Victoria
How It Is In America
I kept waking up, sticking to the sheets and to the mattress and to myself. I sat up again when it was almost morning and then lay back down, and the room smelled like motel, like everything down to the plastic lamps had been washed, but not washed right. Or maybe not dried right. I wanted a glass of water but all the cups were paper and tiny, and the water would taste like metal. I realized that the sheets were moving like waves, like the ocean that was just outside, and then I figured I was still dreaming, and that I wanted to wake up. I wanted to touch myself too and I couldn't, because Corey was in the same bed as me, and it wouldn't be right. Not impolite, I guess it's not polite to do that sort of thing ever, but not right somehow, because Corey became my husband just five hours ago.
I think I might have fallen back asleep for a few more hours and not known it, because next thing I know Corey turns on the light in the little alcove where the sink goes and the motel light clicks on, lighting up his skinny back all cold like an iceberg. I turned on the light then, and started writing this all down on the Howard Johnson stationary.
I wish I could see real moonlight but the curtains are drawn. It's four in the morning, so Corey has been my husband for seven hours now. He wanted to go to his favorite bar after the wedding, and take me too, but I said no. He got a little upset until I asked him how we're supposed to consummate our marriage if we're sitting in a bar, but really I was just imagining myself sitting on some barstool with my dress all droopy like cauliflower. Corey wanted to watch TV next, and I wouldn't let him do that either. There's a terrible news story they're talking about now, a murdered baby, and every half hour they show his little skeleton with yellow dots in all the places it broke. When I said no Corey said Crystal, goddamnit, and I stared at him with my dress up around my thighs and my fists full of crunchy tulle, and we both started laughing. He leaned over and pulled off a set of fake eyelashes, then kissed my eyelid under it.
We went down extra early for brunch, and ended up settling for another place than the one we went to first. The first one advertised a $19.99 seafood special, but when we got there the special was for early birds (before seven AM!) and didn't include any lobster, which was what we really wanted. And anyway they had a big roll of paper towels in the middle of every table, and plaster Hollywood characters on big stages all around the room. All that fake pink skin makes me feel sick.
So we ended up having toast in the restaurant in the motel that's near checkout, just toast because that's all they had left, and Corey complained a lot but I didn't. I'm trying to lose weight anyway, and the restaurant with its cutlery all rolled up in napkins made me feel kind of classy. I'd like, one day, to be able to be an interior decorator for people with big, nice houses, who'll shake my hand and act as if I have a big house like theirs to come home to.
Before giving me her permission Mom sat me down and asked me if Corey was enough. "Will this man make you happy, Crystal?" I took both her hands and told her of course. And what's more, I know that missing him would be more than I could stand. He's filled me in like ceilings and walls and I'd cave right in without him. My social worker asked what I want to do and I said interior decorating-I love working with spaces. But it can wait, maybe. I'm in love and love fills you more than curtains and bedspreads.
I've been cleaning houses for a few weeks. Before that, for six months, I was a nanny. Sometimes I'd buy the kids treats but they didn't seem to care too much, because their parents did it all the time, so I stopped after a while. I'm just making money to put Corey through college, and then he'll be a fireman and I'll be on my way to being an interior decorator. But now it's all about waking up when it's dark, and peeling the dead skin off my fingers after the apple-smelling cleaning stuff gets at it. Usually I don't see any of the people I clean for, just their couches and coffee tables and books and family portraits. It makes me like them more.
Today a girl came downstairs when I was cleaning, and I thought she'd be a little embarrassed like a lot of people are when I'm bent over scrubbing their mess, but she wasn't-she sat down and said hi. I said hi back. She asked me if I would like a glass of water. I said yes, and she filled up a mug for me, and a tall glass for herself, then sat down. "You can take a break," she said, looking up at me. "I'm bored."
"Why don't you watch some TV?" I said, talking like a nanny. This house had four TVs, with big screens.
"I can't," she said. "I got an essay on Sartre due in three days, and so anything I do that isn't the essay should be my novel. I wouldn't want to watch TV anyway; I haven't for months. What's your name?"
All of this was in the same tone of voice, a sort of cigarettes voice, and she wasn't much older than me. Sure enough she took out a pack of cigarettes, and kind of of slid them over to my side of the table.
"I'm Crystal, nice to meet you."
"Crystal. Nice." She paused. "I'm Georgia. Do you have a boyfriend?"
I told her about Corey as she stood up and lit my cigarette for me, like a man would. Then she flopped herself down at the counter, pinching her cigarette in a funny way.
"Where did you get married? I love weddings."
"Florida. That's where my mom lives now," I said. "Our honeymoon was Disney World, because it was close and I've always wanted to go."
"So have I, actually." She paused, looking out the window, a look on her face like she was imagining palm trees. Georgia. She's sort of striking, like an old Hollywood actress with all the makeup taken off. She had all these freckles too and her skin was almost clear, like her bones were covered in layers and layers of plastic wrap with all these freckles painted on.
"How was Disney World? Was it awful?"
"No, it was nice," I said. Girls like her, they don't enjoy anything. "Well, it was noisy, I guess. And you have to like that sort of thing. I mean, fake pirates and whatnot make me nauseous sometimes. You have to be in the mood."
"Like with sex," she said, watching me. "Were there lots of fat people? Lots of fat people eating hot dogs and turkey legs and Mickey Mouse lollipops and Minnie Mouse ice cream bars?"
"I didn't really think about it. I guess so," I said. "There were lots of guys with those handlebar mustaches and big bellies. Didn't see any turkey legs anywhere."
"Oh, those guys're the worst. They're always like thirty-something, right? And they stare at you like they want to knock you over and hump your legs. Awful, spitty mustaches. And the turkey legs-they sell those there, all right. It's like shawarma-you know, lots of layers of fatty meat, crammed on a stick. It'll stick to your colon and you'll get a gut just like them, so you can waddle around and wear muumuus."
"It wasn't anything like that," I told her. "It was kind of magic sometimes. It wasn't magic enough for the admission price, I guess, but I remembered stuff I hadn't felt since I was young. I mean, you're about my age, right?"
She gave me this funny look again. "Twenty," she said.
"Yeah, me too. We were both raised on Disney, you know? Like Aladdin stuff, The Lion King stuff. Me, I watched them all till the tapes broke."
"My Mum and Dad didn't let me watch movies much, but I remember I liked Princess Jasmine a lot," she said. "Ok, I don't mean the Disney stuff at the park, that's all fine. But America, that deep South part of Orlando...it's awful."
"I hear there's lots of violence and whatnot, but my Mom lives down there now, right? So it kind of takes the edge off. You just gotta be careful."
"No, not violence. The violence, whatever. It's here too." Her eyes went wide, and a new cigarette was in her mouth. It made her look pointy, like a fox. "It's the ba-na-lity, Crystal. I've been down there too, last year. Went into a gas station store to get bottled water, right?"
"Right."
"Right. And so I go in, and they're playing this elevator music song, like Beatles-lite, and then Tina Turner. This Mexican guy just staring at me. And I walk down the aisles and the things on the shelves...my God. A big bag of pickle brine with a pickle in it, a giant phallic pickle, and a picture of a cucumber on the plastic, in a purple fucking skirt. And a big vat of boiled oily salted peanuts. And puffed lime-flavored fucking pork rinds. Skin. And this big bag full of chocolate chips and sugary dried banana and peanut butter chunks and you know what they called it?"
"What?"
"Trail mix. And you know what the cashier said it provided?"
"Vitamins?"
"Energy. That's the best thing they could say about it. And you know what that means?"
Mom plays this game with me-the questions that don't need answering. I felt brave and pulled out another of her cigarettes. "What?"
"Calories. Yeah, energy to jump around and fucking frolic in the sun. Empty energy. Like I need that. Sure, have another cigarette."
"Sorry," I said, even though she didn't seem upset. Then I felt brave again. "You're not fat at all. You could stand to gain a few."
"No," she says, "I eat like a fat person. You know what I did last week?"
I didn't know what to say. All of a sudden I wanted to get back to my mopping.
"I sat down right at this table and ate a whole liter-bag of walnuts. After a while it started to taste like paste. I went to bed in such pain, Crystal, that it hurt to breathe all along the skin of my stomach. I was not myself, I felt like a stuck pig. I woke up and I felt like I've been hit by a truck. Like someone was going to turn me into pork rinds."
"Oh, I don't know. I think pretty much everyone feels that way sometimes."
"It makes me want to kill myself."
I though about Corey, sitting in his classes and learning how to be a fireman. "Life's pretty good, if you ask me, especially for someone like you. Life's short too."
"Life's not short, it's long. Think of how much time there is between now and next Tuesday. It doesn't matter if I live in a nice big house or if I sleep in a shitty hole. Your problems grow to fit wherever you are." She dragged really hard on her cigarette, and it glowed and some ash fell off.
She got up and put out a plate with food that I never saw before, lots of dips with long Eastern-looking names on their lids and a bag full of red things, called Goji berries. "Help yourself," she said, and sat back down. I take a cracker and dip it in one of the pastes. It tastes like spicy garlic, really strong.
"You're really pretty, you know," she said.
I rolled my shoulders around like I was a bear and her compliment was a mosquito. "Nah."
"No, you are. I'd date you in a second if you weren't married."
I looked up at her. She didn't smile or anything. Then she sat back.
"Don't worry, I just wanted to see your reaction."
"Oh, okay." The Goji berries weren't as good as they looked.
"I actually have a boyfriend."
I looked at the time on the stove, and remembered that I had another floor and a half to go. I picked up my mop again. "Why did you want to see how I'd act?" I asked.
She laughed, and it was the sort of laugh that you know you don't hear often. "It's for my novel, actually. I'm trying to interact with everyone I can, and observe their reactions. You know what the number one rule for writers is?"
"What?"
"Write what you know. See what I mean?"
"I guess so." She didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere, so I asked her about her novel.
"It's like...it's kind of...have you read Proust?"
"Proust?" The tabletop took two tries with the Windex, and then the Clorox. "No."
"Well he has a bunch of novels that are basically about this person who spends a lot of time thinking and remembering."
"That's it?"
"Well, it's mainly about the prose, you know? I have a very flowery and complex style of prose, so too many events and stuff happening kind of crowds the whole thing. You know?"
"Okay."
"Here, try the hummus before you go. Everyone likes hummus; they just don't know it yet. It's universally palatable. You know, like ketchup."
Corey came home later than usual, so I could have cleaned the whole apartment if I'd wanted to. I was too tired, though, and I'd been cleaning all day anyway, so I sat and watched TV with my feet up on the dirty table, rubbing my knees. The table didn't look dirty, but we'd had Chinese food the night before and pizza the night before that, and I don't think I'd wiped it enough in between.
I did start dinner though, after two fuzzy episodes of CSI. I opened the fridge and smelled the weird burnt smell, the smell of old celery and leftovers that weren't rotten really, just tired. I put everything I could find in little plates and bowls, like Georgia did, and spread them all over the kitchen table. Corey came in just as I was cutting the pickles into slices to make them look like more. "Hi, Baby!" I called through the gap between the counter and the shelves.
"Hi, Baby," he said, kind of tired, and went into the bathroom and left the door open. I've gotten so used to having the bathtub near the front door that I don't even notice anymore. I listened to him pee and got out two glasses. "I got paid today," I yelled.
He came out, and took off his boots. He had his head shaved a while ago, and I still haven't gotten used to it. "Wanna buy us a Porsche?"
"Next paycheck, Baby. How's Sexy Shawna?"
"Dumb." We joke about the only girl in his class, Shawna, who flirts with everyone. I think she's just trying to get a daddy for her kid. Really I'm a bit jealous and I think he knows that too. He kissed me and looked at the table. "Where's the grub, Baby?"
"This is it, dummy," I said, poking him in his side with a plastic fork. "It's a meal made out of appetizers. Remember at the wedding when the waiters went around with the plates? It's like that."
"Classy," he said, and sat down, turning the TV back on. "Gimme a massage after dinner, eh?"
"Long day?"
"Oh, yeah. I'll give you one too, babe."
"Baby?"
"Yeah."
"What do you think of a story where nothing happens in it?"
He grabbed three plates and ate everything off of them, changing the channel in between bites. I prayed for wrestling to not be on tonight. "Uh. Like a movie?"
"Well, I guess so. Or a book."
"Not even kissing or anything?"
"No, maybe thinking about kissing."
"Well it isn't a story if nothing happens. I wouldn't wanna hear it."
"Wait, some stuff happens, though. I mean, there's a main person in it, and they talk about their memories and stuff they did wrong."
"I'd tell them to get out and do something." He was thinking about whether he wanted to change the channel away from the news. They'd buried that baby a long time ago, and now there were a bunch of new ones, a little girl poisoned this time.
"Oh, babe."
"Yeah?" he said, leaving the channel at another episode of CSI, just for me.
"Let's do something really nice tomorrow. Wanna go to Frankie's? It's on me."
He leaned across all the plates full of crumbs and juice to kiss me, and it felt like soft pieces of fish and it tasted like pickles but sweeter.
A week later I was back cleaning Georgia's house. The cleaning was going by faster because I knew where to look for the dirt. Someone had put banana peels in the potted plant near the living room and I tried to figure out if they were supposed to be there. I wondered how many kids lived in the house-it was big enough for seven at least. I plunked down my bucket in the kitchen, and my hands were sweaty and my hair was falling out of its ponytail, and there was Georgia, baking something with a man beside her, so tall he looked like a giraffe. They'd made such a mess in the kitchen my jaw almost dropped off-it was like all the cutlery cupboards had been turned inside out. Not to mention all the honey and prunes and big puffs of flour everywhere. Maybe if I take my time in the basement they'll clean it up themselves, I thought.
Georgia turned around. Even though it had only been one week, she looked thinner than before. "Your water's dirty," she said, and she was right. There were little popcorn bits and carpet scuzz floating around the bucket. "Hi, I'm Michael," said the guy, and jumped across the room and shook my hand before I could wipe off all the sweat and sofa gunk. "I've heard great things about you," I said to him, and he grinned. Georgia didn't say anything. "We're making vegan brownies," he told me, throwing out his gooey hands like an actor in a commercial.
"They're called vegan because they don't contain milk or eggs, and they're sweetened with honey and dates," she said, like she was the nanny this time. "I know," I told her. Corey had taken me on a date to Starbucks a few months ago, and I started talking to the friendly cashier about her job and she'd tried to sell me one. So I'd never eaten one, but I knew what they were like.
"Okay," she said, and sat down, and took out the cigarettes. I hoped she'd offer them to me again, but she didn't. The mess was still all spread out behind her. "Crystal's married and she's going to be an interior decorator and her husband's going to be a fireman and they honeymooned in Disney World," she said, and I didn't know who she was talking to. "How have you been, Crystal?" she asked.
"Not too bad, not too bad," I said, cleaning the counter really slowly and not looking up. She lit up her cigarette, and Michael took one too. "Wanna take a break and help me cook here, Crystal?" he asked. "Looks like Georgia's abandoning ship."
"I am not, I'm just resting," she said. Michael called her a domestic goddess and she pouted, and it looked ugly. Five minutes passed and I did what Michael told me to do. Michael seemed like the sort of guy who touched everybody on the hip as he squeezed past them to get salt, or thought it wasn't a big deal to grab someone's wrist to help them mix the crushed date and banana paste. The sun started shining through the window, and it was so nice, the three of us being quiet. Georgia waved the cigarette box at Michael and he leaned his skinny stomach over her chair and took one out of the box with his mouth, and for five more minutes he went on cooking with me and talking about Steve Martin (who was a standup comedian before he was an actor and wrote fiction) and Subpop (which was a record label from the nineties with all his favorite bands on it), and the unlit cigarette hung from his teeth all that time. He'd be handsome if his hair wasn't so curly, or if he were a bit shorter, or if he weren't so skinny. There was still plenty to fall in love with, if you were Georgia, even though he seemed like he would be mean if he thought you were dumb. He leaned down and lit his cigarette at the little blue fire in the stove, and I laughed.
We put the pan in the oven and I still didn't want to go, so I asked Georgia how her book was coming. She frowned. "It's depressing," she said. "The characters, I don't know what to do with them. It's like they're hanging to the inside of my skull on little hooks. This must be what it's like to have kids."
"Hm."
"Yeah. It's limbo. Sometimes I'll have these moments of inspiration, though. I'll be in the shower or in a food court or somewhere, and I'll have to write all of a sudden, on like a napkin with eyeliner. And then I'll just be exhausted. And then-then it's good."
Michael slid his arms around her. Then he kissed her cheek, looking up at me, and she turned her face to kiss him on the mouth. And then I took my bucket and snuck out.
I cleaned the upstairs, and figured I'd found which room was Georgia's: it had a poster of Shakespeare, but also one of Johnny Depp and two ones with horses. I looked for napkins with stories written on them, maybe in lipstick, but didn't find any. I came back down to the kitchen when I'd cleaned everywhere else. Michael was gone, and so was most of the mess. The pan of brownies was on the table in front of Georgia, and she was staring off into space. Nobody had eaten any.
"What's up?" I asked, trying not to make her jump.
"The brownies went black." She pushed at the tray with her finger, and I looked at them. If you ask me, they didn't rise enough. Or maybe that was the way vegan brownies are supposed to look.
"Need any help putting them away? I know a trick for frosting."
"No." She had finished almost all of the cigarettes.
We were quiet until I had to clean under her chair. Then she got up and sat on the counter, beside the pan. "I don't know how you can be married," she said.
"Why's that?"
"You're stuck with one man, at your age. At my age. Christ, we just stopped being teenagers."
I was careful not to touch the Clorox - it burns. "Sometimes I can't believe it either. But I love Corey very much, and he loves me."
"I love Michael too, lots. But I could never marry him."
I thought about it. "He seems like a nice guy."
"Not Michael, not anybody."
"How come?" I asked, sitting up on my knees.
"Because he wanted to fuck you," she said. She dumped out a cigarette, and I could see there were only two left. The whole room was all filled with smoke, and it made the sunlight look really thick and hazy. I wondered about the fire alarm.
"And it's not just that. My mom and my dad, right? They were madly in love for years and years and years. They're intelligent, compassionate people, both doctors, but different kinds. He's a heart surgeon, she's an oncologist. He'd hide flowers in the cupboards for her. She'd cook for him, and on weekend mornings they'd talk for hours and hours in bed. Laughing lots."
"That's really nice," I said.
"And now you know what? All of this stuff happened, and my mom went on medication, and my dad gained weight. And they slowly started to hate each other. And then my mom was on the phone with her best friend when I was eleven and I ran upstairs and picked up the other line and you know what she was saying?"
I asked her what.
"She said she wanted to sue the bastard. She said she wanted pave the driveway with his CDs and run the car over them again and again and put them in bottles like they were sea-glass-he collects sea-glass. She said she wanted to cut up all of his plants in the greenhouse too, and mail them to him. She said that she couldn't decide what she wanted more, to go at him with the lawnmower or to take all the sleeping pills, so he could find her corpse on the couch and never ever forget it. My quiet, doctor mother, who shook your hand." She blew smoke at the brownie pan. I sat down. "And then I think about my Michael. I think we're smart, compassionate people too." She shook her head. "Now he's talking about inserting someone else. First I hated him for it but now I almost want to it to happen, you know. Before he does it without me knowing about it. So I can see what he'll do." I didn't know what she meant then, I just reached out and patted her hand, and she offered me one of the last cigarettes. I remember thinking that she thought too much, and her parents probably did too. We finished a quarter of the brownie together with forks, no plates, and I told her about American food to cheer her up.
That afternoon I put on my black low-cut dress and my matching black heels. (I really only have one pair, and they're black because I figured black would go with everything.) I looked in the mirror and pulled at the part of the dress that goes over my tummy. It isn't my favorite dress-Mom says the material's cheap and it makes my ass look big-but when Corey came home and saw me in it his eyes lit right up. "Wow, Babe," he said.
We went to Frankie Tomatto's and I got to pick the booth, since I was paying. "Let's have some wine," I told the waitress, and she asked me what kind. I didn't know, and she told me to look at the menu, and I picked two glasses of the second-cheapest. I handed her the plastic menus and she rubbed a bunch of lint off the thigh of her pants before she took them.
"I don't think I've ever had wine before," said Corey, when our glasses came with his steak and my fish and chips. "Yeah you have," I said. "The champagne at our wedding." I picked up my glass, and held it close to his glass, feeling brave. "To forever," I said.
He swallowed fast and lifted his glass.
"Jakie?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think about forever a lot?"
"Sometimes."
"Do you stress out about it?"
"Sometimes. I think maybe I'll get burned by a falling-in house. I think about you dying before I die, and being alone." He rubbed his head, which feels like rubbing a toothbrush, and then he held my hand. "I think about good forever, too," he said. "You know, a house with you. The works."
We ended up splitting the chocolate eruption cake, and giving the waitress a big tip even though she was a bitch, and walking the long way home.
The next time I cleaned Georgia's house she was at the kitchen table already, and told me I was late. "I've been so lazy all day," she said
"Don't worry," I told her. "Maybe do some work now."
"It's not just work. All my high school friends came in last night and there was this big party and I said I was sick. I don't even know why."
She had a plate with some grapes on it and a rice cake, and she was squishing the grapes under her fingers until they popped a bit. I sat down next to her. "Tell me what's wrong."
"I'm scared that he wants someone else," she whispered.
It was weird to touch Georgia because something about her body made me feel uncomfortable, but I gave her a hug. I didn't tell her it was okay because it wasn't, and I didn't tell her she deserved better because I didn't think she did. I just hugged her and she sat there, sitting up really straight.
I wrote down the apartment phone number. "You can call if you need someone to talk to," I told her.
The basement was full of ants so I wrote on my hand to buy them some ant traps for next week. I found an apple core under a sofa chair. When I came back upstairs Michael was there, sitting on the counter. He had eaten Georgia's grapes.
"Crystal!" he said. "Maybe you can help us with this. We're having a bit of a debate."
"He's a misogynistic bastard," Georgia said, and she hit him on the knee.
"Not so, not so!" he said. "I love women, I'm just saying that men run things. The countries, the movies, whatever, and that's just how it is."
"Give us a chance," Georgia said. "We were only recognized as humans eighty years ago, if that."
"Women have power too, though," Michael said. "They control something huge." He looked straight at me and asked me if I knew what it was, the thing we control, and it just popped out of me. "The sex."
Georgia looked at me and said "You're making her embarrassed, Michael." We talked about other things and they followed me from room to room as I cleaned them, even though I probably didn't do as good of a job because I was worried they would get bored and leave. Michael anyway-Georgia always looked bored. "There's so much more dust under the lamps," I said when we weren't talking for a while. Maybe I was being boring, but it's hard to tell what's boring when you clean houses all day. In the master bedroom I crawled to reach under the bed and Georgia smoked a cigarette. They even followed me to the bathroom. Michael got into the empty Jacuzzi tub and Georgia sat down on the very edge of the rim after a second, and I watched them a bit in the mirror as they talked about a French couple that introduced other people and even animals into their sex life.
"Animals?"
"They were so sophisticated that they'd renounced ownership of each other," said Michael. "When you think about your husband isn't there someone, a woman, you're jealous of? That make you guilty of possessive thoughts?"
I thought about Sexy Shawna. "No," I said.
"That's weird. Maybe you don't love him enough," said Georgia, who was pulling one of Michael's curls straight and then letting it go, and pulling it straight again.
I don't know why I lied to them. I just did it, like I was guilty of something.
Tonight I asked Corey how Sexy Shawna was, even though I didn't want to. It was just on my mind. He said she wore a dumb shirt that you could see her bra right through, and I asked him what color it was. "Black," he told me, "Or maybe dark purple."
"Any patterns?" I asked. "Little hearts or writing?"
"Nah," he said.
When I went to bed I realized I could see Shawna in my head, even though I hadn't met her-Shawna had beauty marks all over her body, all over her breasts too, and the kind of dark hair that never looks dirty.
I turned the light on when I knew I wasn't going to fall asleep and Corey scrunched up his face, and I saw that his scalp was red with some kind of rash I didn't notice before. He groaned and covered his face with one hand-he has really big hands. "I can't sleep," I said.
He grabbed one side of my waist with his other hand and dragged me right across the bed until I was pressing against his big sleeping body. His hand fell off his face after a while. I kissed his eyelids and they were hot on my mouth.
The next morning was Thursday and I had half the day off, so I went over to Georgia's house. On the bus I started hoping she wasn't home, and then I wondered why I was going if I was hoping that her house was empty. I stopped at a store near the house and bought an ant trap so I could bring them something. It was a cheap one, a little tin with big mad cartoon ants on it, and poison inside. Georgia had lots of ants because she left cups and bowls with cereal in them all over her room.
I stopped at a pay phone beside the store and called the house first. It rang two times and then the line picked up and a woman with a low voice said hello. "Georgia?" I asked.
"Yeah?" Her voice got higher and I wondered if she'd been crying.
"I have a day off cleaning so I bought you guys an ant trap," I said.
She didn't say anything for a while, which I was learning Georgia did a lot. "Come over then."
So I sat in Starbucks for thirty minutes and then went across the street and knocked on her door.
She came to the door and her hair was curled, and she had lipstick on her big bottom lip. "I'm cooking again," she said. "Come help me cook."
We came in and she pulled her underwear down over the rest of her bum, tucking herself in, because her dress was really short. "You look nice," she said to me.
There were strips of flat meat with orange crumbs stuck to them. I put the ant poison down on the counter.
"Veal," I said. "What's this about, Little Miss Vegan?"
She asked me how I knew it was veal, and I told her I'd worked in a meat shop for a while. "I almost made it to associate butcher but then I cut off a bit of my finger on the bandsaw, and then I quit." We were quiet so I asked her how school was going. "I hate it now," she said, dipping the long veal pieces in something wet in a bowl. "It's stupid. The kids are stupid, the profs are pricks. I think I'm going to take a year off and do some writing, get some real experience. Maybe I'll clean houses too for a while. Work in a meat shop."
"Don't work with meat," I said.
She banged a flat tray down on the counter. "Don't tell me what to do." I cut off some butter and rubbed it on the tray. "Why not a meat shop?" she asked after a minute.
"Because meat people are mean," I said. "Had a customer ask me to take all the fat out of a piece of steak. I had to cut out every little yellow vein of fat and wipe it off the knife and then she said I made it too lean and made me throw it out. Sometimes people bring rotten meat back to the store. They say that the knives ruined it, that we didn't clean our knives. Some lady always asked me to cut her chickens in half. Even through the big bones. And all the men hit on you."
"Must be the raw meat," Georgia said. "Makes them wild."
"I don't know," I said. I cut a bigger piece of veal into two pieces. "The people I worked with were nice though. Nice girls. Sometimes we'd buy a big bottle of Mountain Dew and pass it around until we drank it all. Took us two minutes tops."
"Ew," said Georgia. She put the tray in the oven and washed her hands three times. I got thirsty, but I didn't want to ask for anything. "God, raw meat," she said. "How did you stand it?"
"I just didn't think it was meat after a while," I said. "It was just this cold slimy stuff I'd take out of the coolers for my customers to look at. But cleaning out the coolers was nasty. Seeing the little meaty bits in the water buckets."
"I can do all that," said Georgia. "Let's make a salad too." She took out vegetables, and asked me "What's cleaning like?"
"I think you'd like it better," I said. "You're all by yourself most of the time."
"You're right, I would like that," Georgia said. She wasn't doing a good job of slicing the tomatoes. "Plus, sometimes I feel like being a real domestic goddess, you know? Sometimes I just want to be someone's little woman, let them hand their practical life over to me. It's nice to forget, you know, that forming your authentic self is a burden, and to stop torturing yourself trying to be existential and just get the damn fingerprints off the coffee table."
"Why are you tortured?" I said.
"I don't know," she said, and was quiet for a while. "Maybe I'm not."
There was half a tomato left and Georgia was sawing at it, and its pulp was coming out and I knew she couldn't do it. "Here, there's a better way," I said, and I took the tomato from her hands in a way that made her hands go limp-a trick I learned for children who grab things that are bad for them.
"I look like shit," Georgia said, rubbing her lips together to spread the lipstick. I thought maybe that Michael was coming over soon, so I said, "You always look pretty because you are pretty, and I know Michael thinks the same thing."
Michael did come over soon, and Georgia ran into the powder room and closed the door just as he came into the kitchen. He seemed surprised to see me in the kitchen. "Crystal!" he said. "You look divine." He was walking over to me, looking at me and taking off his jacket, and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, and I pulled back a bit. He smelled sweet, like candles and candy.
"Just wait till you see Georgia," I said. "She got a new dress."
He asked where she was, and I said I wasn't sure. He sat down at the table and asked me what that smell was. "We made veal," I said.
"Veal! You're a godsend," he said, grinning at me, and I didn't say anything, just turned the ant poison tin around and around. Pretty soon after that Georgia came out of the powder room and he kissed her on the cheek too, and then she took out the veal and put it on a plate and he ate it, like the way a dog eats, and she stood watching him, smiling a little smile in between their talking and his doggy bites.
They went upstairs after talking about cleaning and Georgia getting a job next year. I put the crusty veal tray in the sink next to the salad bowl that was slimy inside, and Michael's plate, and my plate, and put Georgia's empty dish back up in the cupboard. Maybe Georgia did deserve better.
I heard them talking in Georgia's room. Then I heard my name. I started sweating, and snuck up the stairs, and crouched beside the banister.
They were talking in a muffled way, like they had their faces in each other's skin. "What's his name?" I heard Michael say.
"Corey," Georgia whispered.
"Lucky Corey."
"Shut the fuck up."
I crept back downstairs so I wouldn't hear more but even in the kitchen I heard noises like hissing and I heard Georgia crying, sobbing and moaning and saying no, no, no no no, you're a jerk, you're a pig, you're a prick, fuck, no, no. I heard wet noises, and slapping noises, and Georgia started cooing at him, still calling him a pig, a pig, you're a pig, my pig, pig. My skin was tight all over and I wanted to throw up, I wanted Corey, I wanted home. I put the ant poison on the counter, so Georgia could find it later if she wanted.
I had to call Georgia's nice doctor mother and tell her I quit. She was sweet about it because I made some stuff up about being allergic to their tropical houseplants.
"Have you mainly lived in apartments, dear?" she said.
"Apartments, yeah," I said.
"Ah! So you probably haven't much exposure to plants like ours," she said, like she was a detective. "Apartments dry out any kind of plant you bring into them like sealed-off little boxes."
"Okay," I said.
"It's a finicky thing, the human body. I just discovered I had a mild allergy to strawberries. Who knew?"
"Huh," I said.
"Anyway, dear, we're truly sorry to see you go," she said.
She offered a really nice referral and severance pay, which I wasn't sure I should take. We hung up and I was standing at the window, so I pulled the blinds and looked all the way down, past my toes in the furry carpet, to the little ant-people on the ground. I was all the way up in my sealed-in box, and the tiny people who were too small to even have clothes drove their little dot-cars.
I kind of hoped that Corey would come home while I was staring down so he could see me at the window-the way they do Camel cigarette ads with the sexy woman all thoughtful in her condo against the glass-and I could show him what I was looking at but he was a little late. He called as I was watching reruns of America's Next Top Model and eating crackers instead. The girls were jumping up and down, screaming because Tyra Banks just told them they were going to China. "Hi Baby," he said.
"I don't have a job," I said.
"What happened?"
"I quit cleaning. I don't want to be inside other people's houses anymore."
I head lots of noise coming from his side, every downtown noise in the world except for his voice.
"I know," I said. "We can't afford me being picky. But I'm allergic to their plants too," I said, before I even thought about it. "I haven't had proper exposure to houseplants."
There was a lot more silence and I started to feel like crap. Then he said he had to go.
When he came home he had a few Dominion bags and a big long flat cardboard box with little green plants in black dirt. "Now you'll have lots of exposure to plants," he said.
I kissed him, took the box, carried it into the kitchen and put it on the floor, because it was way too big for the counter. "But they'll dry out in here, Baby," I said. He picked them up, went over to the balcony, opened the glass door and walked out. I thought he was going to throw them over the railing, but then he just put them down. "We get lots of sun out there," he said. "The Dominion girl said it's got tomatoes and zucchinis and everything, like a vegetable garden," he said.
"Like my Mom's," I said, and he looked proud and said yeah, exactly.
I kept smiling but I felt bad, because maybe he wanted me to take my job back after I had all that exposure to plants. But another part of me said I was wrong, that maybe he just wanted to make our place more like a real home. "We're having eggs," I said, stirring them around in our frying pan. "Put bacon bits in," he said, then asked if we had any pop tarts. I said yes and he found them, and then went up behind me, and pushed my hair away, and kissed me on the back of my neck.
"Love you," he said.
I turned around and gave him a real kiss, a deep movie kiss, and then twisted back around just enough to stir the eggs again.
When we were eating we talked about how his firefighting course was ending soon for the summer, and I said maybe he could have everyone in his class over for a party. I could cook something, maybe out of the garden if it grew fast enough, and they could finally meet his wife.
"I'll even let Sexy Shawna eat my tomatoes," I said, and growled like a guard dog.
He laughed a bit, and then thought about it. "We joke about her like she's some kind of bitch, but she's really a nice girl, you know."
"Okay," I said. Then the phone rang, and it was Georgia. "My mother tells me you aren't coming back."
"No," I said. I was going to lie again but then decided I had to be brave. "I had to quit."
"It's my fault, isn't it," she said.
"No," I said. "You guys don't need me anyway. I made more messes than there were to start with."
"I guess we don't," she said. "But I think I do."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Okay," she said.
I hung up and had a feeling I'd never talk to her again. "You're all red, Baby," Corey said. I put my hands on my cheeks and sat down beside him, thinking of strawberries and veal, thinking of poison.
Jennifer says:
A bit of a rough beginning, but I got into this story more as it went along. It's well written, and the characters are well developed, too. My biggest quibble was that I was really ready to dislike Corey at the beginning and I had to talk myself back into giving him even the benefit of the doubt as time went on. I understand that you are shooting for that kind of ambivelance, but I needed one positive detail earlier on that would make me understand why Crystal was with him at all.
Plot - 22
Characters - 25
Mechanics - 22
Enjoyment - 23
TOTAL - 92
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