The Blonde of the Joke

by Bennett Madison

  That night, when it was almost morning, I killed her. It wasn’t me that did it. It was the girl from the other side of the mirror, the one whose lips were icy white and ringed with blood. I stepped outside the mirror when Francie was asleep and took a Mardi Gras necklace from around my own neck. Francie didn’t resist as I pulled it tight around her windpipe, twisting and twisting to tighten it, until I couldn’t twist anymore. She woke up; her eyes flipped open with a look of inevitability. She knew it had been coming all along. Francie just dropped, and as she crumpled, the necklace snapped, the beads scattering across the floor in a shower of sparkling plastic. Of course, it never happened. But it seemed like it did.

  The next morning I woke early, feeling beyond crappy. I had slept only for a few hours. Francie was lying next to me, on top of the covers, breathing and alive as ever. A peaceful look on her face and an unknown word on her lips. Those Mardi Gras beads were still all over the floor. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t sort out the events of the night before. I couldn’t remember what was real and what was a dream.

  I had to leave. I got up without waking Francie and tiptoed down the stairs, remembering the way Francie had looked at me the night before when she’d held her mother to keep her from falling. That part had happened for real, for sure. On the way down those same stairs, I almost tripped and fell myself, but I caught the banister just in time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Around here, there is a creek that touches everyone. It is in every backyard. If you follow the creek in any direction, making sure to keep at least one foot in the water at all times, you will cross deserts, highways, and mountains, but you will always, always reach an ocean.

  Around here, there is also a subway. The subway is underneath every backyard. If you are brave enough, you can cross that threshold of earth into some underground, and find a city.

  Around here, the suburbs are where you are standing. Somewhere, you know, there is an ocean. You have heard about a city, too, but it is mostly a suspicion. On that Sunday morning in February, the morning after my sleepover at Francie’s, the sky was smudged-newsprint white, and I stepped outside the house on Maple, alone, in my black motorcycle jacket and knee-high leather boots, and I was brave. Francie and Sandy were both still asleep. I knew I had to leave them. I wasn’t sure where I was going.

  The city was only twenty minutes away by train, and the subway stop was right there, but it had never occurred to me, until that morning, to head in by myself. I can’t say it was a conscious decision—at the time it just seemed like the path of least resistance. Where else was there to go? I didn’t feel like going home, and the mall suddenly seemed like the farthest-away place. So I got on the train.

  That morning, the train was filled with strangers who shouldn’t have been up in the first place, and I left my sunglasses on so no one could see me staring at them. Across from where I sat, a bum lay across four seats, snoring loudly, drool dripping from his mouth onto the plastic seat and then onto the dirty floor in one long, slimy string. The lights overhead flickered as we left the suburbs, and it wasn’t until they came back on that I started to wonder where I was going, and why. It wasn’t until the lights came back on that I thought of Francie, on the stairs with her mother. I had stumbled upon something that I was not supposed to know about. Francie had dark secrets.

  The trip to the Bahamas. The rumors I’d heard. Showing up out of nowhere. Those long weekends away from home.

  My brother standing on the doorstep, duffel bag in hand. Francie in her boxer shorts climbing the stairs. Jesse gone to New York for two years with barely a good-bye. Without thinking about it much, I stepped off the train at a random stop, then looked up and read the pylon above me and realized exactly what I had done. Without even knowing it, I had set myself on a path for Jesse’s apartment. Francie had been leading me here: if I squinted, I could see her darting ahead of me, cutting through the crowd, not looking back, just expecting me to follow. Her little black purse had come unfastened, and all her secrets spilled from it, leaving a trail for me. This was her doing.

  But it was not Francie’s doing. I was alone, and Francie was still in her bed, still asleep, probably dreaming of lip gloss. I had led myself here, on my own impulses. I had kept my fingers pressed to a wall, and now here I was, in my brother’s city. I didn’t really know where he lived; I’d only been to his place once, years and years ago, but I figured the geography would come to me. I had taken myself this far.

  Aboveground, on the street, things were moving. The weather had changed; the sun was out, and it wasn’t warm but maybe warmish. Even though the sidewalks weren’t crowded yet, the people who were awake looked content and purposeful. Women in chic black, clutching the shoulder straps of their handbags as they made their long strides down the avenue, handsome men ambling along, everyone in and out of restaurants. Dogs on leashes, the smell of coffee. That morning, the street had been flung wide open, and I glanced in all directions until my eye landed on a giant, double-tiered fountain in the middle of a plaza. With no real idea of where else to go, I headed there. There’s always something about the fountain, right?

  I knew I was on my way to my brother’s house, wherever that was, but I wasn’t in a hurry. Since it was still winter, the fountain wasn’t running, but it didn’t matter. I perched on the edge and fingered a pebble in the basin and looked out over the city. When a couple of guys wandered past me with a tiny dog, I asked them for a cigarette and they gave me one, and I sat there, smoking it happily, pleased to be by myself. Suddenly I was in a good mood. When I was done, I went on my way and was trotting down the block when I realized I hadn’t brought anything for Jesse.

  It was important. I couldn’t show up at Jesse’s place empty-handed. It barely mattered what I brought him, but I had to bring him something. It had to be stolen. A gift that is stolen can bring a person back to life. So when I passed a dingy liquor store, I ducked inside and headed straight for the counter, where I distracted the clerk with stupid conversation while stuffing my purse with those minibottles of booze. Back on the sidewalk, I was laden with bottles, and I closed my eyes and stared straight up into a cloud until I could feel my pupils as pinpricks.

  The last time I had been to Jesse’s apartment had been years ago, with my mother, right after he’d moved in the first time. We’d brought him a bouquet of flowers as a housewarming gift, which was foolish, because who brings a man a bouquet of flowers? If you knew my brother you would know a bouquet of flowers was not just foolish but extra foolish, because he’s the type of person who, not owning a vase, would have to make do with some makeshift solution like an empty bottle of vodka or something, which is exactly what ended up happening.

  I remembered only the most pointless details about Jesse’s place. Things like the naked-lady clock he had next to the refrigerator, the contradictory smell of the stairwell—a cross between pee and fancy cologne. Things like the optimism in his voice the day that my mom and I had visited. He’d seemed so hopeful, for that one day, even though we’d just brought him those crappy, useless flowers. I still remembered that. He acted like it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him.

  I had been wandering aimlessly, and then I was at my destination. I’d known I would find it if I didn’t stress too much, and then there it was, on the corner of a side street, right above a small convenience store. I’m not sure how I recognized it, but as soon as I saw it, it all came back to me. This was it, for sure.

  Jesse had left home for good the day after high school had ended. He had graduated by the skin of his teeth, and his efforts at the whole college thing had been lackadaisical at best. He’d landed this apartment, taken some classes here and there, waiting tables at night, before finally switching to bartending at some point, and dispensing with the classes altogether. A couple of years ago, he’d sublet the place, and picked up to move to New York. We hadn’t heard a lot from him after that, until now. Now he was back.

  From the outside, Jesse’s b
uilding was pretty shitty and falling apart, but it still had a certain ramshackle dignity. You could tell that it had once been nice—fancy, even. Looking up at it—at the cracked stone moldings around the windows and the filthy, elaborate cornices—I imagined Jesse and Liz playing MASH, back in high school, and wondered if this had been predicted for him.

  I rang the buzzer. When there was no answer, I rang it again and then again, until I finally heard Jesse’s crackling voice, hoarse and scratchy, through the intercom: “Who is it?”

  “It’s Val,” I said. “Your sister.”

  The door vibrated, startling me, and I pushed it open and ran up the narrow, fouled staircase to the third floor, where Jesse stood in the doorway, in sweatpants and an old T-shirt, eyes puffy and hair matted. “This is a surprise,” he said. He seemed a little insane, like everything he said should have been punctuated with an exclamation point. But it was early in the morning.

  “Hey,” I said. “Sorry to, like, wake you up or whatever.”

  “No worries,” Jesse said. “No worries. I’ve been awake, actually. But the place is kind of, like, a total dump. You know how it is.”

  We stepped inside. He was right. It was a complete dump. Honestly, I wouldn’t have expected anything else from Jesse, who had always been an utter slob. The place was tiny and littered with empty cigarette boxes and coffee containers, clothes strewn on every possible surface, and it stank with a gross stench that I couldn’t identify. “Let me get some air in here,” Jesse said. He flung open a window and cleared a spot for me on an ancient futon by scooping the clothes onto the floor, then plopped himself onto a wooden stool. “So what’s up?”

  I didn’t know how to answer the question. Jesse was fidgeting, running his hands through his hair and drumming his fingers on an end table. He didn’t look great. His face was pulled and lined, and his lips were chapped and cracking. It looked like he had been picking at his face.

  “I brought you something,” I said. And I dumped my purse out onto the couch, spilling forth the small mountain of bottles I’d lifted: Grey Goose and Jack Daniel’s and Tanqueray and the rest. Jesse’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out.

  “No way,” he said. “This is too much.” And just like that, he seemed better again. “Want a cocktail?” he asked, standing and scooping a couple of the bottles up. “I know it’s early, but I’ll make something breakfasty.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “So what brings you here, anyway?” he asked from the kitchen alcove, where he was pouring and mixing, humming away like he was suddenly the happiest person on earth.

  “I just wanted to see you,” I said.

  “You never wanted to see me before?” He raised a pointed eyebrow in my direction.

  “Oh, like you’re one to talk,” I said. “Like you’re always popping by just to say what’s up.”

  “You got me,” Jesse said. “Here.” He handed me something pinkish in a martini glass. “Tell me if you like it.”

  I took a sip. It didn’t even taste like booze. It tasted like Crystal Light. “You’re a genius,” I said.

  Jesse sat on the futon next to me and took a sip of his own. He reached over and flicked my ear like he was twelve. “Nah, just been bartending too long,” he replied. “I mean, way too long.” He sighed. “Man, I need to figure some shit out.”

  I would never understand my brother. He had been around so much longer than I had, and in the time before my arrival, I knew that he had seen things that had changed him in terrible ways. We had never talked about what, exactly, those things were, but you could tell it all from the way he sometimes tilted his chin and scrunched his mouth to one side of his face: an unconscious wince at some precise angle of injury. The way the muscles in his neck were always clenching and unclenching, then clenching again. I had noticed something in the way Liz had put her hand on his shoulder that night in the basement on Christmas break: like she was trying to bind him, pointlessly, to an Earth that he no longer felt he belonged to.

  Jesse wanted to leave. He had one foot out the door. It had been that way as long as I could remember, but I guess he’d always been too much of a slacker to devise a proper exit route. Surely he would figure it out eventually. I don’t know—maybe if he looked long enough he would stumble across the schematics to a spaceship, or an interdimensional teleportation device, or a flying car. I’d heard of crazier things. And I guess I thought that if we brought him enough crap, maybe we could weigh him down. Just saddle him up with more and more junk until he was too heavy to break the stratosphere.

  “How’s Francie?” he asked. “You should’ve brought her with you. That girl is, like, a trip.”

  “I didn’t feel like it,” I said.

  “Ah,” Jesse said. “Well, that’s cool, too. Is everything okay with her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe? I mean, I guess?”

  “I get it,” he said.

  Even though I’d only had a couple sips, the drink Jesse had made me was strong, and I was feeling sort of buzzed. I sat there on the futon staring out the window at the tiny sliver of sky that was visible between two adjacent buildings, and thought that it reminded me of Max for no real reason. I was surprised to be thinking of him; he had snuck up on me. It was like he was so skinny that he was able to slide into the smallest gaps in my thoughts. He was so opposite Francie, who was also skinny but took up so much space.

  “It’s just that she’s different than I expected her to be,” I told Jesse. “Well, I mean, it’s like she’s the same, but it’s things that are different.”

  “Maybe you’re different, too.”

  “No,” I said, considering it. “Actually, I think I am exactly what Francie expected.”

  “That’s not really what I meant,” Jesse said.

  “Oh.”

  “Come stand out on the fire escape,” Jesse said. He lifted the screen and crawled over the old-fashioned radiator, out the window, onto the rickety steel balcony outside. I followed him. Out on the fire escape, Jesse perched on the metal stairs, knees wedged in his armpits, and lit a cigarette. “I’m trying not to smoke inside anymore,” he said. “It makes everything smell so gross.”

  I thought it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference, but I didn’t say anything. “Let me have one,” I said. Jesse handed me a cigarette, and stood next to me, arm around my shoulder. His arm felt lighter than I thought it should have. We stood there, barely eleven o’clock in the morning, pink cocktails in hand, shivering a little and staring up at the cold winter sun overhead. So this was the city.

  “So are you and Francie, like, in a fight, or what?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Really. Why are you here then?” he asked. “Obviously it’s nice to have you, but it seems like you’re upset or something.”

  Why had I come here? There was no way I could explain to him all the reasons, especially since I wasn’t exactly sure of those reasons myself.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I finally said.

  “That’s fine,” Jesse said.

  This was his city. He had come here, years ago, I guess thinking that it would somehow be different. Like it would transform him. But on the fire escape, above an alleyway, I could see that it was not different at all. If I was wearing glasses, I thought, I might be able to see our creek.

  “Where were you?” I finally asked him.

  “When?” he asked.

  “When. I don’t know. Anytime.”

  “Let’s just say…elsewhere,” he said.

  “Was Elsewhere any different?”

  “No,” he said. “It was just the same.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I tossed my cigarette over the fire escape and watched it fall.

  “You feel better now, though, right? I mean, every time I see you it’s like you get a little better. Steady improvement?”

  From the way he avoided my ques
tion, I had the answer to the question that I had come to investigate.

  “Remember that time you and Mom came to visit me here?” he asked. “Right after I moved in?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Things seemed so different then.”

  “I know,” I said. “I mean, I was really little. I was kind of too little to understand what was going on. But things did seem different.”

  “I always thought you understood everything,” he said. “Even when you were practically a baby. You always seemed like you just sort of knew the score better than anyone.”

  I just looked at him like Are you insane? and he shrugged back all, Well, maybe I am, but still, and actually, he was right. I did know the score, sort of: he had believed in this city, and in this shitty apartment. He had believed in it, and it had failed him.

  “I don’t want you to die,” I said. “Can you please not die?”

  “I’m not going to die,” he said. “I’m only twenty-four, you know. Not like I’m some old man or something.” But I knew what he really meant to say: I am barely here now. You won’t even miss me when I’m gone. I’m as good as a ghost.

  When I got home, around two, Francie was sitting on my doorstep smoking.

  “Hey, bitch,” she said.

  “Hey, bitch,” I said.

  “Where did you go?” she asked.

  “Elsewhere,” I told her. And then, gay as it may be, I just started crying.

  Francie kind of melted. “Hey,” she said. She stood and put her arms around me and it didn’t even feel awkward or anything. I buried my face in the crook of her neck and she mussed my hair. “Don’t worry about it,” she murmured. “Not to worry. We’ll go to the mall; it’ll be all better.”

  I wanted to believe her, I truly did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Francie was eating a taco salad. They had put cheese on it by accident, and she was picking it out with her fingers with a look of pure revulsion. Francie hated cheese more than almost anything else on Earth. Just the smell of it disgusted her; I was surprised she was even capable of touching it without rubber gloves.