The Sky Is Yours

by Chandler Klang Smith

  “May I use the lavatory first?”

  “See you on the bed boat in five.”

  She disappears into the echo-chamberish bathroom suite; he hears water angrily blasting from all three sinks. Ripple gets out of the ball pit and lies down naked on the bed boat, gazing up at the waif onscreen, trying to wriggle out of her bonds. She looks a little like Abby if you don’t focus your eyes too hard, lean and tan, though her voice is all wrong: “Who’s—who’s there?” Way too normal. He thinks about Abby’s weird little accent, a dialect of one, how she references sex positions like discrete activities: “We could From Behind or Sideways or go fishing!” He never thought she’d be the only fem he ever had, never wanted that—but never again? Stuck the rest of her life in a Quiet Place? Maybe they allow conjugal visits. A padded room, every surface a mattress…“This place is fucked.” “Let’s Against the Wall.” Screw the adultery penalties, it would be worth every cent, it would feel so right….

  By the time Swanny reemerges, he’s got a good-sized erection in hand. Onscreen, a yeti penetrates the virgin on the incongruous shag carpeting of the mountain cave’s floor.

  “I kinda got started without you,” Ripple says, nodding at his penis.

  “Good lord,” says Swanny. She stares at his body. “I’ve never seen a man naked before. Your genitals—it’s like an alien dissection.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “I didn’t intend it as a compliment.”

  But anytime a half-naked woman ogles Ripple’s cock with rapt fixation, he’s going to take it that way. He gives it one last expert squeeze up near the tip, then opens his arms.

  “C’mere,” he says.

  Swanny lies down on the bed next to him. He cups his hand around her breast and kisses her on the chin. Channeled through surround-sound speakers, the yeti growls, “You like that, sugar tits?”

  “Turn off the video immediately,” whispers Swanny.

  Ripple taps a button on the controller. See, he can compromise. “Let’s listen to some classic sex tunes.” The blue notes of the Shat’s “You’ll Have Time” fill the room, along with church organ and Sprechstimme. “Close enough.” He hikes up the satin of her negligee and climbs on top. Swanny is rigidly still as he tongues her neck, slides the strap off her shoulder. Coma Vixen, up close and personal: some fems really do just lie there, apparently.

  “Show time,” he mumbles, and presses into her.

  But something is—weird. He’s in, he’s definitely in, but no way is this right. She feels like a cat’s sandpaper tongue. Ripple slows his pace, staring down at her. No, it’s not possible…“Those are happy tears, right? Like, you start crying when you come?”

  “That’s right. That’s it exactly. You’ve brought me to orgasm.” Swanny turns her gaze to meet his, tears trickling down toward her ears. Her voice is as flat as her expression. “The pleasure is indescribable. You’re dominating. You’re ‘the abuser,’ Duncan.”

  “Hey. That’s not nice.”

  “Neither is this.”

  She doesn’t want him. She really doesn’t want him. Not even for hate sex. Somehow he never considered that as a serious risk. Ripple feels himself retracting within her. He rolls off, and she tugs her nightgown down to cover herself. He turns his back, curls into a fetal position. He’s not going to be a great lover, captured onscreen for all eternity. He’s never even going to fuck his wife.

  “I was doing my best, OK?”

  Swanny snorts. “Really? That’s your best?”

  “Go away.”

  Swanny picks up the controller from where it’s fallen on the mattress. “Do you have any costume dramas in your archives?”

  Duncan sits up. He swipes the controller from her hand and hurls it through the projector screen. It smashes into the wall. “Get out of my room.”

  Swanny straightens the strap of her negligee. “And where, pray tell, am I supposed to sleep?”

  “Who cares? Go die in a fire. You’re fat and frigid and nobody likes you.”

  “How dare you speak to me that way. Verbal abuse is grounds for an annulment.”

  “Good luck finding another husband. There’s the door.”

  “When my mother hears about this, the consequences will be drastic.”

  “Yeah right. She’s after her ROI, same as anybody else. You don’t believe me, look where you are.”

  Swanny toddles toward the door. A drop of blood hits the carpet between her feet; it isn’t from her mouth this time. “I didn’t think it was possible to hate you even more than I did already.”

  “Better pace yourself, wench. We’ve got the rest of our lives.”

  * * *

  Swanny has had over one hundred and fifty extractions. She has had menstrual cramps that brought her close to fainting. She once broke a toe kicking her father’s gravestone in rage, and she’s sprained her ankle on rabbit holes in the garden on two separate occasions. But nothing in her experience compares with the loss of her virginity tonight. The pain was excruciating, consuming, and with it came a blinding anger. She hated Ripple, hated every inch of his endoparasitoid nudity—but to her chagrin and surprise, she also hated herself. Her body betrayed her, became a contortionist’s box with blades coming in the sides. Frigid.

  It was never like this in her fantasies (because yes, of course she had them, fantasies intended for pure titillation—truth and beauty will only get a young lady so far). Even in daydreams of highwaymen and pirate kings, who in their villainy would overpower her, Swanny imagined she would, with this as with all things, seek out and take her own dark, secret pleasure. Yet tonight, with Duncan, she found herself without inner resources of any kind, clamped in the merciless jaws of the actual. Ripple’s penis was not a metaphor for anything. It was a wedge between her and herself, held in place by the most erosive friction, as if he were saying, I don’t love you, I don’t love you, with every scoot. Swanny is cracked almost in two, and worse yet, the grand gates of the Hotel Paracosm are locked to her. Has Ripple ruined her, for everyone, for all time? Erased all her imaginary friends? At the moment, she cannot conjure the charming fop, the rakish brigadier, from whose touch she wouldn’t shrink. Her whole life, she has longed for contact, sure and true, on the deepest levels of sensuality and emotion. Now, on her wedding night, she wants to be alone.

  Swanny silently slips into her mother’s suite. The space is like a little apartment, a parlor and two bedrooms. One of the bedroom doors is ajar. Swanny peeks in. The lights are off and her mother is in bed, wearing a sleep mask and an anti-aging cream that glows faintly in the darkness. Swanny tiptoes to the other bedroom and lets herself inside.

  The decor is tastefully barren; other than a sleek, oblong light fixture and a painting of lovers on the Twolands Bridge, the walls are ivory, unadorned. Swanny rips off her negligee, wads it up in a ball, and throws it into a corner. Her hope chest stands waiting at the foot of the bed. She opens it and tosses clothes over both shoulders until she finds her favorite pajamas, red flannel with a repeating pattern of iconic retro housewives declaring, “Cook your own damn dinner!” and “I start drinking at noon!”—the ones that her mother says make her look like a Sapphic endtimes lumberjack. But even with these on, she’s still shivering. Frigid. She drapes her chinchilla coat around her shoulders as she digs deeper into the chest for her quilted dressing gown, and it’s then that she finds the envelope. Swanny, it says. Open ASAP. Inside, there’s a card about the size of a party invitation, letterpressed with her initials. Swanny recognizes it: she used dozens of these the week after her engagement, to announce the news in personalized notes to all her mother’s friends. But the handwriting here isn’t hers. It’s plain, and cramped, and nevertheless spills out from the card onto an additional sheet of legal paper folded up inside, as if the words, once flowing, couldn’t easily be staunched.

  Dear Swanny,

  Tomorrow morning you are leaving. You are traveling to the city to meet your husband and all your new servants, to make a new l
ife. Your mother says she will come back after the wedding, but I don’t believe she will. She has packed all her jewelry and her Who’s Who books and her content reel, and I think that if she can, she will never leave your side. A mother does not let her child go easily. I know. Though my son has been dead longer now than he ever was alive, I carry him with me still. If it would bring him back, if it would keep him safe, I would gladly follow him to the ends of the Earth. This is the one thing, perhaps, that your mother and I share.

  So I will not see either of you again.

  You never asked me what I did before I came to this place. But I once also made a journey far from the only home I knew. When I was a young mother, not much older than you are now, I too had a head full of dreams. At night, I tended my baby; each day, I taught grammar and geography to little children in a hot, dusty classroom without desks or window glass. When I had money, I bought books from the pulp mill for their shelf. The books came in unlabeled cartons and I bought them by the pound. Sometimes, when the books were in your language, I rewrote them into mine. It was a puzzle I could solve, to keep my mind fresh, to stake a claim on the world. One of these books was your father’s.

  I was pleased with my work. When I sent him my lines alongside his, it was a gift. I did not expect to be hired as governess to his newborn child, to travel with my son to the manor on his estate, half a world away. I did not expect servant quarters twice the size of the cramped apartment I shared with my boy back home. I did not expect it to ruin my life.

  This house is mine now, this house I have cared for so many years, and I have earned it a hundred times over. No manor home is worth a lifetime of grief. Though you were a sweet child—lonely and spoiled, yes, but sweet—raising any child is a struggle, and you were not my own. If I could take back every hour I spent with your family, I would. But it is too late for that.

  Once upon a time, I tried to tell you why my son died. I told you about the sickness that ate away his body from inside until only his soul was left, trapped behind the windows of his eyes. I told you about how your father taught him to swim, how they splashed together in the pool until the well water pruned their toes. I told you, but you did not listen. You always pretended to flout your mother’s teachings, yet perhaps you learned from her all too well. In your mind, we were creatures of different kinds, you and I. You did not believe that my family’s life could have anything to do with yours—that the same monsters could devour us both.

  Swanny, I know you have wondered why you have so many teeth, and I know your mother has told you that you are inbred. La Diabla. I never contradicted her, because lying to a child is a mother’s right. Also I did not want to lose my job. I had already lost too much. Now, though, I have nothing left to lose. And no one stays a child forever.

  There is a sickness in this place. In the ground. In the water.

  That sickness is also in you.

  The teeth do not only grow into your mouth, Swanny. Those are just the ones you can see. They grow into your rib cage, into your lungs and heart. I watched the teeth chew up my little boy, and then your father. It happened to the other Gray Ladies’ children too. For them it took just months. For you it is taking much longer. I do not know why.

  But I do know that soon your teeth will leave no room inside for anything else.

  I have hidden a manila folder under the lining of this chest. In it I have put X-rays from your dentist. You can look at them if you do not believe me. They show the teeth you have never seen, and new ones that have not yet dug in their roots. I am not telling you this to warn you: if the truth could save you, your mother would not have swaddled you in lies. I am not even telling you so you can lead a fuller life in what little time remains—I do not pretend to know what pain or joy this truth will bring. No. I am telling you because I once promised your father that I would educate you, and though your mother set me to different tasks, I will not break that promise. I owe that to him, to you—and most of all, to myself.

  Here is your lesson, gordita: you will die. No name or title or fortune can ever protect you from that. Now here is your homework: how are you going to live?

  Your housekeeper,

  Corona

  Swanny tears the letter to pieces, then holds the pieces together and reads it again. She shoves it into the pocket of her coat and flings the rest of her clothing from the trunk. The lining is red satin. Corona was never fond of sewing, and the place where she tore the fabric along the seam is sealed with a long shimmer of scotch tape. As promised, the X-rays are inside. Swanny’s hands shake as she holds them up to the light. It doesn’t take her long to see the nascent teeth, nestled between her ribs like fetuses. Corona has marked some of the larger ones with Pippi’s SIGN HERE stickies, the ones they used on all the contracts.

  Swanny feels as though she’s in a dream as she rises from the floor. She wafts through the suite’s little parlor, into her mother’s room, and deftly, silently drifts between the pieces of furniture until she finds Pippi’s valise, the one with the valuables. She twists the combination lock—it’s always been the Wonland County area code, 666—and in the darkness moves aside the ring boxes and the cut-glass business trophies until she finds her mother’s gun.

  Despite the curlicued monogram on the grip (PFD in a tangle of lines), it isn’t a lady’s pistol; it’s a double-action semiautomatic sidearm and Swanny has no idea how it works. Still, she lifts it up to her temple, experimentally, feeling the weight of it in her hand. The lamp switches on.

  “Burglars!”

  Her mother’s sleep mask has large Egyptian eyes embroidered where her real eyes should be; combined with the teal cream on her skin, it makes her look like an otherworldly thing: a septuagenarian Sphinx. She whips the blindfold off over her head.

  “Swanny, drop that handgun this instant.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because it’s mine.”

  “In that case, perhaps I should use it on you.” She points the gun at her mother.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Pippi plucks a clawful of tissues from the box on the bedside table and begins to swab her face. “If you didn’t have someone to tie your stays, you’d never get your clothes on in the morning.”

  “I know about the X-rays.” Swanny wipes her eyes on her sleeve.

  “What X-rays?” Pippi’s voice snaps like dropped chalk.

  “I’m sure you’re quite aware which ones I mean, Mother.” She articulates each word with care, aiming for some semblance of wounded dignity: “I know the truth. I know I’m going to die.”

  Pippi swings her legs out of bed, pats her hair. “You are not going to die.”

  “Don’t lie to me anymore. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear all this pointless, hollow playacting. I’m not even angry anymore. I simply feel nothing.”

  “You feel nothing?” Pippi yanks a shearling robe around herself and knots the belt as if girding for battle.

  “That’s right,” says Swanny, shrinking slightly.

  “Well, perhaps you can try feeling grateful for a change.” The muscles of Pippi’s neck work as she grinds her teeth.

  “Grateful?” Swanny laughs through her tears. “Grateful? Oh, Mother. I’m going to die, and you—”

  “You’re going to die? Die? You’ll do nothing of the kind. Look at this house. Look at where I’ve taken you. Would you like to know a secret? I was born in an apartment, Swanny. I worked summers as a typist to pay my way through underschool. I was the top of my class at Hartford-Hazlett, and for overschool, I won a scholarship to Chokely Bradford’s business program—a scholarship, Swanny, back when they were still co-ed. I was their last female valedictorian, the last one in their history.”

  “Mother, what does this even—”

  But Pippi doesn’t stop. This is an aria.

  “I was the last, and I was the finest. All my life I have watched the world dismantled around me, even as I climbed up into it. The day after my graduation, the first day of my assistantship, those goddamn
ed dragons torched the roof of our office building. But I did not stop. I Did Not Stop. I have never let anything stop my getting what I want.

  “I transformed McGuffin-Stork. I kept them on their toes. The conference rooms fell silent when I appeared. I remember when I met Humphrey Ripple. I took him out to lunch. I took him, Swanny.

  “I got braces on my teeth at twelve, froze my eggs at twenty-two, and had you at my earliest convenience. You were a stellar embryo, a rowdy toddler, a willful child, and a stubborn girl. But never in my life did I expect you to disappoint me. Look at me, Swanny. Do you think your father made our millions? Your father? The poet? No. He was scion to a crumbling dynasty, squeaking by on name alone. No. It was me.” She glares at Swanny from deep within a fire of furious triumph. “You are my daughter. You will never die.”

  Swanny shakes her head. She drops the gun on the floor and stares at it there for a long time.

  “You’re senile,” Swanny says. The statement is so huge, it leaves no space in the room for air. And then she screams it: “You’re senile, you’re senile!” And then she’s running, in red flannel pajamas and a chinchilla coat, deep into the labyrinth of the house.

  * * *

  Ripple wakes up, drenched in sweat, and rolls over to look at his alarm clock, where the digits display in glowing orange, like the dragons themselves are spelling out the time: 4:26 a.m. Abby is going to a Quiet Place at 5:30. He lies still for almost a full minute in the darkness. He can hear the sound of his own heartbeat pulsing in his ears. What is he supposed to do? He tries to picture tomorrow morning at breakfast, Abby gone, another day cranking up just like nothing’s happened. His father and Osmond, reading books or working puzzles at the table while truffled frittata cools on ignored plates. Pippi lecturing his mother on the merits of different coffee roasts. Swanny stabbing a grapefruit to squirt him in the eye or, more likely, taking breakfast in her bed upstairs, so sick of him she’s made herself an invalid. And Abby, meanwhile, locked into some collective insanity he can only imagine, the smell of disinfectant, restraints on beds, involuntary hose-downs…when all they needed to do was set her free…