Jennifer Husk had no intention of attending North Atlantic College; she’d sent her application just to see if she was smart enough to go. Despite the fact that she’d refused to include the $50 application fee, a letter of acceptance had arrived two months later, with a handbook explaining the school’s no-tolerance position on alcohol, tobacco, drugs, rock music, and “flesh food” (i.e., meat of any kind). She also received a course catalog whose cover featured four portraits: a black guy in a rugby shirt contemplating a globe; an Asian girl spinning a basketball on an index finger; a tuxedoed Indian boy straddling a cello; and a freckle-faced girl folding her hands over an open Bible. Below these pictures, a caption appeared: Success begins in the soul. These people, Jen reminded herself, believed they had souls; they took classes with names like Light Bearers to the Remnant, Gift of Prophecy and Life in the Balance. Also, Jen guessed, they had to have money: scholarships, loans, trust funds, savings bonds, something. How else could they afford to pay the $28,000 tuition? Jen had nothing, aside from the notion that doors, if they were supposed to be opened, would be opened. The tuition deadline approached. Scratch-offs and Powerball tickets failed to deliver; nobody died and bequeathed her an estate. The deadline passed. Jen tossed out the catalog. Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be. The first day of class came and went. Then the second. The third. The fourth. On the fifth day of the semester, she made a decision: she would go anyway.
Intro to Humanities met in the committee room of the White House, a sprawling Victorian mansion whose bedrooms had been converted into classrooms. The room, with its scarlet wallpaper, crystal chandelier and table of shellacked wood, was a place where rich people had once taken their meals. Now a plump, stooped woman with round cheeks and a gray bowl cut sat at the head of this table, fiddling with a slide projector. Laycock, Jen thought. Leetha Laverne Laycock. Jen had checked out Laycock’s personal webpage. She knew Laycock had a B.A. from North Atlantic, an M.A. from Assumption College, a PhD. from Holy Cross. In her faculty photo, Laycock resembled a good-natured, toothy mammal: a burrower that made homey nests underground. In person? Laycock looked the same — only older.
Once class began, Laycock dimmed the lights; her projector flung the image of a painting onto the wall. In the painting a woman danced before a floating, disembodied head. Strings of blood streamed from its neck. The head, emanating saw blades of light, showed no signs of missing its body. It gazed unapologetically at the dancer, who was clothed in jeweled garters and flowing scarves. Jen’s cheeks flooded with warmth. She was not, she guessed, supposed to find the image arousing.
“‘The Apparition,’” Laycock said. “Gustave Moreau. Nineteenth Century.” Every few seconds, her eyebrows jerked backwards. “Anyone remember Salome?” she asked. “The harlot who danced for King Herod? He enjoyed the dancing so much he offered her half his kingdom. But Salome didn’t want half his kingdom. She wanted the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Why would someone want a head instead of a kingdom?”
A puffy-faced girl, her cheeks perforated with acne scars, raised her hand. “Maybe,” she said, “this Salome person was power hungry.”
Laycock giggled silently. She pointed to a young man wearing an orange warm-up suit and a bright white hat upon which the letters N and Y sparkled. He scooted his chair back, then stood. “Obviously,” he said, “Salome is a ho, right? No disrespect, but for real. Look at her. Ya’ll know how ho’s be trippin’.”
A few students chuckled. Laycock, it seemed, couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. She also didn’t seem to have any answers, didn’t seem to mind that nobody did. “Nicely put,” she’d say, as the theories piled up. “Very reasonable.”
Maybe, Jen thought, Paul was right: College was for chumps.
The next morning, the head of John the Baptist appeared to Jen in a dream. The head — bearded and bleeding and beset with pupil-less eyes — rotated slowly, clicking. At first, Jen couldn’t make out what the head was saying. Then she realized: it wasn’t saying anything. It was singing that Carpenters song about birds appearing: “Just like me/ They long to be/ Close to you.” In the middle of the song, she woke up.
Paul straddled a corner of their futon. He held a Fisher-Price Movie Viewer to his left eye. He’d received the viewer in the mail the day before, along with a cardboard box of yellow, rectangular cartridges. He slid a cartridge into the viewer, looked through a tiny hole, and spun a red handle on the side. Clickety-clack. A soundless movie (he had Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, Pink Panther, and Bugs Bunny) played as fast as he could spin the handle, forward or backward.
“You’re gonna be late,” Jen said, glancing at the clock. It was ten to nine. Paul wore a T-shirt with a Wolverine decal, a pair of crud-streaked jeans. Every day, he packed two Baloney sandwiches on white bread into a rusted lunch box, and drove his Honda Civic to Framingham, where he cashiered at a bookstore.
“You’re the one who hasn’t gotten out of bed,” he said. “Don’t you have school today?”
“It’s called college,” Jen said. “And it’s not until later.”
“Must be nice to get paid to sit around and read.”
“I’m not getting paid,” Jen said.
“Your tuition’s free, isn’t it?”
It was. Sort of. Someone was paying the teachers to show up and teach. A lot of someones. Only none of them was her. She hadn’t explained this to Paul, who, after dropping out of Fitchburg State after two semesters with a 1.6 GPA, had taken issue with higher education. Instead, she’d told him the school had given her a full ride. He could not, she’d thought, argue with a full ride. And he hadn’t. “Congratulations,” he’d said. “Now you can waste your time for free.”
Paul slid the cartridge from the movie viewer, returned it to the blister pack he’d carefully opened using a straight razor. “You seen my Wish Book?”
“Wish Book?”
“You know. My Sears catalog. The one from 1985? I can’t find it.”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” Jen said. “You’ve used up all your wishes.”
“Don’t act dumb,” Paul said. “Seriously. That thing cost me ten bucks on eBay.”
Another reason Paul didn’t need college? He was starting a business — an online venture that depended upon his ability to track down obscure relics from his childhood and resell them at inflated prices. He’d recently paid fifty bucks for a stuffed bear that moved its mouth when you slid a cassette into its back. According to Paul, he could get a hundred bucks for that bear, easy. In ten years? A thousand.
Paul went to work; Jen yanked the covers over her head. She closed her eyes. The head reappeared. The whites of its eyes were slick as boiled eggs; the lids, lined with dried blood, flickered. Coiled clumps of hair writhed of their own volition. Its lips, blistered, quivered and drooled.
Enough, Jen thought. She got up. She made the bed. She picked up the boxers Paul had left on the floor. She folded the Scrabble board they’d abandoned the night before, sweeping the words they’d made — dark, mend, war, fauna – into a velvety pouch. She lifted the futon mattress, retrieved Paul’s Wish Book. Walking downstairs, she flipped through the kid section, noting little boys in Popeye pajamas, a Rocky Balboa punching bag. Paul’s birthday was coming up: no doubt he’d want to consult the Wish Book for ideas about what to search for on eBay, and thus how to spend the money his parents would send him. In the kitchen, Jen opened a door beneath the sink, shoved the catalog into the trash. She buried it deep.
Part Two
For the last year Jen and Paul had rented the attic of a large white colonial in New Haven, Massachusetts. The house belonged to a pair of 25-year-old identical twins named Alice and Christine, who’d inherited it from their grandmother. The twins were short and pretty and spunky, with green eyes and crimson hair. The house, with its glass doorknobs and high ceilings and steep staircases and brittle windows that trembled whenever a car drove by, hadn’t changed since the twins’ grandmother died — nor had it been thoroughly cleaned. Antique sofas, covered in cat hair, were unraveling. Dirty plates, abandoned by the twins, attracted swarms of fruit flies. Dust balls, like miniature tumbleweeds, drifted across the wood floors. The kitchen reeked of sour milk and wet cat food, thanks to the series of bowls the twins had left out for a wild-eyed Persian that brought dead mice into the house and trailed fluorescent bits of kitty litter from its fur.
“You don’t have to do that,” Christine said. She was eating a health bar in the breakfast nook while Jen scrubbed a pot one of the twins had left on the stove. A scorched lump of angel hair clung to the bottom.
“I don’t mind,” Jen said. She didn’t. Work, she hoped, might prevent her from summoning the head. Only she kept shutting her eyes to see if it was still there. It was. Its nostrils quivered as if preparing to sneeze. In her mind Jen slipped a hand through its neck hole and encountered a warm, suctiony passageway. She wormed around, found its brain: an eggy gelatin pulsing with electricity. The head liked this. It shuddered. Its lips parted, revealing a set of crumbly teeth.
“Last night,” Jen said, “I dreamed John the Baptist’s head was singing to me.”
Christine shoved the last chunk of her breakfast bar into her mouth. “Weird,” she said. She ripped a sheet of paper from a pad on the refrigerator. She handed Jen the paper and a miniature pencil. “Write it down.”
“Write what down?”
“What you just said.”
Jen stared at the paper. In the bottom right-hand corner, a woman held a broom and a mop and a bucket and sponges in her arms. A caption read: Domestically Disabled. Jen squeezed the pen, drew the letters neatly across the top of the page.
Years before, Christine and Alice had taught themselves the basics of handwriting analysis. On several occasions, they’d scrutinized the phone messages Jen had taken, her grocery lists, her rent checks. Every time, it seemed to Jen like they were playing a trick on her; no matter how hard she tried to print the letters correctly, her writing always betrayed a number of personal deficiencies. She suffered from a lack of this, she yearned for more of that.
Christine held the paper at arm’s length. “Okay. You wrote the sentence at the topmost part of the page. That actually suggests a high degree of ambition. Good. You also left-aligned everything, which probably represents a desire to be grounded by family or friends. At the same time, the spacing between your letters is saying… give me breathing space. What really stands out, though, is that you have a tendency to slant left.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It could mean you’re depressed. But most likely you’re afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Don’t get defensive,” Christine replied. “I just interpret what I see.”
That afternoon Jen returned to the room in the White House. Her eyes burned; she’d spent a good deal of the day trying not to shut them. Unless she made a conscious choice to keep them open, her lids had a tendency, every ten to fifteen blinks, to seal themselves shut. When this happened, the head appeared. It shook itself back and forth, slapping itself with its hair. Its lips mouthed the word no over and over. She understood what it meant: she’d promised herself she wouldn’t attend the same class twice. But who was the head to tell her what to do? She made the rules. She could revise them.
As students took their seats, Jen hid behind a copy of the school newspaper. She read a student poem about the beauty of ice, scanned an editorial complaining about the price of cafeteria food, as well as an article discussing the work of Ron Peabody, North Atlantic’s sole art teacher. The newspaper had reprinted Peabody’s most recent work: a painting of a girl with tangled hair tethered to a weird-looking cross — one that, upon closer inspection, Jen realized had been made from three partially engorged phalli. It looked to Jen like a terrible painting; apparently, others had reacted similarly. Ron Peabody’s defense? It was supposed to be terrible: it was about sexual abuse.
Eventually, a rumpled, sharp-featured man with graying sideburns entered the room. He shuffled through a briefcase, removed a sheet of paper, and began calling roll. Jen’s body pulsed, as though a host of live tiny things was pressing against the inside of her skin. There was only one explanation: she’d gone to the wrong class.
She tapped the shoulder of the boy next to her. The boy had cornrows and a thin beard that ran along his jawline and around his lips — a beard so neat and trim it looked like it might’ve been drawn with a Magic Marker. “What class is this?” she asked.
“Intro to Humanities,” he said.
“Who’s that?”
“Professor Wood. You didn’t hear about Laycock? She was walking her dog last night and keeled over. Heart attack. Out for the semester. Maybe forever.”
“Anyone’s name I did not call?” Professor Wood asked. “Okay, then. Let’s begin with a prayer.”
Jen shut her eyes. The head swung back and forth, a pendulum of hairy meat. Professor Wood asked for a blessing upon the class, the school, and especially Dr. Laycock. The head moved its lips to Wood’s words. Jen pinched herself several times on the thigh, hoping her brain would interpret the code: Cut it out.
After the prayer, Wood apologized. He would not be discussing the symbolist movement. Nor, for that matter, would he discuss any branch of the humanities. He would spend his time here discussing what he knew: ecology. All the people in this room were earthbound creatures; thus, they were stewards of the earth and its resources. “How many of you shower every day?” he asked. Hands flew up. “And why,” Wood asked, “do you do this?”
The boy with the perfect goatee raised his hand. “We’re dirty,” he said.
“Really?” Wood said. “Are you slopping hogs? Slaughtering calves? Shoveling manure? At the very least you’re probably walking at least five miles to school everyday, right? No? That’s what your ancestors were doing a hundred years ago, and they went entire weeks without bathing. But you guys need one every day? Here’s a challenge for you: skip that bath two days a week. Use the same towel for a month. Learn to use less!”
Goatee Boy passed Jen a note. Didn’t catch yr name, it said. I’m Lorenzo.
Jen thought for a second. Linda, she wrote, taking care to slant every letter right-ward. I’m new. From Canada.
You cute, Lorenzo wrote back.
“You think,” Wood said, “that because this world isn’t our eternal home we can trash it? Man was given dominion, yes, but dominion means control. And if we don’t conserve, folks, we won’t be in control. We’ll be awash in chaos.”
Jen folded the note. She flipped open her notebook. She wrote stewards at the top of the page, drew a question mark after. Stewards slanted right, but the question mark stood up straight. It stood at attention. It looked ready for battle.
After class, Jen asked Lorenzo what he knew about John the Baptist.
“The voice crying in the wilderness,” Lorenzo said, smiling. He was typing a message on his phone; every few seconds his lips parted, revealing a luminous wad of gum. “You know. He predicted Jesus and all that. Then baptized him.”
“Not that,” Jen said. “The stuff about his head.”
Lorenzo flipped his phone shut. “You mean the ho who asked for it on a platter? Who knows why those people did what they did. Last week? In Faith of our Fathers? We read this story from Judges where this old dude gives away a concubine, along with his virgin daughter, to a gang of men to rape all night. Then, in the morning, the old dude takes the concubine and chops her into twelve pieces.”
“That’s a true story?”
Lorenzo wrapped an arm around Jen’s shoulder. His fingers, which grazed her neck, were soft and slightly sticky. “Of course it’s true,” he said. “It’s Scripture.”
“But what does it mean? A king offers you half his kingdom, and you ask for a decapitated head?”
“You’re not a big Bible person, are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You don’t give off that vibe. Which is fine. But you should come to that class. You’d get a kick out of Bowers. He’s a trip.”
At the religion department — a tall, yellow Victorian flanked by tall maples — Jen followed Lorenzo through the front door and into a room that resembled a chapel. He sat down on the back pew beside an Asian girl wearing a baggy sweatshirt and spandex pants. She was sucking a purple lollipop.
“You know Joanne?” Lorenzo asked.
“Um,” Jen said.
“Linda’s from Canada,” Lorenzo explained.
“Didn’t you used to be in Approaches to Literature?” Joanne asked.
“I dropped that,” Jen said.
“I wish I’d dropped it,” Joanne replied. “But today, oh my gosh, Lorenzo. Do you know Greg?”
“Red-cheeked boy with the fro?”
Joanne nodded. She popped her sucker in and out of her mouth. “We were supposed to look up an old song, as old as we could possibly find, and bring the lyrics in. When it’s his turn, he starts reading some song he found from the thirteenth century or whatever. But the lyrics are all about this dude dripping candle wax on this woman’s… you know.”
“Hoo-ha?” Lorenzo said.
“Only, he didn’t say ‘hoo-ha.’ He said the C word. But the way he said it, it was like he didn’t even know what it meant!”
“Get out,” Lorenzo said.
“I swear.”
“You ever tried it?” Jen asked.
“Excuse me?” Joanne replied.
“Have you had anyone drip candle wax onto your C-word?”
Joanne frowned. “Um, no?”
“And you?” Lorenzo asked, aiming his finger at Jen.
“I’m still waiting for the right person.”
Lorenzo chuckled.
“Your friend’s funny,” Joanne said. She wasn’t smiling. “Is everybody this funny in Canada?”
Jen didn’t have time to answer. Doug Bowers, the bemused-looking blond man who taught Faith of Our Fathers, had begun a recap of last week’s lecture on the Millerite movement: using the books of Ezekiel and Daniel, the Millerites had created a system by which they predicted the Second Coming of Christ. Followers donned ascension robes, sold their worldly possessions, and waited in graveyards for a dark little cloud to bloom angels. October 22, 1844, came and went. Nothing happened. The Millerites were disappointed. Greatly.
“It’s hard for me to believe,” said a bearded man in the front pew, “that nobody pointed out Matthew 25:13 to these folks.”
“Ah!” Bowers said. “Don’t be so quick to judge! A revolution in faith is a complicated event. Most of the time, there are more than a few kinks to work out.”
A chubby, sour-faced girl raised her hand. “Should somebody explain Matthew 25? Not everyone’s memorized the Bible.”
“Watch therefore,” the bearded man said, “for ye know not neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”
“Thanks,” the girl said, smirking.
“Remember,” Bowers said, “it’s easy to identify the flaws of our ancestors. A hundred years from now, our own children will probably look back at us and say ‘What morons!’ Our main concern, the one that should keep us up at night, is this: Are we searching Scripture as closely as the Millerites? Are we seeking our own personal revelations?”
Part Three
After class, Lorenzo slipped Jen a strip of paper with his number; he had to run. He had basketball practice from two to four. Jen stuffed the paper into her pocket and waited for Bowers. She had a question for him: could modern-day people have visions?
“I’m sure they can,” Bowers said. “The question is, what kind?”
“That’s what I wanted to find out. See, I have this friend. She keeps having the same dream, even when she’s awake.”
“Sounds like this friend of yours needs to search her heart. As well as Scripture.”
“But what if what she’s seeing is straight from the Bible?”
Bowers shook his head. “You have to be so careful with visions. There’s always the chance that it’s originating in some other, darker place. The truth is, no one on this planet knows the Bible like the devil.”
“The devil?”
“I’m not talking about a cartoon guy with horns and a pitchfork. I’m talking about a beautiful fallen angel. The onetime leader of the heavenly choir. A being with the power to seduce the hearts and minds of the Very Elect. A being who rejoices every time a human refuses to believe in him. Because think about it: you can’t resist an influence if you don’t even believe it exists.”
Back at the twins’ house, Paul and Alice and Christine were at the dining room table, playing a board game Paul had recently won in an eBay auction. The game involved rolling a pair of dice, turning a clock, and sticking your finger into the mouth of a plastic vampire. The point was to hope the vampire didn’t wake up. If he did, he’d bite your finger. His felt-tipped fangs would leave two dots behind, thus branding you a loser.
“Hey,” Paul said. “You ever find that Wish Book?”
“No,” Jen replied. She brushed a few specks of dandruff from his shoulder.
“I have got to find that thing.”
“Wanna play the next round?” Christine asked.
“I’m good,” Jen replied.
“So,” Alice said, “how was school?”
“You mean college,” Paul said.
“Good,” Jen said. “I learned about the Millerite movement.”
Paul frowned. “I thought you were taking science classes.”
Jen shrugged. “We had a guest speaker.”
Alice, a self-proclaimed history buff, cleared her throat dramatically. “Paul?” she said. “I’m going to have to take issue with that assumption. The Millerite movement wasn’t totally unscientific. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I remember a number of Millerites becoming quite active in various health movements. Which makes sense. There’s nothing more scientific than learning how to take care of your body, especially when preparing oneself for translation.” Alice stuck her finger into the vampire’s mouth. She waited. The clock ticked. Nothing happened.
“Translation?” Jen asked.
“The journey from earth to heaven. The Millerites believed you had to exclude from your diet any foods that aroused the animal passions.”
“Sexual desires,” Paul explained.
“Exactly,” Alice said.
“Nobody said anything about animal passions,” Jen said.
“That’s the thing about schools like that,” Christine added. She blew on the dice in her hand, then released them. “There’s a lot about stuff they never tell you.”
Jen made an announcement: she was exhausted. “Good night,” said the twins. “Good night,” said Paul. Jen climbed the stairs to the second floor, then a final flight to the attic. She held a cordless phone and a strip of paper with a string of numbers and the name LORENZO RAMON ALFARO. She sat on the futon. She rubbed her eyes. Surprise, surprise: the head appeared. It was not happy. It was weeping. But it didn’t have tears to cry, only blood. Was it a test? Jen wondered. She decided that it was. The head wanted to know if she felt for it.
“You’re sad,” Jen whispered.
I yearn for what I have not.
“Your body?”
The head tried to answer, but couldn’t. It was overcome by its weeping. Jen imagined cradling it in her arms. Every time, it slipped from her grasp.
Please, the head said. Its bottom lip quivered. Think of Linda. Of Lorenzo.
Jen opened her eyes. How could a head so sad be all that bad? The answer, she guessed, was in the letters of Lorenzo’s number, which she punched into the phone. She waited.
“It’s Linda,” she said, when he picked up.
“What’s up?”
Good question, Jen thought. What would Linda say? Linda: a woman with a free ride, a woman with a vision. A woman without fear, who knew what she wanted and believed she would get it. “You like to party?” Jen asked.
“Depends what you mean by ‘party.’”
“Party. P. A. R. T. Y. Party.”
“If you mean party, drink, then nah. I ain’t down with that. Gotta keep my temple clean.”
“I’m thinking maybe something with candlelight. Some hot wax.”
Lorenzo laughed. “You’re crazy. I gotta study!”
A nasal laugh echoed in the background. “Is that Joanne?”
“Yeah.”
“Aha.”
“Nah, it ain’t like that. She’s in Abnormal Psych with me. We got a huge-ass test tomorrow.”
“What’s more important? Studying for a test or unlocking an ancient mystery?”
“You still tripping about John the Baptist?”
“I’m not tripping. Just seeking new truths.”
“You should chill. Let those truths come to you.”
“Maybe you should teach me.”
“Maybe I will. I’ll play you some music. Tomorrow, you and me. I’ll write you a song.”
“A song about the head of John the Baptist?”
“Yes. Exactly. Promise. Cross my heart. Hope to die.”
“Don’t disappoint me.”
“This is Lorenzo you talking to.”
“Lorenzo,” she said. “Lorenzo, Lorenzo, let down your hair.” She hung up the phone. Her body was alive with palpitations. But actually she felt great. When the head appeared in her mind, she addressed it. What did it think? Should she follow through? The head wasn’t talking. It appeared to be sleeping. “I’ll call the whole thing off now if you tell me,” she whispered. The head kept its lips zipped. Maybe the head knew she was bluffing. The head, she figured, could see right through her.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Paul said. “Things don’t just disappear.”
“You’re in love with things,” Jen said. For the last ten minutes, they’d been lying on the futon, trying to retrace where the Wish Book had gone. “I mean, like, physical things. You love them.”
“I’m a materialist,” Paul explained. “I make no apologies for that.”
“It wasn’t a criticism,” Jen said. “Just a fact.”
“Some might see it as a flaw.”
“Only if it interferes with your life.”
“It sort of is my life.”
“That’s one way we’re different from each other. I can’t think of anything I own that I wouldn’t mind giving up.”
“I like to hold on to things,” Paul said. He slipped his hand inside her shirt. “You, for instance.”
“Please,” Jen said.
He mashed himself against her backside. “Wanna do something?”
Do something. It meant did she want him to touch her while he touched himself? Which was what he liked. He liked other things — he liked the normal things, and the normal ways — but this was what he preferred.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t showered in a while.”
“A while?”
“Two days. No. Three.”
“Why?”
“Conserving water is important.”
“But so is personal hygiene.”
“We’re stewards, you know.”
“Stewards?”
“Of the earth.”
“You’re being weird.”
“What’s so weird about having a conscience?”
“If you’re not interested,” he said, “all you have to do is say so.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Fine,” he said. He flipped over. The futon shook.
“Good night,” Jen said. He didn’t answer. She didn’t close her eyes. She kept them peeled. The stars faded. The head congealed.
You refused him love, it said.
He’s had plenty of love, Jen thought.
Can such things be measured?
Okay, Jen thought, so maybe you couldn’t measure love. But sex? Sex you definitely measure. And in that department Paul had her beat. She knew; he’d told her the stories. Stories she hadn’t wanted to hear: ropes, honey, milk, blood, blindfolds. The psycho exes, the ones who’d do anything, then make him regret it.
But he’s yours now, the head said. Your first. Your last.
The head had a point. This troubled her. She did not want to be troubled. She wanted the head to shut up. But really: how? The answer, she discovered, was frightening: you harnessed the power of the unthinkable. Could she think the unthinkable? Could she imagine, for instance, removing all her clothes? Could she imagine spreading her legs? Could she imagine sitting on the head — on its upturned face — and riding it until it suffocated? She could not. She didn’t want to take it that far. She didn’t want to imagine herself rocking back and forth on the face of a head, especially a holy one. No rocking, she told herself as she began to move. No rocking.
Paul was shouting her name.
“What?”
“You were laughing.”
She’d been dreaming. In the dream, she’d been standing on George Hill, a mound of treeless earth on the edge of North Atlantic College that kids used in winter for sledding. She’d gone there to get rid of the head. She’d jammed two fingers into its eye sockets, hooked her thumb under its top row of teeth, then hurled it down the hill like a bowling ball. She punted it into the sky. She slung it. She chucked it. Every time, the head rolled back. Every time, she was mad, but then the head would stick out its tongue or make kissy faces and she would laugh.
“I had a dream,” she said. “A nightmare.”
“Oh boy,” Paul replied.
“You never want to hear my dreams.”
“I never want to hear anybody’s.”
Paul was wearing a pink oxford shirt and pink polyster pants. His hair was pink. He had a pair of pink lensless glasses and pink deely-bobbers on his head.
“Check this out,” he said. He slapped a sticker over his heart. It said: HELLO my name is FLOYD. “Get it?”
“But it’s not even Halloween,” Jen said.
“The store’s having a contest,” Paul said. “You have to wear your costume for a week in-store to be eligible to win. And guess who’s gonna come home with a $50 gift certificate?” He kissed her forehead. His stubble left a burn.
Part Four
Jen had almost forgotten: she had a date. Not a real date. A fake date. The date, after all, was not rightly hers: Linda had done all the work. Linda and Lorenzo. It had a certain ring, didn’t it? Linda and Lorenzo had planned to meet in the Conservatory, a gargantuan building that had once been a sanitarium, and which was now home to the North Atlantic Department of Music. “The Conservatory?” Linda had asked. “For real? Will Colonel Mustard be there? Should I bring a candlestick?” Lorenzo didn’t get the joke. “You’re Clue-less!” Linda had exclaimed. He didn’t get that one either. Which was okay. The important thing, Jen realized, was to keep Linda laughing. Linda was decidedly upbeat. Linda was the kind of person who had the power, no matter what the circumstance, to stay positive.
“You know about the tunnels, right?” Lorenzo said. They’d met in the lobby, peeked in on an a cappella group holding their mouths as they sang, Yo-ho, yo-ho, yo-ho-whoa! Now, they climbed a creaking staircase blanketed with dingy red carpet.
“What tunnels?” Linda couldn’t take her eyes off Lorenzo’s hair. He had let it out, as she requested. It was now a glistening poof ball on the top of his head.
“I’ve personally never seen them,” Lorenzo said. “Just heard they were there.”
“Like the underground railroad,” Linda said.
“Maybe.”
“Did your ancestors ever use such transportation?”
Lorenzo laughed. “I wish,” he said, opening a door in a dim hallway. “My ancestors came from Brazil.”
The door opened into a tiny room — one barely big enough to hold a piano. It smelled of dust and rotting wood.
Sunlight poured through a window smeared with fingerprints, filling the room with haze. Lorenzo sat on the bench, his fingers splayed across the keys. “This one,” he said, “is called ‘The Voice Crying in the Wilderness.’”
Lorenzo couldn’t read a note. He made everything up as he went. His fingers, Jen noticed, were long and elegant, his nails so polished they looked fake. He frowned meaningfully while he played, tilting his head this way and that. Every once in a while, he let out a moan. Unfortunately, the song failed to live up to its title. It sounded like something from “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
“How do you know what to play?” Jen asked.
“It just comes to me.”
“So you hear it first?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you ever hear anything you don’t want to play?”
“Like what?” Lorenzo said. He lifted his hands off the keys. The chord he’d just played dissolved.
“Sometimes, I hear things. Like a voice. A higher power.”
“You should listen to it.”
“But I’m not even sure I believe in a higher power.”
“We all have our doubts,” Lorenzo said. He ran a finger along her jawline. She tensed. Her back felt like it was breaking out into hives.
“How do you get over that?” she asked.
“You just take a look around. You acknowledge that God’s in everything. Everything that’s alive, everything that is, is from God. Think about it. If you were to have a child, that child would have your blood, your genetic code, right? Well, every piece of material around you was made by God, which means it’s been imprinted with His code. That’s what’s so fly about science. It’s just you checking everything out and what’s being revealed is God’s code. You make connections, you start understanding, but you never get full. The more you eat, the hungrier you get.”
“Mm,” Jen said.
“Like right now, looking at you, I’m seeing God’s code all over the place.”
Lorenzo sucked on her bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth. Jen closed her eyes. The head was bobbing in a river of blood. It was trying to drink from this river, but every time it tipped over and reached out its tongue, the head flipped back over onto its back. Jen opened her eyes. Lorenzo’s eyes bulged beneath their lids. They jerked back and forth, like they wanted out of their sockets.
Things were moving fast. What would Linda think about Lorenzo unbuttoning her jeans? Was Linda that easy? She was. Definitely. Then why was she whispering no? Was Linda one of those types? Would she whisper no with her mouth but say yes with her body? Could Linda welcome the hands of Lorenzo even though they were freezing? Did she have a choice? His hands, which had recently been at work inside Linda’s pants, were now at work upon their own. Did Lorenzo have protection? Linda wanted to know. “Protection from what?” Lorenzo asked. “From babies,” Linda said. “From diseases. From diseased babies.” Lorenzo assured her it was all good; he was clean. “Okay, but,” Linda said. “Wait a second,” she said, though it was clear there would be no waiting involved. Not today. Don’t you think. Shouldn’t we. I don’t know if. Hey. Wait. Wait. And then came the decision of Linda’s that surprised Jen the most: she did not move. She stayed perfectly still.
Lorenzo wanted to know if Linda was okay. Of course she was! She was just waiting a sec to put on her pants. After being so full, that part of her needed to breathe. What about him? Was he okay? Yeah. Definitely. But you know what? He needed to jet. “I need to jet,” he’d said. “Need” meaning “want.” “Jet” meaning get quickly to basketball practice. He was already late. “Late” meaning he wished he was already there. He would call. Everything cool? She nodded.
But everything was not cool. As Jen pedaled the twins’ bike toward campus, her crotch burned. The stinging was so bad that she stopped at the old cemetery across from the main campus. The gravestones were thin, dark grey slabs, slanting in different directions. She deemed the left-slanters weak, the right-slanters strong. The bodies buried here had names like Silas and Elias and James. Alive once, in another century.
It was a beautiful day for a funeral. The sun was splashing all over the green leaves; a swarm of insects danced overhead: tiny dots of light. They swirled around each other, separating and dispersing, then collecting themselves again in a cascading swarm. Winds came and bore them upward, flinging them across the cemetery. They floated on the air like yellow bits of light materialized. Jen moved toward them. She wished to be carried away. Something flew into her nose.
The committee room in the White House was dark and full of students. A man who was not Dr. Laycock or Professor Wood stood at the front of the class. He resembled a fat, balding Sean Connery. Jen had seen him before, driving a red Miata. Then she remembered: Anthony Muntz. Ph.D., Old Dominion.
Jen made her way to the front of the table. The head of the class, she thought. She could see Muntz up close. His wide nostrils were dark passageways heading into his face. Muntz pointed a remote at a slide projector he’d crammed into the corner of the room. A phantasmagoric worm appeared on the screen, its gaping mouth bearing what looked like two fangs.
“Hookworm!” Muntz exclaimed. “Didn’t know you had these little suckers inside you, did you? I’m kidding. Sort of. Some of you do and some of you don’t. Anybody in here like meat? Congratulations! You just upped your chances of getting a pinworm. Familiar with the pinworm? Lives in your rectum. Comes out at night, lays eggs in your anus. Anybody got an itchy behind? No? Means nothing. Parasites don’t just live in your bowels, people. These little guys pop up all over. Heart, head, lungs. Even your eyes.”
Jen mashed hers shut. Oblongs of light swarmed against the darkness. The head rolled. It bore its crumbly teeth. It looked like it might be in agony.
“You guys like magic?” Muntz asked. The audience mumbled. Somebody cackled. “Of course you do. Everybody likes magic. I’m gonna do a little magic. But I need a volunteer.”
Jen raised her hand.
“Okay Miss Enthusiasm,” he said. “Come on up.”
She went.
Muntz squeezed her arm with one hand and with another, swiped a Q-tip across her forehead. Then he wiped the Q-tip onto a slide, slid it under the microscope projector. Muntz focused the microscope. Something came into view. It looked like a short, fat eel, with little suckers up front for legs. It had the face of a catfish.
“Aha!” Muntz said. “Beautiful. Wonderful. Sometimes it takes a couple swabs. But you, my dear, you’re a veritable parasite production company. Just kidding. Probably just got lucky. Everybody’s got ‘em! Anybody know what we’re looking at here? No? Demodex folliculorum! Don’t let the name scare you. Little bugger’s harmless, long as it doesn’t multiply too much. Last thing you want’s papulopustular rosacea. But you, my dear, you don’t have to worry about that. Just keep your head clean.”
The bell rang. Jen stared at the screen for a minute, then followed the others outside. The sun was bright. It seemed like it should be lower than it was. Demodex folliculorum, she thought.
An incantation. A summons.
At the twins’ house, Jen made the executive decision: time to clean. She dusted. She organized. She mopped. She got on her hands and knees, ground the nozzle of the Wet Vac into Oriental rugs to suck up cat hair. Hours later, everything still looked filthy. It would, she realized, take weeks to right what had gone wrong here; it was stupid to have started. In the downstairs bathroom, she found a dead leaf. She looked at it hard. It wasn’t a dead leaf. It was a dead mouse head. It was looking right at her. She waited for it to speak. It didn’t.
Someone was pounding on the front door. She opened it to find Lorenzo, drenched in sweat. His jersey, which said NAC Flames, was soaked. He’d run the whole way here. He was hiding something behind his back.
“I wanted to make sure you were cool,” he said.
“How did you know where I live?”
“You think I don’t know where my girl lives?”
“Your girl?”
“I brought you something.” He held out a single red rose.
Jen shook her head. “I’m engaged,” she said. “To be married.”
Lorenzo’s tongue wormed around, making one of his cheeks bulge outward. He raised his eyebrows. “Damn,” he said. “Why didn’t you say nothing?”
“I tried,” Jen said. “You weren’t listening.”
“Wait,” he said. “This mean you ain’t coming to my game tonight?”
Jen slammed the door. She waited for him to knock again. He didn’t.
Part Five
Down in the twins’ cellar, Jen helped herself to the oldest bottle of Bordeaux she could find. She tried to open the bottle with a wine key, but broke the cork. She shoved the rest of the cork into the bottle with a chopstick. She poured half the bottle into a Big Gulp cup. Shards of cork bobbed on the surface like the remnants of a shipwreck. Upstairs she searched the twins’ bookcases for a Bible, found one, turned to the index, looked up John the Baptist. The Gospel of Matthew had this to say: Among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. In the fourteenth chapter, she found the story of the beheading. Salome’s mother had asked for the head of John the Baptist; John the Baptist had called her an adulteress. Jen wasn’t sure, but it seemed like Salome’s mother had slept with another man. Apparently, nobody knew this but God, who told John the Baptist.
Dr. Laycock hadn’t mentioned a mother. Dr. Laycock had said nothing about a mother. Jen felt like she should be mad, but then she thought of Laycock, wasting away. Who would teach her class from now on? Who would walk her dog? A sixty-year-old woman. No children. No husband. Probably never been laid. But maybe she didn’t need sex. Instead of sex, she planted ideas into the heads of her students, and hoped they’d grow wild.
“You cleaned,” Paul said, when he came home. He tore open a strawberry fruit roll up. He dangled it above his face. It looked like skin. Like raw, sticky meat. He lowered it into his mouth and chomped.
“You can’t really clean this place,” she said. “There’s like, a gazillion centuries of filth on everything. You try to clean and it spreads out. It moves.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Nooo,” Jen said, wrapping her arms around his torso. “Not much. Hardly any.”
“You reek.”
“Did you know that people of yore hardly ever bathed?”
“You are wasted. Which might explain the fact that you don’t seem to remember what day it is.”
“I do remember,” Jen said. “It’s the day of Lorenzo’s game.”
“Who’s Lorenzo?”
“Lorenzo,” Jen said. “The basketball player. My lover. Did you know I’d taken a lover?”
“I’m going downstairs,” Paul said. “Call me when you’ve sobered up.”
How did Jen get to the gym? She thought she’d walked but she couldn’t remember the journey. She knew only that the gym was hot and cramped and packed with students. There were a few feet between the end of the court and the beginning of the concrete wall. The Flames were beating Southern Vermont by twenty-five. Every time Lorenzo got the ball, he scored. He dribbled between his legs, head faked right, went left, spun, leaped into the air, double-pumped, and shot. It made her head hurt to watch. She could barely keep up. Clearly, he was the star.
In the bleachers — on a balcony at the north end of the gym — the students were going crazy.
Afterwards, Jen watched Lorenzo stand in line to slap the palms of the opposing team. Streaks of light swam over his sweaty skin. Joanne, wearing a gymnastics uniform, came running out of the crowd. She jumped onto him. He wrapped his arms around her. Apparently, she didn’t mind the sweat. She embraced him with her legs. He kissed her on the mouth.
“Lorenzo,” Jen yelled. She thought she might flip him off. He never looked up.
“Hey,” a voice said. It was the sour-faced girl from Faith of Our Fathers. She was wearing a Marilyn Manson tank-top and green eyeliner. Her arms, the size of Jen’s thighs, were bare and smeared with red splotches. One of them, Jen noticed, looked like a face. A face with a beard and no body.
“My friends and I have a bet,” she said. “They don’t think you go here, but I told them you’re in my class.”
“Oh.”
“Can you do me a favor and just tell them you go here?”
Jen glanced over the sour-faced girl’s shoulder, to the top of the bleachers. Two short black girls — they looked barely thirteen — turned away and giggled.
“I don’t go here,” Jen said. “Not anymore.”
Paul sat at the head of the dining room table, surrounded by a mound of Super Friends wrapping paper. His hair was still pink, but he’d changed into his Captain America shirt — the one he’d bought at Target, the one that’d been faded to look old.
His birthday? Was that possible? Had she missed it again? It came every year on the same day and every year she found a way to forget. This time she’d also missed the gift-opening. The table was crowded with mint-condition toys: monster puppets, squishy, baseball-sized balls with gruesome faces. Alice tossed a glob of slime — green and lustrous and wobbly — between her hands; Christine snapped a monstrous skull onto a plastic skeleton.
“I had a revelation,” Paul said. “I’m twenty-nine years old. Today is the first day of the last year of my youth. What better way to celebrate than busting open the mint condition boxes of yesteryear?”
“Our children’s inheritance,” Jen said.
“Who better to spend it on than ourselves?”
Christine handed Paul the miniature skeleton, which she’d plastered with clay. Paul ripped open a packet of Powdered Monster Flesh Remover. They dropped the monster into the plastic vat. The flesh sizzled. The water began to boil. For a second Jen thought it might come alive. The flesh bubbled away. The water turned green. The twins cheered.
“You want a sundae?” Alice asked. Jen wanted a sundae. She did. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so.
Sundaes were for good girls and boys. Every good boy deserves fudge. Where had she learned that? She didn’t know. It made perfect sense.
“In a minute,” she said. “I’m going upstairs to change.”
In the attic Jen slid out of her clothes. Naked, she walked across the hall and into the shower, where she twisted the cap off one of the twins’ bottles of shampoo. She dumped out a handful, lathered her arms, her legs, her face. Some got in her eyes, she mashed them shut. There, in the stinging darkness, the head of John the Baptist hovered. There was nothing scary about it, Jen realized. Nothing sexy. It simply was.
The time has come, the head said. Jen knew what to do. She didn’t know how she knew but she did. She saw herself reaching out through the dark to take hold of the head. It prickled with heat. She slid it over her head like a hood — like a mask. It was tight. The inside was slick and sticky and hot. It felt as if fireworks were going off on her face. She understood. The head was fusing itself to her flesh. She opened her eyes. She felt it. It was there. It was on. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to speak. She wheezed.
She wrapped herself in a towel and descended the stairs. She gripped the rail. Balancing the new weight was difficult. In the den Paul and the twins were sitting on the couch. Paul balanced a quart of ice cream in his lap. They all had spoons, but they’d stopped using them. They were staring at the TV. She could tell by their faces that something terrible was about to happen. She stood in the doorway. She wasn’t in a rush. She would wait all night. She had time. She didn’t know what she would say, but she trusted the head to make the right decisions. It knew what they needed to hear. It had known all along what to say. All it had needed, all this time, was a body, to which it could harness itself. She was the one.
“Behold,” she said when they finally looked her direction. “My kingdom is at hand.”
