by L. L. Soares
"I ran away from home a bunch of times after that, trying to keep her from healing them. I knew the wounds were special, even then. A special gift. And I knew that, no matter what, I shouldn't lose them."
"How did you survive, running away so young?" Janet asked.
"It wasn't easy," the girl said. "A couple of times, over the years, they found me and made me go home again, but I never stayed long. Whenever they tried to heal me, I'd run away again. One time I overheard them talking, Mama and my stepdaddy, saying they were going to have me locked up somewhere. They didn't know I'd heard them. I ran away for good that time. I must have been fourteen or fifteen by then. They never found me again. You see, my wounds are more important than them. More important than even me. I couldn't let anything happen to them."
"Do you want another burger?" Janet asked. "If you want anything else, anything at all, just let me know."
"Thanks."
"So, how old are you now?"
"I turned twenty-one a couple of weeks ago," the girl said. "It was so nice. Some people got me a cake and everything."
"And you never healed, after all this time."
"My wounds haven't healed because they're not meant to. They're special. I won't let them heal. Ever. It was only the last year or so that I realized I should show off my wounds, and not just keep them for myself."
"What's your name?" Somehow it hadn't come up until now. "Mine's Janet."
"Sally," the girl said. "That's what they used to call me. In some ways, I feel like I left that name behind when I left home. People can call me whatever they like. Names don't matter much. I don't need a name, you see, because it's like a decoration people feel they need, to be individuals. Me, I already have all my decorations.
"Thanks for the food, Janet, but I really must be getting back. There will be people waiting."
"Can I see you again after your next showing? There's so much more I want to talk to you about."
"Okay," Sally said. "But I'll have to be leaving in the morning. I've stayed here too long as it is. I get restless. I can't stay in one place too long. I want as many people to see my gifts as possible."
"Do you have a place to sleep tonight?"
The girl hesitated. Obviously, she must have been staying somewhere since she came to town. The gallery, most likely.
"You can stay with me if you want," Janet said, taking charge of the situation. "I have plenty of room. I've been divorced for just over a year now. Sometimes it can get real lonely in that house, and I never did have any children..."
"Children," Sally said, a far-away look in her eyes. "I don't think I'd ever want any. My wounds are my children. Three little babies holding hands on my belly. Like I'm always pregnant, but I never have to go into labor. I never have to give them up to the world."
Janet watched the girl eat. She was so hungry. "Will you promise you'll come back with me after your showing?" Janet asked. "I'll make you a home-cooked meal and a big breakfast in the morning, so that you'll have a full stomach when you leave."
"Sure," Sally said, finishing her last burger. It was the first time she looked right into Janet's eyes. Most of the time, the girl looked down when she talked. Janet thought maybe the eye contact was the girl's way of letting her know she trusted her.
* * *
"So what was your husband like?" Sally asked. "You keep asking so much about me, but I'm sick of talking about me. My wounds are me. They're all I have to offer anyone that's any good. You, you've got other things to offer. I can tell. And you've got your own wounds, too, but they're hidden deep inside you. It's up to you if you want to show them to me."
"You're so open," Janet said. "So... so, I can't put it into words."
"You don't have to. That's the best part. Just feel things, sometimes. You don't always have to explain everything. Everyone is always saying there have to be answers to everything. There has to be a reason why we're on this earth. It makes no sense to me. Maybe there is nothing but what we experience from moment to moment. Maybe nothing is supposed to make sense. That's how I take life. I just want to share it with people, show them my wounds. Sometimes, they show me theirs. Sometimes, they can't bring themselves to do it, but they try. Either way, I don't judge them. They do what they can."
Janet chewed on an after-dinner mint without thinking about the taste. She didn't know what to say next. She wasn't even sure why she'd pursued Sally so aggressively, why she'd brought her here, to her home. She'd thought she wanted to hurt the girl. There was a bag of ropes and sharp tools in the basement. Janet had bought them while she waited all afternoon for Sally to finish her time in the gallery. She had wanted to make the girl cry out. Make her bleed. But she didn't want to do that anymore.
There was an awkward silence.
Sally reached out and touched Janet's hand, gently.
"What shape is your wound, Janet?"
"I don't know," Janet said, suddenly tasting the flavor of the mint. Like a series of soft sparks.
"Then, maybe I can help you find out."
Janet helped her clear the table. Then they undressed one another. Sally had a slender, fragile-looking body. Janet wondered when was the last time she'd had a real meal. She would have looked so vulnerable, standing there before her, if not for her wounds.
Janet reached out to touch them, but hesitated.
"Go ahead," Sally said. "It's okay. Really."
Janet rubbed her fingers against the children who decorated Sally's stomach, the birds in flight above them. The girl turned around, and Janet saw more birds, and a sun, dotted rays shooting out of it. A pink, fleshy sky.
Janet touched the wounds, just as she had that first time in the gallery when she'd paid the five dollars. The experience had been so powerful then that she'd panicked. She had overreacted. Waiting for her, that first time, outside the building, she had prayed the girl had not heard about her conversation with the gallery owner.
Now, the wounds were more intimate, as if she had bought them and they belonged to her alone. She almost forgot about the person attached to them. Sally didn't seem to mind, enjoying the sensations as Janet explored.
As she let herself get absorbed in the experience, Janet found herself nuzzling the wounds with her face. Her lips. Her tongue. A thousand tiny mouths sang softly in her ear.
Sally grasped Janet by the shoulders and leaned her back onto the table. Janet did not resist. She looked up into the girl's eyes, looked at the cheeks stained with perpetual tears, as if she had been crying acid.
"I'll help you find your wounds," Sally said, her voice full of authority now. "I'll let you see their patterns."
Janet said nothing as the girl began to touch her.
* * *
"Good-bye," Sally said, getting out of the car.
"Good-bye," Janet repeated.
Janet had brought her to the town limits. She offered to drive her further, but Sally told her this was far enough. She said she had to find her own way, alone.
Janet thought that parting would be much harder, that she would beg Sally to stay. But she hadn't. It was as if Sally had left enough of herself behind to sustain her.
When Sally was out of sight, Janet drove back home. She had to resist the urge to speed the whole way back.
When she returned home, Janet went immediately to her bedroom. The bed was still unmade, and she removed her clothes.
In the full-length mirror behind the bedroom door, she looked at herself naked and tried to imagine wounds of her own.
Shaped like open hands and bow ties.
Part Three: Laura Cooney & L. L. Soares in Collaboration
In Sickness
Zach found himself wondering how he'd murder his wife. There were so many ways to do it, and he'd rolled each over in his mind at least once. It all seemed inevitable, her dying by his hands. But then again, it had seemed inevitable for years now, and it hadn't happened yet.
He was sitting in his car outside Horatio's Hot Dogs, which used to be an A&W Root
Beer drive-in restaurant when he'd been a kid, eating a chili dog and trying to keep it from dripping onto his pants; something else that was probably inevitable.
He looked through his windshield at the neon blue sign above the restaurant, and the words below the name which read 'The Pride of Blue Clay.' Did a city really take pride in its hot dog stands? Even a place as fucked up as Blue Clay? Maybe it worked back in the 1950's, but these days it sounded hokey as hell.
"Shit!" Zach groaned, as a lump of chili missed the napkin on his lap and stained his pants.
He'd hear it from Maddy when he got home, if not right away then when she did the laundry. Why was he so clumsy? Sometimes it was like living with his mother all over again. So much for the joys of married life.
He dabbed a napkin in his Coke and wiped at the stain, and the hot dog in his hand dripped again. "Fuck!" He threw the hot dog out his open window. He never did understand why he liked the damn things so much anyway; they always gave him heartburn afterwards, and they were messy as all hell.
He cleaned up as best he could and started the car. He pulled out of the parking lot, one hand on the steering wheel, and one holding the soda close so he could suck on the straw every now and then.
It was getting late and he figured he might as well go home.
* * *
Maddy smiled as she heard Zach's car in the driveway.
"My man's home!" she said, giddily.
She turned off the TV and stood up. She grabbed the brush off the table and fixed her hair, then ran to the door as she heard him come up the front steps.
Maddy pulled open the door and smiled at Zach's anxious face.
"Darling!" she said, throwing her arms around him. "I love you. I love you! I love you so, so much!"
Zach sniffed at her neck, then pushed her away.
"Oh, hell, Maddy! You've been drinking again!"
"No, Zach. It's my stiff neck. I put rubbing alcohol on it."
"Just get inside. We don't need to be putting on a show for the neighbors."
Maddy nodded and stepped aside for Zach. She followed him inside and shut the door quietly.
"Would you like your dinner, darling?"
"I already ate."
"Oh, okay." Maddy smiled. "That's good because I forgot to make dinner, haha."
"I figured as much. Don't worry about it." He was clearly disappointed in her behavior. Even though he often went out to drink with the guys, he always frowned on her drinking. He told her all the time, when she drank she got obnoxious. But the way she saw it, she deserved to get drunk even more than he did.
Judgmental prick, she thought as she continued to laugh. To pretend she was happy. Supposedly when you drank the truth came out, but she found the opposite to be true. She acted the exact opposite of what she felt, for a little while anyway.
Until the depression kicked in.
"So, did you eat anything?" Zach asked. "Or have you been drinking this whole time?"
"I don't remember," she said. "I guess I must have eaten something."
She was trying to hug him, but he kept his distance, looking at her like she was an alien masquerading as his wife.
It didn't take long before her alcohol-induced laughter turned to sobs, and she cried herself to sleep on the sofa. Zach ignored her and watched a marathon of Gunsmoke on cable television, the shadows of the cowboys dancing across Maddy's face.
* * *
She woke up with a hangover. Zach had long since gone up to bed, and she was grateful not to find herself covered in her own vomit. That had happened before and it was pretty gross. And disorienting.
She walked to the kitchen, ran the faucet, and was splashing cold water on her face when she saw them in the backyard. She'd left the outside light on, and they were staring at her through the kitchen window.
The children.
A boy and a girl: the boy bigger and plumper, wearing some torn old clothes; the girl in a dirty dress that had once been a luminous yellow. Their faces now reminded Maddy a lot of those fetal pigs she'd dissected in high school biology class. Their beady eyes focused on her until she turned away.
"What's wrong?" Zach asked, coming into the room. "Do you see them again?"
Maddy scowled at him.
"Shut up!" she snapped. "Do you see them again? Do you see them again? Yeah, that's it, I'm a fucking lunatic freak alcoholic."
Zach rolled his eyes. "You said that, I didn't."
Maddy gripped the sides of the kitchen counter, took a deep breath in, then exhaled. She stared at the knife in the dish rack, swallowing the impulse to pick it up and stab Zach in the stomach and those two damn pig babies along with him. Stab 'em in their little piggy eyes and see 'em cry pig's blood tears.
"What are you smiling for?" Zach asked.
"Leave me alone, okay?"
Zach shook his head. "I don't get you. One minute you're grinning like the Cheshire cat, and the next, you look like you want to kill me. I think you're losing it."
Maddy opened her mouth to reply, then froze when she heard the laughing. The little piglets were laughing at her.
"What's the matter? What are you looking around for?" Zach asked.
Inwardly, Zach groaned. I seriously don't need this nursemaid shit. Times like this, he really thought seriously about up and leaving. Just going out to get a pack of cigs, Mad. Such a god-awful cliche. Maybe that's what made it funny.
"Shut-up!" Maddy shouted.
She was standing in the middle of the room, staring up at the ceiling.
"Maddy, I didn't say a goddamn thing. You're seeing them again. Don't shit me."
"Yeah, I'm crazy! You'd love that, wouldn't you? You can't commit people that easily anymore."
More's the pity, he thought. Then he looked into her face. Her gray eyes wide with fear, her body braced for attack, and he realized it wasn't just the two kids that she was bracing against; it was him as well. She didn't have anyone in the world she felt she could trust. She was like a frightened stray kitten, caught in a back alley.
Zach approached her. She tried to push him away, but he wrapped his arms around her and caressed her. She stopped struggling and sighed, her body collapsing into him like a rag doll.
"Please, let's not fight anymore, Maddy."
She let the tears gush out, and it sounded like the rush of a faucet turned full force inside her head, drowning out the laughter of the pigs.
* * *
"Why don't you just leave the bitch," Carol Anne said as she rolled over in bed, her perky breasts riding up over the bed sheet. "I really don't understand why you put up with that shit. You don't love her anymore, do you?"
Anymore. That was the key word, because he had loved Maddy once. Back when they'd been high school sweethearts. He'd always thought they'd break up for good after graduation, go their separate ways, but they didn't. They were both scared of the outside world and never left Blue Clay, and only seemed to find comfort in each other. They'd both come from awful family lives they couldn't wait to escape. So they escaped together, but not far enough. Never far enough.
Zach couldn't leave Maddy. They had too much history together, and he couldn't help feeling that he was somehow responsible for the way she was now.
Which got him thinking of how to kill her again. It was something he thought a lot about these days: how to put her out of her misery. It was a compassionate thing, to his mind. Not a cruel thing at all. But he could never decide on the best way to do it.
"I can't do that," he said. "Not yet."
"Do you expect me to wait forever?" Carol Anne said. He knew it was so much hot air, that they'd had this argument a dozen times before, and it led nowhere. It was her way of twisting the knife in him, of making him realize that she was here for him, that she offered him some escape from his home life. She wanted him to acknowledge how much she helped him, and she wanted him to treat her like someone important.
"I don't care how long you wait," Zach said. "You knew what you were in for when we
first started this thing."
"I just want you to appreciate me," she said. "I'm sane at least. I don't stress you out like she does."
But she did stress him out, in a different way. She was so damn needy. And while she didn't have outbursts like Maddy, didn't have those fluctuating, unpredictable moods, she had her own set of problems. Sometimes she was an escape for him, and other times she was just another burden.
She knew never to push things too far, that he'd end it if it became too much trouble. And she didn't want things to end between them. He was one of the few sources of sanity in her life, too.
"I don't understand you, sometimes," Carol Anne said after a bit.
"That makes two of us," Zach said, and started getting dressed.
* * *
Maddy was lying face down on the kitchen floor, pressing her hand into the sticky spot. Did Zach spill that? Zach spilled that. Zach was clumsy and he dropped things a lot and he didn't pick the stuff up. She liked the sticky feeling. It was as addictive as peeling glue off your fingers.
Maddy put her nose to the spot and sniffed. Beer, she thought. That's Zach's beer. I like wine. Beer comes at you through the stomach, but wine creeps up your spine and rests on the back of the neck like a big hand. And that's the coziest feeling in the world, she thought, closing her eyes.
She heard the kids chirping like crickets. A finger prodded the space between her shoulder blades. She tried to fall asleep, but the finger was persistent.
"Mommy," a high-pitched voice said that could have been either the boy's or the girl's.
"Go away," she said.
The little boy lay his head down on the floor beside hers. His face was fat and thick and creamy, reminding her of tapioca pudding. His eyes were squinted from smiling. He looked more like a pig than ever.
