Things Withered (8 page)

There was this building downtown where you could get a beer and dope any time and there was this asshole that hung out there named Reeses like the pieces and he was always grabbing her tits and anyone else’s. One time she and her friend Cindy? Samantha? gave him a joint that had a load in it and watched him smoke it until it popped in his face and he was all stoned and everything and pissed his pants. It was the funniest thing they’d ever seen and he never felt her tits again.

Karen turned the cigarette over and over in her fingers. If she smoked it, he would smell it on her breath, surely taste it at least, when they went to bed. He always kissed her goodnight. Sometimes he even kissed her hand, or her fingers, because he frequently held her hand.

Tears stung her eyes. Ropes tightened around her chest. She brought the cigarette up under her nose and closed her eyes and sniffed, deeply. She lit the end of it with a match, without touching it to her lips. She lifted it, lit end down, to help it burn. She inhaled the air around the cigarette.

(could say the man at the store was having a cigarette)

Smelled like sitting around having a beer. Having a few laughs. Smelled good.

She put it to her lips and inhaled. The smoke, foreign-tasting, not at all what she remembered and yet still good, hurt her throat and her lungs and felt good. She let it out. She closed her eyes, and did it again. Smelled like

(whore)

being drunk, getting fucked, stealing, puking.

Karen smoked and cried.

“Should we make a baby?” Ted whispered in her ear. He always said that before he made love to her, slowly and thoughtfully, as though he needed or wanted permission at each step. She answered him by pressing her body against him, in the same slow thoughtful way.

In the beginning this ritual amused her, and she almost found it contemptuous. Later she began to look forward to the routine of it; the safety in the knowing. Now when she pressed her body against his, she could sometimes blank her mind out in such a way that her body wanted his in an innocent way, the way a wife wants a husband, the way a woman might want a baby.

Her body would never accept a baby. Ted didn’t know and she would never tell him, but her womb and ovaries and vagina (up past the place where his penis reached) and her eggs and her uterus and all of it was full of worms and fungus and dark red blood that was poisonous. He could never know that, and she would never tell him.

Sometimes when she had already pressed her body against his in answer to him, when he had his hand on her breast and was stroking it, and when he would kiss her very gently on the mouth she stopped thinking and for one second, until she felt it and stopped, she would feel white and clean and warm and pure and ready for him and his babies. As soon as that happened the snakes came back and they reminded her of secrets. That happened less now, and once or twice, it hadn’t happened at all, until the first thrust of his penis into her blackness. Then she remembered.

She would cry for him if she thought it would mean anything; the accidental murder, the socially acceptable, fatal disease. The apologetic sin; the damage done.

(I’m sorry, I am a sorrow.)

She went for a walk sometimes. If Ted was busy in the garage, fixing things, making new things that would break later and he could fix, sitting, sipping his beer. She would poke her head through the doorway and say she was popping out to the store. That was exactly how it happened; she poked her head in, and popped out; she was at her finest when she was lying. It was honesty that made her seem like she was lying. When she really lied, she was infallible.

Karen walked farther now, passed the store, passed the industrial park, passed the highway, up to where the lights got brighter, and there was some traffic. For a long time she just stood on the corner where the highway divided the suburb from the rest of the world and she would stare at the flashing lights.

She had hidden the pack of cigarettes under an industrial garbage can, on top of a rock, and they had stayed mostly dry. She would have one cigarette when she went on her walks. She didn’t feel like she was getting addicted again, but at various, random times of the day she would check herself:
Do I want a smoke?
The answer, whether true or not, was always no.

She stood on the corner of suburbie and the rest of the world, and watched the sign flash.

“Eddies,” it flashed off and on. There was no apostrophe to show the possessive, Karen at least knew that much, even with her limited education, and so she wondered if it was perhaps some inside joke, as though three or four Eddies owned the bar, and they all had their names on the sign. She eventually convinced herself that was true, and laughed at their little joke herself. Underneath the sign was another that read, “dancers.” She just looked, and then moved on, home.

She was always careful now to bring along gum and a Rolaid, which seemed to effectively hide the smell of the cigarette. She washed her hands carefully when she got home, and put off kissing him as long as possible to give the mouthwash/gum/Rolaid a chance to do its work. She stopped at the store and bought some little doodad so that Ted would know where she had been.

“Did you enjoy your walk?”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “Would you like some toast?” She was so smooth.

Jane Meyer invited her to a wedding shower. “Bring something,” she told her. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask what exactly she was supposed to bring, or what she was supposed to wear. She didn’t feel right asking Ted. Her mother was of course dead and she had never met her father, although she told Ted for convenience’s sake that he too, was dead. Who could she ask?

She brought home six magazines. There was
Modern Bride
,
Today’s Bride
,
Ladies’ Home Journal
,
Country Living
,
Glamour
, and
Today’s Woman
. They all featured a beautiful, delicate-looking woman on the front, and the bride’s magazine’s featured lovely, clean, pure, brides.

It was Laurie Perkins who was getting married. It was a second marriage, and Karen had no idea if that made any difference or not, but Jane had said—in such a way that it sounded both as though it might, and Karen must know how—“It’s a
second
marriage, you understand.”

(no)

The magazines told her nothing. The clothes were beautiful, and there was a good article in one of them about how child actors had their lives ruined by fame and money. Karen could just imagine. They knew nothing, but she bet they had their share of secrets. She felt gleeful after reading that article, but forgot to put fabric softener in two loads of laundry and the socks clung to the shirts. It was six of one, half dozen of the other, as Ted would have said.

By the end of that day she hadn’t figured out what to wear, but had decided that she would bring flowers. Flowers were associated with weddings in all of the magazines, and they were so beautiful, perhaps no one would see through her.

The shower had gone over without a hitch.

Ted had smiled at her when she left the house. “You’re looking so pretty, I don’t know if I want you to go anywhere,” he told her, looking her over in a way that he rarely did. She was so familiar with that look that she snapped back from the robot-dressing, flower-carrying, supper-dishes-done, there’s-a-cold-roast-in–the-fridge-if-you-get-hungry, and felt her eyes narrow and turn hard. Did he see? She stopped in time.

The flowers were in a clear plastic box, provided by the flower shop. Karen had tied a ribbon around the middle of the box, slightly hiding the flowers inside, but allowing them to peek seductively through; that was on the advice of the magazine. It was supposed to be for centerpieces being stored in the refrigerator, but Karen had adapted the idea, and was quite satisfied with it.

She had decided upon a red blouse with a black skirt, not too short, not so long that her legs didn’t show. Her legs were smooth and long, and like the flowers, might be something she could hide behind. She wore nail polish, a light pink that clashed with the blouse, but no one wore red anymore.

(act normal)

The flowers were a big hit. Laurie called them chic.

“Oh! So
chic
,” she squealed when she saw them, in a brittle, half-hysterical way that made Karen do a double take. She’d heard herself talking that way in the very beginning. She watched Laurie carefully after that, but never heard it again. She did see Jane looking at her skirt, and later saying something to someone in a surreptitious way. The others were wearing fat dresses and pants.

(sorry or fuck you)

She was dressed wrong, and she suspected the flowers weren’t chic at all, but were wrong. She wished for a cigarette but never got one that night.

It wasn’t long before she crossed the street to look at Eddies. She would carry her cigarette over there and smoke outside the building. She could hear the voices inside, laughing, the music, the clinking glasses.

She imagined herself saying it. “Just stopped in for a drink, hon. I got so thirsty! Want some toast?” She would just have a Coke, smoke a cigarette. While she imagined the Coke some men drove by in a car and shouted out the window at her, and laughed. It was that kind of place.

The first night she crossed, she didn’t go in.

“Want to make a baby?” They were sitting at the breakfast table.

Karen’s eyes were carefully hooded, as she had to be careful in the morning, when she was tired and more of her real self was awake than her home self. She looked at him tiredly, wondering what he meant, assuming that he was just making a little husband-wife joke, since his sperm was still in her, running out, soaking into her underpants and robe. She would wash clothes again today.

She smiled.

“I mean it,” he said, seriously.

He looked deep into her eyes, and she knew that he couldn’t see anything unseemly there. She became very aware of the feel of his sperm running out of her. It felt warm on her cool skin. Because it had been in her body? Because truth hurts?

He reached over and took her hand. He lifted her fingers to his mouth and put one in his mouth. “I mean it, sweetheart. Darling. Let’s go again, this time, we’ll make a baby,” his voice got husky and deep with desire.

She stared blankly at him, but let herself be led away.

One time this guy in a bar who looked like a nice guy, way back when she was still to learn that there was no such thing, before she met Ted and found out there were, there was this guy who seemed really decent, and offered to give her a ride home on his motorcycle. She was a little drunk and feeling like she should be nice because he was nice and maybe he would like her if she was nice and then the motorcycle ride would be something they did together. He took her for a ride and stopped in this park and fucked her without taking his pants off, even, just pulled them down. He took all of her clothes off, though. She refused to feel bad about it. She stole his pot.

It was Tuesday and Karen was at the old folk’s home. She was reading to Margaret. When they got to something that Karen couldn’t read, she just pretended. Margaret was very hard of hearing and Karen suspected she only really liked the attention. Karen loved to read for her.

While Karen read to Margaret, she noticed that the old woman would sometimes zone out, as though her mind had simply ceased to function. Her eyes would go blank, the muscles in her face would go slack. Where did she go? At those times Karen would wonder if Margaret was dying. She looked so peaceful. That was what peace would look like: like not thinking at all.

“Margaret?” Karen would whisper. So far, she always answered. It wouldn’t be long though, and Karen looked forward to Margaret’s peace.

Karen lay on her back and her husband moved up and down above her. She couldn’t let go, her muscles, every muscle in her body, was tensed and panicked.

(what if? what if?)

She went in. She walked in as though it was something she did every single day. As though she wasn’t Mrs. Karen Stevens, but was Karen. Or “Kren,” she used to be.

Insides of those bars all looked the same. The same people sat at the same tables, their backs against the wall as though they were actually important enough for someone bad to be looking for.

“Gimme a Club,” she told the bartender.

It was early, ten-thirty. She could smell the urine coming from the men’s washroom, where last night or today someone must have pissed on the way in. They (she) used to laugh when someone did that. Underneath the beer and piss and cigarettes you could smell the more sinister smells, puke, pot, blood.

The music for a dancer came on. Kren kept her back to the stage. The bartender put the beer in front of her. She was only going to have a Coke, but it was as if the place had overwhelmed her, as though the last three years had stripped the first thirty from her and here she was, back at ya.

“Déjà vu,” she whispered. The bartender looked disgusted at her.

She wished she had a cigarette, but that would be going too far.

“Got a smoke?” she asked the bartender.

“I ain’t a fuckin’ store. Go buy a pack,” he said. He gestured to the machine in the corner, a dark corner, of the bar. There was a man sitting at the table right next to the machine. He was drunk, or at least, he looked pretty drunk.

Kren knew the people in this bar, especially the men. A lot of them would be married. None of them would be like Ted. These ones were the bored ones, the ones that expected something different out of life but were too stupid to go get it themselves, but too smart to live without it. She was suddenly so lonely for Ted, for home.

“Gimme some change then,” she said, and handed the bartender a twenty. While he got her change, in quarters, she took a gulp of her beer, delicately wiping her mouth with her fingers.

The quarters slipped in with a familiar ching, dropping into slots in an organized, determined (deadly) way. Kren looked up at the stage where the woman was taking her clothes off in a bored, off-key way. Only one man watched, and his eyes never left her.