by Lydia Millet
Curiously, some people appeared to believe it.
“Bridewarrior?” asked Addison. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s like this pagan deal. Ritual nudity?”
“OK, maybe later,” said Nancy.
“We’re just trying to talk here, Salvador,” said Addison, patronizing.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Susan asked Nancy, who looked up gratefully.
“Sure, do you have cranberry juice?”
“Take a spritzer,” said Addison.
Sal fumbled with the Walkman, pressing buttons.
“So this track’s called ‘Motherblood,’ ” he said. No one was paying attention. “Wait, wait. This other one rocks even harder. ‘Black Carbuncle.’ ”
When she came back with the drinks they’d requested he was still declaiming.
“It’s on Cruel Scars of the Bone Beast. Then there’s ‘Uterus of the Earthworm.’ ”
Susan leaned down with the drinks tray, feeling like a waitress.
“Earthworms don’t have uteruses,” said Addison.
T. had just come in and was standing beside Casey, smiling faintly at the conversation. He lifted his glass to drink.
“Not the point,” said Sal. “It’s a dark hellish vision.”
“Well, but—” started Nancy.
“What she might mean,” interrupted Addison, “is it’s this, you know, kinda bad poetry.”
“It’s not fucking gay-ass poetry, man,” said Sal. “It’s music.”
“But—”
“You just don’t get it,” said Sal, and shook his head in disgust.
“I had to dissect a worm once,” said Nancy to Casey. “Back in Invertebrate Biology.”
“Excellent,” said Sal.
“Could you check on Angela?” asked Casey, as Susan began to move away. “She’s lying down upstairs. In the room with the Arctic fox.”
“Of course,” said Susan.
She passed Reg and Tony on her way to the stairs, standing in front of an eagle diorama outside the birds-of-prey room.
“It’s totally Natural History Museum,” said Reg. “Circa 1950.”
“I love it,” said Tony.
“Me too,” said Susan, and they gazed at the eagle. It had its wings back and talons out, coming in for a landing. Beneath it, on a gritty stretch of fake sand, a mouse cowered.
Walking up the stairs, she stopped and stood still on the landing, as usual. No airplanes, but there was a searchlight weaving back and forth across the sky. Always some light, in that black square—what you observed was forms of light—she tried to assess her drunkenness. She needed to drink more water, clearly. She breathed in, found a familiar body against her, and leaned back, contented.
“Ten minutes alone,” said Jim into her ear. “I can get the job done in ten. Done and done well.”
“I have to check on Angela.”
She was drunk enough to have a pleasant feeling of chaos—a fluid chaos, not harmful but thrilling—she could welcome it, she could feel a kind of carefree anger against the cousins brewing in her and trying to supplant the fear of them. She walked with Jim along the darkened second-floor hallway and knocked on the door of the Arctic room, then, when there was no answer, pushed it open. Under the blaze of overhead light the white fox crept forever, but no older woman.
“She’s nowhere,” said Jim.
“She has this, you know, early-onset Alzheimer’s, basically,” she said in a low voice. “With some other things going on too. Mixed features, I think the shrinks call it. We need to find her.”
They checked the other bedrooms, one by one—Rainforest, Himalayas, Indian Subcontinent. Then onto the barren wastes of Mongolia and The Soviet Union. She rarely came in here. Beyond an amateurishly painted Lenin, The Soviet Union had nothing but a massive, shaggy animal that looked like a bison, marked WILD TIBETAN YAK, and a sturdy horse marked EQUUS PRZEWALSKI.
“This guy shot horses?” asked Jim.
Finally they had checked every room save horned beasts. As they approached she could hear the shower running from her own bathroom and in a flash she remembered: the woman had tried to kill herself in a bathtub once, after her husband left. The onset of her decline.
“Wait,” she told Jim, and rushed forward to open the bathroom door. “Angela? Is that you?”
Only the small bulbs over the vanity were lit. When she flicked on the rest she saw Angela standing up in the bathtub—not naked, small mercies. She had a towel wrapped around her and her hair plastered down on her head and the shower water was spattering down behind her.
Susan was relieved.
“Are you OK?” she asked, and reached past Angela to turn off the faucets. Water fell on her hair and face as she stretched her arm out. She looked around hastily till she saw the hook that held her terrycloth robe. “Here. Put this on.”
Angela looked at her blankly. Soaking wet, she was pitiable.
“Here, I’ll—right arm—left arm—there you go,” and she tied the belt around the slim waist and snaked the towel out from beneath. “Why don’t you come with me.”
Angela’s clothes were nowhere to be seen so Susan led her toward the closet. Jim stood next to the open bedroom window smoking, holding his cigarette outside.
“Could you go find T.?” she asked him. “Or Casey. Either of them will do.”
She wouldn’t ask Angela what she had been doing in the shower—it seemed a rude intrusion. And when she asked about the clothes again the woman looked vacant, so she held up a dress of her own. “Do you think you could be comfortable in this one?”
Angela nodded but seemed distracted.
After some awkwardness she got the dress on, albeit with difficulty, as Angela stood limp and pliable in front of her. She was wondering if she had to find shoes for her too—whether they wore the same size—and then giving up and heading for the bathroom sink for a glass of water when T. came in.
He put an arm around his mother and steered her over to the bed to sit down.
“She suffers from trichophobia,” he said. “Now and then. One of a number of complications.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is,” said Susan.
“No one does. It’s a fear of loose hairs.”
Susan gazed at him dumbly, sitting on the edge of the bed with his mother, slowly patting her hand. After a few seconds she ducked through the bathroom door and filled a cup.
“It’s intermittent,” said T. “But when it—she tries to wash them off.”
“Animal hairs, too? Because in that case—”
“I don’t think so,” and he shook his head. “It’s long hair that’s the trigger, mostly. This extreme disgust with long hairs. And it’s if they’re loose, only. Not if they’re on your head.”
There was fear of everything these days, she found herself thinking—as though it was magnanimous. A generosity of fear.
The fear of litigation. Was there a name for that?
She remembered an earlier impulse.
“Listen,” she said abruptly. “I haven’t asked you yet, but I do want to know. How was he?”
“How—?”
“In those—those days you were down there with Hal. How did he seem?”
T. gazed at her levelly, idly draped an arm around his mother’s shoulders.
“He seemed all right,” he said mildly.
“It’s that—you’re the only one I can ask.”
T. nodded, his head barely moving, and gazed past her to the open window.
“He was worried about me,” he said. “I was nothing to him, but he was still worried.”
She waited. On the nightstand a clock was flashing 12:00.
“He was preoccupied, though,” he went on. “He was down there looking for something.”
“You,” she said.
“Yes, but—yes and no, I got the feeling.”
She preferred not to look at him straight on, so she switched her gaze to his mother instead, who wa
s studying her own bare feet. The toes were polished light pink.
“I should say, I do know why he went down there,” T. said gently, after a minute. “But in the end it wasn’t that. I mean yes, he was recovering. He slept a lot. A bit of binge drinking. And in his spare time he was looking for me. But also, he was—I remember thinking he was like a child.”
“A child?” she asked. It surprised her.
“There was something childlike about him. Like someone who’s never left home. That’s what it was: someone who’s lived in one place all his life. And then suddenly travels to a new country.”
On the wall beside them the African plain was palely visible. She reached out her right hand to sweep her fingers over the painted fringe of tall grass that grew up from the floor.
Of course, you couldn’t feel the grass.
Still the smoothness of the wall was somehow disappointing.
“But he had traveled before,” she said softly. “I mean we traveled together. Mostly before the accident. We did road trips. And we went to Europe, once. He was impressed by Europe.”
“I didn’t really know him,” said T. “As you said. That was just how he struck me.”
They sat there quietly for a while in the dim light of the bedside lamp, until T. turned and looked at the wall painting, one of the big spreading trees. Possibly an acacia, Susan thought idly. They looked different over there.
“Hunting, you know, it wiped out some of them,” said T., scanning the animal figures in the background. “It’s not a leading cause of extinction around here anymore. But Africa, yeah. Monkeys killed for the bush meat market, for instance. Elephants for ivory, rhinos for powdered horn. You know: some Chinese people, a folk-wisdom group that isn’t actually particularly educated in Chinese medicine, think it’s an aphrodisiac. Globally, mostly the driver is habitat loss. But soon the leading cause is going to be climate change. Or too much carbon, anyway.”
“What?” asked Susan. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head.
“Is it time to go home?” asked his mother, raising her head.
“I think so,” said T., and helped steady her as she got up. “Sorry,” he said to Susan. “We were hopeful she would last a little longer this evening.”
“Please, no,” said Susan, and turned to Angela. “It’s fine. I’m just glad you’re all right.”
They left the room, T. and Angela walking slowly into the wide hall with Susan behind them. She flicked on the line of sconces as they passed; it was too dark for strangers, who knew what they might bump into—dim shapes of horn and hair, the lips of elk. Then she noticed the sconces still had their basins half full of light-brown moth bodies.
We’re brittle and fading, she thought. Fading like moths, gray-blond mothers. With each day the population aged. Maybe not in the so-called third world, where there were plagues of babies, but here, where there were plagues of the elderly. Before long there would be scores of old ones for each of the young, their lives prolonged but rarely cherished—certainly not by the old themselves, who hung on by threads of pharmacology in stages of slow death. Not by their children either, the children moved away pursuing an idea of self, an idea of fulfillment as once, not all that long ago, nomads had followed the seasons. They lived their adult lives in distant cities now.
Soon all the young would be absent, lifted into the momentum of their speedy existences in which the past was only a minor point of information—the parents who had raised and loved them, even adored them with all their hearts, only the vaguest imprint.
Ahead of her Angela picked her way with care down the wide stairs, as though her bones were hollow. Yes, it was coming, the generations of the ancient would be left to their own end. The grandmothers would feed the great-grandmothers in their final falls, the ones in their seventies would tuck in the sleepers who were in their eighties, nineties, hundreds—
Hal, she thought, had been on the cusp of a whole new life.
Regret needled her, and something like envy.
“Oh,” said Angela, as they led her past the eagle. “A beautiful birdie.”
In the foyer the two of them watched as T. leaned down to Casey to say good night—Angela smiling vaguely, Susan feeling a quick, guilty flush of pride in her daughter. Together they were beautiful, it couldn’t be denied. Then T. took his mother’s arm again and Susan followed them outside and helped Angela into the passenger seat of his car. The high-end black Mercedes was an affectation he still hadn’t dropped, it turned out.
There was continuity there, at least. She felt reassured by the black Mercedes.
As she went indoors again she waved at Casey, who had moved outside and was sitting by the pool, talking to Jim and others in the dappled turquoise refractions. The lights in the library were on so she ducked in and saw piles of books all crooked on the floor, then Nancy and Addison, the quiet college girl whose name Susan forgot, and Sal. It smelled liked marijuana.
“Oh shit,” said Sal under his breath, when he saw her coming. He had the joint in his hand and seemed to be casting around for an ashtray.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve actually seen pot before.” There was an ashtray on a sideboard, she recalled, and headed over to pick it up.
“Thanks, man,” said Sal.
“So we’ve been looking at these antique anatomy books,” said Nancy. “Animal anatomy. Some are from the 1920s. There are diagrams of earthworms.”
“Informative,” said Susan, and set the ashtray on an end table.
“It says here worms are gay,” said Sal. “Listen. ‘Two earthworms mate by attaching at their clitella and exchanging sperm.’ They sperm on each other.”
“It’s not uncommon, in nature,” said Nancy.
“The worms aren’t gay,” said the girl from UCLA, with some difficulty. It was the first time Susan had heard her speak—her voice was affected by the multiple sclerosis. “They are hermaphrodites.”
“You want?” asked Sal, and held out the joint toward Susan.
“Maybe I will,” she said. She drew on it and held in the smoke as she passed it to Addison. “Thanks,” she said after she let it out. “Been a while.”
It would allay her nervousness, she thought. If it didn’t put her to sleep instantly.
Sal took the joint back and slipped on his headphones.
“Susan?”
She turned to see Steven and Tommy at the library door just as Sal began to recite the lyrics. “All virginal maidens / Satan will ulcerate …”
“Oh hey! Steve, Tommy. I’m so glad you made it!”
“Whoa,” said Tommy. “I’m getting a contact high.”
“Susie. I had no idea,” said Steve, as though he’d stepped into a bordello.
“What can I say,” said Susan, cheerfully. “It’s California.”
“But Mother Earth, she heals them,” croaked Sal, head rocking, “By sending them to Hell …”
She would report to Casey: the possible benefits of wheelchairs were outweighed by the costs.
“Let me get you some drinks,” she persevered, and went toward the cousins, leaving Sal and the others behind.
“This place is like that Haunted House ride at Disneyland,” said Tommy. “Do you have one of those elevators where the pictures on the walls stretch out?”
She realized suddenly that she must not have seen him in years. He had thick eyebrows that met in the middle and cheekbones with a spray of acne. A show of affection was clearly called for, so she held out her arms and smiled.
“Tommy,” she said, and embraced him, remembering as she drew close and smelled his strong deodorant that he was the one his father was proud of. Unlike the unfortunate art student, or whatever the other kid was. “The prodigal engineer.”
He let himself be embraced but barely participated. She pulled back and noticed he was unsmiling.
The father, at least, could be plied with spirits.
“Would you like a cocktail? A beer? Please, follow me.”
>
She kept up a patter as they headed down the hallway toward the room with the bar.
“What kind of engineering program are you in? Civil?”
“Chemical,” he said. “Going into cement.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding, but despite casting around desperately could find nothing to say about this. Doubtless there were many people qualified to speak on the cement subject, but she was not among them. “Oh, I thought you were still a student.”
“Graduating in May. Early recruitment. Already got my first job lined up.”
“Congratulations!”
“Focus on GGBS.”
“GGBS?”
“Ground granulated blast-furnace slag.”
“Right outta college,” said Steven. “Six figures.”
“Wow,” she said.
At the end of the hall, in the darkness under a rhino head, Reg and Tony were kissing.
“Are those two guys?” asked Steven. “Making out?”
“It’s two old guys,” said Tommy. “Whoa.”
She checked her impulse to comment and went through the dining room door ahead of them.
“So what can I get you, Tommy?”
“I need a strong one after that,” he said. “Gimme a vodka. Man. You got any Absolut Citron?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “We do have some mixers.”
“I’ll take a Bud,” said the father.
From behind the bar she could see Casey and Jim and some of her former neighbors outside. She missed them.
“Let’s get some fresh air, shall we?” she said, once both of them had their drinks in hand, and led them through the French doors.
“Hah-ey,” said Dewanne, smiling widely as they approached. She was a thrice-divorced Southern belle and more times than that cosmetically enhanced; she’d lived two houses down. She was also an avid catalog shopper, in a constant state of indignation at the perceived abuses of mail-order apparel companies. The indignation was a hobby. When they both had teenagers in high school—she was a housewife and Susan was substitute teaching—she would come over to the house in the late afternoon, a glass of white wine with ice cubes in her hand, and call 800 numbers to harangue operators about merchandise quality.
Susan had always liked her.
“Hi, Dewanne,” she said, and reached out to grab her hand.
