Watch Your Mouth

by Daniel Handler

  “He killed them,” she said, panting. The towel had collapsed around her, a bedsheet, a costume, a body bag. “He killed them, didn’t he? Tell me.”

  “If you don’t owe me an explanation,” I said.

  Mimi crawled toward me. “Just tell me if he killed them.”

  I tried to step away but I’d have to step forever. I saw she’d crawl everywhere to find me. I’d had a moment to leave, years ago, but it had passed somewhere in the blur of everything we’d done. “Yes,” I said, letting the slipperiness of a pronoun slide whatever pieces she needed into place. What did it matter, anyway? It was all like that: his fault, her fault, what he did, what she did, what I did. What did true matter to me? What could it matter? “Yes. He killed them,” I said.

  Mimi shook her head like she was trying to get something off her. “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  “I tried to stop him,” I said. “I’m still trying.”

  Step 10

  Step 10: Continue to take personal inventory—

  “You’re packing?” Allyson said.

  “Yep.” I looked at my duffel bag, gaping open like a hungry mouth. What to feed it? Jeans, shoes, toothbrush—I needed to make a list.

  “Don’t you think it’s wrong to just walk out like this on a commitment you’ve made?”

  —and when wrong, promptly admit it. “Yes, I do.”

  “Joe—”

  “I have to go, Allyson. You and I have something—the possibility of something special, really. Really special. But—”

  “I meant the job.”

  “But—”

  “The job, here at Vast. You’re supposed to be my assistant, the Entertainment Assistant—”

  “Al, I can’t—”

  “—and you’re ducking out right before the big party, the night I count on you most.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t think I can assist anyone in being entertained tonight, Al.”

  “Joe—”

  “I thought you might understand,” I said. “After I—it was difficult to tell you about it, Al, but I did. I thought you’d understand.”

  “But why are you leaving, Joe? You owe me an expl—”

  “I don’t owe you anything!” A pair of empty shoes stomped into the duffel. “I—look, with what happened to me—with me—”

  “I know what happened to you, Joe,” she said. She sat beside the duffel; the mattress sagged like something giving up. “And you’re getting help, which is good. But at a time like this you need your friends around you. You need people to—”

  “If I don’t leave,” I said, “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  She took my hand. “I think I can make that decision for myself.”

  I felt my hand curl around hers, harder, harder. I remembered some nature photograph, some silent and powerful snake, some defenseless little creature. “If I don’t leave,” I said, “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  Al stepped back, snakebit. “You don’t mean,” she started carefully.

  “Yes.”

  “Joe, if you’re really in danger of hurting someone, even yourself, I can’t in good conscience let you go.”

  “—to a costume party,” I finished for her.

  “Anywhere,” she said. “Not in good—”

  “You’re the only one here with good conscience, Al.”

  “What happened, Joe? We were discussing the list of guests and you got up and walked out like you were hypnotized. Then you spent all afternoon working on Mrs. Zhivago’s costume, and—”

  “Mrs. Zhivago!” I shouted. “Mrs. Zhivago! Why don’t you check on this Mrs. Zhivago? Go on, check the Vast records, see if you can dig up her past!”

  “Don’t be—that’s ridiculous!” she said. “Check the records? We’re a resort, not some computer spy ring. What is this, some cheap thriller?”

  “Yes, unfortunately,” I said. “It is.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Figure it out yourself.” I rolled socks into a tight sphere. “Einstein.”

  The joke wasn’t funny any more. “What happened, Joe? Did she—did she say something—that guest—”

  “She’s—part of the family,” I said.

  “Part of the family that you—”

  “Yes.”

  “How can that be? She doesn’t look a thing like—”

  “It wasn’t my family.”

  She stood up and looked at me. I couldn’t; I looked out the window instead. From my window, on the opposite side of the building, you couldn’t see the pool, but the real tide, with a moon lurking above it, a moon that could be mechanical except the joke wasn’t funny any more. If Mimi wasn’t dead everything in this perfect universe could have been devised. “Not your—”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean? You lied to me about—about—”

  “Yes. Well, not really—yes.”

  “So nothing like that happened to you?”

  “No.”

  Her face hardened, and set. I looked out at the moon, the water below it reflecting light which had left long ago. Nothing would budge. Everything was set in stone. “Why? You made that up—just to get laid, or what?”

  “You’d already laid me,” I said.

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “I have to go,” I said. “Do you understand that? All of you try to help me—you, and Lauren, what’s-his-name, the guy from Hire Power—”

  “What? Who?”

  “—but you can’t. I’m—beyond help. Far beyond.” I looked out at the moon, a perfect postcard circle. “I’m so far from help that the light from help would take a million years to reach me.”

  She snorted, then smiled despite herself. “You’re—”

  “—crazy ,” I finished for her.

  “You are,” she insisted. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Let me go.”

  “Well, not tonight,” she said. “You can’t—”

  “Abandon my job, I know, I know. You don’t get it.”

  “No. You can’t leave,” she said. “Not unless somebody’s private jet is picking you up. We’re on an island, remember? Out in the middle of wherever.”

  “There must be a boat for, I don’t know, emergencies.”

  “You’re not an emergency,” she said, picking up her clipboard from my bedstand. There was a wadded piece of tissue there next to the clock, having mopped up from the last bit of sex we’d had. I couldn’t tell if she’d looked at it, too, if she knew what it was. It was hard to tell what anybody was seeing any more. Al looked at me, opened the door and padded down the hallway carpet which was as brown and dark as mud. “You’re just a jerk,” she called.

  I looked down at my limp duffel and realized I couldn’t take it anywhere. “Shit,” I said to it. “Shit shit shit.” I listened to everything forbidden come out of my mouth: “Shit shit fuck shit fuck goddamn fucking fucker. Shit!”

  Like a ghost Al’s voice floated down the hall to me. “You kiss your mother with that mouth, Joe?”

  Outside they were switching the lanterns on and a masked, six-piece band was tuning up. Out in the half-light the party would start up with or without me. “Not my mother,” I said.

  Step 11

  The band was playing something that told the Japanese-lit guests to take two steps forward, two steps back, but watching from my room I was stepping back further than that. Dance with me, like a partner: back through all the steps I’ve shown you to the muddled tragedy that brought them on. It’s often hard to describe the plot of a book to others, even when it’s still going on; you remember the parts you like but those aren’t all the parts that happened. And your own family is the book you can’t put down. When you live there it’s an opera, the scenes you remember: violence, peeping through doors, arguments, meals, everything loud, loud, loud. For years your ears are still ringing. Then you review it again and you realize there must have been quiet parts, too—every opera has them—bu
t where did they go? Like all master criminals they’re untraceable. You remember a little wooden box, elaborate and you’re pretty sure Indonesian, but there’s something else on the coffee table now and your mother doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Your father lent you a robe, but it’s not the one in photographs and, now that you think about it, it might have been your robe all along. You remember huddling in the hospital, all of you together in numb grief, but if you were all together who was in the hospital bed? You can remember their pale and bare legs, the wheezing of the machinery, but the rest slipped past the sightlines while you were watching someone in the orchestra. You were wrong, maybe; somebody was. When did the dog die? Where’s your favorite little plate? What lie was believed long after the liar forgot all about it? If you didn’t remember to make the bed, why are the blankets pulled taut, the sex stains hidden under throw pillows bought at a store that went under years ago? When did he tell you she called, where did those tiny plants go, the ones you grew in Styrofoam cups, when did that cut heal? When did that song slip out of heavy rotation on the radio, into the slang and then into a resort band’s repertoire? Bing, bing, bing, everything is re-edited; you know you heard it in the overture but you still didn’t expect it in the finale.

  The golem is a figure in Jewish myth—sort of a Jewish lie, sort of a Jewish truth. It appears to wreak havoc but really, it’ll do anything you say. You don’t have to tell it twice. If it tries to speak for itself, the Word of God tumbles out and the golem turns back into clay. It’s a monster, sort of, but who isn’t a monster occasionally, particularly among family? It moves quickly and quietly, creepily, anywhere you want it to: out of its room, along the edge of the pool leaving muddy footprints somebody will have to clean up, towards the Japanese lanterns it can bring down with one swing of its arm. It moves closer, closer. You don’t have to tell it twice.

  Marco was ladling out punch into plastic cups with the concentration of a surgeon. I grabbed two and downed them, ignoring his frown. Al was calling something to the drummer over the amplified cha-cha. The lanterns made everybody look pink: the Pearson cowboys, the honeymooning Giltmores dressed in their wedding outfits, the J-E-W daughters all dressed as ballerinas, with a witch for a mom, two other witches who knew each other from work, Mr. Anderson wearing a tin-foil crown and his wife in a Vast gift store tiara, Dr. Zhivago in a cowboy hat he undoubtedly borrowed from the Pearsons, and Mimi, where was—

  “Joe?”

  I turned around to find Sarah Hackett, alight with punch and having asked me to her room a while back. She was dressed as an opera Viking, her red hair covered by a horned helmet and two long yellow yarn braids, her fat body panelled in tin foil and construction paper. Behind her the king and queen were starting a conga line. “Hi, Sarah.”

  “Great band, huh? They’re going to let me do a number later.”

  “Well, I don’t want to miss that.”

  “Why aren’t you in costume?”

  “I was so busy helping everybody else,” I said, “that I never—”

  “I have plenty of costume stuff in my room,” she said. “Let’s—”

  “No,” I said. “I have to stay here, Sarah.”

  “Really ,” she said. “I gave Mrs. Bitburg all her witch stuff. All the witches are my work.”

  Just beyond the row of lanterns, towards the sea, I thought I saw a flash of white, like a sheet, a robe. “You must be very proud.”

  She giggled, then frowned. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “I don’t have time,” I said. I walked around the snaking line of tourists. Al and her clipboard glared at me.

  “I thought you had to stay here,” Sarah called.

  “Have to run,” I said. I reached the pink perimeter and saw her clearly: Mimi, walking along the shore towards the Vast canoes, lined up like tools for surgery. It was true: I had to run.

  I caught up with her at the foamy edge. She turned to face me before I grabbed her arm.

  “Let go.”

  “Mimi—”

  “Let go!”

  I let go.

  “Thank you. Now leave.”

  “Why? What are you doing here?”

  She turned to me, eyes incredulous, incredible. “What am I—I’m walking along the beach, Joseph. It’s been a very upsetting day for me, thank you very much.”

  “For me, too.”

  The surf ran long, encircling our feet. I felt a soggy chill crawl up me. “That’s not my problem, Joseph.”

  “I don’t think we should be alone.”

  She laughed rough, one syllable: “Ha! Then leave.”

  “I don’t think you should be alone.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “You’re the only one left, Mimi.”

  She looked at me, her face clouding over as the moon did. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  That’s when the hands pulled us under.

  I surfaced choking, kicking at the mud beneath me before I realized I was lying down in a half-inch of water. “It’s O.K.!” I shouted to Mimi, grabbing her arm. “It’s O.K.! It was just the surf! Just the surf!”

  Mimi stood up, shaking me free. She was soaking. “I know!” she shouted. “I know it was—what else could it be?” She shook herself long and hard, like a large dog. “What are you talking about? Did you—” She stopped and looked out toward the party, covering her mouth. Her eyes grew wider, frightened. I scrambled to my feet and followed her gaze to the long, tall figure, silouetted by the lanterns and striding toward us. “You led him here, didn’t you?” she said. “You led Ben here to—”

  “Ben’s dead,” I said. Behind me was only the Vast sea, dark and unreadable. There was nowhere to hide. The figure lumbered closer.

  Mimi wiped the hair out of her eyes. “Then who—what—?”

  Not tall enough, moving too quickly and—if that weren’t enough—wearing a cowboy hat, Dr. Zhivago stepped into view. “Mimi?” he asked, taking in the scene: his wife, a young resort employee, alone in the dark and soaking wet. I read once that you can read the end of your relationships in their beginnings; did Zhivago lie awake nights, wondering when his wife would fake her own death to elope with somebody else? “What is happening here?”

  “Nothing, Frank,” she said. “Nothing.” But he stepped closer and saw; a miracle he hadn’t seen it before, really.

  “You,” he said, his voice thick with punch and recognition. “You’re—you’re—”

  That’s when the hand grabbed my shoulder. I turned around: Al. One more false alarm and I’d have a heart attack.

  “You’re what’s-his-name!” he shouted.

  Al blinked, then extended her hand. “Al Einstein.”

  “Not you,” he said. “Him. He’s—”

  “Joe,” Al said.

  “Joseph,” I said. “Last Name Changed.”

  Al looked at the Zhivagos, all clipboard-professional. “Let me apologize for Joseph,” she said. “He’s been dismissed from The Vast Resort and is leaving first thing tomorrow.”

  “I wasn’t dismissed,” I said. “I quit.”

  “Why don’t I take you both back to the party,” Al said, “where you can enjoy a complimentary cocktail.” She tried to take each of their arms like she wasn’t allowed to cross the street. Mimi allowed. Zhivago resisted.

  “But what is he doing here?” he said. “How did you find—”

  “He’s a former employee,” Al said, “who is leaving first thing—”

  “He’s been following us,” Mimi said, quietly. “He won’t leave us alone.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Al said quickly. “Look, why don’t we go back to the—”

  “Why not?” Zhivago said, turning to me. He looked tired; everything did. “Why won’t you, Joseph? Just let us live our lives. They’re none of your business. Just leave.” And then he left, or started to, Al and Mimi in tow. After two steps they stopped and looked at me, all of them, as if I should have vanished already. I turned a
round and looked out to the Vast ocean, thinking they were right, but it turned out I was. It turned out, rising from the ocean so large and dark that it stood out even in the moon-covered night, that I was right, and that the one that wouldn’t leave us alone, the one lumbering slowly, so huge, with sure and wet purpose toward the shore, wasn’t me.

  “What is that?” Al said, the only one who didn’t know, the only one who had no reason to lie about it. “What is that?”

  You don’t have to move so quickly, not if you’re so huge. A few strides will get you there. “What is that?” Al screamed again, and the golem swung at me. I ducked in time to escape impact but not the earthy scent, the swoosh of air, the cold, cold prick of a few stray drops clinging to those enormous arms. It was real, the scent, the sound, the feel. It had always been real, this golem. Mimi had created it, down in the basement, just like I’d always said, and it had followed everyone, hunted them down, strangled them or smothered them or whatever it was that golems did, to get revenge, to obey the wishes of its creator. Mimi wanted it to kill everyone who had harmed her, and here it was: Cyn, Stephen, Ben and now me. Now me, now here. The golem was now here. This was real as real could be, as real as this gets.

  I ran thickly, my pants soaked with surf. I ran right into the others and we stumbled together, clogged, through the sand toward the party, like some bedraggled caboose to the conga line. I kept looking back at the golem, advancing with silent calm. It walked so easily, acquiring menace with every step. Its stride was muddy, and effortless, almost elegant in its surety.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, as a special treat we have a little preview of the talent show. Performing with our own Vast Orchestra, Ms. Sarah Hackett—” Mike just frowned when the four of us tore into the party. We must have looked like mere rule-breakers. “What—” he started to say, and then he looked past us and saw. The band, already poised, froze further as the guests turned around to see who the party crashers were. One of the witches screamed, but most everybody was silent, caught mid-sip, mid-saxaphone, mid-finger food, mid-vocal debut. The Anderson royals started to smile, knowing of course what it was: some prank, some costume party finale. Even Mike’s scream sounded canned, a high feminine scream he might have performed every session, just when the party might be dying and the people were ready for something new. But it wasn’t.