The Listeners

by Leni Zumas

  “Thank you,” Fod said roughly, and shook his hand.

  THE BABY TENTACLE was swollen today, red at the rim of the nail. The clerk’s mood seemed no worse; he rang up my aspirin with his usual tranquil efficiency; but if the tentacle was infected he must have been in some pain.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” squeaked Two Thumbs, “you?”

  “Sick of this rain.”

  “Right?” he said but was, as usual, in no mood for small talk, and looked past me to the next customer. I muttered thanks and swung out with my purchases. The old white lady with her red-painted wrinkles nodded as we passed. In all the years I had lived on this street we’d never spoken, but she usually offered an unsteady smile. She had a plastic hood over her hair, face open to the downpour. Why wasn’t the blush running down her cheeks? Red stain on elbow. I had licked my finger and gone to wipe it, but Mert shouted No. I’d had my sister on me—a little patch of her.

  Before long I was walking into the old neighborhood, where you couldn’t spit without hitting a spark or two. I blinked at the neon sign of a new computer café where the radio station had once stood. Nobody could see me. They all passed without seeing. Umbrellas, running faces. The tether strained, frayed, unraveled; and when I went fully deaf, it would snap. That hitchhiker in Portland had been deaf, but hadn’t seemed too sad about it. Had been, in fact, a rather cheerful guy. How the dickens could he have felt cheerful when he went around in a box of silence? But he had laughed freely, offered us pieces of a spicy chocolate bar, and winked at Mink when her shirt caught on the van door by accident of course and opened before his very eyes.

  My feet kept moving. I was swerving onto Belfry Street. Under the trees the water, gushing off leaves, hit me harder. There were no cactus pots on the porch; the widow’s walk railing was bare. Our flag had flown the whole time we lived on Belfry Street, years of comings and goings—only Cam and I had remained constant inhabitants—different bodies in the bedrooms, different snack preferences and television habits and degrees of substance abuse.

  I lit one from the new pack. Wet asphalt hissed under tires. The churches waited heavily in their places. I was tired of walking around, but the bar didn’t open for another three hours. So I circled back toward the trees. Down in the park, branches guarded against sky. Pine brooms on the gravel path, a piece of string, flares of old weed, a puddle grown over with prismy oil. I sat for a while on a dead tree, its stump sliced to expose a moss-rimmed butthole.

  THE SUMMER WENT on, even though her body had stopped. The leftover children were amazed to watch the air get wetter and the trees greener; to hear cheers from playing fields; and to see the yellow moon.

  Three weeks after the middle’s funeral, they drove downtown for fireworks. The oldest had her period. She thought about how this very same gloppy red mucous had been inside her when her sister was alive, growing dark on the walls of the bag only inches away from her sister’s gang of eggs when they lay together on the porch. In those eggs had been the nieces and nephews the oldest would have taught to play guitar.

  She hoped a misaimed rocket would explode into the statue of the famous explorer, killing at least a few of the crowd.

  The mother handed her a plastic pouch of juice with its own puncturing straw. Fifteen is too old for juice, thought the oldest, sucking, shame a gray sleeve on her lung. Red broke in the black air. The youngest asked, “Can the fireworks fall on us?”

  The family was four.

  “QUINN, I KNOW you don’t love to talk about this, but I’ve noticed, we’ve both noticed, that you’ve dropped a little bit of weight recently. I’m only bringing it up because I want to—to—to check in with you. Is everything all right?”

  Mert had learned check in from the good doctor during the bad times.

  “Yeah fine,” I said.

  “Really,” I said.

  “I’ve been walking more,” I said, “now that the weather’s nicer, maybe that’s—”

  “Well, you want to keep an eye on it, right?”

  “An eye is being kept.”

  My parents smiled and sipped their waters, but in the bad times, they had screamed: You will. I won’t. You will. I won’t. Yes, Quinn, you will. No I fucking won’t. What did you say to me? Nothing, Fod, I’m sorry. You’re going to eat what is on that plate. No. Goddammit, Quinn, put it in your mouth and chew. No. Why are you doing this to yourself? Answer me! No. Yes. No. You—will—put—this—in—your—mouth—Leave it, Will! from where she’d stood at the stove; Mert hadn’t even wanted to be in the same room. Just leave her alone. But later, in the night kitchen, she had said, Darling girl, what goes on inside your head? in such a wrecked voice my eyes ached. I’d said, My thoughts, I guess. If you don’t eat, you are going to die. I eat, I shrugged, which launched a fresh surge of scream: When? When do you eat? At school? On the bus? I certainly never see you do it! Your father never sees you do it! When could you possibly be eating if you look like—Mert stood back, bumping hard into the stove—that!

  At first the good doctor, who I went to after those failed sessions with the dink, had been barking up the wrong tree. “Does being thin make you feel powerful? When your mother tries to make you eat, and you refuse, how do you feel?” I answered every question truthfully, and the good doctor seemed confused. When the first visit ended she told me she was most intrigued, and at the next appointment, instead of hammering away in the same old direction as the dink had, she switched tacks.

  “And who is the bloodworm?”

  “Worm who eats blood and is made of blood.”

  “Where does the worm come from?”

  “Underneath,” I said.

  “Underneath what?”

  “Just underneath.”

  “Why are you afraid of the bloodworm?”

  “It ate my sister.”

  She could smell in a forest if a wolfberry grew.

  “How do you know?”

  “I see it.”

  “You mean you saw it?”

  “No, see.”

  The good doctor paused, then said, “You have recurring mental images of this worm consuming your sister’s flesh?”

  I nodded.

  “And where else does the bloodworm live?”

  I shook my head.

  The good doctor asked again.

  “Down there,” I said. “It eats the blood.”

  “Down where, Quinn?”

  “When your period comes,” I hissed.

  “Does the worm live in your vagina?”

  “No!” I was furious but couldn’t explain. In and out of my sister’s holes. Eyes, mouth, ears, downstairs. A snail shell isn’t big enough for your whole ear—you can’t get the ocean. Try with two. I still can’t.

  “Please don’t worry,” I told my mother now. “I’m eating enough. I seriously am.”

  Mert smiled faintly. “Okay.”

  “Promise you won’t worry?”

  “Promise,” she said.

  “Death tolls went up again this month,” Fod said. “November can’t come soon enough. Get that lunatic out of the White House…”

  “He might win again,” I said.

  “There is no way that imbecile—that ambulatory lobotomy could win again.”

  “But he might.”

  “I assure you, kid, he won’t.”

  I said, “You know who would’ve loved that term, ambulatory lobotomy? She would have.”

  Mert said, “I think that’s enough, Quinn, don’t you?”

  “I’ve only had two glasses!”

  “Three, in fact,” she said.

  “Wine is good for you,” I pointed out, continuing to pour. “There was this study that said it prevents heart disease.”

  “I just think”—Mert’s voice was at its carefulest—“that you’re going through a challenging time, with the job loss, and it might be a good idea not to drink so much.”

  I laughed. “I don’t drink that much. You should see some of my associates! L
ike remember Jonathan Geck? By the way, thanks for dinner, it was really good…” I itched to be gone, but there was still the after-meal tea.

  “Earl Grey or English Afternoon?”

  “Shock me,” I said.

  The lagging hours of being together. God bless them, they tried, but the trying felt sad. Why?—because I was supposed to have a family of my own by now, or starting one? Because I came by myself across town for these dinners, a stunted oldening girl who still wished the television were on as a buffer? I had broken my rubber-band bracelet on the bus and was reluctant to hunt for another in the kitchen with Mert around. She might have offered some comment on my life, how it was not much of one. Instead I latched myself into the hall bathroom and held my wrists under the cold until they were gone. Only boring people get bored, Mert used to say when we complained how long Saturday was without TV. My sister said, But that’s an ipse dixit! Dogmatic and unproven statement, she added to me, and I yelled, You mean they made up a whole term specially for Mert? and Mert sneered: Do you even know what dogmatic means? Yeah, I said, it means the way you talk.

  “Squidling?” she called. “Milk or lemon?”

  “Lemon,” I shouted, wiping numb fingers on the reindeer towel. How could they still have this ancient rag? Riley had worn it as a cape when our sister made him be demented elf.

  Mert watched me slurp at the kitchen table, her own teacup untouched. I wondered where my brother was—must’ve had better things on tap tonight, though what that little monk could possibly have had on tap was a mystery. Fod? Out plucking a few more hairs from his garden. And where was she? Like smoke around us, sighing at the crinkled shells of our ears.

  “Please let your father drive you back,” Mert said and I nodded, even though it meant twenty more minutes of eyes. If Riley had been here we would have dropped him off first (the paranoia law didn’t count for short trips inside the city) then continued on to my neighborhood where my father always locked the car doors. After our sister died, no more than two of us—one parent, one kid—could take a car journey or fly in a plane together. It had made vacations complicated. We’d bought a second car, a used hatchback whose seats had smelled like guinea pig. I’d hated the law, but Riley had agreed it was a good idea to make sure some people were left over.

  Tonight the streets were quiet, traffic lights changing without any cars. I turned on the radio hoping to find noise that did not demand attention—a newscast, for instance, in a foreign language. I stopped on an army recruitment commercial.

  “Why didn’t Ri come tonight?”

  “He already had plans with someone,” Fod said. “A classical music concert, I think.”

  “A date?”

  “Is that so outrageous?”

  “Well.”

  Be! All that you can—!

  “Your mother mentioned a girl who…”

  “What’s that?”

  “A girl who works at the archives.”

  We were nearing the intersection where Fod would press the automatic lock. The radio said “And now a blast from the past!” and out jumped the opening bars of “Dear Done For,” clackety drums, ping ping ping of guitar, slim thump of bass. Fod, this is us! I wanted to reach for the dial but my arm wouldn’t. My father didn’t recognize the song. The music coiled into a long, narrow tube. My vision was zooming. If your head lost enough blood, you passed out. The lack of oxygen turned off the brain, and a fight-or-flight response kicked in: all blood rushed to the torso to protect your heart, so you had no blood in your legs either, making a collapse even more likely. The remedy the good doctor had taught me was to stick my head between my knees, as if bracing for a plane crash. But I couldn’t do this in front of Fod. I couldn’t see except straight in front. My blood was marching for my heart, leaving the brain dry and alone. My sister had lost all her blood too. Her skull had been drained of gore, membrane shriveled, salt gone.

  On his date my brother would have worn dark stiff denim, hoping Pine couldn’t tell the britches were new. In the night air, colder than he’d planned for, his windbreaker would have been like paper.

  Maybe once, with her. Just once. After once, it would have been over, not regretted but never spoken of again. In the Caribbean there grows a kind of cactus whose flowers bloom only one night a year, carry out their sex lives, and are dead by morning.

  “My favorite was the flute,” he told Pine.

  “Mine was the oboe,” she said, “although I wouldn’t want to meet an oboe player in a dark alley.” Pine did the trick of making her eyes go in different directions.

  “Stop that with your eyes!”

  She shut them obediently and Riley thought, Now would be a good time. When she’s not looking. But they opened again. Maybe when they were back in their neighborhood, at the intersection where she went left and he went right?—maybe then he would do it. He was the boy, after all.

  “Thank you for the concert,” she said as they got off the bus. “It was brilliant.”

  “I’m glad you liked it,” said Riley.

  “Thank you,” she repeated at the corner where he went right and she went left.

  “You’re welcome.”

  They stood apart, arms hanging.

  “Well,” she said, “I shall see you Monday.”

  He waved and smiled, the virgin youngest.

  A BULLET IS a mouthful of pennies. A bullet tears metal and meat. A bullet shot on the night of June 2, 1984, went through my sister’s head and they found it later on the floor. It carried, the forensic tests would show, tiny pieces of her hair, skin, and brain. We had been sleeping with our heads to the window. The glass was up. The bullet made a hole in the screen. They threw away the screen. They patched the skull for burial so the brains couldn’t climb. Fod wanted her cremated but Mert said they weren’t burning her girl.

  “We have to clean the floor. The floor has got to be cleaned. We need soap and a bucket.”

  We watched our mother move in little swipes around the kitchen, looking for things in the air, muttering, “That floor in there. It really can’t stay like that. We have to fix it.”

  “Coo,” I said.

  “Coo,” finished Riley.

  “Why are you two just standing there,” Mert mumbled, opening a cabinet. She stood for a long time looking at the shelves.

  “Are you going to start cooking again?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Cooking, Mert, like when you take food and make it hot?”

  Lacustrina dreamt of sharks, who needed salty sea—her lake had water fresh as rain where no small sharks could be. She dreamt she met an octy in the driftings of a wreck; he wrapped his sucking tentacle around her tender neck. Awake she gathered twirlshell snails and put them in her basket. When she had a question, she wasn’t scared to ask it.

  Why did Mr. Walker keep a pistol? Why did stupid goddamn Mr. Walker keep a pistol in his stupid goddamn house? Why did Mr. Walker have to get it, and cock it, and fire it six times at the goddamn kid? The burglar was not even voting age. Fod did not blame the burglar, who’d had no weapon. He blamed Bill fucking Walker that gun-loving Republican who had seen fit like the fuckface he was to keep a pistol in his kitchen drawer.

  Don’t say fuckface, don’t say fuckface, said the back of my mouth, but he kept saying it and from the bathroom Mert screamed, “If I hear that word one more time I’m going to kill myself!”

  I explained to Riley what a figure of speech was.

  I was peeling my fingers, seeing how long the strips of skin could go. I had three peels laid out already on the coffee table. Fod saw. “Disgusting,” he shouted. “You’re fifteen years old, stop acting like a baby.”

  If Walker showed up to the funeral, I planned to slice his throat. I sharpened my army knife the night before. Riley, watching me scrape its blade on a stone from the yard, said: “But then you have to go to jail.”

  I said I didn’t care and besides I was a minor so the sentence would be short.

  “Why isn’t Mr.
Walker in jail?” asked Riley.

  I shrugged. I’d duct-taped a cotton sheath to the inside of my dress so I could bring the knife out quickly, before Walker knew what was happening. In the throat I would cut him. The funeral home would have to get a new carpet.

  “ENCORE,” I SAID from the end of the bar. Mink poured me a fifth, a sixth. “My tab,” I nodded, though there had never been a tab. I scratched the sleeve of red and black, a dragon and a sailor’s ghost and a doll with crimson eyes. Nearby hovered venereal Lad. He was playing later, down the street, in the terrible band helmed by Geck. Who still had his hopes. It was impressive, really. After all these hundreds of years, he was still making a go.

  “You nervous?” I bellowed at Lad.

  “I don’t get nervous,” he said.

  The junior bartender said, “Oh listen to you.” She was at the taps with her shoulders wrenched back, thrusting every inch of mammary gland into the sky.

  He grinned her way. Lad liked to sleep with barely legals and to exaggerate for them the length of a brief prison term he had served back when they were still trading puffy stickers. This salty rooster had bedded half the young ladies in town—including, in the old days, if we are being entirely honest, myself.

  When I pushed my empty glass at her, Mink elbowed it aside and leaned forward. She said, “I need to show you something.”

  “Can you show me after you get me another drink?”

  “No.”

  Other than Lad, now having a giggle attack with the junior bartender, there were no other customers.

  “Well, what?”

  From her back pocket she pulled a crumple of newspaper and flattened it on the silver bar. It was a tiny article, one cramped paragraph, and my eyes were blurring; I had to squint. I saw the name of the university where my parents taught, and the word appoints, and Cam’s name.

  “He was appointed…?” I groped.

  “A visiting professor,” Mink explained, “at the law school. For one semester.”