Last Day

by Domenica Ruta

  Miles considered this for a length of time Karen found to be astonishing. Why wasn’t he screaming Yes, yes, yes? The boy was deeply hurt and could not seem to shut off the flow of his rage.

  “I want to make cookies by myself,” he said with a pout.

  “You can’t do that,” Tianna said, with what Karen sensed was a little frisson of power. “Only I am allowed to use the oven. You need me to help.”

  “This lady can help. She’s big.”

  The baby, who had been napping peacefully on the carpet, woke up with a vague whimper.

  “That notebook is exactly the kind of thing you should burn in the bonfire tonight,” Karen told Tianna.

  “But I love this notebook. And it’s not finished yet.” She fanned through the many white, lined pages, showcasing its potential.

  “That makes it even more perfect.”

  “No, I should burn something bad I want to get rid of. To make room for something good.”

  “Not in the olden days. Back then people burned all kinds of things. Good things and bad things and things they’d had forever and things that were brand-new. Just to make a point.”

  “Like what?” Tianna was clutching her notebook against her chest. The lights of the TV twinkled in her glasses.

  “Like baby horses and ball gowns and gold necklaces and all kinds of things. Anything you can think of.”

  “That’s stupid,” Tianna said. “Gold wouldn’t even burn in a regular fire.”

  Karen wasn’t sure if this was right and reproached herself for not knowing. She’d studied the symbols for alchemy, had made flash cards and everything. The one for gold looked like the left eyeball of a subtly powerful bird. But melting gold, what that involved, she had no idea.

  “Why would they burn a baby horse?” Miles’s voice cracked. His lips trembled as he tried bravely to contain this question and its inscrutable answer, but within seconds he was in tears. Karen had miscalculated. That parable was meant to shame Tianna for her snobbery and prideful attachment, but Miles was the one who was wounded. The sacrificial horse Karen had spoken of was something she had seen in a medieval triptych by a German painter. It was called Last Day Offering. In the painting, a whole procession of barnyard animals waited to be torched. Red lightning cracked the flat black sky so that it looked like a broken plate. The humans had stern faces and foreshortened limbs.

  “Now that I think of it, the horse might have been a pony, not a baby.”

  “A foal,” Tianna corrected.

  “Stop it!” Miles cried. “You’re lying.” He was inconsolable, recoiling now from any gesture of affection.

  Telling the whole truth had clearly been the worst idea in this situation. But how could you tell only half the truth? Wouldn’t that make things more confusing, like offering someone half a story?

  The sound of jangling keys pulled the attention of all three children toward the door with a magnetic force. Their mother was home. She was very tall for a woman, and also very fat, which lent her overall presence a distinct power. Her feet fell like cement bricks across the floor. She was wearing purple hospital scrubs. A pair of white, sparkly sunglasses pushed back her burgundy hair. Her face was freckled like Tianna’s, though much tanner, and her cheeks sagged as though her prettiness had been pawed off her face by her children.

  “Are you going to just sit there, Tianna? Jesus…” The woman dropped half a dozen rustling plastic shopping bags at the threshold of the door and stepped over them.

  The baby rose to his feet and toddled warily toward his mother. “There he is,” his mother sang, her voice, her whole body, softening as soon as the baby was in her arms. “No one gave you a bath today? Like I asked them to?”

  Tianna was struggling to lift every single grocery bag at once and carry them en masse to the kitchen. She got as far as the living room couch, where she implored Karen to help her. “She loves Avonte the most because he’s the baby,” Tianna observed. “He isn’t any cuter than Miles was. He’s just the newest.”

  Their mother, who had yet to acknowledge Karen, a stranger in her home, carried Avonte into the kitchen, where she opened and slammed shut a succession of cabinet doors.

  “Why is Miles crying?” she bellowed.

  “She told us a scary story,” Tianna yelled back.

  “I’m Karen. I’m Dennis’s old friend. We used to be in foster care together.” This, Karen decided, was the best explanation of herself, under the circumstances.

  “Is he even up?” their mother asked Tianna. She couldn’t have been less interested in Karen. But the feeling was mutual. This woman would be a distant memory soon. Miles could come with them if he wanted, wherever she and Dennis decided to go, but Tianna would probably stay behind. They would have her every other weekend and holidays, but not all of them, she hoped. The baby looked like too much work. And it was best to leave a baby with its biological mother anyway.

  “He’s been out cold all day,” Tianna answered in a tone that belied her pleasure in this report. “I made breakfast and lunch.”

  “Figures.”

  Their mother disappeared with the baby into the bedroom where Dennis was still asleep. No, they would not be staying here at all, Karen decided. It was a nice enough building, adjacent to the train, friendly neighbors, good natural light if they moved the televisions to different spots, but she and Dennis needed a fresh start. They couldn’t go back to Heart House. Overnight guests were not allowed and it was only a matter of days before Karen herself was kicked out. They would have to stay in a motel. The very thought sent shivers up and down her legs.

  “Tianna!” the mother bellowed from the bedroom. “Get your brother dressed.”

  “Are we going to the bonfire?” the girl asked. She eyed her notebook lying on the floor and shot Karen a look so caustic it could peel paint.

  “Yeah, after I drop you off at your grandmother’s. She’s gonna take you.”

  “Is Miles coming with me?” Tianna explained to Karen, “We have different grandmothers. Mine lives in Dorchester. His lives in Roslindale. Avonte’s grandmother lives in Maryland. Our mom’s mom is dead.”

  “Just do what I ask and stop badgering me. I don’t have the stomach for it today.”

  Tianna took her brother to their bedroom in the back, leaving Karen alone. She flipped through Tianna’s notebook of celebrity portraits. The girl had an accurate but light hand, her pencil strokes a faint whisper over the pages. Among the faces were lists of words in alphabetical order, spelling lists, obviously, and they too were printed as though by a ghost who could not manipulate the pencil close enough to the page to make real lines.

  “It’s you.”

  Karen looked up from the notebook and saw Dennis standing before her. He was awake, barely. His eyes were small and sunk deep in their sockets. His lips were pale. There was a yellowish tint to him. A yellow aura was not good, Karen remembered dimly. Her mind had drained its vast catalogue of information and she could think of nothing to say. So she repeated him.

  “It’s you.”

  Dennis sat down in the armchair diagonal from her. His gaze was loose and slow to catch focus. He looked at Karen, but only for a moment, then languidly turned his attention to the TV, or the window behind it.

  “Is it cold out?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said. “It was nice out today. It was getting cooler as the sun set, but not cold.”

  “It’s Saturday?”

  “Yes, it’s Saturday. It’s Last Day. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Forecast was good for this weekend, I think.”

  “Dennis, I have so much to tell you. I had a good job. At the YMCA. But then they fired me. And I have to move. I’m scared, but also really feel that this is all part of a bigger plan. What about you?”

  Dennis mumbled a response. In volume it was the most he had said t
o her so far, though she couldn’t understand a word of it. The phrase disability benefits came through.

  “I get disability, too,” Karen said. “And social security. I have a lot of friends.”

  “Good,” Dennis said. “Good.”

  She wanted to touch him. Her hand lifted to reach the arm of his chair, then stopped midway and returned to her lap. She felt that her body was not her own anymore, that it would act out of turn, that even though she felt no urge to pee, at any moment she might wet her pants.

  “Are you happy here, Dennis? Do you ever miss me?”

  “Karen,” he said with a troubled certainty. “It’s really you.”

  “That’s right. I’m here.”

  “The one and only…” His voice trailed off again.

  “I’ve missed you so much, Dennis. I think about you all the time. A lot more lately. I don’t know why.”

  “Do you have a job someplace? Where do you live?”

  “I just told you, I had a job at the Y but I got fired. I live at a group home in Allston.”

  “Ooof. The Green Line. Rough. Worst transit line in the city. Walking is faster.”

  “Are you married? Is that woman your wife? Are those your children?”

  “We’re engaged.” Dennis smiled and lowered his eyelids until they were nearly shut. “Engaged to be engaged.” He laughed but did not explain the joke. The laughter sputtered out like a tiny mechanical toy whose battery was nearly spent. His head dropped suddenly and he fell asleep.

  How could Dennis, her Dennis, have ended up here engaged to this woman? Karen had never been in a romantic relationship, outside her imagination, that is, and could not imagine the workings of such a utilitarian partnership: that the children’s mother, Amanda, had a steady job with decent healthcare coverage, and Dennis offered disability benefits, food stamps, and free, if not quality, childcare; between the two of them they had enough connections in the world of pills to keep each other high and living comfortably, something neither of them could achieve alone.

  “Dennis,” Karen hissed. “Dennis, come with me. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he answered, his head still slack, his eyes closed.

  “Don’t you want to come with me?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” Karen whispered. “Okay, then. You’ll tell them? Or should I?”

  “Let me rest a minute.” He reached over to pat her knee but missed and nearly fell over. Karen caught him, felt the weight of his shoulder against her hands. He was so heavy, like a bag of wet cement. His shirt had no sleeves and his arms were covered with a rash of pink pimples. There was a tattoo on his biceps, a Chinese symbol, each stroke like a sword balanced to build a complicated, unstable house.

  “Aw, shit. Did he fall?” Dennis’s fiancée shouted from the kitchen. “He’s on all new meds. He’ll probably just stay in tonight. You’re welcome to hang out here with him, but I’m leaving. The kids are going to their grandmother. I have the night off for once and I’m not wasting it laying around at home.”

  “Can I use your restroom?” Karen asked.

  “We call it the bathroom. And sure. Be my guest,” she said in mock grandeur.

  Karen propped Dennis up with a pillow until she was reasonably sure he was stable, then she excused herself to the bathroom. There was no window in the bathroom, but the door locked, which put Karen at ease. She splashed water on her face, then washed her hands. This fiancée had what Karen considered to be an alarming number of perfumes. They crowded the dingy, gold-flecked Formica counter. Further proof, Karen saw, that this woman was cuckolding Dennis, her purported life partner, covering the stench of her betrayals and lies with so much cherry-vanilla body spray.

  Dennis had to know that he was not the father of any of those kids. He deserved better than this. He probably had diminished self-esteem, after being traumatized the way they were as kids, and then who knows what had happened to him afterward in his spate of foster homes. Karen was lucky. She’d been seeing Nora for years, and that had helped her self-esteem a lot. She wanted Dennis to start seeing Nora. She wanted all the best things for him. But first they had to leave this place.

  When Karen emerged from the bathroom, Tianna and Miles were dressed and ready to go, waiting by the door, while their mother consulted her reflection in the microwave’s door to apply mascara.

  “Oh, good. Finally,” she said, foisting the baby into Tianna’s arms and taking her makeup bag into the bathroom.

  “I’m going to burn Viscount Darkdoom,” Miles said, holding up a plastic figurine of a homely, well-dressed man from some cartoon show or movie Karen had only vaguely heard of. “He’s a bad guy,” Miles explained.

  “He’s starting to get it,” Tianna said proudly. “I talked him into it.” She had put on a purple ruffled dress and a pair of cowgirl boots. Her face was clean and Karen detected a layer of gloss on her lips. “I’m going to burn my old bunny,” she told Karen. The toy in question was a limp carcass of blue plush fur stained on the ears with an awful, crunchy brown matter. “Avonte puked on it and the smell won’t come out, even though I washed it.”

  “You’ll have a nice time,” Karen said weakly. “Bonfires are fun.”

  “This one has face painting,” Tianna informed her. “Too bad you’re not coming.”

  “Come with us!” Miles said.

  “Maybe Dennis and I will meet up with you later.”

  Both children shot her a dubious glare. Dennis had slumped over his knees in the recliner, his palm extended as though to receive alms.

  Karen had the backpack that the woman downstairs had given to her by the front door. She picked it up and handed it to Tianna. “Can you do me a favor and burn this?” Tiana hoisted the bag onto her shoulder.

  “It’s heavy,” she sighed, and adjusted the straps. Her own overnight backpack she slung across her chest.

  “Okay, let’s go,” their mother shouted. She had done a lot to herself in a short amount of time. A purple leather skirt and chunky black heels exposed her legs, which were long and nicely shaped. A green shamrock tattoo floated above her ankle. Black, spidery lashes fringed her eyes, which were watering from the purple contact lenses she’d put in.

  “Hey, Prince Charming, I’m going out,” she shouted at the recliner. Dennis made no reply. “If you end up leaving him here,” Amanda told Karen, “make sure the door’s locked.” She took the baby from Tianna and herded her brood out the door and down the stairs.

  “Dennis.” Karen took his empty hand in hers and squeezed it. “You don’t have to stay here. Maybe you feel guilty. I don’t know, but I think they’ll be fine without you.”

  Dennis rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

  Karen scanned the room for a working clock. “I don’t know. It’s getting late.”

  Dennis sat back and pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket.

  “Six fifty-seven,” he said. He found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in another of his pockets and lit one.

  “You look like your dad when you do that,” Karen said.

  “I don’t remember what he looked like.”

  “He smoked. I remember that.” She sneezed three times in a row and Dennis said nothing. “Let’s go, Dennis. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

  “Okay.” He reached over again to touch her knee and this time his hand made contact. Karen felt a jolt like a rubber band snapping against her skin. He was looking into her eyes now, his cheeks sunken and his eyes glazed.

  “Want to watch a movie?” he asked. He was looking right through her, at something behind her. She turned around to see what it was.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Back there. In my bedroom.”

  He got up from the chair and Karen rose to follow him.

  He was barely undressed when his penis spra
ng out of his underwear all pink and flushed as though surprised. He pushed Karen backward onto his unmade bed. Dennis squeezed his eyes shut the whole time. Was he shy or ashamed? She couldn’t tell. He didn’t want to talk, which was all Karen wanted to do. She didn’t even realize how much she was talking until he put his hand over her mouth. “Dennis, I can’t breathe,” she tried to say, but only thick, low notes escaped her. Finally he groaned and collapsed next to her.

  “Dennis,” she whispered. The sheets were wet and sticky and quickly getting cold. “Dennis?” she said again, and when he didn’t answer, she shouted.

  “What.”

  “I want to go now,” she said, crying. “Please say you’re coming with me.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he said, drifting off, away from her.

  “But where? I don’t even know where we’re going. I was hoping you would know. That you’d have an idea, at least.”

  “Okay.” He patted her thigh.

  “Dennis?”

  She found her dress bunched up between the mattress and the bedside table. Her underwear was on the floor near the foot of the bed. She dressed in the dark of Dennis’s bedroom, a red orb glowing on the bottom corner of the TV pulsing slowly, too slowly, like an alarm that knew it was already too late.

  The top of Dennis’s bureau was covered with pill bottles. Tall ones. Fat ones. Orange with white tops. White with no tops. Most had labels but only some were labeled for Dennis. If the occult could have been Karen’s college major, psychopharmacology would have been her minor. She was practically fluent in medical Greek. Anything ending in -done, like its sound suggested, rang her soul’s deepest gong and produced an almost immediate sense of calm and well-being. It was false, Karen knew. She did not like to abuse drugs. They interfered with her intuition. But her stomach was twisted hard inside her, a legitimate pain. And eighty milligrams equaled eighty dollars: who was she to turn away from a tiny pot of gold so clearly delivered by the universe? Karen selected three half-full bottles and put them in her purse. Then she found Dennis’s phone and dialed the only number that made sense at the moment.