Authors: Sarah Langan
Lois couldn’t lift her head from the pillow, but her wide, dark eyes focused on his face. “James Walker. I ate his toe. I eat other things, too. Birdth . . . mostly birds. At night it geth worse. It’s something inside me from the woods.” She coughed again, and this time wiped the phlegm on her hair so that it shone. Much of her hair was plastered to her scalp in nappy locks, and when he’d first come in he’d mistaken it for grease. Now he realized that she’d been using her head as a handkerchief for days.
“I locked my windows last night. Nailed them shut so I couldn’t get out. I’m more myself than I was yester- day. I’m trying to starve it, so it leaves me alone. But I can’t last another night without . . . eating. I need you to lock me up.”
He noticed now that she’d hammered nails diago- nally through the window ledges. They formed a bent and uneven line across the wood. A few were rusty, and most were quite thick. He looked down at the floor, saw the hammer on her desk, and realized she’d gotten the nails by plucking them from the joints in her own floorboards.
“I was wrong,” he said. “You belong in a hospital.
You’re not well.”
She nodded. The tears returned, and she squeezed his hand hard. “Ever since the woods, I can feel it looking out from my eyes. The problem is, I
like
it. I’m afraid I’ll break the windows tonight unless you lock me up.”
Fenstad shook his head. He’d studied cases in which viral infections passed the blood-brain barrier and caused dementia and even schizophrenia. He hoped it wasn’t a virus. He hoped it was stress. Stress, at least, was less likely to leave her permanently damaged.
“I wish it was stress, Dr. Wintrob,” she said, as if she’d read his mind. Then she laughed that same bitter laugh. “I wish it was cancer.”
He shook his head like he was trying to shake some- thing loose from it. “You need to go to the hospital.”
She looked at him, a large set of black eyes and gaunt skin. “You know, I don’t feel things the thame way I used to. The baby in my stomach is too little to move, but since the woods, it kicks. Maybe it’s sick, too. Normally I’d care about my own baby, but I don’t, you see.”
“You’re pregnant?” Fenstad asked, and he wondered whether it was an hysterical pregnancy—she needed a reason to go on living. On the heels of this, he’d solved the mystery. This change in her person wasn’t viral; it was psychological. She needed to get away from the people closest to her, but she didn’t have the courage to leave them, so instead she’d developed a new personal- ity to do her dirty work for her. It would make enemies of them, and set her free. Smart machine, the subcon- scious. It insisted on survival, even when good manners would have us all six feet deep.
Lois smiled. “Do you know some women invent preg- nancies? They get big and then suddenly, poof, they get small again. They want the attention so bad that their bodies change, just so people will notice them.”
“I didn’t say you were having an hysterical preg- nancy, Lois,” Fenstad answered.
She smiled. “No?”
Her brows, what remained of them, were knit to- gether and he thought that he didn’t like this new iden- tity she’d created. There was violence lurking beneath this girl’s black eyes. There was madness there, too. “I’ll help you. We’ll go to the hospital. I’ll have you confined for the night, and tomorrow we can decide what to do.”
“If you hate someone, does it mean you never loved them?” she asked.
Fenstad shrugged. “Depends on why you hate them.
Are you talking about your mother, or yourself?”
Lois chuckled. The sun had begun to set, and its red rays were moving slowly out of sight. “I think it means you never loved them . . .”
Just then Jodi came through the door. Out the win- dow, the last of the sun’s rays clung to the far wall in slanted red lines that splashed across Lois’s dilated pu- pils, and out of sight. The room went dark. Only her eyes and the phosphorescence of his watch hands illu- minated the room.
Lois coughed. She didn’t cover her mouth, and the smell was pure sulfur. Then she closed her eyes. Her breath clicked, and wheezed, and finally stopped. Fens- tad shook her. “Lois!” he yelled. Behind him, Jodi dropped her
TV Guide
with the show about Mormons and their many wives emblazoned on its cover.
Lois’s head rolled. Her nightgown was open to the third button. He felt her heartbeat with his palm. It was weak, but present. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes again. “Fennie,” she said.
Fenstad blinked. Looked at his hand on her breast and promptly removed it. “Dr. Wintrob,” he corrected. “Right.” She smiled. Her pupils were so massive that the brown of her irises was gone. He wished, suddenly, that he had not come to this sick place. He wanted to be home with his wife, where he belonged. He wanted to
be anywhere but here. “I’m hungry,” she said.
Jodi began to shiver like she had late-stage Parkin- son’s, and he realized that she was terrified. “She ate all the steak Tuesday night while I was sleeping in front of the
Wheel of Fortune
marathon. I don’t even think she
cooked it. She goes out at night, too, but last night I locked her in her room. Don’t want the whole neighbor- hood seeing her in her skivvies. And there’s some- thing . . . New friends of hers from the bar, maybe. They bang on the windows at night. They tease me.” Jodi was crying now. She picked up her
TV Guide
and rubbed Bill Paxton’s face as if for reassurance.
Fenstad’s stomach dropped. Neither woman was mak- ing sense. Could the infection have caused some kind of mass hysteria? Did its smell have a neurological effect? He didn’t know, but this child’s room with its torn-up floors where a grown woman spent her days watching television was dark and cold. “She needs to go to the hospital. Help me get her to my car.”
“I don’t want to go,” Lois said. “I like it here, in my room. Don’t I, Mom?”
Jodi looked from Fenstad to Lois, and didn’t answer. She cupped her mouth with her hand in an unwitting pantomime of speak no evil.
“Lois. You’re going to the hospital,” Fenstad said. Lois laughed. Her wheezing was less pronounced,
but still audible. “I changed my mind.”
“You’re too sick to make decisions,” Fenstad said. Lois nodded. “Exactly right. It’s my mother’s deci-
sion, and you don’t want to make me angry, do you? Because I know where you live, Jodi. I’ve lived with you my whole fucking life.” Then she smiled. He noticed with a start that the gap between her teeth was gone.
Jodi covered her face and peeked between her fingers. “But Lois,” she said with phony concern. “I want what’s best for you.”
“Really?” Lois asked. Then she smiled, because all three of them were in on the dark, unbearable joke.
Fenstad looked from one woman to the next, and he thought the worst part of this bedside scene was not
Lois’s madness, but the grotesquerie of their relation- ship. For almost thirty years these two had played the roles of loving mother and daughter. Probably neither of them knew right now how much they hated each other.
“I like it here,” Lois said. “We’ve got lots of wonder- ful game shows on the television.” Her teeth were as straight as those of a 1950s Hollywood actress. The lisp he could understand: Autohypnosis made men walk on hot coals. But the teeth? What
was
this?
Jodi nodded. She was shaking so hard that even her head was jittering. “You know best, Lois,” she said.
Lois’s nightgown was white, and for a moment he was back in Wilton, Connecticut, where the carpet was deep blue, and in the sickbed slept a crone.
Fennie? Is it a lump?
Lois’s breath smelled like a fly-infested slaughter- house. Even in textbooks, no one changed this much this fast. He remembered the half-eaten bird on the front lawn, and with a jolt wondered if Lois’s alter ego had murdered James Walker in those woods.
“I read in the paper that Ronnie and Noreen set a date,” he said, because he wanted to get her talking.
“So?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Miller Walker can’t be happy about his missing son. Things won’t go over well for you if you stay in town, Lois. A little time at the hospital will be good for you.”
Lois shook her head. “You’ll see,” she said.
“What happened in the woods? Tell me again,” he said.
Her voice was deep and watery. “You’ll see, Fennie.
You’ll see.”
“Dr. Wintrob to you.” He took a shot in the dark: “Is it seeing out from your eyes right now? Can I talk to it?”
“Time’s up, Dr, Wintrob,” Lois said. “Fifty minutes. Session’s over. I noticed that sometimes you cut me off at forty-five, and even forty. Am I that dull?”
Fenstad didn’t move. “I’m not leaving. I like you too much.”
Lois grinned. “I think my heart stopped beating.”
He looked down at the creaking floors. Their nails were missing, but instead he thought he saw the plush blue carpet in Wilton, Connecticut, soaked in blood. “Stop it,” he said.
Lois lifted her hand to the middle of her chest. Then she opened another button, so that he could see her exposed breasts. “Feel,” she said.
He shook his head. She lunged for his hand and forced it against her bare skin. He thought about girlie maga- zines, and track practice. He thought about Lois Larkin’s nipple under his palm, and her beautiful beat- ing heart. He felt himself go hard.
“You want me, don’t you?” she asked.
He pulled his hand back and shook his head. The room was dark, and he could see only shapes, the tiny slivers of white in her eyes, and her perfect grin. “He’ll leave us all alone. Daddy doesn’t love me anymore. Do you?”
Fenstad’s brow was sweating. The sulfuric scent in the room was thick. Why was he wearing jeans? He
never
wore jeans to work. They smelled, too. They smelled dirty like he was in high school again, fishing his school clothes from the hamper because when she was angry with him, Sara Wintrob left his laundry un- touched.
“Do you love me?” the woman in the sickbed asked, and he answered her immediately. Answered her the way he’d always answered her.
“Yes, Mother.”
The floor was full of blood. It squished, and his leather shoes were soaked. It sucked on his feet like hungry mouths, pulling him down. Deep down. Drown- ing him. How old was he? Forty-six? Sixteen? He didn’t remember for sure.
“I’m not sick,” she said.
Her voice. He hated it. His hand made a fist. He would strike her, his mother. He’d beat her senseless and bloody like he’d always meant to do.
“You know I was never sick, don’t you?” she asked. She was laughing at him. He’d wipe that grin off her face. He’d wrap his hands around her throat like she deserved. “Speak up, boy. I can’t hear you,” she said.
“That’s enough!” Jodi cried distantly, but her voice was like static. He could hardly hear it over the barking black dog. Whose dog? His dog? Did he own a dog, now?
He didn’t hold back because she was a woman. He swung as hard as he could. Her face turned red, and something went flying. A tooth? Her mouth was bleed- ing. Bitch. He’d shown her. Oh, yeah. Now she knew. Back in Wilton, Connecticut, she was crying her fuck- ing eyes out.
She didn’t cry. The look on her black-eyed face wasn’t shock. It was satisfaction. She laughed, this woman. Not his mother. God, why had he thought she was his mother? Just his patient, Lois Larkin. He’d struck a woman. His own patient. Her mouth dripped blood all over the dingy yellow sheets. As she watched him, she cupped her hands under her chin and began to drink.
“It tastes so good,” she said.
“That’s enough!” Jodi howled while Lois cackled. His hand hurt bad. His hand was on the door. He should stay even though he’d done wrong. He should fix what
he’d broken, and make it better. That was his job. It had always been his job. He’d better not lose his job, or his wooden house would come tumbling down.
“Fennie? Do you feel it?” the woman in bed whis- pered, and he was running out the door.
F
enstad’s eyes were leaking. He’d parked his Escalade in the driveway of his house, but he wasn’t ready to
go inside. He was waiting for the leak to stop dripping.
Maddie was dancing in front of her mirror on the second floor, and down below Meg was reading at the kitchen table. He focused on his daughter’s awkward hip thrusts (the girl was no Ginger Rogers), and the light that reflected against Meg’s still face, but his eyes kept leaking.
What had happened at Lois Larkin’s house? He wasn’t sure he remembered correctly. She said she’d eaten a bird, and he’d believed her. He pictured her catching it in her hands, and stabbing those huge, gapless teeth into its chest. Why would he think something so outlandish? There was more. His mother. Sara had been there, too. But how was that possible?
“Feel Flows” was playing on the radio. He tapped his fingers against the dashboard, which comforted him, because at least he was doing something. He wasn’t just sitting around, letting his eyes rust. He kept tapping, hoping that soon the world would make sense again. The Beach Boys were playing, after all. How bad could things be if Brian Wilson could still croon?
He’d had a bad day. Not as bad as the day at Motel 6, room 69, where the carpet had been maroon, and the bedspread dirty gray. No, not that bad. But bad enough. Patients dropping like flies, kids cramming the hospital beds and morgue—a bad day. He tapped his fingers. Started humming “Feel Flows.” Tried to tune out his thoughts, until all that was left, like the end of the world, was one song.
A voice called out to him from the void, and he re- membered Lois’s bloody grin:
Fennie, is it a lump?
The basketball hoop over the garage had rusted, and its net was gone. Once he’d used an entire vaca- tion day to play “horse” in the driveway with his son. He’d bested David at five games straight, and was ready to throw one so the kid would start smiling, when David ran into the house, crying like a girl. He’d hid- den behind Meg’s skinny trousers and whined that he never wanted to play again, and he never did. Fenstad came walking in a minute later, ready to explain to the kid about winning and losing, how you need to be good at both to be a man, but Meg’s furious frown had stopped him.