“Doesn’t seem right,” she said, “a strong creature like that, locked away in here forever, to be stared at by drunks.”
“Doesn’t matter how it seems,” I said, and for a moment I thought I’d said the wrong thing, that she would stand and walk away without another word, but instead she nodded.
“You’re right,” she said, “it doesn’t.” She looked at me and I saw traces of aged beauty, sharp features now covered with too much makeup, powder caked in places, mascara running a little from the rain. She was drunk, but not so much that she slurred her words, just enough so that I knew. On her left ring finger was a gold wedding band.
“Where’s he tonight?” I asked, pointing at the ring.
“Burying his mother in Pittsburgh,” she said.
“Why aren’t you there?”
“Because I always hated his mother.” She smiled, her tongue flicking against the back of her teeth and when the bartender came by again, I ordered us a round of shots.
It didn’t take long, the two of us drinking the way we were. Soon I was driving her car along 26th Street, past the highway connector and a dark stretch of abandoned warehouses and factories. She’d told me she’d let me know when we reached her street, but it seemed like I’d been driving forever. She rolled her shoulders back and forth across the cloth seat as though, even sitting down, she was slightly off balance. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she kept running her hand up and down my leg.
“Are we there yet?” she asked.
“You tell me.”
She opened her eyes. “Next one,” she said.
I turned off at the next street and drove slowly as I followed her directions. A thin layer of ice had formed on the asphalt and glinted under the streetlights. Finally I pulled into a narrow gravel driveway. Her house looked like every other house on the block. A small, two-story building with aluminum siding and a roof in disrepair. I shut off the headlights and the engine.
“This is it,” she said. “Tada.” And then she leaned across the middle console and kissed me hard, pushing against my lips until she’d pinned my head against the driver’s side window. She tasted like some overripe fruit, spoiled and pungent, and she ran her tongue around the inside of my mouth. I thought about the woman I’d moved to that town for, where she might be at that very moment, who she might be there with.
The woman leaned back and took a deep breath. In front of us, the large bay windows of the house were illuminated by the amber glow of a streetlight. I saw that the curtains had been pulled back slightly and that there was a small girl inside, standing there watching us.
“Who’s that?” I asked, nodding toward the window. The girl couldn’t have been any older than six or seven. She had long blonde hair and wore a large white t-shirt that fell below her knees. Her tiny hand was pressed against the window and she looked scared. When she saw that we’d spotted her, she hid quickly behind the curtain.
The woman had followed my stare. “That’s my daughter,” she said. “She’s supposed to be in bed.”
“Who’s watching her?”
The woman turned and gave me an annoyed look. “She’s supposed to be in bed,” she said again. “She watches herself.”
All of this happened a long time ago. I no longer live in that town, or anywhere near it. And I no longer drink the way I once did, angry and hungry at the same time. These days I have a family of my own, a wife and a daughter who thinks I’m the world. At night, after I’ve tucked my daughter into bed, I wait outside her room for a minute, so that if she calls for me, I will hear. Every day I go to my job and come straight home after, and there are many, my family included, who would call me a good man. And it is maybe because of these things that it is hard for me to imagine that man, the one who got out of the car that night and stood quietly in the doorway while that woman screamed at her daughter, the girl shivering as cold air rushed in around me, pulling the hem of her makeshift nightgown toward the floor, the woman screaming and screaming until she finally sent the girl off to bed crying. I try to think of how that girl might have seen me, an uncertain creature silhouetted in the doorway, a strange man in her home, and it reminds me of the stains I’ve left on this life of mine. It’s hard to think of that man, the one who stayed the night with that woman and left the next morning without a word. It is hard for me to picture him, but that does not change anything. And it is not regret I am talking about, it is something different altogether. I remember that when that woman yelled at her daughter she called her Lexie. The girl’s name was Lexie.
This Too
MARTHA SCRUBS THE WINDOWS with a mixture of hot water and ammonia. She wonders when Benjy painted them black. It is night, but still, the effect is palpable. Outside, there’s a half moon and streetlights casting their orange glow. Little gets through. Martha dips the sponge into the steaming bucket at her feet. She is not wearing gloves. The phone rings and she remembers she needs to call and cancel service. When the machine picks up there is silence and then a long beep. Whoever is on the other line waits a moment and then hangs up. Martha works until her hands are shriveled and pink. They remind her of the pet hamster she had as a child. When it gave birth to a litter she was so excited she picked one up to show her parents. That night the mother hamster ate the baby Martha had contaminated with her scent. When Benjy found out, he filled the bathroom sink and drowned the other babies one by one. Martha remembers him sitting on the edge of the tub. She remembers crying when she saw the hairless babies floating in the sink like severed thumbs. Benjy was calmer than she’d ever seen him. She remembers what he said as he brushed past her. I saved them. When Martha finally recovered herself, she flushed the babies and told her parents the mother had eaten them all.
Martha kneels and dips her arm up to the elbow in the hot water and ammonia. Tears fill her eyes. The pain creeps toward her shoulder. When she thinks she might pass out, she stands, shuts off the light and leaves.
On the drive home Martha thinks about the last time Benjy called, a month ago. His apartment is in Homestead, only a mile and a half from the house she shares with two roommates, but at the time she had no idea. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in over a year. No one had. It was late, and she’d fumbled with the cell. When no one spoke on the other end, she knew it was him. Where are you, she whispered. For the longest time there was nothing. I’m hiding, he finally said, and hung up.
The next day Martha returns to the apartment. As she’s turning the lock she sees a pair of eyes watching her from behind a cracked door down the hall.
Inside, she walks past the bathroom she refuses to enter. It is the one room she will not go into. In the bedroom, she sorts through Benjy’s CDs and then his books. She lifts one off the floor and flips through its pages. Desperate scrawls in the margins, whole chapters blacked out in permanent marker. When the cops arrived, the walls were covered in writing. The landlord painted over it before Martha could see and she’s grateful for that, but she knows whatever he wrote is still there, just hidden. He did the same thing when they were kids growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Locked in his room for two and a half days arguing loudly with himself. Martha remembers wishing he would let her in, so she could take care of him. When their father finally kicked down the door the walls were covered, diagrams and drawings and the same word written over and over.