“Oh. No kidding?”
Susan bobbed her head up and down as she lied. Except, it was true, wasn’t it? They were having a hard time.
“Yeah, so, we’re working it out, you know, but it’s pretty bad right now. So, I mean, can I — can we — can Emma and I please come crash with you for a few days? Just till I figure out our next step.”
Finally Susan shut up, tilted her head back up to the sky, and squeezed her eyes shut. Come on, Jenna. Come on.
“I … oh, Sue.” The final silence was the longest. Susan felt a tear spill down her cheek, before Jenna spoke at last. “I can’t get bedbugs. I just can’t.”
Susan ended the call and shoved her phone in her pocket, cursing loudly and stomping her foot.
“Ma’am?”
At some point she had entered the Barnes & Noble and was standing at the table of new releases. A small crowd of perplexed shoppers were looking her up and down, and a rent-a-cop security guard placed a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder.
“Sorry,” Susan muttered, and pushed her way out of the store.
On the way home she stopped at a pet store and asked if they sold diatomaceous earth, the crumbly soil compound that was one of several supposed bedbug killers she had read about on BedbugDemolition.com. The saleswoman, a puffy, overly made-up woman in her fifties, chuckled ruefully. “Sure, honey. You’re lucky we still have some in stock.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You think you’re the only one with bedbugs?”
Susan felt a hot rush of shame and looked furtively around the shop. “No, I … I …” She had no idea what other uses one might have for diatomaceous earth. The pet-shop lady shook her head and grinned.
“Don’t worry, dear. Everybody’s got the darn things, or it sure seems like it.”
“Not like I do,” Susan muttered. The saleswoman cocked her head and said, “Sorry, dear?” But Susan just shook her head and forked over the $27.50 for her three-pound bag.
“Well, I wish you luck, sweetheart, I do,” said the saleswoman. After giving Susan her change, she squirted hand sanitizer into her palm from a dispenser beside the cash register. “Do you know where you got ’em?”
“No, I …” Susan trailed off, and her mouth dropped open.
“Ma’am?”
It was funny — for all her research, all her terror, it had never occurred to Susan to wonder where the bedbugs had come from. But as soon as the woman asked, Susan knew the answer. She took her bag and left the store, passing under the tinkling shop bell, clutching the heavy bag of soil to her chest. Susan marched up Court Street and turned left onto Montague toward home.
20
Quietly, Susan let herself into the apartment and set down her lumpy package of diatomaceous earth just inside the door. She poked her head into the kitchen, then slipped off her shoes and padded in her socks to the living room, where she found Marni dozing on the sofa, her phone dangling in one hand, breathing lightly.
“I can’t believe it,” Susan whispered to herself. “I can’t believe it took so long to figure this out.”
Marni’s chest rose and fell gently; her thick copper hair lay in a tumble across the pillow.
Every day she’s been coming here. Every day, in my home. With my daughter.
Staring at the sleeping girl, Susan dragged the nails of her right hand along her left wrist, harder and harder, perforating the barely healed skin for the hundredth time, drawing out bright red beads of blood.
Every single day.
“Marni,” she said sharply. “Get up.”
Susan waited a moment and then knelt at the girl’s side and shook her, roughly, by the shoulders. Marni proved to be a lighter sleeper than Alex — she jerked awake, blinked twice, smiling through her confusion. “Oh, hey, Sue. Emma’s napping.” She fumbled for the baby monitor, which sat on the coffee table, and lifted it up reassuringly. “Poor thing was totally zonked. We went over to the carousel, and then … um, Susan?”
Susan was still crouching beside the sofa, staring at Marni, not moving. She could almost see them, the bedbugs, stage-one and stage-two nymphs most likely, invisible to the naked eye, crawling out from Marni’s shirtsleeves, up from her cleavage, marching in uneven lines. Bugs appearing from the folds and creases of the girl’s clothing, tumbling onto the sofa, disappearing into the cracks, sliding between the floorboards. It was disgusting.
“Marni, you have to leave.”
“Oh.” She hefted herself up to a sitting position. “Wait. What?”
“I’m sorry,” said Susan. “But it’s not working out.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You’re fired. Get out. Right now.”
Marni’s eyes were wide with pretended innocence. Susan felt waves of hatred and disgust wash over her. The girl shifted on the sofa, ran a hand through her hair, and Susan saw the invisible rain of them, bedbugs floating like dandruff off her scalp. She grasped Marni by the wrists. “Get up. Please. Please, just go.”
“But why? What is this about?
Susan’s mounting distaste crested, transforming into pure hot fury. “Why?” Susan laughed once, a high thin bark. “What is this about?” Like she didn’t know! Like she didn’t go home every night and laugh at them — laugh at her, laugh at Susan, laugh at what she’d done to her. “Because you’re dirty.”
Marni’s back stiffened, and she stared at Susan with cold, hard eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Because you’re disgusting!” Susan heard the hateful words pouring out of her mouth, a hot torrent of bitter words, but she couldn’t stop them. Didn’t want to stop. “Because you got bedbugs in some 10th Avenue motel room, or at your Friday night gang bang—”
“Oh, my God! Susan!”
“—and you brought them here. Into my house! You contaminated my home!”
Susan was shrieking now. She felt her blood pumping in her veins; her hands were clutched into fists, her ragged fingernails biting like teeth into the tender flesh of her palms. The pain felt good and powerful, clean and right. Marni was furiously collecting her things, sweeping her computer and hair-ties and a textbook into her backpack.
“This is unbelievable,” she said. “Unbelievable.”
“Out! I want you out!” Susan chased Marni as she stomped down the hallway. “Get out!”
She reached past Marni, threw open the door, and it cracked against the wall of the landing.
“Fine!” shouted Marni. “Jesus! Fine!”
Susan slammed the door behind her and locked it. Through the wall she heard the muffled tromp of Marni’s footsteps as they rapidly descended the interior stairs. As Susan stood there heaving hard raspy breaths, she felt something at the back of her knees: A bite. She whirled around, slapped at her legs, trying to catch the dirty little creature in the act. Another one, this time right at the corner of her eye. She brought her hand up, pinched at where she had felt the insect, clawed at her face.
When she looked up, Emma was standing halfway down the steps, clutching Mr. Boogle, scratching her little bottom and looking around the room.
“Mama? Did Marni go home?”
“Oh, baby.”
“Is everything OK, Mama?”
“Yes, honey. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”
She smiled at Emma, who smiled sleepily back, Mr. Boogle dangling against her pink thigh. “All right, Mama.”