“I know that doesn’t justify what I’ve done-what I’ve been doing-and I’m not trying to make excuses, right? I just wanted to give you an explanation because I do love you and I’ve hurt you so much and you didn’t deserve it and if there’s anything I can do, any way to make it good again, to fix things, to make you feel less alone-”
“-are you done?”
A soft breath, a softer swallow. “Yes.”
I looked at the room in which I was sitting, at the furniture and the small bits of dust here and there and the faded pictures on the mantel and decided that I couldn’t remain here. This was an alien shelter in an alien world where outside the walls people you thought you knew were just stacks of carbon hiding behind the scrim of humanity you put in front of them so you wouldn’t have to deal with what they really were.
“I’m sorry you got bored with me. And I’m sorry there’s no way this can ever be fixed. I can’t be your friend anymore. I love you… I love you too much in another way for that, so I can’t be your friend anymore and that makes me sad. Please don’t come to the service tomorrow, and please don’t ever call me again. I hope the show goes well. Break a leg.”
I hung up. She did not call back.
I spent the next two weeks making all the necessary arrangements to leave Cedar Hill, stopping only long enough to eat or sleep, neither of which I did in any great quantity. Pippin received decent reviews, especially for Beth.
I gave notice at work. I stored most of the furniture and all of the keepsakes. I hired a cleaning crew to come in and scrub the place from top to bottom. I hosed down the outside until the aluminum siding shone. I had a landscaper come in and fix the lawn, adding flowers and plants out front and a pair of small trees in the backyard. Both Mom and Dad had often remarked how they’d wished we had more shade back there.
One of the offices I cleaned nights was a downtown real estate firm. I showed up an hour early on one of my last nights and spoke with the manager, who was all too happy to help make arrangements to put the house on the market. I gave her all the necessary information on the house, as well as the bank account number where the funds were to be deposited, and told her I would call with my new address as soon as I was settled. We made copies of the keys, signed some forms, and shook hands.
I decided to go down to Kansas and visit my grandmother for a while. She was old and not in the best of health and had cried for an hour on the phone when I called to tell her about her daughter’s accidental death. She had neither the strength nor the money to make the trip to Ohio for the service. I wanted to be around her for as long as she might still be alive; I wanted to be around someone who’d known my mother as a child and could tell me things about her that I’d never known. Dad’s mother never entered into the picture; she never liked me and I never liked her, so there would be no love lost between us.
Two nights before I planned to leave, I was sitting in the middle of the emptied living room reading an excellent biography of the late blues guitarist Roy Buchanan when it suddenly occurred to me that I never knew what Mom’s or Dad’s favorite song was. I have no idea where the thought came from, but once it entered my head it would not leave, and soon-after polishing off half a twelve-pack of Blatz (Dad’s beer of choice)-I started to cry. It seemed to me that someone should have cared enough to ask either of them if they even had a favorite song and, if they did, should have cared enough to remember what it was. So I focused on that until my head felt like it was going to implode.
The ringing of the phone jarred something back into place, and as soon as I answered, the first thing out of my mouth was, “ ‘Kiss an Angel Good Morning.’ Mom’s favorite song was-”
On the other end, someone burst into sobs.
I shook myself back into the moment at hand and said, “Hello? I’m sorry about-who is this?”
Beth spluttered out my name, then said: “I’m s-s-sorry, I know y-you said not to call but s-ssomething’s happened and I… ohgod… please come over. I can’t ask anyone else t-to-”
I was sitting up straight, every nerve in my body twitching. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“… gotta… gottadosomethingwiththeanimals now, I d-d-don’t know what I’m supposed to… She said everything was okay, I asked her, you know? ‘Everything’s fine now,’ that’s what she said…”
Forget the lies and feelings of betrayal and the anger and rage and pain and jealousy and everything else; when someone you love calls you in the middle of the night in hysterics, you tell your pride to screw itself and go to them without another thought.
I pulled up in front of house and knew right away something wasn’t right. For one thing, it looked as if every light in the place was on; Beth and especially Mabel were frugal as hell when it came to utilities-neither one of them would have left that many lights burning; for another thing, the U-boat was gone and Mabel’s new car (a tan Toyota Tercel, a very smart and sensible car) sat in the driveway; it was well past two A.M. and Mabel should have been at work. The third thing I discovered when I went to knock on the door.
The house was unlocked.
This was not the worst neighborhood in Cedar Hill, but you wouldn’t live here on “Renter’s Row” unless you absolutely had to.
I entered and closed the door behind me. I called out for Beth and, getting no answer, Mabel.
Nothing.
I took a deep breath, my heart triphammering, and immediately began to cough and sneeze. It smelled like the place hadn’t been cleaned in days; everything was sopped in the stench of animal shit and old urine mixed with the musty scent of shed fur and… something else. Something meaty and rotten. It was so overpowering I ran into the bathroom and threw up.
Breathing through my mouth, I checked the kitchen and backyard, then Beth’s room.
She was gone, and so were all the Its.
Finally I knocked on Mabel’s bedroom door; when there was no answer I began to open it and saw a piece of paper that had been taped there but had fallen to the floor. I picked up and unfolded the note. It was from Beth:
I couldn’t stay here any longer. I hadn’t been home in a couple of days. She must have done it while I was gone. I’m like you now. I’ve lost everyone. I’m so sorry for everything. There ought to be a place for people like us. I hope you can forgive me someday. This is why I don’t trust happiness. It’s better to leave and re-make yourself. It’s always been the best thing. I love you. Always remember that.
I opened the bedroom door and (If I don’t turn on the light, everything will be fine.)
– turned on the light.
The first thing I saw were all the pink- and rust-colored feathers scattered around the room, on the floor, sticking to the walls and curtains and light fixtures, but as I stepped closer to the mess on the bed I realized that the feathers had once been white. The dull buzz of flies sounded in my ears. The carpeting grew more and more damp the nearer I came to the bed. There were probably a thousand other smells and splotches and sights but the closer I moved toward the bed, the more my peripheral vision faded out until I could see only through a small, frozen, iris-out circle.
The upper half of the mattress and headboard were splattered in blood speckled with chunks of bone and mangled tissue. She’d dressed for work before lying down and placing the feather pillows over her face. After that it was a simple matter of pulling the pistol out of the drawer in her nightstand, pushing and prodding into the pillows until she could feel the barrel’s position through them, or maybe she’d already had the gun in her hand before she lay down, or maybe – one of the stained feathers dislodged from the overhead light and brushed against my shoulder on its way down.
The gun lay on the floor near the bed. I wasn’t about to touch it or anything else in the room. My chest was so tight I thought my lungs were going to collapse. Something was strangling me from within. My vision blurred because of something in my eyes. I reached up to wipe it away but made the mistake of moving at the same time. I stumbled over my own feet and fell onto the bed. I heard the muted splash as I hit the soaked remains of the pillows and the body underneath. I felt heavy tepid liquid slopping between my fingers and soaking into my shirt. It was all over me. I panicked and tried to push away but only managed to slip and fall face-first into the worst of it. I scrabbled around like a crab on a beach, tangling myself in gore-saturated sheets and wet feathers until, at last, I managed to grip the edge of the headboard and pull myself up. I lurched around, trying to wipe the blood from my eyes until I bumped into the dresser. I looked up and saw myself in the mirror and almost lost it. At least I didn’t scream. Not once. As much as I wanted to just throw back my head and let fly with a howl to bring down the house, I didn’t. I backed away from the bloody thing in the reflection, blinked, and saw what was on the floor by the