Authors: Laura Wiess
“Seeing as how she was only good for breeding in the first place, of course,” my mother said with a derisive sniff. “Don’t get me started, Hanna.” She twirled up a forkful of spaghetti and paused. “Ask Helen if I can borrow that book when you guys are done with it, okay? I’d like to hear it.”
“Well, tomorrow we’re going to find out if the guy has taxidermied his wife—”
“Eating,” my father said weakly.
“Or he’s some kind of serial killer who married his own mom—”
“That’s it,” my father said and, grabbing his plate, went into the living room to finish in front of a nice, simple alien-end-of-the-world sci-fi movie.
“Is he mad?” I said, looking at my mother.
She shook her head, lips twitching. “No, but someday, when you’re in a mixed crowd, mention the word
uterus
and see how fast the guys clear the room. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”
“Can I use the word
atrophy
with it, too?” I asked, grinning.
“Oh, I wish you would,” she said, and we both cracked up.
My mother put her music on while we were clearing the table, and in the middle of it, she put a hand on my arm and said, “Stop for a minute and listen to this. Listen to the words, Hanna, and then try to tell me we don’t just keep reliving the same feelings and problems as the people before us, over and over and over.”
“What is it?” I said, leaning back against the counter.
“Janis Joplin singing ‘A Woman Left Lonely,’” she said softly, turning it up and leaning next to me. “Tell me this isn’t timeless.”
And I listened and I heard the raggedy pain and raw yearning and bewilderment, heard the question and wanted to hear the answer, too, but the only one seemed to be neglect by a man and that made my heart as heavy as a brick, and I just shook my head and went back to clearing the table because I couldn’t stand thinking that how bad I felt and how lonely I felt with Seth sometimes was not only timeless but…common.
Crystal’s brother’s keg party would have been better if I hadn’t gotten the bright idea to bring Seth, too, to introduce him to Crystal and have him meet my other friends.
Bad idea.
He stiffened up the minute he saw all the guys with long hair and tats in the clearing, got a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, and partied so hard there was no way I could let him drive home, which pissed him off, so he started getting shitty with me in front of everyone there and only stopped when Crystal, wearing hard eyes and a hard smile, quietly reminded him that everyone here was
my
friend, not his, and he was making an asshole out of himself.
He went over and sat down on a log, smoking and sulking and glaring until I told Crystal we were just going to go.
“How?” she said. “He can’t drive.”
“I don’t know,” I said, because there was no way I could take him back to my house like that, so we took him back to Crystal’s. She made him coffee, and I knew what she was thinking, but she never said it out loud, and she stayed while we poured a whole pot of coffee into him. I told her to go back to the party because I was going to walk him around until he seemed half decent, so she did.
I took him outside and made him walk with me, first with my arm around him, and then just next to me because he pushed me away and snapped,
I can do it,
so I was like,
Fine, then do it,
because I was so
mad
at myself for bringing him there in the first place.
“You think you know me, but you don’t,” he said, swaying and giving me a look full of disgust. “You don’t know shit, so why don’t you just get the hell away from me?”
“Why are you saying that?” I said, starting to cry. “What did I ever do to you?”
He blinked hard, focused on me, and sniffed. “Right, go ahead, cry. That’s all girls ever do. Cry and lie to get out of it. You’re all the same.” He turned, fumbling with his fly and stumbled over to the bushes on the side of Crystal’s house. That’s when I heard a bike rumble up.
It was Jesse.
“Hey, Hanna, long time no see,” he said with an easy smile, climbing off the bike and hanging the helmet. “You headed down to the party or what?”
“Actually, we’re just leaving,” I said, glancing around to make sure Seth wasn’t lurching out toward me, because if there was one thing I didn’t want, it was—
“Hey, how’re you doing?” Jesse said, his gaze shifting to somewhere behind me.
“Sup?” Seth said, reeling up and slinging an arm around my neck.
I met Jesse’s gaze, calm and dark and slightly amused, and just
wanted to die, because he recognized Seth from the mall, I knew he did, and I felt like a fool. “So, uh, how’s work?” I said desperately, dragging my hair out from under Seth’s arm and wincing.
“In this economy I’m just glad for the steady paycheck.” He tucked his hair behind his ear and cocked his head, eyes twinkling. “So how’s school? Did you graduate yet?”
“No,” I said, silently begging him not to go any further, and he must have caught my plea because he just smiled and said, “Well, hey, I have to get down to the party.” And to Seth, “Good seeing you again, buddy,” and ambled away whistling.
“So did you ever fuck him?” Seth said, loud enough for him to hear.
Jesse stiffened, paused, and turned, all traces of good humor wiped from his face. I caught my breath and managed a furious, “No!” to Seth, and after a second, Jesse kept going, and then I struggled out from under Seth’s arm and said, “What is
wrong
with you? Why did you say that?”
“Because
he
wants to fuck
you,”
he said, lifting his chin and giving me a cold look.
I looked away, arms wrapped around my waist, and I couldn’t help it, I started to cry again. “Why are you being like this?”
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he demanded.
“You’re wrong,” I said, avoiding his gaze.
“Bullshit,” he said. “Were you ever with him?”
“What are you
talking
about?” I cried. “This is a
party
and he said hi, so what, big deal!”
“Were you?” he said.
And what I wanted to say was,
Yes, I was! There, are you happy now?
But I didn’t because that would have made him even madder, and I was already humiliated, and all I wanted to do was walk away and leave him there, not forever but for now, but I couldn’t do that
because if I did, I knew he would never come back. He could do that, he could close himself down and turn it all off, and one stupid fight wasn’t worth losing him over, so I didn’t say anything, just stood there huddled and sniffling and wiping my eyes, and finally he sighed and said quietly, “Come here.” I did and he held me and said he was sorry but he didn’t like seeing me so friendly with so many scummy bikers—
“They’re not scummy, they’re my friends,” I mumbled against his tear-soaked shirt.
“Yeah, well, I’m your
boy
friend,” he said, holding me tighter. “Unless you don’t want me anymore.”
“Of course I do,” I said, crying harder because I was scared. “Don’t even say that!”
“Well, what am I supposed to think, Hanna?” he said, pulling back and making me look at him. “You’re choosing
them
over me.”
“I never said that,” I said, hiccupping. “But Crystal’s my best friend—”
“I thought
I
was your best friend,” he said, sounding hurt.
It just got worse from there for another minute until I was really sobbing and saying, Fine, I wouldn’t come down to any more parties at Crystal’s unless he was with me, and then he hugged me and we walked some more and he finally got sober enough to drop me off back at my house. I was worried about him driving home but he said he’d be fine and he was, except for running over somebody’s big plastic recycling bucket and dragging it for a mile before it finally shattered and broke free.
Gran is getting too skinny and I think it’s because she can’t eat anything anymore but mushed-up food because she chokes easy. Grandpa said if the food goes down the wrong pipe and ends up in her lungs, then it’ll breed bacteria and she’ll get pneumonia and probably die, so we have to be very, very careful about feeding her.
Plus, she never stops moving and that has to burn calories because she’s always sweating, too, and I swear to God she looks so exhausted that I feel like tying her arms down or something, just to give her a break. The thing is, she’d still strain and twitch and jerk, only she’d probably end up with hideous rope burns, too, and that would make me an old-person abuser, so forget it.
I don’t want to hurt her, ever.
How It Ends
I took a deep breath and, juggling the breakfast tray, opened the door to Mrs. Boehm’s room. “Hello?”
“I was wondering when you would make an appearance,” said a soft voice from somewhere among the pile of pillows on the bed. “Come in, please.”
“I have your breakfast,” I said and sidled into the shadowy room, trying not to spill the glass of grapefruit juice and cup of hot tea on the tray.
“Another egg,” the voice said with a tinge of disgust.
I wasn’t sure what to do with it and stood there until she said, “Well, bring it here, please, and then open the shades. I’d like to see who I’m talking to.”
I did, setting down the tray and then going around the room pulling the shades. When I was done I turned and got my first real look at Margaret Boehm and the sickroom.
It was a woman’s room, an elegant, magnificent private garden. The beige carpet over the cherry flooring was patterned with pink roses, violets, and blue forget-me-nots. The wallpaper was cabbage roses against a baby blue background with deeper blue morning glory vines twining throughout. The ceiling was high, the chandelier crystals twinkling in the thin February sunlight, the furniture a rich, glossy mahogany. There
were old bisque dolls and lace scarves on the bureaus and the vanity was covered with cosmetics and an elegant rainbow of perfume bottles with stoppers. The vanity stool was pleated satin with clawed ball feet and the bedside lamp was pink with beaded glass fringe.
The bed was a double like the one my mother and I had shared, only instead of having room for two, one side was piled with novels and magazines, an ice pack, a hand mirror and brush, and a pile of white sheets waiting for decorative embroidery.
What struck me hardest at that moment was how everything in the room seemed to be flourishing except the woman supported by the mountain of flowered pillows, the small, pale, shrunken figure whose bony shoulders seemed too slight to support even the lacy straps of her nightgown. She gazed back at me, blue eyes rimmed with dark hollows and braided ash-brown hair slightly mussed from sleep. Bruises dappled the crooks of her arms, and the skin at her throat looked…withered.
“So you’re the strapping young orphan come to distract me from my misery,” she said, taking in my hand-me-down woolen skirt and the white blouse straining slightly at the buttons. Sighing, she picked up her fork and toyed with the runny soft-boiled egg. “I have no appetite for this.” She tasted the tea and set the cup down with a faint grimace. “Chamomile cannot hold a candle to Earl Grey, especially without sugar. Dreadful.”
I waited, not knowing what to say.
She nibbled the buttered centers of her toast and sipped her grapefruit juice, shuddering with each swallow, and then asked me to help her to the bathroom. I did, sliding a supporting arm around her hot, trembling frame as we crept across the carpet, and then waiting outside the door while she completed her toilette. I helped her back into bed, where she lay back, pale and sweating, closed her eyes, and didn’t speak again.
For the next week, this became our morning routine.
Lunch and dinner, however, were very different stories.
By noon her pain had eased some, thanks to her medication, and she was relaxed, awake, and lonely enough to want to talk. She didn’t require anything from me at first, speaking generally about the approaching spring and how the long, dark months of winter always seemed so ominous. She showed me some of the books on the bed, novels she’d bought years ago that were now helping to pass the hours.
“Talk to me, Louise,” she said one afternoon, smiling slightly at my surprised look. “For this moment at least, I’ve grown tired of hearing my own voice.” She eased herself up against the pillows, wincing, and pulled her long braid out from behind her and laid it over her shoulder. “My forehead aches so from the weight of the braid but I can’t seem to convince Nurse that the pain is real. She believes I only complain for attention.”
“Would you like me to brush out your hair?” I heard myself offer. “I used to do it for my mother and she always said it was very soothing.”
She gazed at me a moment, as if searching for something, and finally nodded. “That would be nice, yes. Please.”
I moved a wooden chair with a tapestry seat over to the window and then helped her out of bed, into her robe, and over to the chair. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly, wincing. “I’m just sore.”
I waited until she was settled, then untied the blue ribbon from the end of the braid and spread the clumsy weave. When I was finished, her hair hung to her waist.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” she murmured as I brushed. “I don’t know how anyone can choose to avoid human contact. I find myself hungering
for it constantly, and of all that’s out of reach for me now, I believe being touched is what I miss the most.” She leaned forward to peer out the window. “Look at all this snow still on the ground. It feels like winter will never end and I did so want to see one more spring.”
My hand jerked and the brush grazed her scalp. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Boehm, but of course you’ll see spring! My goodness, why would you even say something like that?”
She never answered, only gazed out the window at the workshop until she could no longer sit comfortably, and then I helped her back to bed and pulled the shades so she could sleep.
“I have hired a new handyman,” Dr. Boehm said that afternoon in passing. “Don’t let me catch you fraternizing with him, Louise.”