gods with a little g

by Tupelo Hassman

  I put the picture back in its spot and I am just about to go inside when I remember the finger painting he did. I duck my head back in the car window and it is obvious that this isn’t the first time Fast Eddie has labored like this, wept and jerked it to Heidi’s smiling face. It would take more than once to get the letters drawn up there as clear and sharp as they are, layer after layer, shiny and stiff on the beige upholstery of his LeSabre. All caps, SORRY.

  All of Eddie’s emptiness and loneliness is spelled out right there. How he has that hole in him like Dad’s, the kind that makes your body forget how to work, how to do the simplest things, like get it up. It is possible that I could feel some kind of kinship with Eddie myself, especially because 2013 is the same year that Mom died.

  Or, I could feel joy because fuck Fast Eddie, and I could put this little secret in my arsenal and remember it whenever the Dickheads cheer in his name. I could ruin him by telling everyone what he does when he’s alone and the loneliness is too much to bear, that he is soft, in his heart, in his pants. I could take that picture from under the visor and rip it up for an elixir that I would never brew to heal him. I could leave it in shreds there on the driver’s seat with a note, maybe, so he would know that someone knew all about it, a note written in silver Sharpie on one of the torn strips, SORRY, NOT SORRY.

  Or, I could do nothing. Because sometimes that is the only choice with any kindness in it and sometimes kindness is the only choice.

  STRANGE MAGIC

  I had a plan for the porn I borrowed, Lust in the Fast Lane. I was going to use it to coat letters I would send to Winthrop in juvie, to make sure he is safe, to surround him with the goodness of our friendship. The laughter of us reading those scenes has to have soaked into their pages, and with a bit of Aunt Bev’s magic, I would bring that out. Since I can’t do that, I have to hope it will be useful when he comes home, to undo whatever damage is done to him in there. I’ll spray his room with it. Give Pen a bath in it. Something.

  I’ve seen Aunt Bev work a few binds. Once for Dad, when she revived him, and once when a Walmart threatened to move into the empty lot next door, where the angel is. She washed its perimeter with a bucket of rose water and union-labor literature, binding it with the worker. She used it to brighten up the tetanus trap that is the angel’s rebar halo, binding it to her. The Walmart found another home. This is powerful magic.

  I wait for an early afternoon when everyone is out and then I tear the pages of Lust in the Fast Lane from what is left of its cover, and then I tear the pages into strips so fine my hands start to cramp. “Scissors won’t do,” Aunt Bev says. “You need flesh and blood and bone. A shredder can’t know your mind, that’s why those documents go dumb. They’re destroyed by a machine. This is hand work.”

  When all the pages are torn, right down to the last big O, I simmer them in rose water, soak them through until the ink that hasn’t already been smeared by sweat and cum is blurred on the strips. Then I wait until it all starts to disintegrate, ashes to ashes, pulp to pulp. I sieve it through cheesecloth into a clean jam jar, write LFL on the lid. I put it in the dark to strengthen until Winthrop comes home, and then there is nothing to do but wait.

  ALSO, WAITING

  If you were flying in a plane over Rosary, California, on most days you would have to fly low, beneath the air on fire from the refinery, just to get some visibility. This way you’d be able to make out a figure on the ground, a bony girl in black, maybe a little drunk, and you would have no trouble making out the words on the sign I’d be holding up, the letters on it outlined and colored in until all my Sharpies dried up from the effort: TAKE ME WITH YOU.

  PLUMB

  Dad takes Iris out to dinner for her birthday, adults only, leaving Bird and me alone to pretend we heated up the dinner Iris left us, to pretend in general. I go to my room and shut the door. It doesn’t help. It turns out that ignoring someone who isn’t even in the same room as you are is not easy. It’s like I can feel him breathing. It’s like I can feel him breathing on my skin.

  I try the bath again. I fill the tub and my fingers are circling even before the water is done running, but I can’t get off. I lie there for a while, keeping the beat of Bird’s stereo with my palm against my stomach. I get out. I pull the jam jar from the back of the cupboard where I hid it behind a box of tampons, the jar with Lust in the Fast Lane inside, the potion I made for Winthrop.

  “Psychic, heal thyself,” I say, as I pour just the tiniest bit from the jar into the tub. I think of Cy, in his tent, trying to get off with the wrong magazines. I think of Mrs. Gillespie and her gnarled hand, of Fast Eddie and his gnarled heart, and then I pour in a little more. “For the homies,” I say.

  And I get back in. And try again.

  It doesn’t work.

  So I get back out and I pour the rest of Lust in the Fast Lane into the tub. Every last page, and I climb in after it. Because what am I saving it for? Winthrop doesn’t want my friendship. He has so little interest in our friendship that he doesn’t even want me to send him letters full of magic and pretty lies. He was clear about that. And as I figure out how to work my body again, as I start to feel that familiar rush of blood, I realize that the only one not clear is me.

  And I’m going to fix that right now. Or rather, have Bird fix it for me. Using his special tool.

  I wrap myself up in one of Iris’s embroidered guest towels and knock on Bird’s door.

  Bird opens the door and he just looks at me.

  “Are you busy, Bird?”

  “Nah.” He smiles, and all of his smiles are smirks. “I was just jerking off.”

  We have more in common than I thought.

  And now what am I going to do? I have this moment of remembering. Who I am. What this is. I tighten the towel around me, say, “Forget it,” and just then, the slightest breeze flows through the stuffy air of the house, breathes down the hallway, around me, and into Bird’s room.

  Bird’s smirk disappears. In its place is the most serious look I’ve seen from him since I threw away the tablecloth at the VFW hall.

  “You’re having trouble with the tub,” he says. It isn’t a question.

  He closes his bedroom door and heads into the bathroom, where he turns on the faucet and watches it flow. I watch him. The way his hair is hanging. He needs it cut. The way his ass curves with muscle. He needs it grabbed. And then he turns to me and I realize what is happening, has happened. To us.

  Lust in the Fast Lane.

  And there are no brakes. That was the whole point.

  “What are you really having trouble with, Hell?” he says, and almost exactly like in the scene with the plumber who shows up for an emergency call in Hungry Housewives, I don’t need to answer. He lifts me up onto the counter and sets me right.

  The water splashes in the tub and I wrap my arms around Bird, wrap my legs around him, and remember Aunt Bev’s warning about binding. How there is nothing like the first bind you work to make you a believer.

  WHIPPED

  Today is Iris’s actual birthday and she swears the only thing she wants is for us to go to church with her and Dad. Even though Bird only climbed out of my bed a few hours before, we get up and take our showers and get dressed properly, like the good children we are pretending to be.

  But at church, Bird is not himself. I expected him to be my partner in crime, rolling eyes with me at the sermon, anxious for it to end, but it is like some other boy is there with us, attentive, quiet. A believer. Bird sits in the dusty light coming through the windows and the stained glass colors his face, blushes his cheeks, stings his lips like the makeup ads promise every girl they’ll do. And he’s beatified, like the Bible promises it will do. If we were allowed saints here, if the Catholics weren’t cursed, I would call this a sighting. Saint Bird is sitting in this pew just one hymnal from me, transformed, and I know why. I know where Bird really worships and I know, exactly, what’s come over him.

  The love of Jesus and all His angels can’t c
ompare with the glow you get from being really, really bad.

  LOST

  I make a lost sign for myself. All the signs are for myself. I hang this sign up on the back of my bedroom door. I hang it on the ceiling above my bed. I hang it inside my pillowcase so I can listen to it crinkling at night. I tear off all the little squares with my number written on them and chew and chew them like they are tiny pieces of gum. Then I swallow them and wonder where they went and if I should make a lost sign for them too.

  FORENSIC FILES

  I go to Winthrop’s to visit Pen. Sometimes Rainbolene and I walk over together from the tire yard but whether she’s with me or not, I walk right in, and it has become almost like Mrs. Epsworthy doesn’t know that I don’t live there myself. She’ll be deep into whatever television show she is watching, which is all of them, and when I say, “Hi, Mrs. Epsworthy,” sometimes she doesn’t say anything to me. Most times she just says, “Good girl,” when Pen gets down off the couch and wiggles her way toward me, rubbing against my legs, doing her best to stay down.

  So it mostly goes like this:

  “Hi, Mrs. Epsworthy.”

  “Good girl.”

  “I’m taking Pen for a walk now, Mrs. Epsworthy.”

  Then I take Pen for a walk. We stop to sniff all the important things, and when we get back I wash out her bowls, fill one with a cup of kibble, the other with cold water, and I go home or to Aunt Bev’s. I don’t go to Fast Eddie’s anymore. Mostly. Except when I do.

  I like it at Winthrop’s. Not being seen here is more welcome than being seen at home, where it’s either Iris or Bird or, worse, both at once. Iris’s inevitable response when I force myself in my front door hardly varies: “Well, Helen, you’re still alive.” And Bird has developed a real fucking attitude problem, emphasis on the fucking part.

  “Sunny-side up, you are still alive,” he says, at my tits, and when I tell him to go jerk off already, it starts a whatever-a-thon. “Whatever,” he says. And what else can I say to that? I’m only human.

  “Whatever, Bird.”

  “Whatever, sis.” He puts all the emphasis on sis he can manage.

  “Whatever.” And here I pause dramatically to prove that I too can be a dick. “Bro.”

  It goes on like that because there’s no sexual tension or anything.

  I suppose it doesn’t help that I keep creeping down the hall and inviting him back to my bed.

  Maybe it is no surprise that the responses I receive when I show up at my own house don’t feel quite as good as Mrs. Epsworthy’s blank “Good girl” that isn’t even meant for me.

  * * *

  Pen sits down for the leash, pacing already with her front paws even while her butt stays planted on the linoleum. It’s almost the end of the third week without Win and she’s got our routine down. But today, something is different. Where Pen’s neck used to rise thick and muscular from her chest, there are rolls of furry flab and another roll is folding up around her hips.

  “Mrs. Epsworthy, have you been feeding Pen?”

  She doesn’t hear me, so I step closer, and she seems to realize this noise I’m making isn’t coming from the television. “Treats? Have you been feeding Pen treats?”

  “Oh, Helen!” It’s like we’ve just met. She turns down the television. Not all the way.

  “Mrs. Epsworthy, have you been feeding Pen?”

  She looks confused but seems to finally understand who Pen is, or what feeding is, I don’t know. “The sweet girl! I do share with the sweet girl,” and Pen thumps her tail and licks her lips imagining what apparently follows anytime the words sweet girl are said here.

  “Mrs. Epsworthy…” I have to do this. Whatever else he has decided about me, I don’t want Winthrop to think I can’t take good care of a dog. “It’s just that, remember, Winthrop talked about watching Pen’s weight? Pen is getting—” I start on the f, my teeth into my bottom lip, but that is as far as I get.

  Mrs. Epsworthy bursts into tears.

  “Fat! She’s getting fat! I know it. I’m making her fat, I’m making her just like…” And here she sobs and holds her breath and the living room of the Epsworthy house is quiet except for the grim voice of the man recounting the crime being discussed on that afternoon’s show.

  “I ruined him. He’s ruined. Look where he is.” Mrs. Epsworthy has old-fashioned ideas about fat. She thinks of it as some kind of a moral failing.

  It’s hard to teach an old dog-lover new tricks.

  Pen runs to Mrs. Epsworthy when she starts to cry, even before that, some signal of salt and sadness calling her to attention. The dog sits down by Mrs. Epsworthy’s feet, rests her head on Mrs. Epsworthy’s knees, her whiskers brushing the remote. Then she looks up at Mrs. Epsworthy and moans just softly, teasingly.

  I shouldn’t have said anything. Pen is more sensitive to people’s feelings than I am. I sit on the sofa arm. There’s a My Little Pony on the couch, chew marks all through it. I brush through the pony’s mane with my fingers.

  “Winthrop is not ruined.”

  “I just want him to be happy, and treats make him so happy. They didn’t used to make him so … pudgy.” She sounds betrayed. “Before he could walk he would ask for more formula, more cookies, and he was so happy, so easy to please. Rain was never like that, I could never make her smile. I mean … before we understood.” As I watch Mrs. Epsworthy rubbing Pen’s head, massaging her ears, I realize how hard she must have worked to catch up, to understand who Rainbolene is. And now she needs to learn that fat isn’t a bad word. Next thing you know, she’ll realize that TV is sucking her life away.

  Pen finally stops moaning and Mrs. Epsworthy wipes at some goop caught in the corner of Pen’s eye. “Because Rain always knew who she was,” she says. She sniffs at the goop on her finger and rubs it into the cloth place mat protecting the arm of the chair. “And Winthrop never did. It’s like he was always looking for … some other family.” I think about Winthrop and the homes he’d broken into. Whatever Mr. Epsworthy has told his wife about Winthrop’s adventures in crime, a mom knows. She knows it wasn’t the houses he was breaking into. It was the families.

  Mrs. Epsworthy lets out a big sigh and pulls the remote from under Pen’s jaw. The sound of the television fills the room.

  “I won’t give her any more treats, Helen.”

  I want to argue with her, to say all I know about Winthrop and who he is. Instead, I say, “Okay, thanks,” and grab Pen’s leash, and we run around the block as fast as we can go to burn off the calories of Mrs. Epsworthy’s love. We run until my chest is about to explode, but Pen has barely stretched her legs, so we run around the block again for her, Pen straining at the leash, pulling my arm as far into the future as it can reach without pulling me to my knees.

  PS WAITING

  I’m not going to Fast Eddie’s anymore, which is bad timing, since beers are free now. It turns out Eddie will share his beer if you just ask him how his day is going. But there’s nothing for me at the tire yard now but torture in the form of Bird, endlessly sucking Mo’s face, as usual, but now with one eye open, on me. It’s not torture so much because I want him sucking my face, I tell myself. It’s torture because they’re doing it in the spot where Winthrop sits. Sat. Doesn’t sit. Because they are there and Winthrop is not.

  CHALKBOARD

  I will not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not fuck Bird Doncaster.

  I will not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not walk so softly down the hallway that no one could possibly hear me except Bird with his secret psychic sex sense. When he’s waiting for me as I push open the door and his smile lights up the room like a searchlight from a police helicopter, I won’t cover his mouth with my hand, tell him to shhhh. Push him into the hall, to my room, because it’s the farthest from where my dad and his mom sleep. And I won’t close the door behind us, push him onto the bed. By the time my clothes are off, and so are his, I won’t climb on top of him, forget to be af
raid we’re going to wake the house, that the mattress squeaking underneath us is giving us away, that the blood in my ears can be heard through the walls, that the sounds of our breathing are screams in the night. I won’t bite into the pillow, to keep us quiet, bite into his neck, stuff his mouth with my tits, and forget all about my promises to not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not fuck Bird Doncaster. I will not fuck Bird Doncaster.

  THE FIRST MIRACLE

  Even though he is so deep in love with Iris he does things that would drive any sane person crazy, like whistle as he walks around the house, and exclaim over every meal as if it is the Last Supper, Dad does a thing this morning that isn’t irritating at all.

  He checks in with me.

  Not only is this a surprising move on his part, but what he is checking in with me about is Winthrop. To see how I’m feeling about Winthrop being gone. Dad asks, “How are you doing without Winthrop this summer, Helen?”

  It is such a surprise to hear this and said in this way and I feel like Dad actually already knows the answer and that answer is, “Not fucking great, Dad.” I don’t say this, though. I don’t say anything. And he asks me again, like maybe I didn’t hear him the first time.

  The question comes over me too loud.

  HOW ARE YOU DOING WITHOUT WINTHROP THIS SUMMER, HELEN?

  Like Dad is God, God Himself, visiting us during cold cereal hour. Complete with a heavenly echo. And He already knows the answer and the answer is meek and mortal and true.

  I’ve just poured the flakes into my bowl from one of the plastic Tupperware pourer things that Iris insists will keep our food fresher longer, and that is what I was thinking about. The plastic pourer thing. In this super-mean way, I was thinking about how Iris is always trying to make things better around here, and I was using this tendency of hers, to do good things for us, like it is a weapon, sharpening it to a point, so I can stab her with it. Like she’s a fucking monster for not just letting things suck, for trying. And then there is Dad’s voice and this question. Like Dad cares too, in a real and useful way. It’s like God just pulled the tablecloth out from under everything to show me that, yes, He’s got something up his sleeve.