Through the paneled window of the classroom door, the gentle curve of Miss Lily’s forearm could be seen, and her slender wrist, poised at the chalkboard, and her willowy fingers, grasping a piece of fresh chalk. A silver bangle slid off her wrist like an unsuccessful manacle and rested half way down her forearm where the sleek line of the limb broadened, just before soft angle of the elbow. Chalk dust powdered her delicate fingers with white, making them ashen, pale in contrast with the smooth, sun-bronzed flesh on the back of her tiny, almost infantile hands.
Her rouged lips parted slightly, like a small child’s in anticipation of a lollipop, forming a perfect “O.” A sea of first graders gazed in awe as Miss Lily drew circles on the chalkboard.
“Looonely,” said Miss Lily, reminding her students of the letters and sounds that they had learned in kindergarten, but had left behind in the languid summer days. “Moooan. Ooown. Can anyone tell me another word that has an ‘O’ sound in it?” She pursed her red lollipop lips into another circle.
Five fingers appeared sheepishly in the air from the back row.
“Yes, Michael?”
“Umm . . . nooo?”
The freckle on Miss Lily’s left cheek disappeared into a dimple as a smile blossomed across her face. “Yes! Very good. Any other ideas?”
The first graders fed off of Miss Lily’s enthusiasm, and were excited now too, spewing word confetti from jabbering mouths.
“Go!” “Home!” “Don’t!” “Show!”
Miss Lily drew the long, straight line of an “I” next to the white circles on the board.
“What about ‘I’ sounds? For example, spyyy. Miiine.”
“Bye!” “Cry!” “Die!” “Eye!”
It was only Miss Lily’s second week at Kidron Elementary School, but her students fawned over her already. They stared at her with wide, amorous eyes, absorbing her with a sycophantic gaze. At recess, the girls tried to braid her long, auburn hair while the boys tugged at her skirts for her attention.
From the hallway, through the window in the door, Principal Richard watched as first graders clambered from their miniature desks and rushed to the front of the room as Miss Lily announced the end of the day’s phonetics lesson. Groping at her feet and ankles, they encircled her, like bees on the open face of a sunflower or moths swarming around a candle at night. Crouching on their knees before her stool, the first graders looked on as Miss Lily cracked open Snow White and they clapped their hands and all chanted in unison when she got to the good parts.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall . . . “
* * *
At lunch, Jan Donnelly, the school’s secretary, sought out Miss Lily in the library. She peaked her deflated puff hairdo out from behind the stack of Hardy Boy mysteries and Miss Lily nearly choked on her carrot in surprise. Jan was a purple nails and hair spray type, with a mouth as big as her fist that she always crammed full of tic-tacs and mentos. She hated children, but had adored Principal Richard since they graduated together thirteen years back; she kept her position as the elementary school’s secretary simply so she could watch which students’ mothers he kept suspiciously long in his locked, windowless office. She marked them down in a notebook that she kept in her desk drawer, under her mints.
“He likes you, ya know,” Jan announced, flopping into the chair opposite Miss Lily’s.
Miss Lily looked up bashfully, blushing. Jan forged on despite the rosy tint blooming on the young teacher’s cheek. Miss Lily huddled a little, feeling fragile.
“I’m not sure I understand. To whom are you referring?”
“Well, Dick, dummy,” snapped Jan. She puckered her glossed lips and violently sucked her mentos. “Principal Richard! You must have noticed the way he looks at you. He comes back to the office after hallway rounds drooling so much that I swear I’ll have to mop one of these days!”
Jan leaned forward on the table and her cleavage spilled out of her v-neck blouse. Miss Lily slumped and shifted uncomfortably under Jan’s covetous stare, and she averted her eyes, examining instead the collection of Berenstain Bears books.
Undeterred, Jan launched ahead, her lecherous eyes widening. “And whenever he gets back from staff meetings he locks himself in his office for, like, twenty minutes. And we all know what that means.” She snorted and kept on sucking.
Miss Lily wasn’t sure what to make of Jan’s assertive declaration, but she felt threatened by it, and crossed her legs and pulled her cardigan a bit tighter around her shoulders, instinctively covering her protruding collarbones and the tender skin at the nape of her neck.
Principal Richard, though barely thirty, hadn’t aged well. His facial fat puddled around his chin, and grizzly bushes of chest hair poked their frizzled heads out of the top button of his dress shirts. When he wore a tie, he used it solely to wipe his armpits of their forever expanding sweat stains.
“But I shouldn’t say that, it makes him sound perverse,” Jan continued, punctuating Miss Lily’s awkward silence. “He coaches youth softball and supports the booster club and all that. He’s harmless— he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Really. He stopped fishing the way normal folks do it because he hated skewering maggots and worms, and now he just fly fishes. Cuz they don’t use real flies, you know.”
Miss Lily didn’t know. She was preoccupied with the horrific image of Principal Richard’s characteristically sweaty personage guiding a young girl’s hand on a wooden bat, teaching her how to swing strong and hit the ball.
Jan extended her pudgy fingers and plucked a carrot from Miss Lily’s plate. Between crunches, she asked, “What’s a Saratoga city slicker doing in bumblefuck Kidron, Ohio anyhow? I mean, there’s nothing here except for two hardware stores and three Mennonite churches. Hell, if you want alcohol or sex or anything you have to go the whole way to Akron, or ravage the Amish kids on rumspringa, and that’s just a drag.”
Miss Lily sighed, and looked away ruefully. “Well, there was a small situation that I felt that I needed to get away from, and Kidron seemed like a nice place to escape and relax out of the public eye for a while.”
Jan pounced. “I bet it was a man, wasn’t it? Oh, this is good. I’ve heard about those big-time horse race gamblers up in Saratoga. They treat their women like their horses. If ya don’t put out, you’re out the door like a horse with a stitch in its calf on the backstretch. Yeah, this is real good stuff.”
Silently, Miss Lily moved on from her carrots to her celery. Jan looked beyond Miss Lily’s right ear as a stocky shadow darkened the doorway.
Leaping up from the table, Jan exclaimed, “Honey, now’s your chance!” She bounded to the young teacher’s side, and whispered in her ear: “The fastest way to his heart is jelly beans. I know it. I’ll tell him to give you a call tonight.” Miss Lily crumpled, like a morning glory at the approach of the noontime sun, folding its petals into itself. Then, leaving her half-finished lunch on the table and Jan amongst the National Geographics, Miss Lily pushed wordlessly past Principal Richard’s gut in the doorway and tumbled into the hallway, then fled to her classroom.
At the end of the school day, Miss Lily bustled out the door before the last echoes of the bell had dissipated, narrowly avoiding Principal Richard’s bug-eyed attempts to flag her down to invite her to that evening’s softball tournament game. She had grown accustomed to taking the two-mile journey home by foot, but now she regretted it. The walk took Miss Lily by the ballpark, down to the crossroads that served as the village square, and past the Town and Country store where crotchety old men sat gathering dust in rickety rocking chairs in the afternoons, smoking pipes, talking about the year’s corn harvest, and jeering at children as they walked home from school. The old men whooped and hollered at Miss Lily’s smooth, lean calves that peaked out from under her sundress as she scuttled past, but went back to grumbling about the uppity New Yawker once she had gone by. Miss Lily had paid a dying farmer an exorbitant sum for an old farmhouse at the top of Emerson Hill, and allowed prime soybean soil to degenerate into a field of wildflowers.
Beyond the farmhouse’s westward facing front porch, Kidron valley stretched out in a patchwork quilt of fields. On clear evenings, the crack of a bat punctuated the sticky early September air as little legs sprinted in diamonds to the cheers of parents and Principal Richard. But Miss Lily sat inside, where the air was still and damp, behind closed doors and thick window glass, and slowly took the phone off the hook. From the softball field, where Mr. Richard’s team jumped into each other’s arms and clapped hands, celebrating that evening’s victory, Miss Lily’s house could be seen, blazing in the already darkened Eastern sky, then suddenly, like a candle, the lights snuffed out.
* * *
When Miss Lily arrived at the school the next morning, she successfully snuck past the office, but found Jan lurking by her classroom door. She followed the young teacher into the empty classroom.
“I tried to call ya last night but the phone was busy for hours. Who were you talking to for so long, huh?” Jan didn’t skip a beat to wait for a response. “No doubt that New York man. Is he gonna come down here and try to find you or what? Don’t tell Dick about him, by the way. He’s a nice guy but he’s a bit of a jealous type and it’s the envious ones that make the most trouble.”
“There’s no New York man, Miss Donnelly.”
Jan’s nose scrunched up into her closely set eyes and her bottom lip sagged stupidly. She jutted out her chin, perplexed. Then, like a baby doll whose plastic eyelids open and close when you shake it, Jan’s eyes bulged suddenly.
“You cheated on him, didn’t you? And you’re escaping his horrific, erotic wrath! That’s obviously it. No one comes to Kidron because they actually like it here.” She snickered in the falsetto of a sixth grade boy who has just learned the word “fuck,” and giggled at her own risqué fantasy. She was lingering in the doorframe where the first graders had taped up fall leaf cutouts, and looked like a floozy in a toy store. Miss Lily was becoming nauseous with disdain, and slumped into her desk chair, feeling faint.
“You feelin’ alright honey? And what’s up with the snowsuit?” Jan breached the threshold of the doorway, penetrating into the classroom, and reached out to tug on the sleeve of Miss Lily’s modest sweater. “It’s hot as blazes in here! You’re going to melt like a popsicle on the sidewalk by lunch unless you strip that heavy thing off.”
“I think I’m getting sick. I woke up this morning with the chills, and I’m afraid it might be terribly contagious,” said Miss Lily meekly, and she feigned a delicate cough.
Jan scoffed but moved a step away. “I’ll get Dick to fix something up for you,” she insisted. “He’d just love to show his sympathetic side.” She slunk out of the classroom with a wink.
Halfway through math class, Jan’s animated face appeared in the window of the classroom door, and she knocked with the enthusiasm of a carpetbagger selling cosmetics in rich suburbs. Miss Lily begrudgingly opened the door, and Jan thrust in, a mug of tea in hand.
“From Dick,” she whispered in Miss Lily’s ear as she swept past, placing the steaming mug on her desk and producing honey packets from her pocket. “And he sent some cough drops too. You’re lucky to have a sweet guy like him after you.”
Miss Lily said nothing in response but ushered the secretary out the door, claiming the pressing importance of basic addition. She let the chamomile tea set until it was too cold to drink and gave out cough drops as prizes for correct math.
On her walk home that afternoon, the rusty men stationed outside Kidron Town & Country didn’t hoot at Miss Lily as she hurried past their chairs and into the store. She was looking wet from the humidity, dripping almost, and her shiny hair was deflated, and her wide legged pants hid her sculpted legs. They shook their heads and wagged their drooping chins and commiserated, “They must not have humidity up there in Sar’toga.” When Miss Lily emerged from the store a few minutes later with a full bolt of dark blue calico fabric, they wondered if a city girl would know how to sew.
* * *
When softball season ended, the panel of old men on Kidron Town & Country’s front porch noticed the abrupt absence of their favorite object of observation. Miss Lily had stopped walking to work, knowing that Principal Richard would no longer be occupied directly after school with little girls, bats, and balls, and the walk left her feeling exposed, vulnerable. Principal Richard’s team had cleaned up the tournament season victoriously, but Miss Lily hadn’t heard the cheers from the ballpark. Instead, she was holed up in her house, sewing dark blue curtains in the pantry, the only room that didn’t have windows. The farmhouse’s wide-eyed front windows stared vacantly into the sultry night, and inside, Miss Lily pricked her fingers on needles in the dark.
Below, in the valley, the ballpark’s lights flickered then went out, and in the sticky Indian summer night little girls were treated to post-game hot dogs. Miss Lily’s phone rang and rang after the victory, and her caller ID lit up with the elementary school’s office number. She called the phone company to have them disconnect her home phone, and waited on the line until she heard the dull beep of solitude.
Miss Lily searched for Principal Richard’s address in the staff directory, and wrote it on a slip of paper that she taped to her bathroom mirror, along with his phone number and email address and the names of his closest friends and family. She poured over maps of the little village, marking streets that the man would likely be on, and at what times. With operative diligence, Miss Lily shadowed Principal Richard’s routine, from his 6:45 cup of coffee and cinnamon toast at the downtown Bliss Café, to his afternoon pit stop at Kidron Town & Country to jabber with the men in their rocking chairs, and to the houses of his friends, where he played and lost at poker. On Tuesday, it was Doug’s, where the wife served chip dip and didn’t let them stay past ten-thirty. Thursday’s Bud Light and football explained the lack of Friday morning meetings. On Sundays, he fished. Miss Lily tracked his movements, and put ostensible stars on the map to demarcate his stomping ground.
When Miss Lily knocked on Jan’s door while Principal Richard was away at an administrative meeting, the secretary was delighted to usher her in. Autumn parent-teacher conferences were fast approaching, and Miss Lily had become morbidly obsessed with the contents of the notebook that Jan kept in her desk drawer. Miss Lily could no longer stand to look at her first graders without knowing which of their mothers had grasped the worn leatherette of Principal Richard’s belt, or burrowed their lips into his glutinous neck.
“Getting jealous, huh?” said Jan with a wink and a nudge.
Miss Lily flipped open the notebook, and read aloud with a trembling voice. “January 28th, meatball sub day, Ms. Hampshire (formerly Mrs. Withrich), suspicious scraping chairs sounds and a misplaced woman’s watch. April 17th, English as a Second Language testing, Miss Ruiz (mother of Amber Ruiz), candle-induced fire alarm, blamed on faulty microwave popcorn. June 3rd, Field Day, Mrs. Wilson (head of PTO Classroom Mothers Committee), missing order of popsicles, whipped cream, and waterslide lubricant.” Miss Lily flicked through the pages with the voracity of a teenage boy peeping at a stolen porn magazine in a gas station bathroom. She simply couldn’t stop reading. Jan looked on with pride, and her lips twisted into
a proprietary smirk.
* * *
When Miss Lily’s Honda pulled into Lehman’s Hardware’s parking lot across the square from Kidron Town & Country, the white heads nearly spilled out of their rocking chairs with surprise. For weeks, they had only seen her car zoom through the intersection and head up Emerson Hill even before the busses had come by. They missed her cleavage and sundresses and calves and small hands. Although the autumn weather was still warm, Miss Lily appeared wearing black dress pants and a turtleneck, and her hair was tied back in a bun. Bug-eyed sunglasses hid most of her face. Miss Lily emerged from the hardware staggering under the weight of a stack of square-cut mirrors, and drove off again, leaving the old men rocking and wondering and watching as her car snaked up Emerson Road to her house on the hill.
The hoary old men had been right—Miss Lily couldn’t sew. The unfinished curtains lay crumpled in a pile in the pantry, where she had sat for nights on end, bleeding on the fabric as she clumsily attempted to make neat stitches in the calico. Miss Lily was beginning to feel claustrophobic in the pantry amongst her dwindling supply of canned vegetables and now nearly empty stock of fresh fruit. If she couldn’t block out the penetrating night and its peering eyes, she need some way to ensure her security within her own house. Miss Lily banished dark alcoves and blind corners, and set up mirrors to illuminate every nook. While standing at the sink, she could now see into the shower, and from the kitchen table she had a view of the back porch. She lined the baseboard of her bedroom with mirrors, so she could chase monsters out from under her bed without even having to get down on her knees.
With a simple trick of light, Miss Lily was replicated a hundred times over. She caught a glimpse of her facial profile while turning a corner, and her own reflection followed her up the stairs to her bedroom. In this new house of mirrors, she was fascinated by curves of her body that she had never seen before. Pulling off her turtleneck, Miss Lily found an indentation in the small of her back, where her spine met her slender hips. Undressing in the mirror, she examined her hamstrings, the backs of her kneecaps, the curvature of her neck. Miss Lily wondered at the translucency of her skin, now pale and powdery, ashen from the abrupt lack of exposure to sunlight. Her limbs, once lean, were now skeletal, and her elbows jutted out at broken angles. Miss Lily pursed her unglossed lips, and watched herself unsuccessfully flirt with her reflection, but was afraid to touch her fragile skin with fingers now coarse and worn.
Miss Lily’s bedroom window framed her body as she turned, around and around, on tiptoe like a ballerina in a music box. A newly born Narcissus on a pedestal, Miss Lily was absorbed in scrutiny and examination. Although the black night thrust licentiously against her closed windows, Miss Lily could not see out into the night. The stars blinked, unseen in the velvety sky, and the season’s last fireflies flashed invisibly in the dark. From an anonymous tree, an owl peered through the darkness, searching for his prey, and hooted mournfully in the midnight stillness. Night crawlers slithered through the field of wildflowers and poked their serpentine heads out from under the front porch. Moths with dusty wings flew kamikaze missions into the closed windows and fell with soft thuds onto the roof. The vine of a moonflower crept up the columns of the porch, and unfolded its petals, opening like a full-mouthed snowy kiss to the moon, and invited the thousand eyes of the night to the glowing house on the hill, to watch.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Note to the House-Sitter
14 March 2010
Sunday
Maria:
Please do not make yourself comfortable. Or if you do, I would ask that you re-fluff the pillows upon leaving the couch. The muslin cotton throw pillows sit at a 60 degree angle to each arm of the couch and the slightly smaller yellow ones rest on top of that, at a pleasantly skewed angle that appears both spontaneous and aesthetic. Symmetry is imperative. You will find a protractor in the top drawer of the bureau in the dining room, next to the tubes of Tide-to-Go. Both can be used accordingly, although I would prefer that the occasion not arise where their utilization should become necessary.
I suppose you can eat, provided that you do the dishes. I’m sorry, but you will have to wash them by hand. I disposed of my last dishwasher because it continually left streaks on my glasses and plates, despite the overzealous promises of detergent commercials. I keep latex gloves under the sink. Please discard them after every use. If you must cook, I would ask that you promptly and thoroughly throw out all leftovers in the garbage disposal; eight-legged armies are attracted to the stench of decomposing food like warriors to the scent of blood. If a spider should appear in my kitchen or elsewhere, kill it immediately. Have no compassion for God’s mutant bastard child. The little beasty must and will die. And do not dare to drink alcohol in or around my house.
I understand that you will be busy attending class during the day, but there are a few chores that I would like you take care of around the house. It is absolutely necessary that you water my hyacinths. I will be showing them in a few weeks as an example of winter bulb forcing at the Spring Flora Expo, and I want to take any and all precautions. If my reputation should deteriorate among the Ohio Creative Design community, my freelance flower arrangement business will be irrevocably damaged. Please understand the gravity of this situation. Maria, I am counting on you. The temperature in the back sewing room must not exceed 55 degrees—leave the door closed at all times to prevent heat from the house from entering. The pots should be rotated 180 degrees every two days, to ensure a straight stem. Leave the pots on the sewing table, in indirect sunlight. On Tuesday, add one tablespoon of half-strength household plant fertilizer to each pot. The fertilizer can be found under the bathroom sink, with the OxyClean and Peroxide and Ammonia.
In addition to the upkeep of my hyacinths, and any other small household tasks that you should find necessary in order to keep the house in the state in which you found it, there are one or two small errands that I would like for you to complete throughout the week. My dry cleaning should be ready on Wednesday evening. If you receive a somewhat indiscernible phone message from a man with a thick Indian accent, it is more than likely Mr. Arundhati, calling to tell me that my clothes are done. If he asks about the stain on my bathrobe, tell him it was wine. Also, garbage collection day is Thursday. If at all possible, keep watch for the garbage truck, and bring in my trashcans immediately after they are emptied. The Johnson boys have a tendency to steal them, fill them with bricks and/or dog shit, or light their contents on fire.
While on the subject of the small devils that live next door, I should warn you of a few things (besides incinerated trash). The Middleburgh Intermediate School bus arrives at approximately 3:04 on Monday–Thursday, and tends to be delayed slightly on Fridays. Once the two twats get home, their negligible mother gives them sugar and casts them out to the backyard, where they yell and scream and hammer things and generally make a childish ruckus. If they should shout unpleasant things over the fence (ie: “hag,” “fag,” or other rhyming words), ignore it. Do not egg them on, and do not appease them. If they throw baseballs at the birdbath or the gnomes in the backyard, do not throw them back.
I’m afraid my humble abode doesn’t offer much entertainment. The collection of leather-bound 19th century novels in the salon is not for reading, it is for display. I dust their jackets weekly, usually on Wednesday. The books for actual consumption are kept in my bedroom, in alphabetical order on my bookcase. Although my DVD collection is significantly smaller, I would ask that you likewise maintain its organization. You will not find embarrassing home videos, or sex tapes, or boxes of love letters, or filing cabinets of classified family secrets. If you are looking for voyeuristic amusement, you will find none. I can, however, offer you free access to an extensive hoard of Julie Andrews movies and a complete collection of Jane Austin novels.
On Friday evening/Saturday morning, at between 1:55 and 2:05 A.M., you will receive a distraught call from a man named Jimmy. If it is not too much to ask, please make arrangements to pick him up at O’Neill’s pub on Republic Ave. Deposit my wayward brother at his tenant on 186 Montgomery St. and please verify that he has his keys. It’s just a short 5-mile drive, and he shouldn’t be too bothersome. Ignore the stench of cheap Merlot—there is Lysol in the glove compartment. If he tries to bring a cup or a bottle into the car, I absolutely forbid it after last weekend’s spill. If he notices that you are not me (a detail which he very well may not discern), do not tell him where I am. Inform him that I will be back next week, and remind him that he owes me $120 for upholstery cleaning. If you should feel uncomfortable with this request, I have also left the number for the taxi service on the counter. Call around midnight on Friday night, and give them the same instructions as I have detailed here.
I have left my contact information on the counter. As I will be running around all week finalizing decorative and floral arrangements for Alie’s wedding, my cell phone is the best bet. If need be, you can also contact the hotel and leave a message for the Miller wedding party. I will be back from D.C. late Sunday evening, the 21st of March. In preparation for my return, please strip the sheets from the guest bed and change the towels in the bathroom. Fresh sheets and towels can be found in the upstairs hallway linen closet. Travelling fries my nerves, and there is nothing more soothing than a tidy house.
Maria, I thank you genuinely for your help. I am thoroughly excited to see my baby sister get married, and your generosity and diligence make it possible. Just please do not neglect the hyacinths.
Best regards,
Helen Miller
Sunday
Maria:
Please do not make yourself comfortable. Or if you do, I would ask that you re-fluff the pillows upon leaving the couch. The muslin cotton throw pillows sit at a 60 degree angle to each arm of the couch and the slightly smaller yellow ones rest on top of that, at a pleasantly skewed angle that appears both spontaneous and aesthetic. Symmetry is imperative. You will find a protractor in the top drawer of the bureau in the dining room, next to the tubes of Tide-to-Go. Both can be used accordingly, although I would prefer that the occasion not arise where their utilization should become necessary.
I suppose you can eat, provided that you do the dishes. I’m sorry, but you will have to wash them by hand. I disposed of my last dishwasher because it continually left streaks on my glasses and plates, despite the overzealous promises of detergent commercials. I keep latex gloves under the sink. Please discard them after every use. If you must cook, I would ask that you promptly and thoroughly throw out all leftovers in the garbage disposal; eight-legged armies are attracted to the stench of decomposing food like warriors to the scent of blood. If a spider should appear in my kitchen or elsewhere, kill it immediately. Have no compassion for God’s mutant bastard child. The little beasty must and will die. And do not dare to drink alcohol in or around my house.
I understand that you will be busy attending class during the day, but there are a few chores that I would like you take care of around the house. It is absolutely necessary that you water my hyacinths. I will be showing them in a few weeks as an example of winter bulb forcing at the Spring Flora Expo, and I want to take any and all precautions. If my reputation should deteriorate among the Ohio Creative Design community, my freelance flower arrangement business will be irrevocably damaged. Please understand the gravity of this situation. Maria, I am counting on you. The temperature in the back sewing room must not exceed 55 degrees—leave the door closed at all times to prevent heat from the house from entering. The pots should be rotated 180 degrees every two days, to ensure a straight stem. Leave the pots on the sewing table, in indirect sunlight. On Tuesday, add one tablespoon of half-strength household plant fertilizer to each pot. The fertilizer can be found under the bathroom sink, with the OxyClean and Peroxide and Ammonia.
In addition to the upkeep of my hyacinths, and any other small household tasks that you should find necessary in order to keep the house in the state in which you found it, there are one or two small errands that I would like for you to complete throughout the week. My dry cleaning should be ready on Wednesday evening. If you receive a somewhat indiscernible phone message from a man with a thick Indian accent, it is more than likely Mr. Arundhati, calling to tell me that my clothes are done. If he asks about the stain on my bathrobe, tell him it was wine. Also, garbage collection day is Thursday. If at all possible, keep watch for the garbage truck, and bring in my trashcans immediately after they are emptied. The Johnson boys have a tendency to steal them, fill them with bricks and/or dog shit, or light their contents on fire.
While on the subject of the small devils that live next door, I should warn you of a few things (besides incinerated trash). The Middleburgh Intermediate School bus arrives at approximately 3:04 on Monday–Thursday, and tends to be delayed slightly on Fridays. Once the two twats get home, their negligible mother gives them sugar and casts them out to the backyard, where they yell and scream and hammer things and generally make a childish ruckus. If they should shout unpleasant things over the fence (ie: “hag,” “fag,” or other rhyming words), ignore it. Do not egg them on, and do not appease them. If they throw baseballs at the birdbath or the gnomes in the backyard, do not throw them back.
I’m afraid my humble abode doesn’t offer much entertainment. The collection of leather-bound 19th century novels in the salon is not for reading, it is for display. I dust their jackets weekly, usually on Wednesday. The books for actual consumption are kept in my bedroom, in alphabetical order on my bookcase. Although my DVD collection is significantly smaller, I would ask that you likewise maintain its organization. You will not find embarrassing home videos, or sex tapes, or boxes of love letters, or filing cabinets of classified family secrets. If you are looking for voyeuristic amusement, you will find none. I can, however, offer you free access to an extensive hoard of Julie Andrews movies and a complete collection of Jane Austin novels.
On Friday evening/Saturday morning, at between 1:55 and 2:05 A.M., you will receive a distraught call from a man named Jimmy. If it is not too much to ask, please make arrangements to pick him up at O’Neill’s pub on Republic Ave. Deposit my wayward brother at his tenant on 186 Montgomery St. and please verify that he has his keys. It’s just a short 5-mile drive, and he shouldn’t be too bothersome. Ignore the stench of cheap Merlot—there is Lysol in the glove compartment. If he tries to bring a cup or a bottle into the car, I absolutely forbid it after last weekend’s spill. If he notices that you are not me (a detail which he very well may not discern), do not tell him where I am. Inform him that I will be back next week, and remind him that he owes me $120 for upholstery cleaning. If you should feel uncomfortable with this request, I have also left the number for the taxi service on the counter. Call around midnight on Friday night, and give them the same instructions as I have detailed here.
I have left my contact information on the counter. As I will be running around all week finalizing decorative and floral arrangements for Alie’s wedding, my cell phone is the best bet. If need be, you can also contact the hotel and leave a message for the Miller wedding party. I will be back from D.C. late Sunday evening, the 21st of March. In preparation for my return, please strip the sheets from the guest bed and change the towels in the bathroom. Fresh sheets and towels can be found in the upstairs hallway linen closet. Travelling fries my nerves, and there is nothing more soothing than a tidy house.
Maria, I thank you genuinely for your help. I am thoroughly excited to see my baby sister get married, and your generosity and diligence make it possible. Just please do not neglect the hyacinths.
Best regards,
Helen Miller
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Vivisection
I have sprouted glassy feathers, and someone is plucking them out of my left arm, one by one. This must be what a duck feels like at the butcher, bound up, strapped down, stripped naked, and shivering. Although I always assumed they were dead beforehand. Why am I not dead yet?
She is coming at me with forceps, and when the blunt tips press into my flesh, I become acutely aware that I cannot move my arms. Coarse fabric digs grooves into my ankles and wrists. My shoes have been removed. I can see my toes, my feet; they are splayed like Da Vinci’s Vitruvius, and my palms face the ceiling. Someone has slit my shirt down the center and it is stripped away from my chest, spread out to my sides like delicately removed skin from a corpse on an autopsy table.
This is not butchery; this is vivisection.
My skull throbs and pulses and I blink my eyes in the fluorescent light, running in parallel lines above my immobile head. When Jeanne took me to the Anatomy Amphitheater at the university medical center on Wednesday to practice for her presentation, I joked with her and lay down spread-eagle on the surgical table on stage. Far above, flies ingloriously committed suicide, flying kamikaze missions into the buzzing fluorescent lights. She yelled at me and told me not to ridicule the medical profession.
“It’ll save your life one day, you know!”
Jeanne was always chastising me—for my crooked tie, for my liquored breath, for my mussed hair, for my unpolished shoes. Even so, she wanted me to come to her dissertation presentation. I promised I’d sit in the back and not make a fuss. But I wanted to touch the table where the bodies lay.
I didn’t want to be the body.
I force my eyes open and widen my mouth into the perfect oval for a blood-curdling scream. I’m not dead yet! But stiff pads press into my temples and I cannot tilt my head back. No oxygen reaches my lungs. The woman in white is still depluming me.
The straps around my wrists tighten as I tense my muscles and try to move them, and the woman looks up, startled. She wipes her white smock with pudgy fingers and stares at me with terrified green eyes from under wisps of ginger hair.
“You’re . . . awake! They said you were unconscious and it’s just a short drive and, and . . . uh, what’s your name, sir?”
She sets her forceps down with a clank and loses her balance. The table lurches and my weight shifts painfully onto my left side. The tubes attached to my arms are swinging rhythmically; I realize that I am moving. We have just turned a corner. A siren is whining in my ears, ringing, exhausted.
“Will I be late?” I croak. Moving my tongue to speak I notice that my teeth are warm and sticky. There is a hole where my
front tooth goes. Wincing, I bare my sanguine grin.
“We’ll be there soon, don’t worry.” She tells me I’ll be alright, but her tone is unconvincing. She scuttles about my horizontal body with her tools. From her deep pocket she produces gauze, and attacks my forehead with a wet rag and peroxide.
“What’s your name?” the woman in white wants to know. “Can you tell me who you are? Do you know how you got here?”
When I don’t answer, she tells me an elaborate tale about rainclouds and puddles, skidding and brake lights, windshields and steering wheels. The details tumble hurriedly from her mouth and plop like raindrops somewhere beyond my consciousness, sending ripples through my nerves as she swabs my forehead with alcohol. She dictates like a police report, without adjectives, without feeling, although her eyes widen as she speaks, as though she is frightened by the very story she is reciting. An eastbound, silver Honda CRV skidded through a red light on icy pavement and broadsided a maroon ’98 Volvo heading northbound on Westchester Avenue at approximately 10:10 Friday morning. The driver of the Volvo was rendered unconscious upon impact. Significant bodily damage was inflicted upon both vehicle and operator.
I have a Volvo. My uncle lent it to me after I maneuvered my Nissan into a ditch after a particularly heavy Saturday night out. He never liked the color of that old car.
“Do you know where you are?” asks the woman.
I am not in my Volvo. My Volvo’s plush upholstery smells stale like cigarettes and its wide backseat smells sweaty like sex, not sterile like bleach and steel. I keep condoms and registration and a map of the Midwest in my glove compartment, not tubes and forceps.
The woman in white is leaning over me, pulling open my eyelids. I am briefly blinded; she must be searching in my brain for something. I wonder what she sees.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I will not be on time for Jeanne’s dissertation presentation. It starts at 11.
“Will I be late?” I ask again. My words are slurring but I can’t help it. My lips won’t open fully, my teeth aren’t set straight. My tongue lags behind in the back of my throat, and I fear I might vomit on the woman in white.
Jeanne will assume that I had been drunk, that I’d gone overboard on a Thursday night again, that I hadn’t woken up to my alarm. But I wasn’t. Not this time. I swear.
“Will I be late?”
My body lurches to the right, and the woman in white nearly tumbles on top of me. She is shaking my shoulder, harder than I suppose she should.
“What’s your name? Stay with me, honey, I want you to tell me your name!”
I want to be Jeanne, but I am not. I press my eyelids shut again. They are sticky and cool as they sweep up and down over my swelling eyeballs. My contracting esophagus compels me gag, to expel from my stomach this morning’s breakfast, last night’s nightcap, yesterday evening’s dinner. I want to rid my body of its contents, of its toxins and alcohol and cigarette smoke. My lips sag open and spittle collects on the corners of my mouth like unused excuses.
“Will I be late?”
When I lie, feet out, palms up, spread-eagle under Jeanne’s penetrating gaze, I want her to find me clean. Clean. Clean. So clean that there won’t even be blood when she approaches me with forceps and scalpel and pins.
She is coming at me with forceps, and when the blunt tips press into my flesh, I become acutely aware that I cannot move my arms. Coarse fabric digs grooves into my ankles and wrists. My shoes have been removed. I can see my toes, my feet; they are splayed like Da Vinci’s Vitruvius, and my palms face the ceiling. Someone has slit my shirt down the center and it is stripped away from my chest, spread out to my sides like delicately removed skin from a corpse on an autopsy table.
This is not butchery; this is vivisection.
My skull throbs and pulses and I blink my eyes in the fluorescent light, running in parallel lines above my immobile head. When Jeanne took me to the Anatomy Amphitheater at the university medical center on Wednesday to practice for her presentation, I joked with her and lay down spread-eagle on the surgical table on stage. Far above, flies ingloriously committed suicide, flying kamikaze missions into the buzzing fluorescent lights. She yelled at me and told me not to ridicule the medical profession.
“It’ll save your life one day, you know!”
Jeanne was always chastising me—for my crooked tie, for my liquored breath, for my mussed hair, for my unpolished shoes. Even so, she wanted me to come to her dissertation presentation. I promised I’d sit in the back and not make a fuss. But I wanted to touch the table where the bodies lay.
I didn’t want to be the body.
I force my eyes open and widen my mouth into the perfect oval for a blood-curdling scream. I’m not dead yet! But stiff pads press into my temples and I cannot tilt my head back. No oxygen reaches my lungs. The woman in white is still depluming me.
The straps around my wrists tighten as I tense my muscles and try to move them, and the woman looks up, startled. She wipes her white smock with pudgy fingers and stares at me with terrified green eyes from under wisps of ginger hair.
“You’re . . . awake! They said you were unconscious and it’s just a short drive and, and . . . uh, what’s your name, sir?”
She sets her forceps down with a clank and loses her balance. The table lurches and my weight shifts painfully onto my left side. The tubes attached to my arms are swinging rhythmically; I realize that I am moving. We have just turned a corner. A siren is whining in my ears, ringing, exhausted.
“Will I be late?” I croak. Moving my tongue to speak I notice that my teeth are warm and sticky. There is a hole where my
front tooth goes. Wincing, I bare my sanguine grin.
“We’ll be there soon, don’t worry.” She tells me I’ll be alright, but her tone is unconvincing. She scuttles about my horizontal body with her tools. From her deep pocket she produces gauze, and attacks my forehead with a wet rag and peroxide.
“What’s your name?” the woman in white wants to know. “Can you tell me who you are? Do you know how you got here?”
When I don’t answer, she tells me an elaborate tale about rainclouds and puddles, skidding and brake lights, windshields and steering wheels. The details tumble hurriedly from her mouth and plop like raindrops somewhere beyond my consciousness, sending ripples through my nerves as she swabs my forehead with alcohol. She dictates like a police report, without adjectives, without feeling, although her eyes widen as she speaks, as though she is frightened by the very story she is reciting. An eastbound, silver Honda CRV skidded through a red light on icy pavement and broadsided a maroon ’98 Volvo heading northbound on Westchester Avenue at approximately 10:10 Friday morning. The driver of the Volvo was rendered unconscious upon impact. Significant bodily damage was inflicted upon both vehicle and operator.
I have a Volvo. My uncle lent it to me after I maneuvered my Nissan into a ditch after a particularly heavy Saturday night out. He never liked the color of that old car.
“Do you know where you are?” asks the woman.
I am not in my Volvo. My Volvo’s plush upholstery smells stale like cigarettes and its wide backseat smells sweaty like sex, not sterile like bleach and steel. I keep condoms and registration and a map of the Midwest in my glove compartment, not tubes and forceps.
The woman in white is leaning over me, pulling open my eyelids. I am briefly blinded; she must be searching in my brain for something. I wonder what she sees.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I will not be on time for Jeanne’s dissertation presentation. It starts at 11.
“Will I be late?” I ask again. My words are slurring but I can’t help it. My lips won’t open fully, my teeth aren’t set straight. My tongue lags behind in the back of my throat, and I fear I might vomit on the woman in white.
Jeanne will assume that I had been drunk, that I’d gone overboard on a Thursday night again, that I hadn’t woken up to my alarm. But I wasn’t. Not this time. I swear.
“Will I be late?”
My body lurches to the right, and the woman in white nearly tumbles on top of me. She is shaking my shoulder, harder than I suppose she should.
“What’s your name? Stay with me, honey, I want you to tell me your name!”
I want to be Jeanne, but I am not. I press my eyelids shut again. They are sticky and cool as they sweep up and down over my swelling eyeballs. My contracting esophagus compels me gag, to expel from my stomach this morning’s breakfast, last night’s nightcap, yesterday evening’s dinner. I want to rid my body of its contents, of its toxins and alcohol and cigarette smoke. My lips sag open and spittle collects on the corners of my mouth like unused excuses.
“Will I be late?”
When I lie, feet out, palms up, spread-eagle under Jeanne’s penetrating gaze, I want her to find me clean. Clean. Clean. So clean that there won’t even be blood when she approaches me with forceps and scalpel and pins.
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