all but because she’d been looking to trade up.
So, the drinking. And more drinking. And inevitably, the late-night antibooty call.
Audrey’s message beeped. Saraub hung up. Yeah, he’d tell her he was sorry. But not right now, when his head was about to explode, and any moment, the toilet might beckon.
Who else to ring? The sun outside was bright. A perfect fall Monday. Great weather for a hot dog in Carl Schurz Park. He dialed Daniel’s number. After the movers, he and Daniel had gone out for steak at Hooters yesterday afternoon, and then to Dick and Jane’s Cabaret on 71
st
Street. Six strippers slathered in Crisco had swung from poles. The girl on his lap had assured him that she liked tall Indian men, which, even after four whiskies, had seemed like a convenient coincidence. After six whiskies, he’d taken her to the backroom and paid her three hundred bucks to strip to her birthday suit, then get on his lap again, and dance.
“Oh, big man,” she’d said, while feeling his turgid crotch. The whole thing had been pretty humiliating, mostly because he’d wanted to tell her to stop but
hadn’t wanted to be rude. So instead, when she’d asked for three hundred more to suck him off, he’d given her fifty, and said, “I’d really rather you got dressed,” then walked out. He waited at the bar another hour for Daniel, who apparently liked getting sucked off by twenty-four-year-old mothers who commute from Queens and dream of one day becoming Vegas showgirls, just like that movie.