Unloaded

by Eric Beetner

  “Close call.” Katie started to slip the picture back under her pillow, but then she stopped.

  Sean was staring into her face, green eyes blazing in a way they never did in real life. She watched his lips curl into a smile—a secret one, just for her. “Katie,” he said. “My Katie.”

  She nodded.

  “You know what you need to do to set yourself free.”

  Her cheeks felt hot. She turned to the poster on her wall—to Dean and Cody and Max and Terrence. And Sean. The other Sean. The one who didn’t talk.

  They had a song, the Boys did. It was called, “Set Yourself Free,” and it unfurled in Katie’s mind like a bright flag. If you love me, darling, you’ll set yourself free/ We’ll be free together, you and me…

  She turned back to Sean’s picture, to those soft, twisted lips, to those green eyes, twinkling. “Ready?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Carol Flynn woke up with a start at four a.m. Bad dream, she tried to tell herself. But it wasn’t a dream, it was life, her life. Every night, waking up like this.

  Years ago, Carol used to be such a sound sleeper. But all of that changed with motherhood. First it was the mysterious kicks of pregnancy that roused her from slumber, and then, after Katie was born, the slightest shift in her baby’s breathing could jolt her awake. It was a common problem for new mothers, one that Carol assumed would right itself once her daughter matured. But as it turned out, their daughter blossomed into something neither she nor Bill had ever imagined, and as a result her sleeping only grew more fitful.

  These days, Carol longed for the calm of new parenthood, for the days before she and Bill knew there was anything wrong with their daughter. Not wrong. Different. Fine as long as we stay alert, as long as we watch her…

  Bill snored like a bear. She couldn’t understand how he could sleep like that, but he was only a father, after all. He’d never felt the kicks. He didn’t share Carol’s intuition. Bill expected that life would go okay if he worked at his job, if he paid his bills, if he put healthy food on the table and kept the doors locked and a baseball bat in their bedroom closet, just in case. He’d always been that way, and he still held by those tired old rules, as though nothing had ever happened to them. As though healthy food made any difference at all.

  As though a home could only be invaded from the outside.

  Carol tried listening to Bill’s snoring, the long intake of breath and the sawing release, a door opening and slamming. It usually soothed her, the familiarity of it, the rhythm. But not tonight. How can he not see?

  Carol nudged him awake. “I think she’s off her meds,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Katie.”

  He dragged an arm across his face, wiped sleep out of his eyes. “No,” he said. “I watched her.”

  “So did I.”

  “I counted the pills.”

  “And?”

  “And,” he said. “She’s on track.”

  “She could be hiding them.”

  Bill moaned. “Carol.”

  “I heard her talking to herself.”

  “Probably chatting online,” he said. “About that band she likes.”

  “She said she was praying.”

  “So? She was praying then.”

  “I’m going to check on her.”

  “Leave her be.”

  “I’m just going to peek in.” Carol slipped out of bed, put on her robe.

  Bill said it again, more insistent this time. “Leave her be, Carol.”

  Carol sensed the anger in his voice, and she knew why. Katie acted out when she felt “too mothered.” The therapist had told them that, back when Katie was still living at the treatment facility. “You need to watch her, but you must give her some space,” the therapist had said, as though that therapist knew anything. As though Carol’s love, and that alone, was what drove her only daughter to do what she had done to that boy down the street.

  “I know you have the best intentions, Mrs. Flynn,” the therapist had said. God, how Carol had hated her, how she’d hated all the staff at that treatment facility, those people in her neighborhood, writing in to the newspapers, standing outside the courthouse, busybodies all of them, telling her she had no right to be a parent, that her daughter was a murderer, a monster who should be put down or institutionalized forever. It was why she kept Katie inside—not for their protection, but for her own, for Katie’s own.

  “If she’s talking online, that’s a good thing,” Bill was saying. “She needs some freedom. She needs to socialize.”

  Carol stared at him. “You don’t remember.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “It was a fight. Over a singing group.”

  “It was a chemical imbalance. She’s on her meds.”

  “I need to check on her.”

  She started out of the room, padded down the hall, Bill’s voice trailing behind her. “For God’s sakes, Carol.” But then, he was next to her as he always was, hand on her shoulder. Protecting her.

  She wished it didn’t have to be like this. So dearly, Carol wished that they could be like other parents, that they could look in on their sleeping daughter without that gnawing feeling inside, that they could watch the rise and fall of her chest and listen to her soft breathing and see only an angel.

  Carol flicked on the light in the hallway. As quietly as she could, she turned the doorknob.

  “Honey,” Bill whispered. “You have to back off.”

  “I’m just checking.”

  “Last time, okay? You promise, after tonight, you’ll give her privacy? Treat her more like an adult?”

  “She’s our daughter, Bill.”

  He squeezed her shoulder, too hard. “Carol,” he said quietly. “She’s a forty-year-old woman.”

  “Where is she?” Katie’s mother asked her father as Katie came up behind them, Dad’s baseball bat clutched in both hands, the metal cold against her palms and Sean’s voice in her head, urging. “Don’t be frightened, love. It will be over soon and you’ll be free.”

  Katie wasn’t frightened though. She was amazed, in fact, at how small her parents had become in their old age, small enough so that she could see right over both of them and into her bedroom, the hall light illuminating her neatly made bed, Sean’s picture propped up on the pillow, lips curling into a smile.

  “What the hell is going on?” Dad said. “What’s that picture?”

  But Katie heard only the voice of Sean The Shy One. “I love you,” the picture said, Sean said, as Katie raised the bat over the tiny heads of her wrinkled parents.

  “I love you too,” she said, as the bat came down.

  Back to TOC

  LORELEI

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Please love me my eyes beg. My need is so raw, I can’t blame any of you from looking quickly away.

  Not you, not you, and you—none of you can I blame. Only just love me, can’t you? Love me…

  That Sunday night, desperate not to be late, I had to change trains at Times Square, and the subway was jammed, both trains crowded, always I knew it would happen soon, my destiny would happen within the hour, except: it was required that I be at the precise position when you lift your eyes to mine (casual-seeming, by chance) as you turn to face me. I must be there, or the precious moment will pass, and then—so lonely! In the swarm of strangers departing a train, pushing into the next train, pushing to the gritty stairs, breathless and trying not to turn my ankle in my spike-heeled sandals, my hair so glossy black you’d suspect it must be dyed but my hair is not dyed, this is my natural hair color, and my skin white, exquisite soft-skinned white, and I’m wearing a black suede short skirt to mid-thigh and black diamond-patterned stockings with a black satin garter belt you can catch a glimpse of when I’m seated and I cross my slender legs in just the right, practiced way; and a white lace camisole, and beneath the camisole a black satin lace bra that grips my small bre
asts tight lifting them in mute appeal. Please love me, please look at me, how can you look away? Here I am, before you. My shiny-black hair I have ratted with a steel comb to three times its natural size, my mouth that’s small and hurt like a snail in its shell I have outlined in crimson, a high-gloss lipstick applied to the outside of the lips enlarging them so I’m breathless smiling making my way to the far side of the track being pushed against, collided with, rudely touched by—who?—sometimes I feel one of you brush against me light as a feather’s touch, purely by accident, or almost-accident, sometimes it’s a hurtful jolt, I could step aside if I’m alert enough but a strange lassitude overcomes me, this one isn’t the one, and yet!—the shock of him colliding with me as he hurries past, scarcely aware of me, doesn’t slow his pace or apologize, not even a murmured Excuse me, the touch is like an electric shock, half-pleasurable, though meant to hurt. As if he knows, this stranger, that he isn’t the one. Not tonight.

  That Sunday night, not late—not yet ten p.m. And not so crowded as the previous nights, those wild weekend nights, but still plenty crowded at Times Square, you can be sure. And I was the desperate girl you saw hurrying to make the downtown train. Before the doors closed. Stumbling in my high-heeled shoes so you might have thought there was something wrong with me, the over-bright glisten in my black-mascara eyes and parted crimson lips, the look in my feverish face of anticipation and dread, you’d have felt a stab of pity, and maybe something else, something deeper than pity, and more cruel, and possibly you’d offered to help me, offered your seat to me at least. And possibly, I’d have accepted.

  Always in the subway I think On this train, this train is my destiny: who? Which one of you? Tremulous with excitement. Anticipation. Pondering through my lowered eyelashes the possibilities. Mostly men of course but (sometimes) women also. Young men, middle-aged men, occasionally older men. Young women, with a certain sign. But never middle-aged, or older women. Never. I tried not even to look at them. Resented them, their raddled faces and tired eyes. And sometimes in those eyes a look of hope, which I particularly despised. For in the hopeless, hope is obscene! And when out of sheer loneliness one of these women smiles at me, moves over inviting me to sit beside her, like hell I will sit next to some old bag like she’s my mother, or grandmother!

  As if I would ever be one of them.

  On the train that night a woman of about forty-five took shrewd note of me as soon as I entered the car, out of breath and laughing to myself, my hair just slightly disheveled, fallen into my face. The woman was wearing a green uniform, and ugly dirty-white nurse’s shoes they looked like, and her dirt-colored hair flat against her head in a hairnet, staring at me not with sympathy or pity but with disapproval I thought, prissy fish-mouth I tried not to look at. Hate that type of person observing me, judging me coolly. Not to the hairnet woman was I pleading Look at me, love me! Hey: here I am.

  In the subway the trains move so swiftly you can never catch your breath. Outside the grimy window that’s a reflecting surface like a mirror mostly there are the rushing tunnel walls, that slow as the train slows for a station, and the doors open with a pneumatic hiss like the sigh of a great ugly beast, and passengers lurch off, and new passengers lurch on, and I lift my eyes hopeful and yearning Who will be my destiny? Which one of you? At 34th Street one of you entered the car, sat near me, I could see that he’d chosen the seat beside me deliberately, for there were other, unoccupied seats. The way his eyes trailed over me like slow slugs, my crossed legs in the patterned black stockings, my mouth in a dreamy half-smile, as if I’m expecting to recognize a friend. A friendly face. Like a child hoping to be pleasantly surprised, for I am not a cynical person by nature. And he stared at me appraising. His mouth moved into a kind of smile. He was many years older than I was, one of the bad-Daddys of the subway. In the underground are the bad-Daddys, you know one another. Staring rudely, with that smile at the edge of a sneer, or a sneer at the edge of a smile. In his early forties, pale coarse pitted skin attractive in that battered way some men are, that would be hopeless laughable ugliness in a female. Sand-colored hair crimped and wavy like a wig, and in his right ear lobe a silver ear cuff looking as if it might hurt, like something clamped into the flesh. The sign that took my eye immediately was that he was wearing suede, which matched my skirt: a black jacket with chrome studs. (The jacket was not “real” suede of course. My skirt, that strained at my thighs just inches below the fork in my legs, was not “real” suede of course.) He was wearing dark trousers and (fake) ostrich-skin boots. On his (hairy) left wrist, a heavy I.D. bracelet. When he opened his mouth to smile, there was the shock of a gleaming tongue-ring winking at me. As if he knew me he spoke a name, had to be a name he’d invented at that moment, or maybe it was a name known to him, of a girl he’d known and had not seen in years, and I smiled at him saying no that is not my name, I am not that girl, and he asked Which girl are you, then? And the tongue-ring winked at me in a nasty way, unmistakable. And I told him Lorelei—I am Lorelei. And he cupped his hand to his ear as if hard-of-hearing in the noisy subway train and he repeated the name Lorelei and added A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. It was not clear to me if he spoke these words truly or in jest but I saw that he was excited by me. I saw the light come into his eyes, that were ordinary small mud-colored eyes. In a lowered voice he began speaking of himself, said he was a lonely pilgrim searching for something he could not name, been searching for all of his life, would I like to have a drink with him, please would I like to have a drink with him, we could get off at the next stop and have a drink together, he knew just the place, and all this time I was quieting observing him, through my mascara-lashes I was observing him, his eyes that were ordinary and mud-colored and hopeful and the truth came to me No: he is not the one. So politely I told him I could not get off the train with him, no thank you. Told him that I was meeting someone else. And he stared at me not-so-friendly now, and spoke to me in a low crude voice not-so-friendly now, exposing the spit-gleaming tongue-ring not-so-friendly now, called me Lorelei like it was Loora-Lee and some kind of stupid name, cow-name, he didn’t think so much of. All this while other passengers in the train were trying not to observe us, trying not to hear the man speaking to me, the way you’d speak to (maybe) a retarded girl in the train, a girl her family ought not to have let ride the train alone, that kind of girl, but I am not that girl of course. One of those eavesdropping was the hairnet woman in the ugly green uniform, I saw now was food-stained, had to be a cafeteria worker probably, so I could pity her. The hairnet woman was frowning at both of us like we were the scum of the earth, so I could despise her.

  Shutting my eyes then, and not opening them until later, several stops later, the hairnet woman was gone and the tongue-ring man in the seat beside me was gone and I checked my reflection in my little gold mirror compact seeing a shiny nose, anxious eyes for I had almost made a mistake. That one was a test. In your ignorance you might have gone with him.

  For my life at that time was a continual testing. That in ignorance or desperation I would make a terrible error, and would not realize my destiny.

  Slamming into the car from the car ahead was a big girl of about thirty with no eyelashes like she’d plucked them all out or shaved them, and she’d shaved most of her head so just stiff platinum-blonde quills remained, so striking!—everybody in the car stared at her even those who’d been nodding off woke to take in such a sight. The girl’s face was glowing and shiny as if made of some synthetic material like flesh-plastic, with no pores, and her lips were swollen and pouty, and moved as if she was talking to herself. For in the underground, some of us sometimes talk to ourselves, and you are (maybe) meant to overhear. Seeing me, her eyes latching onto mine, she stopped in mid-stride and stood swaying above me holding the rail about two feet from me, observing me and a slow smile broke over the plastic-face like something melting. Big husky girl six feet tall in khakis and tight-fitting black T-shirt with DRAGO FREK in red letters. The sign was a bullet
-shape silver ring on the middle finger of her left hand which was the bullet-shape of the silver buckle of my belt cinching in my waist tight. Her eyes on me restless as those minnow-sized fish that devour living things in seconds—piranha. Leaned down to ask did I know what the freak time it was and I laughed saying no I did not know what the “freak time” it was, I was sorry. After ten p.m. I said, this is what I thought the time was up on the ground where there were clocks. This made Plastic Girl laugh too, and a smell of spicy meat came from her opened mouth. She asked didn’t I wear a wrist watch?—and I said no, and she laughed again saying Hey, was I a girl who didn’t give a shit about the time, and I frowned at this, I did not like to hear profanity or nasty words, not even from a girl who stared at me in a way that was flattering. All this while Plastic Girl leaning over me and breathing that meaty smell saying, I guess you’re the kind of girl who knows her own mind. That is fucking cool.

  Raising her voice to be heard over the racket of the train Plastic Girl started telling me about this place she was expected at, some kind of residence she wasn’t going back to, halfway-house, halfway-to-Hell house, except somebody there owed her, had clothes of hers and personal documents so she’d have to return except not by any fucking front entrance where you had to sign in, she’d get back inside by a window and it wouldn’t be broad fucking daylight, it would be night. I listened to Plastic Girl’s voice like it was a radio voice. It was a voice beamed to me that had nothing to do with me. Distracted by Plastic Girl’s heavy breasts swaying inside the T-shirt, and her belly above the zipper-crotch of the khakis pushing out round and hard like a drum. The bullet-shape silver ring that was the sign between us, that (maybe) Plastic Girl had seen also. And the thought came to me Is this the one? A female?