Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  Is she asking me for drugs? Because if she wants drugs, she should just say so.

  “What I’m saying is”—and here she puts her hand on mine—“what I mean is, you’re not alone.”

  I look past her out the window. In the distance, I can see lights from neighboring houses, which go out as if by agreement.

  “Blackout,” I say.

  Stanley comes to look as the wind takes a break. Our generator might be the only sound for miles.

  Twenty-one

  In the ten days we’ve been here, Hannah has alienated four children, two moms, and one rabbi. That girl who fly-papered her neck and forehead for the unveiling of ZOG Chicken’s new conveyor with the intent to subvert proceedings but with the effect of upgrading them—Hannah called her gay for not having an opinion about Stanley’s ass. The girl who pelts feed at the suits from Kroger, Hannah called her gay for having too many opinions about me. School is Stanley failing to coax her into the little building each morning. Home is me watching her rip pages from When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. I have begun canvassing moms at the plant to see what their kids are reading, just to keep Hannah on par. Kathleen, who works in legal, said her thirteen-year-old went nuts for The Face on the Milk Carton, which is about a lactose-intolerant girl who, in thrall to dairy addiction, reaches for the very carton bearing her likeness, which suggests, in all probability, that she was kidnapped as a toddler. I imagine the degree of wish fulfillment advanced by this novel has girls all over America going wonky. Certainly Hannah would love to think she’d been kidnapped—that her real family is living in a hot-air balloon traversing the skies of Malaysia. Yesterday, I found her editing with black marker a page from the YA novel Rat Boys: A Dating Experience. The premise? Girls needing prom dates abracadabra rats into prom dates, only Hannah does not like the word date, so she’s swapped it out for the considerably more topical death. Girls needing prom death turn rats into prom death.

  The decision was easy: Hannah needs to work.

  So today, we work. I’ve put her on the incubator task force; when the chicks hatch, she transfers them to the nursery. It always amazes me to see the eggs crack within minutes or hours of each other. Nature’s clock, which operates even in the most unnatural of settings. Eggs in a crate, crates stacked forty high in what amounts to an oven. The best part of incubator duty is handling the chicks, who come out bewildered and all fuzz—as if the fuzz were meant to communicate a state of mind. The worst part of incubator duty is knowing these little guys will die at the hands of a rabbi who can sever sixty necks in sixty seconds.

  As for me, I’m back on the evisceration team. I gather this is Wanda’s idea of the doghouse. Or maybe she thinks that instead of abandoning what I can’t do, I should try. Used to be I’d reach into a bird like you might a black sack at the magic show—fish around and see what you get. Rectal canal good, breast meat bad. No one knew how I kept coming out with breast meat, the chicken corpus is not like a squid, but, you know, leave it to me. Sharon advised I let the viscera reveal itself. No need to rape the cavity. I did my best.

  She asks what I’m doing for New Year’s, which is tonight. The Jewish New Year started months ago, but such is the tyranny of the Christian calendar. Naturally, I don’t much like New Year’s. In order from earliest to most recent, I have spent the last five like this: with people from boarding school at an unofficial reunion near school grounds watching the ball drop on TV; at some party having sex with some guy while watching the ball drop on TV; watching the ball drop on TV with syringe in tryst with a vein that showed itself, miraculously, just before midnight; at a rehab where we watched the ball drop with the sound off because Mandy was made psychotic by the din of any crowd; and finally, last year, in a network of lies disported to make all my friends think I was spending the night with other friends so that I could actually spend the night alone, watching the ball drop on TV.

  “Watching the ball drop,” I say.

  “Oh no, you can’t do that. That ball is evil. Bob Barker is evil.”

  I think she means Dick Clark.

  “Dick, Bob, whatever. They dye their hair, they are evil.”

  “I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about it.”

  “Well, I do. Come to my house. We’re playing Twister.”

  I reach into a bird and pull out what looks like a flaccid balloon the length of my arm ending in a knob’s worth of gut.

  “Stop right there!” Sharon yells. “That’s perfect.”

  We break for lunch.

  Joe’s brought a thermos of chicken soup. Am I the only one to find this vile? I am. The talk is about layoffs. The talk is always about layoffs. Joe’s got only himself to support, so he thinks he’ll get it first. Like ZOG Chicken gives a dime about his personal life. I say more likely me and Stanley get the boot. Joe says, rather bitterly, that I got Wanda eating out my ass. Rachel says, Really, Joe, not in front of the kid.

  Hannah wants out of the afternoon’s labors. Says this is yeomen’s work and that our cook’s shit tastes better than this lunch. Rachel’s mouth drops open. Sharon’s too. I feel inclined to excuse Hannah’s temperament, but what am I supposed to say? That our mom’s a crackhead, give the girl a break? If I know Wanda, the entire staff knows our story, anyway. On good days, I think discretion keeps them from asking questions. But mostly I think it’s disgust.

  “Do you like Twister?” Sharon ventures.

  “I like Twister,” Stanley says, which makes us all laugh. As if Stanley can even get his arms above sea level.

  “Then come on over,” Sharon says. “We’ll ring in the New Year like a pile of puppies.”

  I look from one face to another and think, These are my colleagues, this is my sister, this is my lover. I get up and go out the back, through the parking lot and into the fields. On either side a mountain range, the Allegheny and Appalachian, and everywhere else: snow. I start to feel majestic, like an elk, maybe. Just taking it in.

  Next I start to feel droopy and just a little stupid. My tracks in the snow are fascinating. I catch sight of a snowman in the lot and address myself to him. I have seen that movie where a boy’s dead father reincarnates in a snowman who will melt unless repaired to higher ground; where father and son bond on the hockey rink of love; where an earnest snowman can save the day. I wept through the entire thing. Why can’t my dad come back?

  Aggie saw the movie with me. She was agnostic on the matter of whether one could actually reincarnate in a snowman, so we suspended disbelief and celebrated the principle: We keep coming back until we get it right. I said but doesn’t the promise of a million chances recommend sloth? Why bother now if we can just fix it later? She said it’s not all that fun having to come back and suffer anew, and that the sooner you get it right, the sooner you can rest with God. Right, God. Every discussion ends in God.

  Me and the snowman were the same height. I’d skipped lunch, which made his face all the more appetizing. Raisins, prunes, carrot. Then again, on the off chance he really was my dad, this was probably not the way I wanted to initiate contact. I produced a haiku.

  Snowman who art Dad

  Get me the hell out of here

  Life unbearable.

  Sharon was calling my name. Break’s over. I trudged back to the rec room, through sterilization, and into my antiseptic white apron, white gloves, and white shower cap. Whatever I’d learned before lunch was long forgotten. I was tossing entrails all over the floor. Tossing and listing, because it was getting hard to stand up.

  Rachel said, “Are you high again? Oh, come on.”

  Sharon said, “Stop slurring, I can’t understand a word.”

  The conveyor whizzed past. Soft focus made everyone look like a tampon.

  In Wanda’s office it was something like: Don’t bring her in here, she’s covered in guts. And Hannah, who was making a beaded necklace in the corner, saying: Gross.

  They took off my gown, gloves, and cap.

  From the couch I said, “What’re you making
, Hannah? It’s pretty. You’re so good at this stuff. Hey, it’s beads! I love beads!”

  “Drop dead, Lucy.”

  But wait! I’m an elk! Just taking it in!

  The phone woke me. Wanda answered. Since it gets dark at four, it could have been four, it could have been eight. It was eight. She covered the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Sharon. Wants to know if you’re still coming tonight.” I nodded.

  She hung up. “Want some tortellini? I made it yesterday.”

  “What are you still doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Oh.”

  She made a decent tortellini. I said thanks. Where was Hannah?

  “Over at Sharon’s. Stanley, too. And Joe and Rachel.”

  I sat up. “Look, about before, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I mean it this time. It won’t. I’ve been trying to cut down. I just got, well I just messed up a little.”

  “How right you are. Because guess what? We finally got a bed for you. Tomorrow a.m., you’re getting on a bus. Your grandmother and I made all the arrangements.”

  “Oh, great. First day of the new year. Is that supposed to mean something? I’m supposed to turn over a new leaf? Resolutions are idiotic.”

  Wanda smiled and said, “I’m very pleased. This is the best thing for you right now.”

  I asked if she knew anything about the place.

  She said, “It’s in Texas.”

  I said I knew that, but could she tell me more.

  She said, “It’s in Texas.”

  We took her truck to Sharon’s. She’d fried the clutch so bad, we couldn’t get out of first gear.

  “Your driving’s making me sick,” I said.

  “Vomit in this car and you are dead.”

  We could see Sharon’s five minutes before we got there. She had a glowing Santa on the lawn. Candy-cane torchlights. Mylar bows on every post. When we opened her door, it jingle-belled. You’re here, look who’s here! She offered up two goblets of nog and some pinecone earrings. Everyone was wearing them, it seemed. Over her shoulder, I saw people I did not know sitting around a fire. Who are these people? “The brass,” Wanda said, and arranged her face into a smile. The brass are the men who run ZOG Chicken, and their wives. They were eating fruitcake.

  Sharon took our coats. “The gang’s over there,” she said, and pointed to a room opposite the brass. “But I’m trying to get them to mingle.”

  Wanda said, “No problem,” and cozied up to the dowager brass whose deceased had founded the plant.

  I made for the gang. They were crowded around the TV, which had me relieved. I am a little superstitious about the ball. Still, there were three hours to go, so why the focus?

  I was told to shush. If I hadn’t been so drained of the wherewithal to interest myself in other people, I might have gauged the tone of the room sooner. As is, it took a few seconds to realize we were watching the TV with horror. It was an emergency news flash: The superplague had hit California. It had not traveled from Minnesota, this was a new outbreak. The nation’s lunatic had struck again. Four people were dead.

  My first thought was rehab, thank God I’m going to rehab. My second thought was to suppress the first.

  Hannah was hugging her knees in a corner. I figured now was the time to mention I’d be letting her down first thing tomorrow. Plague’s a comin’, I’m a goin’.

  I managed to get her in my shadow before she stood and made for the other side of the room.

  The screen split into a quartet of coverage from the White House, the CDC’s headquarters, the Pentagon, and the biocontainment facility where the four victims and their families were being held. We watched a series of speeches asking for calm. We listened to scientists admit the situation was grave. We saw footage of the moon men zipping across Carmel and Big Sur, rounding up anyone who might have come into contact with the victims. Consensus among the experts: If this gets to Los Angeles, we are doomed.

  I held up my glass. “Nog, anyone?”

  Rachel turned off the TV.

  We heard laughter from the brass and envied it. Ten minutes ago, we were laughing, too.

  Joe said, “I thought maybe it was over because they nailed it in Minnesota.”

  “They got lucky,” Hannah said.

  “It can’t last,” Rachel added. “Not so long as that nut’s still out there. Can you imagine? One man could kill off half the world.”

  “How do you know it’s just one man? Maybe it’s organized. Like the Black Panthers.”

  For a moment, we all eyed each other suspiciously, which harbingered worse if plague hit Pennsylvania. Every man for himself.

  Sharon burst through the door. She was a little drunk. Why the long faces? It’s New Year’s!

  Without discussion, we were agreed not to spoil everyone else’s night. There was nothing to be done. In fact, I almost wished the press would start vectoring the news as per the North Koreans, where so long as you’re hidden, who cares if you’re starving. Because really, what is the point? We can’t protect ourselves, there’s nowhere to run. Okay, so maybe some of us will finally begin to live each day as if it were our last. But as Wanda said, most of us can’t finance our dreams, last day or not.

  “Well, come on!” Sharon said. “We’re setting up Twister.”

  We filed out of the room like men off the plank.

  Twister for adults is made for reunion weekends in the log cabin, just you and your five best friends from college graduated twenty years ago today, look at our paths divergent, and yet here we are with a bottle of Chardonnay, six wounded hearts, and a slipped disc. The one with the disc gets bedridden. The others cancel the river raft. Tempers flare, resentments will out. There is inadvisable sex between two. There are tears in the chamomile. Convalescence, hangover, s’mores. If only half as much happens tonight, it will bring the tramontane of Pennsylvania to their knees.

  Because we are new to each other, Sharon has issued name cards. Linda and Kathleen. Deirdre, Noah, Lonna, Donna. We are like the ZOG family singers. Rachel shakes out the Twister mat and secures it to the floor with paperweights. Doug Guildenstein, homosexual son of dead founder brass, mans the spinner. He has a bad knee. He sits on the couch with legs crossed, spinner handy, Merlot on deck. He’s wearing dress socks and penny loafers. Sharon seems alarmed by the prospect of brass v. yeomen, so she divides us up herself. She makes like she’s assessing our skills and choosing accordingly. Half of us find this funny, mostly the brass. The eldest has an umlaut in her name. Urüla. No clue how you end up with a name like Urüla or whence the umlaut, but Joe says she’s from New York, which apparently explains it.

  Urüla wants to captain our team. She’s got a vision. The youngest and most limber among us should go last. Seems reasonable enough, only the first trial asks Sal to make like a starfish and hold it. He does not last three seconds. He’s nearing seventy. He is an accountant.

  Urüla revisits her game plan. We are asked to huddle. I am beginning to wonder if she didn’t use to be one of those Eastern Bloc gymnastics coaches.

  Stanley and Wanda take to the mat. She’s on all fours, he rides her like a pony. Half of us find this funny, mostly the yeomen. Doug trades his Merlot for brandy. Watching him fondle that snifter puts me in mind of Masterpiece Theatre. He looks ready to impart wisdom. And when he calls out a new position, it sounds Shakespearean. Poor Doug, he was meant for better things. Had he not gambled away his share of ZOG stock, he might have financed a regional theater dedicated to the lost works of.

  I am told to squat and loop my arm around Wanda’s knee. Ah, the much touted indignity of Twister. I loop, Joe straddles, Kathleen assumes a yoga pose that seems unfair. She’s had training. I bet she can give herself head.

  Comes Hannah’s turn, the game gets ugly. Doug sends her to the other side of the mat, but somehow she’s able to hook her foot around my ankle and effect a collapse that slams me into an elbow and splits my chin.

  “Foul!” cries Urüla. “That’
s a foul!”

  Doug reminds Urüla that there are no fouls in Twister. Shylock could not have said it better. The game takes a break. My chin trails blood across the mat. I wonder if premonitions of blood account for the mat’s fabric, easily cleaned with sponge and water.

  Stanley ministers to my chin, which is more flap than chin. Two flaps, really. Must be some dry skin on Joe’s elbow, dry like a rotary blade. Stanley cannot stanch the blood, so he has me lean way back in my chair. I can see up his nose. If his teeth were terrible, it’d be like a dental appointment. My dentist, anyway, has ugly mouth. I figure in the way shrinks want to help you because they’re crazy, dentists have the ugly mouth.

  Hannah peers into my chin.

  “How’s the movie?” I ask.

  “You’ll need stitches. But probably I can sew you up for now.”

  “Why does that not excite me?”

  “What if I used black string? What if I rounded you up some painkillers?”

  Stanley says, “No way. It’ll get infected. Plus, you’re twelve.” He looks at me. “She’s twelve!”

  “Well, what would you suggest? No way we’re getting to an ER in this weather.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not if I get painkillers.”

  “We could tape it?”

  Hannah rolls her eyes. “You think Scotch tape is a better idea than sewing it shut? You’re a retard.”

  Sharon comes in to check on me. Takes one look at the gash and says, “Ewwww.”

  Does she have disinfectant? No, but she has vodka. All those who think vodka’s as good as hydrogen peroxide, say aye. It’s a split vote.