The Heaven of Animals: Stories

by David James Poissant

  “That’s terrible,” he said.

  When she met his eyes, her look was suspicious, unbelieving.

  “And I’m sure you would have picked it up.”

  “I caught it, didn’t I? I didn’t drop it.”

  “That’s true,” she said.

  Her feet left the water and her knees met her chin.

  “We’re bringing each other down,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Let’s just bring each other up.”

  She stood. Inside of a minute, she’d refastened her arm and pulled on her clothes. She wrung water from his shirt and held it out.

  She said, “Are you going to show me your place, or what?”

  . . .

  The apartment was small, four hundred square feet, give or take, outfitted with the essentials and little else. The main room was a coffee table, a couch, and a plastic crate overturned with a TV on top. The carpet was worn without being stained. The only thing segregating this room from the next was the kitchen’s linoleum and the narrow, transitional strip of aluminum tacked between. If Lily expected a bachelor pad, posters on the wall and nudie mags in a stack, she’d be disappointed. His was a den of divorce. Half the time on the road, he didn’t require much, and, perpetually broke, he couldn’t have stocked up on much if he did.

  “Cozy,” Lily said. Then: “It’s nice.” She ran her hand down one bare wall, beige. All of the walls were that innocuous shade of Band-Aid that put Brig in mind of hospitals or synagogues.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” he said.

  “Let’s do shots,” she said.

  Air blew cold through the ceiling vents, and Brig moved to his room. He changed into dry clothes, then reappeared with shorts and a shirt for her.

  “You’ve done shots before?” he asked.

  Lily rolled her eyes and took the clothes from his hands.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, her hair was combed. It hung, a wet veil, like black drapes around her face. He’d picked his smallest shirt, an old X-Men tee from high school that he’d never summoned the heart to throw out. It was a medium, and still it hung nearly to her knees, sleeves at her elbows. Wolverine leapt from the center, claws out. The fake arm gleamed, a tan, creamy plastic in the lamplight. Behind Lily, through the open door, a bra and panties hung from the shower rod, shorts and sweatshirt balled on the floor.

  He thought to retrieve his own clothes, tossed, water soaking into his bedroom carpet, but there was some momentum to be accounted for, and he didn’t want to lose it.

  “Tequila okay?”

  “Great,” she said, which was good. It was all he had, tequila and PBRs, a case in the fridge and two more in the closet.

  He searched the cabinets for a shot glass. He thought he’d had one once, but there was no telling. Finally, he pulled down a pair of mugs. One was yellow, a smiley face on its side. The other, white with brown stenciling along the lip, was an old Waffle House coffee cup, something a friend had stolen for him as a joke. Somewhere was the complete place setting: dish, cup, and saucer, fork and knife. He filled the mugs a quarter full with tequila and walked them along with a saltshaker to the coffee table. He returned to the kitchen and opened the fridge. On a shelf between an expired half gallon of skim and something in Tupperware leaned a lime of questionable integrity, rind chalky and soft. He cut it up anyway, then carried a pair of wedges to the couch.

  Lily was seated, and he sat beside her. Pharmaceutical Representative, the industry’s trade journal, lay in her lap, pages open to a Samsonite ad.

  “Which one do you have?” she asked.

  “Those are three-hundred-dollar bags,” he said. “Mine’s over there.”

  In the corner stood his suitcase, black and tan, his only piece from a matching set. The suitcase had a retractable handle and two wheels but lacked the lightweight frame people had these days, the four wheels that swiveled and turned on a dime. The set had been a present from Kate’s parents, a wedding gift as practical as they were. They’d tried saving the marriage, her parents, offering to pay for fertility treatments or pay off debts, anything they thought might be wrong. When the dilemma proved ineffable, they offered money for a marriage counselor. But Kate’s mind was made up. Brig wondered whether her parents knew the way it had gone down, or whether they blamed him, whether they assumed he’d left their little girl. He wanted them to have the whole story. He didn’t know why, but he wanted that.

  Lily tossed Pharm Rep onto the coffee table and held out her hand. He tapped salt onto her skin, then tapped some onto his own.

  “You first,” she said, which should have been his first clue. He licked the salt, took the shot, bit the lime. The liquor was cheap. It scalded his throat going down, then churned, syrupy and lava-hot, in his gut. He handed Lily the smiley face mug.

  “Count me down?” she said, and Brig did.

  On three, Lily licked her hand and downed the tequila, but she didn’t make it to the lime. She was coughing too hard, flapping her hand in front of her face, eyes watering.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

  “The lime gets the taste out of your mouth,” he said, but she waved him off.

  “I thought it would taste like a margarita.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She rubbed her shoulder. He wondered whether the arm ever itched or burned. One late-night documentary had taught him about amputees and the phantom limb pains they sometimes got.

  “You know how I promised to tell you if you were staring?” Lily said.

  He nodded.

  “You’re staring.”

  He apologized. He took the mug from her hand and finished the shot. More throat scouring, more burn.

  Lily said nothing. Her unused lime segment sat on the table, and she touched it with one finger. It rocked back and forth, a little green boat.

  “What are we doing here?” he said.

  “How do you mean?” She scooted closer so that their legs touched, and Brig stood.

  “Enough,” he said. “This is getting weird. Can I just come right out and say that this is getting weird?”

  “This got weird an hour ago,” she said.

  “And whose fault is that? Who took off her clothes? Who got me high?”

  Lily laughed. She stood and Wolverine stood with her.

  “I’m five foot four with one arm. You really think I could get you to do anything you didn’t want to?”

  She moved to him, pressed the full length of herself against him, hard, and put her lips to his neck. She didn’t kiss him, just let her lips lie there, soft, warm worms on his skin. Then she pulled away and pulled his hand with her to the bedroom.

  . . .

  A year, he’d waited for Kate’s call.

  “Call me when you get there,” she’d said. “Just so I know you’re safe.”

  He’d waited a month, then called. He got the machine with his voice still on it, and he left a message. Maybe he’d waited too long. Maybe, waiting, he’d hurt her feelings. But he’d been afraid to call without good news. Because, if he called with good news—proof he could get a job, hold it down, contribute to society and all that—maybe he could make her see he’d change, that, short of being the kind of happy she wanted him to be, he could at least be useful.

  He left her his new number and the address to his apartment. He told her what he’d been up to, told her work was good—a lie—and the city was safe—another lie. He told her how, just that morning, a quail had crossed the parking lot, identical brood trailing her like the miniature middles of a Russian nesting doll. Kate loved nesting dolls, had kept a dozen on the mantel in their home. He talked until he heard a beep, then called back and picked up where he’d left off. He told her everything he could think to say except that he missed her, which he did, terribly.

  “Call me,” he said at the end.

  He waited another month, then, worried she’d missed the first messages, called again. This time
, the voice on the machine was hers. She was going by her maiden name, and the new outgoing message was no-nonsense. Leave your name and number, and I’ll call you back, it said like a reprimand.

  He gave her his information again, then he gave her more news. He’d gotten a raise, he said—big lie. There was a chance he might be transferred to Atlanta—big, giant lie. He said he missed her, that he should have told her that the last time he called. Anyway, he wanted her to know just how much he missed her, how he didn’t care for this arrangement, how, before a year was up and the divorce became final, they might consider other options available to them. Could she call him? Please? And soon?

  A year went by.

  He called, left his message at the beep. If he could just have a minute of her time. All he really wanted was to say that he was sorry. He was so sorry, and, even if what they’d shared wasn’t happiness, exactly, then at least it was something familiar and good, certainly better than what he had now, which was nothing. Maybe, if it wasn’t too much to ask, maybe she would take him back and everything could return to the way it had been. Better than the way it had been. He would try harder, no matter what trying harder meant. He would work. He would take her places. He would listen when she talked. He really would try this time, if only she’d give him the chance. If it wasn’t too much to ask.

  The next week, the papers arrived.

  He didn’t sign them. By now, he knew enough to know it was over. He only wanted to talk to her. He thought, if he held back on the signing, she’d be forced to call, but the only calls that came were from her lawyer, then his.

  He signed.

  “Now leave her alone,” his lawyer said. “Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t give her reason to request a restraining order.”

  This seemed, to Brig, excessive. Had he missed something? Was this necessary? Restraint? Restraint from what? Brig had never raised a hand to her. He’d never raised his voice. He’d seldom raised his ass from the couch, and that had been the problem. But he’d outgrown that. A year in the desert, and he was a new man. He hoped he was.

  He hoped that this, all of this—the threat of restraint, Kate’s refusal to take his calls—was, in fact, proof of her affection, proof that maybe she cared too much, found the pain too acute to keep him in her life. And, if it was easier to cut him out of her life altogether, that didn’t mean she didn’t still love him. He believed this. He had to. This abiding belief kept him off the couch.

  Still, he wanted—needed—to hear Kate’s voice one more time. But, when he called, the number had been disconnected.

  Two more years, and word came from his parents that Kate was engaged. The guy was a big-shot lawyer. The announcement had filled a quarter page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

  “I’m sorry,” his mother said, but the conversation was cut short by a knock on the door. The woman in the next apartment wanted to know if Brig might be able to watch her cat.

  . . .

  They sat on the bed, then lay down. There was one pillow, and Brig let Lily have it. She stretched out on her back and studied the ceiling. He lay on his side and studied her. Her real arm was closest to him, and he wondered whether she’d picked her place on the bed on purpose, whether she lay on her back to shield the prosthesis from view.

  “Why Brig?” she asked.

  “Family name,” he said.

  “As in, a family of shipbuilders?”

  “Brig’s short for Brigham, as in Brigham Young, as in Mormon. And, before you ask, my dad had one wife. Like most Mormons. Just one. That fucking TV show’s got everyone confused.”

  “I love that show,” Lily said, and, when Brig gave her the eyebrow, she shrugged and said, “I’m kidding. I don’t watch TV.”

  He shook his head. “Who are you?”

  “Just a girl,” she sang, “just an ordinary girl.” She laughed at the ceiling.

  He wanted to tell her to knock it off. He wanted to say: For one second, be serious. But he also wanted to be inside of her. Or, he thought he did. Was he scared? He guessed he was. It wasn’t that it had been so long, though it had been. And it wasn’t that she was so young, though she was. It was something to do with the fact that the only woman he’d been with was Kate. The measuring stick of his love life came down to Kate, and sleeping with Lily meant doubling that count. Maybe he should have started sleeping with women right after the divorce, but that wasn’t the way he’d been raised. No matter that he no longer believed in the way he’d been raised—some things you couldn’t shake. And say he did it? Say he slept with Lily? How many women would he have to sleep with before each time didn’t feel like it meant so damned much?

  “You want to know who I am?” she asked.

  He did.

  “I started out a gymnast, and now I’m a diver. I’m an A student. I like birds, and I’ve kept the ticket stub to every movie I’ve ever seen: a hundred and forty-two—a hundred and thirty if you don’t count the ones I saw more than once. My parents are Baptist. They voted for Bush. Twice. They try to get everyone to convert. But, wherever they go, Brazil or Belize or wherever, they bring food, books and maps, crayons for the kids, so that’s cool. Sometimes people go along with it just for the food at the end. You can tell.”

  Brig’s parents had been strict, but not mission-oriented. Either you were Mormon or you weren’t, and God have mercy on those who were not—that was their position.

  “My parents actually worry about them,” she said, “about the ones who play along, then go back to worshiping the river gods, or whatever. One time I said, ‘So what?’ I meant it as in ‘At least you’re helping them out.’ But my parents don’t think that way. They don’t care about saving lives. They care about saving souls. I got a month in my room for that one.”

  “They lock you in your room?”

  “Not literally. I just mean they grounded me for a month. No phone, no friends.”

  She pushed her hair out of her face, let her hand fall on his leg and rest there.

  “But you know what that’s like,” she said. “You must.”

  He couldn’t deny it. On the more absurd end of the spectrum, he’d once been grounded two weeks for trying Coke at a friend’s party.

  “You’ve done coke?” Her eyes widened at the ceiling. She looked so impressed, he almost let it go, but he couldn’t.

  “Coca-Cola,” Brig said. “Soda.”

  “Mormons don’t drink soda?”

  “Or coffee, or tea. Tequila’s right out.”

  Lily laughed. “Holy shit.” Her hand moved up his thigh.

  “And your tattoo?” he asked.

  “They’ve never seen it,” she said.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Speedo covers it. Plus, we don’t show much skin in my family.”

  Brig’s either. His parents had been big on modesty, pants for Dad and high necklines for Mom. First time he’d brought Kate home, she’d worn a blouse that made good use of her cleavage. They’d said nothing, his folks, but he’d sensed the disapproval in their thin smiles.

  “Your parents,” he said, “if they knew you were here?”

  “Oh, they’d shoot you,” she said. “I mean Thou shalt not kill, sure, but let’s be honest. They’d shoot you dead.”

  “And what about you?” he said.

  “What about me?”

  “You buy into it, all the God stuff?”

  Lily seemed to think on this. Her hand worked its way up his leg until her fingers found the drawstring of his shorts.

  “I do,” she said. “Not the way my parents do, but I do. It all just seems too big for there not to be one.”

  She pulled, and the bow he’d tied came undone at his waist.

  “I mean, just because my parents have this kind of messed-up take on it doesn’t mean there can’t be a God. And just because I do stupid stuff doesn’t mean I don’t want someone up there watching me do it.”

  Her knuckles were at his navel, the back of her hand turning slow circles into
his abdomen.

  “It’s just, the arm,” he said. He was feeling dizzy, euphoric. He felt the way you felt coming in out of a cold rain, waiting for the shower to warm. “If it were me . . .”

  “It’s not you,” she said. There was a line, and he’d put one foot over it.

  “Besides,” she said, “you’ve got your own shit to worry about. Don’t bring me into your shit.”

  “You don’t know anything about my shit,” he said, and the warmth was suddenly gone, the warmth and the hand, the slow circles setting his skin aflame. She turned onto her side. She faced him, now, watched him with the same intensity she’d been giving the ceiling.

  “You’re angry,” she said. “You still love her, and you’re mad at God.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been mad at God a long time. Kate couldn’t change that. She thought she could, but she couldn’t.”

  He reached for her hand, but her arm was beneath her. If he wanted a hand now, it would have to be plastic.

  “Anyway, I’m done with God.”

  Lily smiled. “But what if it’s not God you’re mad at?” she said. “What if the thing you’re mad at is this idea of God, this really bad idea you got from other people. What if God exists? What if God is love? Aren’t you going to feel stupid later?”

  “I don’t believe in afterlives,” he said. He wanted to, but getting rid of hell had meant jettisoning heaven. He’d practiced the rhetorical backflips of one without the other, but what was grace without justice? Halos begged firebrands, fangs wings.

  Better the ground. Better the great, white blank.

  “You believe in heaven?” he said.

  Lily turned onto her back, and again her hand was at his waist.

  “I have to,” she said.

  She slipped her hand down his pants, took hold, let go.

  “You have protection?” she said.

  . . .

  In the bathroom, he braced himself against the sink. His head spun, and he wondered whether he was coming down with something, whether the tequila might come back up. He shut his eyes and opened them. He splashed water on his face. The comb she’d used sat on the countertop, and he pulled a black hair from it. He took hold of each end and stretched the hair to its full length, two, maybe two and a half feet. He thought of flossing with it, then dropped the hair into the sink. He turned on the faucet, and the hair curled in the water, then slipped down the drain. With Kate, he’d been forever snaking the bathroom sink, pulling fat, globby hunks of hair like drowned mice from the drains, the smell so bad he often gagged. And it occurred to him that, since Kate, he hadn’t needed a snake. Three years, and not once had his drain clogged.