Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (10 page)

He sloppily dialed the house number of his brother-in-law. A lower voice answered. Noah.

Claudio hung up. -
That was stupid, -
he thought. He called Mathilde.

I miss you,
he told his wife, suddenly stricken with guilt. He'd never kept a secret from her before. Why was it that sometimes the only way to save people involved deception? A removal of truth, an amputation of freedom. Slanting them into chumps.

When he and Jane were children, they once identified the clouds in the sky with nationalities.
These are the French clouds,
Jane had said.
And these are the Zimbabwean clouds and Flemish clouds and the Japanese clouds and the Australian clouds.
They were listening to
The White Album,
making snorting sounds, sweet
glossolalia, as Claudio dropped the needle.
Have you seen the little piggies, crawling in the dirt?
The record was so loud, it sounded drunk. The sky bluer than their eyes. Four eyes, opening and shutting themselves, two at a time. Every sound leaving Claudio and Jane left a fracture.

What have you done? You've made a fool of everyone.

A
s an adult, the most difficult thing Jane ever had to do was walk a dog.

She was twenty-four, living (funnily) in New Orleans. It was a December morning, and the air felt sticky, like there was flour in it. The sun was a bitter orange, bordered by flocks of clouds. She was wearing her bra and eating Cheerios with milk while watching the local news, which told her all about the people who died yesterday, by accident or because they weren't the right religion or through complicated situations where they didn't have a lot of money.

Yesterday, President Reagan called her and told her that Claudio was waiting for her in New York, by the Forty-sixth Bliss Street Station in Sunnyside. She told him to
forget about it
, and
so long
. Ten minutes later she wished she had the number to call him back, because it was rude to hang up on the president. Jane made many mistakes. This was her girlish life: terrifying.

Her cuckoo started singing. Twelve o'clock. Like it was practicing its scales.
La la LA la la.
Maybe the president would call back at one o'clock if Claudio was still there, or another o'clock. Jane promised herself that she'd pick up next time during any of the o'clocks
,
even the inconvenient, witching ones. She found a chunky woolen blanket in the closet. Jane loved covering herself, even in summer. She curled under the wimpled blanket and
felt home, wherever that was. When nobody else was there, Jane was the master of her house.

Find the difference between your world and everyone else's world,
they'd told her at Pine Rest, but it didn't seem fair that everyone else shared the same world. It was like a language everyone except her was fluent in.

Otis made her life both easier and more complicated. She could have been his pet or his paper clip. He ordered her food and told her when to shower. He'd been able to tell as soon as he met her that she'd grown up out of order.

Claudio was able to fix himself, but he was different. Weaker people changed him, because he had to protect them. He was so lucky to have a little girl.
Natasha Maude,
he called her. If Jane had daughters, she already knew what she would name them: Joan and Juliet. They'd have her eyes and sense of humor. Maybe as a mom Jane could learn to be mature in other ways, do things like eat sushi or own a home.

What are you more afraid of, growing up or getting up?
Claudio had asked her the last time they spoke on the phone. It'd been the note he wanted to end their conversation on, the self-righteous avowal to once again place the blame off himself. She'd said,
I'm only afraid of scumbags like you,
and hung up on him.

It hadn't been the truth—Jane was scared of a lot of things—but she had her pride. And the thing with pride was, sometimes it made you lie. And the other thing about pride was, sometimes it felt good to lose it for a while.

Last week Claudio had told her,
you decide how much respect you deserve.
Didn't he know by now how much she hated deciding things? Fuck her brother. Jane had respected him more before he and the rest of their family left her in the hospital, back when she'd been just a kid. But it seemed like everyone left Jane, or would leave Jane, unless she gave whoever complete management over her.

Otis also made her drink. He'd taken her to a party at his friend's three nights before, and Jane had asked if it was a surprise party. Otis looked at her as if she was squaring a circle. But she asked only because of her dream the night before. Everybody she'd ever known, friends of Otis's and kids from childhood and people from Pine Rest, threw her a surprise party, with free dumplings and free cookies and free bagels and lox shipped special delivery, straight from New York. Jane wore a free purple leotard. There was a free cake covered in peppermints that read, in fondant,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEAUTIFUL JANE, FROM THE PEOPLE WHO CARE DEEPLY ABOUT YOU
. It had been so nice to dream. So nice to imagine being worth a party. -
There are dreams out there for everyone, -
Jane soothed herself upon waking. Dreaming was a more finished version of hoping.

Be loose,
Otis'd ordered, placing the cup in her hand. She didn't think she had more than one but then again couldn't remember a thing past the DJ having long blond hair.
Play “Here I Go Again on My Own,”
Jane had said. When he'd told her he didn't have that song, she'd said,
but you look like the type of person who would like that song!
Then, the icy blackout.

She'd woken up without her underwear in a bathtub next to Otis and his friend Darren. Nobody knew for certain what Darren did—some kind of bookie work, or loan sharking. Already Jane could feel some part of her being touched, before her eyes (which were two ransacked corners of the universe) opened. Jane saw and felt with her eyes.

Darren kissed her hello, and she shuddered, nonplussed. Was this her world or everyone else's? Usually the only difference between the two worlds was the voices, but she could feel the kiss through her teeth and even her sinuses. She was almost certain that it was happening in everyone else's world, especially when Otis woke up. Otis looked as though he saw it happening too, this calligraphy of tongues, Darren's mouth on his lady's
mouth. She knew he saw it happening because he had a look on his face like he was going to murder Darren, and then murder Jane, and then he twirled a piece of Jane's hair.

He pulled down his pants and pushed her down facing Darren and moved in the way expected of him. Darren looked at them. Enthralled, like they were TV.

Hold on,
said Jane.
I'm not ready yet.

Ready?
asked Otis.

If you could just give me a second,
said Jane. All she needed was a second. Really.

What's that mean?
asked Darren, spitting a little clot into the drain.

Jane lifted her body out of the bathtub by grabbing on to the towel rack, which had no towels. She went to the next room, somebody's bedroom with nobody in the bed, and looked at herself in the mirror.
I am living in everyone else's world,
she whispered.
This is important. These two worlds: they're perfectly aligned.
And this was a world where what was about to survive was hardly taboo. This was a world where barely anything was taboo.

Once, she had asked her brother,
if you had to lose a sense, which one would you lose?

I'd go blind,
her brother had said.
Anything but deaf. A world without music? That's not a world I'd want to live in,
said Claudio.

At least Jane's world still had music in it. That's what she would say to her brother, if she could now. That's what she'd say to Claudio.

Claudio.

- Think of another thing, -
Jane gave herself good advice. With a Heart full of resurrected fear, she thought, -
and why not? It's just like going to the doctor. -

Jane returned to the bathroom, after she'd decided to be at a point where she couldn't turn back.
Are you ready now?
Otis said, and there was a subtext somewhere in there she could not have
understood. He kissed her. It was like the whole messy, miasmic world was in that kiss. Other people always got their way.

Please, make room. Please,
said Jane. This strident request, as well as her prior brief deferral of what she was facing, had just been cosmetic, she knew with shame. Because when Otis wanted something from her, he'd always find a way of taking it.

When she sat again in the tub, she couldn't move her legs. They felt dead. She had dead legs and dead arms. Everything about her would be dead until it was over. And Jane decided she'd like how it felt, Darren watching. She'd let it come about because she had to, and the pleasure came with fearing for her life. She hoped that it was just happening in her world because she didn't know how to live in everyone else's world loving that.

Were there other people out there like Jane, people who felt born to be debased? Pleasure came so easy for Jane, and at the same time, felt so pitiful. Maybe if they had just given her a few more minutes she would have really been ready.

Jane let it happen until she said
stop.
And they stopped. Not at first, but eventually. Eventually, anything stops.

Otis left to smoke a cigarette, and Jane and Darren were left in the room.
Be careful,
Otis joked to his friend before leaving.
Women. They get attached.

For a second Jane felt a prodding fright that Darren might try his hand at something else. What more did he have to lose?

But fear was just the unknown, Jane recognized, and she couldn't imagine anything she couldn't predict about what could happen with Darren. So she had nothing to fear. That meant nothing really worse could happen.

The whites of Darren's eyes were soft, eggnoggish. He had a bald spot and a thin, pilgrimy nose. But staring at him straight on made Jane's whole body ache. Instead of trying his hand at anything more, Darren talked. He talked in a way that made her feel like she was living her life backward. But how else was
one supposed to live a life? He asked her if she was in love with Otis.
I think so,
said Jane.

Because you know,
said Darren,
love only works if both people are equally happy. Or equally miserable.

Jane used a few devastating seconds not speaking. It was tiring, withstanding words. Finally, she was able to say,
I don't know how to measure something like that.

That was three days ago. Jane lived with this memory. The whole horrible time she'd been thinking not of Otis but of Claudio. What would he have said if he saw her, with her pants to her knees and her frieze-face of tears? Jane's Heart would have overflowed. Claudio was Jane's big brother. For better or worse.

And Jane loved Claudio. She loved him with everything she had.

Something was singing.
See how they run,
echoed the blustering monopoly of voice. Was this the record player in the kitchen? Or just her monsooned, moth-eaten world? The record player was as rusty as the Statue of Liberty, and found in the yard of the foreclosed house across the road. When they were kids, Claudio had played “Lady Madonna” on his record player. They would listen to records with their babysitter, a boy named James who was only three years older than Jane, who had a crush on her. James used to call Jane
Lolita
as a joke. You weren't supposed to use art that way.

Otis came in through the glass door that was still broken from the time he threw his fist through, after his and Jane's fight about the spider who called for Jane from the backyard. Jane kept meaning to replace the door. (How
do
you replace a door? Do you call somebody? Do you pay somebody?) Every morning Jane told Otis,
I promise I'll replace it tomorrow,
and Otis said,
if you don't, you're out of here.
Sometimes she did leave, for weeks at a time. She'd sleep in the shelter, or in the park with her pillow
and sleeping bag. It was just like camping: yielding and cold in the companionable way that would keep her surviving.

A few months ago Jane had lived for a week in a coffee shop, eating its fusty yellow pastries after midnight. She hadn't even had to do anything but let the manager call her honey. His name had been Mohammed, and he thought she was adorable, liking her from a safe distance, like a minstrel. People could be so nice. He'd unlocked the bathroom for her, letting her sleep on its gluey floor, consoling:
lady, I get that you've been through some hard times.
Jane could sleep anywhere. She knew how to get by. She was an American girl, and most American girls can stay alive some way or another.
Wonder how you manage to make ends meet.

The cuckoo clock suddenly screamed. Jane crawled under the couch, blanket beside her. She was a caterpillar, or a roly-poly bug, coiling her body in alarm.

It wasn't the clock.

Otis was home, a dog leash wrapped around his forearm.
I thought I told you last night. Leave,
said Otis, with agency and urgency, with his gargoyle brow. In one hand he held a pizza, and in the other he held a bottle in a paper bag.

Please don't kick me out again,
begged Jane, devoid of her dignity in an accustomed way, this deficit seeming as commonplace to her as catching a virus.

Quite a mess you've made,
Otis continued, ignoring Jane, pointing at the floor. It was true: Jane had spilled the coffee grounds, but she couldn't clean today. It was against the rules. Jane's scrupulous, ravishing rules, which she set for herself and which she followed as precisely as a Hasid on Shabbat. The doctors at Pine Rest had umbrelled her rules under
obsessive-compulsive disorder,
which had hurt Jane's feelings. Technically Jane couldn't clean until tomorrow, and then she'd be able to clean for only the number of minutes of the number of songs that was also the number of letters that the first person on TV
would say tomorrow morning, because those were the rules Jane had set for herself, and Jane didn't alter the rules unless she absolutely had to, because what then would even be the point of having rules?