Authors: Darcey Steinke
I went into Madison's apartment. The overhead switch, the lamp by the bed and the bulb in the refrigerator were all burnt out, so I pulled the curtain back and let the street light illuminate the place. To say the apartment was shabby would be unfair. The falling plaster looked more like an abstract painting than simple decay, and the wood floors were worn smooth. The bed was covered with a rough wool army blanket, and above it was a knifish cubist painting. A blowfish suspended from the ceiling spun slowly on its line, first one way and then the other. The only furniture was a nightstand near the bed and a chest by the window.
I sat on the bed listening to street noise and the building's creaking pipes. Would Madison come and did Pig tell me the truth? I tried to think of them as mother and daughter, but the more I pushed them into that scenario the less likely it seemed a family had ever held them. But it's hard to think of myself in a family. And I, like everyone else I know, considered myself, even as a child, different, aloof, out of sync with the rest.
The fat woman ran her vacuum and I was reminded intensely of the abortion I had had in college. The suck of the vacuum, the rich smell of blood, and how afterward I stayed in my room with the blinds closed and the lights off for several days. I had the sensation of being completely empty, like standing in your old room the minute after the last box has been carried out. I remember going outside in my nightgown to a bench in the sunlight. Nothing that came before that moment seemed real. As if I woke, not just from three days, but from a whole lifetime of sleep.
Patterns of barbed-wire light fell over the walls. I lay there listening to clicking high heels and men yelling to each other. I was sleepy and thoughts began to fragment. I remembered my mother in a special pale-green nightgown that she would wear when my father returned from business trips. In my mind's eye that nightgown grew and grew until it filled the corners of the universe and I slept.
When I awoke it was dark. The curtains had fallen and it took me a minute to sense the parameters of the room and remember where I was. Just as I did, the bed shifted, someone was beside me. I stiffened. At first, I thought instinctively that it was Bell, then more logically that it was Madison, but I knew by a certain musky scent that it was a strange man.
My back was to him, but I was close enough to feel his warm breath on my neck. I tried to calm myself, thinking he simply thought I was Madison and once he figured I wasn't, he would apologize and leave. There was an odd familiarity here, because I had used this fantasy a hundred times—being with a stranger in a strange room, never seeing his face as he took me from behind. I had a liquid sensation of ice melting into a shot of whiskey. The man slipped a hand between my legs and before I could think he began to undulate his fingers, sliding his other hand under my shirt. I pulled away a little and made a negative mumble, but he yanked me closer. His fingers were calloused and I could feel them slide under my bra, cradling the curve of my breast. With his forefinger, he rubbed my nipple until it hardened. He unzipped my pants, letting the heat of his fingertips flow over my lower stomach. I was very wet, the moisture running into my ass.
All in a rush, he loosened his pants and his hard cock flapped against my spine. He rubbed it in the crack of my rear. Spreading his fingers over each breast, he pulled back, forcing me to arch, so he could lick my neck and shoulders. He moved his hands down to my hips, pulled my pelvis up and easily slipped inside. For a moment he was still and I listened to the footfalls on the stairs; it was long enough for me to rise to logic, think—
what is happening
, think,
kneel down.
He began moving in spirals. A car alarm whined and another man coughed through the wall. I tried to pull off but he grabbed my hips back hard. I tried again, feeling the tip of his cock just barely leaning on the outer lip of my cunt before he pulled me back, gasped. I could feel his cock stretch and the arch of semen, felt dizzy and frightened, stood, pulled my jeans on and ran to the door. The stranger made soft disoriented sounds. The bed creaked. He leaned up and said, “Stay.” I looked back a second, the light falling on his bare legs made them look scrawny and strange sprawled on the rough blanket.
* * *
T
HE NARROW GRID OF MY LIFE WAS CHANGING VIOLENTLY LIKE
flood waters expanding the banks of a river. I was suspicious that I had let the stranger fuck me because I was intentionally trying to devastate myself, encourage confusion and misery, so that I would have no impulse to pose or lie. I felt I knew what was best for me, but that somehow, because of a certain well-practiced falseness, a sort of stupid conventional programming, I couldn't do it. But was I right to undermine my life in an effort to right it?
It didn't matter, because it hadn't worked. The first thing I decided was to lie to Bell. Not so much because I always thought I would, but because to keep the lie secret would give me strength. I used to lie a lot until I met Bell, who lied better and with more regularity. When you lie you take on the role of either self-promoter or coward. I was the latter, but to have a potentially hurtful secret would give me power. Lying is like violence in its momentary thrill.
Why lie? Wouldn't it be a relief to have him stomp off? But I didn't even know the stranger. He had about as much significance as a rat and it would be a bigger lie than not telling to pretend he had meaning. Also, I remembered Bell's audition, his threat to the couch, that he would torture me with his own infidelities.
The lobby of our building was painfully bright and the stairwell smelled of strange meat. I turned the key silently and immediately heard Bell's even breath. Though I knew he was asleep I still felt awkward stripping, like he was subconsciously checking for hickeys or wet hair between my legs. I got under the covers.
No man could save you from yourself.
I had a rush of remorse about what I had done. Maybe I had overblown our problems? Bell loved me and it was a wrongheaded sexual retribution that had lured me to the stranger. I let the traffic lull me, watched several planes on their way across the Pacific and thought how much better things would be between us now.
But then he shifted, pulled me closer, reached his hand between my legs and whispered, “You're so wet.” The thought of sex with Bell in such proximity to the stranger was terrifying and I moved his hand and said, “I don't feel like it.” It was so rare I refused that he persisted, moved his hand back over my cunt, worked his hips and cock against my rear, said into my ear, “What I love about us is that we're like gods.” He slipped a finger into my cunt. I was worked up, felt the skin at the base of my neck get numb and pushed into his hand. Bell pulled my pelvis back and slipped inside with a wet sound. He tightened his hands on my hips. His breath quickened, he kissed the nape of my neck, said I had a tight pussy, that he wanted to come all over it, that he was going to come on my face. The dark was mucusy and all I could focus on was the dog skull on the ledge and the red exit lights in the hallway windows of the Hotel Huntington. I thought of the stranger and how he smelled like charcoal, how his cock was thick.
“Do you like it like this?” I whispered, “This is just what I did for the stranger.” I pressed my pelvis back hard, thought of both men taking me at once. As Bell came, he shook me into a liquifying sensation, like honey rising up into combs. We lay there, until his cock softened and slowly slipped out. My ears rang and to keep from getting nauseous I looked for stars in the midnight blue sky above the hotel lights.
Bell was sound asleep. I couldn't get comfortable and I don't know if I had slept or not when I saw a man in our room. I gasped. It was Bell's little friend from the Black Rose. The light from the street illuminated the reds and pinks in his open mouth, he caught my eye like a fish hook, holding his fingers to his mouth. “Sssh,” he said, “you'll wake Bell. Come see me downstairs.” He stood, put his coat over his arm and walked quickly toward the door.
As the door shut behind him, Bell opened one dreamy eye, then rolled to the other side of the futon. I didn't want to wake him, or for him to interfere. I stood, pulled on my jeans, forced my feet into high-tops and buttoned my jacket over my bare chest. I found the little man sitting on the steps of our building. He blew smoke in the direction of the used-book store across the street and looked up at me. “Well.” He stood awkwardly. “You're angry I stayed?”
I had to remember not to displace my anger on the little man: it was Bell who was the fucker. Why had he wanted to have sex with the troll in the room? Did he get off on the fact a stranger was so near? Did the little man masturbate along with us, rubbing his dick, waiting until he heard our breath quicken so we could all come together?
“I feel too stale and stupid to talk right now,” I said. He nodded miserably, knowing something grave had happened. There was that cantaloupe-colored light on the buildings and the digital bank clock across the street beat out the time. I felt like I had dirt in my heart. Irrationally I wanted to confess to the little man. “It doesn't matter you were there while we fucked. An hour ago I fucked someone I don't even know.” Even the idea of telling the truth made my face flush and I pressed my hand over my hair.
“Let's sit down,” he said, “on those steps there.” We sat on the lowest step of a Victorian. He took my hand into his lap. It was like holding the cool hand of a child. We were quiet. He spoke in a deep voice that sounded strange coming from his tiny body. “Let me tell you about yourself. You're a girl from the suburbs. A good girl, not that you haven't done bad things. You've lied to seem interesting, complex, and it's worked, especially combined with your intrinsic charm. You still think of that cheap ranch house, the bedroom with white furniture and the mall you went to on Saturdays, browsing through discount records, drinking Orange Julius and buying plastic earrings at K-mart. You want to be different, not just from your suburban neighbors, but from everyone. It's not really megalomania, you just need to feel special in order to believe you are loved.”
I started to open my mouth, though I had no idea what I would say. But the troll held his hand up. “Just let me finish . . . Your parents are divorced. With a girl you can tell around her eyes, boys have other ways of showing.” My mind went away from the troll's voice. I thought how odd it was my parents were divorced. How one day I had a set of grumpy parents in a home that held the family archives and the next my father had married a younger woman and enthusiastically joined her family. And my mother was so bitterly furious in her little divorcée condo it was hardly possible for her to interact civilly with me at all. The little man talked on.
“Your father cheated before he left your mother. This has made it hard for you to trust men. But you're also suspicious that your mother undermined your father's love by scrutiny and mockery. You have noticed this trend in yourself and it frightens you.”
There was a feeling like I was breaking up, blood seeping out of arteries, exposed veins moving like snapped electric wires. “If you're so good at this,” I said, “what about Bell?”
He was angry I wasn't more appreciative of his magical trollish predictions. Stupid troll. Whether he had guessed or not, I would always think he had heard everything from Bell. I had a sudden vision of Bell in bed, his warm soft skin under the blankets, his head filled with erotic blue dreams. I looked at the little man still talking and thought,
What he is saying has nothing to do with me.
I stood abruptly. He stood too, screwed his face up. He was going to have a temper tantrum like trolls do. And he did stamp his little foot and say, “You'll never be happy unless you learn to forgive.” His neck muscles constricting, his little fists tightly at his sides, as if without absolute control they would start punching. I thought,
like a wife
, and turned, heading quickly down the hill. He grabbed my arm, whispered that I was a fool to hate people who were obviously one thing or another and by not choosing to be something completely I would end badly. “Watch out,” he said, when I finally pulled away. “You don't want to become a fag hag.” The thought hit my chest like a solid punch. The ones I knew had dramatic hairstyles, wore expensive tailored clothing and elaborate make-up. They talked loud, telling self-deprecating stories, then laughed drunkenly whether intoxicated or not. They seemed foolish and desperate, willingly abused by their gay friends.
I didn't want to go back to the apartment, so I walked over a few blocks and into Nob Hill. The streets were filled with cars and people coming out of their apartment buildings, hurrying to work. I saw a clean and attractive couple holding hands. I got close enough to smell her fragrant hair and his aftershave. They spoke in an intimate code and I thought of asking them if they would take me home. I followed until they kissed at the corner of Columbus and Grant and went off for the day in separate directions.
C h a p t e r
F o u r
P
IG'S HOUSE WAS DARK AND DAMP, THE ONLY LIGHT FROM
twenty portraits of Madison lining the hallway. Lit dramatically, each had its own small brass fixture. Up close there was an angelic idealization around the lips and the colors of her eyelids were garish oranges and blues, creepy, matched with the babyish roundness of Madison's face. In one wide childish eye there was even a lumpish figure that resembled Pig. I originally thought a professional had done them, but it was clear now that Pig had drawn them herself. I heard a moan, looked up the stairwell and saw Pig's chubby hand flailed out through the slats of the banister.
“I'm flipped like a beetle,” Pig yelled. The red nails of her fingers jerked and I could see, mashed into the banister, a lock of her hair and muzzy scalp beneath. I was scared at first. The woodwork under her fingers was stained red and a steady drip made a dark puddle near where I stood on the carpet. Holding my hand up, I caught a drop on my palm, a fragrant red wine.
“For God's sake, Jesse, hurry!” Pig yelled out. I ran up the stairwell to where she lay. Her kimono was tugged awkwardly up on one side, stained with wine and urine. A greenish vein beat in her pale forehead and her lipstick had dried in the cracks around her mouth. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull herself up a little. I had decided to be firm with Pig, chastise her for lying, give no information until I got some semblance of truth. But seeing her softened me, her fat fingers curled around my forearm, her cheek against my shoulder, she purred a little, seemed as happy as a child to see me. Besides, I felt pulverized from last night. Resolution, I decided, relied on distance.
I heaved her up by the waist, she hinged in the middle like a sack of flour, her head as loose as a rag doll's. Pig strained to arch her back, to get a hand up on the banister, to steady herself, but her legs folded under her and she slumped back lumpishly to the floor. “I'll never get up,” she said breathlessly, “and I've made such a mess of it.” She sunk her head into her hands, splaying her hair, the gray roots making it seem as if Pig had aged overnight. I squatted down, put my arm around her, braced myself against the railing and pushed up. This way Pig was able to get first one chubby bare foot under her, then the other. She rose slowly with one long moan. At eye level Pig looked into my face, trying to see whether I had found Madison. “It's better that I fell,” Pig said breathlessly. “Just before I went down I started thinking I controlled everything; if I chose peppermint tea instead of lemon a car would crash on the highway.”
Standing, she seemed strong, but as we moved toward the bedroom Pig's head slumped against mine. Her painted toenails dragged on the carpet. In the doorway she lunged toward the bed like it was the last rock before the waterfall. I propped her head up with the paisley pillows and opened the curtains to keep her oriented. Light shimmered on the tall cherry bedpost, highlighting the empty gilded frame over the bed. Pig was never willing to tell me what had been in the frame or why she had taken it out.
“It was horrible,” she said. “I fell, tried a few times to rise, but then gave up and just lay there in the dark . . . Every now and then I'd hear a dog bark or a plane fly overhead. It was like I was a freighter ship going down and my earlier girl-self was on deck waving a yellow scarf.”
I got her to lean up so I could peel off her rancid robe. Pig's body gave off the yeasty smell of bread dough. It was strange to see her; now that I suspected she wasn't a mother, her swollen body seemed even more embarrassing. I went down the hall to the bathroom and wet a towel with warm water. No matter how vulnerable people are, how fragile the delusional structure of their lives, they go on living. People die from liver failure, heart attacks and gunshots but not from loneliness, vanity or confusion—it was this obvious insight that startled me and seemed suddenly amazing. The water had gotten so hot it steamed up the mirror and made my hands numb. I wrung the towel out at its cooler edges and carried it down the hall. Pig's eyes had teared with relief and I let her wipe her face first, before I took the heavy towel and gently rubbed the hollow of her armpit. The hair was long and matted like winter grass. “You know, I was thinking of you and Bell last night,” Pig said, settling down. “I remembered a man I knew who had homosexual tendencies, but went straight. His name was Neal. He worked as a cook, breakfast shift, then spent the afternoon picking up men on the beach.” Pig paused, savoring the picture of nude men entangled on the back dunes. “Suddenly he became religious, decided he needed a wife, one with a couple kids—boys, I think.” Pig's face animated as the details became vivid in her memory: smells, textures, shades of color. I knew how a memory could spiral off like loose yarn.
“The strange part was that when Neal married, his former boyfriend moved in with Neal's mother. He did things for her like grow tomatoes and fix her screen door. Last I heard he was nursing her because she had cancer or leukemia or something like that.”
Her thighs were stained with wine. I opened the towel to the warmer middle. Her dry skin absorbed the wetness gratefully. Pig asked me to bring the robe hanging by the closet. It was a silky thing with a pattern of dogwoods and pink butterflies. She sniffed, leaning up for me to put it over her shoulders.
“I remember too, another time, when I was with my mother's friend. My father was gone for good by then, so I'm sure it was her boyfriend, but people didn't talk like that back then. He took me to a lake to swim and I sprained my ankle, but I didn't tell him. For some reason I felt embarrassed about it. When we got back, he walked ahead, but I had to go slowly, holding onto the car. Why was I so ashamed?” Pig asked me. “Don't you think it's strange?”
“Maybe something else happened that you can't remember?”
“No,” Pig said. “It had to do with hurting myself. I think if someone had hit me or if I'd fallen it might not have been that way.”
I nodded. Self-inflicted pain never gets much sympathy. You keep it to yourself. She grabbed my hand into her own sweaty one. I felt her quick pulse beat against my palm.
“Do you think the opposite of death is love or sex?” Pig asked.
“My father would say it's religion.”
“Oh,” Pig said, not particularly interested. “I always think of that story when Jesus turned water into wine.”
The towel had cooled and I walked down the hall and put it in the hamper and got Pig some water from the bathroom tap. She took the glass gratefully.
“I had a vision, Jesse, but I shouldn't tell you because you'll just think I'm crazy.” She hesitated for a second, long enough for me to notice the dramatic way she tipped her head and how her delivery took a coquettish turn. “I saw Madison and all these men were rubbing themselves against her.”
I frowned. The dream was made up, the details too self-conscious, the meaning obvious—she was trying to lead me into talking about Madison. I wondered if everything she had said before was a strategy to mellow me, make me congenial to the upcoming interrogation. My unease showed and Pig's forehead wrinkled.
“Why are you so negative? It doesn't do you any good,” she said. “Did you find her or not?”
If I looked into her eyes I'd be able to tell if she was lying, but this seemed cruel, so I walked to the window, looking toward the men in orange vests working on the BART tracks.
“Come on,” Pig said, annoyed. “I've got to know.”
I turned toward her. “She said you're not her mother.”
Pig looked startled. “I was her mother!” she said in a high voice.
“Was?” I asked, walking over so I could look down at her restless face, all her features on one level like she had melted.
Her eyes became wide and wet, she fiddled with her wedding ring and another ring with a big obsidian stone.
“Well, I didn't actually have her.”
“She's adopted?” I asked.
“Sort of,” she said. Her eyes were unfocused, she was trying to decide what to tell me.
“What about your husband?”
Pig waved her hand. “He was long gone by then.” She shrugged. “I don't think he would have been jealous anyway.”
“You mean you had me track down your girlfriend?” I felt angry that Pig had lied to me.
“She was more my daughter than my girlfriend.” Pig was getting flustered, the emotional complexity of her relationship with Madison was indescribable even to herself.
“Tell me what happened?” I asked.
Her eyes welled. “It's different than what I told you.” She shifted and the bed swayed. “I saw her hanging around the big squat down the block; Mexican boys with skateboards and a few skinny white girls. She was eating out of the garbage, getting high, sleeping with everyone. Her hair was dyed blond, a good inch of brown at the roots. I saw her with this real evil-looking guy. Once they were smoking pot on the porch and he yelled at me to mind my own business, said I was a busybody. I couldn't care less about their drug problem, it was Madison who fascinated me. One day I gave her a cling-wrapped sandwich out of my grocery bag, then a couple apples, a bunch of little Costa Rican bananas, once a whole ham. It got so she would look for me. Finally one Sunday she rang my bell and asked if I needed any housecleaning done. She had cigarette bums on the backs of her hands and a big patch of hair was gone, her skin was raw and pink as salmon.”
Pig smiled, but then remembered herself and looked to see if the story had touched me. It was hard for me to believe anything Pig said now.
“Did she seem curious about me?”
“She doesn't want to see you,” I said.
Squinting her eyes, Pig pulled her loose features into a suspicious point. “Does she want to see you?”
Pig waited for an answer. Maybe Madison did, though I had no evidence to prove it. And besides, I didn't feel like I owed an explanation. I was disillusioned with Pig because she had lied, because she had used me, and because she seemed so pitiful now. She was a liar and a coward, so afraid that she was trying to make a safety net of her false connection with Madison.
“I know you're going to see her,” Pig said. “Madison has a way of getting into your head.” Her eyes moved around the room, as if the curtains or her hairbrush could help her.
I walked to the door, feeling dismal, concentrating on the open space in the hall and the darker spot down the stairwell.
“Don't you say anything!” Pig yelled from her bed. “You don't know what happened!”
F
ROM DOWN THE BLOCK I SAW THE LITTLE MAN COME OUT OF
our apartment building. He ducked his head, looking cautiously around, hardly inconspicuous with that red hair. I wanted to be invisible, to follow him to his own apartment, to hear his lover yell at him about doing the dishes and where he'd been all night. What did he say to Bell? Did they long for their precious childhoods and fuck on the floor? Did they laugh about last night, and complain about me . . . “Bell,” he would say, “all women care about is possession.”
Inside the stairwell, a stench of pizza and urine came from the garbage chute. The knob was oddly warm as if the little man had lingered outside the apartment with his hand there. I used my key, careful not to jangle the chain . . . if I could catch Bell in some meditative position I might be able to suss something. But he was his public self, shaving at the sink. The room smelled of lime soap and cigarettes. I watched him turn his head, look for rough spots of beard, specks of shaving cream. He reminded me of my father. Shaving was one of the things that convinced me my father was more important than my mother. It made me feel safe to watch my father shave, that small act somehow held back chaos and kept harm from me. Bell's smooth pink skin seemed excited by the blade and the dots of blood on Bell's neck reminded me of poisonous sumac berries.
Had the little man upset him? Did Bell tell him about his father, how lonely he was near the end—so desperate he took to playing taped phone calls over and over just to hear a friendly voice. I tried to see if Bell's hand was shaking, if his eyes had gone blank.
“What did he say to you?” I asked.
Bell caught my eye in the mirror, waved his hand musically. “That I'm to end badly in a one-room flat with a dangling bulb, playing ‘Tracks of My Tears.’ “
“That sounds like your idea.”
“He's no different than anyone else, he just says what you want to hear.”
“Why didn't you tell me he was here last night?” I tried to resurrect some empathy by thinking about what I did with the stranger, but it didn't work. I wanted to make Bell admit he had perverse reasons for letting the little man stay, that these reasons had to do with his interest in boys. Was Bell motivated by jealousy? He knew I'd been with the stranger, though he didn't know yet that he did.
He smiled sheepishly, leaned back against the sink. “Because I'm miserable.” He said this so calmly, as if he had said, “I saw a cute little dog today,” it frightened me.
“About what?” I asked, though I knew he didn't have one answer. His eyes went away from me and he sat at the table fiddling with a spoon left over from breakfast. Was he thinking of how Kevin would look in a tux? How he would feel near his bride? Bell lowered his head. It was Kevin.
“Sometimes I hear a ringing like a soft bell and it always takes me a minute to realize it's my own heart.”
“I think you should move out,” I said. His incessant adolescent melancholy made me sick.
“Because of him?” He looked up.
“Because you're faithless. All you can do is dream about old lovers.”
He softened his features, looked at me like I misunderstood him. “Kevin and my past,” he said carefully, as if speaking to a child, “are no threat to you.”
“You don't make me feel safe,” I said. Bell had started to feel more like a brother than a boyfriend.
At this he stood, moved toward me, grabbed my shoulder. “I can hardly take care of myself,” he said. When he saw my expression didn't change he stepped back and shook his head. “Let's face it, your time clock has gone off, it's ringing like a car alarm, all of a sudden you want a big house in the country and lots of children.”