Peggy started to get worried, though, when, after a whole week, Jill still hadn’t answered her phone or returned any of her messages.
“This isn’t like her. I’m definitely starting to get worried,” she said in a group e-mail.
“Shouldn’t someone call her work?” suggested Jay.
“I don’t know the number,” Lucy said. “And I don’t think Peggy has it either.”
When word finally got to us, it came from Jill’s mom, who only conveyed the most basic details of what had happened. It sounded horrifying, but according to Peggy, who spoke directly to her about it, Jill was going to be okay.
“I mean, physically,” Peggy clarified.
Mitch had gotten drunk and convinced his friends to drop him off at Jill’s house. Jill’s mom told Peggy he’d managed to talk his way into the house, although Jill wasn’t particularly forthcoming with details regarding how that had happened.
“He’s obviously able to convince her of multiple things that are patently false, one of which is the fact that he’s not hideous,” Peggy stated to us.
Once inside, he punched her in the face. Jill said he hit her so hard that she knocked her head on the wooden fireplace mantel, then passed out. When she came to, Mitch was passed out drunk on the couch nearby. When she inched over to the front door, however, he woke up and blocked her way out. He kept her in the house for four days.
“How did she get out? Oh, my God, did he rape her?” asked Tandice.
Peggy didn’t answer.
According to Lucy, who had called Jill’s mom after Peggy did, Jill told Mitch she was cold and needed to get her slippers from the bedroom. It was mid-afternoon on the fourth day of her captivity. She made her way towards the bedroom and then dashed for the front door. She saw neighbors outside and ran to them for help. They were the ones who called the police.
“What’s going to happen to him?” asked Ryan in a text to Peggy.
“He’s been charged with second-degree battery and false imprisonment. He’s definitely going to get time,” she answered.
Lucy mentioned that she saw on Facebook that Jill had moved back home to her mom’s house in Alabama. “Panic-leave,” Lucy said.
“Does she even have a job anymore?” Chloe asked.
“They let her go after she took so much time off,” Peggy told us. “She’s not doing well. From her mom’s description, she sounded very skittish.”
This was never a word we would’ve used to describe Jill in the past. Skittish. She was the most fearless person we knew.
“Well, she used to be fearless,” Jay said.
“I feel like I don’t even know her anymore,” Lucy said.
“I’ll pray for her,” said Lea.
“She has to go back to Alaska for the trial next month. Someone should be there with her,” Peggy said.
“But who?” Lucy asked. Everyone seems to be so busy these days.
Women of a Certain Age
THE FIFTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD AMERICAN actress, a back-to-back Daytime Emmy Award winner for Best Lead Actress in a Daytime Drama (’85 and ’86)1, who was once proclaimed the “Sarah Bernhardt of soap operas” by Carolyn Hinsey in Soap Opera Weekly in a 1991 feature article, sits in her dressing room, quietly nursing a gin rickey—a native D.C. cocktail for the once native daughter—while her neck is wrapped in cornhusks that have been soaked in the prepubescent oils of the undocumented young Mexican women who clean the fifteen bathrooms that are spread throughout her palatial home. Only moderately overweight (she maintains a “matronly figure—prison matron,” as it was described by Joan Rivers on E!’s Fashion Police once), she’s a real actress who was once nominated in the early 1970s for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Featured Role in a Play before she began her thirty-five year (and counting) reign as Lydia Wirthmore on Falcon Palace, the matriarch of the Wirthmore family who own and operate the largest high-end luggage distribution in the fictional Southwestern city of Silver Platte, Nevada (yes, there is more than one high-end luggage distributor in the city, she’s had to explain to several inane daytime talk-show hosts throughout the years who clearly had done no research whatsoever—how else do they think the writers create the familial rivalries, the weekly backstabbings, the tortured romances that provide years of storylines in which Lydia may inevitably shine?). The Actress is the winner of several “Best of” Soap Opera Digest Awards throughout the years including: Best Villainess (’79), Best Couple (’84, an honor she shared with Hayward Griffin, whose character she murdered in self-defense two years later at the climax of a groundbreaking marital-rape storyline that secured her second Daytime Emmy Award in 1986), Best Kiss (’93, shared with Valerie Cortlandt for her later-in-life lesbian storyline, a short-lived dalliance that was over before it even took off and has never been mentioned by any of the other characters ever again, yet has since spawned its own acronym—a “L.i.L.L.y”—memorialized on urbandictionary.com and attributed solely to her storied performance). Now fifty-seven, the Actress, who lounges around between takes in a chartreuse house robe her own sister, a one-time assistant, sewed for her by hand as a birthday present before the two were forced to permanently part ways both professionally and personally, whom The New York Times once referred to in response to her performance in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten as “the inheritor of the legacy of such stage greats as Eva Le Gallienne, Jessica Tandy, and Geraldine Page,” is five foot seven, 168 pounds, with hair colored a “burnt sienna” bimonthly with the aforementioned Third World-oiled cornhusks wrapped around her neck to combat the “turkey neck”—God, how she loathes that term: why not “weathered swan neck” or “crepe-paper skin” or something halfway elegant; why is every day a battle she must fight against her own womanhood?—that has crept into her visage in the last decade or so, resulting in (and she is quite sure of this) a reduction in screen time, a drastic cut in romantic pairings, the acknowledgment by one of these insufferable new teen characters in-scene that she was his great-grandmother, the striking of the Wirthmore office set, a place she considered almost an extension of her own home after all these years. She looks closer at the dressing room mirror with light bulbs lit on its periphery like the ones that hugged the end of a Broadway stage she was on for only that one 363-performance run of A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Winter Garden Theatre, the one extra light casting a ghoulish emphasis on the deep wrinkles in her forehead, the unforgiving lines down the sides of her face from so much yelling on the set, so much screaming in pain while giving birth to one of her four screen children, all that desperate calling for help when her identical cousin Christina (which she herself, of course, played) was holding her hostage at the bottom of a well while she took over Lydia’s life. She places a camisole up to her cheek to wipe away the clownish rouge Dana the makeup lady had applied so hurriedly this morning and smears off the coral lipstick chosen for her by focus groups—the only women who wear coral lipstick are those who have recently been embalmed—pulls herself out of the support girdle the wardrobe people shoved her into, and lets her folds breathe happily against the fabric of her house robe. Her dressing room is located near the old Wirthmore office set in Studio B of the NBC-Paramount Studios in Burbank, California, which is about twenty-five minutes from her house in the Hollywood Hills, which is paid off in full. Now that the set has been struck, Lydia’s office scenes are now filmed in her living room, in an alcove that only reads “office” by virtue of the presence of a cubbyhole stuffed with envelopes, a sterling silver letter opener (which Lydia used once in 1992 to fend off an intruder), and a desk lamp with a hunter-green shade. The Actress sits waiting for her call, choosing not to focus on the round of bells and whistles from the game show taping across the way, one of the many programs supplanting the entire soap opera genre because they’re so cheap to produce, cheaper than keeping up the appearance that Lydia Wirthmore’s fortune is somehow untouched by the outside economic calamities of the real world, the 2008 housing crisis and bank bailout, the election
of the nation’s first black president (the “president” in Falcon Palace is a nameless white man forever modeled on Ronald Reagan), years of sexual revolution having passed by most of the women in the cast like clouds that have morphed from a dragon to a bunny when you look away for a second, thinking that if she could have just one more epic storyline—the revelation that she is actually Serbian royalty, a final triumph over Wirthmore’s main rival DiSanto Leather, Inc., with her, Lydia Wirthmore, at the center of a coup d’état, a cougaresque affair with her stepson Derrick—she wouldn’t be sitting here pondering what Ionesco might have thought of all this love in the afternoon or if O’Neill or Albee or even Ibsen might’ve found the lick of courage deep down inside the character of Lydia Wirthmore that the Actress has had to find or if any of these playwrights whose immortal words she should be performing as a woman of a certain age2 would’ve dared pare down her scenes, diminish her character, strike her rooms.
Why Burden a Baby with a Body?
IN HER DREAM, Hiromi heard the screaming. Terrifying, high-pitched screams that felt, at one moment, as if they were right beside her, but then when she reached in front of her—with her hands grasping at the empty air—they were impossibly far away, like they were coming from the bottom of a deep well. Punctuating the screams were breathless gasps, searching for more air to fuel yet another scream, as babies do. It was in those little moments in between when it appeared Anima had finally calmed down. But then there was a manic reignition of purpose, a steady rise in intensity, then more unquenchable wailing. Her baby was looking for her.
In her nightgown, Hiromi made her way through a dark, wet cellar, her bare feet scraping the slick set of steep, cramped stairs. She struggled to move forward but was arrested, as if she were walking through a thick paste like brown beet molasses. Her baby’s cries—Anima’s screams—had become more desperate, angry even, as if the original need, still unattended, had been compounded by the child’s resentment at the lack of human touch. “Where are you?” the baby’s cries seemed to imply. Anima needed to be found; she had turned vengeful.
Groping her way farther up the stairs, Hiromi reached for the wall to steady herself. As she ascended the staircase, it became wider. With each step she landed on firmer, more navigable ground. She noticed something at the top of the stairs. She moved closer and realized it was a bassinet, just like the one they’d wanted to buy for Kimi but couldn’t afford, made of birch with a tatami base and pieces of turquoise and magenta ribbon woven alternately along the bars, shellacked. The screaming was only for show now, as Hiromi knew Anima could sense her presence even though she still hadn’t seen her mother. She felt the cries had lessened in intensity and purpose, decreasing, it seemed, almost in step with the cadence of Hiromi’s movement toward the bassinet.
The light in the staircase had changed as well. A thin pink beam of light, dense and straight, led right into the bassinet, pointing the way. She climbed the final steps and came up to the bassinet. It was shaking. As she reached inside, her hands broke through a layer of cold air before they finally met Anima’s outstretched arms—her electronic arms. Hiromi grabbed hold of Anima’s tiny wrists, but they burned her fingertips, cold but sharply hot, like dry ice. Then the screaming finally stopped.
With a start, Hiromi woke up from the dream and immediately felt for Takahiko beside her, but he was gone. Prius, she instantly thought. He was already at the café playing Prius without her again. A bit of a panic rose in her as she tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness of their bedroom. He could be with their new baby, Anima, right at that moment while Hiromi was sitting up in bed, wasting time only thinking about her. She had to get to the café in Akihabara and quickly.
A shaft of pink light from the all-night pachinko parlor across the street came through a ripped hole in a paper square of the shoji screen, and she used it to grope her way to the large walk-in closet, the only other “room” in their apartment besides the bathroom. This apartment was the best they could afford with the money from the public assistance program she and Takahiko had been on for more than a year and a half. While Motohasunuma wasn’t an ideal neighborhood, it was only a few stops on the Mita line to the Yamanote line, which was that much closer to Prius.
The tan jumpsuit Hiromi preferred to wear while gaming hung from a crooked hook another tenant had installed on the door. She pulled her nightgown over her head and slipped into the outfit, zipping it all the way to the top. She put on a pair of white canvas shoes, scuffed with black marks from the rude, clumsy steppings of her fellow passengers on the train.
Through the jumpsuit, she grabbed at the misshapen bulge of her stomach, squeezing the flabby skin left over from Kimi’s difficult birth. She was still disgusted by the state of her body. Her daughter had been born premature. Arriving too late to the hospital, Hiromi was forced to forego an epidural and deliver her with minimal pain medication. When she was ready to finally expel the child, a sick river of bile rose in her, and she vomited at the moment Kimi crowned. She felt as if the baby had swum out of her womb to safety on a raft of thick blood and brine, escaping the cage of her ribs and haphazardly pushing aside her vital organs. When the nurse handed her the wrinkled little thing, its skin so much darker than hers and Takahiko’s, the baby opened its mouth and emitted a horrible shriek like a preening beastling, its eyes stapled shut with lines of mucus.
Hiromi found a half-full bottle of formula on the kitchenette counter and tossed it into the crib at the back of the closet. It landed next to the stuffed Pikuro doll her voiceover director had given them before Kimi was born. The doll had a huge mouth that opened into a wide, toothy smile. Its arms were outstretched on either side, curling at the fingertips, as if its default were to hug indiscriminately. She saw the Pikuro doll move a bit, then noticed Kimi creep from behind it. The doll somehow had gotten bigger than Kimi, or Kimi had gotten smaller; Hiromi wasn’t sure. Kimi grabbed the bottle with greediness, Hiromi thought, and sucked on it venomously, her spare paws rattling the bars of the crib in vain. Hiromi looked into Kimi’s eyes.
She couldn’t stand looking at Kimi, that blank, sad stare pleading with her for something. What? What do you want from me? she felt like screaming. Anima never looked at her like that. Anima, with her round, blue eyes that were dewy and soft, her long lashes flicking back and forth so delicately, like an elegant spider perched on top of her eyelids, bending their eight black legs. Without speaking, Anima was able to let Hiromi know she was there to help guide her through Prius and all the wonders of that world—not that Anima couldn’t talk, of course. On the rare occasion Anima needed something from Hiromi, she was fully capable of communicating her needs in a tiny, lovable voice that was comforting and familiar to Hiromi.
Anima didn’t need anything from Hiromi. She was there to help her mother, protect her even with warnings of town invaders and town dissent (not everyone in Prius proper could be trusted). She didn’t demand things from her; she didn’t require thing after thing after thing from her with the desperate clinginess that Kimi’s urgent, manic moans lately had embodied.
Months before Kimi was born, Hiromi had stumbled upon a link to a voiceover audition while surfing the web at an Internet café in Akihabara, Tokyo’s “electric district.” The tekki card she’d been able to wrangle out of her last temp job was set to expire at the end of the month, so she’d no longer have access to all the stops along the Yamanote line. With the entire subway line at her disposal, she more often than not chose Akihabara, mainly for its free twenty-four-hour Internet café located on the third floor of Laox, a discount electronics store.
But she also could disappear in Akihabara. Comforted on all sides by the never-ending lights that illuminated the discount electronics storefronts, she luxuriated in the pointed lack of interest shown by passersby. There was so much else to grab one’s attention—vacuum cleaners shaped like people that cleaned the floor of their own accord when they detected dirt from fine sensors at their base; cell phones thin enough to fit in t
he credit card holder of a wallet, and facial-recognition robots that could greet you at the door because they knew who you were.
Never having done any voiceover work at the time of her recruitment, Hiromi had been unsure whether she had what it took to pull off a child’s voice, in this case a mystical helper baby in an alterna-world game called Prius. Hiromi, whose only exposure to gaming culture had been a requisite dip into childhood video games, found the idea of Prius very soothing. The director of the voice audition, a portly woman with a traditional Edo look, had explained the landscape of the game to her.
The world of Prius was not unlike the large temple gardens Hiromi had visited in Kamakura in her youth. Dense pockets of forest appeared in the game as well as more manicured areas of play where players could set up lodging and businesses according to an earned-points system. Inhabiting Prius was like living in a village that looked like Kamakura but with neighbors and your own residence. New players were each assigned a job as well as a set amount of coins to purchase necessities. Players could earn additional credits through different tasks and accomplishments, such as defeating invaders of Prius. According to Hiromi’s director, border people were always trying to find their way into the village. Players who were equipped with the appropriate weaponry and earned knowledge of secret passageways through the intricate maze of the forests could extinguish these invaders and therefore gain access to more of the town’s amenities and eventually receive their own dwelling. After being assigned “careers,” players came together for tribe meetings to discuss village issues and ordinances and compare point totals. Hiromi would eventually became the proprietor of an apothecary at the center of Prius. Anima was a flaxen-haired little girl whom high-ranking players could earn after a set number of good works and credits.
Read by Strangers Page 17
