Women & Other Animals (6 page)

Hamlet hears the breathing of Lady, whose head is tossed back in ecstatic dreaming of what she will steal tomorrow. Her limbs twitch and she growls at intervals.

Hamlet listens to the women's quiet snoring, to the thinning crackles of a dyingdown fire he can't feed, and to the rustle of unraked leaves beyond the house walls. The concrete beneath him grows colder as the fire fades, and the wind drums and rips at the window plastic outside until a milky corner tears loose and flaps, unsecured.

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Eating Aunt Victoria

Bess rolled down the passengerside window of her brother's Dodge Omni to let the night air fly into her face. She needed to be revived after the numbing dullness of her first evening working security at the Westland Mall.

"So, Bess," said her brother Hal. "Meet any bad guys?"

"Get this," she said. "They give me a walkietalkie to carry on my belt, but when I try it there's nobody on the other end. Somebody causes trouble, I got to call 911

on the pay phone."

The downtown bank clock flashed 11:20 and 69 degrees alternately. They passed through Kalamazoo, then along a fourmile stretch of factories and warehouses where the air stank of paper processing, before entering Bangor Township. Bess lifted a cigarette from the pack of generics on the dashboard. She wondered idly what it would feel like if she and Hal were heading down the highway, toward Detroit or Chicago.

"There's a Navy recruiting office at the mall," she said.

"And there's a bridge over the Yangtze River," said Hal. "Doesn't mean you have to go there and jump off it." He flipped on his left blinker, and looked in both directions before steering over the tracks. The railroad crossing was unprotected, as were many of the private ones on the way out of town—no gates, no flashing lights, no

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warning. Two summers ago, a guy at the gravel pit had been hauling a backhoe across the tracks on a trailer when he was hit by the westbound Twilight Limited. The engine had plowed on, spewing chunks of yellow metal, sending half of the hydraulic arm of the backhoe into Hal's marijuana patch. Bess helped him pull the fourfoot plants from around the twisted metal and carry them into the basement before the railroad police arrived.

The Omni shuddered up and over the tracks, and Hal cut the engine in the driveway beside their tarpapered, twostory house. Hal had been the one to insist that Bess finish high school. Now she was grateful, for it had delayed the monotony she felt tonight, the nagging feeling that the rest of her life stretched out empty before her, as desolate as the Westland Mall after hours. Hal had graduated a year ago and now was working at the StopnGas and attending classes at the community college.

They climbed the six steps onto the porch, where the soggy tongueandgroove boards groaned beneath their weight. "You don't have to enlist," said Hal. "You already look like a military chick." Bess liked her security uniform, the tight belt around her middle and the rim of the hat pressing on the sides of her head. Hal would never listen to her when she mentioned joining the Navy. He didn't care about seeing the ocean or foreign countries, or anything else beyond his favorite Lake Michigan beach, forty miles due west.

They passed through the kitchen with its cracked plaster walls, worn castiron sink, and padlocked metal pantry where Aunt Victoria kept her personal food. The living room was dark except for the blue glow of the television lighting the split vinyl furniture and matted shag carpet. Hal walked right past Aunt Victoria in her reclining Naugahyde chair as though he wasn't going to speak to her.

"Where's my cards?" Victoria rumbled. Her speech had become almost indecipherable in the last few years. By this time of night, it sounded as though it came from a talking stomach without the aid of a throat or vocal cords.

"I'm still using them." Hal kept walking.

"I didn't give 'em to you to keep."

Bess met the woman's eyes briefly as she passed between her huge form and the television. Victoria's oily gaze slid back to the Page 36

screen. Bess and Hal followed the basement stairs down to Hal's room, where they sat on the legless couch and put their feet up on the chipped veneer of the coffee table, next to Victoria's old Bakelite card caddy. Bess picked it up by the metal ring in the center and spun it around. It contained one deck of red cards and one of blue, both with soft, dirty edges. When their mother was alive, she and Victoria used to play poker three or four nights a week.

''Bitch," said Hal. "She told me again today I should be paying rent. I told her this house was half mine. Well, a quarter mine, a quarter yours. She says I need to learn responsibility, but she knows I'm in school and I've got no money. Once you get a couple fulltime paychecks, she'll be after you."

"Why'd you borrow her cards?"

"Just to harass her."

"You got anything to eat?" Bess asked.

"I've got a SuzyQ. You should've asked me to stop at the gas station."

"I don't get paid for two weeks. I wondered if you'd float me a loan."

"Tuition was due this week so twentytwo bucks has got to last me five days, and I got to get gas and cigarettes."

"Well, give me half that SuzyQ and a cigarette, Brother. I promise I'll make it up to you. How was your hot date anyway?"

Hal tore open the package with his teeth and unwrapped the pair of cakes. "Bess," he said, holding one out to her, "I've been meaning to tell you something." He rolled the cellophane into a ball and crunched it in his hand. Usually by now he would have turned on the television or stereo or both.

"What?" asked Bess. "Just tell me."

"My date wasn't with a girl."

"What? You decided she was a real dog?"

"Listen, Bess," Hal paused. "I just might be gay."

"Huh?"

"Gay, like, you know, queer. I don't know." Hall was going on in a normal voice, as though he was at the StopnGas giving directions to the highway doughnut shop, as though he wasn't talking about ruining his entire life. Bess felt the furniture and posters of Metal

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lica and Def Leppard grow large, then small, and then far away. Hal cleared his throat. "I never said anything to you, but I've been wondering for a while. And there's this guy from my algebra class."

"Stop!" said Bess. "Don't tell me any more."

"Why not?"

"Aw, shit, Hal, why do we all have to be so screwed up?"

"See, that's why I didn't tell you before," said Hal. "This does not make me screwed up, Bess."

"No, you're perfectly normal. And so was Mom. And Aunt Victoria. Damn it." Without realizing it, she had eaten the entire creamfilled cake. She looked down at her empty hand.

During her eighthour shift the next night, Bess tried to ignore the smell of popcorn and melted butter from the Westland 4 Theater, but her stomach growled the whole time. Bess had felt hungry since she could remember, an endless, gnawing, empty feeling stretching in all directions. She leaned against the glass door, careful not to push the handle. A sign read: "Use other exits after 6:00 P.M." The north parking lot spread out before her, spaces for three hundred cars and nobody there. What about that succession of community college girls Hal had dragged around, one after another? Didn't they mean anything to him? Bess turned and walked back toward the theater. This used to be a popular shopping center, but now it was run down and half the stores had forrent signs in their windows. New malls on the south side of town had pulled away the business. She shone her flashlight through the window of the Navy recruiting office. On the way into work, she had introduced herself to the officer in charge, a small solid man in uniform. One poster inside featured a massive gray battleship plunging through the ocean, cutting a track through the waves. On another, a group of uniformed, whitegloved men and women stood in sharp rows on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Each time she passed the recruiting office she straightened her shoulders.

When her mother died of lymphoid cancer almost seven years ago, Bess had somehow figured that a welldressed man with a beautiful house would show up and say he was their father and take them home, but there was only the big, quiet woman who'd lived Page 38

with them and slept with their mother. Every weekday morning of that first year without Mom, Aunt Victoria had grimly watched Bess cross the tracks and cross M98 to get to the bus stop. Then Victoria stood there on the porch with her arms crossed until the bus came. Victoria's solemn expression had scared Bess, and Bess avoided looking back at her. Until that year, Hal had been a constant close presence, almost a twin, but he'd gone ahead of Bess to middle school.

The last movie in the Westland 4 Theater let out at 10:47, and the scattering of patrons left the building through the proper exits, without incident. Hal was waiting for Bess outside, but they didn't speak until they were nearly home. "Have you done it with a guy?" Bess asked, as they climbed the little hill.

"Not yet. No." The Omni rattled over the tracks.

"So how do you know you're gay?"

"I just feel like I am."

"Why, Hal?" she pleaded. "Why do you have to do this?"

"I don't know, Bess. Get used to it." Hal slammed the Omni door, took the porch stairs two at a time, and didn't hold the screen door for her. Bess paused outside to look down the tracks, to listen for a train whistle, a sound with no uncertainty, but she heard only the creaking of the porch boards. Bess had always wanted their lives to be simpler, and now Hal was moving in the exact opposite direction. Didn't he realize he was giving up the chance to be normal? And didn't he realize that he could end up as awful and miserable as Victoria?

As Bess passed through the bluelit living room, she heard the purr of the vibrating Naugahyde chair in which Aunt Victoria was sleeping. Sometimes she spent the whole night in it. Bess stood silent, lulled by the chair's hum, and she wondered why her mother had died instead of Victoria. Her mother had enjoyed life, was always laughing and showing those big teeth like Hal's. Even back then Victoria never laughed—she had just watched Bess's mother and waited for her next cue, as though nothing mattered but pleasing her. Bess longed to hear her mother's loud, clear voice, to ride in the passenger's seat of the car while her mother drove, to sit with her on the couch under that needlepoint picture of Jesus, doing a

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thousandpiece jigsaw puzzle of a sky full of orange butterflies. The vinyl couch was torn, the shag rug matted and sticky. Aunt Victoria was a fat monster, turning to liquid in her vibrating recliner, and Hal was queer. How could you have let this happen? she silently asked the needlepoint Jesus, which was now so dusty you couldn't tell who it was. "Why?"

"I miss her too," said Victoria quietly in her rumbling stomach voice.

Bess hadn't realized she had spoken the last word aloud. She stood frozen.

"I told your mother I wanted to die with her." Victoria's watery eyes reflected blue from the television. "But she wouldn't let me."

"Oh." Bess's heart pounded fearfully.

"You need something to eat?" Victoria asked, her voice strange and soft. Victoria hadn't offered her anything to eat in years. Victoria just left food in the kitchen, and Bess either ate it or didn't.

"No." Bess wanted to run upstairs and hide her face in her own pillows. Instead she ascended slowly.

The third night after work, Hal didn't show up. Bess could've tried him at home, but she decided to walk rather than risk getting Victoria on the phone. She didn't want Victoria to offer to come get her, because it was a long process for Victoria to get dressed and out to her car, and then what would she and Bess talk about for twenty minutes on the way home? Over the last year, since Victoria and Hal had been fighting, Bess had gotten to feel that any unnecessary communication with Victoria was a betrayal of Hal. Victoria and Hal had always argued, but they had practically been enemies since a year ago when Hal tried to get into her personal food cupboard with a screwdriver. He'd been smoking pot, and the metal was heavy gauge, so he hadn't done much damage by the time Victoria came home. She'd screamed at him, that he was an ungrateful bastard, that he had no respect. Hal had said calmly, "What are you going to do, sit on me?" and Victoria had erupted in a frenzy and thrown all the spoons and forks from the silverware drawer, sending Hal running outside into the driveway. The following day, Hal had taken the mashed potatoes from leftover dinners in the refrigerator

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and shaped ridges into the letters dyke on the counter beside the sink.

Victoria was halfowner and head cook at the Michigan Waffle House on Red Arrow Highway, and Bess used to eat what Victoria brought home—meatloaf slices and chickenfried steaks arranged on plates with mashed potatoes and a dab of overcooked vegetables. Ever since Hal had been about fifteen, he'd lived mostly on junk food and liked it, but Bess always craved meals. As Bess watched Victoria get fatter, however, Bess felt worse and worse about eating those Waffle House specials. Bess took to standing at the kitchen counter and eating the food from the takeaway containers as quickly as she could, but after the mashed potato business, Bess just couldn't let herself anymore. Finally she'd left so many plates untouched, with the food beginning to mold beneath the plastic wrap, that Victoria quit bringing them, and now she only brought home loaves of white bread and hunks of sandwich meat or sometimes uncut American cheese.

Because there was no sidewalk, Bess tramped across the edges of the wellkept west side lawns, punctuated by streetlights every hundred yards. Before Hal had gotten a car, they used to slip out on warm June nights like this and prowl their township. They sat on the bench nearest the pond, smoking and tossing rocks into the water. They'd talked about missing their mom and about how bad Victoria was in comparison. Bess had always been more afraid of Victoria than hateful, and she wondered if Hal had really felt the hate he expressed back then. Bess wondered if she knew Hal at all. Were they ever as close as she thought they'd been?