by Joey Comeau
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Richards,” Charlie says. “Sorry about all the barking last night. You know how Mitchie gets on a full moon.” Mitchie’s walking around in a slow circle now, at the end of his leash. He stops suddenly and he just falls over on his side for a nap. No grace at all, that dog.
“I didn’t hear any barking last night,” Mrs. Richards says.
“Well, you’re one of the lucky ones,” Charlie tells her. “He’s a little hellion, that one.” He looks down at his dog, to make his point, and he can’t help smiling at the sight of Mitchie’s tongue all rolled out of his head. Poor little bastard. All tuckered out from his run in the woods. “Anyway, I’m here about the headless pointing woman,” Charlie said. “You probably guessed. She is there every day when I come back from my walk, and she leads me down the hallway to your door and right now she’s just standing there pointing at you. You know I wouldn’t bother you about this, except it is every day that this has been happening.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Martha Richards says. “I mean, really, Charles. That sounds like a personal problem.” But she doesn’t close the door like usual. She’s looking where Charlie said the ghost was, like she wants to see her, but can’t.
25
The next day, Margaret and Ann wait in the woods.
“Please . . .” Ann says, “we don’t have to do this.” She picks at one of the tears in her jeans. She has no idea when they tore. It doesn’t matter. “We can just buy some rats or something at the pet store.”
“With what money?” Margaret says. She clears her throat. “Rats are too small anyway.”
Here comes Mitchie, trotting along. Margaret crouches and holds her hand out for him like she has food. He hasn’t noticed the girls yet.
“Hey dog,” Margaret says, and his ears perk up when he hears her voice. She’s got a burlap sack in her other hand. Margaret coughs suddenly. She clears her throat. Then clears it again. She swallows.
“You are not okay,” Ann says.
“I’m fine,” her sister says. “Just let it go.” Mitchie is smiling now, panting. “Here, fella,” Margaret calls. And when Mitchie gets close enough, Margaret takes the burlap sack and she scoops him up. In the sack, Mitchie doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know he’s being stolen. It feels like he’s being hugged. His fat little tail just wags harder.
26
When Mitchie doesn’t come back from the woods, Charlie goes in after him. He walks around in circles for an hour, calling out for his stupid dog. At first he’s sure that Mitchie just hasn’t heard him.
“Mitchie! God damn it. Mitchie!” And then Charlie thinks maybe old Mitchie found two trees pressed up against each other and got stuck in the corner where they met. That happened once.
But after a while, Charlie gets to thinking that maybe Mitchie just found somewhere to fall down and die. He doesn’t want to think this, but there it is. That day has been coming. Charlie knows it. He’s known it for a while. But he likes to think that it’s coming for the both of them.
And Mitchie wouldn’t just die somewhere off in the woods. He’d want to be with Charlie. He would wait until it was just him and Charlie somewhere, and he would die with his snout in Charlie’s hand.
After an hour of yelling and walking in circles, Charlie goes home. Maybe Mitchie’s back there now, stuck in the corner outside the front door. Charlie can already picture his friend stuck in the corner like always, and he walks faster. The building is lit up in the early evening sunset, and he knows Mitchie is waiting there for him. Charlie gets to the door and pulls it open. But there’s no Mitchie in the lobby. There’s no Mitchie inside, either. Only that headless thing.
The ghost is standing in the doorway, already moving its mouth, but Charlie walks right past. There is no way he’s going to follow it down the hall to Mrs. Richards’ room. She always has something to say about Mitchie. She always has some opinion. And Charlie doesn’t want to hear it. The ghost follows him to the elevator, but he ignores it.
The doors open, and he steps inside, alone.
“God damn it, Mitch,” Charlie says.
27
Ann and Jackie meet outside of school, before the first bell. Ann looks like she hasn’t slept in days. She doesn’t have her backpack. She’s wearing those same torn jeans.
“I can’t go in,” Ann says. She looks like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t. Jackie doesn’t know what to do. Did she go too far, asking Ann out? Is that why she’s upset?
“Why not?” Jackie says.
Ann shrugs her shoulders. “Let’s do something else,” she says.
So they get back on the bus and go downtown. On the bus, Ann just looks out the window. She doesn’t say anything. Well, that won’t do. Jackie is determined to show her a good time.
Downtown Jackie sees the cop who arrested her. He’s crossing the street, and doesn’t see her. Jackie takes Ann’s hand.
“I have an idea,” she says. They find a drugstore.
When the cop who arrested Jackie walks underneath them, Jackie’s ready. He has his hat in his hand like a real gentleman, and the two girls are on the pedestrian bridge, perched like squirrels. He is all alone. Jackie is not afraid.
“Hey officer!” she calls. He stops and squints up, shielding his eyes against the sun. He smiles blindly, and Jackie lifts the bag of water balloons up by the bottom and dumps them down toward his head. They’re all different colors, red and green and yellow and blue and white, and they fall in slow motion. God knows what he must be thinking.
It must look like a miracle.
“Eat it!” Jackie yells.
They burst against his face. They burst on his shoulder and his arms. He drops his hat. Jackie and Ann run like hell. They find an office building with a huge revolving door, and they push into it together. Jackie is laughing. They run up the escalator, pushing past men and women who can’t stop frowning in their ugly suits.
“Oh, hello, Janet. How was your vacation?”
“Not long enough, Steve. Not long enough.”
Upstairs, they push the button for the elevator, and then they wait calmly. Ten. Nine. Eight. The elevator is taking its time, but there’s no rush. It was the perfect crime. It was the right spot to hit the cop. He had no way to chase them. Ann doesn’t look scared, either.
“Lovely weather, don’t you think?” Jackie says to a tall woman in a delivery uniform. She has small gold earrings that Jackie thinks are subtle and very nice.
“Oh yes,” she says. They ride the elevator up with her.
“Lovely weather,” Jackie says again to the delivery woman. That’s just about the extent of her business-person water-cooler vocabulary. She tries to think of something else. “Annual reports!” Jackie laughs. “Liquidation! Annual shareholders!” She can’t stop laughing. She puts her face against the wall and she just shakes. The delivery woman smiles.
“Stock options,” the delivery woman says. “Severance packages. Resume cv cover letters.”
“Libel suit!” Jackie says.
Then the door is open again. It is time to run like hell again. Across pedways, into other buildings, into the mall, down through the parking lot. They make their way to the park. They’re just like everyone else, now. They’re blocks away, and out of breath. So they sit down under the hanging branches of a tree.
“Eat it!” Jackie says. “Oh man.” It was so perfect. She feels good again. It feels good to run. The sun is shining and there’s a cool breeze on her face. On days like this, it doesn’t seem real that she sometimes sees her mother’s ghost. It doesn’t seem so bad. It fades like a bad dream. The world is bright and warm and soft and green. The school year is almost over. Two squirrels are chasing each other around a tree trunk like maniacs.
There’s a big group of pigeons and Jackie climbs up on top of a picnic table. The pigeons are all pushed t
ogether, fighting for a slice of pizza. Jackie jumps up into the air, with her wings out wide. Look at that wingspan!
“Caw caw!” she yells in midair, and they all take flight at once. Jackie has the largest wingspan. She is the queen of the pigeons. That pizza slice is hers, if she wants to claim it, but it’s enough to know that she could. She sits back down. Ann isn’t laughing or smiling. She looks tired again.
A woman with a small child comes over and stands in front of Jackie.
“Why did you have to scare those pigeons?” she says. “Did that make you feel big? Did it make you feel strong? Don’t you have any respect? We have to share the world with nature, you know.” And it seems like she’s saying all this as much for her son, who is chewing his thumb, as for Jackie. But before Jackie can reply, Ann is laughing. She laughs and laughs, and when the woman tries to say something else, Ann only laughs harder.
28
Ann has come over to do homework, but they haven’t been to school, so there’s no homework today. The two girls wait until Jackie’s father is in his study, reading, and then they get their jackets on. First the left arm, then the right arm. It feels like everything is important. Today’s the day. Tonight’s the night. Jackie is going to get the girl, even though she’s the awkward teen. She’s the nerdy virgin in a sex comedy who only wants kisses.
They go down the block to rent a movie from the corner store. They want something chock full of sex and nudity and adult themes which may not be suitable for minors. This is a sleepover, and sleepovers mean gratuitous nudity. This is what you learn from the movies.
The boy behind the counter has his hair tucked behind his ears, which makes them stick out. That is his identifying, quirky character trait. When Jackie and Ann put the movie down on the counter, he doesn’t notice the title at first. He opens the case, scans the disc on the computer and then looks up. He looks back at the title.
“Uh,” he stammers. “are either of you eighteen?” He won’t look directly at them.
Jackie purses her lips like the girl on the movie cover. “It’s nothing we can’t handle, I assure you,” she says.
He pushes his hair back behind his ear again.
Back at Jackie’s building, Ann takes the elevator and Jackie races up the stairs to the apartment. She loves running up stairs. It feels so perfect, reaching each landing, grabbing the railing and swinging herself around the turn, flinging herself up the next set of stairs.
She comes laughing in the door. Her father looks like he wants to ask where they’ve been, but his daughter is laughing and safe, and he looks relieved. Ann sits down to pull her boots off, and Jackie gives him her best perfect-daughter smile.
“Can Ann stay over tonight?” she asks him.
“If her mother says that it’s okay.”
Ann says nothing.
In bed Ann and Jackie look up at the ceiling and lie on their backs like teen girls are supposed to do, and Jackie does all the talking. Ann keeps going quiet and Jackie feels like the day is almost over, which isn’t what she wants. So she rolls over on her side and she puts her hand on Ann’s shoulder and she kisses her friend on the forehead and then on the nose and then Jackie kisses Ann on the lips. She’s gone off the script, here. This isn’t the way this scene in the movie was supposed to go. Jackie was supposed to squeal with delight and do Ann’s hair and they were going to have girl talk all night and eat chocolate ice cream right out of the carton, but instead, she goes ahead and puts her mouth on Ann’s, and Ann doesn’t kiss her back. She doesn’t say anything or react at all. Jackie doesn’t know what to do. So she starts talking.
She talks about the first girl she ever kissed, Laura. Laura had pictures of horses everywhere in her room. She had magazine pages of dogs and kittens torn out and hung up. She had a house with a big tree and a tire swing right out front.
Why would Ann care how Laura’s room was decorated? She hasn’t said anything yet, though. Maybe she’s still waiting for Jackie to squeal and break out the chocolate ice cream so they can talk about boys. Jackie keeps talking instead. Her hand is still on Ann’s shoulder, but she doesn’t know what else to do with it.
Laura had pictures from magazines up everywhere. She had a big poster of bats. Scientific names of bats. Snub-noses. So many types of bats. Back then Jackie thought it was creepy, but talking about it now she realizes that Laura was kind of awesome. She was a huge nerd and she just didn’t care. Jackie never even knew there were that many types of bats. Laura’s older sister, Kelly, was on the same soccer team in elementary school as Jackie. Kelly was the biggest girl on the team, tall and muscled. She was the loudest girl, too, and the most popular. Jackie wanted to be her friend. Everyone did.
Laura was a year and a half younger, with long blonde hair and glasses. She interrupted her sister’s parties to show everyone the newest issue of some scientific journal. She got so excited about things like sonar, and she just couldn’t understand why nobody else got excited. She wanted her sister’s approval, too.
And everyone teased her. It was just one more way to impress her sister. They threw popcorn at Laura, and “accidentally” spilled their drinks on her dress. They hid her science magazines and replaced them with porn Kelly stole from their dad. Jackie teased her, too.
And then, at one party, Kelly locked Laura and Jackie in an attic crawlspace together. She locked them in and sat outside with her back to the door, laughing. Jackie could hear another voice, then another, until the whole soccer team was out there laughing. They had planned this.
Laura and Jackie sat in the dusty crawlspace in silence while everyone laughed outside. Laura was crying, but she was always crying. There was a big crowd outside the door, chanting, “Seven minutes in heaven. Seven minutes in heaven.”
And Jackie knew that afterward, everyone was going to tease them anyway. These were her friends. She knew them. So she decided, brushing dust off her jeans, that she might as well.
“They’re going to make fun of us anyway,” she said, and Laura just looked at her. Jackie leaned forward and touched the younger girl’s face. She stopped crying.
“Are you okay?” Jackie said, and Laura nodded. And then Jackie kissed her. Kissing girls comes easy, like breaking windows. Jackie grabbed Laura and pulled her close and she kissed her on the lips. Outside Kelly was laughing and leading the chant.
Ann still hasn’t said anything. Jackie’s never told anyone this before, but a woman should be brave. She sits back a little, and takes her hand off Ann’s shoulder. They’re sitting too close maybe.
Jackie’s first kiss was exciting, and dangerous, but no secret. Laura told everyone, when they let the two girls out, and Jackie just laughed. Kelly was going to tease her? She planned to taunt Jackie and call her a lesbian? Well, Jackie kissed her little sister. What would Kelly say at school, then? Jackie is a lesbian? Yes, Kelly, Jackie and your little sister Laura are lesbians together.
She wants to tell Ann about the look on Laura’s face after their kiss, half shocked, but half dreamy. Or about the letter that Laura wrote her years later, from the far-off city where she was living now. She wants Ann to have that dreamy look on her face now, too, but Ann hasn’t got any look at all.
Ann gets up, grabs her backpack, and runs out of the room.
29
Margaret is at the bathroom sink, trying to be quiet. Ann is going to hear her if she doesn’t stop coughing. Margaret coughs again and then again and something wet and red hits the porcelain. She doesn’t look too closely. She washes it down the drain, and then she fills her hands with the cool water and splashes her face. She can breathe again. It was nothing. Ann would only worry./
IF
30
It’s a school day, but that doesn’t really mean anything anymore. There’s work to be done. In the back of the paper, someone is giving away kittens. Free to a good home. Some days Ann had to go all the way downtown, but today ther
e’s a whole litter just over by the mall. On the phone, she tries not to ask if the kittens are plump.
Then she puts on one of her mother’s dress shirts, and clean pants. She puts on her nice shoes. In the mirror she sure looks like she comes from a good home. A decent sort of country girl. Her sister Margaret starts howling downstairs in her locked room when she hears Ann at the front door. She hasn’t eaten, and she recognizes the sound of the locks. Margaret knows where Ann is going, even if she doesn’t understand anymore that it’s her sister. Food. Locks mean food. The door means food. Everything is connected with food.
Sometimes Ann tells herself that there’s a moral difference between killing kittens for no reason and what she does. Killing kittens just to kill kittens would be evil. That would be cruel for cruelty’s sake. But Margaret needs to be fed. This is the sort of thing that a real country girl would have to do. It’s practical, not evil. People kill animals for food all the time.
And Ann can’t stand the way Margaret gets when she hasn’t eaten. Most of the time, it’s easy to remember that she isn’t really Ann’s sister anymore. She’s something else. She grunts and howls and makes animal sounds. But after a few days without food, she starts finding words. Always random words, like accidents, but they come out in Margaret’s voice.
The mall is down near the water. Ann forgot they were doing construction. She doesn’t get out enough. This is all going to be a parking lot soon. That’s what the big sign says.
The yacht club is right there. She could just take a boat and go. There’s something about the smell of the salt air that makes a person feel free. But her sister needs to be fed, and she has an address scribbled down. So, Ann is practical. She’s a good country girl. She does what needs doing.
