The Safety of Objects: Stories (10 page)

Julie’s mother had her shoes off, her knee-high stockings rolled down to her ankles. The ankles, purple and puffy, bulged out over the hose. She kept shifting her weight from side to side, foot to foot. She seemed more like a feral raccoon than most feral raccoons ever did. Her skin was pasty, her eyes had sunk deep into her head. The black around her eyes was heavy like someone had drawn it there with a charcoal briquet.

Enough! Frank wanted to yell. Stop. Give her the car, she’s earned it.

Between twenty and thirty people stood in a circle around Julie’s mom and the guy, looking at them as though they were objects on view, specimens from
Night of the Living Dead
, perfect examples of the devastating side effects of spending too much time indoors.

The scene was going sour for Frank. There was a definite spin to it, a dangerous whirling that could suck a person down, like a garbage disposal. There was too much to hear, and see, and eat. Frank decided that’s why the kids were lying on the floor like cancerous lumps.

It couldn’t last much longer. There was no way.

Frank looked at the last two contestants and then had to look away. They were pathetic, doughy, offering themselves up for human consumption like some ritualistic sacrifice. When looking away was not enough he had to walk away. He turned around and was going home when he heard a thick popping sound, like one a plunger makes when it comes up. He turned back toward the car. The thick sucking sound was Julie’s mother’s hands coming up off the hood. Her hands were rising up into the air, lifting over her head, but she was still shifting her weight from foot to foot and looking down at the car as though her hands were there.

“Mom, your hands, your hands!” Julie screamed.

The other contestant froze, his hands pressed so hard on the hood they made a dent.

When the judges got to Julie’s mom, they reached up and pulled her hands down to her sides. Her arms fell like levers whose springs had snapped.

She looked up and said, “What?”

Julie ran over and started shaking her. “Mom, you idiot, you lost the contest. You lost when we were so close to winning.

Frank hated Julie. She was unbelievable. A hateful child.

On the other side of the car, the guy with the T-shirt was being pounded on the back in a manner that was vaguely resuscitative, like CPR or the Heimlich maneuver.

A guy next to Frank had a radio tuned to Z-100.

“We have a winner at the Pyramid Mall,” the D.J. said. “Let’s go there live.”

Over the radio, Frank heard the guy thanking his parents and his girlfriend. The weird thing was that Frank was looking right at the guy, and the guy wasn’t talking at all. He was just standing there staring. There were no microphones anywhere. Over the radio Frank heard all kinds of yelling and screaming and a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” by “all John’s friends. But at the mall, with the exception of Julie yelling at her mother, it was quiet.

One of the judges handed Julie’s mom an envelope.

Frank asked someone who appeared to be in charge what it was.

“Second place. Two hundred and fifty dollars,” he said.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars. That’s all she gets?” Frank said. “He gets a car and all she gets is a lousy two hundred and fifty bucks. Unbelievable. You guys are unbelievable. She stood on her fucking feet for sixty-seven hours and forty-eight minutes and all you’re giving her is nothing.”

People stared at the ground while he talked.

He felt sick. He was sick. Vomit and rage and junk food rose in him. He looked at the girl from the radio station. She shrugged. With her shoulders up near her neck, shrugging, she looked certifiably retarded. In order to keep from hitting her, from holding her personally responsible, Frank ran. He ran down the length of the mall and back again. He did it three times before he ended up at the sporting goods store.

Frank ran into the sporting goods store, grabbed the glove he’d hidden, put it on his hand, raised his arm above his head, and screamed: “It’s mine. It’s mine. I’m taking it. It belongs to me.”

When he got no response, he ran through the store, waving his arm and the glove, still screaming. He ran through the store, out the door, and down the middle of the mall. At some point he was aware someone was chasing him, but it meant nothing. He slammed through a set of fire doors, triggered an alarm, and ended up on the edge of the parking lot, at twilight. The earth and the sky were the same deep shade of blue.

“Stop,” the kid dressed as a guard yelled, his voice cracking. “Please stop where you are. Stop. Freeze.”

Each time the guard shouted, he was more insistent. Each time, Frank became more frenzied. He zigzagged unsteadily. He heard a shot ring through the air behind him.

“Freeze.”

Frank was near the far edge of the lot, a tall hill of fill dirt in front of him. He whirled around and crouched down, low, like a catcher. He raised the glove up in front of his face and caught the second bullet.

It struck him like a punch. He rocked back and forth, heel to toe, before falling onto his back, his knees raised in front of him like insect legs.

There was a buzzing in his ears, like a telephone constantly ringing.

Frank lay on his back in the parking lot. No shopping carts wheeled past his head. No one came near him. The glove stayed in place and the crowd over by the mall imagined him skewered, permanently sewn together like a cheap doll, his expression fixed, his hand permanently placed.

It seemed like forever before anyone heard sirens. Red and white flashing lights sucked up the twilight and made it seem much later than it was. A paramedic jumped out and pressed his fingers to Frank’s jugular.

“He’s alive,” the medic shouted and the crowd moved forward.

“Does anybody know who it is?” the medic asked. “Anyone know his name?”

“He lives across the street from me,” Julie said.

Frank fainted behind the glove. The squawking of the police radio woke him up.

“We got a bullet catcher here. Security guard hit him, when he was trying to get away with something.”

I wasn’t trying to get away with anything, Frank thought, and then fell back into a fuzzy kind of sleep.

They slid a board under Frank. He felt pressure, intense pressure, as though his insides were being pushed up and out. He was being squeezed to death. Perhaps they were running him over with a steamroller, pushing him into the fresh asphalt at the edge of the lot.

He tried to remember where he’d parked the car. The CD player was still under the seat. He hoped no one would ever find it. Mary would be annoyed that he hadn’t gotten the tires. Sew buttons.

The medics didn’t touch his face or attempt to remove the glove. They were saving that for the doctors. By the time they tied everything in place with heavy gauze the sky had dropped deep into darkness. The mall had closed for the night. The crowd evaporated: one by one, in a great snake of a line, all the cars pulled out onto the highway. The medics dressed Frank up like a spring float and wheeled him around in a quiet parade on the empty parking lot.

Yours Truly

I’m hiding in the linen closet writing letters to myself. This is the place where no one knows I am, where I can think without thinking about what anyone else would think or at least it’s quiet. I don’t want to scare anyone, but things can’t go on like this.

Until today I could still go into the living room and talk to my mother’s Saturday morning Fat Club. I could say, “Hi, how are you. That’s a very nice dress. Magenta’s such a good color, it hides the hips. Nice shoes too. I would never have thought of bringing pink and green together like that.” I could pretend to be okay, but that’s part of the problem.

In here, pressed up against the towels, the sheets, the heating pad, it’s clear that everything is not hunky-dory. I’ve got one of those Itty Bitty Book Lights and I’m making notes.

Today is Odessa’s day. At any minute she might turn the knob and let the world, disguised as daylight, come flooding in. She might do that and never know what she’s done. She’ll open the door and her eyes will get wide. She’ll look at me and say, “Lord.” She’ll say, “You could have given me a heart attack.” And I’ll think, Yes, I could have, but I’m having one myself and there isn’t room for two in the same place at the same time. She’ll look at my face and I’ll have to look at the floor. She won’t know that having someone look directly at me, having someone expect me to look at her, causes a sharp pain that begins in my eyes, ricochets off my skull, and in the end makes my entire skeleton shake. She won’t know that I can’t look at anything except the towels without being overcome with emotion. She won’t know that at the sight of another person I weep, I wish to embrace and be embraced, and then to kill. She won’t get that I’m dangerous.

Odessa will open the door and see me standing with this tiny light, clipped to the middle shelf, with the pad of paper on top of some extra blankets, with two extra pencils sticking out of the space between the bath sheets and the Turkish towels. She’ll see all this and ask, “Are you all right?” I won’t be able to answer. I can’t tell her why I’m standing in a closet filled with enough towels to take a small town to the beach. I won’t say, I’m not all right. God help me, I’m not. I will simply stand here, resting my arm over my notepad like a child taking a test, trying to make it difficult for cheaters to get their work done.

Odessa will do the talking. She’ll say, “Well, if you could excuse me, I need clean sheets for the beds.” I’ll move over a little bit. I’ll twist to the left so she can get to the twin and queen sizes. I’m willing to move for Odessa. I can put one foot on top of the other. I’ll do anything for her as long as I don’t have to put my feet onto the gray carpet in the hall. I can’t. I’m not ready. If I put a foot out there too early, everything will be lost.

Odessa sometimes asks me, “Which sheets do you want on your bed?” She knows I’m particular about these things. She knows her color combinations, dots and stripes together, attack me in my sleep. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night, pull the sheets off the bed, throw them into the hall, and return to sleep. She will ask me what I want and I’ll point to the plain white ones, the ones that seem lighter, cleaner than all the others. Odessa reaches for the sheets, and in the instant when they’re in her hand but still in the closet, I press my face into them. I press my face into the pile of sheets, into Odessa’s hands underneath. I won’t feel her skin, her fingers, only cool, clean fabric against my cheek. I inhale deeply as if there were a way to draw the sheets into my lungs, to hold the linen inside me. I breathe and take my head away. Odessa will pull her hands out of the closet and ask, “Do you want the door closed?” I nod. I turn away, draw in my breath, and make myself flat. She closes the door.

*  *  *

I’m hiding in the linen closet sending memos to myself. It’s getting complicated. Odessa knows I’m here. She knows but she won’t tell anybody. She won’t go running into the living room and announce, “Jody’s locked herself into the linen closet and she won’t come out.”

Odessa won’t go outside and look for my father. She won’t find him pulling weeds on the hill behind the house. Odessa won’t tell him, “She’s in there with paper, pencils, and that little light you gave her for Christmas.” She won’t say anything. Odessa understands that this is the way things sometimes are. She’ll change the sheets on all the beds, serve the Fat Club ladies their cottage cheese and cantaloupe, and then she’ll go downstairs into the bathroom and take a few sips from the bottle of Johnnie Walker she keeps there.

I’m hiding in the closet with my life suspended. I’m hiding and I’m scared to death. I want to come clean, to see myself clearly, in detail, like a hallucination, a deathbed vision, a Kodacolor photograph. I need to know if I’m alive or dead.

I’m hiding in the linen closet and I want to introduce myself to myself. I need to like what I see. If I am really as horrible as I feel, I will spontaneously combust, leaving a small heap of ashes that can be picked up with the DustBuster. I will explode myself in a flash of fire, leaving a letter of most profuse apology.

Through the wall I hear my mother’s Fat Club ladies laugh. I hear the rattle of the group and the gentle tinkling of the individual. It’s as though I have more than one pair of ears. Each voice enters in a different place, with a different effect.

I hear them and realize they’re laughing for me. They’re celebrating the fact that I can no longer pretend. There are tears in my eyes. I’m saying thank you and good-bye. I’m writing it down because I can’t simply go out there and stand at the edge of the dining room table until my mother looks up from her copy of the
Eat Yourself Slim Diet
and says, “Yes?”

I can’t say that I’m leaving because she’ll ask, “When will you be back?”

She’ll be looking through the book, flipping through the menus, seeing how many ounces she can eat. If I tell the truth, if I say never, she’ll look up at me, peering up higher than usual, above the frameless edges of her reading glasses. She’ll say, “A comedian. Maybe Johnny Carson will hire you to guest-host. When will you be back?”

If I go without answering, the other ladies will watch me leave. When I get to where they think I can’t hear them, when I get to the kitchen door, they’ll put a pause in their meeting and talk about their children.

They’ll say they were always the best parents they knew how to be. They’ll say they gave their children everything and it was never enough. They’ll say they hope their children will grow up and have children exactly like themselves. They’ll be thinking about how their children hate them and how they hate their children back because they don’t understand what it was they did wrong.

“It has nothing to do with you,” I’ll have to say. “It’s me, it’s me, all mine. There is no blame.”

“Selfish,” the mothers will say.

*  *  *

I’m here in the linen closet, doing my spring-cleaning. I’m confessing right and left and Odessa knocks on the door. She knocks and then opens the door. She’s carrying a plate with a sandwich and a glass of milk. Only Odessa would serve milk and a sandwich. My mother would give me a Tab with a twist of lemon. My father would make something like club soda with a little bit of syrup in it. He would use maple syrup and spend all afternoon telling me he’d invented something new, something better than other sodas because it had no chemicals, less sugar, and no caffeine. Odessa brings me a sandwich and a glass of milk and it looks like a television commercial. The bread is white, the sandwich cut perfectly in half. There are no finger marks on it, no indentations on the white bread where Odessa put her fingers while she was cutting. The glass is full except for an inch at the top. There are no spots in that inch. The milk looks white and thick, with small bubbles near the top. It looks cool and refreshing.

Odessa hands me the plate. I look at her for a moment. She is perfect. I drink the milk and know that I will have a mustache. I look at Odessa and want to say, “I love you.” I want to tell her how no one else would bring me a glass of milk. I want to tell her everything, but she starts talking. Odessa says, “Make sure you don’t leave that plate in the closet. I don’t want your mother finding it and thinking I’ve lost my mind. I don’t want bugs in here. Bring it out and put it in the dishwasher. Don’t stay in there all day or you’ll lose your color.” I nod and she closes the door.

I’m hiding and I’m eating a cream-cheese-and-cucumber sandwich and having my head examined. I’m in the neighborhood of my soul and getting worried. I’m trying not to hate myself so much, trying not to hate my body, my mind, the thoughts I think. I’m hiding in the linen closet having a sex change. I’m in here with a pad of paper writing things I’ve thought and then unthought. Thoughts that seemed like incest, like they shouldn’t be allowed.

I’m trying to find some piece of myself that is truly me, a part that I would be willing to wear like a jewel around my neck. My foot. I love my foot. If I had to send a part of myself to represent myself in some other country, or in some other way, I would amputate my foot and send it wrapped in white tissue on a silk-embroidered cushion. I would send my foot because it is me, more me than I’m willing to let on. There are other parts that are also good—hands, eyes, mouth—but after a few months I might look at them and not see the truth. After a few years I might look at them and think of someone else. But my foot is mine, all mine, the real thing. There is no mistaking it. I look at it; I take off my sock and it screams my name.

I could go on for hours demonstrating how well I know myself, through my foot, but I won’t. It’s embarrassing. The foot, my foot, that I wish to wear on a ribbon around my neck is an example of grace twisted and trapped. Chunks of bone and flesh conforming to the dictum: form follows function. It’s a wonder I’m not a cripple.

I’m hiding in the linen closet, writing a declaration of independence. I’m in the closet, but the worst is over. There is hope, trapped inside my foot; inside my soul there is possibility. I’m looking at myself and slowly I’m falling in love. I’ve figured out what it takes to live forever. I’m in love and I’m free.

I want to throw the door open and hear an orchestra swell. I want to run out to the Fat Club ladies and tell them, “Life can go on, I’m in love.”

I’ll stand in the living room, facing the sofa. I’ll stand with my arms spread wide, the violins reaching their pitch. I’ll be sweating and shaking, unsteady on my feet, my wonderful, loving, lovable feet. At the end of my proclamation my mother will let her glasses fall from her face and dangle from the cord around her neck.

“Miss Dramatic,” she’ll say. “Why weren’t you an actress?”

The fat ladies will look at each other. They’ll look at me and think of other declarations of love. They’ll look and one will ask, “Who’s the lucky man?”

There will be a silence while they wait for a name, preferably the right kind of a name. If I tell them it isn’t a man, their silence will grow and they’ll expect what they think is the worst. No one except my mother will have nerve enough to say, “A girl then?”

I’ll be forced to tell them, It’s not like that. One of the ladies, the one the others think isn’t so smart, will ask, “What’s it like?”

I’ll smile, the orchestra will swell, and I’ll look at the four ladies sitting on the sofa, the sofa covered with something modern and green, something that vaguely resembles the turf on a putting green.

“It’s like falling in love with life itself,” I’ll say.

My mother will look around the room. She’ll look anywhere except at me.

“Are you all right?” she’ll ask when I stop to catch my breath. “You look a little flushed.” I’ll be singing and dancing.

“I’m fine, I’m wonderful, I’m better than before. I’m in love.”

I’ll sing and on the end note cymbals will crash and the sound will hold in the air for a minute. And then swinging a top hat and cane, I’ll dance away. I’ll dance down the hall toward the den.

I want to find my father in the den, the family room, watching tennis on television. I want to catch him in the middle of a set and say that I can’t wait for a break. I want to tell him, “Life must go on.”

He’ll say that it’s match point. He’ll say that he’s been trying to tell me that all along.

“But why didn’t you tell me what it really means?”

“It seemed pretty obvious.”

And then I’ll tell him, “I’m in love.” There will be a pause. Someone will have the advantage. My feet will go
clickety-clack
over the parquet floor and he’ll say, “Yes, you sound very happy. You sound like you’re not quite yourself.”

“I’m more myself than I’ve ever been.”

I want to find Odessa. “Life will go on,” I’ll tell her. “I’m in love.” I’ll take her by the hand and we’ll dance in circles around the recreation room. We’ll dance until we’re dizzy and Odessa will ask me, “Are you all right?”

I’ll only be able to mumble “Ummmm hummm,” because my grin will have set like cement. I’m hiding in the linen closet writing love letters to myself.